Boeroer

Best dual weapon setup for melee ciphers (when it comes to focus generation) is Unforgiven + Starcaller - because both get an additional +10% burning lash on top of the 25% burning lash. If you want to use the Helwax Mold then it's 2x Unforgiven (because of the speed). You can use Vulnerable Attack and still reach 0 recovery. With Scion of Flame you will get +30% lash +12% lash. Both will give you additional focus if the lash goes through DR. Make use of Body Attunement.

Yes, those are pretty powerful. The lance is also good enough. Since we don't know how the draining of Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff will work (maybe this time it's 50%? The ingame description doesn't give numbers) we can't say yet if it's really inferior or not. I agree that Firebrand is meh compared tp the priests' faith attuned weapons at the moment. Am I wrong or did it not only loose the higher base damage but also enhanced crit damage and Damaging III?. Currently it seems it's only a scaling great sword that does burn damage as its second damage type, right? Why not give it a burning lash like the faith attuned weapons get - just to make it equally good? Maybe I missed some new gimmick it now has?

Ah... and I thought you found some nice console command to unlock that stuff.

Confirmed. Also the case with Citzal's Spirit Lance. I I remember correctly it also happens when I carry the lance and then use Spirit Shield.

You have to be stealthed I think. I constantly have gigantic models in my char screen and also disappearing models with a gigantic floating head behind the stage and the frame. Funny that you devs didn't see that yet. It's there like... always.

Where/how did you get that?

I can agree to that. 6 seconds plus recovery is bad. I currently like the wizard's self buffs a lot. And the only reason is because they are fast casts...

By the way: the solution of the Spirit-Lance/Carnage combo is quite good. You will deal your normal Carnage damage and the AoE of the Lance just gets added. No weird cascading side effects. Good, but not OP. Although: Spirit Lance does generate a TON of focus with the AoE and has a cheesy behavior with Soul Annihilation.

Both PER and MIG are important - as is INT and DEX. You won't be able to max any of those if you are not willing to dump a stat completely. So I would go for something like MIG 15 CON 10 DEX 15 PER 15 INT 15 RES 08 Since cipher powers usually have an ACC bonus and also enemies' defenses are not that high at normal/hard difficulty you could also lower PER and put more points into MIG, DEX and INT. YOu want to attack stunned/prone/flanked enemies anyways: MIG 16 CON 10 DEX 17 PER 10 INT 17 RES 08 But I would prefer the first approach with more PER.

Borrowed Instincts is very good later on. I'd always use it. You can use it instead of Vampiric Shield once you can get it (because their deflection bonuses don't stack). Veteran's Recovery helps in the early game to survive. Don't rush in and get attacked by everybody, but rather play more like a rogue. Whisper of Treason is very good to deal with attackers. Just turn them from threats to friends. Before getting Firebrand you can use Justice from Raedric and keep it as backup weapon (Firebrand does burn damage only). It has an additional crushing lash (10% on top of 25%) which also generates focus. With the help of Soul Whip, Biting Whip and Two Handed Style the smaller lash can make it through DR and give you some additional focus. Once you got Firebrand and also Scion of Flame I would drop Justice and use Hours of St. Rumbalt or whatever two hander that you enchant with a burning lash. Another nice trick you can do to get the best focus per hit via Firebrand is to stack flanking bonuses (Glanfathan Stalking Boots, survival 12, Apprentice's Sneak Attack) and use Phantom Foes to trigger flanked on a lot of enemies. +45% damage with Firebrand is devastating.

Hi! When using Soul Annihilation with Citzal's Spirit Lance ALL damage rolls (initial target and all enemies that get hit by the AoE) will get a raw damage bonus from Soul Annihilation. The intial hit gets the biggest raw damage bonus, then the next damage roll in the combat log gets a small bonus, the next is a bit bigger and so on until it reaches crazy numbers. I suspect that while all damage rolls are done focus is building up again in the background and used for calculating the raw damage (without it getting reduced to zero). I guess Soul ANnihilation should only get applied to the initial target, then focus should be 0 and than that's it.

I agree that it would be a cool effect. But then I would prefer that they summon a trinket that fits the deity and that boosts spell damage (with a lash). Like those holy symbols in Eye of the Beholder or something.

No, why? I didn't suggest that nor did I complain about summoned weapons. Why do you sound like I did? Actually I voted for a scaling based on Power Level and not character level. But clearly this is an oversight. The raw damage of Soul Annihilation should only be applied to the initial target.

Ahahaha! Try a Soulblade/Conjurer please and console in Citzal's Spirit Lance. The lance (just as the rod+modal) generates focus with the AoE damage. One attack and you might get 100 focus. Then - and now comes the best part: Soul Annihilation's raw damage bonus gets applied to all AoE damage rolls. BOOM!

By the power of Grazeskull!

It was just a joke about enchanting. "Superb" as a tier of qauality when it comes to enchantment of weapons and armor. You can upgrade weapons and armor to "superb" once you got Adra Dragon or Sky Dragon Scales. And if you can get Kraken Eyeballs you can even upgrade them to "legendary" quality.

You can't seriously tell me that it's intended that if I summon a great sword that deals +60% (!!!) additional corrode damage suddenly all my damaging spells also deal +60% additional corrode damage. It's clearly a bug. No need to argue further. We can come up with lots of fancy explanations why this could be intended ("now the priest channels his spells through the weapons!") - but the simplest and obvious explanation is: it's a bug. I can't say if it was intended that Mith Fyr added a burning lash to spells as well in PoE - it did. I don't know if this was altered for Deadfire since I didn't test it yet. But as least in this case I don't summon a weapon with a 60% lash but instead put a weaker AoE-effect to everybody all around me with a chant (that might be intended to buff every damaging effect). Who knows. It was long known and not patched, so I guess it was intended. With Wildstrike I don't know. They reduced the lash damage for Deadfire - so maybe applying the lash to offensive spells as well is an approach to balance the smaller lash numbers. I don't say I don't like it. It gives druid casters something special. But it's still worth mentioning in a bug report I guess because it's different from PoE without any explanation why. If it's intended they can easily make the description more on point to avoid more questions. Then the murky description is the bug, not the effect itself.

Yeah, but that is mainly a problem of Swift Flurry triggering itself I guess. If you remove that part it's not that bad anymore. Although I think that Blast should get implemented like carnage now is. I guess they altered Carnage so that there are no balancing issues with on-hit effects any more. But at the moment Blast is the same as carnage was in PoE: lots of pitfalls with AoE-weapon hits + special "on hit/on crit" abilities.

That's where the term "grazer sharp" comes from...

Exactly

Yeah - but why didn't you take some Kraken eyeballs and make it legendary?

I don't know if the Long Pain is too strong. At least not in a party setup. First of all you need to get two wounds so you can't start right away with it. Secondly it needs some time summoning. Then you need another wound to trigger Lightning Strikes (you want to do that). If you want to use Torment's Reach or Force of Anguish you are forces to go into melee because else you won't get wounds. And if you really want to max the damage you have to go high MIG and take things like the hater talents - best is every one of them. It adds even more micro to a monk but you get rewarded with awesome damage, which is fair I think. They could be a bit slower though, that's a nerf that would make sense. adding a short "charge fist" animation to the attack cycle would be ok. All in all it's very powerful, but there are other things in the game that are even more powerful. I mean Kalakoth's Minor Blights with Blast strikes me as the more powerful thing for example. It's also a summoned weapon but its summoning only takes a fraction of the time the summoning of the Long Pain takes. Its damage is high - even the AoE part has good damage, and paired with Blast it's hilarious. Combine it with Alacrity, Combusting Wounds and Pull of Eora and in my book it's one of the most powerful ability/weapon combos in PoE if you factor in that it involves very little micro and fuzz. Same with Rot Skulls and Citzal's Spirit Lance. Even if you don't spec your wizard towards two handed weapons at all the lance still annihilates whole groups of enemies and is also good against single ones. All in all i think the Long Pain was on of the best things OBS intruduced with a patch. It turned a melee-only class into a viable melee OR ranged class. They should have done something similar with fighter and barb, too. It onlytakes one ability as one can see...

If it looks like a bug and rolls pills out of poop like a bug it usually is a pharmacist.

They should have made a subclass called "Batsh!t".

As far as I know nothing has changed in that regard.