Boeroer

Creative and very hacky. I like it.

I personally would use Steel Garrote because the passive healing can be nice - but you'll have to make sure to afflict enemies before. But it doesn't matter much I guess. I thought Goldpact would work with Magran but haven't played paladin/priest for ages so I guess I was wrong. When going solo you shouldn't stick to a particular weapon setup all the time. For example against fire-resistant/immune foes that "fire-power" setup will do not much for you. Keeping it in a second weapon slot for the times you want to cast your fire stuff is good though imo. My main weapon setup would include a shield. Paladin's strength is his defenses - putting a shield on top makes this even better because defense values have increasing returns. And for example the medium shield modal only slows down your melee attacks but not your casting. So that's a good defensive boost without a drawback (while casting buffs at the start of battle for example). I am a loved of large shields in this game due to the awesome modal. It's perfect to open combat and cast all your buffs (which don't need accuracy) in rel. peace and once you're buffed up switch setup and go full attack mode. It also helps a LOT to survive the gun/crossbow onslaught that happens at the start of boarding fights. But all the talk was for Paladin which you don't use anyway (sorry). But with Bloodmage/Magran I would actually do the same: use a large shield while buffing up (no acc needed) and only then switch to your "offense mode". Instead of Sun & Moon etc. you could also look at Chromoprismatic Staff (also PL bonuses but not only fire) or Blightheart (+10% corrosive lash for all your damaging spells - cool - and also a healing effect that can be prolonged with Wall of Draining and/or Salvation of Time). High AR is great when going solo. Wizard has Spirit Shield and Iron Skin which are great in combination with a heavy armor. Of course you won't need that once Barring Death's Door + Wall of Draining is on.

Furyshaper/Ancient is a bit meh because of the summoning limit as Eric said Berserker/Ancient has some minor quirks, too: as an Ancient you will most likely cast a lot of raw damage spells like Plague of Insects, Insect Swarm, Infestation of Maggots, Venom bloom and so on. First of all those are often all foe-only and using Berserker Frenzy will turn them into friendly fire. Plague of Insects has a very big AoE. You def. don't want cast confused Plague of Insects on your party. Also confusion from Berserker Frenzy will shorten the duration of those spells. In case of DoTs losing duration hurts because it's like a multiplicative dmg loss (less ticks from the DoT). You can get rid of confusion though - so those problems can be circumvented. Use special food, drugs or items to become resistant or get Smart (from party member?) to cancel the confusion. The biggest reason to go Berserker/caster is the Tenacious inspiration which gives +2 PEN - which otherwise is extremely useful for damage dealing with spells - but in case of raw damage spells... it doesn't do anything. Of course you can just use other spells - but then you're not using the Ancient's increased Power Level with beast/plant spells. But once going into melee the +2PEN is great again. So one could make the argument that you only should go Frenzy after casting spells - which would be a valid point. Of course the healing capabilities of the Ancient are good to counter the Berserker's self damage, too. So overall it's a minor inconvenience imo - once you circumvent confusion. Ancient's DoTs are cool with Barbarian passives, not only Spirit or Blood Frenzy but most notably Blood Thirst. You can cast some DoTs at the start of the fight and then go into melee. While the DoTs work and eventually kill some enemies you'll get 0 recovery attacks every now and then which speeds up your melee attacks considerably. If you use the Community Patch then my recommended Spiritshift form would be Stag. Because the CP turns the really bad 1/encounter lol-carnage ability of the stag form into a weaker "proper" Carnage passive like the Barb has - weaker but it stacks with the original - which is cool. Double Carnage for the Stag. Is it important to you to play an Ancient druid? If yes I would go with Berserker, vanilla Barb or Corpse Eater (because it fits so well thematically imo). If you would also consider other Druid subclasses: as Waldemilson said Berserker/Fury is cool - it is not so much about Spiritshift but high PEN and casting speed with elemental spells. Berserker/Shifter is also pretty nice. This one's mostly about Spiritshift though. Use the healing in between shifting to counter Berserker's self damage.

The first three all work (I would recommend another Paladin subclass though because Flames of Devotion isn't really important solo and it's the only thing the Bleak Walker excels in) - but /Bloodmage will be the most powerful and also versatile multiclass option because you can combine all your buffs, healing over time and especially Barring Death's Door with Wall of Draining - then they will last for the whole fight.

Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure (unique grimoire required) uses an invisibility that only breaks when you deal any sort of damage*. Thus you can cast all the CC and debuffs you want: if they don't deal damage they won't lift the invisibility of A's Brilliant Departure. Like all other beneficial effects that are attached to your character the invisibility itself can be prolonged with Wall of Draining. Watch out: Bloddmage's Blood Sacrifice deals damage to you and it will lift the invisibility! So you have to time it right if you want to regain spell uses with Blood Sacrifice. For example when most enemies are controlled or after you broke the invisibility anyways (e.g. with Concelhauts Corrosive Siphon to heal up or Amplified Wave or whatever). A's Brilliant Departure can buy you a lot of time to cast (and gain focus from those casts as Beguiler), run from sight, reposition yourself and so on. Other sources of invisibility that you can prolong with Wall of Draining could be potion of invisibility or the invisibility from Slippers of the Assassin. They break on any attack roll you do - but not from damage over time ticks like Disintegrate or Bleeding Cuts. Because those don't do attack rolls anymore once they got applied. Pulsing spells (Chillfog, Malignant Cloud etc.) are not "DoT" (damage over time). They will roll a new attack with every pulse which will lift those invisibility effects from potion or slippers. *Wall spells excluded, they will not break the invisibility even if they deal damage.

I wouldn't say switching weapons to match enemies' AR isn't recommended. In fact I would def. recommend it. Bleeding Cuts is great against certain enemies but against the common mob it's counterproductive because the damage needed to kill a rel. weak enemy is applied faster without the modal AND you'll get more focus from the overall dmg you applied (because the dmg of Bleeding Cuts doesn't generate focus). Against slash resistent enemies I'd argue it's nearly always better to switch to a dmg type you can fully penetrate with instead of insisting to use Battle Axes' underpenetrating slash dmg + Bleeding Cuts. Because the raw dmg Bleeding Cuts does is based on the slash dmg you did and that can be pathetic when severely underpenetrating. What I said there is with the assumption that you don't use recovery-skipping effects and prolong them indefinitely with certain item effects (see Strad of Favor trick). Instead of switching dmg types (e.g. from quarterstaff to pike or whatever) you can also try to stack PEN and/or use weapons with two dmg types. This avoids switching in many cases. But dual dmg weapons usually have lower base PEN so it's not a no-brainer. Some weapon types who normally only have single dmg and decent base PEN have uniques who have dual dmg types. I found that the Morning Star is one of the weapon types which have a great mix of PEN and dual dmg. Also the modal can be very helpful for certain spells (e.g. Disintegrate, Killing Bolt and whatever targets fortitude). Willbreaker + Make them Flinch + Gauntlets of Greater Reliability is one of my current go-to setups because it lets you apply the modal to anybody eventually (miss-to-graze conversion), it has good PEN, crush/pierce dmg AND also lowers Will on hit which is kind of cool for a Wizard/Cipher. But I wouldn't advocate for making this your one and only weapon choice - at least not for a solo run... Soul Annihilation is great - but if you miss all your focus will be gone for nothing. So if you want to make SA you main source of melee dmg you should make sure you don't miss. There's one-handed weapons with high accuracy (e.g. Rapier + modal, esp. Rännig's Wrath or Kapana Taga with some enemies engaged or whatever). If you use them with nothing in the offhand it's a lot harder to screw up Soul Annihilation. At least in the early game where I find misses are very common and are very frustrating. Another way can be to use the modal of the small shield. You can switch it on for a shirt while to get the +15 ACC for your next attack (also works if you evade a melee attack by stepping to the side if not engaged) and then use that +15 ACC for Soul Annihilation. You can of course combine stuff like an accurate weapon with the small shield modal. This is only for the early game imo - or if you meet foes which are really hard to hit. Later on you have several sources of ACC buffs so often you can just use whatever (I mean if we talk about not missing Soul Annihilation). One exception is Sun & Moon - this is so good with Soul Annihilation that it's a viable weapon for the whole game imo. You get two chances to not miss SA - and if the first flail head hits, then the second one will generate focus already which is great, too. Citzal's Spirit Lance is pretty cool with Soul Annihilation because the AoE of the Lance applies different portions of raw damage to all enemies. The initial target gets the normal raw dmg of SA and then there's some internal workings at play that give different amounts of raw dmg to the enemies in the AoE. I suspect that those hits generate focus which will get dumped into raw dmg immediately (but you can't see that). Draining Touch is very good on a Wiz/Ciph because not only has it very high base dmg and does corrode dmg - it also targets Will instead of deflection. A Wizard/Cipher has so many tools to lower Will in enemies. For example you can use Kapana Taga in the offhand + modal and Draining Touch in the main hand. Modal lowers enemies' Will by 25. Miasma lowers enemies Will by another -40 (!) and then drop Secret Horrors and Ringleader... what isn't charmed will get annihilated by your (and your Phantom's) Draining Touch (+SA if you want). And even the charmed/dominated ones you can kill quickly. An insanely good weapon against all forms of vessels is Grave Calling. It can create a foe-only Chillfog that counts as weapon attack. That means the Chillfog will generate focus for you (fuel for Soul Annihilation all the time). It also has an enchantment that applies paralyze+ to an enemy if the sabre has done some hits. This also works with the Chillfog! So the Chillfog will generate focus for you AND freeze enemies in place as well. And the best part is that if a vessel is killed by the Chillfog it counts as weapon kill so that will proc another Chillfog. It can snowball into a cascade of death for all vessels on the screen (which are not immune to freeze dmg). Never forget your Phantom which carries the same items as you. Citzal's Spirit Lance * 2 is cool. With the example above (Kapana Taga + Draining Touch) you can also let your Phantom engage enemies (Kapana Taga can give +2 engagement, if you wear Reckless Brigandine it can get another engagement etc.). You can send it in to "tank" some enemies and then drop some terrify effect on them once the Phantom has engaged 2 or 3. They will disengage eventually and get hit by the Phantom's truck-like disengagement attacks. Not bad for a summon I think. You can also give it very protective gear and really use it for taking aggro for you for a long time - or even give it "suicide" gear so you can send it to enemies while you are invisible/stealthed/away - and when it dies it will explode with several AoE bursts (for items see Great Swords Effort, Mantle of the Seven Bolts or Cape of the Falling Star, Effigy's Husky...). This can be very helpful to thin out groups of enemies before you feel confident enough to face them head-on. It can also be useful to let that happen while you two are in the thick of it all since those AoEs are foe-only. There's the Shroud of Phantasm (cape) that summons 6 copies of you which have very low health. If you are in a pinch you can have 6 death explosions that might kill enemies around you and save you). Those copies also can cast all your spells (unlike Essential Phantom). Also - even as a Soulblade - never forget Mind Control. Stuff like Ring Leader is impacting the outcome of an encounter so much. It's like summoning a bunch of creatures who fight for you while taking out the same number of enemies. I can't emphasize enough how powerful that is. Combine with Phantom and you'll have a small temporary army fighting for you. Also here stuff like Miasma and club+modal can help a lot. Especially when using Brilliant Departure first and cast Mind Control on a bunch of enemies in calm. Then finish of the non-controlled with melee + SA or whatever. Tl;dr Wiz/Cipher is an incredibly versatile class combo. I personally would prefer Psion or Beguiler for solo (using Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure to stay hidden and cast CC like there's no tomorrow while my Phantom does the DMG) but that would be a totally different playstyle than what you are looking for I guess.

Do you mean solo or with a party? With a party you can do almost anything and it's fine, for example going full glascannon. Solo you'd need to pay special attention to defenses. I would suggest to roughly imagine what kind of cipher you would like to play (e.g. ranged or melee, favoring mind control or other crowd control or mainly dealing damage with your spells etc. Then it's easier to recommend a general build direction. There is no universal "best" way for a class in PoE unless you know the role the class should fit into. Skills: depends as well. For example the accuracy bonus from survival can be very good. But if nobody else in the party has mechanics that would also be a very important skill.

Deflection modal of quarterstaff doesn't stack with the Wizard's deflection buffs, does it?

Wall of Draining changes the comparison considerably since it works with all benefical effects (that are attached to your character, not the enemy), including effects from consumables and items. Check out Stuff like Cape of Magnificient Escape. Its Escape-like ability gives you a very short +50 deflection buff, but with WoD it can get prolonged a LOT and since it's from an item it stacks with spells like Mirrored Images and Arcane Veil etc. (it doesn't stack with Escape itself - I guess because it's considered to be the same thing). Same with Mask of the Weyc's Arcane-Veil-like ability and so on. I personally don't use it too much because it feels a bit like god mode and takes away fun for me personally. But no doubt: it's a gamechanger. Of course - as was already said iirc - an Ascendant would profit a lot more from WoD than a Beguiler does.

"It's complicated"

After the first levels a Wizard can tank quite well (once he has sufficient spell uses at his disposal). At higher levels it's a good use of low-level spells (many defensive self buffs are low-level spells that can even be mastered) because damaging low level spells like Fireball etc. lose effectiveness against higher level enemies anyway.

Yes, from a systemic point of view all is clear. I meant I see no ingame "justification" for RES influencing Deflection and you have to be a bit creative to find an ingame explanation that somehow explains why a character with high resolve can block blows better. But it's accepted and therefore my point was that letting CON influence Deflection could also be explained somehow.

Six Chanters can do most encounters without even clicking on an enemy, just standing there. It's the highest power/micromanagement ratio I can imagine for PoE. Here's a youtube series from @Raven Darkholme with 6 Chanters:

Can't be changed, hm... But would it be possible to create a passive that "piggybacks" onto every character and adds a "healing received" modifier based on CON? Or a "damage reduction" modifier based on CON? You know, just the general idea of attaching something "dynamic" like that on everybody.

Agree

Afaik the healing one gets from converted damage (Rekvu's Scorched Cloak, Flame Nagas, Dorudugan etc.) neither benefits from MIG, healing received nor healing done bonuses. It's just the described % of damage that gets through and nothing further influences it. I think because the approach is balanced in itself there's no need to touch the base healing values. If you'd lower them that would be an even bigger motivation to raise CON - because for low-CON chars the healing would be even more ineffective. What could be tweaked is the actual percentage value per point of CON. Maybe 5% is too much, maybe it's about right... no idea. 'Twas just a number that I used because it sounded okay. But I figured since CON also raises/lowers the health pool by 5% it would only be fair that the healing scales by 5% steps as well (see @thelee's latest point).

When going solo damage output shouldn't be your primary concern - rather staying alive. Which means avoiding damage - and if you get damaged to be able to heal it. Steel Garrote imo has the best tools for that because of the good defensive passives, the strong self heal of Lay on Hands, substituted with the life drain when hitting afflicted enemies and the great armor passives. Beguiler has lots of tools for crowd control and disabling/debuffing which also avoids incoming damage. Replenishable resources are important, too. Luckily the Beguiler has two ways of getting focus: damaging enemies with weapons and - much more potent - casting Deception spells onto enemies. Paladin's Zeal is limited but you can get some back via killing foes and you don't need that much Zeal anyway (it's mostly the passives and the healing that make the Paladin a good choice). I personally would stick to a medium shield I guess because the modal is pretty good but doesn't slow down your casting (only weapon attacks). Why would Soulblade/Bloodmage be a really bad combination? I mean I don't see very convincing synergies for soloing and it lacks reliable healing - but I wouldn't say really bad. Borrowed Instincts stacks with the Wizard's deflection buffs which is cool, Spirit Lance is good for focus gain and works well with Soul Annihilation... And later Wall of Draining is just great for all self buffs you can imagine (including the max focus buff the Soul Blade gets after each kill).

Ah, you didn't say. It sounded like a party setup to me. Illusionist is cool for some spells but so limiting in a solo run imo. For example no Phantom (which can be very useful in solo runs). You said you don't care about that too much - but at the same time the benefits of the Illusionist subclass aren't outweighing the drawbacks imo. At least for a solo run. About Streefighter: I'm regularly playing Edér as Fighter/Rogue tank and it works well with a large shield + modal. The cool thing about any solo Spellblade is that you can use the large shield Cadhu Scalth + modal in combiation with Adept Evasion and high Reflex to just shower yourself and the enemies with AoE friendly-fire AoE spells that target Reflex. All grazes will get turned into misses and the rare hits will get softened a lot by the modal + shield passive. I can cast almost everything I have on an enemy group with my spellblade tank in the center - and he will hardly get scratched. You don't need a Trickster for that so I'd say Streetfighter is good enough, too. But I personally would pair it with a Bloodmage (although that's everybody's choice for solo and thus that might be a bit lame) - also because Blood Sacrifice can be a tool to actively bring you down do flanked + bloodied and profit from the On the Edge passive - even if you don't get hit at all. If you tank around you also wouldn't need Powder Burns to get flanked. You'll just get flanked the "natural way". But I guess Illusionist also works.

Speaking of Ranger + AoE: Am playing an Arcane Archer/Troubadour as hireling atm and I love her. Plenty of AoE - and the synergy between Sure-Handed Ila (which applies both its recovery and reload bonuses to reloading weapons) and weapons such as Spearcaster (+modal = great) or the Red Hand is great. But then... anybody tried Imbue:Web + Imbue:Eora with high INT, Driving Flight and Waterhaper's Focus and combined it with being energized (Their Champion)? If you shoot from stealth you'll apply 6 pulsing AoEs (3 webs + 3 pulls) with insane accuracy in a heartbeat. And all pulses will interrupt enemies if they crit. At the same time they can't move and get pulled together. It's just not fair. Also, with high Arcana very useful against hard to hit enemies because Imbue Shots get Arcana as accuracy bonus - and Spearcaster does that, too. I just leave the modal on . With SH Ila I'm still fast enough to prone-lock those enemies.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

For solo I'd suggest Tactician and Steel Garrote from your list. Steel Garrote would be my preference. The rest is cool in a party but not as reliable in a solo run (if you don't like to use Smoke Veil) imo.

They give a lot of XP if you are of low level. At higher levels that's not that much anymore. I mean the amount stays the same, but relative to the amount of XP you need to advance through higher levels it's not that much anymore. If you reach lvl 11 you can still upscale WM. The game will recognize that you're too high of level and will suggest upscaling then.

For the first time I think lvl 10 is good for non-scaled WM. The first fight can be tough because it's very long and stretched over the whole map. After that it gets easier but then the difficulty surges again at some point (in a certain map with certain annoying enemies who use paralyzing blow darts... ;).

White March is designed to be tackled from lvl 8 on. It can be started earlier but the initial fight is too difficult for most partys < lvl 8. So it is def. easier than doing upscaled Act 3 and I would totally recommend going there (I mean WM) first. Just don't try to do Crägholt Bluffs "on the fly" while traveling to the WM. CBluffs is very high level content and will mop the floor with lvl-8 parties.

The bestest weapon! By the way, speaking of Willbreaker: in earlier runs I never enchanted it with "Make them Flinch" (25% miss to graze conversion) because I thought the alternative has more impact. But I came to realize that when it really matters (meaning taking on the tough nuts and not "winning more" against the trash mobs) it's a great enchantment. Especially if you combine it with Gloves of Greater Reliablity (also 25% iirc). Grazes are sooo much better than Misses. Even if the enemies' deflection (or fortitude, what is lower - hello Brute Force) is so high you would only miss otherwise you will graze quite often and apply effects that will make it more easy to hit properly.