UltimaLuminaire

When clearing a Pool of Memory trial on Kazuwari (for me it was Trial of the Changeling) characters that end combat flanked will still be considered flanked after exiting the challenge. This flanked condition doesn't clear on restart or rest. The only way to clear the condition is by entering combat, getting flanked, and then getting "un-flanked", so to speak. As proof of this condition here's a google drive link to a zip file containing two saves: one from before the glitch, and one from after the Trail of the Changeling. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mh45jsS6shNPxrn6X_8zhumh8ZSyOyev/view?usp=sharing

You need to keep in mind that Barbarians are not reliable damage. In order to do big damage, the Barbarian relies on several key abilities. Frenzy: +15% damage/healing (Strong) Blooded: +25% damage while bloodied (!) Barbaric Blow: +20% damage, 30% hits to crits, +50% crit damage (!) Bloody Slaughter: +20% hit to crits, +50% crit damage (!); near death enemies only. Note that this applies to weapons, so it works with ranged. One Stands Alone: +20% damage while near 2 or more enemies (!) And that's not considering other factors for unpredictable nova potential. Bloodlust: +20% Action Speed (counts as passive so it stacks with all other sources of Action Speed) after downing an enemy Bloodthirst: Wave recovery time after downing an enemy. Note that reload time is not the same as recovery time. Barbaric Retaliation: Melee full attack when crit by an enemy So if you are being underwhelmed by a Barbarian then it is likely the class simply isn't for you. You will achieve more consistent big numbers with other classes, and that's just looking at one facet of gameplay. There are a crazy number of ways you can play Barbarian when you aren't limiting yourself to being a solo front-line DPS. Switch hitting, modal debuff abuse, raw damage abuse, all of that is there but untapped because most of the community can't stand how underwhelming and random the solo Barbarian's damage is. That said, in all of my 50+ playthroughs using Barbarian, they have never failed to hold their weight. The hit to crit conversion just skews the numbers in their favor.

You'll need to crank the speed up to max, but in return it's very easy to follow what's happening. I've also only been using End Turn.

Duration of effects seem to drop at the end of the character's turn and not necessarily on the same initiative the buff was cast, or at least this is how buffs like Frenzy work.

You'll still get a lot of mileage out of certain fast weapons, like hatchets, clubs, and flails. Daggers and stilettos are a tougher sell. Guess it depends on how much you love Pukestabber or Azure Blade, which have some utility on characters with abysmal Perception thanks to the accuracy buffs. But can we talk about firearms? I feel like the initiative penalty is so tiny compared to, for example, the reliable damage of dual pistols w/o modal. What a wallop. Every round is a good round for gunners. EDIT: Also, I'm still on my Barbarian bull**** for turn based mode and I noticed that Carnage is hitting the primary target every time, despite them being stationary. So crack open those monk fists or dual whatever because it's good times ahead. Remember, the full attack damage multiplier does not affect Carnage since it only looks at the base damage of the weapon. Haha.

Really loving turn-based mode so far. Was afraid it would turn into a slog, but that's far from the case early game when upkeep is low. Only issue I've run into is when using stealth and pausing rapidly while attempting to engage an enemy. You can prevent the start-of-combat trigger and break enemy AI, preventing them from doing anything.

You can hit the same enemy with Carnage, but it requires that enemy to be moving as you hit them. They literally move into the Carnage AoE. I've had this happen on multiple occasions after using Spirit Tornado (I check my log frequently). They have to be moving fairly quickly as you hit them, and I've observed it happening on different combat speeds. As for your Carnage damage math, of course if you push your Might and PL you will have more accuracy and do more than the base weapon damage with Carnage. This is consistent with my testing as well. The raw damage numbers will still be "low," but it'll be better than most lashes at that point. It's mostly that you tend to have more modifiers on your full attacks (Barbaric Blow, Blooded, One Stands Alone, Legendary, Bloody Slaughter, lash, etc), and Carnage doesn't apply the 5% per PL bonus multiplier until after multiplying the base weapon damage, modified by Might, by 0.33. Carnage also can't crit, and most Barbarians invest heavily into crits in order to keep up their effectiveness. If all of that still checks out, there shouldn't be a reason your math is wrong. I also haven't noticed any changes to the formula when playing the game after the Seeker Slayer update, but I should probably test it again later in case. I still have a save file right next to a group of assassin vines. I'm just not a Corpse Eater. I also would like to second that fists are good; faster than long swords while dealing as much damage as long swords with some investment. It's been fun, and chaining Barbaric Smash with a Monk's unarmed animations has been more than satisfying.

Sure, but keep in mind Leap has significant recovery at the end of it unless used from stealth. You could do the same thing with Ranger's Evasive Roll but with 0 recovery and only 1 resource cost. Leap will get the job done, but if you're only looking at the best of the best, then it is balanced enough that it can't be.

Barbarian Leap, much like Rogue Escape or Ranger Evasive Roll, can be used out-of-combat to cheese maps with elevation elements, employ stealth shenanigans, circumvent slog zones and traps, etc. It's just hilarious because it has infinitely more yelling involved. Combat-wise, it's not as good as other class gap-closers (both in cost, recovery time, and ability to turn the tide of battle by itself), and its upgrades aren't that good when you consider the drop in accuracy due to how acquiring abilities at higher power levels work. Best to keep looking at Fighter, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue for min-maxing gap-closers in combat.

Boeroer is right, so just follow their advice for ranged Barbarian. Barbarian Serafan does fine. You often switch hit between dual pistol Barbaric Blow/Smash and hand axe + whatever. Even with the nerf to full attacks, you'll be critting often and dealing plenty of damage. Pick up Blood Frenzy and enjoy. The only issue is that pure Barbarian is very resource intensive. You'll finish small fights fast, but in longer fights with reinforcements, ranged Barbarians will fall off. You can remedy this somewhat with Caroc's Breastplate and Barbaric Smash. Key: Frenzy, Barbaric Blow, Bloodlust Consider: Blood Frenzy, Barbaric Smash (rage recycle), Wild Sprint (+5 dex and burst of speed to help reposition; stacks with Rapid Reload), One Stands Alone (for switch hitting with dual melee) Everything else is up to you. Late game you'll have access to Heart of Fury, but you may not need to use it depending on your party composition. Instrument of Boundless Rage is quite strong with no real start-up, so you'll likely be using that at least once a fight before finishing things off with Barbaric Smash.

I'd also like to chime in. I've had this Red Hand effect double stack when party members leave and re-enter the party. Courier's Calling, for instance.

Blood Frenzy requires a crit, which Carnage cannot do. The conditions are otherwise similar to Spirit Frenzy, so as long as you crit with the spell you should be good. The reason for this is because neither Blood Frenzy, Blood Storm, Spirit Frenzy, or Spirit Tornado status effect objects filter for specific keywords. For instance, if you wanted to make a mod that caused all Monastic Unarmed Training attacks to Distract on graze, hit, or crit, you can pretty much copy paste Spirit Frenzy/Tornado's "hits cause stagger" effect and just replace the status effect it would apply on trigger with a Distract effect from somewhere else. Then add the unarmed keyword to the KeywordIDs under Attack Filter as well as the proper ID to the Monastic Unarmed Training ability. Bam, instant over powered unarmed attacks.

These theories also don't account for talents/passives or active abilities that convert misses to grazes and grazes to hits.

@Boeroer Mental Binding was sped up in a prior patch to have a faster cast speed. It currently has a fast cast speed with average recovery, just like Secret Horrors. It's still balanced by below average Paralysis duration, but is otherwise fantastic when coordinating a barrage of attacks. @Archaven Overcoming Fortitude has the same steps as most other defenses. You can stack accuracy bonuses from passives. Of Accuracy is a simple +3, Perception items found early game can usually net you a +1 or +2 from necklace and helm. Pet can get you another +1 Perception early on. There might be a pet that gives you +3 accuracy on spells or distant opponents. For actives, you can stack a Perception inspiration with a consumable (+5) for a total of +10 acc. This is all before party members nuke enemy Fortitude with Morning Star Modal and/or body afflictions. Another method of gaining accuracy is power level. You get +1 per PL beyond the base PL of the spell. This means a single class will have slightly more accuracy, but also that Empower will add +5 accuracy. Of course, the Mental Binding immobilize is more of a bonus. Only reason to use it over Web is to immobilize enemies immune to Ground. While it's good at that, most enemies that can fly also use ranged attacks, so yeah.

@grasida These are my observations. Hopefully they can help you determine how to best bait engagement. For enemies with engagement, most Wilders and Undead (spirits and vessels) are able to engage you regardless of melee weapon/shield. Might be an inbred talent. Beasts are generally able to engage you, but only if they're big enough. Bigger Beasts should be able to engage more enemies, but I haven't verified this beyond Drakes and Kraken. Kith-wise, you just look for enemies with a shield, any sort of barbarian that has Thick Skin (note higher slash, pierce, and crush resist; only relevant in bog locations), or anything with Constant Recovery as they likely also have Hold the Line. Anything with Guardian Stance goes without saying, but I've only seen enemies with Mob or Conqueror Stance so it'll be interesting if you do see an enemy with that stance. As for any peculiar casters with engagement, IIRC, not even Concelhaut on PotD engages you with summoned weapons. I think just Battle-Lich will engage with a great sword, but there's only one of those for now. A few fampyr casters also don't engage, but that's usually because they're too busy tanking up and doing shenanigans. I'm sure they could if they wanted to. Engagement also has some rules. You can engage immediately if you aren't in recovery and the opponent isn't terrified (yellow) or charmed (green). In cases where I've seen an engagement during recovery, the recovery was purely melee weapon recovery and not spell or weapon switch recovery. Abilities that initiate a primary or full attack counts as weapon recovery, but not abilities that generate an AoE that results in a Primary or Full Attack (ie Heart of Fury). Once you've delivered an Opportunity At- ...Disengagement Attack, it appears you cannot re-engage that same target for a period of time. My best estimate is 2 seconds, but someone might be able to dig out the real cause/result from the game's code. I haven't been able to find the correct status effect in the gamedatabundle files. As far as how enemies interact with those rules, I don't recall seeing an enemy break them. You just need the speed to actually run past multiple enemies without getting minion blocked, which the Pallegina build provides. Barring speed, push effects can help you navigate mobs but may result in breaking engagement. EDIT: Just to be clear, engagement happens immediately. The focus target is the first to be engaged, and further engagements are first come, first serve. If an enemy has more than one engagement, they'll usually force engage on you once they've engaged their focus target. Enemies also love to focus engage targets that do not have a method of engaging (such as Pallegina in her Thunder mode). This can help you begin the Lightning phase with incoming focused engagements. It doesn't appear enemies switch focus before your weapon switch recovery ends, so you can abuse this. Weapon/shield passives seem to activate pretty much immediately. It's active abilities, like Modals, that can't activate till you finish weapon switch recovery.

@mant2si You didn't read the key points. No setup at the start of combat other than maybe a Wild Sprint or a Leap. No legendary equipment needed. Not even time because less than a second startup and no cooldown. By high level it's doing 70+ cold damage in a massive AoE every .7 sec (faster and stronger after the first use). It only costs 1 Rage and chains ruthlessly with Barbaric Smash for resource recycling as needed. It's EASILY up there with Heart of Fury. I would gladly let Carnage stay where it is so we can keep power and speed in Barbarian active abilities. I did not say anything about 1v1 or bosses, of which pretty much any 1 cost resource Full Attack will out-DPS Spirit Tornado. This is for mobs, and has consistently killed them off before I could place a single-class monk in position with the appropriate wounds or a single-class wizard could fire off the first empowered damage spell. Even after the Monk gets in position and has the resources to fire a big attack off, the Barbarian is still firing off the AoE at a different mob and will likely get off 5 more before the Monk recovers in order to generate wounds. It can also be done before Monk even has access to Whispers of the Wind, and thus has solid accuracy, damage, and penetration bonuses from PL as a result. The only downside (and a big one) is that it uses up all your Rage in order to spam, and a Barbarian without Rage in Deadfire is on the slow side. That, and if we're looking at the game as a whole, it's nowhere near the power you'll experience from multi-classing. Definitely takes the winds out of the sail since Spirit Tornado and Heart of Fury are the only reasons to single-class a Barbarian. As for Carnage benefiting from passives, food, or potions, it normally doesn't. The only Barbarian passive that influences Carnage is Accurate Carnage, which adds a small +5. It ignores food and potions unless they grant Might, PL, or Interrupt on hit. Even then, Might and PL only have a small influence and Interrupts on hit were nerfed in % chance. Responding to Fighter passive, Constant Recovery in no way lets you regen through all DPS, especially mid level and higher mobs. It doesn't happen fast enough or with a high enough base value, even after talent upgrade, to do that. The idea is you'll kill them before they kill you. If you want to actually out-heal mob DPS, you need to stack actives and item passives to do that, and that's fine. It's balanced very well. Also, screw Arcane Dampener working on Constant Recovery. Sorry, I just... it makes me mad. Responding to Rogue passive, Sneak attack is 30%. We're comparing base passives. For most of the early game, you could equate Carnage to a 10% lash as long as a 2nd enemy is near the primary target. Get another enemy and that's another 10% for a total of 20%. Carnage will never be as good at damage as true damage passives without that 3rd or 4th enemy. Once you get to mid or high level, then Carnage is relatively bad unless enemy mob has high armor and/or damage immunity since Raw damage doesn't care. There are plenty of these mobs, especially if you are challenging content earlier than you should, and we will likely see more in future expansions. That's where my comment about overall net damage comes from. Over the course of a playthrough, if you only looked at what the base damage passives are doing, you'll see Carnage come out on par if not slightly ahead. All of this is fine, since Barbarian will have all the abilities it needs to fullfill its intended role as a crowd controller with damage support. Whether Carnage should get a talent upgrade like all the other damage passives in the game is a different discussion. Probably one I am too biased to participate in considering I've modded my game for that very talent. I think you are simply too fixated on endgame Carnage. What matters is how these base damage passives work with you as you explore content from beginning to end. All of my observations of Carnage accounts for organic exploration of content at varying difficulties. Obviously, if you only want to look at end game, Carnage offers you even less since the idea by then is to use your abilities to nuke. In a party with all Strikers, you nuke things so fast you'll barely have anything to Carnage after the first 3 seconds. It becomes irrelevant outside of Heart of Fury, which lets you apply Carnage many, many more times for excellent potential damage at the very beginning of combat, where enemies are thickest. The point I'm trying to make is that Carnage is okay for the game as a whole, and you never multi-class or pick solo Barbarian for Carnage alone. You pick Barbarian because they have beautiful eyes, rapier wit, and a body to die for. You pick them because the kit works great.

Scordeo can be enchanted to help your crit damage and attack speed further. It's a fantastic weapon. You can buy it fairly quickly assuming you hoard cash as soon as you can start sweeping up city quests.

Yes, first attacks will break stealth. However, you can still keep two pistols on a weapon set for when you just need to pump out ranged damage via full attacks. You have a good selection of pistols to do so, and the right combination can give you some of the highest DPS in the game.

Haven't tested yet. Since it's a low level spell, it should be a quick. Though, I've looked at the game files and it does not look promising. There doesn't appear to be any possible interaction with Carnage in the gamedatabundle files, just the unique melee attack made for the summoned weapon. It doesn't influence Carnage damage at all. The only thing Carnage will do is lay on a count of Static Charge if your secondary Carnage attacks hit. Pre-nerf, Fighter was definitely better than Barbarian in almost every way. We don't live in that world anymore, and to top it off Constant Recovery is not comparable to Carnage. They are two different passives achieving different goals. Carnage was nerfed to be farther behind compared to other damage passives unless there is a well placed mob, where you'll likely break even or better. Due to scaling and enemy variety, it's hard to adequately compare Carnage to upgradeable passives like Soul Whip, but over the course of the game you will see the Barbarian's Carnage net more damage than other single-class damage passives simply due to the consistency it brings in fights against mobs with damage immunity and/or high armor. Besides, the nerf lets the dev team throw all that power/potential into other tools in the Barbarian's kit. It's not meant to single-handedly win vs mobs like it did in PoE1. You have to use your active abilities in concert and risk exhausting your Barbarian resources to truly spike. Low startup, no cooldown Frenzy, instant Nimble + engagement immunity via Wild Sprint, quick cast Leap with relatively low cooldown (something you couldn't do in PoE1 until the very end of the White March), the list goes on. By the time you get Spirit Tornado, you can start spamming 30+ cold damage + Terrify AoE nearly every second, and this gets much higher with each PL beyond. It's beautiful and arguably makes the nerf to Carnage worth it.

For whatever reason, Spirit Lance AoE attack only has the Conjuration keyword ID. If you had, say, a Conjuration modal that increased damage from Conjuration by 20%, then that would apply to Spirit Lance AoE. I'm thinking this was something that fell through the cracks because there really isn't a point to the AoE having a Conjuration keyword other than to screw over the Pike weapon modal. EDIT: Removed unnecessary text after looking at other posts in different threads. Most people get what's going on with modals and special attack keywords.

I'll need to double check the status effect in the GameDataBundle files, but if it works at all like Spirit Frenzy's "OnScoringGrazeHitOrCriticalHit" proc, then there is no weapon ID in the filter and thus it will still work with Carnage hits. I made a mistake saying Blood Frenzy works because that's only "OnCrit", which Carnage clearly cannot do. EDIT: Yup, Static Charge event status effect also says "OnScoringGrazeHitOrCriticalHit" and specifies Pollaxe ID in the filter, but it also has !!!! Whoa! It actually has the ID for Carnage Attacks in the filter! I didn't even realize that was a thing, but I should have because Accurate Carnage needs to apply a filter so the accuracy buff only affects Carnage. Same deal with Barbaric Blow Carnage AoE size bonus. Time to make more personal mods! mwahahaha hashtagRisingCarnage Wahai Paraga AoE specifically targets additional creatures with a primary attack. Because of this, Carnage will be able to take main hand weapon data, which is what it looks for. Observe Cadhu Scalth's Strike the Soul, for instance. As one of the few melee range attacks with its own penetration and damage value, it does not reference your main or off-hand for base weapon damage. Thus, Carnage never procs off of Strike the Soul (or I have missed with every Carnage attack that might have proc on it over the course of 300 hours). EDIT: Wahai Paraga should work like Spirit Lance and WotEP now so it doesn't proc itself infinitely. It has its own attack with unique damage and penetration. I doubt it works now. Will test. EDIT2: Still haven't tested it yet, but checked attacks.gamedatabundle file for anything that has the Carnage or any specific weapon keyword ID. Special attacks that do should be capable of Carnage. Wahai Paraga does not have the Carnage Attack ID, but it does use the Pollaxe weapon attack ID. This would imply Carnage being able to proc on the random attacks. WotEP (primary target and AoE targets) has the proper weapon ID for the attacks, so they apply Carnage. That's why I love and keep mentioning Heart of Fury. Every cluster of bodies you can reach is just amazing bonus damage (with effective value increasing relative to enemy variety in armor type or damage type immunity). The issue is performance before high level because Barbarians rely on 3 mechanics (aside from Carnage) for damage up to that point: Critical Hits (and by extension Overpen) via Barbaric Blow and Bloody Slaughter (which both boost Critical Damage and Hit-to-Crit Chance) Attack Speed from Frenzy (25%), Wild Sprint (15% from Dex), and Bloodlust (20%) Slightly weaker damage passives. One Stands Alone is the standout for all game difficulty modes as your go-to buff for alpha strikes. Blooded is a strong conditional, but will become harder to rely on as Obsidian tweaks difficulty and adds more complex enemy attacks (with OnHit and OnCrit effects). So already Barbarians need to spend themselves out if they want to spike. It's much better than it was back in PoE, but we lost Carnage effectiveness to compensate. This ties back into single class Corpse Eater being subpar before Power Level 5. The additional Rage Cost makes them less effective in buffing themselves and front loading damage, which is why you'll usually see the subclass paired with another class so you always have access to Full Attack options. Once you get to Barbaric Smash, though, you'll see a point during encounters where you lose much less Rage due to recycling (due to how Barbaric Smash is coded, it refunds 2 Rage every time; they did not make a separate entry for Corpse Eater like they did for Frenzy and Berserker). At that point, Corpse Eater shines because you get back 3 Rage whenever you have the opportunity. If you do decide to go single class Corpse Eater, I think you'll adjust quickly given your knowledge of mechanics. On the other hand, you can still coast by on tankiness. Barbarian tank passives are among the best in the game. Thick Skinned, One Stands Alone, and Unflinching are excellent in most game modes. It appears to have a specific AoE attack that it uses, instead of doing multiple primary attacks (which makes sense because then it would just be an infinite loop of damage between multiple enemies). This means you would not proc Carnage off of targets caught in the AoE. You'll hit with the lance, and then see two AoE's occur: Spirit Lance AoE and Carnage AoE. EDIT2: I verified in attack.gamedatabundle whether Spirit Lance's AoE has a Carnage or weapon keyword ID and it does not have either. So, it's unaffected by things like a Fighter's Weapon Specialization talent, too. The only ID it has is Conjuration, so anything that increases Conjuration effects would apply. I'll update the OP at some point with specific attacks that have useful keyword IDs. That way we will all know what can apply Carnage. ---- I'll update the OP with some info. Gotta cross out Blood Frenzy since that's OnCrit, and I should also mention another funny observation I had. Turns out enemies moving at sufficient speeds will be targeted by their own Carnage AoE hahahahahahaha. I caught this when I Terrified an opponent and they walked into the Carnage AoE triggered on them. Beautiful, and probably more reason Spirit Tornado is the next most OP thing on a solo Barbarian after Heart of Fury.

Why Test (Version 1.2.0.0028) Mmmm, Carnage. I've been a long time fan of Barbarian and have been seeking information on how the Carnage mechanic works in Deadfire since release. Unfortunately, things were slow both here and on Reddit with limited interest (people consider Carnage a worthless ability, especially in light of Mob Stance prior to its nerf) and poor accessibility (limited HUD tooltip info). The only question that really got answered was whether the secondary Carnage attacks applied on-hit effects, and the answer was a resounding, "No, but Spirit and Blood Frenzy on-hit effect buff does." That, and the fact that the resulting Raw damage does not care for Penetration, Graze, or Crit modifiers. Fast forward to present day. With the help of the mod guide video kind of showing where to look, I've been able to look at the various status effect and attack object structures. So here's some general observations from what's been tucked away in the GameDataBundle files: Carnage damage does scale with Power Level. It's a meager +5% per PL, but it's better than nothing. Amusingly, since Carnage is itself PL 0, and you start at PL 1, you actually start with the bonus +5% to Carnage damage. Don't get excited, though, because this scaling value is applied after the 0.33 modifier.The 33% damage effect will check the weapon in your primary or off-hand as appropriate. It does not care about anything other than the weapon's Base Damage range. You don't get the accuracy bonus from weapon quality. There is a hidden PL accuracy bonus that can't be observed in the game's tooltips, as noted in the Power Level Compilation Thread. The AoE Carnage attacks (main and off-hand) that apply the 33% damage effect seem to use a static 0.33 value for damage that overrides the default ability damage scaling for effects (+10% per PL). This just means you can only rely on the +5% damage per PL after the 0.33 reduction. Damage So the question I had at this point was what influenced Base Weapon Damage? Does weapon quality factor at all? What about active abilities proc from passives, like One Stands Alone, or conditional passive bonuses like Wilder Hunter? Thanks to a wonderful group of Assassin Vines, I've been able to get started on testing. Here are my observations thus far. Damage range for Carnage appears to use the following formula: (([base Weapon Damage] * [Might Damage Bonus]) * 0.33)(1 + (.05 * PL)). This was tested with a mod I made which increased the scaling damage bonus from PL so I could observe any small change to other values. Weapons used were of the same type, but different quality between them. Of course, quality had no effect on the damage result, and neither did One Stands Alone. I still have not tested sabre's Sharp weapon property or Wilder Hunter talent, though I suspect that Carnage damage will not check for creature type before applying itself. If anyone tests these before I do, that would be nice. Surprise! Might influences your Base Weapon Damage before it is shoved into Carnage's % damage calculation! This was tested by observing the damage range with and without Frenzy. Whether it's worth having high Might to maximize Carnage damage is another thing. Assuming you max it out, you're still looking at 10-15 Raw damage from 30 Might and 10 PL delivered via a Sword swing (Base 13-19). Finding the minimum and maximum damage possible is just a matter of using the minimum and maximum values under Base Weapon Damage range for the relevant weapon. For the most part, numbers stayed within the correct range, but was a little tricky to parse because damage values are not integers. Your damage range will include decimal values, but the hit point damage flying out of enemies on screen will round the value up. Testing Error In the GameDataBundle files, it appears that your off-hand weapon is ignored for base weapon damage and your main weapon is used instead. This isn't because they didn't put in an entry for your off-hand weapon. They did. It just doesn't get referenced at all, and thus the AoE attack and subsequent 33% damage status effect it would reference are also unused. It may be a mistake that the main weapon got referenced for both the main weapon on-hit event and the off-hand weapon on-hit event, or it could be a measure to prevent the game from breaking on something. Area of Effect As for Carnage AoE size, even with 21 Int, I struggled to hit more than 3 additional Assassin Vines at a time. Barbaric Blow's 50% increased Carnage AoE did not make a noticeable difference, though I guess that's fitting given the size of the base AoE (360 degrees; "Small"; 1.5 blast radius override). At the very least, if you get 3+ enemies clustered, Heart of Fury can apply a lot of extra damage via main and off-hand Carnage AoE. Closing There's nothing to really close this OP on. The goal wasn't to show whether Carnage was a viable mechanic or not but to clear up some of the mystery behind how it works. I'll leave some closing thoughts: Abilities like Barbaric Blow and Heart of Fury do not influence Carnage damage whatsoever. This, despite Barbaric Blow claiming it also increases the crit rate of Carnage. There's no benefit to doing so even if it worked that way. You ultimately use the abilities for the Full Attack abuse and maybe the increased Carnage AoE. For consistent, powerful basic attack applications, dual wielding wielding a spear, sword, or battle axe in your main hand will offer the best results (Base 13-19 damage). Might becomes slightly more relevant with big 2h weapons since it will modify a bigger value. Great sword, pike, and quarterstaff (Base 18-24 damage) will lead to a maximum Carnage damage range of 14-19 at 30 Might and 10 PL. From my testing, 2h Weapon talent doesn't modify Carnage damage and neither does the great sword modal. Two-weapon Full Attacks will apply a big sum-total Carnage damage with endgame abilities, such as Heart of Fury, but a max level Barbarian can swing Sanguine/Voidwheel with amazing impunity once the first enemy falls. This can result in a solid Carnage damage spike over the course of a combat encounter. The benefit of instant primary weapon recovery via Blood Thirst should not be underestimated. As of the recent testing in patch (1.2.0.0028) even the attack animation is canceled. It's seriously FAST. Completely unrelated to Carnage. You could forgo melee entirely if your goal is to dual Pistol/Blunderbuss Heart of Fury. Heart of Fury will fire at all enemies within range AND has the bonus of bypassing primary weapon reload (unlike Barbaric Blow). The downside is the ability cooldown, but you will still ultimately pump damage faster by just rushing the second Heart of Fury. Whether it's worth the 8 Rage is another matter. EDIT: I saw an enemy get hit by the Carnage AoE triggered on them. They were moving fairly quickly (Terrified) and just ran into their own AoE. It was HILARIOUS.

I found poisons to be more useful in tackling Splintered Reef early rather than explosives, and the most useful explosive (the lightning one) is getting nerfed. I am totally up for abusing poisons more than other consumables, especially with barbarian builds since Spirit Tornado already hits like a grenade and more frequently anyway. "I think I'm going to take the skill that is effective 25% as much as the one that works all the time" is definitely what I will gun for if that 25% happens to be something that snowballs you or prevents you from instantly losing the game when nothing else will kill you. This goes for rogue-likes and actual table top games like D&D (where running into a dragon, illithid, or beholder can just get you killed). Splintered Reef is just huge on everything, and every run I make abuses going there to snowball.

Has anyone tested how much Driving Flight benefits from Power Level? I recently destroyed Splintered Reef with Maia + Spearcaster + Driving Flight. Had +2 Power Level from buffs and was suddenly surprised by the damage output.

The upgrade on Concussive Shot also fills a niche as the only ability in the game that targets Deflection and lets you remove 30 sec off beneficial effects. Combined with Ranger's high accuracy, this gives you a solid spectrum of casters that can be hit where Arcane Dampener would miss.