Elric Galad

Gift from the Machine : heritage hill reward if you sacrifice people. Dungeon Delver OR Wild runner : depending on side you choose in "At the mercy of the tribes" act III quest. There are 2 others in Act III : one for rescuing the fang girl inside ice temple. And one for giving the 3 birds to the Orlan singer who wants to eat their soul.

Read again. The second calculation is actually 1.2. It is right. But the way it is written is a bit confusing

Do elemental talents apply to summons ? Blights ? Drakes ? Ghosts ?

Basically, when they kill someone, he dies. Best power ever. I heard that it was +25% damages against foes with less than 20% life. Which means around 5% bonus damages. It's low. Furthermore, with the risk of overkill, it should be actually less than 5% average. Not so good trade for having mushrooms indtead of eyes.

That is really important for paladin. For the price of a talent, you get +10% for FoD, +5% for fire lash, +5% for fire damage chant, 5DR against fire, +20% immolation damage. You could also benefit from +20% damages from Wrath of the Five Sun (Pallegina) and +20% Batteforged damage (fire godlike). It also works with various scrolls and items. Also, for druids, it is important to choose wildstrike according to the talent you plan to takes. I even wonder if it can worth it with turning wheels monks. Fire godlike monk with a chanter teammate maybe ?

Druid could get Spiritcapslock. Like Spiritshift but with infinite duration.

Martial classes are going to get their ultimate abilities at level 15. I wonder what they could be. Immolation and twin arrows were crazy. No damage malus for barbarians' carnage ? Pet "wild bite" lash for rangers ? Crazy bonus damage on crit for rogues ? Ritual suicide for monks ? Knock knock knocking on heaven's door for Fighters ? Firedoom of burning fireness for paladins ? Who knows ? WHO KNOWS ? If you know please tell me ! Please ! Please...

Pet decimates a lot of stuff before level 12 (and after).

Yes, I'm not proud. TBH this is more of a roleplaying thing than an efficient use of talent slots I use it too. And having 1 character running out of health in capital battle does happen.

FoD is +50% damages against 25% dr. That's why it is huge (and can be misleading). Also, in the logs, lash damages of the same type are displayed as a sum, even if calculated separately.

You can do a lot of dirty things with fire godlike too. Godlike powers should not be compared with helmets but with helmet+racial. Racial basically worths a talent. So I think fire godlike and moon godlike are balanced, nature and death are quite bad.

They stack, but I'm not sure they're added. If I remember well each lash is treated separately vs DR/4 and the resulted damages are added. I tested this too and I agree with Kaylon.

6DR bypass is good. It's more or less 2 rending mods. Pierce/electrical damages is nice too. But is it better than Lenas Er (rending, lash, disorienting) that can also benefit from Durgan refinement ? (Sure, at party level, Durgan refinement has opportunity cost) Without Durgan steel, Stormcaller is about the same level as Lenas Er IMHO. While, for ranger, because of returning storm, I think it is actually better.

Is stormcaller that good for a cipher ? I wonder if Soulshock could even be close to returning storm bolt generated by Ranger's version. Do you require the electrical damage talent to make it work ?

If you look more closely at cipher changes, you'll see most of their single target CC have been buffed (whisper of treason, mental binding, puppetmaster, silent scream.) Only their high level AoE CC (amplified wave and mind plague) have really been nerfed. But ringleader seems still very powerful. It seems more a slight change of style (with increased variety) than a true nerf. By the way, I was thinking about a Cipher specialized in DPS too. More precisely specialized in Critical Damages. The idea is to create a Hearth Orlan Watcher Cipher, to get Doemenels' talent, Dungeon delver award, one handed durgan-refined Purgatory Saber, which leads to : - 30% hit to crit - +120% crit damage bonus (+50% base for a +170% total). - good accuracy with single handed style, further boosted by High Perception, possibly Borrowed instinct, tactical meld and strong deflection debuff like Mental Binding and Silent scream. What do you think of this build ? Do Doemenels talent and Dungeon Delver works with damage spells ? With CC spells ?

A paladin with zealous aura and Herald shield basically add +3DR, +5 all defenses and hit to graze party Wide. It helps a lot. Also the most dangerous ennemies in act 1 are ghosts and shades that do cold damage (well, and Raedric party but you may come back later). Therefore, pale elf race is extremely convenient for this act. Heavy armor on casters may be a good choice too early on. After all, you have a limited number of spells at this time. You're going to be more limited by this than by action speed.

Sounds great. Not sure I would make such a specialized build, but Wrath + FoD Arbalest surely does most of the job ) Your build is great anyway. But does elemental Talents work on Lash now ? That would be a good news ! And by chance, do you know if they work on "curse type" DoT ? If only they had designed a couple of unique abilities for companions, like for Pallegina and Devil of Caroc.

Whisper in general is just a much better use of Focus. With 30 Focus you can cast one Puppet Master or Whisper of Treason and one other 1st or 2nd level power. Dominate is a better effect overall, but generally you're only Dominating or Charming an enemy to keep their heat off you and to distract the enemy, and Charm can do that just as well as Dominate can. I agree that it seems slightly too strong. Fast cast is not a bad way to make it a bit different from tenuous grasp. I think reducing its duration to 8s would be better. But as you said, Whisper is only "generally better", especially for the situation you describe. Dominate is +60% duration, and its effect if more or less twice more powerful (Shut down an ennemy AND gives you an additional teammate, not a gimped weakling.) In total, its effect is 3.2 times as strong as charm. OK "twice more powerfull" is clearly overestimated . But it also "saves" around 2s casting, so I think it's not that poorly balanced. In conclusion, having different powers for different situation is not that bad for me. Whisper is more or less CIpher's signature spell, so if it becomes their most used spell it won't be so bad.

The accuracy bonus from surv is unchanged and it was better than DR so... Accuracy bonus levels could enable choosing additional types of monsters instead of stacking +10 against a single type. +20 Accuracy against Beasts or Vessels can potentially break Adra Dragon, Alpine Dragon and Concelhaut fights (which happens to be the game's greatest challenges).

Did they nerf Mind Plague to 6s in 3.0 beta ? It used to last 18s from what I remember.

Did you check the Beta Thread ? http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/7/entry-190-update-notes-300-beta/ I really think it's nice. I think Cipher gameplay will have more variety from now. No more amplified Wave spamming. The whole package seems far more balanced. Stasis not buffed makes me sad, but c'est la vie. Also DR from Survival has been divided by 2, which makes sense.

The cipher powers recent buff sounds actually quite good. There are a lot of fun and diverse tools now. A nice and subtle change is what Obsidian did for Whisper of Treason and Tenuous Grasp. Now you have a CC followed by debuff versus a slighter longer CC with faster cast, but without debuff. Both are nice, you will probably not select both, but each of them has its purpose. Now it seems that Cipher are meant to be the top dog for Single Target CC. They have a lot of excellent spells for this, with slightly different uses (Whisper of Treason/Tenuous Grasp for quick and cheap CC, Mental Binding to deal more demage to the target, Puppetmaster for complete, quick and long domination, Silent Scream to kill some stuff around.) AoE CC are a bit less noticeable, but Amplified Wave is still valuable, and Mind Plague is still a crazy spell (It was the best cipher power IMHO, even if less convenient than the old amplified wave. Multi-target Hard CC with crazy duration is priceless.) They also have a wide range of (mostly) ally friendly AoE damage powers, from echo to Detonate, which is rather cool too. But still no love for this poor stasis field ? 70 focus for a single target hard CC which prevents from attacking the target ? This power's concept is not bad, especially after adding immunities to the game (I don't think that a single creature is immune to stasis). My suggestion would be either longer duration or greater bonus to accuracy. 60-70 focus will happen in most fights. Cipher will start at 45 at max level. So you barely have to deal about 45 - 75 damages to cast them (without even counting draining whip... or greater focus). That's not so much. But I agree major Power will become more rare. But I don't think it's so bad. Spamming Amplified Wave was strong but boring. But please consider that 10 focus from greater focus is a lower amount of focus if all powers cost more. It could be better to raise it to 15-20 bonus focus. Anyway, I feel that 3.0 will make the class probably neither stronger nor weaker, but nicer to play. I was tired of spamming Amplified Wave. Nice job, Obsidian !

"The pepper slashed, the pepper trashed."

Spicy hot salsa sauce to trigger fan of flames. Tequila gives +3 DR. The Doemenels renamed "Cartel Domingo". And Thaos becomes "El Toro" serving the "Wood Inca", ancient goddess of Death and Fiestas.

Trivial nitpick, but there is at least one instance where enemies spawn behind you and block your exit from a dungeon . So there is actually one point in the entire game where per-rest matters. Mmm... and act IV