Boeroer

War Bow is a solid choice for a ranged cipher. But I would really like to see a cipher with The Golden Gaze. Soul Whip, Biting Whip and Dangerous Implements plus Apprentice's Sneak Attack add up nicely to a total bonus of +80% base damage. Too bad the cipher has nothing like Blast or Driving Flight to tune up the proc chance of Expose Vulnerabilites. Of course Time Siphon is nice, but it comes rather late. Another nice variant for a cipher is Firebrand (Forgemaster's Gloves). With its high base damage and annihilation it works extremely well with Soul- and Biting Whip as well as with crits (which do happen a lot if you use Mental Binding for example). You can also use gear that gives +10% against flanked targets and add survival-bonus to it (up to +30%, +20% is more realistic) and then use Phantom Foes to trigger this. Phantom Foes also works with Apprentice Sneak Attack. Scion of Flame boosts the damage of Firebrand by 20%. Add Savage Attack and Two Handed Style and you'll pile up the following dmg bonuses: - Soul Whip: 20% - Biting Whip: 20% - Flanking bonus: +30% (+40% in theory) - Appr. Sneak: +15% - Two Handed Style: +15% - Savage Attack: +20% - Scion of Flame: +20% ------------------------- = +140% weapon base damage without enchantments and MIG (Firebrand has Damaging III which adds +45% damage as well). With Damaging III this adds up to +195% at 10 MIG. On a crit this will be +295% (without Merciless Hand). Of course you can only summon Firebrand thrice per rest - but you can use an estoc or great sword for backup. Actually Justice is not bad because lashes do generate focus and justice has two of them: a 10% crushing lash and an additional +25% crushing lash. Of you manage to get that first lash through DR it's not bad for early to mid game. Later, with elemental lashes and durgan steel I would perhaps use Rumbalt or Blade of the Endless paths. But nothing beats Firebrand in the early to mid game if you can stack a lot of dmg bonuses.

Yes, they do. Especially Missile Barrage is powerful in that regard - Concussive Missiles, too because they work in an AoE like Combusting Wounds does. If you want to utilize Combusting Wounds more you can use blunderbusses (6 hits at once) with high DR bypass. But those are really bad against high DR foes with Flames of Devotions (lashes don't use your DR bypass at all). Missiles of any kind are also better with DR bypass of course. For the marking/Coordinated Attacks part: you could also use dual Cladhaliath which then can have the Coordinating enchantment as well which will give you +4 ACC and more damage (+25%). Shame or Glory would be nice in combo with Fire Godlike (both would trigger their benefits at 50% endurance). Of course dual spears do look a bit weird.

@MaxQuest: You meant The Rain of Godagh Field. Another option is Sabra Marie which has Annihilation (=+0.5 crit damage mod) and fits the cipher theme perfectly well. Blunderbusses used to be the top weapon for ciphers for one (or two) simple reasons: - Draining Whip gave a flat +x focus bonus per hit - so any weapon with multiple hits (blunderbusses do 6 with one attack) where best. - Carow Golan drug did the same: it gave +x focus on hit with the same result: blunderbuss was the way to go. Both got nerfed to +x% and therefore blunderbuss is not that great anymore - except if you can stack DR bypass a lot (Lead Spitter + Ryona's Vambraces + Penetrating Shot + Effigy's Resentment: Devil of Caroc) and add Body Attunement (steal DR of target). Then blunderbusses are still great. But they need more preperation as you can see. So an arquebus is more convenient and will produce the same results without that much fuzz on high DR targets.

If you want to deal damage you have to go the alpha-strike way. FoD with Sworn Enemy, Intense Flames, a burning lash on the weapon and Scion of Flame leads to top alpha strike damage (more than doubles your initial dmg roll). You can add Runner's Wounding Shot for the same setup in order to get a third powerful attack. You could add Envenomed Strike if you have high MIG and INT for the really tough boys... and that's it then. Auto attacks will never be the domain of the paladin, but his alpha strikes can be very effective. Taking out one or two dangerous guys right at the beginning of combat can be very nice. If you want to go the retaliation way you have to take Vulnerable Attack and Ryona's Vambraces and maybe also drop Devil of Caroc into the Blood Pool in order to bypass as much DR as possible (9 in this case). If you take a Fire Godlike it can be worth it because Fires of Darcozzi Palace, Flame Shield and Battle Forged should stack with double retaliation from shield + armor or helmet. You should use a Ring of Searing Flames, because combining Combusting Wounds with a lot of hits is a good way to use all those weak but plentiful hits. Wreathing FLame does not stack with Flame Shield by the way and is superweak. Edit: and then there's Sacred Immolation of course. Spelltongue does not prolong Sacred Immolation. I guess it's because it's implemented differently than buffs. It's a bit like a Foe-only-Chillfog you carry around with you and that also wouldn't profit from Spelltongue. You forgot that crits with Sacred Immolation are powerful because the 20-30 is base damage. If you also get Merciless Hand + other crit damage mods you will deal a lot of damage when you crit. THings like Zealous Focus can help to crit more often - same as Distant Advantage (wood elves) because SA's radius is so big with enough INT that enemies at the edge of SA will get hit with bonus ACC (which stacks with everything) - or Fighting Spirit (humans).

Always the hardest part.

However, taking the sneaky route and only fight when you can't avoid it or use Shadowing Beyond (and the Cape of the Master Mystic) can also be a lot of fun.

I had 17 DEX. Maybe that's a reason why I thought I saw no recovery. I also found another possible reason why I can't see recovery from time to time although there should be a tiny bit left: My computer and the graphics card are rather old. In fights with a lot of combatants and/or graphic effects (blights, whisps and stuff) the fps go down so massively that display of recovery can get skipped entirely. Glad that the calculator works properly. Awesome stuff! It already helped me to spare a lot of time with a max-DEX-chanter build I was toying around with. Sooo convenient...

Well with expansions installed you can now go to Twin Elms, buy your preferred stuff and then do WM I and II. It's kind of quirky, but that way you can enjoy your favorite gear a bit longer. Before the expansions came out I felt the same. I still fell a bit angry about Acuan Giamas (morning star). One of the best weapons in the game (especially for rogues) - and it comes sooo late. It's a shame. Same with the superb Daybreak (morning star) that you can find right on the way to the last fight. It feel a bit like a slap in the face if you are a fancier of morning stars and then the two most awesome ones can be found around 5 minutes before the game is over...* * and another good one can only be bought from Azzurro, that "King of Random" of Eora...

Draining axes don't matter when you look at health. They only heal endurance. It's not the lack of endurance that could make this build a bit unplesant to play in a solo game (you will get targeted and hit a lot) but the low health (compared to other melee oriented classes). I tried another rogue build with max CON and MIG, but used a shield and retaliation and stuff - and even then the health loss was not really manageable - except if I used Infuse of Vital Essence a lot. Then it was doable but still a lot of fuzz. I canceled that solo run... If you level up you get all your health back by the way (or was that Tyranny?). @DR <3: The fighter gets Constant Recovery right from the start, that's true, and thus spares a talent point - but Constant Recovery is less powerful than Veteran's Recovery. If you want the fighter to be the better "regenerator" you'd have to take Rapid Recovery as well and that would cost a talent point, too. The good thing about the rogue - if you want him to play as "behind enemy lines" character - is that Escape comes quite early and it pushes your deflection quite a bit. The overall squishyness is the downside once Escape runs out. Charge is the better ability of course, but it comes at lvl 13. This would be too late for me to build a whole concept around. If you can manage to operate behind the lines without being targeted by a lot of enemies then I guess this rogue can be quite fun and effective. Because against one or two enemies he will easily stand his ground with this healing and also his monstrous fortitude (preventing long disables). But for a solo game I guess there is no rogue build which can do a face-off most of the time without resting a ton - because rogues lack deflection and health as well as CC (disables) and consistent AoE damage. I have the same problem with fighters though, but to a lesser extend.

They also have Llengrath's Safeguard which does the same at 50% endurance, they have Arcane Veil which makes you, esp. in combination with Wizard's Double, untouchable in melee. I don't see the need for even more abilities around this.. But Grimoire Slam is really bad after the early game if you don't work with high MIG and crits, I agree. It doesn't work as defensive ability at all. 2m push is weak, too.

You can do that blunderbuss-trick. But it's still less effective than to use your phrase-points on a more powerful invocation than Hel-Hyraf. Except you have other party members who can make good use of DR reduction - like others with blunderbusses or spells with a lot of tiny hits, like Mind Blades or Blast. All other party members would profit more from Killers Froze Stiff for example, because a spell will do more damage with a crit than with more DR bypass. I never tried if Expose Vulnerabilities stacks with Hel-Gyraf to be honest. If it does things become interesting. Then I would def. use a wizard with Blast and The Golden Gaze in combo with Hel-Hyraf + Blunderbuss and I would also consider giving Pallegina blunderbusses.

Potions of Infuse with Vital Essence work the same as the spell, yes. A fighter (or paladin) with 10 CON and a rogue with 19 CON will end up with nearly the same health. It's a bit sad though that a rogue has to invest so many points into CON to be as sturdy as a fighter with 10 CON - not to speak about monks or even barbarians. I don't understand why OBS did this to the rogue. If rogues only were flimsy thieves who do pickpocketing all the time then maybe OK, but rogues cover a big variety of possible professions, from little thieves to burly doormen or bodyguards. No idea why OBS gave rogues such bad starting values.

Good luck with that.

Cool - funny amout by the way.

Same goes for rangers with bows. Rangers can do more stuff with bows than other classes while wizards can do more stuff with implements than other classes. Where's the problem? If OBS would have also invented some mechanic around backstab being better with concealable weapons like daggers and stilettos then rogues could do more stuff wth daggers than other classes (sadly, OBS didn't do this so backstab is best with a two hander... ). I can't see why this is generally a bad thing. That, on the other hand, is a nice idea.

I addressed that, too - and showed why it's not a good idea. It would have to scale in order to be of any use later in the game and it would also be boring because you can't alter it in any way. With implements you can determine how you blast works to a certain degreee and that adds options which is always good. The class of wizard is by no means railroaded. It's one of the most versatile classes in the game. Just because there are two talents around implements doesn't mean you have to take them. Not taking them doesn't gimp your wizard. They just turn him into a unique implement user like a ranger's Twinned Arrows make him a unique bow user. I guess you don't want to take away Twinned Arrows from the ranger because it railroads him into bow usage? That is an approach that wouldn't work well - because constant healing would allow you to abuse this system. Without any health mechanic left there is no limit to your endurace as long as you can heal. So you would have a ton of uses per encounter as long as you have some sort of healing - which would break the game. You would have to detach endurance from "hit points" in order to make this work - and that would be the same as a mana pool (named endurance). PoE and PoE2's base restriction of usage is per encounter or per rest - and also some limited resources like phrases, wounds or focus which can be refilled in combat. And there are no cooldowns (which I am very thankful for because cooldowns are an awful mechanic - look at Tyranny). So far PoE's resource system works quite well after all those patches.

Using what? Your clipped-off fingernails? Your spit? Wizards already have Arcane Assault 2/encounter which is a very powerful attack given that it's raw damage and you have it from lvl 1 on. It's totally fair that wizards have to use an implement in order to profit from blast. But it has benefits, too. Because all spell chances (Golden Gaze's Expose Vulnerabilites for example) or on-crit effects (stunning, overbearing) carry over to the Blast's AoE. The chance to proc a spell chance is very high with Blast because you will hit multiple enemies with one shot. Without an implement you couldn't profit from that. It would just be a weak ranged AoE attack that would be of no use in the mid to late game. It doesn't sound like you want wizards to get nerfed, so maybe you didn't think through your logical chain of reasoning. Giving wizards Blast for every ranged weapon would make them the superior ranger - so that's not an option. I agree that the grimoire looks kind of stupid with certain setups. Dual wielding or using two handers (except implements) will remove the grimoire, but one handed setups look kind of silly if you are wielding a mace and a book. Or another example: I'm playing a wizard with Novice's Suffering at the moment (quite nice with high MIG + Citzal's Martial Power) and instead of using two fists he punches with one fist and one grimoire... I mean I also use Grimoire Slam with this guy (first time I ever use this - actually it's not that bad with high MIG + Citzal's Martial Power, too - same as Arcane Assault - high base damage + high MIG and crits lead to high damage numbers) and there it's ok of course - but watching your burly wizard (in hide armor) punching enemies with his book all the time seems a bit weird. Like a granny slapping a thief with her handbag. A simple option to switch off grimoire display would be nice. Like they are doing with helmets.

I don't think it scales. What you could do is to combine it with a multi-retaliation setup (item + shield) and Scion of Flame, adding Fire Godlike, too and combine it with a Ring of Searing Flames. All retaliations (item, Supper Plate, Battle Forged, Fires of DP - maybe even potion of Flame Shield) then would stack and cause up to 4 or 5 retaliations with every hit you take. A chanter with Myth Fyr is very nice here, too. If you cast Combusting Wounds around you and get hit by mobs this will melt them quickly - especially later on when combined with Sacred Immolation.

An additional slot for another arquebus or Runner's Wounding Shot mean nearly the same damage - so you can totally do that.

Yes, Dragon Thrashed completely stacks. The game might become too easy once you hit lvl 9... As Livegood118 said, blunderbuss + lash is not an optimal choice. Although lowering enemies DR is the right approach instead of stacking DR bypass (lashes don't work with DR bypass). An arquebus would still be the better choice. Hel-Hyraf is a rel. weak invocation. I often use my Pallegina as total alpha striker like so: - FoD - Wrath of the Five Suns - Prestidigitator's Missiles - Intense Flames - Scion of Flames - Arms Bearer - Penetrating Shot - Runner's Wounding Shot - arbalest with burning lash - 2 arquebus with burning lash (one of it the marking one - works great with Coordinated Attacks) - Cloak of Minor Missiles - Ryona's Vambraces - Coil of Resourcefulness - Sacred Immolation She can then do the following: start with Wrath (Sworn Enemy), targeting the toughest foe. This will do around 100 -130 damage most of the time. Then I will use the arbalest with FoD on the same target. Often that shot will crit, causing prone (all arbalests do that) and dealing > 100 damage, then Prestidigitator's Missiles (often 60-90 damage), then the last two arguebuses with Runner's Wounding and FoD (also over 100 dmg). The last arquebus I keep firing with because the marking stacks with Coordinated Attacks and gives a fellow +20 ACC. I equip her with heavy armor because it doesn't matter much with this setup and because she wants to get near enemies for Sacred Immolation. In tougher encounters I like to use Minor Missiles from the cloak as well since they do a lot of damage with Sworn Enemy and stacked DR bypass. Missile scrolls also work fine. This setup is a very good alpha striker. She can take out threats in seconds (except dragons who need a bit more attention ). If you don't want to stack Dragon Thrashed you might take this chanter into consideration which I tested after toying around with MaxQuest's speed calculator: Chanter with Sure Handed Ila and Hold-Wall or Borresaine and max DEX and PER: - wood elf - arbalest (Hold-Wall) or - war bow (Borresaine) - Sure Handed Ila & any tier-1-phrase - Outlander's Frenzy - Champion Braved the Horde alone - Killers Froze Stiff - Gunner (when using arbalest) - DEX 20 - rel. light armor A chanter with this setup can shoot with little to no recovery rel. early in the game (Outlander's Frenzy helps and stacks with Ila) while also buffing other ranged teammates. One idea is to get phrases quickly in order to chain Killers Froze stiff while stunning (Borresaine) enemies or causing prone (Hold-Wall). You can paralyze-lock enemies pretty early in the game with this. With the arbalest the shooting speed is surprisingly fast with Ila, Gunner and over 20 DEX - comparable to a two hander, wielded by a slower guy in heavy armor). The good synergy with another chanter who uses Dragon Thrashed is that paralyze lowers reflex a lot and Dragon Thrashed targets reflex. Later you can start the chanting with Myth Fyr, add some revolutions of Ila + tier-1-phrase so that your phrase counter reaches your cointer limit pretty fast and then repeats with Myth Fur. This way you can make sure that Pallegina and others can add lashes to their alpha strikes - be it spell or ability. And later on, after cycling through your Ila/tier-1 phrases, when your and Kana's phrase counters are full, you can choose to use a damaging invocation with Myth Fyr again if you want. You have to adjust the phrases from time to time to make sure that the timing is right. I don't mean that you should switch chants but arranging your song like so: Myth Fyr - Ila - tier-1 - Ila - tier-1 (repeat so it fits nicely with the invocations you are aiming for). Myth Fyr will add quite the damage to Pallegina's alpha strikes (30% due to Scion)! The advantage of such a build is that you are more flexible and do more for party members than pure Dragon Thrashed will do. For example a Blast-Aloth will love Sure Handed Ila and mass paralyze. And it's fun, too. Chaining Killers Froze stiff can be very powerful. In later levels you can choose to use Champions once Outlander's Frenzy wears out in order to maintain very high attack speed. You could also think about using Myth Fur more frequently - you will have to test out yourself. If you add a burning lash to your weapon and also take Scion you will have a permanent +60% burn damage boost if you chain Myth Fyr properly without gap. But you'll lose "singing speed" and the counter will not fill as quickly and you shooting will be slower because Ila will not work without gap when combined with a longer phrase until late game. Of course nothing beats double Dragon Thrashed though. Wizard casts Binding Web, 2 chanters use Dragon Thrashed - encounter's basically over.

But if you have only one guy with decent lore you can just use scrolls. At least against Lagufaeth. No scroll helps against stun or prone and a priest will be the only way to prevent those if your defenses are not high enough. But then there's also a potion of (Major) Recovery - this helps a lot in such cases. You don't need casters for that. Criticism is always justified as long as it's constructive. Ranting all over the place with exaggerations is not. It's understandable and it mght also be relieving, but one should expect some nudges and clouts in response. I agree though that those auto-stunners like Skirmishers and Phantoms shouldn't proc stun effects on grazes. Things like spell chances (x% proc chance on hit or crit) also don't work with grazes and it would be only fair if enemies' "spell chances", even if they are 100% of all hits and crits, wouldn't work on grazes (of the initial hit roll).

Another thing: enchantments like overbearing or stunning do increase DPS. They lower enemy's defenses which is the same as an increase of ACC (for every party member who attacks that enemy, but let's put that aside). So one could put that into consideration as well when calculating DPS. But I know it's hard to do because second hit roll and durations and stuff.

A less provocative title would have helped a bit I guess.

Very nice!

I like those nasty stunners. Skirmishers, Phantoms, Banshees, Lagufaeth and also Corrupted Druids and Blights and whatnot. It feels especially good to start an encounter with disabling + clipping them first. Ogre Druids also got much hate in the past for using Calling the World's Maw and Plague of Insects, same as Delemgans and especially Adragans ("Hello petrified, tell me how you're doin'!"). Because they can use spells the player can use. How dare they! Usually those complaints will come from players who don't know the mechanics yet and get frustrated because they get owned by those enemies - although the rest of the game feels easy for them. They don't know how awesome Fenwalkers are and will never use a mountain dwarf because they think "Hale & Hardy" is totally useless. Of course it can be a shock for inexperienced players to get disabled so hard and then bite the dust - but as I said it feels especially rewarding if you finally manage to overwhelm them. And for me it's more like "disable first or suck" instead of "save or suck". Why can they get off their disables although you start the fight? I mean how frustrating must it be for an Adragan to stand around at some random crossroads, scratching his stony butt - and suddenly get his head blown apart by a paladin's arquebus shot with Flames of Devotion? That is really evil save or suck I'd say - he didn't even see it coming.