Tank barbarians seem pretty disgusting

[Kaylon]

I don't know what happens but the Firebug proc seems to be bugged and almost never triggers (just like Vent Pick)... Taste of the Hunt works like it should, bash doesn't hit twice and overall the results aren't very impressive. The problem with the shield is it lowers accuracy (which already isn't stellar for a barb), bash has also low accuracy and Taste of the Hunt isn't a guaranteed hit either. HoF has a pretty small radius and Combusting Wounds even smaller... In the end I think a double Bittercut is the most damaging combo for HoF.

[Boeroer]

OK, thanks.

[Jojobobo]

Taste of the Hunt works like it should, bash doesn't hit twice

Do you mean bash doesn't hit twice when Taste of the Hunt procs? Or bash doesn't hit twice with HoF (as in each hit, doesn't generate a single additional hit on a different target)? Or just that you're not seeing the bash bug altogether.

 

As both Loren Tyr and I tested the bash bug it would be weird if you couldn't replicate it, however perhaps with another effect in play the bash effect behaves correctly than it does in your average attack (which seems bugged, as mentioned).

[Kaylon]

 

Taste of the Hunt works like it should, bash doesn't hit twice

Do you mean bash doesn't hit twice when Taste of the Hunt procs? Or bash doesn't hit twice with HoF (as in each hit, doesn't generate a single additional hit on a different target)? Or just that you're not seeing the bash bug altogether.

 

As both Loren Tyr and I tested the bash bug it would be weird if you couldn't replicate it, however perhaps with another effect in play the bash effect behaves correctly than it does in your average attack (which seems bugged, as mentioned).

 

In fact I didn't see the bug at all, but I was focused mostly on HoF. However from what I read about the bug it doesn't seem to happen all the time...

[Jojobobo]

Weird, inconsistent bugs certainly are a treat. I'll add this mention to the bug report I made.

[Kaylon]

I managed to defeat Magran's Faithful with a solo barbarian in potd - which I thought impossible without heavy shot&run.

 

Base stats: 18mig - 15con - 3dex - 18per - 18int - 3res; skills - max athletics

 

Items: legendary bittercut with corrosive lash x2, gauntlets of accuracy, crossed patch, ring of searing flames, ring +4int, belt +3might, argwes adra armor, boots of speed, periapt of winding path

 

Consumables: flask of war paint, oaken scarab figurine, potion of spirit shield

 

Tactic used: Use food. Pull enemies with an arquebus and then run behind the tree on the right of the map (you can be attacked from a single side there). Use Savage Defiance, Greater Frenzy, potion of spirit shield and flask of war paint. Cast combusting wounds on them then use dragon Leap to jump in the middle. Use Heart of Fury (and Barbaric Blow if still alive ) which will kill the priests. After being knocked out you will trigger Vengeful Defeat which will kill most of the enemies left. Thanks to second chance you'll be back again and use instantly Second Wind to avoid another death. Then call the beetles and depending on how many enemies are left standing (I had a single soldier left badly wounded and I simply killed him) you can attempt to finish them or to run away using the beetles as distractions.

Edited October 28, 2016 by Kaylon

[Boeroer]

Yes - I'm lvl 11 now with nearly the same stats - (swap MIG and CON) and Combusting Wounds + HoF + Vengeful Defeat is really devastating. Only thing is I use max survival for +60% healing and trigger Savage Defiance after being revived. Potions of Major Endurance will heal me to nearly 100% with the healing mods.

 

Eye of the Storm is really good for running away when things get really bad by the way. Tested it before I took HoF instead.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

A few observations...

 

There's a bug with HoF - whe you're using 2 weapons all the carnage hits are done with the left hand weapon (even those from the right hand) - and if you have a shield with bash all the carnage hits will be done with the shield.

 

The procs from weapons can happen only once per attack - ie if you're using Badgradr's Barricade and all the hits from carnage are crits only one enemy will receive the proc...

 

HoF radius (2m - pretty small) isn't affected by INT, only the carnage radius - that means you have to hit an enemy with many enemies clustered around him to be effective...

[Boeroer]

Yes, it's weird and I have to say that dual annihilating sabres seem to be the best option for HoF (leaving any duplicated setups aside like dual Drawn in Spring or dual Bittercut - I can't have those in a pure solo run which I'm doing atm).

And yes, you have to aim really carefully, but man is it powerful. Also note that you should aim at the toughest foe in the pack when you are dual wielding. Because if the targeted foe dies while you execute the first swing, there will be no second (same with Torment's Reach and all the other Full Attacks). So sometimes it's better to use a weapons that is slower but hits harder. For example I like to use the Drake's Bell with Vulnerable Attack at the momen (but I also like to switch to Tidefall or such things - I slayer-enchanted those weapons for different enemies), when I know the targeted foe is likely to die after the first HoF strike. You get way more damage out of HoF this way because all strikes will be done with 11 DR bypass. I don't have Ryona's Vembraces yet - that should make it 14 DR bypass. But against tougher foes who will survive the first swing it's better to use sabres. I don't even need Two Weapon Style any more because I seldomly have to use anything else than HoF and Vengeful Defeat. And if something survives normally one Barbaric Blow Full Attack sets the deal.

I didn't try out if Bloody Slaughter is worth taking. If foes survive, most of the time they have only a tiny bit of endurance left. So maybe Bloody Slaughter with it's addidional hit to crit and +0,5 crit damage mult can help here? Would give me +2 crit damage multipler with the two annihilating sabres against low endurance foes with HoF or Barbaric Blow. Hm... could mean the difference between barely alive and dead foes.

 

Did you know that you can have two Vengeful Defeats in one encounter (one from second chance of course)? Lure the enemy away from his starting point. Then, when you're about to go down (the second time), call a summon. When you go down with a Vengeance the summon will go on and the fight will not end. When the summon is gone the enemy will normally return to the spawning point and you can get up again. Saved my dwarven a** a few times now.

Edited July 22, 2016 by Boeroer

[dambros]

I managed to defeat Magran's Faithful with a solo barbarian in potd - which I thought impossible without heavy shot&run.

 

Base stats: 18mig - 15con - 3dex - 18per - 18int - 3res; skills - max athletics

 

Items: legendary bittercut with corrosive lash x2, gauntlets of accuracy, crossed patch, ring of searing flames, ring +4int, belt +3might, argwes adra armor, boots of speed, periapt of winding path

 

Consumables: flask of war paint, oaken scarab figurine, potion of spirit shield

 

Tactic used: Use food. Pull enemies with an arquebus and then run behind the tree on the right of the map (you can be attacked from a single side there). Use Savage Defiance, Greater Frenzy, potion of spirit shield and flask of war paint. Cast combusting wounds on them then use dragon Leap to jump in the middle. Use Heart of Fury (and Barbaric Blow if still alive ) which will kill the priests. After being knocked out you will trigger Vengeful Defeat which will kill most of the enemies lef. Thanks to second chance you'll be back again and use instantly Second Wind to avoid another death. Then call the beetles and depending on how many enemies are left standing (I had a single soldier left badly wounded and I simply killed him) you can attempt to finish them or to run away using the beetles as distractions.

Since I know you record videos often, do you mind recording this fight? It always seemed impossible for me unless you want to spend 30 min running around with Persistance.

 

Not doubting you or anything, I just want to use it to learn to beat this fight faster/less cowardly.

Edited July 22, 2016 by dambros

[Boeroer]

I can totally believe that. I cleared a pack of 8 Lagufaeth just a few hours ago with only one HoF on lvl 11. I'm a boreal dwarf and used +15 survival bonus against wilder - so I had a lot of crits with dual annihilating sabres. And you should pile up everything that increases damage per hit, like One Stands Alone, Blooded, Vulnerable Attack, Frenzy, food & resting bonus for MIG and PER and so on. It's hilarious. And of course the combo of Combusting Wounds + HoF is great. Just look at the combat log how many hits you generate when you target more than 5, 6 foes. 

Edited July 22, 2016 by Boeroer

[dambros]

I guess I am too close minded when it comes to most tough fights. For me you either tank it long enough or don't get hit at all. That is why this discussion have been so interesting, afterall your barbarians seem to have a deathwish and it works!

Edited July 22, 2016 by dambros

[Dr <3]

The second chance is one/rest or one/encounter? You have to rest after using it?

 

Now i'm running a solo run with my Ice mage build, after that chance are i will try a run with a 2h very upset flamekin barbarian: abusing the flame retaliation, second chance, vegenful defeat, flame shield, burning wounds,should be fun.

 

So you are saying that against armored mobs hof with a 2h do better than dual sabres?

Edited July 22, 2016 by Dr <3

[Kaylon]

There's another bug I forgot about... You remember when you want to use a potion and you see the drinking animation but nothing happens? You can do the same with Dragon Leap - you activate it, you do the jump but when you land you do no damage at all and you still have one use left...

 

PS. Drawn in Spring isn't very good with HoF because its lack of damage is compensated by its speed and for HoF the speed isn't important. You want to pick another sabre (maybe enchanted with slaying) in the right hand and use Bittercut in the left hand - but in the end it won't make a big difference because only half of the initial hits are done with the right hand.

 

PPS. I will try to make a short video.

[Boeroer]

The second chance is one/rest or one/encounter? You have to rest after using it?

 

Now i'm running a solo run with my Ice mage build, after that chance are i will try a run with a 2h very upset flamekin barbarian: abusing the flame retaliation, second chance, vegenful defeat, flame shield, burning wounds,should be fun.

 

So you are saying that against armored mobs hof with a 2h do better than dual sabres?

Second chance is 1/ rest per item. You can swap items after the fight I guess. Like RIng of Wonder/Saint's War Armor/Osric's Family Breast Plate.

Of course Vengeful Defeat is much better when you have aparty with one or two sguys who can revive. It's why my "Immortal Martyr" build is really strong despite the fact it's really squishy. You just toss im into the mob, trigget HoF and forget him, then revive. Most enemy groups don't survive this. He has 1 HoF every encounter and as many Vengeful Defeats as you can have rivivals per encounter (so endless with a chanter). Of course it's quite useless against single targets. The more targets the better. It's actually (number of foes in range)² * 2 hits with dual wielding. So 5 enemies generate 50 hits, 6 enemies 72 and so on. It's eays to get a lot of small melee foes into a ragne with max INT so that you can hit up to 8 foes or so. With Ogres, Drakes and stuff it's obviously more difficult to hit more than 4 foes. But you can still use Barbaric Blow for that.

 

It's better to use a 2h with high DR bypass (aka estoc) or with special damage feats (aka Tidefall) when you suspect that the foe that you target initially will not survive the first swing of the Full Attack. Or when you meet slash resistant foes of course (unless you have dual Bittercut). Other than that, 2 sabres are better.

Battle Forged with Scion of Flame, One Stands Alone and Blooded is pretty neat. It also triggers Blood Thirst and resets recovery. Very nice together with Flame Shield and Barbaric Retaliation. You can (but don't have to) take all the slow downers like Vulnerable Attack, slow 2handers, dump DEX and so on but still achieve nice attack speed with Blood Thirst + all that Retaliation.

 

 

 

There's another bug I forgot about... You remember when you want to use a potion and you see the drinking animation but nothing happens? You can do the same with Dragon Leap - you activate it, you do the jump but when you land you do no damage at all and you still have one use left...

That works with other abilities as well - for example I get this a lot when using Barbaric Blow - but WITH the damage. 30% of the time or so it resets the counter and I can do another Barbaric Blow when I get this bug. 

Edited July 22, 2016 by Boeroer

[Jojobobo]

I think the weird triggering/not triggering is to do with being interrupted to be honest - ordinarily I play high Resolve builds and never notice these issues then. However with my Barbarian I'm sometimes getting even figurines activating without it counting - which is pretty overpowered with things like the shades if you were of a mind to exploit it.

[Boeroer]

Right - figurines also work twice sometimes for me. I also have 3 RES and get interrupted all the time.

[Boeroer]

Using a draining weapon like Purgatory or Tidefall with HoF is actually quite funny...

[Kaylon]

Here's the video

https://youtu.be/HSakyeWsN48

 

PS. This was with scaled content and I was a bit lucky because I wasn't blinded. If you don't play with scaled content they're much easier.

[Raven Darkholme]

Lol that was some broken ****.^^

[Boeroer]

It's awesome. And all my encounters since lvl 11 look like this... without the arquebus shot. The weaker ones also don't need Comb. Wounds.

 

And look how big the AoE of Combusting Wounds is with that much INT.

 

The good thing about Blood Thirst is that you will have 0 recovery for a quick Barbaric Blow right after HoF - or any other action that you need, like healing and such. Also works after standing up after Vengeful Defeat. Then you need healing very desperately most of the time. Bloodlust is also not too bad because you will most likely also have +20% speed after HoF and Vengeful Defeat. Good to clear the rest of the bunch - if there are any rests. As I said it's easier to use this against smaller targets like kith and more difficult against bigger ones (blobs, ogres, drakes and so on) because of the range.

 

And now imagine you have a full party with a priest for buffing and a wizard for debuffing... :D

Edited July 23, 2016 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

Unfortunately you can't have the enemies clustered like that in all the fights and that's when it really gets hard. And enemies with lots of stuns, paralysis, roots, prones can be very painful too (Durgan's battery lv3 is very very hard with all the abductions, paralysis, stuns, roots...). 

[Boeroer]

Yeah. It woul be great if one could have 10 mechanics, 10 lore and 12 survival at the same time. However - with a mind control spell or summons you can manage to distract those nasty disablers sometimes. I just put my summons as cannon fodder into the midst of the enemies and then I jump right after them and start HoF. It's really bad if the enemies do not want to cluster because they have ranged attacks. I then run behind a corner to force them to follow and cluster at that corner, then I jump in (or use the Cape of the Cheat to "escape" into their midst).

[dambros]

Here's the video

 

PS. This was with scaled content and I was a bit lucky because I wasn't blinded. If you don't play with scaled content they're much easier.

That was insane, and broken as hell hahaha. I think you can manage to get this combo or something close to it on most of the difficult fights.

 

Monks should be able to do something very similar with torment's reach and cw, shouldn't they?

Edited July 23, 2016 by dambros

[Boeroer]

Sometimes you die spectacularly, but it's more satisfying doing it like this than to "divide and conquer" all the tough fights.