Boeroer

No, they give you a higher chance of causing an interrupt. With PER 15 you will have a value of 15. With Interrupting Blows it will be 30. If you hit somebody, you will roll d100 + interrupt value (here 30) against concentration. Concentration with 15 RES is 90. So without Interrupting Blows it would be d100+15 > 90 = interrupt time of weapon applied With Interrupting BLows it would be d100+30 > 90. That's better than prolonging the interrupt time by15% I think. You can lower concentration by 10 then with a chanter's phrase. Then your chance to interrupt a RES-15-Guy with your 15 PER and Interrupting Blows would be like 50%. Another way are all the spells/powers that lower RES. Like Miasma of Dull Mindedness and so on. That will further lower concentration by 30 points. So it's not too bad to max PER if you want to cause a lot of interrupts. With 20 PER and all the stuff I listed above you would have to roll d100+45 >50 against a 15 RES guy. That should be an interrupt almost every time. If you combine a chanter, a wizard and an interrupt-barb you can perma-lock a lot of foes without any defense or immunity against this.

They scale with levels and reach the equivalent of superb weapons. They are great! Fast and lots of damage. However: you can't enchant them and they do crush damage. If you meet enemies that are immune to crush you are screwed. Just carry hatchets or spears in your second weapon set and you're good to go. To counter the fact that you can't enchant them you can find nice sandals that give a bonus to unarmed damage.

Haha - you guys... XD At least I'm not doing a playthrough at the moment - that's something. But I still find myself firing up PoE too often in order to test and tinker around because of stuff I read in the forum. So it's all your fault. And I managed to go to bed before 11:00 pm twice in a row! Whoot-whoot! Ah, and @knownastherat: sorry if that post of mine sounded ****y. I meant no (real) offense.

Yes! I find it to be a good term for that kind of "work". :D

Amplified Wave is fast and nice. But you won't get rid of your focus since it generates it's own.

You are right about strike hard and stuff. I just like it when you can have a good weapon early on and stick to it (if it works).

I second nearly all what Mocker22 said. Especially what he said about caster clipping. That's not what barbs are good at. Other things: - Keep in mind that barbs' performance depends on items - especially weapons. This is due to the fact that most special on-hit or on-crit effects work with carnage. - Brute Force can be great if you have any means of applying Weakened in an AoE (and take Threatening Presence for Sickened yourself). This can be done by a priest's Painful Interdiction for example. Sickened and Weakened stack and result in more than -40 fortitude and more than -30 Will. In this case Brute Force is wonderful. If you don't plan to do that: don't take Brute Force - Threatening Presence alone is not enough - because most enemies have higher fort than deflection anyways. Threatening Presence is still nice on it's own though. - Envenomed Strike doesn't work with carnage - so in my opinion it's a waste. Vulnerable Attack is a solid choice for barbs - because it works with carnage and carnage does less damage than your initial hit - so +5 DR bypass via carnage is great. It's like a flat +5 damage bonus per hit. Savage Attack is only good later in the game when low ACC is not a problem anymore (carnage has reduced ACC, that's why). - Interrupting Blows can be great for a fast hitting barb - because it also works with carnage. There are no immunities to interrupts. Take two one handed weapons with high interrupt value (there are two great war hammers with 1.0 sec and 0.75 sec for example). Combine this with high PER and you will land a lot of long lasting interrupts in an AoE. If you're fast enough, you can interrupt-lock whole groups. Also works with a certain spear and a shield - you don't have to be dual wielding. - Barbaric Blow is really bad unless you have a weapon with an on-hit or on-crit effect. Then it's ok. - Wild Sprint is only per rest (which is really annoying). Boots of Speed are passive and cost you nothing but have the same effect. - Barbaric Shout is great despite the fact it's only per rest. - If you like Death Godlikes you should combine this with Bloody Slaughter. That's a great combination - especially with carnage. You can use another thing with this combo: - Heart of Fury (HoF) can be a real gamechanger in tough fights. There's a reason that it's only 1/rest: It's superpowerful if you know how to use it. If you have high INT (and therefore a huge carnage AoE) and are dual wielding + Vulnerable Attack the damage will be hilarious - if you can manage to hit 5 to 6 enemies with it. Each hit will trigger carnage by itself which leads to many, many hits. It's really great if you combine it with Death Godlike and Bloody Slaughter, since during this Full Attack + tons of carnage hits most enemies will be reduced from uninjured to badly injured - or from badly injured to death. When HoF and Death's Usher + Bloody Slaugher meet - nothing will stand afterwards. It's especially great if you have a draining weapon like Tidefall or so - because after the usage of HoF your endurance is 100% again (if you managed to hit 5 to six foes). It gets even better if you have a weapon that has an on-hit or on-crit effect since the chance that the enemy gets debuffed and hit again with the same attack is big. For example: if you have a weapon that causes prone most of the time you use HoF everybody will lie on the floor afterwards if they are not dead. Against one or two enemies this ability is totally worhtless though. You have to reach as many enemies as possible. - Blooded: is only good (in my opinion) if you take a Fire Godlike or combine it with Vengeful Defeat: then the enemies get really hurt when you go down. You can combine this with HoF and also Barbaric Blow: If you feel that you might be going down and are below 50% endurance: first trigger HoF, then Barbaric Blow and then, when you keel over, Vengeful Defeat will be triggered. All these will have more damage because of Blooded. And maybe Death's Usher and Bloody Slaughter also kick in. Vengeful Defeat is only great if you have any means of reviving (second chance item or paladin or priest or chanter). THis way you can go down, deal damage with it and get up again. Wow - this is more text than I planned - sorry!

I know it's different since I played PoE a little bit from time to time. I just think it was funny that there was an option to sound like a nitwit in the IE games.

What I liked about the IE games (and yes, it's the first time I even use a reference to that games) was the fact that your dialogue options changed when your INT was too low. You would sound like a dump ogre. Hilarious!

So, one per encounter... how lame.

Sacred Immolation fo the win! WIthout it it would have taken you 3 hours I suppose.

Yes, even the +5 DR will be suppressed by a Fine or Exceptional enchantment on your armor. The -5 Deflection worked though if I recall correctly. +3 shouldn't stack with other +MIG gear, but at least it shouldn't be suppressed by a +1 MIG helm or stuff like that. It should just override it.

Since there are Rings of Unshackling (and they alwys seem to rain down on me - don't know why) I wouldn't choose Suppress Affliction - but to each his own! I know that you don't use Iconic Projection and Repulsing Seal a lot... because I'm a psychic! But just tell me: how does the Spell Mastery exactly work? I know you pick this one spell per level - but then? How many times can you cast it per encounter? And do you get an extra button for that mastered spell?

I also like Iconic Projection. Damage and Healing at the same time = great stuff.

Ooooh! Really good point! That's ideed a solid reason not to get charmed.

Just like the Dr. ordered, you need to max out your DEX. I don't agree that you don't need PER so much because it not only gives you more interrupts(!) but also does result in more crits. If you crit an enemy with a disorienting weapon, the duration of the debuff also gets multiplied by 1.5. That way you can stack up more of this debuffs as if you only would do hits. But the main reason is interrupts. Crits will start to fly around anyway when your enemies are debuffed multiple times with disorienting (as you can see in my screenshots - a deflection around 1 means 100% crits if your ACC is 98 or above). You can speed this circle of debuffing up significantly if you debuff the defenses of the mob first with a spell. I used Aspirant's Mark so I can do it myself - a scroll would also be fine. Or you just ask a fellow party member to do this. I just tested a double team of a Wodewys-Barb that causes Nature's Mark on 10% of hits/crits together with this debuffer brab. Since you hit a lot of enemies via carnage the spell striking will trigger pretty soon, releasing Nature's Mark in an AoE upon the mob - then it all goes very quickly. But you could also take any debuffing spell that lowers defenses. I also used the yells and shouts so that my barb doesn't get hit too often. As I said it's pretty annoying when your stacking chain gets broken because you get interrupted of even disabled. I just went with the Vile Loner's Lance and a shield. It didn't make a lot of difference interrupt-wise and also the stacking of disorienting wasn't so much higher than with dual wielding. It also gives you a lot more sturdyness - especially if you combine it with the Stalwart Defiance talent. If you want more survivability then you can even pick up a bigger shield. This will not slow you down - just make you do less crits at the beginning of a fight. Is thas no influence on your interrupt chance. A normal RES value helps so that you don't get interrupted too often (because that breaks your interruption/debuffing chain). Since you don't want to wear thick armor (you have to be fast in order to stack the debuffs) a shield really helps. One of the main reasons for a shield is the durgan feinforcement. It gives you 15% more speed with the main hand - and that's nothing to sneeze at. Gauntlets of Swift Action would be supergreat, also. What I dumped to 3 was MIG so I could also max INT - since I didn't want to be a damage dealer I just tested it and it works. And you have +4 MIG from Frenzy. But Savage Defiance is still a little bit weak then. But the maxed INT kind of makes up for this. With a Ring of Overseeing you can reach lots of enemies now. You will still do ok damage because of all the crits. I didn't use Vulnerable Attack because of Attack Speed - and still did 30 damage with each hit against DR 10 to 15 Ogres. A wizard with Expose Vulnerabilites, a Chanter with this DR- invocation and Ryona's Vembraces might help. Or you build a real glass cannon with dumped RES and high MIG. But that is not "fire and forget". I chose the Vile Loner's Lance because it not only lowers defenses by -5 (and stacks it), but also has a very high interrupt time (1.0 sec). Plus: it has +5 ACC as an advantage which is great, too. That's indeed a nice combination. I think a second wepon with dual wielding will not make the build any better because then you will not hit frequently with this awesome spear but only every second hit. I tested it a bit and I like the spear & shield style better. It also helps with the "fire and forget" aspect. As I said: Barbaric Blow and Heart of Fury really speed things up. HoF is maybe better left over for the tough fights though. Yell or Shout help to stay alive but maybe you want to skip this because of the increased micromanagement. So I had something like: Moon Godlike (+1 INT and +1 DEX + healing - although a bit weak, but great range) Background: Deadfire Archipelago (+1 DEX) MIG: 03 CON: 10 DEX: 20 PER: 15 INT: 19 RES: 10 Reflexes are godly - fortitude not so. Don't get knocked prone! Any gear that improves fortitue defense and defenses against prone and stunned is highly appreciated. Abilities: Frenzy, Bloodlust (doesn't work so well with dunoed MIG at first, but later triggers often), Savage Defiance, Thick Skinned, Theatening Presence, Barbaric Blow, Heart of Fury. Talents: Weapon Focus Peasant, Weapon & Shield Style, Accurate Carnage, Interrupting Blows, Stalwart Defiance, Aspirant's Mark, Bear's Fortitude That should work. I don't know how he behaves throughout a whole playthrough - I just tinkered around a bit with this build. I will have to do a bit more playing before I post a build. Maybe WM II will destroy this anyway - who knows?

Is it that dangerous to get charmed when you do a solo fight? I mean they stop hitting you when you are - so you just wait until it wears off and keep on fighting - or not? With a party it seems to be more annoying. Nevertheless impressive Will defense!

Two Darcozzi paladins with marking weapons, Inspiring Exhortation and Coordinated Attacks are a really great frontline.

Sure - but the recovery stays at zero.

You nailed it!

So when I reach 0 recovery I could basically retrain DEX to 3, right? Because +21% recovery of zero is still zero...?

Ah, ok. That's obviously right. I totally forgot the AoE aspect.

Huh? Liberating Exhortation is a substitute... or not?

175 deflection is NOT the original value. Stack defense bug it is. Are you at 2.03?

Yes! Sacred Immolation + on kill effects =