Boeroer

I wanted to compare it to another long-lasting Terrify effect and Enervating Terror came to mind. I don't know if Cipher is single-target focused. While you have to target an enemy or ally, many of the Powers have a medium (e.g. Secret Horrors) to huge AoE (Phantom Foes, Amplified Wave...). And I would say you can totally compare a Cipher to a Wizard if both are supposed to play the role of a debuffer or crowd controller in your party. See Beguiler vs. Illusionist. While I think most Cipher Powers are pretty nice and well balanced (and most passives are just great), Haunting Chains is just a waste of an ability point in my opinion. Also when you compare it to the other PL-8 and PL-9 stuff you can take. I would maybe consider it if it was a fast cast, but even that is not the case: 3/3secs. I would maybe take it as a Beguiler since you'll get back a bit of focus and it also works with Empty Soul/Soul's Echo/Complete Self, but only maybe.

Dude! I put a winky emoji. What Do you expect?

Ryngrim's Enervating Terror does Weaken and Terrify in an AoE at PL 5 for 15 secs base while Hauning Chains does Hobble and Terrify on a single target at PL 9 for 20 sec. At PL 9 Enervating Terror has basically the same duration as Hauntuing Chains due to PL scaling. I know: Ryngrim's is maybe too strong... but still. Haunting Chain is def. too weak for a PL 9 ability. A smallish 1.5m radius would make it ok. Barely.

Zealous Focus is part of Zealous Aura. Zealous Aura is the whole thing that contains Zealous Focus, Zealous Endurance and Zealous Charge as modals. Exalted Focus, Exalted Endurance and Exalted Charge are the upgrades from Power Level 4. Zealous Aura is Power Level 2 - and afaik a multiclass char reaches PL 2 at charcter level 4, not 3. Is your level progression unmodded? Or did it change lately? I didn't notice - but I also didn't pay a lot of attention to it.

This is a nice basic idea - however it's kind of a waste for a Debonaire to only deliver melee crits to charmed enemies (keep in mind that a charmed target flips back as soon as you damage it - and Cipher powers are all foe-only and can't be cast on charmed enemies). A Cipher and a Debonaire/Wizard can exploit the 100% crit rate better. The good thing about Soul Annihilation is that it doesn't care much about your weapon base damage - so a light weapon with +5 ACC (for example a Rapier) can be better than a two hander in order to make sure that SA connects. Especially in the early game (where you will miss with SA often and then waste a lot of focus) a single handed Rapier with modal (+12 ACC, +5 ACC, +20 ACC) can be really good.

What qualifies as a light weapon? Pfff... Maces, Sabres, Swords, Hammers of course. It obvious. So obvious that you got it wrong?

Torkar on PotD (not even upscaled) is maybe impossible with a lvl 5 party. I mean what's impossible - you could apply some DoTs like Bleeding Cuts maybe and then kite and cheese him to death I guess - or do some other game-mechanics-cheese. But it's nigh impossible to win a "normal" face-to-face fight against him if you are only lvl 5 (even more so if you are lvl 5 and your hirelings are lvl 4). First of all there are too many ads - lots of ranged, too. Those are deadly if they come in numbers because they can always reach you no matter chokepoints etc. All of the ads are like 8+ levels higher than you. And the guy itself wears that belt that lets him heal one time once he's near death. I like to do him early, but lvl 5 is just too much of a tedium to try it more than a few times. Weapon modals help a lot to win fights against high level enemies. Not using them and then complaining about high difficulty is like being a mechanic and complaining that the screws are hard to pull with your fingernails. Rogues can certainly not do everything better than a cipher. THey can't do support and they can't do crowd control. They can't debuff in an AoE (atm not even with AoE weapons) except with Smoke Cloud etc. Actually when thinking about it they can't do even few things that a cipher can do. My guess is that you don't utilize a cipher properly. They are not as good as single target dps machines like rogues are - but that's not their main role. One Whisper of Treason or Puppet Master (even better if cast from stealth to initiate encounter) can turn the tide. Can't say that about any of the rogue's abilites except his invisibility abilites and the Trickster's high level stuff. And I say that while not even being a big fan of ciphers in general. Haunting Chains... yeah I don't get it as well. Seems like a complete waste of ability points But maybe I'm overlooking something. Like Fractured Volition - that's also... "errrm?"

I agree. It's a slower approach than hitteing evertything directly but very reliable and very resource-friendly. You get good DoTs and also good HoTs (Healings over Time). Best played as Nature Godlike. In my opinion Pollen Patch is the best healing spell there is. But you have to move a round a lot to make it really good. Garden of Life is also nice, but the limitation on corpses can be a bit tricky sometimes. Like when you need healing but nobody's dead yet.

Exactly

Maybe it just glitched.

New patch notes for 4.1.2 are out and they don't mention this problem. Any news?

i have a sneaking suspicion that this is actually an intended nerf (e.g. the designers never intended for this aoe weapon interaction, and they took wayyyy too long to address it, letting people getting used to it) and the reason why no one official appears to be commenting on it is to try to sidestep the player rage at having such a big and late-in-the-cycle power-level cut. I don't know. Because we had the same situation a few patches ago where rogue abilites suddenly didn't work with AoE weapons anymore. And that got fixed pretty quickly. Also I got this response from QA: Doesn't sound intended. But maybe they changed their minds...

kk

I can't get duration from the Wall anymore iirc - only if the enemies have real buffs that can be drained.

Eh? It has a casting time of 3 secs base and a recovery of only 2 secs base (that's 1 sec faster than a light weapon). Overall it takes you 5 sec base to complete casting and recovery. As comparison: Eyestrike: 3+2 = 5 Mind Wave: 3+4 = 7 Whisper of Treason: 3+3 = 6 Tenous Grasp: 0.5+4 = 4.5 Phantom Foes: 0.5+4 = 4.5 Mental Binding: 0.5+4 = 4.5 Puppet Mater: 3+4 = 7 So why is it "horrendous"?

Yes, what about AoE weapons? This is pretty big and I wonder why this isn't a top priority. Same as Essence Interrupter. Good that the summon scaling is fixed though. Also no fix for the messed-up walking speeds? I mean turn based is nice and all and I get that it should get out of beta soon - but is that more important than fixing stuff of the non-beta part of the game? You know - the part that shouldn't have many bugs because it's not beta?

They do. But actually no cipher spell is untargeted (you can't target the ground). So it's not a special feature of Eyestrike. PoE's Mindblades had a problem that it wouldn't jump further if you missed or if one enemy died from it. Luckily they fixed that in Deadfire. I usually target the enemy with the weakest Fort. defense with Eyestrike. That should be the one I hit with a Morning Star and some Secret Horrors first. It is of course not as potent as Chillfog. But while you are limited to 2 friendly-fire Chillfogs per encounter you can cast Eyestrike over and over again since it's only 10 focus. A Beguiler usually gets a lot more focus from it than it costs. And it doesn't harm your teammates. Like Curse of the Blackened Sight basically.

You hate Pratchett, Boeroer. Your opinion does not count. Did I say that I hate Pratchett? If so then that was extreme hyperbole. I just think his Discworld stuff is not very funny or entertaining - I mean when it has the length of a whole book. I like some King books very much. Also partially because of nostalgia. "The Dark Half" was the first book of him that I read (iirc) and I liked it very much, same as "It" "The Last Stand" and "Christine". Also "The Eyes of the Dragon (The Napkins)". The Tower however... nay. It's like with Tad Williams: some of his books I really liked (Osten Ard stuff: very nice) while some othes were very ehhh for me (Otherland - jeez). Of course I was quite young when I read all of that. Maybe I would judge differently today. I wouldn't have guessed I would like anything from Brandon Sanderson after torturing myself with his Mistborn stuff. But I found myself enjoying his Stormlight books. Until now at least, the newest one is kind of tedious to read, too.

It's a supertedious read in my opinion.

Why did you post this twice?

You might want to wait until the loot bug is fixed. Currently Essence Interrupter destroys the loot of the target if it gets turned into a summon on death.

Secretly?

I absolutely agree. The more I play the higher I value single class characters. In a full party that is. Having access to higher Powel Levels earlier is much more important and has more impact in my opinion than having a bit more resources and a "perceived synergy advantage". Because most synergy effects don't need to be done in a "self-contained" build when you have a party.

It can be very tanky with Paladin passives and Exalted Endurance + Borrowed Instincts while it does pretty good single target damage with Soul Annihilation. So it can be a very good tank which also does good damage. FoD + Borrowed Insticts gives you +30 ACC, +40 with Ring of Focused Flames. Easy to stack up on focus with that. Then dump that focus with Soul Annihilation. That's a lot better than having a very good tank who can only slap a wet towel around. The good thing about Soul Annihilation is that it's does not depend on your build as much as other abilites do. It will even do good damage on a very defensive character (as long as you can land a hit). At the same time it also has access to all the nice cipher powers which can be used for damage, support or CC. It can be a great class combo for a party - even if the Whispers otEP-cheese is gone. Since making class tiers is nonsense it can't be #1 though. Therefore all discussions like "Class X is god tier trolololo class Y is trash roflmao" become superfluous.

That's not cheesy And that's hardly even exploit. That's a straight-up non-vague bug, since the description clearly tells "Sweeps the fighter's melee weapon in a large arc". So it's either implementation-bug. Or description-bug. And looking at the effect... I tend to think that it is related to implementation, because: - it's quite improbable that a character can reload the blunderbuss 5 times under 1s, when sweeping 5 enemies in melee. - the advantage gained is a bit too high, and doesn't look to be intended design. That said, I also find weird how Whisper of the Wind works with bows and firearms. I mean I can somewhat understand implements firing n shots without the need for draw/reload... but these... nope. But with the same argument "how can you reload x in y secs?" you could also call HoF and Whispers of the Wind with ranged weapons a bug. Basically you could call all AoE weapon abilities a bug - if reloading a crossbow doesn't work, putting an arrow on and drawing a bow should also be impossible - and so on. In this case I do think it's a smallish bug that Clear Out allows you to use a ranged weapon if you have a melee weapon in the offhand. But not because of "realism". It's a bit clunky: You still have to get into melee range but instead of using the melee offhand the main hand gets used. It works properly with other primary attacks like Taste of the Hunt etc. Whirling Strikes has the same glitch by the way. No matter though: it's in the game and it's very powerful. It just proves the point that there's always an effect x with class y that allows that class to be used with a more powerful build - while there are also bad choices which make a potentially great builds crappy.