Boeroer

Everything you said in above post is right.

Gauntlets of acc +5 and Inspiring Radiance plis blessig or the paladin's aura help to produce crits.

Two weapon categories means two talent points which equals bad. You can of course use two handed weapons with a rogue. I would say estocs are one of the best weapon type for rogues. Dual wielding sabres is king, but the differences are not that big that I would say you would be gimped. Estoc or pollaxe and warbow is a good choice. Or greatsword or pike and arbalest. Sabres and pistols: also nice. I all depends which weapons you will find and how early you can find them. So in my opinion Weapon Focus Soldier is one of the best choice you can make: Tidefall greatsword, Tall Grass pike and Hold Wall (later Aedrin's Wrecker) are some of the best weapons in the game. Plus: you can get them very early. Same with ruffian: Resolution sabre, Jolting Touch stiletto, Oidrwhattheheck stiletto, Disappointer pistol - all early in the game. What use is a superduper item when you get it very late? Like the Purgatory sabre for example.

I agree - Echo is superstrong and you can get it early. That's also the reason Mental Binding is so good. Amplified Wave - with the tactic I mentioned above (I use Painful Interdiction plus Threatening Presence or the cipher's horror-Power) - is also a great damage dealer because it's radius is so big and it often crits. I just send the Barb into the fray, cast Interdiction on his head an then three times Amplified Wave. 75% of the foes die instantly - the rest goes prone. And that's not only during lame fights against wichts or something. It also works with all bounty encounters. They were just ricidoulusly easy.

The weapons I mentioned are all great - even without speed enchantm. With that they will be even better.

Right - I wanted to concentrate on the powers I use mostly. I abused Ectopsychic Echo with three ciphers and a fast running priest that ran behind enemy lines. Everything dies in seconds - really, seconds. But it also requires a lot of pausing and sometimes goes horribly wrong. Since I have access to Amplified Wave I don't use that tactic any more. Amplified Wave is superstrong when you combine it with a priest's Powerful+Painful Interdiction AND a char that can do sickened AOE. They stack, dropping fortitude by over 40. Amplified Wave then hits like a truck because it targets fortitude.

That will work. Even on PotD in 1.06 with Tall Grass my barbarian knocks enemies prone all the time. But don't waste two talent points on Brute Force + Threatening Presence as long as you have another party member that can apply the weakened affliction in an aoe (e.g. a priest with Painful Interdiction). Most foes have way higher fortitude than deflection and minus 20 will not be enough - let alone the fact that Threatening Presence can miss. If you stack weakened and sickened it's working like a charm though - especially on large mobs of relatively weak enemies.

Ok - I tested it with an old savegame in Court of the Penitents against a spectre which I flanked and blinded... . .. ... It works! Not only sneak attack and deathblows, but also deep wounds! The pierce damage is still kind of low (although I also had reckless assault and vulnarable attack on). Best hit I had was 15. After 5DR was subtracted it was at 10 - still lousy. BUT! Deep wounds added more than 16 raw damage on every retaliation. Now that's nice! Rolling a new rogue retaliation build now... :-D Next question: Do Blood Testament, Turning Wheel and Enervating Blows apply to retaliation?

You mean if the damage modifier (50%/100%) also applies to the retaliation damage? Good question. I don't think so, because these are special requirements the target must fulfill - and this damage bonus would not be applied if these req. were not checked. I don't think that the game checks if the target qualifies for sneak attack or deathblows while executing retaliation. But on the other hand... does "One Stands Alone" work with retaliation? That's another damage bonus that only gets applied in special situations - but this is on the character's side, not that of the enemy.

You may be right. I'm now playing without rogues and have the same problem. In my playthrough before this one I had the two rogues I mentioned - but that was on 1.05. Maybe these problems occured after 1.06, because with the rogues Phantom Foes worked. OR my rogues instagibbed everything before I could realise that the debuffs where disappearing.

I'm using three ranged ciphers at the moment in PotD. Here's my simple advice: Wood Elf MIG: max CON: min DEX: max PER: min INT: max RES: put rest here Powers: Mind Wave, Mental Binding, Tactical Meld AND Borrowed instinct for a whopping +40 ACC, Amplified Wave. The rest doesn't matter that much. These powers I use mostly. Tactical Meld and Borrowed Instinct for bosses. Mental Binding and Amplified Wave are just insanely good. Weapon Focus: Doesn't matter. I have Arbalests (because of Aedrin's Wrecker), Crossbows (Wendgär) and Blunderbuss/Pistol (Lead Spitter/Dulcanale) on my ciphers and their focus generation is on par. So you can take what you like best. Also had a war bow cipher the team. That also worked very well. I don't know about hunting bows. You can get a The Disappointer very early and enchant it - that's a good start for a ruffian cipher.

Put 3 points into CON, max DEX, use a light or medium armour, buy Shod-in-Faith boots from the Crucible Knight's Blacksmith and don't try to imitate "One stands alone": all problems solved.

I have a barbarian who has max MIG, DEX and INT while having min CON and low PER and RES. Still I use him as offtank with an enormous carnage radius. It's fun to watch when he swings his great sword (try the overbearing Hours of St. Rumbalt) and a lot of enemies suddenly decide to sit on their a**es for a while after they got carnaged. With the right items, you can do that. With different items: not a chance - he then has to stay away from harm. Since barbarians have such high endurance and health values, even with 3 CON he's the guy with the highest endurance in the party. The low PER and RES make him a glass cannon though - if he lacks the right equipment. I even boosted INT further with the Dunryd Demon (Helmet, +2 INT). This leads to very long durations for all debuffs, heals and buffs that he triggers. So barbaric shouts, frenzy and so on last longer - consecrated ground (from Shod-In-Faith boots) lasts very long, duration of scrolls and potions is very high, knocking multiple enemies prone is good because they lie around forever and so on. So I basically would say: Yes! Dump CON and max INT, MIG and DEX on a barbarian. Bit thats just my opinion. You can build a viable barbarian if you don't do that of course. My first one had 10 INT, 3 DEX and maxed CON, was a fire godlike and used retaliation items. Also worked well as a second tank and shouting debuffer after he found some thick armour and bolstered that even further with the right talents and items plus enchantments (Talent from Crucible Knights, Tick Skinned, Blunting Belt or Hiro's Mantle, Crush-Proof Enchantment). It was just an other playstyle. In Version 2.0, many things will be different: High CON is giving much more Endurance and Health now, PER is influencing accuracy. So the build that I'm using know and that I mentioned at first won't work as well any more.

Melee rogues require a lot of micromanagement, that's true. But they deal so much damage... To avoid waiting at the beginning of a fight: just shoot with something and then switch to melee. Boots of speed and/or fast runner also make positioning more easy.

I use my priest for buffs mostly and not so much for healing. Still i think that might is important. When you combine high might with spells that raise might even further like champions boon on yourself, then cast some damaging spells like cleansing flame, you can dish out a lot of damage. Thaos and Adra Dragon are witnesses...

It just comes to my mind that maybe it would be nice ro combine cipher's psychic backlash with the wild orlan's racial ability that raises defenses after will-attacks. That way you would raise your defenses against all enemies that attack your will defense plus stunning them. Might be nice for a (tanky?) melee cipher. So maybe in that case psychic backlash is not 100% crappy.

What retaliate ability of the cipher do you mean? Psychic Backlash? That's crap in my opinion. I don't recommed using a talent point for it. As far as I know Jolting Touch still works with carnage - not 100% sure though. You don't need the animancer boots for that. Jolting Touch scrolls are easy and cheap things to craft. My playtrough before this one had two fast running, dual wielding melee rogues (sabres and battle axes) and two ranged ciphers to trigger deathblows at the beginning of every encounter with Phantom Foes and Blind or Mental Binding - man, that was fun. I can imagine that a double team with tall grass and hours of st. rumbalt would also be nice - but nothing beats dual sabres when it comes to pure dps. Ranged rogue is a waste - in terms of fun. It's effective of course, but kind of boring. But that's just my opinion. Best autoattacker so far was/is my standard barbarian offtank with sanguine plate, tidefall/tall grass, shod-in-faith and enchantments and items that raise DR further. Seldomly goes down and just keeps dishing out lots of (carnage) damage. No special attacks needed.

Battle forged will only trigger in very tough or long fights - but then it's a life saver because of the +DR and the additional damage. Moon Godlike ist also good of course - just shifting the char a bit more to tankiness. The thing ist: when your health drops because the fight is really tough or to long then all healing will not save you. That's the time the +DR of battle forged comes in handy. ALso nice to combine with defiant armours like "He carries many scars" from Undead Raedric or Palegina's armour. You can use them if you already have the frenzy ability and don't feel the need to use the spell holding from the sanguine plate. You can't stack more than two retaliations. That is because all same effects from clothes, neck, rings, boots and so on suppress each other. The only excaption ist weapons (and shields, which count as weapons). You can stack retaliation from Hiro's Mantle + Sura's Supper Plate - or the Coat of Ill Payment + Supper Plate - or Vengiatta Rugia + Supper Plate. But you can't stack Hiro's Mantle + armour retaliation. Same thing with stat bonus: you can add bonus might from bracers and so on with the Godansthunyr war hammer - but you can't stack bonus might from armour and bracers for example. So - 2 retaliations maximum + plus battle forged retaliation, because it's a different kind of retaliation (burn, not pierce). You can add retaliation of grazed ranged attacks with some special shields and armour plus the ability of the monk. Then you would have 2 times "normal" retaliation, battle forged and 2 times ranged grazes retaliation. The retaliation of ranged grazes is not really a retaliation as the others - it's more a reflection of the shot. Since it only reflects grazes, it's not super powerful but useful against hordes of weak archers/snipers and the like who annoy you. I honestly don't know if this reflection generates focus though or profits from all these +%damage modifiers. Would be good to know. You could also combine all these retaliations with riposte if you play a rogue. Would be an interesting build, stacking all these kinds of retaliatioin - but because riposte is so bad and the ranged reflection isn't powerful either it would just be a nice gimmick build but not very powerful in terms of dps. But maybe it's fun to see all these different retaliations trigger all the time. For me the most fun with retaliations comes with barbarians (retaliation procs carnage) or ciphers (retaliation generates lots of focus).

Tanking with a barb and still doing good dps works well if you use high DR armour and shod-in-faith boots together with retaliation items and battle forged. Battle forged seldomly triggers though because you get healed all the time. You don't even need good deflection. And because of the enormous health of barbs you don't have to rest more often than other chars. A nice combination is sanguine plate plus shod-in-faith (=frenzy plus consecrated ground when getting a crit. hit) together with hiro's mantle and sura's supper plate and a sabre or some weapon that does something special on hit or crit like overbearing, draining, interfering, stunning etc because these things also apply to carnage. Use all +%damage modifiers that you can get. They all also apply to your retaliation.

Barbs and draining weapons is still good of course because of carnage. Add shod-in-faith for the win. )

Retaliation doesn't trigger draining or other weapon enchantments as overbearing or stunning, because they nerfed it. It's not a full attack anymore as it used to be. The only things it does: pierce damage, procs carnage, generates focus, always hits, gets bonus from things like vulnarable attack or savage attack, blooded and so on. So you can't use it to regain endurance. But when you stack two ret. items like supper plate and hiro's mantle or one of the two ret. armours and add battle forged, then you retaliate two to three times when you get hit. It's pretty nice if you are a low dex tank barb with high DR. Or if you're a melee offtank cipher. Also nice when you are a low dex tank monk with rooting pain and turning wheel.Maybe it also works with blood testament.

And never play a cipher.

I used a chanter as tank on PotD and it's absolutely working. Your plan seems solid. When your enemies are debuffed or not superstrong, the lvl 3 chant that does slash and burn damage as hazard is also a great damage dealer against mobs. And don't underestimate the chant that drops frost traps: when you use your tank (plus offtanks) to pull enemies towards the rest of the group, the enemy gets hobbled and damaged. Hobbled lowers reflex a lot, so when the enemy arrives a your casters, all reflex based spells/powers will hit a lot harder. It's very useful in the early parts of the game.

Do your fights last longer than 30 seconds? 3 chants at 3 seconds each plus 20 seconds duration seems ok for me. In mid- to endgame the summons die way earlier anyways. I think they wanted to nerf the abuse of summons - for example with 6 chanters you could summon an army, let one puny enemy live that punched effordlessly at your tank while your summons roamed the area till every enemy was dead. Still doable, but requires more management now.

Use "Infuse with Vital Essence" on your Wizard. The health loss during combat will be substracted from your bonus health first. If the spell ends and you have not lost more than this bonus amount of health, you will be still at 100% health. It's not a big buffer bit maybe it helps.