About the Barbarian...

[Boeroer]

Phew... that was close:

 

 

I had to unleash 15 Crackling Bolts on him and his crew (Blood Thirst + mobs + AoE scrolls = awesome), but the fat guy I had to bring down wth an single handed exceptional hammer (+20 Acc) with freeze & beast slayer enchantment (+5 ACC, +25% dmg) + survival bonus against beast (+10 ACC).

 

And I'm running into another problem (also in this fight). For some reason Veteran's Recovery won't trigger anymore in some fights. Encounter starts and there's no Vet. Recovery. I think this is that case when I receive a crit right at the start of combat (fear aura also triggers spell holding even if you're immune to fear from Whiteleaf or stuff) which will trigger Frenzy + Consecrated Ground - and that somehow seems to prevent Veteran's Recovery from activating. Very, very annoying because now I either have to respec (don't need a talent that doesn't work in dragon fights) or find out how to change this.

Edited April 26, 2017 by Boeroer

[firkraag888]

It must be frickin hard to solo with a barb.

 

I've never tried to solo the game, don't no if I want to.

 

I could probably do it but it would be incredibly tedious and time consuming and I like collecting loot and would hate to have to sell it all

 

But if I was to solo I would do it with a wizard, Druid or a paladin. Maybe consider a priest but fighting enemies immune to fire would be extremely difficult.

 

Frost wizard would be best. Druid good for per encounter spirit shift and paladin would have good defences vs will, fort , ref

[smjjames]

@firkraag: You don't have to solo if you don't want to, you're not forced to. Some people do it for challenge reasons, some for RP reasons.

 

All you would really get out of it is bragging rights anyway.

Edited April 27, 2017 by smjjames

[Boeroer]

Actually it's not that hard. It's somewhere between rogue/fighter and monk/casters. Since you rest a lot in a solo run the per rest mechanics of casters are not limiting. I did finish solo runs with priest, wizard, chanter, druid and monk. I also did partial solo runs with rogue (non-pacifist) and fighter and canceled them because it was too tedious - mainly because they lack AoE. I didn't try to solo with a spell-bind-rogue (spells on Deathblows) or fighter (spells on Disiplined Barrage) though. That might be nice. You can get the Suntouched Mail and the Amulet of Summer Solstice fairly early which would give you 6 Sunbeams per rest.

 

The barb is harder than a monk in Act II because his ACC and deflection are lower and carnage rarely hits. But once you get Blood Thirst and use spells and scrolls it becomes easier. Casting AoE damaging spells with 0 recovery (as long as you kill stuff) is really powerful. Mass-interrupts also help you to survive. Now I'm lvl 11 and I would say he's better than a monk - just because of HoF. At least in the usual fights without bosses (includes bounties because those don't have real bosses). At lvl 10 the carnage ACC is the same as my auto-attacks, so it does good AoE damage and also start to crit every now and then. BUT the ACC bonus from survival doesn't work with carnage. So it's better to go for the healing bonus in my case (except if you have to hit foes with very high defenses - like Cail in the above case).

 

The good thing with a barb is that you don't necessarily have to kite and pull because he can hit most foes at once and can amass huge endurance and health numbers. It makes a solo run less tedious and more fun, at least for me. Act I is a bit nasty though. 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Boeroer

[BBMorti]

I am surprised a fight vs Cail the silent could be that 'hard' for a level 11 character. A wiz or priest would level him in less than a minute. A Chanter/Paladin wouldn't hardly take any damage in that fight, I am pretty sure.

 

Barb is a late bloomer for sure.. 

Edited May 1, 2017 by BBMorti

[Boeroer]

Lvl 10, not 11. The fight gave me the xp for the level-up.

 

Tough encounters are always easy with casters. Rest before, unleash all spells and win, then rest again.

 

Chanter or paladin at lvl 10 would take some time to kill him, bit less risky for sure. With a barb it took like 1 minute, but it's more risky. Especially because my barb is dual wielding hammers and has no shield. RES is 3.

 

Good thing is that a barb with decent CON can take a lot of beating at lvl 10 - with enough self healing capabilities. A caster will die quickly if he gets surrounded (shouldn't happen, but might) because his health will run out.

 

Ever tried Cail solo on PotD with a level 10 character - no kiting, no pulling? A paladin could do it of course, but it'll take forever.

 

Now at lvl 11. I'm doing WM I - and the Craig Ogres in Stalwart, including Darzir, were a cakewalk. I sneaked Godansthunyr from the Sky Dragon's place and now also carnage's ACC leads to some stuns every now and then (exceptional enchantment). I carry the stunning hammer in the offhand because that's the hand that attacks first with Full Attacks. HoF will first stun most enemies and then comes Shatterstar with the high Interrupt and the annihilating crits. Works pretty nicely so far. Also, Battle Forge now starts to really do some serious damage. Next talents/ability will be Blooded and Scion of Flame I guess. Since I'm below 50% endurance all the time (and only drink potions or activate Savage Defiance once I hit around 20% endurance) this should be OK and add +45% damage to Battle Forged and +25% to Barbaric Retaliation.

[BBMorti]

A wizard wouldn't really take any damage in this fight, his buffs are too strong at that point. Also I don't see how he would get surrounded, unless he did it on purpose. There is both a natural choke point and corners, in this fight. 

 

A paladin/Chanter with investment in lore would kill that encounter rather quickly, just spam a few spell scrolls. With 8+ lore it would be a slaughter.

 

Yeah I tried Cali solo with no kiting or pulling on Potd. A tanky Wiz would not take damage here with buffs, surrounded or not. But I would just fight in a choke point, maybe pop a few summons in front, then spam AoE. Solo tanky Priest/Wizard's with Sanguine can clear bounties at level 11, I know this from experience.

 

A Chanter or Paladin wouldn't need the summons, but definitely not need kiting, either. If I was solo with one of those I would have lore enough to clear the fight with scrolls, if I wanted to be quick. They would both be tanky in a solo run.

 

A tanky priest haven't met his full potential, yet, at level 10/11 for sure, but he can be very durable.. and can level the fight with his own spells or scrolls in little time. Later he will be the, arguably,  strongest class in the game. Such a fun class to play after avatar kicks in! ^^

 

You plan to start popping out videos when PoE2 hits, @boeroer ? I have wondered how you play, after reading comment from you here on the forum.

 

You are clearly very knowledgeable, but I imagine you have a unique play style. My impression is you like Monk/Barb classes a lot and I noticed you prefer to play with no injuries from knockdowns. Which made me think you must have a lot of knockdowns outside solo play? 

 

I would be curious to see for sure.

[Boeroer]

I have a lot of Knockouts on purpose when I use a barbarian with Vengeful Defeat. Besides that I don't have them that often.

 

In Trial of Iron you can't turn off Knockout Injuries.

 

Usually I don't play with dedicated tanks but sturdy frontliners who can take a beating but won't try to hold a lot of enemies singlehandedly. I also don't use DPS glass cannons. That way my party never collapses just because the main tank gets disabled or I can't kill stuff because my DPS squishy goes down. I like all classes except rogue. Not because I don't like the class itself, but because it lacks interesting abilities, is tedious to play and is not very effective for all that afflictions hassle (except early game).

 

I also did solo playthroughs with every class and agree that casters like wizard and priest are easier than martial classes. Priest is special because he has all the prayers and also all the good ACC buffs. You can't substitute spell spamming. This barb is a special challenge. Especially because I go full offense and only survive through self heals and carnage-cc and interrupts. I'm aiming for the Ultimate achievement with this. Bounties will work, but dragons might prove to be too difficult, we'll see. I already have serious issues with Adragans despite my very high fortitude defense.

 

My general rule of thumb is that accuracy beats everything else in this game - so that's my focus. One reason why I like paladins and priests. Dragons are a joke if you can always crit-charm or crit-prone them with a char whose ACC you buffed into the sky.

 

Barbs and monks are special fun for me because of their mechanics.

 

I can't record vids and play at the same time. My hardware is to weak. I run PoE at minimum graphics (resolution 1920*1080) and still have fps drops in certain maps.

 

I will soon buy a new machine, but it will not be sooner than July I guess.

Edited May 1, 2017 by Boeroer

[Belfaldurnik]

I am surprised a fight vs Cail the silent could be that 'hard' for a level 11 character. A wiz or priest would level him in less than a minute. A Chanter/Paladin wouldn't hardly take any damage in that fight, I am pretty sure.

 

Confirmed.

[Boeroer]

As I already said, the fight took far less then a minute at lvl 10, not 11. Because I used scrolls + Blood Thirst. At level 11 it would have been a lot easier because of Heart of Fury, but still not as easy as with a caster.

 

It's more risky with a barb (if you want to play him like a barb). You have to get into the fray in order to hit as many foes as possible with carnage. For a caster nearly all tough fights are easier. You place yourself accordingly so that you can't get surrounded and then unleash all your spells, preferably buffs first, then CC and then damage. Most AoE spells have such a big area that you can hit most of the Xaurips + Cail. That way you will kill all the annoying priests as well who - in the barb's case - would start to heal their allies all the time and that's annoying as hell. You can't do anything but use scrolls to deal with that if you can't reach them with carnage.

 

I used 15 Crackling Bolts with nearly no recovery (because nearly every Bolt caused the death of at least one xaurip) and it was good. But this just demonstrates how powerful spells are.

 

And even a lvl 11 character can be killed by Cail if you make a mistake- or one of the remaining bugs emerges (potion drinking for example). This is Trial of Iron after all and you don't want to get too bold.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Now I've durgan steel:

 

 

At lvl 15. It's funny how fights against Battery Sirens are supertough (usually need high dmg scrolls + Blood Thirst for those because of that sharty stuck affliction - can't wear a stag helmet ) while the end fight at the forge is easy peasy. Redeemer + carnage + Blood Thirst + some vessels for the win.

 

I tried to retrain without Blood Thirst - but it's just too good with scrolls to give it up. Now with durgan steel I will have nearly 0 recovery (0.7 frames) in full plate, with Vulnerable Attack and with Frenzy + Bloodlust. I will still keep Blood Thirst.

 

I'm aiming for Interrupting Blows as last talent and want to pick up the mourning gloves. The speed enchantment doesn't stack with Frenzy, but with Bloodlust. And the gloves give me improved interrupts per kill - and Godansthunyr and Shatterstar both have increased iterrupt times (0.75 and 1 sec)... Hope it's worth it.

 

Edit: argh - just remembered the Mourning Gloves are achieved through a stronghold adventure. Dammit!

Edited May 8, 2017 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

First dragon down:
 


This was way easier than I thought. I expected this to be a tedious fight because there are no ads for Heart of Fury besides that little wurm thingy.
I never realized until this ultimate run how good potions of Major Recovery are. The short stuns of the dragon where completely nullified and with a little bit of Whiteleaf I could prevent constant terrify. The rest was just swinging around with both hammers. I didn't even need a scroll. Notice my Knockout injury I got when I struck down the nearly dead dragon with Vengeful Defeat (on purpose - I still have to unlock the last stage of the Redeemer ). Still, the fight took long enough so that all the food bonuses ran out. That's the problem with a barb if there's only one enemy left. Sometimes I really wish I could summon a bunch of enemies just to speed things up.   

 

At level 16 the damage of Battle Forged + Scion of Flame + Blooded is very good by the way. Accuracy, too. I guess half of the damage I deat to the dragin was from Battle Forged. But for some odd reason I crit myself with Battle Forged in this fight (for over 60 burn damage although my burn DR was 24...). Don't know what happened there, but this sucks in a ToI run.

Now I can enchant Godansthunyr to superb. I will leave one sky dragon eye for another weapon because Shatterstar can be enchanted to legendary with a kraken eye (Godansthunyr can't, 1 point is missing).
Since Moonwell is so good I'm considering to retrain again, leaving Veteran's Recovery aside and taking Deep Pockets instead. I'm always short of quick slots. Shod-in-Faith are still nice, but with Moonwell they are also no longer needed. I think I will go and pick up Viettro's Formal Footwear now.

edit: all bounties of the main game are sone, too. As expected: very easy. Did 4 or 5 without resting in between. Only the vithrack exarch did cause some problems - or I should say his annoying crystal eaters did. I guess I got too c0cky. But Vengeful Defeat + Ring of Wonder saved me.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

I discovered that when you use Second Wind (healing ability from your athletics skill) while under 50% endurance (= Battle Forged is on) you will attack yourself once with your own Battle Forged. This can kill you. So: don't use Second Wind with a fire godlike at higher levels!

Edited May 9, 2017 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Sadly, the Adra Dragon killed my shiny barb. She was the last one standing (badly injured). All my charms hit, but I had a lot of issues with scrolls - they wouldn't go off after the casting animation, I had to recast several times. Maybe I should have killed the PoE process in the task manager and restart to get rid of those minor hickups, but I thought I could still do it. And then, also second chance didn't trigger, hell knows why. I also discovered that Dominion of Sleepers will cause a self hit with Battle-Forged, too (this time for 52 ). It seems that all watcher abilites that will do something with your character might have this issue. I guess it would have been easily possile without those quirks - because I defeatet her several times in the solo non-ToI tests I did before. All bounties so far (didn't do Magran's Faithful and Brynlod yet) and other content was fun and quite easy at lvl 16 with this barb, most normal encounters take less then 20 seconds. Durgan steel helps a barb a lot, especially if he uses CC-on-crit-weapons; more than one or two char levels can.

 

I guess the Alpine Dragon would have been the toughest challenge.

 

If anybody is interested, I could post a class build and describe briefly how I got this far.

 

I guess I will not do another attempt on the ultimate. It's just too time consuming and real life claims its share.

 

So... ulti-barb "Mallet" needs to rest now. It has been a valuable experience.

[BALONEYPWNY]

I'd be interested in seeing your build, Boerer.

[Natures Bounty]

Sadly, the Adra Dragon killed my shiny barb. She was the last one standing (badly injured). All my charms hit, but I had a lot of issues with scrolls - they wouldn't go off after the casting animation, I had to recast several times. Maybe I should have killed the PoE process in the task manager and restart to get rid of those minor hickups, but I thought I could still do it. And then, also second chance didn't trigger, hell knows why. I also discovered that Dominion of Sleepers will cause a self hit with Battle-Forged, too (this time for 52 ). It seems that all watcher abilites that will do something with your character might have this issue. I guess it would have been easily possile without those quirks - because I defeatet her several times in the solo non-ToI tests I did before. All bounties so far (didn't do Magran's Faithful and Brynlod yet) and other content was fun and quite easy at lvl 16 with this barb, most normal encounters take less then 20 seconds. Durgan steel helps a barb a lot, especially if he uses CC-on-crit-weapons; more than one or two char levels can.

 

I guess the Alpine Dragon would have been the toughest challenge.

 

If anybody is interested, I could post a class build and describe briefly how I got this far.

 

I guess I will not do another attempt on the ultimate. It's just too time consuming and real life claims its share.

 

So... ulti-barb "Mallet" needs to rest now. It has been a valuable experience.

Now that is a pity! It must be quite frustrating to go down like this. I'd be very interested in a class build and run review too. And I'd be interested in your opinion whether this might be doable with other races.

[MaxQuest]

Sadly, the Adra Dragon killed my shiny barb. She was the last one standing (badly injured). All my charms hit, but

Did you notice that the dragon regains a part of endurance (~10-25%) when is repeatedly charmed?

[Boeroer]

Once I find some more time I will post a build.

 

@MaxQuest: No, I didn't to be honest. That's interesting. Why is that?

 

Most of the time I use the charm to get rid of the adds like Adragans and the dragon is still at full endurance at that time. Spares me some figurine uses.

Then I try to place myself between some xaurips but in melee range of the dragon (basically getting surrounded by xaurips + dragon) for HoF. Then the only thing that's left is the dragon with injured or badly injured endurance. Then I will finish with kiting + scrolls. But not this time.

 

Definitely doable with other races. I did a solo barb run before with a similar approach but with a boreal dwarf and finished it, but PotD only, no ToI. But of course I played more recklessly and therefore reloaded a lot.

Edited May 13, 2017 by Boeroer

[MaxQuest]

@MaxQuest: No, I didn't to be honest. That's interesting. Why is that?

When trying various tactics vs Alpine Dragon, I've noticed that sometimes his endurance was slightly going up upon being charmed. For example he just dropped from barely injured to injured, got charmed, and suddenly mouseover tooltip displays barely injured again.

 

Another experiment I made was: cast Disintegration that should deal around ~850 dmg (stats adjusted via console) and watch if dragon dies (he has 816 hp on PotD). In the first case (when no other spells were cast) dragon indeed dies. But if he is repeatedly charmed - he doesn't (4 appliances of Whispers of Treason provided enough regeneration for him to end barely injured, despite of ~850 dmg raw DoT).

[Boeroer]

Mysterious... did you have a chanter with Ancient Memory in the party or something? I guess not...

[MaxQuest]

Mysterious indeed.

 

P.S. I triple checked for aoe healing sources. Not that there were much to check through, as I used for testing a solo, naked cipher, pale elf (not moon godlike):

- screenshot 1

- screenshot 2 (made exactly 1s later as you can see by Disintegration remaining duration)

 

My understanding is that charm stops combat for the affected target for a split second, enough for out-of-combat regen to kick in.

[Boeroer]

It shouldn't stop combat as long as there are still (uncharmed) enemies left. But maybe you are right. I can't think of another reason.

 

Such wondrous healing doesn't occur when my party members get charmed. Unfair!