Boeroer

I guess the highest healing would be with Magran's Favor + Sun & Moon. Just because +4 PL for Flames of Devotion/White Flames should raise your healing by 20% (multiplicatively). Add Otto Starcat and Stone of Power and all that other (fire or universal) Powerlevel stuff. Also leads to pretty decent FoD damage of course. The self heal of both weapons (via a portion of the fire dmg) should also be nice for you.

A Berserker/Wizard can confuse you with Confusion. You could use thelee's poison, apply it to your weapon and attack yourself with Rhakan Field Boots. I guess?

A really nice CC/debuffer can be the Skald/Furyshaper with a Morning Star (Willbreaker). You will lower Will via Fear Ward (-10 terrify) + the Willbreaker (-3 per hit, stacks) and Fortitude via The Long Night's Drink (-10 from weaken) + Body Blows (-25) + Spirit Frenzy (+10 from stagger). With Brute Force and the significantly debuffed fortitude the crits come easily, giving you good phrase generation. At the same time stuff like Killers Froze Stiff and Ben Fidel's Neck (the -10 to all defenses stacks with the aforementioned debuffs) are really cheap for a Skald (and target Will mostly). Such a guy is a blessing for every party member that has abilites that target Fortitude (Cipher with Disintegration for example or some great Wizard spells) or Will (like Priest, Cipher with Deceptions or other Chanters). Also don't underestimate the Fear Ward: it's very impactful. If you also have a guy in the party who can abuse disengagment attacks (like an Unbroken/Trickster for example) you will smile. Losing wards is no problem if you have a Priest: cast Withdraw on the ward. It will still work but will be untouchable.

Action economy is a thing when you have plenty resources but only that much time to execute your abilities. With Cipher and Chanter it's often the other way round: not enough resources (yet) to cast something (at least the expensive stuff). Hence my Psion/Troubadour dude which I really liked because: if focus is down you'll have phrases - and once those are down you'll have focus again. With the help of cipher's Lingering Echoes and decent INT I could paralyze-lock most enemies with Killers Froze Stiff and squeeze a cheap Soul Shock in between - and so on. For me there's two main motivations to go SC Cipher (mostly applies to Ascendant because he has max focus while ascended - but also Beguiler because he can cast stuff without actually losing focus): Shared Nightmare which leads to a huge, huge AoE increase and Driving Echoes which turns a good fellow nuker caster into an awesome one (for example). Stuff like Missile Salvo is just so much better with +8 PEN. Shared Nightmare is also fun when you use AoE weapons like mortars, WotEP, rods etc .: the AoE of those will also grow with Shared Nightmare.

The duration can be doubled with an Antipathetic Field, too (because enemy not only gets extra raw dmg but also the duration of Death1000 increases with every tick of the beam). If there are only two enemies standing (and one of them has Death1000) Mind Blades is really good as well. Belt of Magran's Chosen or Essence Interrupter are good items when going for Death of a 1000 Cuts it seems.

I can check, wait a sec... edit: Reaping Knives do nothing with Death of a Thousand Cuts. It seems the best ways to utilize that are still Mindblades and Antipathetic Field.

Forbidden Fists are cool (also check out Steel Garrote + FF which is very good in the early game due to enfeebled + Garrote ability) - but I have a slight hunch that OP doesn't want to play another one after having completed his last run with a Forbidden Fist as initially stated...

Sorry double post, but I just checked the Psion: Reaping Knives do indeed give the Psion focus. Actually - contrary to my initial statement that a Psion doesn't need Reaping Knives - it's quite nice to have that additional focus income. It can more than double the focus gain if your knife buddy is attacking fast enough.

Don't forget that the Animancer's Energy Blade has only 3 secs recovery instead of the standard sabre's 4 secs. It's as fast as daggers are. Animancer's EB has 12 base dmg and "sharp" on top (+10%) while Reaping Knives have 14 base dmg. It's a bit more but not that significant. Keep in mind that you have to summon them for whopping 80 focus, that they have a duration and so on. Edit: What' cool is casting Reaping Knives on multiple party members because it feels a bit like an exponential focus gain machine at some point. SUre it takes some time to set it up but once you have 3 very fast hitting allies using Reaping Knives for you you will have a substancial focus gain while you can use your powers without having to bother with attacking yourself. The important part is fast attack speed: Reaping Knives don't care about damage when we talk about the focus gain. It's always +5 focus per strike. So a very fast attacker, even if he's dealing whimpy dmg per swing, will generate good focus for you. Unfortunately you can't cat Reaping Knives on summons like the Monk's. I guess some really fast hitters like Barbarian/Streetfighter or Barbarian/Monk or so could be the best focus generators for you. Addendum: bonus attacks from Swift FLurry/Heartbeat Drumming do not generate focus.

By the way: if you cast Reaping Knives on a Wizard and that Wizard summons an Essential Phantom then that Phantom also has Reaping Knives and does raw dmg (which is cool)- but it doesn't generate focus for the Cipher (which is too bad).

Path of the Damned gives every enemy +2 AR - which makes Penetration (and raw damage) a lot more important. Whether Reaping Knives is worth it or not also depends on the Cipher subclass. Beguiler and Psion don't really need it - although both could still profit from it theoretically (the focus gain of Reaping Knives even works for the Psion iirc). For the other subclasses it can remove the biggest issue they can have when it comes to boss fights and such: they won't do much weapon damage due to the enemies' very high AR and thus won't collect much focus - it can be quite frustrating. You can steer around that problem with a weapon that does raw damage (Animancer's Blade or Eccea's Arcane Blaster for example) or weapons with very special damage types (see Essence Interrupter). But maybe even better: combining Reaping Knives on an ally AND using one of the above weapons for yourself. If it's just about the raw damage/PEN issues and not about gaining focus I would prefer using Driving Echoes on the ally though. +8 PEN is immense and in case of your Cipher/Monk combo the Monk would deal a lot more damage with his fists +8 PEN than with Reaping Knives (in most cases). Of course the added focus transfer wouldn't happen -but as you realized: it's not that enormous anyway.

The most impactful thing that could hit you in the first seconds of combat would be some hard CC - and that usually doesn't target deflection. You'd have +8 deflection against some shots at the beginning of a fight or something like that. For that I personally would not be willing to spend a talent point. The situation in which this could indeed by so benefical to a point where I would consider taking it was against Lagufaeths' paralyzing blowdarts - especially when wearing Aila Braccia.

It doesn't stack with other deflection buffs (for example from your party's priest) and makes you even slower (it's already very slow).

I'll summon @Aarik D for you.

I recently liked to play the following (which go a bit in OP's direction regarding class choice) : Psion/Troubadour nonstop casting use empower per encounter (Sasha's Singing Scimitar) endless resource pool (passively regain focus and phrases) very versatile (dmg, CC, summons, support, healing) zero need for weapon usage Steel Garrote/Bloodmage Whispers of the EP with Offensive Parry tanky via self buffs nd paladin passives offensive parries will daze enemies and then heal you while you cast at the same time can usually cast all the time (only interrupted by the use of Blood Sacrifice) not a melee build per se - the weapon is there for draining life passively mostly while casting Bloodmage/Helwalker Concelhaut's Draining Touch: very high base dmg, targets Will defense, drains life, causes weakened. You can keep it in encounters if you cast it from a grimoire (e.g. Blood-Soaked Grimoire) and switch to another grimoire (without Draining TOuch in it) after summoning it (also never learn it at level up). Miasma of Dull Mindedness: lowers Will by 40 points Kapana Taga + modal in the offhand: gives +2 engagement and lowers WIll by 25 points Swift Flurry/Hearbeat Drumming: chain crits because Will is at -65 points Reckless Brigandine: +1 engagement, good AR boost when low on health Essential Phantom: gets +3 engagement from club and brigandine Rmygrgand's spells (terrify enemies): enemies flee and this will trigger Disengagment attacks from you and the Phantom. Disengagment attacks get huge dmg bonus which works exremely well with Draining Touch. Beguiler/Beckoner or Troubadour call forth some summons to buy some time Use Whisper of Treason/Ring Leader/Puppet Master etc. to mind control enemies until only one enemy is still hostile gang up on that one enemy (mind controled and AI summons like Many Lives Skeletons will automatically do that, the rest simply select all and attack) rinse and repeat very easy in the early game - still great later on still very versatile (dmg, CC, healing is all still possible) SC Arcane Archer Driving Flight single handed Hand Mortar with Blinding Smoke in one setup, Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot in the other Use Fire in the Hole for imbue shots, especially Imbue:Web after luring enemies to a spot and later also Imbue:Eora in order to pull enemies together to a very tight group. use Hand Mortar for Twinned Shots max Arcana --> craft scroll of Avenging Storm and/or use Heaven's Cacopohony Avenging Storm + Twinned Shot with Hand Mortar will produce a ridiculous amount of hitt rolls (! like hundreds or even mor than thousand) rolls on the tightly packed targets. Blinding Smoke triggers Avenging Storm although Blinding Smoke does not deal damage itself --> unbelievable amount of AoE dmg with one Twinned Shot Not especially wow in the early game though you can keep the pet out of it (just use it as occasional body guard). With Firebrand it's better to just use the scroll and not pick the Druid class - but it also works with a Druid. The "problem" is that the Druid class itself isn't particularly great when looking for non-shifted melee fighting with Firebrand (except Scion of Flame and Taste of the Hunt). You can use healing, buffing and CC though. Maybe I would go for Druid/Rogue or Druid/Helwalker instead of Devoted.

There is no release date. When he had less busy times at Obsidian he would write for the TTRPG during work hours as well, but at the moment Josh is writing it in his free time. Which I appreciate. The last "update" on it was on a Twitch stream some days ago where Josh showed what he was working on and took questions etc. Imo it's looking great so far (especially the lore parts but also the meta-rules which allow you to build your own abilities/spells etc.). But lots of work left I guess.

That is good to hear.

Eh, sorry, I forgot the word "often". Some things do indeed scale. Some things even scale very well (Spiritshift weapons, Animal Companion, Battle Forged...). Still Veteran's Recovery doesn't make such a big difference in the late game as it makes one in the early. Other stuff like Prestidigitator's Missiles or Enigma's Charm etc. don't scale at all which is too bad. Deadfire's Power Level mechanic is a big step forward in that regard. 3 INT is indeed strange for a Chanter. His linger time will be very short - and if you don't really want to use phrases and invocations I don't know what you pick a Chanter for. But if it works:

Prestidigitator's Missiles is only worth keeping in the later game for a Rogue - because Deathblows works with it (+100% dmg). Most of the cross class talents are better in the early game than they are in the late - even Veteran's Recovery. Reason is because PoE <edit> often </edit> knows no scaling of abilites/talents so naturally low level stuff falls behind the higher level abilities/talents.

If always the caster gets hit I would suspect spell reflection. If also other party members get hit I would check for confusion. Yes, in Deadfire most often active spell effects do change when the caster changes: if you lose Power Level while a spell is working it will drop in potency immediately. If you gain ACC while a pulsing or jumping spell is active the next pulses/jumps will have higher ACC and so on. With Confusion it's the same: a pulsing/jumping spell which is still working will immediately change from foe-only to friendly fire. I use that "feature" in my favor when I have a Berserker with Grave Calling and a Chanter with skeletons (can be the same char): you kill one of your skeletons which produces a foe-only chillfog, you retreat from the AoE of the Chillfog and only then trigger Berserker-Frenzy. And suddenly the Chillfog's pulses will do friendly fire, killing more of your own skeletons which will proc more Chillfog's etc. As soon as I remove confusion all the Chillfogs are foe-only again.

Iirc Savage Attack and Vulnerable Attack can be active at the same time - but I'm not 100% sure anymore. Confident Aim has that 20% bonus to min damage - which essentially is a 8% dmg increase. Doesn't sound like much (besides the hit conversion which is good) - but it's a small hidden gem because it raises your min BASE damage. So it's actually a 8% multiplicative dmg bonus. I would drop Gauntlets of Accuracy as soon as I got Gauntlets of Swift Action.

That does explain why it procs SF/HBD chains so well.

I have no idea. One reason why Outer Worlds might have a lower user score could be the Epic exclusive deal thing. Lots of (potential) players were quite pissed by this and I guess some might have given bad reviews just because of that (regardless what they actually think about the game itself).

Deadfire didn't sell well. PoE did. Besides that: it's difficult to judge games' quality (or if it was liked by the buyers or not) by comparing sales numbers - especially if said games are from different genres or have little overlap in target audience. Even in the seemingly same genre there sometimes isn't much overlap. Compare D:OS and PoE: only 40% overlap of players - although most would say it's the same game genre (CPRG). Then you have to take into account if there were console releases right off the shelf - and if the game works well on consoles to begin with. Sales numbers, contemporary critics and even user reviews are bit unreliable tools to determine whether a game is objectively "good" (if that's even a thing) or even if you (personally) will like it. Often it helps, sometimes it's misleading. Popular example from the world of movies: Citizen Kane. But anyway: maybe it helps to not only display the meta score but also the user score to see if a game was not only received well by critis but also by the audience (regardless of sales numbers) - i find the results quite interesting: Pillars of Eternity: 89/8.3 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire: 88/7.8 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: 85/8.5 South Park: The Stick of Truth: 85/8.6 Fallout: New Vegas: 84/8.8 Neverwinter Nights 2: 82/6.6 The Outer Worlds: 82/7.3 Tyranny: 80/7.8 Dungeon Siege III: 72/4.7 Alpha Protocol: 72/7.5 It seems like Hurlshot's assessment of Outer World's popularity is not entirely correct. It wasn't rated extremely well (although 82 is still good) but also doesn't seem to be liked that much by its players - less than for exampe players liked Deafire. Although def. more people bought Outer Worlds than they bought Deadfire.

Spell reflection: good point. Also confusion maybe? Once the caster becomes confused Eld Nary will target friedlies with its jumps as well. There are a lot of Scriveners with Nemnok and they are all high level Wizards - so getting hit by Confusion or running into Arcane Reflections might happen.