Moneo

I used both Lead Spitter and the Rain with my ciphers. Well, LS provides you a ****load of burst dmg. The damage from LS varies a lot depending on target's DR, and it seems that against low-DR foes LS can outdamage everything. In particular, it can one-shot hostile wizards. But against mid-DR enemies its damage is much worse, and against high-DR, it's miserable. So I went with the Rain for my ranged cipher. It provides high DPS and very fast and reliable focus flow. Perhaps, durganized Sabra Marie would be even better (considering you crit a lot), but you get it too late in game, whereas the Rain is obtainable during mid-game. You can enter White Marsh armed with it. And don't forget, with the Rain (or other bow), you don't need to spend a talent point for the Gunner talent. But for the most efficience with the bows, you need to reach 0 recovery. DAoM potion, durganized light armor, Gloves of Swift Action etc.

If you can bear the video guides, look for Nerd Commando guy on Youtube. He made some guides on PoE, and the one about companion leveling, too.

By the way, is Twin Sting so good for a ranged cipher? I prefer durganized Rain of Godagh Fields, the cipher becomes a beast with this weapon, and the focus flows quite quickly. But this approach requires spending 2 durgan ingots, of course... I didn't compare Twin Sting to Rain on a long run.

Although retaliation damage is a good and handy addition to barb's offensive power, I wouldn't rely on it that much. A barb deals the most damage and number of kills with his weapons, so it's better to improve his active offensive capabilities. Of course, there is nothing bad with stacking different sources of retaliation damage, but that's secondary IMO.

I think, that's not about "sucking", 'cause a pally can be a tankadin in the first place. But in PoE1, Kind Wayfarers are rather damage dealers than tanks, so it's strange to have such an impediment with them. This will not work well together with KW's PoE1-like on-kill triggers. That's not a synergy in any sense, it's an impediment and mere contradiction. Such a restriction suits more defensive-oriented Shieldbearers of Eldga, not offensive-oriented Wayfahrers. IMO, it's better to hinder Wayfahrers in their defensive abilities (if they are to have some downsides or restrictions), not in their offensive power.

Not only by rogues, there are Apprentice/Baby sneak attacks. BTW, "vulnerability to sneak attack" is just an attribute applied to a creature when it acquires certain debuffs. It's not about rogues, but creatures themselves. I take it that Kind Wayfarers would inflict not more, but less damage to such creatures.

I'm curious about the interpretation of this Kind Wayfarers' restriction. Does it apply to every creature that is not immune to sneak attack? Or are there particular creatures that are especially vulnerable to a sneak attack? I suppose that means debuffed creatures which are vulnerable to sneak attack (e.g. flanked/blinded/weakened etc.). AFAIK there is no particular immunity to sneak attack. I think, that Kind Wayfarers are supposed to be fair combatants who don't exploit enemy's weaknesses and rush into the battle boldly, with opened visor. But this restriction would make KW's on-kill triggers less effective, of course.

Speaking about disappointments, I find that Goldpact order restrictions in PoE2 as they are announced are quite disappointing. Unability to use paladin's auras is rather frustrating. This leaves very narrow usage of such paladins...

I love Goldpact pallies as a PC because of their reputation options. I'm also disappointed how are Goldpact pallies introduced in PoE2, but that's not the final decision, everything may be changed. Personally, I think that a paladin without auras is near to worthless, especially in (full-)party gameplay.

Yes, losing concentration is the worst downside of dumping Res on a melee warrior in PoE. IMO, barbs in PoE don't get much benefits from min-maxing (comparing to other classes like wizards, ciphers and even fighters). A balanced barbarian works pretty effectively. A min-maxed barb is viable too, although this approach requires a bit more micro, as far as I can see. But everyone plays the style he likes.

Yeah, speaking on importance of ZF, I meant those hard boss fights. But this also depends on your playstyle. If your pally is tanking bosses, and your party is standing in some distance, ZF is useless for your damage dealers/CC-ers, whereas ZE is always useful even for your paladin alone. But I usually take ZF in the beginning of the game, 'cause early on, a low accuracy is a serious issue. Later on, low acc is an issue mostly in boss fights, but by that time, you have different ways to boost it. BTW, a chanter can buff your party's accuracy against the dragons by whopping +20.

Yes, it ignores DR. But I wrote about the damage from mobs. A paladin not only damages himself, he receives some punches from the foes. And the more tanky he is, the more effectively he can abuse SI. +2 DR means roughly +20 health spare from 10 enemy's hits and +200 health spare from 100 enemy's hits. About auras. Yes, they all are very good. I had a hard time thinking, which is better, ZF or ZE. After some time and having some experience, I decided that Zealous Endurance is slightly better than Zealous Focus on the long run, although there are encounters where ZF would be very handy.

Yeap, that's the main reason I don't auto-pick Goldpact paladin.But still,.. Sacred Immolation comes only at lvl 13. And before that undominating distant allies via Aegis can be tricky. Redfield/Executioner helm range is quite limited, and it's not like Paladin will be switching to hunting bow. You mean, a tanky pally is rather useless unitl level 13? Yes, he deals quite little amount of damage, that's true. After getting Sacred Immolation and Scion of Flame, he becomes an okay damage dealer. Of course, Aegis of Loyalty is not a panacea. But it's quite helpful as an addition to Liberating Exhortation and priest's Suppress Affliction. It's just not intended to be used in every case, just on occasion. I use a tanky pally as a scroll caster too. Taking Aristocrat background, you can easily get 7-8 Survival and 12 Lore with your paladin. Actually, in my party, it's the only character besides a priest, who can get 12 lore and cast Protection against Treachery from scrolls, thus he frees my priest from spending time and spell slots casting this spell. Of course, this comes later than level 11 (at level 14, if I remember correctly). Also, I found, that for a pally who abuses Sacred Immolation, it's handy to take a +2 DR Survival bonus over +40% healing. In my party, I have enough sources of healing to keep such an unkillable character standing straight, but the harm to the health from SI may become an important hinder which makes you rest more often. So, the less harm this guy takes from the mobs, the better. Wearing an Exceptional plate armor, having +2 DR resting bonus, Second Skin talent and buffed with Zealous Endurance, this character will have 23 base DR, that's not bad. Also, I feel that Zealous Endurance on PotD is quite handy and it boosts your party's survivability. It's not about keeping your buddies alive during the battle, but it diminishes harm to health, and you can move from one battle to another without resting (and this strategy fits my playstyle pretty well). So, a tankadin may be a bit passive and boring character. It just boosts your party and helps his mates to do the job. Also, I prefer an arbalest, not a war bow as a ranged backup for my pally. I usually use Hold Wall (+Slaying Primordials against those Spores, I prefer to shoot them from distance).

A Goldpact pally is quite good as a PC, 'cause he can be Cruel and Benevolent simultaneously and is not penalized in his theocracy. BTW, I didn't use Bond of Duty or any other order-specific talents. Aegis of loyalty can give you infinite anti-CC stuff on top of Liberating Exhortation (of course, this requires some micromanagement and party positioning), and you can take it as soon as at level 7.

I used the same method above to test damage over time effects. This time I used the Ranger with Wounding Shot. According to the combat log the damage over time component only shows up once and is based on the initial hit. When Minor Threat activated for Wounding Shot it did increase the overall damage of the DoT left on the target. From this I can assume as long as the skill you are using meets the criteria above and triggers Minor Threat it will increase the damage of the initial hit and the damage of the DoT, but will not proc a Minor Threat crit on individual DoT ticks. Well thanks! AFAIK, that's how DoT crits work in PoE: the overall damage of effect (which is displayed in combat log) is increased by prolonged duration. Damage of individual ticks is not increased. The damage of individual ticks depends on Might, and duration depends on Int, crits/grazes affect the duration of DoT. But this is not applied to Wounding Shot, though, 'cause it has fixed damage which is not increased by increasing DoT duration (i.e. higher Int reduces DPS of Wounding Shot).

Man, I don't state that this talent is crucial for my build. I just think it's not so awful as you try to paint it. Of course, Rhymer's Summon is worse, 'cause Bloody Slaughter triggers just by autoattacking in most of the battles Bloody Slaughter is here not for plain damage, but for more comfortable kill stealing via Carnage hits, 'cause Blood Thirst hastens 2H barb and boosts DPS. Of course, plain damage bonus is miserable, no question. But here I try to land more hits via negating weapon recovery, not to boost damage a bit with every hit. A finishing hit that triggers Blood Thirst is more crucial than other hits made. I only want to point out that taking Bloody Slaughter is viable in such a situation. ATM I'm running a party very similar to my previous one, with a similar barb. Now it's almost al lvl 12. So, I can swap Bloody Slaughter for Savage Attack, for example, and we'll see, what can we get. I think, the result would be quite similar, though.

Well, I judge according to my experience. I run such a barb with Bloody Slaughter, and I can say, that his "Total damage done" is not only the highest, but it's 1.5x higher than the same rate of my second best damage dealer, the DPS monk. Of course, one can swap Bloody Slaughter for Savage Attack, but, I suppose, this won't change the picture drastically. This barb is the best also in "Most crits done" and "Most kills", the only rating where he's not the best is "Highest single target damage", where my cipher takes the prize (I don't run a rogue). So, this way is viable and quite effective. I think, for such a build, Bloody Slaughter is rather equal to Savage Attack, thus, in this case, that's the matter of preference. I like my barb to have the highest possible Acc, even though he doesn't use on-crit weapons. Barbs in PoE suffer from mediocre Accuracy, and +5 Acc means you have plain +5% chance to inflict graze/hit/crit, which also adds some amount of damage, not to mention higher chances to interrupt (which is not crucial, but also helpful). BTW, I don't know if Savage Attack also decreases Accuracy of Threatening Presense. Also, that's the matter of balance. I think, one should balance barbarians in PoE, thus I don't min-max my barb. I max Might and Int and take 10 in other stats, this works pretty well. Of course, one can dump stats (preferably Res) or swap one talent for another, but why fix something which works as is? UPD: I think, Savage Attack is more crucial for a DW barb in order to boost his single-hit damage to overcome high DR.

The uselessness of Bloody Slaughter is discussed here quite widely, I just want to introduce another point of view. In some situations, it might be useful. I'm running such a barb at the moment, and I can assure you, that number of kills raises after taking this talent. If during the beginning and mid-game my best killer was a fast-hitting monk, and the barb was more than 100 frags worse, by lvl 14 the barb excells in the number of kills. About barb's hits. Don't forget, that most barb's hits with weapon are not "normal" hits, they are Carnage hits, which means -0.34 dmg multiplier malus. And after that reduction dmg must overcome target's DR. So... Practically, Carnage crits with Bloody Slaughter inflict 30-45 dmg, more or less (according to the numbers appearing on the screen)... You can estimate non-crit damage according to that. Perhaps, I should make a class build guide for my barb, I like it and it's very powerful build. BTW, I use following talent distribution: 2 - WF: Soldier 4 - 2H style 6 - Accurate Carnage 8 - Apprentice Sneak Attack 10 - Bloody Slaugher 12 - Barbaric Blow (or can swap with lvl 10) 14 - Vulnerable Attack (by that lvl we have attack speed boosters, so it won't hinder our barb as much) 16 - Interrupting Blows or something alike. When I want to arm my barb with Reaping Knives, I just take DW style at lvl 14 (Vulnerable Attack is useless with the Knives anyways) and Savage Attack at lvl 16. Note that both Savage Attack and Vulnerable Attack not only boost you, but also hinder, whereas with Bloody Slaughter you spend your talent point for only boosting. And yes, kills with Tidefall's DoT DO trigger Blood Thirst and those on-kill effects from Mourning Gloves and Tempered Helm. So...

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 (Ibtypically 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. That's the Blood Thirst ability. While it adds quite a little to a DW barb, with a 2H barb, it not only could work, it just works. It can increase speed of such a barbarian drastically and adds DPS output. I recommend taking this ability as soon as at level 7. Also, for a 2H barb, I'd recommend taking Bloody Slaughter talent somewhere at level 10. Yes, it triggers when a foe has <10% of health, and it seems quite underwhelming, but for this barb, it helps kill stealing mobs from other party members with Carnage hits (Carnage has dmg multiplier -0.34 anyways). Armed with slow and hard-hitting 2-hander, such a barb would be powered on kills. The more he kills, the more he kills. Looking at the progression of the number of kills in char's statistics page, I must admit, this works. For a DW barb, this talent is rather a garbage, of course.

Yeah, in the beginning of the game low Accuracy is rather an issue, especially with a barb. So I take WF: Soldier as the first talent. At 1 or 2 Fontprima you can loot a Fine Great Sword in Magran's Fork (a dead body in the Western part, near adra rock). At least, you can loot a Great Sword after killing Lurdana, one of her guards is armed with it. Also, I use a pally with Zealous Focus, so, it's up to +16 to barb's Accuracy in total. It's quite sufficient to pass through the beginning of the game easily. And don't forget that probably the strongest foes in the beginning (apart from those spirits in the temple of Eotas) are Primordials (those Forest Lurkers lvl 7(!) in Black Meadow - you confront them at lvl 3, some Oozes in the Temple and those nasty mushrooms in the cave) and Wilders (some Trolls, Xaurips and Skuldrs including 3 Skuldr Kings in the Temple). So, having a Boreal Dwarf barb since the very beginning is quite handy. This barb starts to shine after level 5-6, when you arm him with Tallgrass and pick 2H-style, One Stands Alone and Accurate Carnage (Savage Deiance at lvl 3 is mandatory, that's obvious). Starting from the mid-game, low accuracy is not an issue, for a barb, too. It becomes an issue in the very late game, when you confront bosses, but killing bosses is not the barb's main job anyways. And what about their height... I find in funny that such a ridiculous midget with a giant sword in hands can devastate enemy's forces Just don't roll a female. Female dwarves are ugly, especially in plate armours, they look like a stupid barrel mincing on tiny thin legs.

Yeah, it's in the Ninagauth's Black Pages. Finding it may be a bit tricky. You must travel to Russetwood and in South-West corner you'll watch a hallucination cutscene, where a wizard deals with his traitor apprentice. After that travel to Durgan's Battery and somewhere in the center you'll discover a hidden stash, where the grimoire is stored. You can't discover this stash without watching the cutscene in Russetwood.

A barbarian is quite simple to build. Pick up following starting stats: Mig 19 Con 10 Dex 10 Per 10 Int 19 Res 10 A human is a good choice, but according to my experiece, a Boreal Dwarf also perfoms very well as a barb. There are a lot of nasty Wilders and especially Primordials who usually attack in packs, and such a barb would be a good surprise for them. Barbaric Yell is an okay starting ability, but Frenzy is better througout the whole gameplay. You can build this guy either 2-handed or dual-wield. For the first option I'd recommend Tallgrass, then Tidefall. The latter one is better with DW sabres, especially Bittercuts, and also Reaping Knives. Both variants inflict formidable amount of damage starting from mid-game and do a lot of kills.

A blasting wizard is a decent approach, because this may make a spellcaster helpful even without tossing spells in every encounter. Thus you can rest not so often while dealing with different mobs. Blast is useful not only because of its on-hit effects from weapons, it also causes interrupts. Since a wizard usually has high Perception, just add "Interrupting Blows" talent, and your blasting wizard will hold a whole bunch of enemies interrupted and doing nothing while you are bringing them down. The best weapon for a blasting wizard is IMO The Golden Gaze. It fires two projectiles, so more hits = more on-hit effects + more chances of interrupts (+more procs of Combusting Wounds, hehe). So, a blasting wizard IMO is not for dealing enormous damage (like a barb with his Carnage), but for tactical stuff in order to impede your enemies and make them more vulnerable for the damage dealt by other party members and different effects (like Combusting Wounds or interrupted foes who can't get out of Chill Fog area etc). In order to increase damage from Blast, take 12 Survival with your wizard (+20% dmg against Flanked), Penetrating Blast talent, boot Glanfathan Stalking Boots (+10% dmg against Flanked) and cast "Phantom Foes" with your cipher upon your enemies in the beginning of the battle. So, Blast will have a bonus +%% dmg from Might, +30% dmg against Flanked targets and also will negate 10 DR, not bad, assuming The Golden Gaze fires twice. Calakoth Minor Blights + Dangerous Implement talent is an exellent choice for dealing damage, but I prefer not to take "Dangerous Implement", 'cause it harms health and makes you rest more often.

Well, if you dont' like PoE, just don't play PoE, what's the problem? It's a matter of your own joy and your own tastes and preferences. If the game doesn't amuse you, try something else for amusement, after all, it's just a game. PoE isn't an easy game on higher difficulties. So, I'm not surprised you have problems with your lvl 6 party on Pearlwood Bluffs. On PotD, I usually come there at lvl 8-9. The game is pretty straightforward and quite hard in the beginning, until Defiance Bay. You have no choice there. After you enter Defiance Bay, you can choose what to do. There are a lot of XP-heavy quests in Defiance Bay and Dyrford, so try to complete them first, level up your party and only then return to Pearlwood Bluffs or other tough places. And spank the bottoms of those bad guys. On RNG. Let's compare PoE mechanics to DnD. Of course, PoE's d100 is much more RNG than DnD's d20. But in PoE, you can miss, graze, hit and crit with every attack, with all weapon hits, spells, debuffs, effects. That's opposite to DnD mechanics, where you can either hit or miss (or crit on rare occasions), and there are no spell crits. In DnD, your crit chance with weapons depends only on dice rolls (unless you abuse Luck or some high-level spells like Executioner's Eyes), whereas in PoE, your hit and crit chance depends on differense between your accuracy and foe's targeted defense. Thus, assuming all this, the conclusion is: in PoE, when you land plenty of hits, you are less dependant on RNG on average. So, the strategy is quite simple. Buff your party's defenses and accuracy, debuff enemy's defenses and voila. Of course, PoE mechanics is very complicated and sophisticated, there are a lot of spells, afflictions, buffs, debuffs etc., but the principles of this mechanics are quite straightforward. Even devastating raw damage attacks can be mitigated via boosting your Fortitude, so these attacks would miss and graze. Even underwhelming Fireball can be deadly if you debuff your foe's Reflexes first (via Hobble/Paralyzation/Petrification e.g.). Don't overlook Priest's Painful Interdiction, it lowers foe's Accuracy, Will and Fortitude. Many Priest's offensive spells target Will, and the nastiest disables like Paralyze and Petrification usually target Fortitude (moreover, you don't have many ways to lower Fort. in PoE). The wizard is the most complicated class in PoE IMO. That's because of sophisticated spell system. My advise: study PoE Wiki's "Afflictions" page and learn which afflictions lower which defenses, and which classes can inflict which afflictions. And use the appropriate debuffs before attacking your foes. Don't forget that afflictions which lower enemy's accuracy are very powerful, too, 'cause lowering foe's accuracy is just equal to boosting all defenses to all your allies. Of course, there are some nice spell/skill combos. For example, I think that wizard's Slicken is somewhat overestimated, that's rather situational debuff, whereas the most OP wizard's 1st level spell is Chill Fog. It damages foes and moreover it blinds them, which lowers their move speed and causes even more damage while they are trying to exit the dangerous area. So, throw Chill Fog upon approaching enemies, land Combusting Wounds on the top of that and watch your enemies melting down while trying to reach you. By lvl 6 my wizard has the highest "dealt damage" rate in my party, even more than a barb (of course, the barb with right weapon in mid/late game outdamages everyone, so that's temporary). You can invent and use your own combos basing on making your foes vulnerable to some attacks before attacking. But don't rely heavily on spell damage. After you wizard spend all spells, he becomes just an undefwhelming melee/ranged warrior, not more than that. So, the most reliable damage is the damage made with melee/ranged weapons. Use your spellcasters to debuff/cc your enemies and then wreck them into pieces with your swords and axes. Then, what to do when you are facing some nasty debuffs like domination/petrificaton etc. First, buff your defenses, that's simple. With scrolls, too. Second, use Priest's "Prayer against XX" spells and according scrolls, they grant mass immunity to disables. Priest's "Lithany against XX afflictions" spells grant one-target immunity to afflictions. Last but not least, debuff nasty spellcasters. Try to use paralyze/prone/stun or something alike. Cipher's paralyzation power costs only 20 focus. Cipher's blind power costs only 10 focus. Wizard's 2nd level spell can cause mass blind, it's very powerful. Blind = +25 defenses against all enemy's attacks, that means plain -25% chance to get graze/hit/crit from enemy. That's the way you can deal with PoE's RNG. So, playing PoE is not just tossing Fireballs here and there for instant win.

Bless is not so useless if you use it with ZF, +10% dmg still works. You can see the list of suppressed effects in your character's sheet during the combat. Devotions for the Faithful add +20 melee/ranged accuracy, it's not +acc to everything, so these effects should stack, 'cause they are just different, not the same. The same effects from the same sources suppress each other, otherwise they stack. For example, +stats from spells and invocations suppress each other, but +stats from clothes/weapons/spells/resting/whores/talents stack. BTW, I use Bless together with Zealous Endurance and Armor of Faith together with Zealous Focus. Armor of Faith will suppress +3 DR by ZE but not aura's Hit->Graze conversion.