Yosharian

No, they don't. You just don't want to use them in a party with no support characters, but with the right weapon and buffs they are very powerful, even if on their own they are underpowered. With the right weapon and buffs any character can be powerful. That's not a reflection of the balance of that character.

My tip to you is: don't play a Barbarian.

So you think a class that's designed to need all 6 attribute scores is well designed? Wow. Yes . They don't need all attributes maxed to be viable, they just need you to pay more attention to skill and items synergies to reach their potential and are not very minmax friendly. If all classes were like that, the game would be cooler, even if somewhat harder.Ok, I see what you mean, but the problem with saying this is that there are so many other classes that can dumpstat half the attribute system and still crush the game easily. If this were an approach for all classes consistently across the board then I'd have less of a problem with it. Yes, that is what I mean. It is not that Barbarians aren't working right, it is just that all other classes don't work how Obsidian wanted to with their "make all attributes viable" approach. Oh they're definitely not working right. All I'm saying is that I see your point about making all stats important. Barbarians need a ****-ton of work to make them decent.

These are superb. People like you are what make PC gaming so ****ing awesome.

So you think a class that's designed to need all 6 attribute scores is well designed? Wow. Yes . They don't need all attributes maxed to be viable, they just need you to pay more attention to skill and items synergies to reach their potential and are not very minmax friendly. If all classes were like that, the game would be cooler, even if somewhat harder. Ok, I see what you mean, but the problem with saying this is that there are so many other classes that can dumpstat half the attribute system and still crush the game easily. If this were an approach for all classes consistently across the board then I'd have less of a problem with it.

So you think a class that's designed to need all 6 attribute scores is well designed? Wow.

No it's not.

Isn't Cragholdt delivered by a messenger? Why would you ask the Steward about it? I don't remember this, anyway.

Uh... No, it wouldn't. Fighters can be tanky and deal good sustained damage, why should it hurt balance if paladins could be built for goid burst damage instead of support? Especialy if they sacrificed the F&C defense bonus for accuracy. EDIT: and what is wrong with barbarians needing INT? While the attribute system doens't make sense from a simulationist point of view, actual combat is so complex that no game I've ever seem made an attribute system that makes sense in real life. I mean, melee combat being based solely in strenght, and people with zero muscles using warbows? Eurgh. Well I don't think there's anything wrong with it anyway, my comment was more that it's sort of nonsensical. I mean if I'm a raging barbarian, my ability to stay enraged for long periods would hardly be down to my intellect. From a pure gameplay perspective it hurts Barbarians massively to have to devote so many points to Intellect and yet still need Might (damage), Dexterity (attack speed), Constitution and Perception (accuracy).

Doesn't need to be such an immersion-breaking message. Could be something like: You meet a peasant on the road towards Craghold. He tells you that the monsters ahead are vicious, cruel creatures that have been known to slaughter entire legions of knights. He advises you to turn back, lest you share their fate. "Only a living god would stand a chance against those cruel bastards!" he whimpers.

Since I'm playing one right now, lemme tell you: 1) Frenzy needs to be looked at. With 20+ int this ability still has a ****ing piss-poor duration. Please look at the ****ing duration of this ability. What a joke. 2) Greater Frenzy: is utterly ****ing useless. Mainly because the duration of Frenzy is so completely **** to begin with. Wow 6% more damage for the 20 seconds in which my Frenzy lasts, not to mention the time I lose casting the ****ing thing because it uses up a standard turn (unlike Savage Defiance which is an instant-cast ability). Whoever designed this talent needs a slap in the damn face. 3) Already said this but it deserves its own mention: Barbs are so ****ing attribute-starved thanks to their idiotic reliance on Int (SERIOUSLY? INT?) to get the most out of their abilities. They cannot spare good dexterity scores unless they sacrifice heavily in other areas. Therefore: Making Frenzy a standard action ability is just ****ing horrific. I actually think whoever designed this class is a sadist. Like, for real. They need help. 4) Carnage is great but you shouldn't need 20+ int to get a decent AoE on this ability. The base radius needs to be like, doubled or something. With 10 int it should be a decent radius. Like, hello? 10 int on a class which hits things to death is a serious investment... 5) Another idea for Greater Frenzy: the key thing with Frenzy is that it adds to the attack speed of the Barb, which HEY WHADYA KNOW is a ****ing major weakness of the class. Yet Greater Frenzy completely ignores this crucial part of Frenzy and instead buffs.... might and con. Wow. Instead, GF could do one of the following: buff Frenzy duration; buff the attack speed bonus; make Frenzy a 2-per-encounter ability instead of 1 - hell it could make it 3/encounter, 4/encounter, FIVE even and this ability would still not be anywhere near OP. Hell, make it ****ing infinite use after level 10. 6) Barbaric Yell just needs to be scrapped completely. This dead-end ability is a complete joke. Thank god they added respec or I'd lose sleep thinking of all the poor saps who accidentally picked this piece of ****. The worst thing: it takes up a standard action. 7) Thick-skinned needs to add a ****ing ****load more than just two DR to solve the massive tanking issues the Barb has. 8 ) Constitution is just overall a **** stat for gameplay, and it's one of the Barb's key stats. I'm not in charge of designing this class, but if I was, I'd design some benefit for builds that take 18 CON or more. For example, and this is just off the top of my head, Savage Defiance could heal a percentage of HP rather than a static amount. That way players who invest heavily in CON get some use out of it. 9) Wild Sprint a per rest ability, are you ****ing ****ting me? No further comment needed. Fix this abomination. 10) Barbaric Shout is OK (I think? I never ****ing use it because it's a standard action ability, am I ****ing getting through to you OBS?) but it needs to be per encounter otherwise it'll never get ****ing used. Per rest is for UBER GODLIKE SERIOUS abilities and all UBER GODLIKE SERIOUS enemies are... wait for it... bound to be immune to Terrify. Lol. 11) Dragon Leap is so sad... LEAP AND CRASH DOWN UPON YOUR ENEMIES AND... daze them... oh. 'Wow.' Let's be fair, only reason this ability is ever taken is because of the coolness factor. Daze is ****ing trash. Make it stun or something, jesus wept. 12) Heart of Fury is just sad because yet again it's a per-rest ability which is useless against super tough enemies. This ability is QUITE CLEARLY to demolish large groups of weak enemies, make it per-encounter for god's sake. 13) The whole Brute Force-Sickening Presence idea is clever, but utterly fails in execution because it just isn't strong enough and is too niche. Who's going to devote two entire abilities just so they can be slightly (again, slightly? the strength of these abilities is just sad) better against Fortitude-weak opponents, such as.... hmm... mages? that's it... and the Barb doesn't really have enough mobility to be able to punish mages reliably, nor does he have methods of avoiding stuns or snares reliably so he'll often fail to reach the target at all if he goes chasing people. Fail design. 14) Vengeful Defeat is a trap ability because planning for your character to be knocked out is just crap, not to mention WOOP DE ****ING DOO ONE AOE MELEE ATTACK THAT WILL TOTALLY CHANGE THE COURSE OF A DOOMED FIGHT LMAO 15) Eye of the Storm: will any enemies reliably be one level below my character? And will it even matter that they can't flank me, since if they are lower level they'll probably get slaughtered anyway? This ability... I just don't know what to say. I think it would take talent to come up with a worse ability than this. Overall I'd say OBS did a great job of continuing the fine tradition of making Barbarians utter ****e. They were ****e in D&D, always were, and it's no big surprise to see that they're not far from that in Pillars. To be fair they have certain abilities which are good (Carnage in particular is just a joy to behold against packs of weaker enemies even if it requires 20+ int to make it decent *facepalm*), but it's just that, taken as a whole, the class just seems to be a random mish-mash of half-baked ideas that just do not work. But no worries, I'm sure next patch we'll see a bunch of buffs for the Fighter.

This is an incredibly wordy way way of saying 'the stronghold needs some ****ing effort put into it'. All these ideas are excellent but they require time and resources (i.e. money) to achieve. Sorry, I love the game but it's blatantly obvious that the stronghold has had nearly 0 effort put into it. Virtually no NPCs, no quests, this ****ing 'feature' is an utter joke. The one useful part it should have played from at the very least a gameplay perspective should've been to give massive rest buffs once fully upgraded, and even now it still doesn't really manage that. Dyrford Village gives absolutely insane buffs on a 2-rest limit by comparison. What irritates me the most is that they created this beautiful area and went to the trouble of creating all these upgrades and then basically said '**** it, that'll do'. 'Soulless' you said, that pretty much sums it up. The wasted potential is what hurts the most. Meh I've had a few tonight probably being a bit more cynical than is completely necessary

IMO it's unacceptable for such a serious bug to persist more than two months in a game which is supposed to be heavily supported, but whatever, talk about nitpicking And that 'workaround' lmao!

I don't think two CGs running concurrently heals you faster. I've seen one being suppressed while the other is not. But yeah, I think you're right that they can overlap. I just think that if they are going to put per-encounter limits on these effects that they should not allow them to overlap. It's sending two contradictory messages to the player: 1) This ability is powerful enough that we want to restrict its frequency per encounter 2) Depending on complete luck, you may end up wasting some of this ability's (limited) power - have fun! Again, as I feel I'm saying frequently these days: it's bad design.

I think it will work with spells as well as physical attacks. You could try it. The game will tell you when Minor Threat has activated in the battle log (it will say something like BLA BLA HAS HAPPENED (Minor Threat) ).

I swapped Withering Strike and Finishing Blow in the build order because I like the way the AI uses skills effectively and having one more per-encounter way of enabling Sneak Attacks (and other similar effects, for example bonus damage on Sagani's pet) is more useful to me at the moment than a per-rest ability like Finishing Blow. Hmmm, in some ways I agree that it's perhaps not the best use of a Rogue but I really like the way she force multiplies everyone else's damage by offering consistent and reliable per-encounter hobbles, blinds, weakens, etc, allowing my other damage dealers to take advantage. I do agree that it's kind of like putting a square peg in a round hole though. Devil's stats are also miserable and she is missing a talent point I believe. The main objective for me was to find a way to use Devil reasonably so I could enjoy her dialogue. Otherwise I'd just have brought in a custom-made hireling.

I see, so you want to approach it from a role-playing angle... fine, fine: Greater Frenzy is not 'magic'. It's the 'cultivation of the Barbarian's inner rage'. It literally says in the tooltip: 'while under the effects of Frenzy.' It's very reasonable to assume that if a Barbarian is skilled or experienced in the use of Frenzies to the point where he has 'cultivated his inner rage', that he can benefit the same from a magically-induced Frenzy as well. This is without even considering that regardless of the role-playing aspect, it's bad game design. Now that I re-read your comment I realise you may not have intended it as snarky mockery and may have just been making a joke. Oh well.

Noticed some behaviours: 1) While using the new Sanguine Plate (Frenzy spell holding), the AI cannot tell that the SP's Frenzy has procced and is up. It automatically casts Barbarian Frenzy anyway. Presumably the reverse can also happen, namely that crits expend (and waste) SP's Frenzy charges (supposed to be 2 per encounter, but see below) while Barbarian Frenzy is still up. 2) SG's Frenzy charges don't seem to be functioning correctly. Shod-in-Faith's Consecrated Ground charges seem to work fine (2 per encounter) but SP's Frenzy only seems to proc once per encounter. Whether this is because it erroneously contains one charge, or whether it's proccing the second charge while the first is still up, is a mystery. Tested this by letting the procced Frenzy run out, then getting crit again - no effect. UPDATE: Tested this again and watched the Frenzy timer carefully - it seems like the SP Frenzy is proccing again despite the initial SP Frenzy still being up, therefore wasting potential Frenzy duration. Essentially if you get crit again before the first timer runs out, the second proc begins regardless. This is bad design. No idea if Shod-in-Faith suffers from the same problem, it didn't seem to, but haven't tested it thoroughly. 3) SP's Frenzy duration appears to be extended to around 20 seconds, presumably by my character's high int (+70% or so duration), yet this is not reflected in the tooltip or explained anywhere. This is bad design. I would add that I think it's absolutely ****ty design that SG's Frenzy does not benefit from Greater Frenzy, but I imagine I'm wasting my breath there.

Lmao how can this class be so badly bugged when White March 2 is just around the corner? Ugh. Well at least the dev in that thread acknowledged it.

Sagani isn't working properly. 'Agile Retreat' is listed several times in her talents, and 'Predator's Sense' becomes glued to Itumaak and cannot be selected during respec. This is really irritating. Please add it to the list of known issues so it can be fixed next patch?

lmao

Does IE Mod work flawlessly with the current version tho? Always wary of using third-party mods with games like PoE.

So I decided to go with nerdcommando's Golden Axe rogue build (look here http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416939844) with some slight changes. Role: offtank/disabler. The idea is to focus entirely on crits, with some survivability as a secondary priority. 2Weapon And Shield 3Reckless Assault 4Shadowing Beyond (I feel this is more useful than Deflecting Assault early on - can't imagine a rogue without this!) 5Dirty Fighting 6Vicious Fighting 7Crippling Strike (since Devil begins with Blinding Strike (ugh) I thought I'd get this rather than the sub-par Deep Wounds) 8Superior Deflection 9Finishing Blow (accuracy bonus helps us crit) 10Weapon Focus: Knight (for Battleaxe specialization) 11Deathblows 12Deflecting Assault 13Withering Strike 14Bloody Slaughter Rejected talents/abilities: One-Handed Style-does not produce crits Savage Attack-accuracy is too important Vulnerable Attack-don't care enough about DR bypass Backstab-too situational Escape-1 use per encounter is trash Riposte-misses too unreliable Deep Wounds-damage is negligible with this build I didn't bother with Adept Evasion because Devil's stats are so piss-poor that I don't feel she has enough reflex to make it worthwhile. Since her main weapon is a Battleaxe (slashing damage) she will need alternate damage sources for certain creatures (cheat sheet: http://orcz.com/Pillars_of_Eternity:_Monster_Strengths_and_Weaknesses), this will almost universally be crushing damage (only creature that resists slashing AND crushing is Flesh Construct, everything else that resists slash is weak/weaker against crush), so the use of a mace/club/war hammer will be useful against those creature types, or you can use a morningstar I suppose.

I see. Do you think she's workable in this role without the Paladin buff?

Ok, I don't have a Pally but I do have a Druid and a Priest. I have levelled a Rogue before so I'm familiar with the Rogue abilities that allow escape.