Boeroer

Hehe: yes, Interfering stacks. Had them all down to 62 ACC instead of 92. Then I did my barbaric shout: "You can't hit me, nananana!" edit: or alternatively: "U can't touch this... HAMMER TIME!"

What a team of 6 barbs, one with The White Spite, the second one with Vile Loner's Lance, the third with Wodewys, the fourth with The Hours of St. Rumbalt, the Fifth with Tall Grass and the sixth with The Temaperacl would be able to do? I'm tempted to plan another playthrough... oh nooo! edit: Maybe Interfering like on Lost Thayn's Reach also stacks? Will test that now...

Maybe - you should run a test if the overall DPS in an encounter is higher with the White Spire. Oh wait - that's a rhyme! Sweet! The good thing is that you can buy it early. BotEP comes bit late or not? Of course you can always use the White Spire (while you light a fire*) first and then switch to BotEP later. )* just for the rhyme

That's right. Level 6 is a bit early for Stalwart.

Is the invocation that turns you into a good warrior any good against dragons?

I updated the posting. You can do it just as good with Vile Loner's Lance and a small shield. You don't need an empty hand. A durgan refined shield gives you 15% extra speed and more deflection - that's worth it. A good thing is to debuff with a long lasting spell. Aspirant's Mark works really well. When it becomes 1/encounter it will be perfect for this build. At the moment it's 2/rest which isn't superbad. If you start with this the rest of the debuffing will be quicker.

Give us grenades! Please! Ah - and whips! While you are at it...

Hahaha - that guy really plays the squeaky wheel.

LOL! Yeah... sadly I'm too weak to resist. My eyebags look like Sparfel's waterskin... But I'm doing no playthroughs at the moment so that's something. Tomorrow I will start another working project so maybe this will really be the last day testing some builds. And here's the result with Vile Loner's Lance and a small shield (no hammer involved): As you can see it's nearly the same. It also went below 0 a lot but I missed the right moment to take a picture. Whatever - Barbaric Blow is really nice with this (and HoF of course) - and because you can stack a little more ACC on the spear than you could if you were dual wielding spear/hammer you produce more crits - which leads to longer duration of the disabling - which leads to more crits... so long story short: it's nearly as effective. This might turn out to be a really good build even for midgame: not too low deflection, nice debuffing and ok damage. I dumped MIG by the way and did not take Vuln. Attack but still had 30+ damage hits because all of my hits were crits - imagine that with a second damage dealing barb (Firebrand?) in a double team - or even with a priest who casts Crowns for the Faithful and Painful Interdiction - ouch! p.s.: for you I drew another silly picture, AndreaColombo.

I agree. Stunning Shots alone is awesome.

True - but they only have crappy class talents - so there's more room for defensive ones that could possibly raise your chanter near the level of a paladin? I mean you can alwys chant some defensive chants to make up for a few points of defense. And you can always switch chants. Start wit short, protective chants to call a summon, then switch to AoE damage - or something like that...? Ok, solo against dragons is a totally different thing.

At level 10 the Lagufaeths should be doable even in Longwatch Falls I think. Never tried them with scaled content because I like to go to Stalwart as soon as possible to fetch all these nice unique items.

I'm pretty sure he's not more effective. Like... a 120% sure. He's doing great things against one single target, no doubt about that. I also like my Twinned Arrows ranger. But he's not doing this in an AoE like the barb. Driving Flight doesn't work with on-hit-effects (except the x%-trigger things like Stormcaller and others of WM have). Plus: Lenas Er, Stunning Shots and Twinned Arrows come really late AND your pet has to be alive and kicking to trigger stunning shots. I prefer Stormcaller since you can get (and unlock it to exceptional) way earlier. This guy debuffs whole mobs - not just one single target. Not only with the bebuffs but also with interrupts as a bonus. If you combine very high INT with an overseeing item and the enemies are not too big (like ogres) you easily can reach 5-6 foes at once. With Barbaric Blow and Heart of Fury (if you need a debuff NOW) even the Vile Loner's Lance is enough - and that thing you can have very early if you want.

What about a chanter with all defense +10 talents, sup. deflection, cautious attack and the Dragon Slashed chant? It's a little bit like Sacred Immolation but comes earlier. Plus you can have very flexible buffs if you need them. And summons. Are his defenses still too weak for soloing?

More FoD uses (however achieved) would be so cool. I love my gunslinging paladins with Intense Flames, burning lash and Scion of Flame.

Thanks to this thread I could invent this: barb disabler Thanks a lot guys!

Speaking about gear-centric: barb disabler

Yeah, as I said: if your defenses are high it's nothing - if they are low it's your death sentence.

I gave the barb Aspirant's Mark (should be 1/encounter after WM II comes out) and all speed stuff and shouts, VIle Loner's and Strike Hard. They are not only disorienting weapons, they also have nice interrupt ratings (0.5 and 1.0) so I also took Interrupting Blows. Behold the power of the Disorienting Roflcopter: :-D And that's without the terrifiy-shout! Heart of Fury is a BIG thing here also: Because it does a Full Attack in an AoE PLUS carnage you an stack up the disorienting effect to ridiculous amounts. But even without it the defenses are whimpy. Groups of tough enemies suddenly become soft, wet toast. Have to try if you also can achieve this with one weapon (Vile Loner's) and shield. Hammer and spear really gives you the look of an imbecile. Will post a build when WM II comes out... edit: the fortitude and reflex defenses are not known - they should be nearly as low as the rest. Fort might be a bit higher (20-30) because ogres have a lot of that.

Erm... did somebody else notice that the disorienting enchantment effect stacks on enemies? We heard about the blunderbuss Scon Mica's Roar: that it causes 6 times -5 defense to a total of -30 defenses. So after reading in the Attack Speed 2.0 thread I figured maybe this also happens if you hit fast enough with melee weapons. I made a barb with all the attack speed stuff so he will hit as fast as possible and gave him the Vile Loner's Lance and Strike Hard (looks crappy, I know), both are disorienting. Then I developed this a bit further and gave him the White Spire and Wodewys for his second and third weapon slot and took Quick Switch. Now I ran into a bunch of Ogres and startet hitting. Soon after that Wodewys triggered Nature's Mark - that caused a long lasting debuff of 10 points to deflection and reflex in a pretty big AoE (maxed INT and Ring of Overseeing) - now I switched to the White Spire and hit everybody for -5 defenses and switched to the dual weapon setup and caused another -5 plus -5 from both weapons. As I had guessed, these debuffs stacked. So the Ogres had -25 deflection and reflex and -15 fortitude and will for a short amount of time (I also used Threatening Presence and shouts to debuff them further). And then - because I was pretty fast - the defenses of the Ogres dropped really fast because I was hitting without recovery and although you can't see it in the tooltip, the disorienting debuff of Strike Hard and Vile Loner's Lance started to stack "internally". I looked at the defelction and it dropped from somewhere near 50 to 20 and further - then staying there. Obviously the first debuff ran out and I hit the point where there was a balace between outworn debuff and new ones applied. Together with Threatening Presence and shouts the defenses of the Ogres were really really low. THey were not disabled, but easy prey for the rest of the party. If you skip all that quick switching and just go for the Lance + Strike Hard (or even for the Lance and a small shield) and try to get crits to prolong the debuff duration plus max INT for long duration this may be a nice, reliable way to heavily debuff in an AoE without to much micromanagement and with litte resources. Have to test this further if it's worth a build...

If you don't have high defenses they will just perma-paralyze you forever with their blowpipes. That's why they are really devastating if your level is too low or if you don't have high deflection and fortitude or some other means of defense that counters this affliction. They are also superfast and love to swarm you - you can't outrun them without boots of speed. So if you have squishies they will be most likely dead since on PotD there will be a ton of Lagufaeth. Then: in Russetwood or Durgan's Battery they are a bit weaker than in Longwatch Falls - at least that's my impression. If you reach lvl 9 or 10 they are not very difficult anymore with a party - or if your defenses are top-notch like a solo paladin's surely are. edit: and stop playing solo paladins! I want my 12 Ogres!

The armor will emit a Threatening Presence of course.

^ Superexactly! I also found it's more important to have fun while playing (a not to messed up build helps of course) than being superpowerful. Even on PotD you will encounter fights which are too easy. Then the fun drops. So OP build = more fun doesn't work. Especially if your OP build needs more micromanagement than you can bear. It can be as Op as you like: if things get tedious it's just not worth it. One example: combine Quick Switch and the Coil of Resourcefulness. Now equip two arquebuses. Fire, switch, fire switch... there's no reload animation - it starts and then gets skipped if you switch right after the shot before the recovery bar appears. If you use a rogue this setup is super OP. You can also do that with two melee sets that deal different effects - like White Spire and Hours of St. Rumbalt. If you switch after each swing there will be no recovery bar. You can just pump MIG and dump DEX, put on plate - all without penalties. It's superduper OP - but at the same time so annoying that I would not do it for more than 5 minutes. Maybe it's a nice option for soloing though.

Well - some of my builds totally evolve around an item - but that's the fun of it (for me): finding nice synergies between items and abilities. So "theorycrafting" and approval is exactly my thing. But at the same time the game just works perfectly well without it.

What always works and is good fun with low micro: High MIG, high INT, good CON, good PER, ok DEX, low RES. Put on Shod-in-Faith (the high MIG and INT are also great for anybody who stands near you), get Sanguine Plate (you don't need Frenzy as an ability then), grab Tidefall. Don't run into battle as the main aggro guy, but don't wait too long either. Your deflection will be low and most of the time the enemies turn towards you and stick to you. You will be hard to kill because of high DR and constant healing (draining via carnage is huge, Consecrated ground also wotks when you're disabled) while doing good damage with Tidefall (+25% wounding in your huge carnage area). It a really nice mix of AoE damage and tankyness. Until you get Shod-in-Faith you want to stay behind sturdier guys and use a pike.