Boeroer

Afaik Chilling Grave is considered a weapon attack, but not a melee attack. But I might be wrong. As soon as I got Many Lives Pass By I found Troubadour also cool (in combination with Chilling Grave I mean) - but before that the 6 + 12 skeletons from Ancient Brittle Bones are unmatched because they give you 18 Chillfogs immediately (compared to 9 from the Troubadour. The Beckoner has slower Many Lives skeletons but the initial burst is better. Maybe in very long fights the Troubadour is better because he can also recast the summons earlier, but I believe unleasing 18 Chillfogs right at the start compared to 9 is advantageous, too.

Why not go with a shield and some defensive capabilities (weapon and shield style, Psychovampiric Shield, Borrowed Instincts and such) and lean into it by maxing Resolve? Increasing returns and all. You won't be the cipher with the best focus generation but you might be the one who doesn't go down. With a small shield your casting accuracy wouldn't even suffer.

I don't remember, sorry. I never payed too much attention to those dialogue-unlocking things in the first place (since you don't gain any mechanical advantages besides maybe being able to avoid combat from time to time - so after the first playthrough right after release I didn't bother much) - and then the last time I played PoE1 was years ago.

'twas just a joke, because "boar". Ofcourse a Cipher can go sword & board. It's totally viable - what dmaage potential you lose you'll make up with staying power. It depends a bit on the party what is better. For example if you also have a Chanter (who have powerful but somewhat slow mechanics) it's not bad to go more defensive. Sabres are nice. The best one is (imo) Bittercut because it has two damage types and also because it gets a 20% dmg bonus from Spirit of Decay because it deals corrode damage (and slash dmg as secondary dmg type). Also Sabres of the Sea + Resolution (also obtainable pretty early) is a good combo. Just note that some enemies have really high slash DR - or are even immune. So make sure you have some backup weapons in the second weapon set that deal non-slash damage (like stilettos or clubs - which shares the same weapon focus as sabres). Hammers are also one of my preferred weapon choices because there's good unique ones that don't kone late and because they deal pierce/crush dmg (choosing the more effective dmg type automatically like all dual dmg type weapons).

Sword an Boar is only for Rangers. You can drop RES to 3 if you're not the one who's engaging first but play your cipher more like a flanker. Or if you have a Priest who can cast Holy Meditation. And if you're dropping to 3 RES you might as well go with a no-shield setup. I personally like dual wielding more with a cipher because your weapon recovery will be much faster and that leads to better responsiveness - because as a cipher you are always alternating between attacking and casting and it's beneficial to not have such long weapon recovery times. The dps between dual wielding and two hander is comparable so the higher responsiveness due to shorter recovery is nice. Also later you can gain 0 weapon recovery time with Time Parasite while still wearing fat armor and using Vulnerable Attack (because dual wielding + several item and ability speed bonuses + Time Parasite leads to such a big overhead of recovery bonus that you can fit in fat armor + Vulnerable Attack without adding recovery). 0 weapon recovery time as a weapon/caster hybrid is a very nice thing. Bit if you like Firebrand too much that's also okay. What it lacks in speed it makes up with high numbers per hit. It's one of the best mid-game weapons for a melee cipher for sure and only falls behind a bit after you gain access to Durgan Steel.

PER is more impactful at the start of the game because you have no means (or let's say only few means) to raise your accuracy otherwise and at the same time lower enemies' defenses - but DEX is the only way to speed up attack and casting animations. All other speed bonuses only shorten the recovery time or reloading time. DEX lowers recovery/reloading time as well as animation time and is always good to have (it has no diminishing returns like PER can have: once the accuracy/defense ratio reaches a certain value - via debuffs and buffs). Certain enemies have preferred targets. For example Barbarians love to target low deflection, Rogues like low DR and endurance (and also casters) and so on. Generally speaking: if you have better defenses and DR you will not only go down less easily because of those increased stats themselves (receiving less damage fron attacks) - but also because enemies will not target you that much but focus on more squishy companions. A heavy armor can already make quite the difference in "felt sturdyness" at the beginning of the game. You will be slower, sure, but knocked out characters are even slower, so... All defenses have increasing returns by the way. So every additional point of deflection for example has more impact than the one before. This means that if you deflection is already okay (for example because you are wearing a shield and/or use stuff like Borrowed Instinct) it's not the worst idea to also get high Resolve. If your deflection is bad anyway you can safely dump Resolved because it wouldn't make a lot of difference anyway (but watch out: resolve also influences interrupts/Concentration and that can be really annoying if you get attacked a lot). Melee dps output is usually higher than ranged, but you'll have the problems you mentioned. You need to compensate for the fact that you will get hit more often. I personally just go with a heavy armor at the start and gradually reduce it with levels I gain. At some point you CC and debuffing capabilities will be enough to prevent too many attacks against you. Also stuff like mind control (charm, dominate) can lead to a lot less attacks on you because mind controlled enemies often present themselves as way softer targets than yourself AND you took away a potential attacker at the same time. Generally speaking the squishyness gets a lot better after the early game. That's true for all classes that feel a bit soft at the beginning.

I don't remember if the interrupt time gets added to the recovery time after the enemy gets back up, but I believe it is not so. I think they don't stack and the interrupt does nothing while the enemy is disabled.

I'm a bit sad that not all OCs have their unique "good" subclass. That would be enough motivation for me to play them instead of "minmaxed" adventurers. Maia's and Thekehu's subclasses are already great and therefore they don't need any boosts imo. Some of the other unique subclasses are only so/so, like Xoti's and esp. Serafen's. If I would buff something then those subclasses (not a blanket stat boost - although that's way less complicated of course ;)). For example shift Serafen's odds more towards the beneficial outcomes of his Wild Mind and let Xoti not only gain wounds per melee kill but with all kills - or something like that. Edér would have been great with a fighter subclass like "Saint's War Veteran" or "Dyrwood Militia" or so. A passive that is somehow in line with the workings of his armor for example. The pet slot is a Berath Blessings bonus so it could still come on top as reward for collecting BB points. Aloth would have been nice with a Aedyran-specific wizard subclass. Like a Court Wizard or Court Mage or something (think that would fit Aedyran customs). I know that breaks the mold of the wizard subclasses being devided by "schools" like Transmutation etc. - but Bloodmage already does this, so where's the loss? Pallegina's Brotherhood otFS subclass needs better implementation of the Wrath otFS ability at least. +2 to stats is also okay though. I would'nt do +2 to a single stat though but +1/+1 I guess. But then... does that have any noticable impact?

Concentration vs Interrupt is rel. simple: you have an interrupt value that gets rolled against the concentration value of your enemy if you hit (and vice versa). If the roll is a success the interrupt strength (something from 0.3 secs to 1 sec depending on the weapon) gets added to the enemy's recovery. You can see that when you look at the enemies' recovery bar (or your own when you are getting hit). It's not that noticable unless the hits come very quickly (for example if somebody get attacked by several enemies at once or if the attacker is very fast) and/or if the weapon has a high interrupt strength. Fast, light weapons like daggers and such have lower interrupt strength - the heavier ones like hammers and so on have higher interrupt strength. The interrupt strength is listed among the other weapon stats. There are some weapons that have higher interrupt strength than usual. For example there is a unique Rapier that causes longer interrupts than all other rapiers and there's also a hammer and a spear iirc. That stronger interrupt is not listed under enchantments with its own name so it's kind of a "hidden" bonus. You have to look at the interrupt strength directly. Interrupt also works with Barbarian's Carnage. So if you have a Barb with very high attack speed and a high interrupt chance (high Perception and so on) and a strong interrupting weapon (e.g. the Vile Loner's Lance) you can "lock" several enemies so that they have superlong recovery times or even can't attack at all anymore.

Barbarians do have healing: Savage --> Stalwart Defiance. But it comes rather late for multiclasses - same as the Furyshaper's Fear Ward which also helps a lot with survivability. I just like the Witch's overall debuffing qualities, especially in combination with Spirit Frenzy which turns any offensive AoE ability into mass MIG/Fortitude debuff (which also removes any MIG inspiration on enemies on the fly). I don't think it's especially good as solo character though. I played a solo Furyshaper and it was fun (mostly due to Blood Ward) - but it wasn't great against Megabosses. The cipher part can surely help here but lack of staying power might indeed become an issue...?

That's what I thought, wards being summons and all that. But as I said I didn't play this combo myself so I couldn't be 100% sure. With Deadfire you never know... I also had fun with a Stalker/Forbidden Fist using Stalker's Patience + Tuotilo's Palm with Swift Flurry + Heartbeat Drumming. The spear has an enchantment that lets you skip recovery every 5th crit (or in other words: 20% of crits). But since you can get crit-chains with Swift Flurry + HBD which will always proc main hand attacks (even if the shield triggers Swift Flurry/HBD) you will experience the recovery skip rel. often. Beast's Claw + Stalker Passives + preferred Forbidden Fist stats (maxed RES) made the char pretty sturdy. You'll always have a crush dmg backup with the Forbidden Fist ability. And it also prolongs the raw DoT of Stalker's Patience. I didn't play this solo though so I can't say if it's really cool for a solo run. However it was a good mix of offense and defense.

Which items are the ones you want? Some special in-game items (for example those of the pre-release Scavenger Hunt) can get unlocked with the help of the in-game console (without marking your game as cheated). I backed the game on fig.co and used the provided steam key to receive my game via steam. I got several backer stuff but nothing game changing. Fig itself didn't provide any game version. It was only the crowdfunding platform. Besides that: do I understand that correctly? You didn't crowdfund the game on fig.co - and are now upset that you won't get the rewards that backers (who helped to fund the game) got?

Aha... which are those "many other" classes? Anyway: more PEN certainly doesn't hurt.

The Wards of the Furyshaper count as summons (not Animal Companions) and also count towards your summoning limit. I never heard that Furyshaper Wards will trigger Bonded Grief - but I also haven't played a Furyshaper/Ranger yet. So while I can't dismiss this with absolute certainty it sounds like false info to me. If I'm wrong I'll happily accept that new knowledge though. Wards do give you a PL debuff if they "die", but you can simply cast Withdraw (Priest) on them: they will still work but be untouchable. Can even be used to block choke points then. Also works with Withdraw scrolls of course. Furyshaper + Ghost Heart do not go well together because the Wards count as summon - same as the GH's Animal Companion does. That means you can only have a Ward XOR your Animal Companion on the field - not both at the same time. Which somewhat cripples this combination imo. Unless you didn't want to use the Animal Companion anyways but only view Ghost Heart as a Ranger without Animal Companion. That's an ineffective use of a Ghost Heart - but in that case it wouldn't hurt the Furyshaper's wardshaping.

Bloodmage/Stalker (Bear companion) was a great solo run for me. Besides the usual benefits of wizards I used the Willbreaker + modal to lower Fortitude for spells and Takedown Combo. The auto will reduction of Willbreaker worked beautifully for my Essential Phantom who used Draining Touch (which targets will instead of deflection). Saru Sichr is good against non-poison immune tough enemies. Its DoT stacks like Bleeding Cuts - but it has no PEN issues since it's not based on the weapon damage you score. The DoT ticks slowly but with enough stacks foes will melt. Beast's Claw is great in combination with Wizard spells in general. I used Gloves of Greater Reliability + Make them Flinch (enchantment on Willbreaker). I think miss to graze conversion is very, very underrated by most players. Especially because Body Blows and other on-hit effects already work with grazes. It lets you graze enemies with stellar deflection often which you otherwise would miss all the time.

Lagufaeth Mages are not "real" wizards, priests or druids. I guess they just have some copied wizard abilities but are not actually of the wizard class. The Imprint spells only work on proper wizards, druids or priests. Unfortunately it's not always easy to determine who is what. I also guess enemies like Rathûn Flamecallers won't work. Xaurip Priests do.

Depends on the difficulty. At lower difficulties Rogues are great - but the more enemies the less impactful a Rogue becomes imo. Fighter is sturdy but boring most of times in my experience, but Charge - although late game stuff - can turn a boring Fighter into fun. A Rogue variant I liked to play a lot was Godansthunyr (hammer) + Badgradr's Barricade (bashing shield). Both sturdy (enough) and good damage output as well as decent single target CC. Before getting those items you can use any other hammer (there are some good early ones - or you can simply chose another main weapon) + bashing shield (the first one is Larder Door). The thing with Badgradr's Barricade is that it procs Thrust of Tattered Veils without limit per encounter. So every crit will proc it. And since spells work with Deathblows (not Sneak Attack) it will get +100% DMG if the target has two afflictions. Godansthunyr has two DMG types and stuns on crit which is also nice. They also look great together imo. Both Fighter as well as Rogue make good spell binding users. You know: using items that hold some spells per rest. Rogue has Deathblows which works with spells and Fighter has enormous accuracy due to starting values and Disciplined Barrage. It can spice both classes up to be able to sling some spells. For Rogue I would prefer damaging ones while the Fighter is better with CC components imo. Also stuff like Prestidigitator's Missiles (for Rogue) and Aspirant's Mark (Fighter) are not bad. It's like a mini spell mastery since 1/encounter.

Sounds like Whowzapoopoop.

Thrice was She Wronged + Upgrade is a great damage tool in general and always nice to have (especially with the Least Unstable Coil because every lightning bolt counts as separate empowered spell which makes it very easy to gain all top-3 inspirations with a single empowered spell). The Thunder is special because although it causes a Might affliction (stun) it targets Reflex and not Fortitude. So it's one of the rel. rare abilities which can lower a certain defense without having to overcome that defense first. The Push effect is kind of annoying for my playstyle but there's also damage on top of the stun which his cool. The upgrade (+10 ACC) makes it a really nice CC tool then. You can stun high fort. enemies (who often have poor Reflex) like nobody else. Combine with the Helm of the White Void and it's even +20 ACC. Cool indeed... If I can afford it I will take both.

Well, Sacred Immolation is quite good... the self damage is very high but with enough healing you can survive rel. easily (esp. if not tanking at the same time). Also it can run while you are casting an invocation at the same time which is cool action economy. Can't do that with more invocations. Maybe check out "Their Champion Braved the Horde alone". It gives you "energized" which will let you interrupt all enemies you land a crit against. This includes the pulses of Sacred Immolation which might crit enemies, offensive chants that may crit the enemy with every cycle and of course also your weapon attacks. It can be very good if you combine those things and disable enemies by simply landing crits/interrupts "on the fly" as secondary effect.

One problem: Blunderbuss + Estoc means you'll only have pierce weapon damage. Unless you plan to unlock another weapon set (like with Fleshmender or Arms Bearer where you could then put a Pollaxe or Morning Star for example) I'd recommend to use another setup that allows to switch between pierce and non-pierce damage. Else you would have to unequip/equip weapons before encounters - and you'd need metaknowledge in order to predict which foes will be pierce immune/highly resistant and which not. Mortars could be an alternative to "normal" blunderbusses because they do pierce/slash. Eccea's Arcane Blaster (pistol though) could be good. Or instead of Estocs pick Pollaxe, Great Sword or Morning Star. Estocs have awesome PEN (and nice uniques) and you can circumvent their weakness with knowledge about upcoming enemies - but if you haven't that knowledge and then meet a bunch of Skeletal or even Risen dudes and can't do anything with your weapons it feels quite frustrating. Better be prepared for that. If you want to be a debuffer also look at the Invocation "Ben Fidel's Neck was Exposed". The -10 defenses that comes with the frighten affliction (which is a lot more useful than in PoE1) stacks with other debuffs. Also there's no immunity to it which can be very good against some very affliction-resistant foes.

1) Which situation? Which difficulty? I know of no situation on the low levels on normal difficulty where you get "bombarded" with enemies. 2) No one goes into combat training "in real life" except soldiers. If I embark to a tour into the Kirghiz mountains to have a little adventure I don't attend combat training before. You can play PoE in a mostly pacifistic way, you can avoid almost all fights by dialogue and/or sneaking. Also there' not much XP to be gained from killing enemies. Fulfilling quests is the most potent source of XP. So why would a Scientist Wizard from the Vaillian Republics go into combat training before travelling to the Dyrwood for exmple? Not very realistic... if realism is what's important in a fantady game in the first place... Anyway there's the tutorial map right at the beginning with some easy enemies in Cilant Lis where you get to learn some basic rules, even with tutorial popups if you didn't tun them off in the game options - so where's the problem? 3) You will get a warning as soon as enemies are planning an attack on your stronghold. Somehing like "your scouts report that a group of <xyz> is advancing..." and so on. Usually there's plenty of time to travel back to your stronghold and help with the fighting. Maybe you missed the message(s)? If you don't want attacks to happen at all you should lower your Prestige (e.g. by enlisting henchmen with the barracks for protection that have bad reputation - and not building stuff that raises Prestige) and at the same time raise your Security (enlisting henchmen with high sec. values and building stuff that raises Security). That prevents most of those attacks. Prestige attracts the good as well as the bad visitors, including attackers. Security prevents attacks. All in all it sounds as if you chose a difficulty setting that is too harsh for you (yet). You can chance that at any time in the game options - unless you chose the highest one named "Path of the Damned". PS: Why not put your criticism into a fitting thread - instead of using a random one which is about something competely different? It will not get seen much here.

Go with Herald, Lay on Hands, Ancient Memory, Mercy and Kindness and Exalteded Endurance, Lethandria's Devotion, Sasha's Singing Scimitar, Physiker's Belt, Practiced Healer.

Enlightened Agony doesn't stack with Turning Wheel. However, it can make sure you won't drop below +5 INT (when under 5 wounds). But I wouldn't use an Ability Point for that given how easily a Nalpasca gains wounds. Melee Monk with Enduring Dance would only make sense if you could make sure you wouldn't get hit much. Like if you were playing a ranged Monk - or if you were playing one with very high defenses but no tanking responsibilities or something like that. Or if you focused your build on Blade Turning. Soul Mirror makes most sense with high deflection. Imo it's pretty useful in solo runs but not that much in party runs (because in a party often it's not the Monk who attracts ranged fire in the first place). Brand Enemy is a neverending DoT ability which is cheap, very fast and most importantly an auto-hit(!). That makes it very useful in certain encounters. Sworn Rival is nice as well (especially for a Goldpact Knight who can get a refund for his +4 AR) but in parties limited Zeal isn't that big of a deal. It can be very powerful to inflict neverending burn damage to a whole bunch of enemies in a few seconds with 100% success. It can help you to ein encounters where you'd normally have a hard time hitting enemies and so on. Note that Brand Enemy is useless against Ironclads/Steelclads and other fire immune enemies and really counterproductive against certain enemies like Flame Nagas and Dorudugan (who heal from fire DMG). Against fire vulnerable enemies (hello Beast of Winter) it's great most of times. Reaching good PEN can make the difference between "meh" and "great" though. Sworn Rival is more like a no-fuzz "everyday usage" upgrade while Brand Enemy is more situational but can make a big difference in hard fights. Mortification otS: yes, overkill. I'd even say Lesser Wounds is overkill (if you use Hylea's Talons for gloves and later Sacred Immolation it's def. overkill at that point imo). Resolve you go all-in (increasing defensive returns) or nothing imo. But it can really help with Sacred Immolation's self damage. On the other hand Monk has other tools to shorten the duration of hostile effects - like Clarity of Agony - and there are some items that help. So maybe I'd still tank RES to 3 if I wasn't to max it in the first place. I value Clarity oA over Righteous Soul since the first one always works while the second is situational - but on the other hand it's wound-driven active vs. passive so I would be torn. Also because RS completey nullifies all attacks that are tagged as poison/disease. So for example stuff like Plague of Insects or even direct damage like Noxious Burst wouldn't affect you at all iirc. I guess I would like to have both?

To me: yes.