Raven Darkholme

I'm soloing PotD with a cipher who uses Firebrand (2h) atm and while I have to reload sometimes due to not being level 9 yet (level 8 atm) it's totally doable and ofc it would be much easier with a paladin and even much easier with a full party. As has been pointed out here paladin, fighter barbarian are a great choice for 2h frontline, but you can also utilize chanter, wizard and cipher quite well.

Sorry for tripleposting, saw this kinda late. I've also played a barbarian not too long ago and maxing Dex actually gives you more dps than MI with Firebrand, also keep in mind you will always easily have +6 Mi from Inn + Salty mast whore + Beefloaf.

So yeah, tested this on my old high level cipher and I don't think any weapon has higher dps and focus build than firebrand cast with the belt for Gauntlets of swift action. Thing about firebrand over other 2handers is the higher base damage, it's 20-30, while for example Abydon's hammer only has 14-20. The next thing is being able to get another 20% damage from Scion of Flame. With 26 DEX, Alacrity/Parasite, Gauntlets and Durgan enchanted Helmsman's you have a little recovery but almost not noticeable, the attack animation is relatively slow, but hitting for 40-50 on a graze, 50-70 on a hit and 60-100 on a crit is absolutely ridiculous, you're only a couple of frames slower than dual wielding but the damage is easily 50% more and most enemies have slightly less flame DR than physical. Main weaknesses are 3 per rest restriction and not being able to use the Looped Rope, but this belt is so much earlier available and it just ... excuse the pun .... burns.

The stun of psychic backlash seems to be different than regular stuns. I know this is kind of an old topic, but I just reloaded my old cipher to test the new deadfire items and ran into some Dank spores who are immune to stun, but when they use their charm psychic backlash stuns them.

Holy **** that armor is op. Cipher will also be really tanky with it, since Borrowed Instinct is almost as good as Llengrath's for reflex and deflection and ofc better than scroll of defence for fort, since you only cast it once for all four defenses and it doesn't cost a consumable slot. Highest overall defense would ofc be paladin, since it's F+C actually stacks with potion of Llengrath's/Wizard's double (WD might even be decent on a paladin due to Righteous Soul + F+C = 35 defense vs Terrified, I've never seen auras do more than graze.

Oh, this is a nice coincidence. I continued my solo cipher from 2 months ago yesterday. (got interrupted by Divinity) The first thing I did in Act 2 was rush Firebrand, since I didn't know what the message about Deadfire items in the menu meant. The belt seems better than the gloves early game, since you can put on gauntlets of swift action (I already maxed Dex, Mi is only at 15 base, which is still 24 with Inn + whore + beefloaf (I'm Aumaua).

Yeah sadly Wizards Double isn't that good, but honestly Deflection is the least important defense anyway, so even with 180 Def you are really tanky as long as your fort is really high. (200 only necessary in LLengrath fight in other fights less would suffice even for Fort)

HoF (dw) + CW = Beauty.

Well I didn't actually hire a cipher.

Fire immune enemies get hit by the slash damage quite a bit the more the chants stacked. With 6 chanters the Adra dragon got to injured before I even attacked it (buffing with llengrath's potion on each char and using Immunity to fear and Moonwell scroll with the lore chanter). Ofc with 2 chanters the effect is slightly less crazy but still far better than seven nights (unless your acc is thru the roof I guess, using invocation exploit you could potentially oneshot the dragon ). I also use 1st level phrases it shouldn't really stop the dragon chant from stacking.

Dragon thrashed is much stronger than seven Nights, since it constantly rolls vs reflex so even high reflex of enemies doesn't really matter (unless it's the 160 reflex of backstabbers in Brynlod's bounty ), while seven nights only rolls once and if it misses that's too bad, wait for another 5 phrases while using your awesome melee weapon.

Wait, you don't have a medium/large shield, tho? Cuz that would lower his chant accuracy, too.

Why not just decrease reload by the same percentage as recovery? I call lazyness

The sloppiest Llengrath fight I ever did. (Tbf it was only my 3rd. ) No consumables (I had almost 30 dragon meat, but no fruit/vegetables to craft) and my strategy of never maxing defenses which worked perfectly till now, bit me in the ass. (I also somehow mixed up prone resistance with immunity ) It took me 3 tries (2 reloads) 5 chanters + 1 cipher new meta

I might be wrong but I think v2.03 was a pretty late patch, maybe even WM1? At that point a lot of stuff got changed I guess. For me I always associated kills not being recorded with damage not being recorded and honestly I don't understand why they fixed one mistake and left the other closely related one open.

Tracking kills and registering "direct" damage (which includes all DoTs and instances that do not go via attack resolution) are separate.Tbh that's was one of the reasons I've made UPMod in the first place, as I wanted to check how good Dragon Trashed and Shinning Beacons are in practice, and compare total damage done at the end of the playthrough. (my party is lvl 8 atm) Are you absolutely certain this was always the case? My first cipher solo (which was my first complete pt of the game, ofc this was shortly after release) didn't get credit for sky dragon and Cail, because he killed them with Disintegrate. The same happened with my cipher in my first trio pt, which was shortly before WM1 released.

I don't think any class would come close to a cipher in terms of max efficency with this (ofc that doesn't mean it isn't awesome on other classes.) I wonder if I should reattempt upscaled magran's faithful solo, which I only barely beat in the past. Focus gain is a huge problem in that particular fight, while it is absolutely no issue in any other fight, due to "trash" enemies you can focus first (focus, get it). Ofc you wouold have to take somebody into the party for a second to send them to the stronghold, but I'm most likely to just console it in and if it is super awesome consider doing a regular run in the future. (I still haven't finished my barb, tho and since I picked up Tyranny again I might not have the time for that soon, but I'll probably do the console test later today).

Concelhaut:

If your looking at overall game damage nobody will top the chanter, especially not rogue who doesn't even have an AoE. Barb might be stronger from level 11 on but since there's so much more damage from the chanter between 9 and 11 the barb will never catch up (it's not like the chanter stops doing damage all off a sudden. ).

I just looked up my stats from the 6 chanters and enemies I didn't auto attack, because lazy, still got recorded as killed. This was not the case previously, so the DoT damage definitely counts now. If you think your chanter is ahead now, wait till level 9.

6 more Dex earlygame is quite huge, dex loses it's value late game. From the way the game (wrongly) records damage your chanter should be at a huge disadvantage over his actual damage, unless you use the invocation exploit., because his main damage the chant doesn't get counted properly. (same goes for stuff like disintegrate, basically every DoT, unless that got fixed and counts properly now.

About "holding aggro" I just realized a funny thing with my test party for mindweb/spiritshift. If you send in a high defense paladin but do not attack (my idea for the party was kinda crazy i only wanted to attack with spiritshift and supp with the rest) most enemies will just aggro the paladin anyway, but if you attack they might try to disengage and run for the backline. A thing I learned while I did my trio party is to send my tank in alone while the rest of the party is stealthed and wait to unstealth till all enemies are either aggroed on the tank or if he is surounded running around him trying to aggro. You can literally stand a squishy cipher next to a threatening ogre who is running around and has no target he can hit, but his AI is set on attacking the tank and he will ignore the cipher. It is important to recognize what the AI wants to do, their scripts are quite set and not very intelligent, send in a squishy too early and they will target it, send it in a second later and they will ignore it.

The only melee ranged will attack I know of is threatening Presence and idek if enemy barbarians have that. edit: The abduction by wraiths is melee ranged, too but they will abduct anyone incl ranged and you will be lucky if they don't abduct your cipher.

I think he's seen the video of the solo cipher which happened to be melee. As solo this talent is a lot more useful because everyone will hit only you and also single target will attacks apply, but you only need good defense to not die to those attacks. @Boeroer pain link only works on allies, as always the wiki is wrong.