Raven Darkholme

I mean, obviously it depends on what class you play, but in my opinion stealing spells is most useful on single class wizard (sure there is some cool stuff you can steal with mc too) and for those dampener is really annoying. Sure if you by all means want to be a wizard who doesn't use one specific wizard spell (invis) for the sole reason of ... not using it... Then you could instead go max res or smth silly, if you really think thats more beneficial than simply using invis.

I'll try Concelhaut and Arkemyr later, it would surprise me if you can't steal their unique spells. Not really you can avoidmost AoE spells with Invis including the infamous Arcane Dampener, that's as useful in a party as solo especially for the sigil megaboss. edit: holy **** this guy is a cheater and has ALL the spells: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Arkemyr also in case Concelhaut doesn't have it this guy has crushing doom: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Iverra edit2: I found a couple more who have doom, getting all the spells really should be np at all.

I just tested the premade character function (which I had no idea even allowed you to use exported chars and which does work in the ultimate) but you don't get your stolen spells with it, just a level 1 char with your char creation stats. I'll test a bit later when I'm back at my pc have to go now (unless someone beats me to it) but I think you'll only lose duration on summons.

You can look up on the wiki which characters have which spells, all named priests/druids/wizards are listed on their wiki page at the bottom and ofc you can also just type in generic enemy names like xaurip priest or whatever. I'll try to export later however I don't think you can import a char to the Ultimate since solo mode is enforced?

Skaen is best in a solo run, invis makes you untargetable by a lot of aoe spells, even the dispelling ones.

So just SoT is already very busted on a sc wizard. Not having 6 secs cd from brilliant makes for very fast extension. Even made a little vid because I think this is stinkier cheese than SOF :

If you didn't do megabosses maybe your wards never ran out? (they last like 200+ seconds) Or it just got fixed since Furyshaper got released, there was at least one patch since then.

I smell a new cheese meta.

How do you deal with longer fights? The wards disappearing give you a stacking PL penalty even if they don't get destroyed. It's maybe not the biggest deal but doesn't sound remotely close to other good classes that don't come with such penalties. I think most classes are pretty balanced in deadfire anyway, even the worse classes can keep up with the better ones to some degree and ofc multiclassing a worse class with a better one always helps.

That's how that statement might sound if you read it superficially, but if you pay attention to the classes I listed they happen to be the best classes for multiclassing with ANY class. Once again I never said ciphers are bad, but if you multiclass with one of those 4 classes anyway you should always ask yourself why you would multiclass it with a cipher and not another class. In a party the answer is quite obviously brilliant, but solo the most obvious answer is SoF, if you don't wanna use that there isn't much left besides charm (which isn't exclusive to cipher) and SA (which is a lot better with SoF or at least a priest/wizard for extension). There will almost always be better classes to multi chanter/priest/wizard with than cipher. Ranger is slightly different as it's not that great for solo but with a cipher the synergy becomes quite nice. For me playing a cipher is more about diversity and not always playing the same classes I played before, and it's definitely good enough for that, I'd never go as far and say it's not viable, unlike barbarian, which is really useless in this game sadly, except for some super niche uses.

Skaen is probably better for solo because of the invis, the raw lash weapons of Woedica are nice but they "only" scale like summoned weapons, not like monastic, so they are less good vs high dr targets than battle axes with bleeding cut or monastic. The one big synergy of priest and soul blade would ofc be, sot + soul blades focus on kill. Wouldn't get much out of it vs doru, but at that point in the game you have scordeos + sot and ofc bdd etc. (the cipher doesn't contribute that much here, occassional SA ofc since you build focus fast, but main dmg would come from bleeding cut) Skald/Soul Blade probably has best synergy, Bellower and Troubadour are also always decent choices and ofc the Psion/Troubadour @abot went for his ultimate.

That's not a benchmark at all. All summons do well early game, so does pulling single enemies with traps on pretty much any class, so does tb cheese with all casters. (and prolly more I forgot) Beating Gorecci street and dig site was impressive when the game came out, now it's all about mega bosses and some parts of the dlc and cipher just does bad there without SoF. You can't even rate how well a chanter/cipher multi does in those scenarios because summons just change how every class is played (except for those who already have their own summons ofc). I once beat every non ship bounty in the game with a level 10 sc wizard, also beat Arkemyr with the same level and prolly could have done way more fights, just because I had wizard with splodey phantom. I want to point out I'm not one of the people who says cipher is bad, I think it's amazing, but it's much better in a party than solo and there is just so many classes MUCH better than the cipher at soloing. The only time cipher really shines is if you multiclass it with perfect matches like chanter, ranger wizard or priest, or obviously if you use SoF and multiclass it with pretty much anything or even single class.

Tbf with SoF cipher goes from one of the worse (not bad at all but still worse than most others) to THE best class in the game. The only classes for SOLO worse than cipher are barbarian and maybe ranger (even tho ranger is honestly already similar or better to cipher). Ofc as stated in previous posts in a party cipher is insanely good, but solo without SoF there isn't much reason to pick one.

If a certain drug not works you can just take another one and then try again. I had problems with deadeye, so I just reloaded and took another drug, then when I took deadeye again it worked. If you're at your last drug and it still doesn't work you can prolly do smth like SoF extend save and reload and it should work.

I haven't tried food stacking in a long time since you have to pause for it, but it was never in patch notes, yet I somehow remember people saying it got fixed. The outworn buckler trick sounds amazing for ff, if you set up an AI switch should even work with max res, since AI switches super rapid.

Well you CAN, you don't need to ofc.

I mean if you multi with priest you can just bdd + sot your pet, but you can do the same for yourself. Without that the pet is not tanky at all if you solo potd.

Playing around with a FF atm and decided I want Coral Snuff instead of Whiteleaf. I expected one drug to remove another but I kept whiteleaf bonus... This might be related to saving and loading because I'm pretttty sure I tested this before and it didn't happen. So unless I'm mistaken and they always stacked you need to use one drug, save, load then use the next one. edit: yeah just tested it with another drug they usually disappear, but once you save and load they won't, let the SOF hatecomments flow.

I vaguely remember Essence Interruper working too, unless they changed that?

You don't need to stun hauani, just the gigantics.

Can't you just use stalking cloak + Whispers as SC monk? Hylea gauntlets + dance for wounds?

I'd rather play all classes and for those who need SoF so be it, shrug. Playing the same 2 classes over and over gets boring.

Yes that's why I meant separate it before they even get low xd. But I think Grave Calling is just gonna be the best option with blade Cascade.

Yes, but I already said that summons are very useful, we totally agree on that point. That's why this discussion is out of context. In the other thread it was about whether bg or poe summons are better and my (maybe poorly worded) point was: The high end summons in BG can keep up or even outshine traditional builds in dmg output. (ofc that game also has a lot of juicy cheese :P) Compared to how good summons are in that game (not the best but much closer to the best than in Poe) the Poe ones would already feel weak even if they scaled properly. But the whole point of the thread was: Not all summons even scale properly in Poe which makes it even worse.

Hm I rewatched the vid and I guess my memory is just bad, he uses priest summon to separate them. That being said can't you just separate them while one is knocked up? they don't start merging until they are low hp, so just knock one up and kite? Also I guess you could just use grave Calling with Clear Out? Not guaranteed but with Blade Cascade and enough hit to crit should be up almost permanently and once again they don't start merging before low hp and once the paralyze is on it has like 6 secs duration.