Hey there, so I've been stuck with deciding between playing a Cipher or Wizard. I normally always play the mage or support classes in rpgs, from oldschool to modern ones. I mean, I enjoy the flashy spells, and combos and just playing a pivotal role in combat. The cipher is quite new to me - and after reading about it, it feels kinda like a Farseer from the warhammer universe (psychic/mind/storm/psy weapon user etc) and that got me quite excited. Now I'm not going to choose a cipher OR wizard for my party - I intend to have both. What I'm trying to decide is which of the two I should make my character, and then the other will be a companion. I am usually quite a min-maxer type player in general, I enjoy working out cool combos and synergies etc - but for my first time around with this game I would like to at least try to use some/most of the storyline companions, rather than make my own. But I've read a ton of bad things about all the story companions, and have seen how their stats are really suboptimal. So I'm currently leaning towards going Cipher and using Aloth as my wizard (and then, not collecting grieving mother as I will take her place). I'm leaning this way because aloth's stats don't make for a great damage dealing wizard, but still decent for crowd control and mage like support. And I can change out his starting spells any time - to give him slicken and that Icy fog spell (which were really cool spells on the wizard I made to test out). With Grieving mother, her stats are both bad for damage and spellcasting in general - so I can't see how to still make her useful, also because of how the cipher spells work, I cannot give her a better loadout from what she starts with. I don't mind either way for myself with regards to per rest vs infinite spells + focus situation between the two - and I love what ive seen so far of both classes' spells. So after all that text, I was wondering if you guys could maybe help me make my decision - any ideas on whether my current leaning will work well - I'll be playing on hard for now. Can Aloth work well as a crowd controller, and leave the damage up to other party members and myself. And are the cipher spells later down the line interesting enough to make the cipher feel like an indepth spellcaster still. If you've gotten this far, thanks for spending the time reading ^^
