Braven

It is exactly like it sounds. In your example, 3.7 health restored every 3 seconds. Keep in mind, it scales with level so long it will be more later. Also, healing modifers affect it and will increase the healing. While it may seem insignificant,remember that it is passive and takes no action. Basically a couple second winds with zero animation and no recovery time. Or another way to look at it is doubling or tripling your endurance pool early game. That is like 20 CON of additional endurance at the start of game. With a couple points in survival and that early amulet, it is like 30 or so more CON.

Not to mention even when the chanter is on the ground prone, the chanting still works. If you can figure out a way to purposefully make the chanter prone all the time, you use the +50 to all defenses shield and equipment (for a total of +100 to all defenses). Now he is the most damaging character and completely invincible... all while lying on his butt doing absolutely nothing.

Before version 2, perception increased deflection instead of accuracy. It resulted in super-tanks, particularly with paladin since they also had more starting deflection and a better faith and conviction back then and fighter with the good “defender” modal before it was nerfed to oblivion. The best strategy was to just max out deflection with perception and resolve such that every attack always misses you. To correct that and make the game more aggressive, it was switched to boost accuracy. That said, I think the expansions messed with balance more than anything else. That is why “high level party” changes were added to increase difficulty in case you skip a region of the world until late game. I guess you could say the game was never really balanced particularly well. I mean, you can solo the game; able to beat all encounters with 1/6th the party shows that the game is not particularly difficult. Probably better now than in the early days, though. 10 is the baseline for all stats since they do “nothing” at that point.

It is an issue, but I still think it is the “lesser of evils”. As your attack speed increases and you interrupt enemies frequently it becomes less and less of a problem. You can also get concentration boosting items later on or cast spells to compensate. Like you said, you also get interrupted at 10 resolve. You really need max resolve to prevent it, but that would ruin the other stat synergies and deflection will never be good with barbarian. The other reason for low resolve is that it can also have a benefit. There are a ton of items that fire off a powerful effect when you recieve a critical hit. By tanking your deflection, you can trigger these more easily. This makes up for the downside of low concentration. I suppose optimal would be higher resolve for ACT 1 and then retraining it to 3 at the start of ACT 2... if you want to truly min/max. That is when you can acquire on-getting-crit items, speed enchantments, and concentration boosters. In ACT 1, low concentration and deflection has no upside. Different stats are more or less helpful at different stages of the game.

14 dex I think is a good number. Those look like great stats from beginning to end. . I recommend veterans recovery at 2, vulnerable attack at 4, and then a weapon style (duel/one-handed/two-handed) and weapon focus at levels 6 or 8. If going two-handed, get the weapon focus earlier; maybe level 4, since two handed crit-weapons are available early. For frenzy, if you hover over your endurance/health pool, you can see a “color coded” indicator. That allows you to get an approximate gauge on endurance and health. If it is red, heal asap; you are under 25%. Yellow means you are around half endurance. Orange is around 33%. It is annoying, but basically allows you to see how much you have, even though the exact amounts are hidden

As boerer said, high might is mostly for healing and extra damage that is more noticible in the early game before things like high crit multiplies and superb weapon enchants reduce the relative value of might. This is also partly because of how DR relates with damage multipliers. DR has a larger impact when multipliers are low. To make a dent against high DR, you either need more damage multipliers or lower DR or both. Lowering DR makes a larger impact early on but requires a talent (vulnerable attack). Going with 18 might instead of 10 results in a 24% damage bonus. Average Base damage of a large one-handed weapon is 13.5. 13.5 * .24 = 3.24 extra damage per hit. Vulnerable attack is a flat 5 additional damage most of the time (at least when it matters) but comes with a speed penatly. Of course, you could get both for 8.24 more damage. That is really noticible early game since without those carnage only does like 1-2 damage after DR most of the time and even less with grazes which are very common early. Sometimes even less than that. 8.24 additional damage is a huge percentage increase! 6-8 times more damage! Over 10 times more damage with a grazing hit which happens all the time with carnage early on. Nothing beats that. This is also why stilleto weapons are good early with barbarian. They contribute another 3 DR bypass to carnage. That has more impact than the might too, though eventually stacking DR has reduced return if you frequently remove all DR from an enemy. Only dex helps non-attack/healing powers like frenzy and barbaric shout activation by making them complete faster and have reduced recovery. Also can help getting a cluth heal off when enemies are interrupting and preventing the action from actually happening (a common problem with low resolve). Might won’t help you if you can’t heal in time and is wasted if you heal early and end up “over healing”. Veterans recovery works great even with low dex because it is passive and requires no action. Only might (and int) stats help savage defiance and veterans recovery talent heal more. Since you already need high INT, might as well get the Might too to make the talent/ability have better synergy. Dex doesn’t help much here (unless savage defiance has an animation... can’t remember but I think it is not too significant). Barbarians have a really nice healing ability with savage defiance and veterans recovery is a great talent, particularly for barbarians. The main benefit of dex is being able to stun better, But the problem is you won’t be able to get stunning weapons, or have enough accuracy to make them effective, until mid-late game. Until then, the dex is less helpful than Might for general combat effectiveness. Savage defiance and veterans can be had at level 3 and vulnerable attack at level 4 for really high DPS and survivabilty and is more effective than higher attack speeds. After getting stunning weapons and enough accuracy (through leveling) to crit well, maybe retrain to high dex for better stunning. Another option is low CON. With properly healing and plate armor, it is not really required and then you can have both high might and dex. However, you will need to rest more often and the vital fortitude defense will be worse which can cause issues sometimes (find yourself proned by enemies a lot if not careful). Because barbarians already have such high endurance multipliers and powerful early healing, barbarian can deal with low con pretty well if you want to be more DPS focused. Often a good defense is a good offense (dead enemies can’t damage you) and you Maximize synergy of offensive stats by getting all of them. There is a nice +2 con sword pretty early that can help mitigate the low con and is a great weapon with dual damage types and also looks great.

. Does temporarily giving enemies fatique make them lose 10% of thier remaining endurance each time? Do they get that endurance all back after the hachet’s effect expires? Is it basically just a fancy way of saying “temporary accuracy debuff that stacks with everything”? It is a confusing weapon.

It is possible to get both stunning and prone on crit using one-handers. There is an axe that can cause prone (buyable in Twin Elms). Do the prone and stunning ones suppress each other or stack debuffs? If they stack their debuffs, it could be nice for getting repeat followup critical hits. For a rogue, they could use the dual types in theory for deathblows without any additional affliction sources. Sadly, you would need to take two weapon focus talents, though. Two weapons works better eventually for a “stun lock” build over two handers for two reasons: 1) Faster attack speed means more hits that could crit, increasing stun rate. The starcaller flail is particularly good for this since it is a “fast” one hander. 2) Only one-handed stunning weapons have +accuracy enchantments. The Spear one has the +5 accuracy bonus and can be further custimized with coordinating attacks or Valient for even more accuracy. Sure, you are limited to pierce damage, but DR does not affect stun chance or duration while accuracy does. The main advantages of two-handers for stunning are (much) earlier availabilty and better damage output against higher DR enemies. Also they don’t need wax or two talents to avoid the “weapon focus” issue when duel-weilding.

I have the damage shield now, but the UI is not very helpful explaining how it works. It seems to absorb damage after attack roll is checked against defense, but before DR is applied. Any remainder damage from a single attack after the shield has run out of “health” is also absorbed by the shield as it disappears. As a result, it actually absorbs more than 30 damage most of the time. What this means is that it is better to wear light armor and go with maxed out defenses to get more misses and avoid the shield getting weakened by the fodder units. Another thing I noticed is that the damage shield seems to trigger before the graze reflection happens with that shield from the monks. As a result, it is better to stick with a large shield instead (or savior). When stacking the chant, the oldest ones always get suppressed and hit last. As a result, a small linger is pretty worthless since the suppressed shield will expire before it will ever be able to take another hit. With really high int it can stick around and help mitigate the streakiness of dice rolls. Perhaps alternating a level 1 phrase and damage shield is best. +10 fortitude and will is nice too and allows for more invocations (or keep up Champion’s invocation duration with less INT) This should work out well with a low INT build since stacking damage shields with only a small linger time is not helpful. The Drawn in Spring dagger can be used with zero recovery with a durganized robe and shield, swift action gauntlets, and Champion invocation. Seems like a good offensive combo with the damage shield to also do decent auto attack damage and wounding is most effective with high might and low int. The captain’s hachet is the best weapon for defense. Basically +10 to all defenses against single enemies that stacks with everything. Add in glittering guantlets and executioner hood’s fear aura for a possible total of +30 Accuracy debuff. With high int and attack speed, they can be applied to more than one enemy by alternating attacks. Does anyone know if the 10% endurance debuff of fatique has any effect on enemies? To my knowledge, there is no such thing as endurance with monsters; they just have a health pool.

Ah, that could work. I skipped that ability since I already had near zero recovery with frenzy and dual-wield. ~10 dex can certainly work fine I think in retrospect; I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Your stats are actually quite good as is. Good stats for Heart of Fury and the ability you mentioned. For the abilities, high might and perception are great. Frenzy helps early too to get the kills coming. I was thinking start of game auto-attacking (I typically retrain at somepoint after getting the late game abilities and durgan steel). I agree that dex is less important late game. Late game you can just nuke everything in 10 seconds in which case perception and might are best for an optimal Heart of Fury kill chain. I guess the short answer is that there are many ways to play barb. Only thing that really matters is high int and at least average perception.

Here are some basic types that are popular: Retailation (Max Might, Con, Int, average perception, low resolve/dex). Fire godlike is good along with retailation items. Key ability is barbaric retailation. This guy starts weak, but is very strong after level 13 ability and late game equipment to compensate for the low dex and resolve. Also laughs at enemies using fortitude attacks while his frenzy is on. Very hard to kill all game, but also slow and easily interrupted. Great for soloing but Boring in a party where his survivabilty doesn’t shine. Slice and Dice (Max Dex and Int, high might). This is best with small weapons and vulnerable attack, or Tidefall. He wants to hit, but doesn’t need to crit. Wounding weapons are good as well as DR-bypass. He has the best overall DPS you can get without being too frail. Effect-on-crit (Max Perception, Dex, and Int. Even in rest). This one either uses on-crit effect weapons or interruption ones. Relying in carnage to deliver those effects. The all rounder: (max Int, even with all other stats with resolve maybe slightly lower than others). A bit boring, but very solid. Barbarian likes all stats, so it can be very effective keeping them all 9+. Now some general thoughts: Dumping both dex and resolve is a bad idea; you will get interrupted constantly. If you dump resolve, go high Dex and vice-versa. Or keep them both balanced. With barbarian, I like High DEX to counter balance two things that reduce your attack speed: 1) plate armor. With low natural deflection you will get hit often and hard; paricularly because the barb wants to be in the thick of things. Unless you are thematically against it, I recommend you suit up with the heaviest sheet of metal you can find. 2). Vulnerable attack. The soonest you can take this is level 4 and that is the perfect time to do so. DR-Bypass is particularly important for barbarians because it benefits all of the carnage hits. The carnage really needs it, particularly early on, In order to do any real damage. This is, of course, shines best with duelweilding. For stats, they are all really useful to barbarian. Int is most important to keep pretty high regardless since otherwise carnage is useless and carnage is the main reason to pick barbarian. Resolve is least important usually just because resolve in general is not that great unless going all out tank. Keep in mind that concentration will be a problem if dipped to minimum. If possible, compensate for this with items if you find any with + concentration or spells. Faster attack speed also seems to help at least make it less noticeable. So how to raise dex? In my playthrough I think I did about your stats, but reduced perception to around 10-12 and a couple other stats like might, con, or int can be reduced a point or two if needed or keep dex around 15. It does mean crit weapons are out though and accuracy can be a problem early; maybe use a weapon with +accuracy or graze-to-hit or spells/abilities. The aspirants mark talent can reduce enemy deflection by 8. Another option is dropping might to 10ish. Your fortitude will suffer some and self-healing suffers a bit, but that can be made up with high survival skill and frenzy.

I agree, it is great armor particularly for your build. In dome ways being health is better. You don’t really want to be under 25% endurance anyway; but running low on health is more common. Helps the long fights and can extend adventuring time before needing to rest since low health is less scary. One of the great things about that armor is that it has enchantment space to both give +2 to a stat and get to legendary quality. By comparison, Sanguine armor can only reach exceptional with a +2 stat enchantment. This makes it particularly good for the late game.

Both blast talents are very solid and the best way to improve his ranged auto attacks. Wizards do well with implements. Originally, casters got all 4 casts in a spell level turned turned to per-encounter and it would eventually make weapons rather obsolete. But that was changed in a balancing patch when The White March was released. Now it is only one per encounter cast and also tied to a specific spell and is now called “Spell Master”. At max level, it will be a total of 4 spell casts, one each from spell level 1-4.

The wiki actually says it both ways. On the listing page it says endurance and on the Scars-specific page it says health. It is actually the exact same enchantment as pellegina’s breastplate. I have tested and confirmed it to be triggered by health in game in the past.

Note: The “He who wears scars” DR bonus happens when at low -health-, not endurance as stated in post. I like the idea of purposely getting crit by will attacks. It is easy to forget that items trigger on non-deflection attacks too. Wonder if this works well with another class that does not need Int so thst Will can be dropped even further. Ranger doesn’t need Int and also has the same steadfast benefit. I guess you really need that huge barbarian endurance and health pool, though, to make it work.

You can always simply avoid areas with tough enemies until later in the game. In the late game you will have many more spells, scrolls, high defenses, immunity items, etc. that part of the game (cliff zone) is not really designed for low levels to clear the enemies... and there is no reason to. It is like going to the castle at level 2. Sure, you can, but why not just wait until level 7 to make it a cake walk? Or someplace in between for a decent challenge that is not fustrating. Just because the game allows you to venture all the way down the endless paths after acquiring the stronghold does not make it a good idea. Go after easy quests instead to level up and gain better equipment first. A lot of quests require no fighting at all. This game is a lot like baldurs gate where you can just randomly walk into a zone of instant-death petrifying enemies at the start of the game if you are not careful. The idea is to careful scout and avoid those enemies.

Monks with maxed out might and con are really powerful. High offense with elemental lashes, high natural defenses, high DR, high health, very high fortitude, and enemies die just by hitting you... really hard to do better than that. You can just auto-attack for the most part, even soloing. Of course swift strikes, torments reach, or FoA is better than just auto attacking, but you don’t even need to do that and will still be really strong. Barbarians are similiarly strong for the same reasons. Worse defenses (except fortitude) and DR, but better healing regeneration and endurance pool makes up for that.

Apparently ancient memories (and the other chanter talent) have no duration, despite the UI text. That could bode well for a low intelligence solo chanter that uses uses phrases and invocations that don’t really benefit from intellience very much like summons or the ice spells. Skip veterans and rely on no-duration regeneration instead. When soloing, will is generally pretty useless since fear/terrify can be stopped with immunity and charm effects do nothing. There are very few damaging will powers that enemies use. Later you can get immunity from paralyze before needing to fafe enemies with paralyzing will attacks. This makes lowering resolve/intelligence more desirable when it is reasonable to do so.

One of the hunting bows has a dual damage type (the one ranger companion starts with). There is also the soulbound bow which has shock and pierce.

Oh, that is too bad. Thanks for the testing! I always thought it multiplied. Guess that makes sense given the interaction with firebrand is also additive.

Yeah, that is a main weakness of rogue in general; they can be blasted down. They do have the advantage of a really good anti-reflex attack ability. Combined with a shield, reflex shouldn’t be an issue at all. Fortitude is a problem that really requires both high con and might to mitigate, along with bears fortitude. The most powerful attacks target that defense. That leaves dex and int being the least important. Monk and barbarian are so powerful because they not only have good retaliation abilities, but also ways to greatly boost their defenses and have large amounts of health. Those other defenses (fortitude in particular) are important for dealing with casters who are not effected by retaliation. Monks can passively increase defenses by +18 with class abilities and barbarian has greater frenzy for +24 fortitude. Need-to-be-hit retalation builds always have max might and con greatly increasing fortitude and have a shield for reflex.

In general, I am not impressed by single target interrupt focused builds; or stun-locking a single target with weapons. The problem is that locking down one enemy is not that significant. With a interrupt or stun lock focus, you have to keep auto-attacking them and cannot be interrupted or knocked down yourself, or stunned by another enemy. It is a nice perk to interrupt an enemy better, but it is not really good enough to focus a whole build or make other compromises unless you are a barbarian and can crowd control multiple enemies at once. The advantage of novice’s suffering is to have lower perception (sinces grazes don’t matter and crits are not helpful) and monks can just FoA for a much better interrupt that lasts over 50 times longer. Anyone can handle a single enemy, 1v1. The harder challenge is dealing with multiple enemies at once.

Thanks mosspit. Currently I am thinking of a hybrid between the Yellow Flash and sorcerers apprentice concepts. Heavy armor, shield for survivalibilty and extra retailation damage from riposte combined with spell-bound equipment for some needed AOE damage and affliction. My special spin is adding AOE spell damage to the mix. Being slow with low dex and plate armor doesn’t matter if your actions are all limited use, high impact actions; it is not ideal for just auto attacking. So I thought about adding in the fireball sabers and the sunbeam items (not really desirable for other party member synergies anyway so no one is competeing if nit playing solo. Of course, AOE is great with soloing too). With deathblows and high Might and high accuracy and a reflex debuff, fireballs actually do great AOE damage. A fireball has 30 average base damage. With deathblows, a critical hit (with plot talents), scion of flame, and 20 Might, will do (30 x 3.2) x 1.2 = 115.2 damage before DR. Hit 5 enemies, and we are inflicting over 500 damage from a single “fast cast” spell that can be repeated 6 or more times in a battle. With adept evasion, combined with high reflex from shield, and you can even include the rogue in the fireball area of effect and it will probably miss. The 6 sun beams do even more damage (base 35) and inflicts a long lasting blind, but with only a small AOE zone. Of course scrolls are great too and allow basically unlimited super-spells for the toughest fights.

High DR favors the rogue since monk has 1.5x the DR with lashes. Crits help the monk more, but rogue is more likely to actually land the crit due to hit->crit and reckless (if it applies to the attack roll) and more likely to have a better hit rating in general. Might is more optional for rogue (though fireballs and healing and such benefit a lot from it) 60% tourning wheel assumes the monk doesn’t use any powers. Minimally the swift strikes take the occassional wound. Others would reduce this further at least temporarily while the rogues ability doesn’t lower the retailation. Afflictions are easy, even solo, with the spreading plague gloves which is fair since the monk’s calculation uses blood testament. Monk takes less micro management since there are no requirements needed. Of course monk has the AOE retailation (works against ranged which is nice too) and larger endurance pool and better defenses which help get more hits in before tge character falls (rogues though have the option of riposte and retailtion equipment triggers deep wounds). I agree monk is better overall for retailation and better under optimal situations (low DR, max wounds) for battle-forged.

Thanks for the info. I will look through your build for ideas. I really like the sunbeams. The AOE is not that big, but blind is a huge debuff. It double benefite the rispote rogue with the -25 accuracy and deflection debuffs. Makes crits easier and targets reflects, which is easy to lower. Crits with high intelligence lasts will last well over 30 seconds. Spreading plague and the AOEs spells work well together and kind of fill in the rogues main weakness of getting swarmed and not having an AOE answer. Wonder if fire godlike retalation is viable. Deathblows effecting it is nice, but rogue endurance is not great. Would give another reason to get scion of flame and fits the fire theme. In theory, deathblows is better than the monk’s lashes for fire godlike retailation damage. Just seems really dangerous keeping a rogue under 50% endurance.