DreamWayfarer

I am no pro, but I think the first build has too little INT. Hitting more foes more spread apart is very useful, and many class abilities Barbs have are duration based. If you droped MIG a little to raise INT to 16, it could work better. Minmaxing is mostly optional, if you are not soloing, tatics generaly matter more. Minmaxing on any difficulty bellow PoTD is not something usualy done. In fact, Barbarians are possibly the least minmax-friendly class. I suppose you could drop RES to 3, if you use a reach weapon, but other than that I wouldn't put anything below 7 on a Barb.

Well, the simple answer is priest, but a Paladin can do the job quite well, especialy a Darcozonni for buffing accuracy, a Shieldbearer for defenses, or a Kind Wayfarer built for some damage for the healing.

Well, constant recovery going from infinite to 90 seconds could be seem as an incentive for Fighters to invest more in INT, but it surely wasn't very elegant, effective or even logical.

Because there is a real potential to fall below the power curve by not achieving good synergy between spells and skills. One of the major advantages of wizards is their flexibility: X spells per level per rest chosen from any spell book you possess allows for a lot of fine tuning and experimentation. The new spell mastery system is the antithesis of that. How so? You still keep your four spells per-rest.

I don't think there are any foes with no number. Only ones whose number you haven't found out yet. You can see which defenses each attack targets by looking the description, but yes, attacks against liw defenses have highter chance of hitting or even criting for highter damage and duration.

In the beggining people said ciphers were the special snowflake clasd Obsidian loved and would always be OP. After some patches, they became balanced but it seems the devs still feel that they have something to prove. I just hope there was a hidden buff or this is some kind of twisted social experiment.

False, at least in my opinion. High INT can make your carnage much more reliable, and able to hit enemies much further than "right next to" your target. Plus, many Barbarian skills are duration based, and more four seconds of frenzy can make a difference in DPS, since ways to buff attack speed are much rarer than ways to buff accuracy, and to a lesser degree damage. But then, I generaly prefer to give my barbarian debuffing weapons, so INT is even more useful to me.

Con is more meaningful now not only because of the numeric boost to its effects,but because the AI will actualy aim for the squishy damage dealers. As for what to drop, I am no PoTD player, since I acticely go for non-minmaxed stats and weird builds, but I think you don't need 20 Might or 18 Per. Taking a couple of points from either wouldn't hurt your damage too much. Or you could drop DEX to 10 and just go for high damage per hit, maybe with Forgemaster's Gloves to summon Firebrand. Just remember to only use it after the enemies are debuffed, since it has no accuracy bonus.

Unless the crit that triggers shod-in-faith comes from an arbalest or gun or spell, and is followed by a couple of arrows .

Right? Currently, I am playing with a support Barbarian on hard and loving it . I generaly try to discover new builds by building a character normaly, but them switching the attributes in a way one of the stats favored by the class is too liw to play it normaly.

Pikes for sure. He would die if an enemy as much as looks at his general direction.

Boeroer is like (almost) always right. I'd like to add that, at lower levels, if you want a disabler or interrupter barbarian wielding a single one-handed weapon may be worth it, since you likely wish to stack as much accuracy as possible.

EDIT: Misread the post. Sorry. As for doubling up on a class, I've found barbarians very interesting, and coupling one or two "disabler" barbs with a damage dealing one is something that I may do in the future. Two from any support class is something certainly worth it, but not as interesting as it is effective, and I like things that are suboptimal while being fun. Of course, I play on hard, so I can't say how much if a help two paladins are on PoTD.

The personal enchantment could be something you could only do once per playthrought, and wouldn't be more powerful than normal uniques. This way, it is opitional, adds to the roleplaying aspect if you don't want your character to depend on another's legacy, and if you do use it you could still want unique items for other equipement slots or to give to party members.

From what I remember most of the uniques got their power from somebody's death (not just knocked out) when presumably a soul fragment got bound up with the weapon. This makes it a bit problematic to craft your own I don't think so. The new description of Edér's armor implies it developed its enchantment on its own, and Éder didn't die while wearing it. Plus, many of the descriptions of the uniques are ambiguous about whatever the power appeared only after the owner's death or if it was only discovered after it passed hands. And finaly, the enchantment could only work when the Watcher is using the item, meaning that while his/her soul reaches into it and gives it power, it is still attached to its owner.

I would link both of those suggestions, and limit it to only once per playthrough, since it is basically creating your own unique weapon, and as I speculated above, those seem to derive their power from reflections of the souls of their original wielders.

Yeah, clear gear progression feels too "gamey" for me. Actualy, I'd like if it was possible to give an unique enchantment to a non-unique weapon or armor that was not possible to add to unique ones. Most of the unique items, judging by the stories in their descriptions, were not counciously enchanted to be so, but derive their power from the history of their first owner, like the soul of the wielder left a powerful imprint on the weapon or armor. Many of those, like for exemple Mosquito, didn't even belong to legendary champions or people who lived throught things half as interesting as the Watcher did, so why can't we turn a normal item into an unique one by imprinting our essence upon it? Nothing too powerful, that you couldn't reasonably use a normal unique instead. Maybe link the enchantment to our dispositions or something, and make it only work when wielded by the watcher or something.

I did it without a shield because my barb was level 6. I don't know about you more experienced people, but the ogres you fight when you enter Stalwart convinced me to wait some more before trying the rest of the expansion. Plus, 12 extra accuracy is nice for carnage . And the extra deflection is not that useful if the shield is not very upgraded, since my barb is not very tanky anyway, and I can't upgrade all my gear yet.

Hah, that's one of the builds I was thinking of testing when I started asking these questions The real question I think is if a version of this build can work at level 6 rather than having to wait till you get to twin elms for Strike Hard. I think that if you don't care too much about heavy hits, you could stack as much attack speed and accuracy as possible, going as far as using only one weapon with an empty offhand, and just try to crit as often as possible with the Vile Loner's Lance. I think I'll try it out right now, I already have a mid-level Mosquito-wielding barbarian I could respec. A couple of initial debuffs may be necessary to begin criting, but after it gets going it wouldn't stop anymore. EDIT: tested it with a level 6 barb: I was able to make Pallegina's deflection go from 79 to 64 and stay there. My accuracy against her was 87 (base + 8 from PER + 13 from spear enchanted with accurate2 + 5 from kith-slaying + 12 from one handed + 6 from weapon focus + 4 from Gallant's focus). I am unsure if critical hits increse the duration of disorienting, but I was criting consistently and I think even on PoTD it would be possible to crit often if you debuffed the enemies first. The damage was not exactly great, but I supose the constant interrupting and -15 to all defenses in a large area might make your barbarian a decent support character, and you are still able to kill groups of adds, even if not as fast as a damage-focused barbarian. My stats before gear and buffs: 8 MIG 8 CON 19 DEX 16 PER 16 INT 11 RES If you think xaurip skirmishers must make me hate myself, you are right, but I find weaknesses to be fun when they force you to change tatics or plan before fighting.

Well, using a barbarian for single targets is kinda missing the whole point of the class, isn't it?

Nice. Now they just need to fix Aloth's level one spells...

It could work well. Since the extra damage from Soul Whip is not affected by Might, you can leave it and Con at 10 and spread the rest between the other stats, giving preference to INT and DEX.

Positively. Get out of here, weirdo! I guess it was because of when she gave a certain speech

These are referred to Pallegina. That indeed looks nice. Is it weird that I actualy expected one of her talents to give a attack speed boost to alies for some reason?

I did it after getting the berries, but I didn't have the waterskin and it didn't matter.