Question about interrupt barbarian

[Madscientist]

As I have already said several times, I want to play with a barbarien who focusses on interrupting and CC large groups of enemies with his auto attacks.

I played around with the stats and I thought about:

 

mig: 9

con: 9

dex: 17

per: 17

int: 17

res: 9

 

Are those stats good or do you know something better?

I do not want to dump stats, but a barbarien with low might feels strange.

 

For those who do not know what this char is: I want to focus on dual wielding weapons that have a high interrupt and/or cause prone/stunn. And I take interrupting blows and threatening presence.

 

As race I think about hearth orlan, pale elf or moon godlike.

[rheingold]

Boeroer has had a few posts where he specifically mentions an interrupt barbarian. You should check out his posts. The basics were something like maxing perception, so an Orlan from white that wends and using the vile loners lance. (21 perception starting?) Can't remember many other details though, it sounded interesting but a bit min/maxed for me.

Edited February 25, 2016 by rheingold

[DreamWayfarer]

I'd say that lowering CON, MIG and RES to 8 to increase DEX and/or PER would be a good move.

[Boeroer]

Hi - don't know how deep your knowledge is, so I will go into depth:

 

Basically - if you want to interrupt as much as possible, you need the highest PER you can get and also attack pretty fast. 

 

A PER score of 17 will lead to an interrupt value of 21. If you put PER to 21, it will be 33. That's 30% more. Interrupting Blows adds +15 (like 5 points of PER without the ACC boost).

So you will be at 48. But that'S still not enough to land guaranteed interrupts. The base concentration at RES 10 is 75. You have to overcome concentration with this roll: rollDie(1-100) + 48 > 75. The chances against foes with normal RES are ok, but not overwehleming although you put all you have into PER.

Every point of PER counts now. So you will have to watch out for stuff (items, resting, food, talents) that give you a bonus to PER. Champion's Boon (+10 PER = +30 Interrupt) and Crowns for the Faithful (+6 PER, +25 RES) are great for this!

 

At the same time you want to lower concentration. That can be done by you (as you said: Threatening Presence is a way to reduce concentration a bit) or by party members. There are some spells or other abilites that reduce concentration directly or indirectly (= -RES). Some are: Expose Vulnerabilites (awesome for a barb, lowers concentration and DR), Miasma of Dull Mindedness (-6 RES means -18 concentration - but the AoE is damn small),  Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment (it'S just one foe at a time, but it lasts very long and is good against tough enemies), Painful Interdiction (this stacks with your Threatening Presence - you can use Brute Force then), the lvl-1-Chanter's phrase that reduces concentration by 10 (huge range, no ressources needed).

 

Then there's a new item, a ploeaxe, that has an aura that causes -30 concentration. That's superawesome - but it's too slow to be you own weapon. However it would be the perfect support weapon for you. Put it on a chanter abd let him sing that "stumbling over words"-phrase and your foes will suffer from -40 concentration. That alone guarantees you 100% interrupt chance against "normal" enemies. For the tougher ones you just can use the things I listed above. With those combined you can interrupt every enemy in the game 100% of the time - you just have to make sure that those debuffs hit. If they don't, your sky high PER (with Champion' Boon and stuff) is still enough to interrupt even the toughest enemy for a good amount of time. So, my party composition would be:

 

- hearth or wild orlan barb from the White that Wends with 21 PER and high DEX. RES shouldn't bee too low because if you get interrupted you can't interrupt others. Iterrupting Blows, Two Weapon Style, Brute Force, One Stands Alone

- Chanter with that chant (and later that poleaxe)

- Priest with Painful Interdiction

- Wizard with Blast and The Golden Gaze as weapon as well as the spell I mentioned above

- The rest is up to you - a cipher would fit in because he also profits a lot from Threatening Presence + Painful Interdiction. A monk also loves the low fort and will defenses

 

For you weapons: you said you want to interrupt and also stun. Well there's just one two combos in this game that fit to this:

1: dual wielding the Vile Loner's Lance and Cladhaliath. The Vile Loner's Lance has a very long Interrupt of 1 sec (instead of 0.5) and Cladhaliath can be made so that it causes stun on crit. Vile Loner's Lance also causes -5 defenses on hit - fits perfectly well with the stun-on-crit. Altough this is a nice combo, it looks kind of weird - if you have no problem with that, I would recommend those - because you can get them early.

 

2.: Then there's Shatterstar (or was it Strike Hard? can't remember) plus Godansthunyr. Those are also great: both have long interrupts (1 sec and 0.75) and other nice enchantments. +1 MIG and stun on crit for example. And the best part: it looks good on a barb! But Godansthunyr comes pretty late.

 

Another good item for a interrupting barb is Mosquito. That rapier causes interrupts that last for 0.75 and is fast. On top it drains endurance whcih is always cool with carnage. You could combine that with the March Steel Dagger in order to speed up your attack even more - but I think it's not your kind of style for a barb.

 

You want to attack as fast as you can, so try to stack lots of speed modifiers: Frenzy, Gauntlets of Swift Action, Durgan Refinement on armor and weapons. You can reach 0 recovery with dual wieding and a light armor like padded or hide or even durgan reinforced heavier stuff  (but then you can't use Vulnerable Attack):

 

Frenzy (1.33) * Durgan Refinement weapon 1 (1.15) * Durgan Refinement weapon two (1.15) * Gauntlets (1.15) + Two Weapon Style = 2.22. At 2 you have no recovery - so there's room for either 20% armor-penalty or Vulnerable Attack. I like Vulnerable Attack - so I'd go for the durgan reinforced monk's outfit perhaps (=0% recovery penalty) and pump survival for +2 extra DR and wear a Blunting Belt and drink some potions of Iron Skin in tough fights.

 

 

There's also the Helwax Mold: that tiem (from a stronghold quest) lets you duplicate any non-soulbound item. So it would be nice to clone the Vile Loner's Lance or Godansthunyr or whatever weapon you like best for this. Or even that strange poleaxe I mentioned. I don't know if it's aura stacks - but if it does, it would be superaweseome.

 

I think that's all I have to say...

 

edit: oh, forgot: if this is set up properly (high INT is also important) it creates a perma-interrupt-lock in an AoE. No foe is immune to interrupts and they also happen on grazes. It's superpowerful even if you don't use ALL the stuff I mentioned above. Just don't get disabled. Suppress Affliction of Liberating Exhortation are your best friends.  Ah, and Frighten (chanter phrase or barbs yell) and Terrify (spell, invocation or shout) also lower concentration a bit - as well as keeping you alive by lowering enemies' ACC.

 

edit2: I just hope the chanter's chant and that poleaxe aura stack - I couldn't test it myself yet, sorry.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Not finished reading yet?

[Madscientist]

Thank you

 

Regarding stats, if I max out perception, I have to sacrifice something else. What should it be?

Low con and res would be bad for a melee char and a barbarian with dumped might seems really strange.

 

I want to play on hard with a full party. Pallagina as tank, Zahua and me as melee damage, Durance for buffs and 2 ranged chars (Aloth, GM, Hiravias, Sagani, 2 of them)

Lets say I consider hard mode as story mode for advanced players.

 

Edit: I know that you do not need an optimized char for hard (actually I have not played PotD yet), but I do not know WM1+2 and I like the story more than very hard combat. Having an optimized char makes the game easier on all difficulties and all those infos here may be useful for someone who wants to play on PotD.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Madscientist

[Boeroer]

I'm afraid MIG is one oft the stats that will have to be lower. But if you take an orlan it fits, don't you think? You will get +4 or even +6 MIG out of Frenzy - that should be OK. It's more useful to interrupt all the time in an AoE than to deal a bit more damage.

[Madscientist]

So even a char with low might vs enemies with high DR will do at least 1 point of damage, so he does interrupt at all, right?

 

I am not sure about PoE, but I think there may be some games where you do not apply a secondary effect if your hit does no damage at all.

[mazeltov]

Thought I'd mention that Crits add 25 to the Interrupt roll (Grazes subtract 25). So Perception not only increases the Interrupt rating directly, but also makes them more reliable by raising Accuracy. Any of the usual Acc increasers or Deflection lowerers will help, as will Graze-to-Hit or Hit-to-Crit conversion, etc.

[Boeroer]

So even a char with low might vs enemies with high DR will do at least 1 point of damage, so he does interrupt at all, right?

 

I am not sure about PoE, but I think there may be some games where you do not apply a secondary effect if your hit does no damage at all.

You will deal a MIN damage no matter how high enemy's DR is. You can see that in the log. If DR is higher than damage it says MIN x. That's not much but every hit deals at least a bit of damage that way.

[Boeroer]

Thought I'd mention that Crits add 25 to the Interrupt roll (Grazes subtract 25). So Perception not only increases the Interrupt rating directly, but also makes them more reliable by raising Accuracy. Any of the usual Acc increasers or Deflection lowerers will help, as will Graze-to-Hit or Hit-to-Crit conversion, etc.

Really, that's even better - where did you get that info? From the combat log?

[mazeltov]

Really, that's even better - where did you get that info? From the combat log?

 

Yeah, we gamed out Interrupts pretty hard last year. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/77638-interrupt-build/

 

It took several patches after release for Obs to get Interrupting Blows working properly. With that fixed and Per adding to Acc now, Interrupters are in a better spot than ever.

[Boeroer]

 

Really, that's even better - where did you get that info? From the combat log?

 

Yeah, we gamed out Interrupts pretty hard last year. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/77638-interrupt-build/

 

It took several patches after release for Obs to get Interrupting Blows working properly. With that fixed and Per adding to Acc now, Interrupters are in a better spot than ever.

 

Cool - I only learned recently that the info in the wiki about crits an interrupts was totally wrong.

Thanks for the info!

 

edit: I mean... the correct one,

Edited February 26, 2016 by Boeroer

[Madscientist]

I started my char with mig 3, con 9, dex 18, per 21, int 18, res 9.

 

I can confirm what mazeltov said:

 

Create a char with high interrupt.

Fight until you have interrupted and enemy with a graze, hit and crit.

Put your mouse over the combat log line with the interrupt.

You will see: your interrupt value + 1d100 = sum > enemy concentration

 

On a hit your interrupt value will be the same number as in your character sheet.

On a graze it will be 25 lower and on a crit 25 higher.

 

[Boeroer]

Cool, thanks!