3:32 - Barbaric Yell frightens enemies in a 5 *mile* radius? That's a heck of a buff to that ability! I also want to call out that you don't want to skimp Intelligence as the Barbarian, as the Carnage ability's AoE radius is heavily dependent on that!
Going through all of these vids + the beginners guide as someone playing the game for the first time! Love how straightforward yet detailed your explanations always are in every guide video, thanks so much for this!!
I'm happy that you're starting to make videos like this on Pillars of Eternity, And if you liked this game, i highly recommend you the other CRPG from obsidian, "Tyranny". It's probably my favourite CRPG, it has one of my favourite universes in this genre, interesting story, cool items, interesting era (it's not typical Middle Ages with fantasy, but it's the end of the Bronze Age with fantasy), and two of the best things about it: 1. it has 3 amazing "evil" routes (technically, you start as evil), and 1 kinda "good" path, and it's one of the "best things", because i know how you like playing evil characters + you're good at role-playing them. 2. Tyranny, has objectively the best magic system in gaming, in short: every spell is made out of 3 parts: Core (Something like an element for example. Fire, Ice, Illusion, Vigor, Emotions, Force etc.), Expression (it's the form of the spell, like: aura, touch spell, weapon enchant, AOE, breath etc.), And Accents (this cream of the crop of this magic system, these accents, are modifiers, that allow you to change things like: DMG, Range, Size, Cooldown, chain reaction, accuracy, stagger, duration etc. Or even more niche things, like adding bleeding effect, making an ice or fire spell deal frostfire DMG, deleting cooldown, adding more projectiles, and many more). Honestly, i will never stop praising this game, it only has two weaknesses: if you know how to min max it's easy, and enemy diversity (there are only humans, beastmen, and magic wisp like creatures). But other than that, every aspect of the game is great. P.S: If you decided to play this game, remember to hover your mouse over green text, it's usually something special.
My previous playthrough on POTD was with a barbarian main. By far the most powerful crowd killer for me. He cleared up some of the final bounties nearly on his own. 1 activation of hearth of fury in the right spot, and all you're left with is a pile of corpses. Tons of fun
Really great overview, detailed and well thought out! I'd definitely defend the idea that every class melds perfectly with being a watcher. You've lived a whole life before the biawic when you became a watcher.
So glad you're back on PoE. I'm just about to start a new playthrough of 1 and will right after play Deadfire for the first time, so perfect timing on your time! As always, thank you for great content and your talent for breaking down things making them simple to understand.
Barbaric yell is nice because it's a per encounter debuff and not per rest, so if youre minimizing rests it's nice to have the debuff readily available and not have to rely on a per rest spell slot that you might want to save for a different fight
Be careful picking Threatening Presence, especially if you're playing solo - combos well with brute force against wizards for example BUT you can end up being permanently stun-locked by higher level ciphers' Psychic backlash ability. Thanks for doing these videos - Pillars is by far my fav game.
Hey slandered I'm happy you enjoyed your vacations, pillar of eternity is a stupendous game , too bad it have their stats completely changed . A barbarian that cannot drop Int or his rage will just last 2-3 sec it seems wrong . BTW I liked the barbarian playthrough cause I acted as a shaman . Too bad the problem of the first pillar is the loadings or I would play another run , even Soo after multi classing in poe2 would be hard to get back to be just 1 class
Mmm Barbarian is a ton of fun, as you said it doesn't line up the best for a Watcher but if I were to play a martial character Barb would be my go-to. Much fun to be had wading into a large mob of enemies and watch as they all die. Gives me a reason to use Maneha every once in a while if nothing else.
I never got far in Pillars 2, but I had a Barb/Druid rage/shifter I wanted to play around with more. Got fed up with load screens and naval wipeouts though. Oof. Not sure best way to play that, like do you try to drop a spell or two at the beginning and then go all out with your claws out.
Go with the Lion shift for its quick attacks and use the barbarian ability that increases dexterity. You’ll deal so much damage over a short period of time
PoE 2 now has an option where you can automatically attempt to board every time there's naval combat. That way ship fights are just like regular fights and this should prevent wipeouts.
Thick-skinned being a passive stacks with everything so along with Second Skin and Battle-forged, that's already 9 physical damage negated before accounting for armor, consumables, buffs and rest bonuses. Definitely not worthless.
Second Skin is based on a story decision and Battle-forged is based on your race. Most players will only have access to one or perhaps even neither of those options. Therefore I don't count them and on it's own Thick-skinned is worthless.
I've always liked barbarian from Poe 2 cause I love going ancient/furyshaper or corpse eater/shifter(this is just an rp build.) cause I love being the literal force of nature to my enemies. Might consider being barbarian for poe 1 but I doubt cause I alway pick rogue, cipher or chanter cause these were my favorite classes in the entire game
I plump for Barbarian being S-Tier. It's a complete wrecking ball. It's true that Barbarian has no party buffs whatsoever, but there's definitely something to be said to the effect of "dead enemies can't hurt your party members." -Carnage radius can get absurd with high Intellect scores. I'm talking an entire enemy frontline and then some. Josh Sawyer made sure to nerf this hard in the sequel. -You did mention that Carnage transfers weapon effect, and even referred to it as a monster ability and yet I still feel like you undersold it. This effect was completely overpowered in POE1. Again, Josh Sawyer made sure to nerf this hard in the sequel. -Blood Thirst can trigger from Carnage kills AND damage over time effects, and even damage over time effects caused from Carnage. -Heart of Fury. By a country mile, this is the highest damage potential skill in the game. Nothing else comes close. HoF scales upward with the games difficulty level, because more enemies = more Carnage hits. To top the nuttiness off, it's even available once per encounter. I'm partial to putting the Tidefall greatsword in a Barbarian's hands. Running low on Endurance? A well placed Heart of Fury will bring you back up to full Endurance while simultaneously placing a damage-over-time effect on everything hit, including Carnage hits. Not that much will be surviving the HoF in the first place. There's a reason this class got dumpstered in the sequel.
I don't disagree with anything that you are saying but that's all offensively focused. I don't feel comfortable giving a class an S rating when it has no party buffs, suffers defensively, and is a questionable roleplaying option compared to other classes. There's probably a case I should've made it A+ though.
@@SlanderedGaming Thank you for the response, I enjoy your videos. Barbarian's low deflection score is dealt with by making sure that the enemy AI "sees" and engages your dedicated tanks first. If they see both the tank and your barb at the same time, they'll inevitably target the character with the lower deflection score. Once engagement has been set, you can much more safely position your barb where Carnage can do the most work. This isn't always possible to perform but it goes a long way in negating the Barbarian's low deflection score. Something you missed regarding sustain: the cross-class talent "Veteran's Recovery" also scales with Might and Intellect. It's a must have, and along with Savage Defiance, your Barbarian will never run out of Endurance. I know it's not a class specific talent, but this is a major boost to sustain for this class specifically as Barbarian's top attribute focuses are Might and Intellect. Regarding the roleplaying: It's subjective but I adored my Barbarian Mercenary from The Living Lands who served as a constable but moved to The Dyrwood to seek out a more profitable and fulfilling life. He already had anger issues, because Barbarian, but became much more (AGGRESSIVE) when he developed a mysterious illness while traveling to The Dyrwood and started hearing voices and seeing shadows at the edge of his vision. 😆
You know, before they patched it with the complete edition, there was a trait you could pick for your weapon style called I believed untrained monk (which is perfect to take as a barbarian because you can't take it as a monk) it lets you fight unarmed = but the KEY to it was, it was bugged. So it would continually stack + damage and accuracy EVERY. SINGLE. New gained level. Rather than just being a one shot boost. Add that to carnarage with a 20/20 Might + Int Toon and it's just gibs all over the room. It's also pretty good on Paladins with their auras. Unfortunately it was patched - because it was literally broken, as well as mechanically bananas as you're fond of saying. I don't know what so many of these games have against Unarmed playstyles. They ruined all my fun : ( [Monks are a little better off in Dreadfire though, so there's that]
@@SlanderedGaming Paladins are pretty boss too; but if you want the best defense for an unstoppable offense, you're kind of bound to a very set response in roleplay. Which can be a good thing, but some of the responses are objectively better to some endgame results. So it's not all a good thing. (You really need to look up what kind of paladin order won't mess up your rep with factions if you're serious about the paladin - or be willing to take the L and work with what you get)
A class I don't care for. I like my damage dealers ranged and good at single target. Death is the best CC. Apparently you can get cheesy with a Prone on Crit Pike, but I prefer my CC to be more deliberate and versatile, and less random.
I loved barbarian MC. You can have super high resolve (the main dialogue option in the game). You roleplay as this super intense, super explosive guy who flies off the handle easily. It meshed well with the idea that you randomly become a watcher, not by choice and are forced to kind of read souls. I didn't notice low dex being an issue unless i didnt have rage, but it was fun.
I'm not going to lie, that thumbnail had my full and complete attention. This video also got me more curious about Pillars of Eternity.
😂😂
3:32 - Barbaric Yell frightens enemies in a 5 *mile* radius? That's a heck of a buff to that ability!
I also want to call out that you don't want to skimp Intelligence as the Barbarian, as the Carnage ability's AoE radius is heavily dependent on that!
Whoops! 😂
Going through all of these vids + the beginners guide as someone playing the game for the first time! Love how straightforward yet detailed your explanations always are in every guide video, thanks so much for this!!
My pleasure!
I'm happy that you're starting to make videos like this on Pillars of Eternity, And if you liked this game, i highly recommend you the other CRPG from obsidian, "Tyranny".
It's probably my favourite CRPG, it has one of my favourite universes in this genre, interesting story, cool items, interesting era (it's not typical Middle Ages with fantasy, but it's the end of the Bronze Age with fantasy), and two of the best things about it:
1. it has 3 amazing "evil" routes (technically, you start as evil), and 1 kinda "good" path, and it's one of the "best things", because i know how you like playing evil characters + you're good at role-playing them.
2. Tyranny, has objectively the best magic system in gaming, in short: every spell is made out of 3 parts: Core (Something like an element for example. Fire, Ice, Illusion, Vigor, Emotions, Force etc.), Expression (it's the form of the spell, like: aura, touch spell, weapon enchant, AOE, breath etc.), And Accents (this cream of the crop of this magic system, these accents, are modifiers, that allow you to change things like: DMG, Range, Size, Cooldown, chain reaction, accuracy, stagger, duration etc. Or even more niche things, like adding bleeding effect, making an ice or fire spell deal frostfire DMG, deleting cooldown, adding more projectiles, and many more).
Honestly, i will never stop praising this game, it only has two weaknesses: if you know how to min max it's easy, and enemy diversity (there are only humans, beastmen, and magic wisp like creatures). But other than that, every aspect of the game is great.
P.S: If you decided to play this game, remember to hover your mouse over green text, it's usually something special.
I am DEFINITELY going to play Tyranny but that's a game I want to stream so we'll finish DoS 2, and the BG series first.
Tyranny was great, but theres a little too much dialogue for my liking. I need to play it again
Nice. With how little information the game gives you on class mechanics this is actually incredibly helpful. I might go back and do the DLC after all.
Awesome glad you liked it!
My previous playthrough on POTD was with a barbarian main. By far the most powerful crowd killer for me. He cleared up some of the final bounties nearly on his own. 1 activation of hearth of fury in the right spot, and all you're left with is a pile of corpses. Tons of fun
Really great overview, detailed and well thought out! I'd definitely defend the idea that every class melds perfectly with being a watcher. You've lived a whole life before the biawic when you became a watcher.
HI SLANDERED! I MISSED YOU
Good to be back!
So glad you're back on PoE. I'm just about to start a new playthrough of 1 and will right after play Deadfire for the first time, so perfect timing on your time!
As always, thank you for great content and your talent for breaking down things making them simple to understand.
My pleasure glad you are enjoying it!
Barbaric yell is nice because it's a per encounter debuff and not per rest, so if youre minimizing rests it's nice to have the debuff readily available and not have to rely on a per rest spell slot that you might want to save for a different fight
I was just thinking about how much I missed your posts last night! Hope your vacation was great!
It was thank you!
I wanted to replay this game. Thank you for the videos. I'll be binging your playlist and relearn everything. these are so informative.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the content.
I love that this is like first crpg where its actually optimal to pump Int on a barb.
Philosibarian.
Be careful picking Threatening Presence, especially if you're playing solo - combos well with brute force against wizards for example BUT you can end up being permanently stun-locked by higher level ciphers' Psychic backlash ability.
Thanks for doing these videos - Pillars is by far my fav game.
My pleasure!
I’m already familiar with Pillars and it’s mechanics having completed the game many times but this is still an enjoyable watch for me 👍
Thanks glad you enjoyed it!
currently playing this as a barbarian, love your stuff bud
Thank you!
Awesome! Keep 'em coming!
Will do thanks!
Really nice video. Makes me want to replay the game. Look forward to more is the series!
Thank you!
Hey slandered I'm happy you enjoyed your vacations, pillar of eternity is a stupendous game , too bad it have their stats completely changed . A barbarian that cannot drop Int or his rage will just last 2-3 sec it seems wrong .
BTW I liked the barbarian playthrough cause I acted as a shaman .
Too bad the problem of the first pillar is the loadings or I would play another run , even Soo after multi classing in poe2 would be hard to get back to be just 1 class
Yeah I am really looking forward to diving into the PoE 2 mutliclassing options.
Mmm Barbarian is a ton of fun, as you said it doesn't line up the best for a Watcher but if I were to play a martial character Barb would be my go-to. Much fun to be had wading into a large mob of enemies and watch as they all die. Gives me a reason to use Maneha every once in a while if nothing else.
Yup Barbarian is a great time.
I never got far in Pillars 2, but I had a Barb/Druid rage/shifter I wanted to play around with more. Got fed up with load screens and naval wipeouts though. Oof. Not sure best way to play that, like do you try to drop a spell or two at the beginning and then go all out with your claws out.
Go with the Lion shift for its quick attacks and use the barbarian ability that increases dexterity. You’ll deal so much damage over a short period of time
PoE 2 now has an option where you can automatically attempt to board every time there's naval combat. That way ship fights are just like regular fights and this should prevent wipeouts.
@@StingrayJay302 Is this real time mode strat?
@@mtaur4113 Yes, it worked great for about 90% of the game. Only time it didn't work well was with some of the end-game mega bosses.
@@StingrayJay302 I prefer turns, but my understanding is that balance is way different and things like AS are not all that great in turn-based.
Thanks for this Slandard i have been looking forca reason to reinstall 1 and 2
My pleasure!
My favorite was a party with 6 bards who have 0 dex and keep singing "winds of death" or "dragon thrashed" in Plate for this one.
Oh yeah that's super effective!
Thick-skinned being a passive stacks with everything so along with Second Skin and Battle-forged, that's already 9 physical damage negated before accounting for armor, consumables, buffs and rest bonuses. Definitely not worthless.
Second Skin is based on a story decision and Battle-forged is based on your race. Most players will only have access to one or perhaps even neither of those options. Therefore I don't count them and on it's own Thick-skinned is worthless.
I've always liked barbarian from Poe 2 cause I love going ancient/furyshaper or corpse eater/shifter(this is just an rp build.) cause I love being the literal force of nature to my enemies. Might consider being barbarian for poe 1 but I doubt cause I alway pick rogue, cipher or chanter cause these were my favorite classes in the entire game
Cipher was definitely my go to.
I plump for Barbarian being S-Tier. It's a complete wrecking ball.
It's true that Barbarian has no party buffs whatsoever, but there's definitely something to be said to the effect of "dead enemies can't hurt your party members."
-Carnage radius can get absurd with high Intellect scores. I'm talking an entire enemy frontline and then some. Josh Sawyer made sure to nerf this hard in the sequel.
-You did mention that Carnage transfers weapon effect, and even referred to it as a monster ability and yet I still feel like you undersold it. This effect was completely overpowered in POE1. Again, Josh Sawyer made sure to nerf this hard in the sequel.
-Blood Thirst can trigger from Carnage kills AND damage over time effects, and even damage over time effects caused from Carnage.
-Heart of Fury. By a country mile, this is the highest damage potential skill in the game. Nothing else comes close. HoF scales upward with the games difficulty level, because more enemies = more Carnage hits. To top the nuttiness off, it's even available once per encounter.
I'm partial to putting the Tidefall greatsword in a Barbarian's hands. Running low on Endurance? A well placed Heart of Fury will bring you back up to full Endurance while simultaneously placing a damage-over-time effect on everything hit, including Carnage hits. Not that much will be surviving the HoF in the first place.
There's a reason this class got dumpstered in the sequel.
I don't disagree with anything that you are saying but that's all offensively focused. I don't feel comfortable giving a class an S rating when it has no party buffs, suffers defensively, and is a questionable roleplaying option compared to other classes. There's probably a case I should've made it A+ though.
@@SlanderedGaming Thank you for the response, I enjoy your videos.
Barbarian's low deflection score is dealt with by making sure that the enemy AI "sees" and engages your dedicated tanks first. If they see both the tank and your barb at the same time, they'll inevitably target the character with the lower deflection score. Once engagement has been set, you can much more safely position your barb where Carnage can do the most work. This isn't always possible to perform but it goes a long way in negating the Barbarian's low deflection score.
Something you missed regarding sustain: the cross-class talent "Veteran's Recovery" also scales with Might and Intellect. It's a must have, and along with Savage Defiance, your Barbarian will never run out of Endurance. I know it's not a class specific talent, but this is a major boost to sustain for this class specifically as Barbarian's top attribute focuses are Might and Intellect.
Regarding the roleplaying: It's subjective but I adored my Barbarian Mercenary from The Living Lands who served as a constable but moved to The Dyrwood to seek out a more profitable and fulfilling life. He already had anger issues, because Barbarian, but became much more (AGGRESSIVE) when he developed a mysterious illness while traveling to The Dyrwood and started hearing voices and seeing shadows at the edge of his vision. 😆
I played this game soooo damn long ago.. literally when it came out. was the system this x/encounter even back then? :D
Yup but not for all the same abilities.
Just found your page , great explanations .. thanks bro
Thank you!
You know, before they patched it with the complete edition, there was a trait you could pick for your weapon style called I believed untrained monk (which is perfect to take as a barbarian because you can't take it as a monk) it lets you fight unarmed = but the KEY to it was, it was bugged. So it would continually stack + damage and accuracy EVERY. SINGLE. New gained level. Rather than just being a one shot boost. Add that to carnarage with a 20/20 Might + Int Toon and it's just gibs all over the room. It's also pretty good on Paladins with their auras.
Unfortunately it was patched - because it was literally broken, as well as mechanically bananas as you're fond of saying. I don't know what so many of these games have against Unarmed playstyles. They ruined all my fun : ( [Monks are a little better off in Dreadfire though, so there's that]
Yeah I don't like Monks in this game but they are monsters in Deadfire.
@@SlanderedGaming Paladins are pretty boss too; but if you want the best defense for an unstoppable offense, you're kind of bound to a very set response in roleplay. Which can be a good thing, but some of the responses are objectively better to some endgame results. So it's not all a good thing. (You really need to look up what kind of paladin order won't mess up your rep with factions if you're serious about the paladin - or be willing to take the L and work with what you get)
good class veteran focus really helps
Yup that's a great option for Barbarian.
Barbarian is the ONLY class that I have never used in PoE for MC, I wonder if it has any interesting dialogue options.
I believe Twin Elms especially has some interesting options for the class but I have never finished a game with it.
Yo, if you yelling at someone from 5 miles away and they get scared, you they're mama.
😂😂
Watching and comenting for the algorithm, but waiting for pillars 2 classes
We'll get there! 😂 Thanks for the support.
A class I don't care for. I like my damage dealers ranged and good at single target. Death is the best CC.
Apparently you can get cheesy with a Prone on Crit Pike, but I prefer my CC to be more deliberate and versatile, and less random.
I loved barbarian MC. You can have super high resolve (the main dialogue option in the game). You roleplay as this super intense, super explosive guy who flies off the handle easily. It meshed well with the idea that you randomly become a watcher, not by choice and are forced to kind of read souls. I didn't notice low dex being an issue unless i didnt have rage, but it was fun.
Nice I could see that being a really fun playthrough.
👍🏾👍🏾🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Cipher my number 1 :)
Cipher's been my go to class when I play this game.
@@SlanderedGaming Same! Love the dialouge implications and crowd control