MadDemiurg

Description: Barbarian ability "One stands alone" does mention damage increase in the tooltip, but none in description. The actual damage increase is about +20 flat damage. No way this is intentional, since all damage modifiers are percentage based in the game. Fire godlike "Battleforged" racial deals fire damage and counts as a melee attack, thus benefiting from a large number of abilities it is not supposed to benefit from, like "One stands alone", "Vulnerable attack" etc. Steps to reproduce 1. Make fire godlike barbarian 2. Level up to level 5 taking "One stands alone" 3. Engage 2+ enemies and let them drop endurance below 50%. They will start getting 30 (2*5 + 20) fire damage hits. Melee attacks also deal extra 20 damage.

Barb is melee aoe dps and pretty one dimensional. It is probably the best melee class atm though, partially due to bugs (but even without he would be very strong). Cipher is generally quite squishy backline char with good single target dps, CC and aoe. He hes a weird power curve, since power of the spells on each level varies greatly (and new ones are not necessarily better), but his endgame stuff is quite nuts. Some more esoteric cipher builds can make him tanky, but I won't recommend them unless you solo. Both are top tier classes in terms of power, along with the druid I think. In the end, if you're not going solo your party composition is going to matter much more than your Watcher class.

For adra dragon ideally you need druid or wizard with petrify. Then just spam dps. You need to hit with petrify though (acc buffs in order).

It has Obsidian in its name. Of course it's overpowered.

Btw a fullplate cipher is pretty viable. If you use a blunderbuss for range recovery is only a small portion of the attack cycle, so recovery penalty doesn't matter that much. And if you use retaliate armor for melee you're getting much more focus than you could get if attacking yourself. The only thing that's significantly worse is cast speed, but you don't spam spells that much.

No, rogue riposte is crap. Psychic backlash is also crap. I was taking about armor or shield with "Retaliation" property. They give you a passive ability to retaliate when attacked in melee (which counts as melee attack for soul whip purposes)

I didn't kill Raedric, was too much for me at that level. Maybe with a lot of traps, scrolls, s/l and other bull****. Killed the other dude instead. Cipher has a lot of cheesy options (antipathetic field does crazy damage, but needs very precise control), plus confusion is VERY abusable atm. You do need to get lucky on your spell rolls though, at least until you get stronger.

did you kill maerwald? what strategy? I did, noting too complex. If he gets caught into antipathetic field he goes down like if he's made of wet tissues. Plus you can paralyze him with mental binding if you're lucky. If you confuse him and you're even more lucky his own elements will gang up on him. So, spells, knight summon and a fair bit of luck.

If you use One Stands alone on fire retaliation barb it's completely broken. It's definitely bugged though. I still believe cipher is more broken at high level, because his level 6 spells are nuts.

So cipher gains focus on retaliation attacks. This is probably one of the most broken things I've tried. Time to find a retaliation item for my solo cipher. If you make it to level 7 (I'm 6 currently) i'm sure you can solo the game this way. +7 DR spell at level 7 is immense. At level 11 you just have 3 different "I win" buttons.

Ok, it works with cipher focus. Might be the most broken thing ever. Rolling a cipher tank now.

Has anyone tried retaliation on a Cipher? It looks like it might generate focus, especially with draining whip. Should be pretty fun alternative build.

Have anyone tried a retaliation cipher build? I want to try it out, but to not have the time atm. Potentially it can mean that every time you get hit you retaliate and gain at least 2 focus with draining whip if it lands. This would make tank cipher quite OP. Also if you go with some firearm as your ranged weapon you can wear full plate with minor implications, since reload is the main problem anyway (and as for spells, you don't cast them that often). Also I'm kinda curious if retaliation on armor and shield stack (probably not).

Most of the time i don't stack it because it's boring to cast before every fight. I didn't take that one yet. How is it bugged exactly ? It adds flat +20 damage for all attacks when engaged by 2+ enemies. The tooltip mentions a damage increase, but nothing like that. It should've been like +20% or smth I think.

The most broken barb talent is One Stands alone. It's probably bugged though. But if you're stacking inspiring radiance you're into bug abuse territory already.

Max i think is going to be +13 deflection and +26 saves. Deflection bonus is not exactly stellar and can be matched by fighter's modals, but save bonus is pretty crazy. So palading is definitely better at tanking magic attacks, especially as a PC.

I don't feel like fighter or paladin can make it far enough. Paladin has abysmal damage when built like a tank (and when not built like one he's just a weaker version of other classes). At least he has high saves. Fighter can have high deflection, but his saves are bad, and his damage is low too and cc is very limited, so he'll get screwed by casters. Imo the most feasible classes are druid/wizard/cipher/monk/barb. I've gotten to level 6 with a tanky cipher abusing confusion atm, but I'm gonna take a break since it's too tedious. Pretty smooth sailing so far though.

Multiple priest trap spells are pretty great for holding off enemies that bypassed your tanks, both damage and cc wise. Some buffs are also quite awesome, like accuracy and deflection ones. The issue I have with priest is that his level 1 and 2 spells aren't that great (repulsing seal probably being the best one), so he's not that good at start of the game and doesn't get as much power increase as wizards or druids at levels 9 and 11. But I'd definitely say that he's quite valuable for a 6 man party.

CIpher works pretty well on PotD in melee with pike/quarterstaff if you have an actual tank. If you want to actually tank the damage yourself, you can probably do it, but you won't be the best tank and you'll have to gimp yourself pretty hard in terms of dps and cc capabilities. Level 4 spells open some decent tanking options, but it takes a while to get there. If tanking, you'll probably have to focus on Per/Res/Int(for buff/debuff duration and to keep pressure off), focus gain would be mainly through draining whip + fast attacking weapon, not damage. You can't really dump dex or might completely though, you need 10 in both at the very least.

Wood elf also get +5 reflex and deflection vs ranged attacks on top of this, which can't be neglected. So yeah, ranged > elf, melee > orlan. Also, orlans are getting -1 might, so it would be interesting to see how that fairs vs fish guys that essentially have 3 more might in terms of max dps. As it stands, stat wise orlan is better suited for tanking.

How are you sure that nothing beats a rogue if you haven't tried the casters? Azurieth's Stiletto procs a crappy 1st level wizard spell 1/encounter, so an actual wizard can cast spells dealing way more damage.

If you go all out dps, you're gonna have problems early on without a proper tank with most classes.

Fire godlike retaliation damage scales, it's 2*level. So at level 12, it's 24 damage before might and other damage bonuses. I've heard they're bugged and can stack more DR than intended, but I haven't encountered it yet. Even without the bugs they ability is very good at higher levels (and yes, kinda meh at start).

Well, I'm probably not a reliable source, but here's what I'm running with: Race: wood elf (+5 acc ftw) Stats: M 18 D 19 C 3 P 4 I 19 R 15 Talents: Draining whip, Biting whip (2 no brainers), Penetrating Shot, Gunner, Marksman, WF (for firearms cipher) Powers are trickier. Mine (not necessarily optimal) are L1: Soul shock, tenuous grasp, eyestrike. Other possible choices - Mind wave, charm, antipathetic field (huge dmg potential, but very tricky positioning and can easily kill your own party in seconds). Yeah, all L1 powers are good in certain conditions, so tough choice. L2: Mental binding, Mind Blades, Recall Agony (first 2 are a must, 3rd is debatable) L3:. Puppet master, Soul Ignition (turned out kinda meh), Secret horrors L4: Mind Lance, Pain block, Silent Scream (Body attuntment is an option too) L5 and 6 are quite OP and there are fewer powers, so it's hard to go wrong

Hearth Orlan isn't that great. Tbh wood elf is better in a lot of cases (I think + 5 acc translates into 5% misses to grazes, grazes to hits and hits to crits regardless of what you attack). Fire godlike is pretty uber at high levels with his retaliation damage scaling. Top races are probably fire, moon, wood elf and hearth orlan with orlan being the weaker one of the pack.