Nature Barbarian

[Boeroer]

Kingsman - now I know why you think barbs are weak.

 

There are several types of weapon enchantments which do things on hit and/or crit:

 

- Overbearing: every time you do a crit, you roll a prone atteck with the same ACC against the target's fortitude. If you graze or hit or crit, the target will be prone. So those weapons do not exactly cause prone on crit 100% of the time, because you have to hit with the fortitude roll as well, but most of the time it works. A worst case scenario is an enemy with high deflection and also high fortitude. Those have two good chances to prevent a disable. Luckily most mobs don't have that. Examples: Tall Grass, Hours of St. Rumbalt, The Temparacl, We Toki...

 

- Stunning: same as above, but stuns instead of prone. Examples: Godansthunyr, Mabec's Morning Star, Cladhaliath (if enchanted properly), Rod of Pale Shades...

 

- Confusing: same as above, but confuses. Only example: Sabra Marie

 

- Spell Striking: Will trigger a spell or effect when you score a crit . The spell/effect also has to pass a hit roll with the same ACC. Most of these are 1/encounter, Badgradr's Barricade has unlimited procs per encounter. Azureith's Stiletto causes Jolting Touch, Bleak Fang Touch of Rot...

 

- Spell Chance: will trigger a spell or effect with a percentage based chance every time you hit or crit. No per encounter limitations. Example: Grey Sleeper, Forgotten Tear of the Beloved, Unlabored Blade, Wodewys, St. Ydwen's Redeemer... (this is what you, Kingsman, were speaking of I guess...?)

 

- Then there are enchantments like persecuting, disorienting, interfering, dazing and so on. Those work every time you hit or crit - no % chance or anything. Bujt the effects are weaker. Disorienting does -5 to all defenses (doesn't stack), Interfering lowers ACC a bit, dazing dazes of course. Examples: Captain Viccolo's Anger causes Fatigue on hit/crit which is awesome - but  comes very llate and is quite special. St. Wyglet's Cudgel causes Persecuting, Vile Loner's lance causes Disorienting. Spelltongue also has a very special thing like this: it steals duration for your buffs and makes you faster per hit/crit. As a barb you can prolong your own buffs forever with carnage while you take away buffs from all enemies you hit with carnage.

 

 

All those work with Carnage (melee only), Blast (implements only), Driving Flight (ranged only) and Torment's Reach (melee only).

If you have a barb with high ACC and Accurate Carnage, you might want to take stunning or overbearing weapons. Stunning is better, but you get that later than overbearing weapons. Once a target gets disabled, the second hit is even more likely to disable it again and again and so on. After some strikes usually all enemies in carnage range are disabled (if their level/defenses are not too high for you). Barb's attack speed helps a lot to stunlock because he can land multiple hits while the effects lasts, prolonging the durations even further. Normally, in my experience, the group of enemies won't get up again once they are down.

For example it's very easy to prone-lock most bounties when you debuff and buff good enough. Nalrend's Ogres are quite easy with a barb with high ACC because they have low deflection. They don't get up once they fall - if you hit fast enough and your INT is good. 

Spell Striking is also nice, but th fact that it only triggers 1/encounter makes it weaker in comparison to the above and I reserve them for other chars.

Spell Chance is great for barbs that have not too high ACC because it also works on hits and not only on crits. When you swing at 6 enemies with carnage the chance to proc the Spell Chance is of course much higher than with any other character (besides Blast/Torment's Reach). So, things like Unlabored Blade trigger way more often with a barb than with a rogue or fighter or so.

That's basically it. I guess most forum users can confirm this. So a main reason why barbs can be great are overbearing or stunning weapons - best is to combine them with a weapon and ability that lowers defenses. FOr example: Wodewys (Spell Chance: Nature's Mark) lowers deflection by 10 - then you can crit even better with We Toki, which will cause prone every time you crit and su a successful fortitude check.

 

Maybe I will do a video to show the effect of those different weapons with a barb. It's quite awesome and the main reason barbs can be superfun. With Heart of Fury against 6 enemies and such weapons most of the time 5 are dead and the last one is disabled for like 20 secs. Because HoF against 6 enemies means 36 attacks against each enemy, once they get disabled the net attack hits even harder. Monks can also do it, too (with more damage usually because of the power and enhanced chances of Full Attacks), but they need wounds and therefore can't keep up the stunlocking for too long.

 

Edited July 10, 2016 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

@boeroer: i'm always afraid to go in a middle of a fight with 3 res and low dex because i fear the mass interrupt effect, but let me know how it works for you!

 

Yeah - I know it's a bit risky. I want to get a +concentration item asap but I didn't want to retrain then - I just see how it goes like this. Against certain foes it's really bad. For example the gouls at Anslög's Compass hit really fast. If I have to fight more than 3 at a time I nearly get perma-interrupted. Against Xaurips and stuff it's no problem. With 18 PER I also interrupt a lot, so it's kind of a balance against those slow hitters.

Edited July 10, 2016 by Boeroer

[Dr <3]

Btw, i thought about the whole pvp hypotesis, the thing is, for how the games works , that the winner will simply be the first that disable( stun, paralyze, prone ecc) the opponent.

Every class have some kind of cc, and is technically able to do enough dmg ( or chain cc) to kill the opponent before it expires. So the whole pvp thing is kind of whortless, who hit fist win thats all.

[Kaylon]

Stun/prone won't work vs players because items with preservation enchantment will make them nearly immune while disabled. 

[Boeroer]

But while they are down you can easily cast/use buffs and all that and when they get up you'll have an advantage. 

[Kingsman]

Yeah I thought all weapons work like spell chance and it doesn't accurately explain what you said in the weapon descriptions when you acquire them. Why do the soulbounds proc so low. I'm am 100 % certain they hardly ever work and this is what probably put me off the other weapons

[Kaylon]

But while they are down you can easily cast/use buffs and all that and when they get up you'll have an advantage. 

Well, that seems rather useless from me, especially when you look at the buffs of the melee classes.

[Dr <3]

Yeah I thought all weapons work like spell chance and it doesn't accurately explain what you said in the weapon descriptions when you acquire them. Why do the soulbounds proc so low. I'm am 100 % certain they hardly ever work and this is what probably put me off the other weapons

So now you can just make up your own barb and have some fun with aoe disable

 

Edit: actually kylon had a good point, i haven't thought about those item... so you have to rely to paralyze and petryfy, for a vantage at most for wiz, druids, chiper.

Edited July 11, 2016 by Dr <3

[Boeroer]

At least you will be able to use some potions and scrolls - if you're allowed to use them. Ok, then you would probably use a prayer anyways and put on the most effectivegear. But true, those preservation items are really strong, especially because one is a shield and stacks to +100 to all defenses. Takes prone's and stun's debuffs away and makes you near invulnerable - but you are still disabled. And it doesn't help against blind or confuse or something like that. So without scrolls and potions we might see chars which are equipeed with all kinds of gear that protects you against certain disables. Crossed Patch, Solace shield, Hermit's Hat and such. 

 

@Kingsman: we're all missing things from time to time and the descriptions in the game are rather vague, it's true. But maybe you understand now why this can be really powerful with a barb and why this lifts him up quite a bit. Those items are also really good on a rogue by the way. Especially if he's after casters. They will give him 50% of Deathblows just by landing crits and the target can't fight back. You should try it out. I once had a rogue with The Hours of St. Rumbalt and it was awesome. Way easier to play than a dual sabre rogue in terms of babysitting and still great damage because of Annihilation on the blade.

And I also think we turned this discussion which started somewhat fiery into a good one. Let's just ignore the scatological comment...

Edited July 11, 2016 by Boeroer

[Kingsman]

Yeah thanks for the help on this one. Good thing I sorted it out playing the game will be more enjoyable now. I just wish the soulbound proc wasn't so low then those weapons would be worthwhile also

[Boeroer]

Some of the Soulbounds can be made to proc more often. There are some abilities that work with the proc chance and you will see the effects a lot more often:

 

- high atttack speed up to 0 recovery: especially good when the spell that gets triggered is AoE based - for example with the Unlabored Blade or Stormcaller you shouldn't care so much about damage per hit but hits per second in order to proc the effect as ofter as possible. You can combine this with all points below.

- Carnage: every enemy in range lifts the chance up. When you hit one enemiy, you'll have 10%, if you can reach two woth one strike, you'll already have 19%, if you hit three, it's 27% per strike and so on. St. Ydwen's Redeemer on a barb with Blood Thirst is the bane of all vessels. He will destroy one vessel in a group all the time and reset his recovery to 0 after each kill. Turns hard encounters against all kind of vessels into a child's birthday party (which can be pretty tough, too, I tell you... ). 

- Torment's Reach: same as carnage, but a Full Attack and can be a much bigger AoE with high INT

- Twinned Arrows: is basically like a twice as fast hit rate: nearly doubles the proc chance but takes away a few percent because of the lower ACC.

- Driving Flight (plus Twinned Arrows): Targets behind the initial ones also proc the effect. With one shot you can hit two enemies, nearly doubling the chance. With Twinned Arrows AND Driving Flight you will roll 4 hits instead of one - lifting the proc chance up from 10% to 34%. This is why Stormcaller is so much better on a ranger than on a cipher or a chanter. 

- Blast: like carnage. One special item is The Golden Gaze sceptre. It has two projectiles and therefore works like Twinned Arrows plus blast: You will have two hits per shot which trigger blast each. So you will have a higher proc chance as with with blast alone. Let's assume you can reach 5 enemies with the blast: that's 10 hits because of the two projectiles instead of 5. This means your proc chance per shot goes up from ~10% to ~40% per shot. That's why it only has a 5% proc chance per projectile - it would trigger all the time if it weren't so.

 

So I think that's why the chances are not too high.  

[rheingold]

Derailing this thread further, and adding to what the good doc said about pvp. I'd imagine rogues with their invisibility would be nigh unbeatable. Cast that the moment combat starts and then a couple of full attacks with blinding/withering strike and it would be game over.

But yeah, the whole pvp thing is useless in pillars. It would come down to who hits first.

[Kingsman]

^^^^^^

 

I don't think the thread has been derailed. The op has probably gotten the best run down on how to build a barb existing on this planet.

[Boeroer]

Hahaha... somewhat true.

[Graschwar]

I wanna thank you all for the vivid discussion. It indeed helped me a lot.

 

 

Now I have reached lvl 8 and i thought you guys might maybe interested in a little status update:

 

 

1.) I decided to go for the knights-weapon focus

 

2.) The damage so far is not great, but not bad either

 

3.) MC has proven to be an amazing tank, he is more effective than Eder or Pallegina, healing support lets him continue like forever!

 

4.) Party:

 

Front line:

-  EDER

 

first complete tank, now i gave him a sabre which makes him a nice damage dealer, increasing his usefulness by a lot. He went down much faster than MC and was the least useful of my team members before.

Opinion: Not the best, but a very interesting character story wise. Dont wanna miss him.

 

-  PALLEGINA:

 

good damage and healing, less sturdy though. Took her as ersatz for Durance (he is very useful but i hate him)

Opinion: Completes the front line rather nicely

 

Mid line:

 

- HIRAVIAS

 

Support, damage dealer, and disabler. Best single target dps in catform or with fire blade. NIce healing, armor spells, great cc

Opinion: Best man

 

Back line:

-  ALOTH

 

good aoe and cc, his cc is a life saver. With a mixture of melee spells he is also a good single target dps-dd.

Opinion: Very useful

 

- KANA

 

great summons and with his kiting ability even tough battles can be won. Even if it takes a  while

Opinion: mandatory. Gotta love this big cuddly teddy-bear

 

5.) Keep completed

 

6.) Choose knights of the Crucible

 

7.) All possible bounties cleared

 

 

So far. As before your opinion is more than welcome!