Menaha - Please help

[Grimo88]

Hi all

 

Menaha has more health than anyone else in my party and she always dies first. She seems to die almost incidentally. I cannot for the life of me figure out why she hits the dirt before anyone else. I played through the entire game with a barb and she rocked. Menaha just plain sucks in my party and I can't figure out why. Should I put her in heavy armor? 

Thanks in advance 

[ottffsse]

She rocks like any barbarian but you have to build up a few defenses before you concentrate on dishing out damage. I have her in my party early since level 5 and along with zahua she has been clocking one of the best dps. Sure she dies sometimes but it should not be a big factor unless she is primary tank which she should not be. And you should have items and abilities to bring her back up and get vengeful defeat to take advantage of it.

 

My suggestion: max Athletics for a strong second wind ability, invest one talent point early into veterans recovery (it synergies very well with high int on barb) , give her a revive item on unconscious like ring of wonder or eders armor (I would not put her in anything heavier than scale). After this just improve her damage output and accuracy.

 

Endgame layout for damage is dual stilettos bleak fang and azureith to proc lots of instant damage on your barbaric blow or heart of fury and then switch to tidefall or blade of endless paths after the stilettos proc.

 

Also just give her a +9 deflection item it doesn't hurt and she won't drop so fast.

 

Other items which work well on her are shod in faith boots obvious, mantle of the dying boar and swaddling sheet. Stack a bunch of those and veterans recovery and she becomes very durable.

Edited February 28, 2016 by ottffsse

[Crucis]

She rocks like any barbarian but you have to build up a few defenses before you concentrate on dishing out damage. I have her in my party early since level 5 and along with zahua she has been clocking one of the best dps. Sure she dies sometimes but it should not be a big factor unless she is primary tank which she should not be. And you should have items and abilities to bring her back up and get vengeful defeat to take advantage of it.

 

My suggestion: max Athletics for a strong second wind ability, invest one talent point early into veterans recovery (it synergies very well with high int on barb) , give her a revive item on unconscious like ring of wonder or eders armor (I would not put her in anything heavier than scale). After this just improve her damage output and accuracy.

 

Endgame layout for damage is dual stilettos bleak fang and azureith to proc lots of instant damage on your barbaric blow or heart of fury and then switch to tidefall or blade of endless paths after the stilettos proc.

 

Also just give her a +9 deflection item it doesn't hurt and she won't drop so fast.

 

Other items which work well on her are shod in faith boots obvious, mantle of the dying boar and swaddling sheet. Stack a bunch of those and veterans recovery and she becomes very durable.

 

Those all look like very good suggestions!  I guess that my problem is that I've never been big on barbarians in PoE or the earlier IE games.  So I don't really have a good feel for how to use a somewhat squishy barbarian front liner.  And I guess that the PoE barbarian model of barb as AoE damage dealer doesn't mesh with my play style.  I'm used to more traditional, single target front liners who hold the line and deal damage one on one, and try to block as many enemies from getting into my rear to engage my squishier party members, whether they're physical ranged combatants or spellcasting types.

[Boeroer]

If you use a barb and don't want to put him in the thickest armor you have you need to use AoE debuffs. Something that keeps the barb alive while it weakens the enemies' defenses.

Then the barb's AoE damage- and CC-capabilties work best.

 

As I saw her RES and CON are not low - so she should be quite sturdy - I mean for a barb.

 

However: I always had lots of fun and no fuzz when I put my barbs in (sanguine) plate, shod-in-faith and gave them Tidefall. It adds a tremendous amount of survivability while the AoE dps is still great. No CC here - but doesn't go down easily as long as such a barb keeps hitting. I think this setup is best for people who have trouble keeping their barbs alive.

[Crucis]

If you use a barb and don't want to put him in the thickest armor you have you need to use AoE debuffs. Something that keeps the barb alive while it weakens the enemies' defenses.

Then the barb's AoE damage- and CC-capabilties work best.

 

As I saw her RES and CON are not low - so she should be quite sturdy - I mean for a barb.

 

However: I always had lots of fun and no fuzz when I put my barbs in (sanguine) plate, shod-in-faith and gave them Tidefall. It adds a tremendous amount of survivability while the AoE dps is still great. No CC here - but doesn't go down easily as long as such a barb keeps hitting. I think this setup is best for people who have trouble keeping their barbs alive.

 

I can see that, though one wonders if this would be pretty much just as true for any other weapon with the same sort of leeching (or whatever it's called) ability that gives the wielder some HPs every time he hits the target.  I'm thinking of that flail you can get early in the game, but I know that there are other weapons with the same ability (I think that the Borsainne warbow has it too, though this is hardly a barbarian weapon of course).

 

As for a barbarian wearing plate, it just seems wrong.  Oh, I realize that within the PoE rules as they're currently structured, it can make sense to do so.  But from a RP PoV, it seems wrong.  IMO, the problem is that there's no linkage between how "heavy" one's armor is and how much that weight of armor impacts your mobility, your "agility" (not the DEX score, per se), and your "deflection" rating.  In other words, it seems to me that if you had two characters who were equally agile (i.e. equal DEX scores for the sake of argument), the one wearing plate should have a lower DEFL score than the one wearing leather armor or no armor at all.  Of course, OTOH, the trade off would be that the one in plate would be a lot more resistant to damage once he's hit. 

 

Other than a better recovery speed, it doesn't seem to me like there's nearly enough of a reason to wear lighter armor instead of heavier armor in PoE.  Better recovery speed just doesn't seem to have enough value to justify wearing the lighter armor unless you're a back liner and recovery speed may be more important to your character than raw damage resistance.  And heaven forbid you're thinking about wearing medium armor, which often seems to me to be the worse of both worlds rather than a useful and usable compromise.

 

 

 

i doubt that the Devs would do anything about this at this late date in PoE.  But I really wish that armor had a component where there was an important trade-off between agility (i.e. DEFL) and damage resistance when it came to an armor's "weight".  It seems to me that if this was done and balanced properly, all armors could begin to have a lot more value to various character builds, beyond whatever special effects have been tacked onto said armor.

[Kaylon]

There are many items now with on hit/aura effects which can increase your survability in melee by lowering enemies accuracy - Executioner's Hood (fear aura), Glittering Gauntlets (daze on hit), Binding Rope (enemies are stuck when they hit you)...

[Crucis]

She rocks like any barbarian but you have to build up a few defenses before you concentrate on dishing out damage. I have her in my party early since level 5 and along with zahua she has been clocking one of the best dps. Sure she dies sometimes but it should not be a big factor unless she is primary tank which she should not be. And you should have items and abilities to bring her back up and get vengeful defeat to take advantage of it.

 

My suggestion: max Athletics for a strong second wind ability, invest one talent point early into veterans recovery (it synergies very well with high int on barb) , give her a revive item on unconscious like ring of wonder or eders armor (I would not put her in anything heavier than scale). After this just improve her damage output and accuracy.

 

Endgame layout for damage is dual stilettos bleak fang and azureith to proc lots of instant damage on your barbaric blow or heart of fury and then switch to tidefall or blade of endless paths after the stilettos proc.

 

Also just give her a +9 deflection item it doesn't hurt and she won't drop so fast.

 

Other items which work well on her are shod in faith boots obvious, mantle of the dying boar and swaddling sheet. Stack a bunch of those and veterans recovery and she becomes very durable.

 

I would STRONGLY suggest not using an Estoc in conjuncture with stilettos, because both are piercing weapons. One of the worst situations you can find yourself in is to have a character with only weapons equipped of a single damage type ... and then run into monsters with that are immune to that damage type!

 

So if you're going to use stilettos, have a slashing or crushing weapon as the secondary weapon.  Or a dual damage type weapon, like swords (which are slash/pierce).  And frankly this is true for any character of any class.