MasterCipher

Damage Type can go a long way boosting your focus gains. Avg base DR in game is 9.21 best to worst damage types: 1 crush/pierce 8.14 2 crush/slash 8.25 (Pollaxes) 3 crush 8.71 (just by itself is better than slash/pierce) 4 slash/pierce 8.79 5 corrode 9.04 6 burn 9.14 7 pierce 9.45 (worse than baseline) 8 shock 9.7 9 freeze 9.87 10 slash 10.31 The difference between 1st and 10th places is 2 points, which may not seem like much at first, but the game calculates lash damage (like weapon enchantments) as a % of base damage, against 1/4 of DR, not modified by damage penetration. Example, your base damage is 20, you have a 25% burn lash, use vulnerable attack, and attack an enemy with 10 DR. Your adjusted base damage will be 15 (20 - 5 instead of minus 10 b/c of vulnerable attack). Your lash damage will be 2.5 (5 - 2.5, vulnerable attack is not used). Total damage = 17.5 If the enemy is weak against fire, DR 4, lash damage would be 5 -1 = 4 for a total damage of 19. This still doesn't look that exciting on paper, but when you start stacking damage modifiers, MIG in particular, it's significant. Every weapon has 14 enchantment slots. Legendary enchantment 8 Weapon lash 2 Durganize 0 Pick a weapon that has 4 or less in other useful enchantments or throw on Kith Bane for 4 Enchantment costs (not comprehensive): haste, stunning = 3 annihilation, marking, coordinating, vicious, wounding, most things = 2 Soulbound weapons can't be durganized or enchanted with lashes which generally holds them back DPS wise, however StormCaller and Steadfast deserve special consideration. Stormcaller deals Shock/Pierce, which wasn't averaged, but you can eyeball the 2 columns and the base synergy is really good; if something is strong against pierce it is usually weak against shock - let's call call the avg DR 8. But Stormcaller debuffs shock DR by 6, so it's DR is more like 9 - 6 = 3 and of course you boost it's base damage by 20% taking the Heart of Storm talent. The proc is good for all classes, but for a Chanter, but it is a radius and not a cone stun, actually making it superior to the normal invocation. Steadfast, the proc is a level 6 druid spell with a high 15% chance, which can crit for a brutal 150 damage. If a Skaen Priest wears gloves of spiritual power and dual wield Steadfast with the +1 MIG hammer (maybe vent pick IF the FOD proc triggers an extra swing of Steadfast), the proc makes up for the weapon damage limitations. (Only Priests and Paladins get this proc). https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_gwdYqK9oOlMjdmS2JaUDhOdkU/view (courtesy of someone else on these forums)

That data is from theBalthazar's v 3.01 - 3.04 spreadsheet, which is terrific, but Obsidian made changes in 3.05.

This has been out a while and still works with the version 3.05 It's going to be a matter of personal taste, but I think the brighter shaders add contrast and give the game a higher fantasy feel. There's a video and screenshots in the link. The install is process is: download, unzip, then copy files into POE folder. http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/12/?

Yes, but I'm looking at whether or not there is a shift pattern. For example the table sequence seems to hold for the Gilded Vale Inn chest, but you have have to add +1 to the current day. For example Rymgard Cloak is listed as Day 20, but for me it is there on Day 19. Same with Overseer Ring listed on Day 9, but it is there for me on Day 8. A sample size of chest is hardly conclusive, though.

=================================== aka Murder Tusks, "Right tusk, hospital, Left tusk cemetery" =================================== Difficulty: PotD full party -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Druid -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Boreal Dwarf -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Living Lands - Colonist -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 21 CON: 16 DEX: 17 PER: 18 INT: 3 RES: 3 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 3, Athl. 3, Lore 1, Mech. 0, Surv. 18 -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Wildstrike - fire ® Greater Wildstrike - fire Apprentice Sneak Attack Two Weapon Fighting Scion of Flame Savage Attack Runner's Wounding Shot Vulnerable Attack Abilities Hunter's Instincts (a) Spiritshift Boar (a) Druid Boar Wounding (a) Druid Boar Regeneration (a) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional echantments by me; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Soulbound Wand Weapon Set 2: Greenstone Staff Boots: +2 movement boots AoE when critically hit (1/enc); available via minor Stronghold adventure Head: +5 DR and +3 MIG buff when delivering killing blow Armor: Sanguine Plate *2 INT Neck: Cape of the Cheat (+25 DEF and +25 REF buff after fast cast 8m reposition) Belt: Wildstrike Belt Rings: +5 MIG +5 RES immunity to charm/dominate 1/Stronghold turn and overseeing, 3 RES 2 dominate/rest (can swap to 1 MIG/1 CON/1 RES ring when charges depleted) Hands: Gloves of Mourning (+10 haste, +15 interrupt, +5 all defenses buff proc on kill) Likes: 200+ damage melee crits, Champion's Boon, Bless, fire buff chant, flanked enemies Dislikes: Standing around waiting for wand refresh - shifts are 10 second death bursts Stag Druid is undisputed DPS king once per rest, but this guy may as well be duel wielding Tidefalls every encounter. You CAN still cast spells, but with 3 INT you have to be choosy. Summons still last normal duration. Some buffs have generous base durations and are simply too good to pass up, like Delegman's form and Returning Storm. I recommend Spell mastery of Talon's Embrace, so you can quickly cherry pick kills to trigger your gear buffs between shifts. Beetle shell is a commonly overlooked very good spell, superior to withdraw in many ways. You can even drop it on your tank to extend his Health (not endurance) by 100 per cast. Fire god-like, barbarian retaliation, and Binding Rope still trigger and enemies continue to attack him, which is usually what you want so he/she can resume attacking them back. Taste of the Hunt and Runner's Wounding Shot, just like the wounding tusks, benefit from the bugged, reverse mechanics of INT, so Taste adds a quick 40 raw damage in a mere 4 seconds to your primary murder tusk attack. If you're exceedingly fond of cruelness, you can caste petrify then immediately follow up with murder tusks, but please adjust the Likes number above upward. If something lives long enough to die from wounding, runner's, or taste after you've reverted to mortal kith form, it triggers your gear buffs. Sanguine gives you 2 frenzy procs and it actually makes sense on this build because you shift after proc and still have another proc for later. Unrelated, but wearing on a barbarian doesn't apply greater frenzy /sadface. If you are still looking at this build thinking 3 INT is bat guano crazy on a caster, feel free to have your priest cast Salvation of Time. And if this isn't crazy enough for you, you could have your Cipher cast Wildleech on this guy and hope for the 1 in 6 chance it lowers your INT to 1. Druids have low base accuracy in kith form, but shifted those tusks are +20 ACC, so suck it Mythical Soulbounds!

Thank you for quantifying Death's Usher! I always felt a 2 MIG race that can wear a help was better offensively. If DEX and INT are important to a caster build who doesn't take a lot of damage, and you plan on wearing the best helms on other toons, I like it.

If an enemy has 300 HP (which is on the high side), it would have be at 30 HP or at less. If you have heavy hitters, many enemies will go straight from above 10% health to 0. If your hit deals 20 HPs, then a crit could finish off the enemy 1 hit sooner. Bloody slaughter increases the chance of converting a hit to a crit by 20%, but if you crit naturally, graze, or miss,, Bloody slaughter didn't make a difference. The 0.5 crit bonus sounds appealing, but for it to matter your hit would have to be really low, say 15 Hp and the creature has to be at the high end of the 10%. The high DR/HP fights where it has the most favorable conditions to shine, are beast heavy, so you'd still be better served offensively by picking beast bane. After re-thinking the extremely narrow band of usefulness, I re-speced my hirelings and my cipher MC is the only toon with it.

It's not an additional, direct bonus to focus, but the additional crit modifier to weapon damage vs near death enemies results in additional focus following the normal damage to focus formula.

Even at 10% it is especially good for ciphers who turn overkill into focus. DPS builds that have high volume low damage hits can benefit too. If you're taking it strictly for weapons, I'd take a 10% booster like scion of flame (5% boost to chanter lash + 5% boost to fire weapon lash) first and only take bs if you still have talents left to spare. That said, I run an extremely offensive party and have it on my Cipher, Barbarian, Paladin, and Priest (Magran). IF this got increased to 25% . . . 1/4 of a 50% crit bonus averages out to a 12.5% damage boost overall and would make it nearly mandatory for any serious dps build and I would definitely make room for it on my Druid and Chanter too.

I don't think you'd miss 2 PER and shift it to max your INT, it will boost your afflictions and hopefully stay within your RP. Greater focus is terrific early, but worth respeccing later (ie starting with 55 instead of 45 focus doesn't let you open with anything fight changing). Low MIG is perfectly playable with a little playstyle finesse. You may want to carry and swap several weapons with racial banes and damage types that target enemies lowest resistance. I'd go so far as to recommend having Aloth choose lower resistances for his spell mastery. Eder gets a great single target damage reduction reducer option later. With Kana's fire lash chant, your damage will be fine. Depending on the difficulty level, you may want to consider taking some accuracy boosts or defense reducers from your companions. Ciphers have some great options to self boost accuracy, but that's time and focus you could be using to disable, so you probably only want to dip into them for harder encounters.

You need to roll into the prestige range for a grand on a quest starting stronghold turn: 2d50+Prestige > 25 minor 2d50+Prestige > 50 avg 2d50+Prestige > 75 major 2d50+Prestige > 100 grand 2d50+Prestige > 125 legendary If you are gunning for lower tier items, be careful not to overshoot too fast. I've done this and had to let stronghold attacks destroy my upgrades then rebuild them.

Cladhaliath spear with Marking, Coordinating, superb, and beast bane enchantments. Paladin with Coordinating Attacks can duel wield and provide +30 accuracy to nearest ally.

If you are trying to optimize breaking the game: 5 chanters + cipher for phantom foes, recall agony, and body attunement - pulls ahead of a priest buffing MIG. The downside is you have to press buttons.

Magran will be a better caster because of their incredible level 8 symbol, but Skaen will boost your melee if that's your playstyle. I do party builds, but think the innate dagger accuracy with drawn in spring and damage consistency is worth using even though you don't get the 10 accuracy from the talent. Steadfast procs are very fun and worth swapping to for fire or slash vulnerable fights.

I use a wood elf Stormcaller chanter with beast and wilder bane stun warbow and confusion warbow with 16 base DEX. Stormcaller sets up a shock druid very nicely. This is slightly off topic, but useful for playing any party chanter. Even at higher levels, you may want to consider opening with low level chants so you can quickly get off an invocation. For example, you can load up 2 ogres in 10 seconds (2s x 5 = 5 invocations). This is made easier if you bow pull and run back to where your party is waiting. Duration by chant level : 2s, 3s, 4s, 6s Linger by chant level: 3s, 4.5s, 6s, 9s

Having come back to the game in prep for POE2 and booking up properly on lashes. Cipher Weapons I used to be big on ranged weapons, but if you like strategizing for risk/reward, I think the melee payoff for damage output and focus gain is worth it. Duel Bittercuts are great, but you have to wait a long time before you can clone a legendary with the mold. Same is true for duel wounding daggers, but worsened by fact that wounding doesn't generate focus. You don't need duplicate Tidefall, but the damage mechanic itself for wounding doesn't work as intended - more INT results in less damage and a Cipher can't afford low INT. Knockdown and Annihilation greatsword is solid all around, but the prone affect is short and redundant for most parties and obviously useless against prone immune. Firebrand gloves, quite frankly are top weapon dps for cipher. It's "only" Damage III, but the base damage is much higher than a regular 2 hander. Damage modifiers benefit significantly from higher base damage. I'm hoping scion of flame results in the base damage being boosted by 20%. Either way, Firebrand is available early, but the drawback of course is you only get 3 uses per rest. This is worth doubling to 6 with the helwax mold. Weapons 2 and 3 are Twinsting and the haste quarterstaff from floor 3 of endless paths (haste + legendary + flame lash - you can't squeeze these enchantments on other 14 slot 2 handers and you can't durganize soulbound). The qstaff lets you hit 0 recovery with Time Parasite in padded without gloves of swift action. You won't hit 0 with Firebrand, but the damage makes up for it. Question on duel wielding, if you kill a target with the primary hand can you attack a new target with the offhand without having to wait to swing the primary again? Basically, I'm curious if there's a loss in DPS if you kill with your primary swing.

POTD is the only difficulty I've ever played, typically full hireling parties. When I first started, I tried high RES and CON builds, but now I only put CON on my Barbarian. I actually like to micro status afflictions. Opening with confusion, right angle pulling, disabled monsters, and the occasional summon sponges = not much incoming damage.

Just because war bow is not the fastest doesn't mean it isn't good. War bows have max range and hit the hardest of ranged weapons that don't require reloading. Reloading takes so long it causes sustained DPS to plummet.

Thank you Boeroer. I feel like I need a tutorial in lashes. The negative is that there is no minimum damage so they can be totally reduced to 0 by DR. However, I vaguely recall strength and damage modifiers somehow benefit them more than base weapon damage.

Is all elemental weapon damage considered a lash? Is the base damage of Bittercut's corrode/slash considered a lash too, or just the 25% weapon enchantment, chanter chant, and Flames of Devotion? If so, vulnerable attack won't make much sense for me, since I don't get hit enough for retaliate focus.

War Bow which you mention in your OP, is 125 frames unbuffed compared to wand's 85 frames (30 frames = 1 second). The primary weapon, wand, is tied with hunting bow as the fastest ranged weapon (I'm not counting Boerer's crazy fists).

After learning about the curoc wand shortcoming, I'm finally on team Bittercut - plus I couldn't fit all the enchantments I wanted on any ranged weapons. But if you want to go ranged, I'd recommend Stormcaller. This is a mix/max damage/focus/control/buff build that unabashedly taps into Cipher OP potential. Human MIG 20 DEX 18 CON 3* INT 18 PER 15 RES 4 *Yes, even on a padded wearing melee because you should be meleeing from the outside of your tank and disable before destroy. Nonetheless, priest & druid can AoE buff stack +12 DR every encounter, so with the gear below you can hit 30 DR vs slash. Also, you can give your chanter field triage and lastly, there's 2 CON food a +5% endurance talent for MC 2 MIG/CON brothel buddy. While there's only a 1 in 6 chance, wild leech can give you +10 CON. focus whip damage whip 20% corrode talent duel wield apprentice sneak attack vulnerable attack savage attack 10 focus: confuse (abusive way to start fights), charm, mindwave, eyestrike, antipathic beam (good damage in its own right, but also increases other beam damage) 20 focus: mental binding, phantom enemies, recall agony (awesome on paper, but mostly just for bosses because everything dies too quickly) 30 focus: ectopsychic crush (supremely lethal) , pain link 40 focus: pain block, stun + raw AoE damage (bread and butter), wild leech (I think you can still cast on your own party summons and have them watch from behind), mind lance (quick finisher), go between 50 focus: tactical meld, detonate (very high AoE crush damage on explode - not sure if explosion still gives you focus back), borrowed instinct 60 focus: mind plague, amplified wave 70 focus: time parasite (you already hit 0 recovery with Outlander's frenzy but this is good when it when that wears off), stasis 80 focus: reaver blades (put this on your barbarian and you can't spend focus fast enough), defensive mindweb (an I win button) x2 Bittercut legendary with corrosion lash/Twinsting 2 PER, 0.1 flank damage padded armor with retaliate 3 MIG helm with retaliation 2 INT focus neck 3 DR bypass, 5 DR v slash, and 5% miss to graze conversion gloves 1.8 movement when health above 75% and +21 interrupt when below belt ring with the 1 use per stronghold turn buff and passive overseer 3 DEX 5 reflex 20 def v stun+prone ring beam proc boots 1/encounter when crit If MC: donate Devil to the blood pool, 0.3 crit faction talent, 1 MIG boon talent, 3 MIG stronghold rest, 2 MIG + 2 CON brothel buddy, 1 PER quest talent, 1 PER + 1 INT + 1 RES quest talent, 0.1 crit quest talent

This "Laser Pointer" build compliments a Paladin's unique stacking buffs and single target accuracy with a ranged marking weapon and attributes, talents, and gear that deals decent, consistent DPS, but more importantly, is capable of giving your primary status afflictioner or damage dealer +36 accuracy. Darcozzi Dwarf, Boreal MIG 21 DEX 17 CON 4 INT 18 PER 15 RES 3 Flames of Devotion accurate aura Liberating Exhortation Coordinating Attacks Sworn Enemy Inspiring Triumph Sacred Immolation Abjuration Outlander's Frenzy crit aura Inspiring Exhortation Penetrating Shot wilder bane Scion of Flame Dangerous Implement Marking Wand/Silver Flash Robe, durganized with 2 INT 4 MIG unbending helm 3 PER 1 stealth aura neck 5 acc gloves/firebrand 1 DEX quick switch belt bartender ring for 20% damage vs spirits and vessels overseer ring/dominate ring stalking boots

I didn't know that burn had to be first for the scions of flame to work. I figured it would work if the target had lower fire damage resistance.

I'm min-max offense minded around synergy. Barb has 18 CON, everyone else has 3 base CON. Everyone has 3 RES. Barb DR, and this party's ability to disable everything with statuses makes both those stats fairly irrelevant. 5 hirelings Barb, pale elf dueling vial loner lance and the club that debuffs RES by 5 Druid, crit orlan, stag, with soulbound wand Paladin, aumua, Darcozzi, with marking wand Chanter, boreal dwarf, with golden gaze. (I can't pass up fire lash buff chant) Cipher (MC), wood elf, with fire wand-usually opens in stealth from max range "casting" confusion Priest, moon godlike, Skaen, with little savior The 2 would-be-nices I miss from no wizard is level 4 spell master of the OP tentacle tank summon and win-button prismatic wall.