MasterCipher

Obviously there's story implications, but the only thing I've noticed reward wise was the Hylea food. Do any stat bonuses come over for pool sacrifices or absorbing souls from the machine etc?

If you want an unusual, narrow build - you can increase your melee DPS by going 3 INT due to the weird way wounding works. 2 of the best weapons in the game both inflict wounding and the tusks have higher base damage than both of them. You'll gimp your spell duration and AoE of course but it's viable.

It's hard to predict. Damage-wise looks good in the tool tip but I was rarely successful with it. The lvl 2 priest ice beam is a good bounce spell to practice with where you won't kill your team. If you can get that to not hit your people maybe you can get lighting to work. Also maybe if you have high reflex/damage resist/hp tanks up front that you don't care if they get hit maybe it's useful.

Off topic - A lot of new information to me about novice suffering - trying to think of a way to min-max it. Debuffs from wizard: with combusting wounds and exploit weakness Barbarian carnage or druid with avenging storm ?

Not related to the most recent question, but it's an effective micro tactic to maximize the damage from Ectopsychic Crush, which has the highest DPS potential by far of any Cipher ability. Use Going Between (fast cast) on a tank, offtank, or ranger pet to maximize the beam - he should be able to survive disengagement attacks. There are other +movement options like gear/talents/and other abilities but +3 seems to be plenty. You can also air drop a summon behind enemy lines to anchor.

I play on POTD with a Cipher MC and all mercenary party. All my chars have 18 MIG/DEX/INT and 3 RES. I micromanage combat and my cipher has done twice as much damage as the 2nd place character which is a monk. It's rare a fight lasts long enough to get off a chanter invocation. I love the mechanics in spite of the quirkiness, but am hoping combat is more challenging in POEII (I'm not in the beta).

I always pick that the fire chant as soon as I hit lvl 9. If you run an offensive party, the overall dps is higher than thrashed and more damage for a cipher a cipher = higher focus. The damage boost also adds to spells and abilities (except dots).

Ciphers abilities aren't considered spells but they feel like them and they play more like hybrids. They have fewer abilities than casters have spells but they have some unique abilities and don't need to rest to refresh their abilities.

With a chanter's flame lash chant, Cipher silent scream is okay (can crit for 150 4m rad), but their foe only beam is even better, can crit 100 damage every second. Beam is passive so you can melee or silent scream or whatever after you get it up. Priests (stacking dots), Wizards (prismatic wall, blast pike spell or blast implements), and Druid (stag form w/ the lvl 8 lightning buff) have some powerful AoE options too. All 4 of these classes can spike higher dps than the chanter dot, but the problem is you have to press buttons and time things.

I always run a chanter with chant that adds a 25% flame lash. Lash talents add 5% to to this. If you choose scion of flame you get 5% + 5% = 10% to base damage, which I find useful for any character in my opinion with high base damage weapon or spell attacks, especially if they're fire based.

If I were to max that exploit, I'd go with a soulbound weapon with a damage proc. That one dagger that procs FoD could be interesting with the the the fire or corruption talent paladin order, but not sure they ever fixed that dagger.

You get 1 or maybe even 2 ranks of Cruel. I don't remember, but no Aggressive.

(POTD) Have done as Cipher using antipathic field w/ bow and Ranger w/ bow and bear companion. Ranger had to bottleneck on bridge. Cipher was harder, took a lot of luck. You can start fight by having Calisca using knockdown on Odema, one of his guards, or Heodan - which makes her leave the party but they keep attacking her.

I have a stag ranger and think for overall dps its far greater than other animal types. Your Tidefall barb seems like a great synergy for inflicting damage over time which the animal companion needs in order to maximize it's damage modifiers.

The captain's hat triggers on my priest when he 'hits' my paladin wearing the captains hat with inspiring radiance.