Moowhoowhoownohawhawhaaaawww!

 

I've taken a long hard look on MaxQuest calculations and built myself an extremely fun character in the beta right now, I call her the Barrage Witch, and indeed, a witch she is!

 

I wanted to create a barbarian that gets frenzied but who never gets touched, but with super-human ranged attack speed. Well, guess what? You can.

I put one wand in each hand, wands are superfast with recovery and all. And I've picked bloodlust. Wood Elf, of course, nothing can stop this Dex machine from hell.

Plus Living Lands for +1 strength, and Colonist for Alchemy (certain potions will be useful, she's a witch after all).

 

I even picked just an exceptional hide armor, just to speed things up even more. And when enemies get a bit tougher, I switch to interfering barrage, a modal that lowers my damage by half, but I lower their accuracy by 10 for each hit, and I hit very, very fast. (Acc. to the tooltip for mainhand and offhand, attack time is 0.6s, and recovery time 1.0 s with my armour and all my gear on.) She looks like's she's a magical speed shooter with one gun in each hand. She almost whips the air (and as a cipher she takes full advantage of Soul Whip, an Ascendant), better Pen with Hammering Thoughts, and AoE for each hit, which is like always, so imagine my Barbarian Carnage. She almost stun lock enemies, and she can take care of them on their own (those mercenaries are just meatshields). She is ridiculously fast too. Which is useful. "Oh noes, several baddies run towards me. Well, I guess I have to move." So, despite Deadfire enemies being fast - they can't catch this witch. I just move, and use my range to the fullest. I even find myself pausing the game much less using her.

 

The mighty warbow only has a meager range of 12!!!! Well, each of her wands has 8, she's much better than I thought.

I'm not even sure she's aiming. She seems to attack any nearby enemy automagically, and this without AI turned on. I've played melee characters nearly exclusively in Deadfire, but this may be my starting build when Deadfire gets released. It's a different feeling in combat, that's for sure.

I set a custom party formation, so that she starts at the back, but still near the front, if that makes sense. In this way, she gets more hits in before any critter reach her.

 

Why would I ever wanna use a 2H warbow or any other bulky ranged weapon with reload times? My dual-wielded wands have no reload time, it seems. It's just swoosh, swoosh... And there are these nice red bloody effects, like visceral gibs. My witch melts them in their own pools of blood. This is evil.

 

 

 

 

- Do you use any cipher spells? Your focus should build up fast and even the 5 seconds until max focus drops for ascendents seem like a long time with lower damage.

- Does the bonus penetration from frenzy and hammering thoughts stack? I saw a bug report that some things that increase penetration do not stack, but I am not sure which ones.

 Thank you! If I hadn't read all these illuminating posts from MaxQuest, I'd never even consider it. But I do love ciphers, but I didn't think that ranged combat cipher builds had it in them. And now I get to play one! Thx, MaxQuest!

 

As you can guess, there's little room to pick cipher spells. The last thing I did was reaching max level in the beta with it last night, and if I recall correctly, I got to pick 3 spells in total. The rest of my talent picks went into other cipher passives and barbarian talents. Ironically, after plowing through level 1 and almost the entire level 2 of those ruins, my cipher never used any spell. I must check what I chose, probably stunning/debilitating spells, like Eyestrike (blinding) and Mental Binding. And I hadn't any room for that cipher passive that let spells penetrate a bit better. 

 

As for penetration something strange is going on. A few enemies, I got no pen blooms, the first seconds I started barraging them with my wands, but then that went away, as if the stacking began to work in a delayed fashion.

 

Well, the latest patch is out, and I tried to replicate my barrage witch. With one less ability per level for multiclass characters and only -30% recovery for dual-wielding, instead of 50%, 30 % of speed with dual wielding (was 50 %), 30 % hit to crit for berserker (was 50 %), she's a bit hampered, and now even more barbarian than cipher. Barra's attack time last patch was 0.6s, and recovery time 1.0 s with my armour and all my gear on. In this beta patch, the attack time is still 0.6s with identical gear, but recovery time is 2.0s, so 100% worse. Well, I'm level 9 right now. One huge plus is that Ascendant was fixed, so I do more damage this time around. And the barb change from 5-9 Raw damage to 33 % of weapon base damage in area of effect is in one sense better, but against dire enemies worse. Dualwielding barbs took a rather big hit. 

 

My conclusion is that even without any fancy plate mail or so - just a hide armour - you can do wonders and with an immense battle presence. I love that!

Is the damage fantastic? No, I deal like a bit over 20 in average, and grazes deal 9 in average, but she almost always hit, and she does it often.

And I did one important adjustment, I picked a barbarian ability called Wild Sprint, IIRC, which makes her even faster, so kiting is even more fun now, and wild sprint grants Barra +5DEX!!!! That means more speed to my dual-wielding.

And I stumbled across those boots that give you Leap, and I thought, well, I'll give them a try. I hadn't tried them before, and kudos to the team. The effect has lots of oomph, and it's really effective, since they become knocked down or something (dazed!). So, for yet another reason now, the enemies don't have time to kill her.

Those lizardmen north on Tikiwara? The standard mercenary party (this time, I've set them on standard AI) plus my Barrage Witch mow them down, and those are the ones I had the most problems with before:

 

Hehe, Barra looks like a crazed high Woodstock hippie. Nothing can stop her when she gets into the groove.

Edited February 2, 20188 yr by IndiraLightfoot

In the new detailed report of changes in this beta patch, it says: "Carnage's damage attribute is now Strength."

What was it before?

 

And can someone explain this?

"Armor Recovery Penalty changed across all three armor types

• Heavy Armor changed  from 67% to -38%
• Medium Armor changed  from -82% to -45%
• Light Armor changed from -50% to -30%"

IIRC, this aren't even the correct old recovery penalty percentages?

Edited February 3, 20188 yr by IndiraLightfoot

In the new detailed report of changes in this beta patch, it says: "Carnage's damage attribute is now Strength."

What was it before?

 

Resolve, probably. I assume it counted as an AoE spell until this fix.

@Cheston: That would be good news, as I max out STR for this build of mine.

Are you saying that Carnage works with ranged weapons now?

I also had that question. Would be great... Dual scepters with Carnage would totally be my style. It's Carnage in- and outside my character.

Edited February 4, 20188 yr by Boeroer