Boeroer

The most uncomplicated barb I ever had - lots of tankyness, lots of dps - was the good old Tidefall barb in plate with Shod-in-Faith boots and some gear that prevents disabling. For me he's a blood drinking, mad berserker. Basically: - Tidefall will apply +25% wounding to all carnage hits PLUS 25% draining, giving you a lot of endurance and slowly killing your enemies on top of your normal damage (works like a charm if you combine this with Combustng Wounds!) - Shod-in-Faith will get triggered all the time because barbs deflection is... well... crap? It will heal you very quickly if things get messy. But this allows you to just jump into the fray - You should avoid to be paralyzed and so on because that really can kill you. The rest will not in 99% of cases. Tidefall is superb and you can get it quite early with a mechincs skill of 10+, Shod-in-Faith you can also get really quickly. Before that you can use Gaun's Share plus Oidhreacht for the same but weaker effect. THis tactic needs a bit more CON because your health will suffer. More health is good because you will not need to rest a lot if you have a bigger health pool. Another option is to go for dps and disabling (less tanky): - Tall Grass will prone on crit - carnage also works with that - Don't go into the fray but attack from the sides after your sturdy friends started combat an got engaged - Don't put on too heavy armor because you want to hit fast - but don't be too squishy either. - Use as many +ACC abilities/items/buffs that you can get to cause a lot of crits. Tall Grass is great because you don't have to get too close (reach attack) and still can optimize your carnage aoe - and it is predatory - and it does a lot of damage. With dual wielding you can do this also: Two sabres with carnage are great if it comes to dps. But maybe you want to combine dps and tankyness with disabling? You can use We Toki and Edge of Reason together: one causes prone, the other drains - and they both have a +0.5 crit damage multiplier. Maybe you want superdrain? Take Blesca's Labour & Purgatory. Or you can use the Vile Loner's Lance (-5 defense on hit) and a custom crafted, stunning Cladhaliath for a nice combo effect: first hit lowers deflection, second hit can stun. There are a lot of possibilites. They all are great. It depends which kind of barb you want to play and if you put style over powergaming or if you don't give a damn how stupid your barb looks (two spears are... weird). But as your title says - you're looking for a dps barb. I think nothing does more dps than two sabres. So you could put on heavy armor, shod-in-faith boots and dual wield sabres. There are some nice sabres in the game that you can get early: Resolution and Bittercut. Estocs are also very nice - as Andrea said the White Spire is good for a barb - so is the Grey Sleeper. But all in all I think Tidefall-Guy was the most fun so far.

Wow - that vid is too long for me to watch. However - doesn't matter if "ego" or not. All you need is Stormcaller, Driving Flight, Stunning Shots and Twinned Arrows. At lower levels you can use Swift Aim instead of Twinned Arrwos and retrain when you hit lvl 13. I don't because I don't like to use retraining in my builds. But it surely is more effective. The rest is up to you. If you like your pet to be a dps powerhouse you can do that. You can skill your ranger further with Penetrating Shot and Marksman and Bloody Slaughter and so on (what they call "ego" in that vid)... Do what you like and try things out (well, not in a TC run isuppose ). Another good thing about the Stormcaller Ranger: because he hits up to 4 enemies with one shot (and thus triggers Returning Storm all the time) he will also lower their shock DR by 6 AND stun them, if your pet engagend the initial target (and Returning Storm also stuns). So, stunning shots are greast for your buddies and your pet (because of Merciless Companion). Combine that with a Wounding Shot (DoT) and your pet does crazy crazy dps against the stunned and wounded foe. They hit slow but like trucks. Even high DR foes get hit by 50 points damage and above. Together with Marked Prey I had 100+ dmg crits against armored foes ON TOP of my ranger's damage. And now the lowered shock DR: If you have a buddy that does shock damage (Druid, Wizard or whatever) he will totally love your Stormcaller ranger. You can even cast Expose Vulnarabilites on top of the Stormcaller effect for -11 shock DR bypass an then finish them all with a Jolting Touch (melee wizard), Returning Storm (Druid) or what shock spell you like best. All in all I think Wildstrike-Shock-Druids and Stormcaller Rangers make the best team because the Druid also has lots of DoT-Spells that are great for the ranger's pet if you took Predator's Sense. Whatever - I think you get the impression that I love Stormcaller Rangers - and I do! Maybe I will wirte a class build for that. I just looked it up and although a lot of people use it nobody has posted a buil for it. And, as Andrea said: a Stormcaller cipher is also very nice. Not because of the dps (the ranger is better in that), but he will generate a lot of focus quickly because of the huge DR bypass that Stormcaller can grant. Imagine a DR bypass of 14(!) with that high attack speed (Stormcaller: -6 shock DR, Penetrating Shot: -5, Ryona's Vambraces: -3). And from time to time Soul Shock will be triggered. But I like the Stormcaller Ranger better because of... yeah well, all the awesomesauce that I described above. :D

Pure tanks just don't work any more. Enemies just run past them. You need some ooomph to stop them.

I doubt that they use it only for bugtracking. It's a quite powerful tool.

The Backlash Beldam is quite tanky, but not as tanky as a weapon & shield paladin, chanter or fighter. And remember this cipher tank wants to get hit in order to generate focus. Maybe that's too risky for a TC run. If it comes to "best balance of dps and tankyness", nothing beats a properly build monk in my opinion. Have a look at the Juggenaut build from KDubya. A nicely build wizard is always powerful. Doesn't have to be a glass cannon. If you're not sure about spell radius and so on try a more tanky, melee oriented wizard. They are also great and even viable for a TC solo game. And they have some nice foe-only-spells, too. Most powerful offensive build at the moment is still the stormcaller ranger plus wolf or bear with twinned arrows, driving flight and stunning shot, if you ask me. It's all in one: tons of dps, debuff, cc and low micromanagement. Because of the multiple hits from one shot and the high attack speed Returning Storm gets triggered all the time. Rangers in general are pretty strong now. The dps of the animal companions alone is just insane if you know what you're doing. Also: the animal companions cannot die from low health - so it's a good tactic to send them in first if you want to spare camping supplies or want to soak up the first hefty volleys of an encounter. By the way: after the latest patches I always had the impression that the more sturdy characters I had in the party, the easier the playthrough. Encounters last a bit longer, true, but I don't lose. And by sturdy I don't mean pure tanks with no dps. But 3 CON 3 RES glascannon chars that fall apart when looked at get rushed too often. And once the enemy reaches them it's over for them. Every encounter you try so shield them and keep them away from harm - it's tedious.

It's Jira from Atlassian, a web based project management software, mostly used for software development. I sometimes use it when I work for clients who own a license.

I also realised that some time ago when I used a paladin with quick switch and arbalest, arquebus & sword&board . If you time it correctly (like you described it, L4wlight), you will only have very short recovery phase between shots. But I didn't transfer this knowledge to two handed weapons (stupid me). But let's be honest: That's to much micro (at least for me) to be playable. Pause, switch, pause, switch - all the time? Might be great for supertough fights though - to get better equipment early. .

Exactly

You can use the paladin if move speed (for ectopsychic echo) is the only thing you want: take Zealous Charge, Fast Runner, Boots of Speed and The Last Tower (large shield in Crägholt, move speed +1). This all stacks to +7 move speed without other stuff (+6 without shield). You will lose a bit of tankyness, but seriously you don't need a deflection of more than 100 in most encounters anyway. And because of the tower shield you will have more than that. And for dragons there are the priest's buffs. A very nice thing is to use an island aumaua paladin with quick switch and weapon focus soldier. He can shoot 2 very hefty Intense FoD shots from an arbalest and an arquebus (both with fire lash), killing most squishy wizards and the like. This can trigger on-kill-effects like Inspiring Triumph or Strange Mercy (Kind Wayfarers) or The Black Path (Bleak Walkers). He can quickly switch from shooting to tanking (and running). Later the high move speed is very nice in combination with Sacred Immolation. Also: you can quickly reach your party members for Lay on Hands OR just run away when you see that an encounter goes down the drain. Pure paladin tanks are so boring (and not very effective after the A.I. got improved) - a little bit more dps makes them better - in my opinion. Their defenses are great anyway. p.s.: In order to get The last Tower early, you can run solo through the Torn Bannermen in Crägholt without fighting them. You just have to reach the stairs of the tower while the Torn Bannermen and Undead fight each other. This is possible with all the +move speed talents/items I described above. You need some summons also to discract the foes that insist to follow you no matter how fast you are. If you are in the tower, just go to the treasue room and lockpick the chest with The Last Tower inside. I think you need 10 mechanics minimum to pick the lock. But in a TC run it's very risky - maybe you have to wait for the The Last Tower until your level is high enough.

I was wondering if Novice's Suffering suffers (ha!) from other problems as well. Turns out that all the special attacks of rogues don't work with it. I have a base damage of 23-27 crush with my unarmed rogue at lvl 14 (sandals included). But when I read the tooltips of Crippling Strike (and the others), it says Full Attack(7-10 crush+7-10 crush). When I do deathblows with my fists, the damage is way lower than with hatchets (which have less base damage). Seems that NS is totally bugged. Nobody ever noticed because nobody ever bothered to use it. But in theory this counterpart to Fulmineo (monk with fancy hat/rapier/dagger vs. rogue in robes with fists) would be quite good. The damage is that of sabres (in theory, if NS would work), he would hit faster and you didn't have to use any enchantments to make the fists viable. And with a spear and hatchet in the second slot you would cover all three damage types. Can anyone confirm?

You can put a sabre in the other hand. Or We Toki. Then you would have damage, prone effect and everlasting buffs. Together with a priest this is awesome. Another thing: I just noticed that unarmed attacks do not trigger carnage. I tried out a barbarian with Novice's Suffering, Sandals of the Forgotten Friar and so on - and while the damage is pretty good and he hits very fast, there is no carnage. This has to be a bug.

Yes - it seems not to be affected by int. Another thing: I just build a barbarian with all the abilities possible that give him buffs for a certain time (Frenzy, Bloodlust, Stalwart Defiance, Wild Sprint and so on) and paired that with Sanguine Plate, Shod-in-Faith boots, Tempered Helm etc. Then I used Spelltongue plus Ravenwing (call the stylepolice!) in the Thorfen Quest. This is what happens: Spelltongue steals 5 seconds duration from each benefical effect of the enemies (also with carnage hits) and gives this time to my beneficals effects. After a few hits my frenzy's duration is so long that it will last for the whole fight. The pulses from Consecrated Ground will go up from 2 seconds to 20 if you're lucky and hit alot of enemies while the pulse is on. Bloodlust, Stalwart Defiance, etc... they all can last forever as long as the enemy has still buffs on. This is really great. And with the mace you do good damage. I also tried Mosquito instead of Ravenwing because that looks better. The carnage-draining is also nice, but dps drops significantly. Same with Drawn in Spring wich applies wounding via carnage: nice effect, but the mace was better. Maybe I should completely skip Weapon Focus Noble, use Gallant's Focus and take a nice Stiletto for the second hand... Next thing I want to try is to use potions and see if Spelltongue also prolongs their durations.

There used to be a bug that removed the draining enchantment from all weapons that had it. This bug was fixed some time ago.

The cipher drugs that give +x focus per hit are really useful when you do a lot of low dmg hits (Blunderbuss, multi retaliation) or when you have to fight an enemy that has very high deflection and/or DR (dragons). The rest of the drugs is not worth mentioning. If the effects were more extreme maybe...

Haha - nice. And please put a Randall Flagg bounty into WMII.

Ok, after watching this disturbing vid I'm also voting for a buff.

The only drug I ever used was Carow Golan for a cipher - and that's awesome.

Is the range of driving flight influenced by int?

If you want her to be in your party you should keep her of course. Sacrifice Kana instead.

Sure! No seriously - it's not overpowered and adds a nice little detail to the item. I don't even know if it is intended that there are no limits to the spell striking. But I think so because they changed it from Pillars of Faith to Thrust of Tattered Veils - which is a lot weaker. That Driving-Flight thing might not be intended. ToTV is a ranged spell with crush damage and therefore counts as "ranged attack" which can be reflected by some items - but it's not a missile. However: this Driving-Flight thing is also not superoverpowered. I mean how often do you crit with the bash? Ok pretty often... It's really funny: the shield has a higher (bash-) accuracy than the superb dagger Drawn in Spring. That's because the shield causes a -4 to accuracy penalty - but still. Another funny thing: since ToTV has +10 ACC it nearly always crits when it gets triggered. If they want to nerf that they should probably do a nerf for Stormcaller+ranger first. Not that I want that either.

I tested it and the Thrust of Tattered Veils (ToTV) from Badgradr's Barricade only works with Penetrating Shot and Driving Flight. NOT with Stunning Shots and also not with Twinned Arrows. Penetrating Shot only works if you activated it before an encounter. It's strange: when you activate it during combat it will not apply to the ToTV. The melee ranger with Badgradr's Barricade looks promising - Driving Flight wit the ToTV is pretty nice and it'S kind of a mini aoe. But I will have a look if a rogue can make even better use of this shield since he crits even more and since deathblows and so on also apply to ToTV. And then I will try out a spellsword wizard with it.

And there are special talents for priests that let them gain +10 accuracy with two weapons that fit their deity. For example a priest of Magran can get +10 accuracy for arquebus and sword.

I still can't believe it: Ranger's Driving Flight works with Thrust of Tattered Veils from Badgradr's Barricade! I just did a crit with it and two foes where hit by the thrust: the one in front of me and another one behind him. I'm just testing a tanky melee ranger build with this shield and Drawn in Spring. Drawn in Spring doesn't do much damage, but sets up Predator's Sense for my wolf companion with it's wounding enchantment. And it looks ok toghether with the shield since they're both blue (or turquoise). The wolf just did a crit on an Orge Matron (Nalrend the Wise bounty) for >100 damage (all dps+ mods plus Marked Prey). Now I wonder which other "ranged" abilites besides Penetrating Shot and Driving Flight work with that shield. Twinned Arrows? Stunning Shots? Let's find out!

If you say so.

Very good to know. Thanks a lot!