Boeroer

Works: With enough RES and Clarity of Agony (and not too much INT) there's Berserker's Confusion when you use Frenzy (the Confusion is managed seperately from the speed and self damage aspects) and Sacred Immolation's self damage (not tied to the fire damage part). They will be fairly short then. Sacred Immolation + Clarity of Agony + Crucible of Suffering is a nice combo imo. Removes the hefty self damage, so your Sacred Immolation has no drawbacks AND gives you bonus defenses on top. If you combine with Effort's Hemorrhaging (see below) the Sacred Immolation can also trigger Hylea's Talons' DoT on yourself and the enemy. If you use Enlightened Agony (smart) you can cancel out the Confusion directly (because smart couters confusion) and trigger Crucible oS instantly. A Priest or Paladin could also give the smart inspiration and remove the Confusion right away, triggering CoS. --- Does not work: Any character can get flanked, but when the flanking ends CoS will not trigger. A Tactician gets confused when getting flanked. You will get flanked (1. effect) and confused (2. effect) and both end if you disengage. This also doesn't trigger Crusible of Suffering Edit: as one might expect also Cowardice from Debonaire doesn't trigger CoS (like running away from allies to trigger Cowardice and then move back to cancel it). --- Does not work: Deletrious Alacrity of Motion's self damage is tied to the benefical effect and is not a separate hostile effect. Doesn't trigger CoS at all. --- Works: When you use Confusion (from Berserker or Tactician) and don't want to raise RES like crazy and use Clarity of Agony you can use Footsteps of the Beast and step into your own hobbling traps (usually foe only - with confusion it also hits you while walking). The hobble effect is very short. But you have to make sure it wears off properly (so stop walking around for a few secs). If you keep stepping into your own frost traps then the duration of the effect will get refreshed all the time and the effect will not wear off = no CoS. It's an old trick for Forbidden Fist/Berserkers to gain a lot of wounds+healing on the fly and it also keeps up Crucible of Suffering ifyou do it right. It's becomes more difficult to hit yourself with the hobbling traps if your defense is superhigh (like in general and then on top with Crucible oS). But every now and then it should still graze you because the traps drop so frequently (with every step you take - as fast as Arterial Strike causes dmg when you move). It can work out in a way that you don't even have to stop moving because most traps will miss - and if a new one grazes, the effect of a previous trap might have already worn off. But of course you can always stop moving to make sure. --- Works: Hylea's Talon can be triggered with spells if you use the great sword Effort with the enchantment Hmorrhaging. If you land a crit with anything you will trigger Hemorrhaging which counts as melee attack - which can then trigger Hylea's Talons' DoT on the enemy or yourself. --- Does not work: The Thundercrack trick doesn't trigger Crucible of Suffering. The pistol doesn't put the nagative effect on the wearer anyway - so it needs to be carried by a party member. But even that doesn't work. You will get the effect - and if your buddies switches weapons the effect goes away... but nothing happens for the Monk. --- That's all that comes to mind atm. Maybe I will remember more later.

Iirc that pause (or its length) is not influenced by anything. I'm not 100% confident though.

Yes, it's best to actually test these options in the game because theorycrafting and calculating is of limited use with such a complex game. It's great to get an idea - but there's so much to consider which is difficult to put into a formula.

Stalker is actually a great class to make a multiclass (off)tank and very good for certain melee builds (especially if it's about high accuracy because no other class has that many stackable accuracy vs. single targets). I played a solo Geomancer (Stalker/Bloodmage) and it was excellent at tanking - even without a shield setup. Of course the Wizard's self buffs helped a lot here. But I think players often just forget about the Animal Companion which can def. help a lot with offtanking. I mean you get two bodies for the price of one. A SC Stalker is a bit more tricky because it lacks the nice synergies of some multiclass combos - but I think offtanking is no problem. Thick armor and decent RES and CON would be my preference. You cannot heal yourself until Power Level 9 with Shadowed Hunter - but what are those other party members for anyway? You can however heal the animal companion. If you pick the Bear and are a stalker the near has great armor rating which makes it a lot sturdier compared to a non-Stalker non-bear. Antelope also works because of the higher defenses - but overall I think the bear is better for offtanking. If you have a Chanter in the party then off-tanking with the animal companion is even better: you can revive it unlimited times per encounter - because animal companions don't get injuries. If you don't have a chanter the ranger can revive the animal companion, too - but the Bond resource is limited.

St. Omaku's Mercy with the enchantment that skips recovery on crit is great imo because it trades higher PEN for slightly slower recovery - which hasn't such a big impact bc. of the skipping. In combination with Driving Flight and Twinned Shot (=4 attack rolls) and all the accuracy the chance is very high to skip recovery. Imo there's no real delay - except the shooting animation of course. The most straightforward way for max single target with a Ranger usually is Essence Interrupter or Amiina's Legacy witj the modal on. That's not about crits so much - but the very high ACC helps to balance out the drawback of the modal. And the upside of the modal (-50% recovery) is just insane for DPS.

I mean it's less likely to drop from healthy or blooded right to death with one cast of wilting wind - so I expect Spirit Shield or Iron Skin to trigger. Yes, that's what I meant basically. Your dead before BDD gets cast. I also guess the other effects wouldn't trigger of you dropped from healthy or bloodied to death right away.

The cape only triggers BDD if you go under 25% health, right? So maybe if you blast your character from let's say 30% to 0 with a single cast it could be that he goes down before the cape has a chance to trigger the BDD effect?

Yes, that is a very good approach to SC Chanter Tekehu. Spamming Eld Nary's Curse would be my use of unlimited phrases. Imo Tornado is not so great. It's just that Great Maelstrom is so powerful that you often only need that one spell, hence the druid. And to the way there the druid can offer those foe-only variants of Chillfog and the other water/frost spells he gets which are really helpful at all times. Plus good healing, too. I think that's why most players prefer the druid path. You can amplify all offensive spells (including Great Maelstrom) with the great sword "Effort" and its enchantment "Hemorrhaging". This sicken/hobble debuff procs off of all(!) attack rolls (like spells, not just weapon's) and it counts as a proper weapon attack. Which makes it trigger Avenging Storm Bolts, too. If you add other attack rolls that proc off of weapon attacks (see Hylea's Talons for example or Ring of Molded Flesh) you can increase the number of attack rolls on the target(s) even further. You can then cast Avenging Storm, then Great Maelstrom (or other offensive spells , those who pulse like Chillfog, Venombloom etc. are best) and every crit of those spells will trigger Hemorrhaging - which will trigger an Avenging Storm bolt - which can itself trigger Hemorrhaging if it crits - which thrn triggers another bolt (and so on). It's absolutely devastating. The Effort trick using Avening Storm can also be used by the SC Chanter variant - and it's really good in combination with Her Revenge and it's multiple hit rolls against a group of enemies. But then you'll not have scimitar's effect of course.

Yes, it got patched at some point and turned from "per encounter" to "per rest" which turned it from "most sought after cape" into "what are those useless rags lol?" 😉 It is mentioned in the named enchantments' description that's it's per-rest. But you have to click on the names of the enchantments iirc.

Well, devs can't name it "Ectopsychic Echo" and then make it a shred spell, can they? 😉

Barbarian in PoE starts of... weak I must say. The main reason is the relatively poor accuracy (especially for Carnage) and the bad deflection which makes him squishy. At lower levels the impact of his big endurance/health pool cannot realy be felt and he cannot really make up for it because he misses or grazes often with Carnage. Fortunately Carnage counts as an active ability und thus gains accuracy with every level - up to the point where your Carnage has better accuracy than your normal attacks. And with a few levels and more endurance and health he doesn' feel as squishy anymore, especially if you give him decent CON. So do not get discuraged if he feels a bit meh at first, it will get much better. In the beginning it can help to give him a single weapon (+12 ACC) - the impact of the added accuracy is highest in the early game. Later you don't need that anymore. If he feels too weak and gets knocked out a lot another alternative is to give him a pike or quarterstaff. The most fun I had with a Firebrand Barbarian (no need to go Fire Godlike, was mainly for the fire theme): All weapons which have an "on hit" or "on crit" effect are good though. Also ones with "speed" because they let you reach 0 recovery time fairly quickly in combination with Frenzy (and Bloodlust and maybe dual wielding + two handed style).

Right!

Hi! edit: the follwing is about Deadfire: I personally prefer Barbarian/Monk, especially Berserker/Helwalker. The self damage of the Berserker's Frenzy directly fuels the wounds of the Monk which makes this a very enjoyable combination: you always have wounds to spend. There are other nice synergies like the higher crit chance combined with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming of the Monk (causing crit chains) or that Rootig Pain fires off all the time (get rid of the Berserker's Confusion though because you will hit yourself if not). However: it's very risky because the self damage of the Berserker scales very steeply. It will kill the character if it's not countered with healing or damage resistance (or both). A really big health pool helps, too. I enjoy it immensely - but instead of a two weapon etup I would very much recommend to use a Morning Star (in Deadfire at least): Both classes profit a lot from the modal which the Morning Star's weapon proficiency offers: it reduces the fortitude defense of enemies a lot. Monks and Barbarians have abilities to target fortitude instead of deflection (look at Force of Anguish and later Brute Force). You can then see which defense is lower and attack the weaker one which is very helpful. Also there's an early unique Morning Star in Deadfire that is perfect for this character combo (Saru Sichr). It works extremely well with those crit chains I mentioned above because it rolls two attacks per swing (because it has a separate poison attack roll). Anyway: it can lead to a lot of "oh my god what just happened?" moments. The build requires attention but is a lot of fun imo. For me it's okay if the main character needs more attention than the rest of the party and I enjoy the challenge to keep him alive as long as he's so much fun on the offensive side. Watch out: Nalpazca cannot heal when on drug crash - so using Frenzy when not on drugs = certain death. Helwalker suffers increased damage with every wound - so Frenzy hurts even more (also means more wounds but also quick death if not healed). Both have incredible wound generation as one might suspect. They all have pretty brutish vibe imo. --- Monk/Streetfighter is a very good damage dealer (and can also be an extremly good dps and crowd control character using two "mortar" blunderbusses which deal AoE damage - so basically a medium ranged Shadowdancer... just look at the Monk's ability "Stunning Surge" and imagine the implications when it's used in an AoE) but it can be fragile. The benefit of using blunderbusses is that they allow the use of "Poweder Burns" which immediately unlocks the Streetfighters passive which makes him superfast - without actually getting flanked by enemies or bloodied. I'd say mortar Shadowdancer is the best option but of course melee also works very well. Trickster/Forbidden Fist is an excellent tank/damage hybrid using a weapon + a great early bashing shield made for monks. Maybe not main tank material but a great frontliner who's holding his own while dealing a lot of damage. Ah... note that one companion in Deadfire can be a Monk/Streetfighter (a so called sidekick though, not a full-fledged companion). That may be a reason to not pick that combo as main character? Shadowdancers don't feel as brutish as Ravagers to me. --- Berserker/Streetfighter (for example with a certain set of daggers) has insane attack speed and dps output and in the early game can dominate fights with a hunting bow (+modal), too (makes some tough fights in Deadfire so much easier). But is also very squishy as one can imagine. Like the Berserker/Monk I mentioned above. It's also very good with two battle axes. I haven't much experience with other Barb/Rogues. Another plus is that Barb/Rogues can be the best lockpicks in the game. The reason is that you can use the ability "Leap" outside of battle whenever you want. You can stealth in a drak corner, then leap across the room/area right beside a chest, pause and pick the lock and grabbing stuff without anybody noticing you. Same goes for doing stealth/invisible attacks - so maybe a Barb/Assassin could be fun, too. There's a great early assassin dagger in the game which does great things when used from stealth. And assasin's boots that make you invisible if you kill somebody (1/encounter). Maybe even a Mageslayer/Assassin build would be fun as a thematic build - getting rid of casters from stealth and as soon as possible. Never tried, but sounds fun. --- In PoE I enjoyed barbarians a lot more than rogues. Because Carnage procs all weapon effects in a AoE you can do a lot of fun stuff with a Barbarian. This doesn't work in Deadfire anymore, but they have other cool stuff there. Examples are a draining weapon with a Barb (drain from all enemies in the Carnage area), weapons that cause prone or stun on crit (in an AoE bc. Carnage), weapons that just do a lot of base damage per hit (like the summoned Great Sword Firebrand) in combination with Blood Thirst, weapons that leech buff durations from enemies and so on.

Kind Wayfarer + Forbidden Fist sounds like a good synergy because of the healing from White Flames and Lay on Hands and Exalted Endurance that can support your health while under the curse. And Eternal Devotion's lash will stack with Turning Wheel's, too. Slap on the Ring of Focused Flame and your White Flames will have great accuracy, too. Pick Scion of Flame and the PEN will be great, too. Only thing that feels not so nice to me is that White Flames (the KW's Flames of Devotion) is best with dual wielding because the healing procs twice then. This is a huge advantage imo. Forbidden Fist attck is not a full attack so shield setups make a lot of sense. BUT: once you pick up Tuotilo's Palm you'll have the best of both: weapon & shield AND dual wielding AND great enchantments for the Monk's side of the build. On top of that - since Forbidden Fist profits so much from maxed RES - they also fit very nicely thematically. Paladins with high RES make a lot of sense, too. All in all you can become very, very tanky while also having great offensive capabilities. And let's not forget that White Flames also heals your allies in range (and that range is increased by +10 INT from the Monk's side of course). Just don't pick the resistance passives of the Paladin! Sacred Immolation's self damage is a separate effect from the offensive part - its duration gets shortened by high RES and stuff like Clarity of Agony. So using Sacred Immolation (which is a great damage boost) isn't as risky as it usually is with "normal" paladins. Paladin/Monk is like it's made for Sacred Immolation (or the other way round). The self damage will wear off pretty quickly and even grant you a wound when it's ending. The burning part will still carry on. Like with the curse though the hostile part will get prolonged with higher INT. I think all in all it's a great combo - it's not very "gishy" though? --- Street Fighter (I'll get to your question below) has an enormous potential for weapon damage. And with the Forbidden Fist it's quite easy to lower your health to 50% willingly in order to trigger the Streetfighter's passive without getting flanked. Combine with Human to also profit from Fighting Spirit at 50% health. But since operating at 50% health is risky one might - in this case - use Iron Wheel and a lot of CON + Tough and maybe even an Amulet of Greater Health in order to make the 50% of health still be a lot of health. Streetfighters don't profit a ton from high INT as they usually don't use a lot of AoE or duration-based stuff (except maybe Toxic Strike) - and while the loss of a multiplicative burning lash in combination with such high damage bonuses does hurt your dps, I think the convenience of a much bigger health pool and thus the more reliable approach to "keep me under 50% health for massive dps gains" is just better. Getting knocked out all the time is no fun after all. I made the same experience with a Helwalker/Berserker: very potent but dropping dead all the time. As soon as I rampoed up the health pool to the max it became much more enjoyable and performed actually way better even though on paper it had less dps potential. But it's only potential. What is that worth if you cannot make it happen? Using a pet that does high "heal on kill" makes a lot of sense here. If you have Eder you can make sure he picks one that does a weaker version of that effect for the party, too. You will kill quickly so you will heal a lot, too, giving you access to even more "risk free" FF attacks. By the way: Trickster/FF is an even better combo overall imo because you can lean into the defensive side more, become very tanky and still have great damage output. Also seems to be more on the gish side with the spells the Trickster gets. --- What about FF/Berserker? You can shorten the duration of the confusing part of Frenzy a lot so that you only become confused for a very short time - and the nyou'll get a wound + healing when it stops. The duration of Frenzy will not suffer. The self damage part of Berserker Frenzy cannot be shortend (it's directly tied to the frenzy duration) but iirc it will also give you wound + healing once Frenzy ends. With such a character you'd also need a lot of Health and a pet with heal on kill is very benefical here, too. --- With all those I would recommend using Tuotilo's Palm and a weapon that does other damage than only crush (so no clubs and maces). For Skald Sasha's Singing Scimitar seems like the obvious choice. With Swift Flurry: Stalker's Patience (with Mercy Strike!) as well as Mohora Tanga (super high chance for crit chains because Red Flag Flying can proc itself!) are excellent choices. Watch out: Mohora Tanga can crash the game if your accuracy is much higher than your enemies' defenses (beause an endless loop of crits can occur that will shut the game down immediately without warning). If you don't overdo it with the accuracy/debuffing enememies defenses you should be fine though. --- Best use would be both of serafen's mortars. hybrid use (1 melee + one ranged weapon) if often just worse than 1 dedicated melee set + 1 pure ranged weapon set. You can def. keep up the distraction if you don't use Clarity of Agony too often - because you will be shooting/reloading superfast with Swift Strikes + Streetfighter's passive. And Mortar's AoE + INT + Stunning Surge is an excellent, excellent combo. High INT also makes sure the distraction lasts long enough even if your RES is very high. On the otehr hand using a ranged setup is a bit detrimental to the FF attack. I suppose one can use it as a great way to dispose of enemies who come near you though. You don't even need to switch weapon sets in order to deal melee damage then. Blunderbuss + melee weapon can make sense with FIghters (Clear Out can use the Blunderbuss if it's in the main had when a melee weapon is in the offhand), Rangers (Whirling Strike) works the same, Barbarians (Heart of Fury works with ranged and melee weapons, both will execute no matter what). If you count Blunderbus + bashing shield a ranged + melee setup it can make good sense for a lot of characters because you get the defensive bonus AND the dual wielding bonus that also speeds up the reloading. But usually I think pure ranged or pure melee beats hybrid in most cases.

I would try to decrease the duration of the curse from the Forbidden Fist ability and to find a way to produce wounds besides using the Forbidden Fist ability (so basically get short-lived hostile effects or prevent being attacked a lot so you can use Enduring Dance of Death). Generally one also you has to watch out for "does xy on melee weapon crit or hit" or so, because in the unmodded game the Forbidden Fist ability works like a melee spell and is not registered as a weapon attack. That means that for example a Skald will not generate phrases if he crits with the Forbidden Fist attack. But since you use the Community Patch mod this is not a problem because the Forbidden Fist attack is registered as melee weapon attack there (as it should be). Thirdly you have to forego resistances against afflictions - if you want to get wounds from said afflictions. For unknown reasons the Forbidden Fist's wound mechanic will not generate a wound if you downgrade an affliction with a resistance and that affliction then ends. For example: you get hit by an attack that would weaken you for 10 secs - but you have a resistance against CON afflictions and so you only get sickened for 10 secs. Not the sicken effect expires and you get... nothing. So it's better to not gain any resistance but instead make sure that all hostile effects only last very shortly. Which means maxed Resolve, special items and abilities. Also countering an affliction with an inspiration works: the affliction and the inspiration cancel each other out and you get 1 wound and some health. Based on those requirements: Pros: Swift Flurry + Heartbeat Drumming can make it more likely to generate a phrase point (you cannot gai more than 1 per action, but the chance to get one increases with more crit rolls per action) Turning Wheel is great for invocation and chant AoEs (bc. +10 INT) - something like Her Revenge is a lot better with a big AoE, same as Killers Froze Stiff etc. Turning Wheel prolongs the duration of debuffs/CC you can do with invocations. For example the paralysis of Killers Froze Stiff lasts a lot longer. the burning lash of Turning Wheel stacks with the Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr lash, giving great multipilcative dmg bonuses to your weapon attacks (also Lightning Strikes if this us used instead of Swift Flurry) Ancient Memory and Mery and Kindness help with the FF-curse's self damage, Mercy and Kindness boosts the healing when a hostile effect expires Inspiration invocations work for the caster, too and can counter afflictions - and thus create wounds endless resources (wounds and phrases) Cons: Forbidden Fist attack cannot produce phrases Resistance chants (which are usually very good against certain enemies) will hurt your wound generation no real martial synergies Pros: lots of inspirations to counter afflictions and thus gain wounds healing to counter curse damage Triumph of he Crusaders is nice in combination with Forbidden Fist attack/curse. FF attacks can kill quickly and you can heal a lot from fast kills. Turning Wheel's INT bonus is great for AoE size and (buff) durations Salvation of Time Barring Death's Door (+Salvation of Time) + Turning Wheel + FF's curse can let you reach absurd dmg bonuses with the FF attack while the absurd self damage has no consequence Spiritual Weapons' lash stacks with Turning Wheel (and Lightning Strikes) for nice multiplcative damage bonuses for your weapon's attack. Cons: Action economy: Priests usually buff/support (the party) a lot. This takes away from fighting etc. no martial synergies besides Spiritual weapon limited amounts of spells Pros: Turning Wheel + spells like above healing o counter curse damage Druids have many DoT spells which profit a lot from higher INT Druids don't have accuracy buffs so the Dance of Death can help with hitting with ranged Druid spells some spells work with Instruments of Pain (for whatever reason) and gain *6 range. One of them is Sunlance which gains a range of 120m... 😂 Taste of the Hunt is a nice alternative to Forbidden Fist attack Druids can generate a lot of wounds and high defense with friendly-fire combos such as Tanglefoot + high RES + Clarity of Agony + Crucible of Suffering. You will get hobbled by your own Tangelfoot - but the duration of pulses will be very short and you will get a wound as soon as a pulse spires Wildstrike lash stacks with Turning Wheel and Lightning Strikes Spiritshift Armor stacks with Iron Wheel'a AR bonus - while having 0 recovery penalty Cons: Action economy like with Priests when buffing or healing a lot no martial synergies besides maybe Taste of the Hunt, Wildstrike lashes and natural armor limited amounts of spells Pros: lots of self buffs which are superfast like with the other casters: +10 INT is excellent for all sorts of spells (AoE and duration) Deleterious Alacrity's self damage counts as hostile effect. When it expires you get a wound. Citzal's Spirit Lance works with Turning Wheel (AoE size, lash) and Stunning Surge which makes this an excellent combo Wall of Draining helps to prolong positive effects. See Crucibe of Suffering and all other (self) buffs as well as Healing over time You can - like the druid - generate wounds from friendly fire effects such as Chillfog (blind) or Binding Web (stuck) but those effects a more inconvenient than the Druid's hobble - and remember: no resistances with the Concelhaut's Draining Touch trick and a club+modal in the offhand + Miasma of Dull-Mindedness you can lower enemies Will defense a ton - which makes them easy to crit with terrify effects and expecially with the Draining Touch weapon (it targets Will). This makes triggering crits chains with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming a lot more likely and deals a ton of damage. But the trick is a bit cheesy and not intended behavior. potentially ulimited resources/spells Cons: no real martial synergies besides the access to Spirit Lance and Draining Touch, but both are very potent, so... squishier bec. of the Bloodmage's drawback against bloodied enemies and bc. of the added self damage of Blood Sacrifice --- sorry, no time to address the rest, have to go. Maybe later, bye!

Ahaaa - now I get it!

This what makes the most sense to me. I mean it's called "Death of a thousand cuts" and not "Death of a thousand very specific Cipher spells". Heh no... but I mean it makes the most sense mechanically. Everything else just feels so forced and unneccesarily complicated to me. On the other hand I don't really play Deadfire anymore (besides running some test session here and there) and will certainly not do an SC Cipher run in the foreseeable future - so my feelings on this matter mean very little.

Huh? They are not limited in that way.

I would add "and target the same defense". It can be benefical to have one alternative to fortitude-targeting spells (like having Antipathetic Field or so). Besides that I agree - especially because Disintegration does raw damage. You don't have to look at enemies AR and your PEN. And if you have a Morning Star dude like Konstanten who also lowers fortitude with chant and Spirit Frenzy you're all set. Frostseeker is good. If you plan to pick Shared Nightmare then Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole are great picks against hordes of enemies. Watershaper's Focus with Blast and Ondra's Wrath, too (especially with Time Parasite). Both of the latter have fairly low PEN though, so having a backup weapon set with crush or raw damage is benefical. If it needs to be ranged then there's only Eccea's Arcane Blaster, as @yorname said - or scepters. Current's Rush has the enchantment High Tide which triggers a cone AoE on crit that can proc itself. And that cone does generate focus iirc. A quarterstaff could be used to be somewhat safe and still do good crush damage. If it were me I'd probably pick the Blaster for single targets and against pierce/slash resistant enemies, too. Raw damage takes aways any worries about PEN and AR which is so convenient.

No, DoT ticks do not trigger Do1000C. Only direct damage attack rolls from Shred spells seem to trigger Do1000C. Reaping Knives (the spell) might have the right keyword, but the attack from the knives themselves don't have it. That's stuff like Mind Blades and Antipathetic Field. Mind Blades isn't too bad if you have a lot of bounces and only two targets. Since Antipathetic Field rolls every second and is cheap it's the best option (if you can set it up) imo. If you bring a Berserker/Cipher you can anchor Apathetic Field to an ally who's flanking the enemy. If one really wants to make Do1000C work I would recommend such a party member. It also has other nice little things it can do with Confusion+Cioher spells (for example cast Amplified Strike on an enemy instead of an ally and deal double damage that way, cast Amplified Wave on enemies or anchor Ectopsychic Echo to enemies - and more). Blood Thirst + Soul Annihilation is a pretty great combo, too. A Cipher Wall spell with the shred tag would be perfect. To bad we don't have one. I didn't try Pain Link. Maybe the retaliation has the shred keyword, but I doubt it. I guess only the appliance to the ally is keyworded. I guess a Soulblade with Sun & Moon who could spam smaller Soul Annihilations non-stop might also work well? Didn't actually try if Soul Annihilation attacks carry the shred keyword. Might be worth testing. I would have preferred if they had implemented Do1000C like Combusting Wounds, meaning that all damage rolls would work. To balance it out the effect then could have been weaker than it is now. The current implementation can be very potent but the complicated setup severly limits its overall usefulness.

Maybe because the damaging spells of ciphers aren't super impressive in general compared to some other of the cipher's abilities (for example mind control). Since ciphers have potentially unlimited resources their damaging spells aren't as impactful as Wizards', Priests' and Druids' in most cases - but they can cast more of them in an encounter (if they manage ro generate enough focus). Disintegration is great if you can make it hit (or even crit). Especially against tough single foes it's a great damaging spell. For that to go nicely a party member with a Morning Star + weapon proficiency is very helpful: hit (or even only graze) the enemy with Body Blows from the Morning Star (which lowers the fortitude defense a lot), then cast Disintegration with Ydwin on him. Best would be to charm or dominate him before or after - for example with the help of Serafen - so that the slowly dying enemy doesn't bother you anymore but even helps you - as long as alive. Fortunately a charmed enemy will not get flipped back to hostile from Disintegration (or Soul Ignition which stacks with Disintegration but doesn't do raw damage but burn and has to overcome enemies' burn AR in order to be effective). So you can charm an enemy and calmly cast Disintegration on them afterwards which makes the process a bit more flexible. Both beam spells (Antipathetic Field and Ectopsychic Echo) are good if your positioning and movement is great (for example when using Boots of Speed and immunity to disengagement attacks from Nomad's Brigandine or Gipon Prudensco) - and if you have enough PENentration and ACCuracy. They also don't rely on INT at all. Antipathetic Field is the go-to spell to use in combination with Death of 1000 Cuts. Both are also great in combination with Combusting Wounds (from Aloth for example). For a nice combo of disruption and AoE damage Amplified Wave is still very good. But you have to watch your PEN and the enemies' AR. It does crush damage - so it's great to lower crush AR in an AoE before using it. This can be done with Expose Vulnerabilities (Wizard), a Mace with modal + Clear Out (Fighter), Hel Hyraff (Chanter) or the Sungrazer flail (its enchantment that lowers crush AR by 1 also works with spells from that character iirc). Stuff like Mind Lance and Mind Blades is cool, but the damage:focus ratio isn't very good in most cases. Soul Shock is a lot better in that regard - IF you can ramp up your AoE size (more INT mostly) and PEN - as well as having an ally that's often surrounded by enemies (like a main tank). The biggest hurdle for good DPS with Soul Shock is your casting speed and your focus generation. A combo of Reaping Knives on a fast attacking party member (like your Soulblade maybe?) with Time Parasite can give you a great outcome with spamming Soul Shock. Reaping Knives - despite their description - generate 5 focus per hit. If your party member does a full attack you get 10 focus - that's one Soul Shock. Now if the Reaping Knives wielder attacks twice as fast as you can cast and recover from Soul Shock you can spam it endlessly (in theory). A Psion would be the best subclass for this but it would also work with Ydwin. Unfortunately Deltro's Cage, which would boost the Power Level of Soul Shock by 2 points, would slow you down. I don't know if it's worth it (besides its protective benefits of course).

Hi, while I was trying to do something different with Xoti this time (SC Priest all the time becomes boring at some point as does Whispers of the Wind for the umpteenth time) I experimented with Inner Death some more, combined with Empowered Strikes of course. Main reason was initially that Xoti's Lantern gives +1 Mortification (and +1 Wound) per kill. That's the only way besides Brilliant to regain Mortification - and it also means that Inner Death is kind of cheap (-3+1 =2 ) if it kills (which it often does with Empowered Strikes to ensure a crit). Now I tried to max the damage per empored crit with abilities and items so that the impact of one Inner Death punch is really, really impactful - so at first I went with Lightning Strikes instead of Swift Flurry because a +15% lash is a multiplicative damage bonus and is a great thing to have for such a high-dmg/single use combo. With the help of Lightning Strikes, Turning Wheel, Thunderous Blows and some items that add dmg bonuses and lashes I could often crit for ~500-700 dmg - which is pretty dope. If you have to take out an annoying enemy NOW I'd say that this is a very useful tool. But then, since I would will crit almost always with that combo anyway, I thought I'd give Swift Flurry and HBD a short try. I knew that Empowered Strikes (+100 ACC and +100 PEN on empowered attacks) does NOT influence the additional attacks of SF/HBD, but I thought I'd try how it feels anyway. I used Mohora Tanga to maximize the chance for procs and then I also put on Boltcatchers - because they work very well with Mohora Tanga*. It is not guaranteed that Inner Death will trigger SF/HBD! It is a melee attack and it can trigger them, but it doesn't use your weapon - so any special sauce the weapon has that could help you with SF/HBD procs will only trigger as soon as Inner Death did trigger SF/HBD which then executed a weapon (in this canse spear-) attack**. After a few tries I managed to trigger a crit cascade (for testing purposes it's helpful that the additonal attacks wil get executed and displayed BEFORE Inner Death impacts the target) - and I saw that the +300% crit damage bonus of Inner Death does apply TO ALL attacks that are done in the scope of the attack. So all damage rolls from SF/HBD and Boltcatchers got that sweet dmg bonus. Whoopsi! Boltcatcher proc: Heartbeat Drumming proc: I mean this is still a gamble. It's much more reliable to just pick Lightning Strikes of course - especially if you want to kill the tough foes with an empowered Inner Death asap. Tough foes with high defenses usually make crit chains a lot less likely. But with Swift Furry it's pretty awesome nontheless when it happens. 😄 I one-shot Concelhaut and Menzago instantly - but with other bosses I tested I didn't have as much luck. But of course Inner Death - even without a juiced up SF/HBD crit chain - is still a very hard punch. Anyway: thought I should share this info. Maybe somebody has better or just more fun ideas what to do with this. Cheers! --- )* Mohora Tanga's enchantment Red Flag Flying counts as melee weapon attack and can thus proc itself for and endless cycle as long as it crits. It can proc melee-related special attacks from other items such as Boltchatchers. It also procs Swift Flurry/HBD attacks that are then executed with the normal spear attack again - wich itself can proc Red Falg Flying again on crit and so on. This increases tha chance for crit chains happening a whole lot. )** Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming are always executed with the main hand weapon, no matter how they got triggered in the first place.

Interesting. The only situation that I can think of where you could command a melee attack on somebody from 3.5 meters away and not have to move to execute it is with Instruments of Pain (Monk's *6 melee range ability). Maybe abilities like Leap, Evasive Roll, Charge, Flagellant's Path and Escape also don't count as movement in this case. They don't for other purposes (such as the Wall or Blade Turning) so I guess this could work as well. However: for what use?

Somewhere out there is a video from the closed beta of PoE in which pikes and quarterstaffs had engagement for their whole reach - and somebody put his character with a pike behind a choke point and the enemies with normal melee weapons tried to get to him and where instantly murdered by countless disengagement attacks.

I don't know about "threatening", but engagement doesn't work with reach. It is limited to the normal 0.8m melee distance.