Are the barbarian and Rogue now Playable?

[Anaeme]

For a long while the barbarian and rogue were the weakest classes in PoE. (At least when playing on PotD)

 

I found the barbarian to be an exercise in frustration...his rage even at max INT did not last long and the penalties to deflection were way too high. To top all these disadvantages, the class was MAD (Multi Attribute Dependent) it required INT, MIGHT, CON and PER to be effective. The Barbarian was a terrible ensemble. I repeatedly brought this to Josh's attention but no clue whether he did anything with it

 

 

 

The Rogue had the simple problem of landing face down as soon as an opponent touched him. That class could not last long enough to dish the single point damage it was designed for. The developers appeared to be struggling with what to do at the time....what did they finally do?

Edited October 2, 2016 by Anaeme

[Dr <3]

Since when heart of fury became 1/encounter a lot of people "discovered" barbarian again, but he was always very strong in my opinion.

Works good both offensively ( dual wield or 2h weapon, max might) or defensively ( sword &shield, max const).

 

I think you can find some builds around, or just check some of boerer comments...

If you want to be sure anyway go dual wield with a stunning weapon on one hand ( chlandillah or Godansthunyr) and spelltongue in the other, you will see wonders.

 

The rogue on the other side was and still is very frigile, but there are a couple of interesting build: " tanky" with sword & shield, evasion, ripose ecc or "sorceror apprentice" in wich you became an half wizard ( since someone discovered that deathblows e works with spells --> from fireballs to direballs!)

[Boeroer]

Barbs were and still are one of my favorite classes. No frustration for me. They alwys were great meat shields if you provided enough healing and good AoE damage dealers (>500 endurance and 3000 health at lvl 16, CC with carnage, Barbaric BLow was good when dual wielding). Since HoF is 1/encounter the barb wins every mass encounter on his own just by jumping into the fray and trigger HoF. If you have Combusting Wounds even bosses melt from all the hits it generates. Bloodlust and Blood Thirst are also very nice additions. When frenzy runs out you normally get a speedup from Bloodlust and when you kill one foe after the other with carnage the 0 recovery from Blood Thirst kicks in after every hit - at least it feels like it. And Blood Thirst (=0recovery after a kill) also works with spells or things like retaliation. Did a PotD solo run with a 2 DEX 3 RES barb and it was viable.

 

Rogues' defensive abilities got buffed a bit. Escape gives you +25 deflection for quite a while. Now you can use it to dive INTO the battle with a deflection buff. With that, a shield and the newly buffed riposte he can be tanky enough to be a good offtank now. With Adept Evasion an the reflex bonus from shields he's nearly untouchable for enemies who target reflex. Then he can feign death and get up invisible which grants him sneak attacks and even some Backstabs for more than 6 seconds.

I'd still say he's one of the weakest classes.

Edited October 2, 2016 by Boeroer

[Slack83er]

I played rogue for a while, and all considered... it's not that it's weak... problem is it's fragile. You often can't live long enough to dish out what you had in mind. Moreover it's quite micro intensive, requires proper positioning to exploit all his potential. But still.. I find him quite fun to play. The fragility itself, and the fact that you must always be properly placed, along with my inexperience in the role, convinced me to try a ranged buccaneer aumaua. Details in my thread, if you're curious.