Braven

Well, it never is so drastic that you always miss. And wasting power source to slightly debuff then cast is worse then just casting the same spell twice most of the time. Two rolls of the die is better than one. And if you are lucky in the first cast, then you just saved a spell and time. Lets say you only had a 1 in 6 chance of hitting (16.6%). The example 10% increased chance to hit would make this 26.6%. Except it is not really 26.6% because you could miss with your debuffing attack making it still 16.6%. If instead of debuffing, you cast the same spell twice, there is a 11 in 36 chance (30.5%) for at least one to hit and it is possible both hit. It is extremely rare to have such a low base chance to hit and it is still better simply casting twice. Debuffs only really make sense if you will cast many spells targeting that defense after debuffing (before the duration runs out or they die). Since you are limited in spell casts, and enemies tend to die in very few hits, the best defense “debuff” is one that targets deflection so you can follow it with several weak melee attacks against a high health enemy with high defenses. Other than that one specific situation, it is better to just not debuff when the debuff amount is so minor. This is the same reason it can be better to duel-weild to land more crits vs using one-handed style’s +12 accuracy bonus. More hits also provide more opportunities to crit. Really depends how much of a difference there is between accuracy and defense to know which is better.

Well, you listed two DPS subclasses... so that is not really the optimal makings of a “pure tank”. Paladin works great with monk because they can heal and provide extra defenses and armor to dramatically increase survivabilty. Monks gain power with wounds (taking damage) so they pair well with healing classes. Kind wayfarer paladins makes excellent healers while not slowing down DPS because thier white flames ability is effectively “instant” cast. Monk, without multiclass support, are not good tanks in this game; they are best at DPS (lashes from lightning and turning wheel; rooting pain; helwalkee might; powerful fist weapon) or for pairing with casters who use duration and/or AOE abilities because they can increase INT by +15 for a 75% increase of all durations. Also, swift strikes speeds up casting time. That said, fighters can be good tanks. People often talk about the cleave damage and accuracy buffs, which are for DPS, but they also have decent tanking abilities. The stance that increases engagements, and importantly reduces damage, is very good. Combined with a medium shield’s modal ability and a class like paladin with high defenses and armor and they are really hard to kill or for enemies to ignore... but they give up a lot of DPS for this playstyle. The defense-focus builds are not talked about much is because it is over-kill given the game’s current easy difficulty and the fact there are OP items and late game abilities that can make any character of any class or build invincible with crazy high defenses. Since enemies have low health pools, the best defense can be a good offense. Dead enemies can’t hurt you, afterall, and many can be killed in a couple hits.

Paralyze of “sound of voice” invocation is strong. I made a ranger/chanter that used that chant. The trick is using dual rapiers with the modals on that provides +20 accuracy. My ranger/chanter was hitting with an accuracy of over 100 (no items but normal rapiers) at level 7 and critting constantly to trigger the +1 phrase generation of the offensive chanter subclass. Combined with high Int, you can recast every 8 seconds on average. Since most of the accuracy buffs were either single target or weapon-based, the paralyze would miss or graze sometimes, though, so it wasn’t quite the perma-stun I was hoping for.

Most of the affliction spells are not even worth casting, even if they costed no power source; simply not worth the cast time. The problem is that most afflictions only provide a very minor debuff, like -5 to a stat, and have short durations... and require a accuracy roll. Compared to what POE afflictions did, that is laughable. Meanwhile, damage spells have gotten better and are helped much more by scaling (PL). Buff spells usually have much longer durations and don’t require an attack roll, and the extra effects are useful since you can synergize. Many affliction extras are useless. For example the CON ones reducing incoming healing. Most enemies don’t heal themselves so this does nothing. The only affliction spells worth casting are ones that either charm or disables complely. The head scratching part is that there are really powerful level 1 powers, like the 20 seconds of charm cipher gets, and level 19 spells with longer cast times that do something strictly weaker, like frighten for 10 seconds. Why would you ever use something that temporarily weakens an enemy slightly when you can not only prevent them from attacking you completely, but also have them fight for you? Durations and cast times should better match the strength of the effect and the ability tier. Regarding accuracy, you could try using flail, club, or morning star. The weapon modal abilities greatly reduce defenses to reflex, fortitude, and will respectively. So hit with weapon, then hit with spell. Not so useful for AOE spells, though. I noticed that some DOT spells, like the druid ones, grazes and crits only effect duration and doesn’t change the “tick” damage (they all have really long durations anyway, so graze still lasts for like 30 seconds), so accuracy doesn’t matter so much as long as you don’t get a miss with those.

Multiclassing will be more powerful since animal companions scale the same either way and you will get more abilities and total powersource that way. Also, as others have said, most high level abilities are not worth it. For rogue/ranger, assassin is the best subclass option. The downside isn’t as bad at range. You may want to combo backstabs with wounding shot, since that ability works best with high damage attacks. The only rogue activated ability you need is smoke bomb. Ranger has a “escape” like ability later on that can be used to get out of range. I wouldn’t worry much about crits. Ranger has tons of accuracy and crits now only provide +25% damage modifer; it is not as powerful as in POE1. Personally, I don’t think sharpshooter is worth it.

Two hander certainly works. One of the best weapons is a two-handed great sword and the hardest enemies have high DR which favors large weapons. You will be kind of a jack of all trades, master of none warrior, but sturdier than most against magic, poisons, and other special attacks thanks to faith and conviction and being a dwarf. We like to refer to these generalists as off-tanks. . Basically good defense, but not the best. Good damage, but not the best, etc. You are fighting at the front but still don’t want to be taking all the hits.

Race: Nature Godlike (very important in this build) Class: Shifter / Kind Wayfarer. (Druid / Paladin) Might: 19 Con: 5 Dex: 13 Per: 18 Int: 19 Res: 3 Stats can be tweaked to your taste (they are all helpful), But make sure might is maxed since this build has a ton of healing powers. The idea of this build is that you have two “stances” every encounter; your caster stance and melee stance. We will take advantage of the fact you lose all items when shapeshifted to build on synergies. For example, in caster (non-shapeshift) stance, we can gear up completely for maximum spell power and ignore items that help melee. It is fine to lose those items because melee stance doesn’t really need things like int, for example, but your caster side benefits a ton from it. Likewise, during caster stance we can load up in deflection at the expense of melee. That means a large (or medium) shield with modal engaged and a dagger w/modal for extra melee deflection. The penalties, like lower dagger damage, don’t matter because we will never actually attack with them. Accuracy doesn’t matter much during this stance because we cast buffs with no attack roll, basically allowing large shield use with no penatly. We need to minimally cast one at the start of battle to activate nature godlike power levels. Passive healing and defensive buffs like moonwell are also good. Your low CON is compensated by druid CON inspirations, so your actual health pool is average; enough given yor healing and high defenses. After you buff up behind your large shield, you can either move on to shifter phase or let out a couple AOE Damage over time spells. Does anyone know how DOT spells, like returning storm, work for accuracy? Is it your current accuracy When each tick goes off or the accuracy you had when you originally cast the spell? If it is your current accuracy, you could cast it and the shapeshift, largely avoiding the shield penalty. The fact you can’t cast while shifted doesn’t matter because your DOT(s) will continue going on with a long duration while you are shifted. Also, all of your paladin powers work fine. Now that you have finished the caster phase, you can shapeshift and stay in the melee phase, using flames of devotion whenever you need to heal (or party needs healing). Because they have been softened up by your DOT and allies you should be able to focus them down with flames of devotion gaining the paladin on-kill benefits, like zeal regeneration and keeping everyone topped off. What makes this build OP? Shifter gives you 5 free heals, basically on the same power level as lay on hands, that cost zero ability points and no power source. You don’t really even need to use the animal forms for long. You can just shift, flames, shift back spell, shift, flames, shift back, etc for a constant stream of healing to yourself. When and how often you shift depends on how much damage is coming in. I like the bear if I think I will stay shifted for a while for the extra armor. You get these 5 free heals right at level one, along with 3 flames of devotion for healing making the early game a breeze. Shapeshifting gives plate-armor level armor with no recovery penatly. This is huge because plate penatly is much worse in POE2, particularly with the double-inversion math. When combined with paladin passive and robust inspiration from druid, you have around 15 armor as a bear. That is enough to prevent most enemies from penetrating and you keep your paladin passive defenses too. Late game, paladin gains armor passively by standing still. This will help your armor level as a human since you don’t need to move to buff or cast the long range Druid DOT spells. Druid has some of the most damaging spells when you have high might and int; Just takes a while to tick away. Paladin is a perfect compliment because the extra healing and defenses and armor will keep you in the fight while the DOTs slowly kill everything. As paladin, the only ability you will get/use is flames of devotion (and the accuracy aura). All others will be spent on the paladin passive abilities. The healer passive is particularly important because of the huge numbers of heals you push out. The best part of this build is how insane it us at level one. You get 8 heals right off the bat, the highest damage weapons, and free heavy armor without penalty. You also get a ton of animal powers, like the cat’s increased action speed, which works even when you shift away. I like going to cat early, using the speed up cat power, shift back to human and cast spells. The action speed reduction speeds up your spell casting a lot. Late game, you get great paladin passives like rhe stacking stoic steel armor. This ensures you will always get the maximum 75% damage reduction from armor. Enemies far away, just shift back to human and power thrm down with spells, or switch to a gun in your other weapon slot. Remember; you don’t need to stay in animal form. It would still be good if you used it for nothing but the free heals. Shifter powers benefit a lot from power levels. Power levels increase the base healing amount of the shifter heal. That means it works multicatively with might and the healer passive ability. It actually scales really well; better than paladin healing. Is this build FUN? Absolutely! There is a lot of strategy, which will vary from encounter to encounter, on when you shift between animal and human. You can freely shift whenever you need to heal yourself and the shift back. You can stay in animal form for a long time as the durations last a really long time if you want to kind of go on auto pilot for a while. The scaling is good with nature godlike and you get the fast attack speed, high armor, and lashes for good damage and survivalbilty. You can also stay in human form and go through all your spells with your shield providing mitigation. Regardless, you start as a caster for at least one spell to buff yourself with fit or rebust, for health and nature godlike activation. .

Nice, this looks similar to my "Eternal Flame" build idea I posted a few days ago, but you were able to flesh it out more with items and stronger fire theme.

GoldPact Paladin / Priest of Weal (or other subclasses... doesn't really matter much but this combination is the best for your personal protection) Paladin/Priest makes a very good healer which are also themselves, nearly indestructible. Even if you don't really "tank", if you are near impossible to kill or disable, that means you can keep healing without disruption. Priest has many AOE healing spells and inspirations (to cancel afflictions or buff party) and paladin has a quick casting, potent single target heal with lay on hands that only costs 1 zeal. Goldpact provides you with +4 armor. Combined with heavy armor and enemies will have a really hard time damaging you, if they hit you at all. Late level, paladin gets even more armor just by standing still; something a dedicated healer will be doing a lot of. Paladin has lots of passive defensive boosts and priest of weal gets access to the powerful wizard defensive spells like arcane veil and mirror image, in case you are ever attacked. Remember to get high might and intelligence; those are the primary healing stats. Perception is pretty much completely useless to you since buffs and heals have no accuracy rolls and you might as well hold a large shield since accuracy doesn't matter which will make up for the lost reflex if you dump it. Sadly, dumping it means not being able to see traps and hidden items, though, and you will truly be a pacifist since you will be blind as a bat and unable to hit anything even if you tried attacking.

There are a few abilities that are primary attack instead of full attack. If you heavily rely on those, you might be better off with a two-hander. Backstab with rogue is best with a two-hander since you only get one hit, so the faster recovery of one-handers don't help there and you have limited resource for future backstabs. I do miss DR; Now it is just whichever one you find that has the enchantment that works best with your build, or is the most OP. That makes a much bigger difference than the base weapon stats. A couple damage or penetration is no match to things like enchantments that reduce your recovery by 75%.

Yeah, most of the ranger skills are about trying to keep the companion alive, making you wonder, why should I even bother. The tier 1 chanter skeletons are better at tanking than the bear is. Basically, the companion is just a weakish summon spell. That pile of accuracy is so tempting but it is really fiddly to actually get them all. Crits also seem generally worse in this game. You can’t interrupt with them, the extra damage is ultimately pretty negligible, and there are not a lot of items that need crits. Or more precisely, there are a lot of OP items that don’t need them at all. I wish this class combo had something like arcane veil to help deflect opening gun shots. Those ranged crits were the biggest problem I had. They get the opening volley off before you can charm. After charm, it is just easy cleanup, though. I changed the build to recommend high CON and lowering might instead which is not needed anyway. The damage boost from it is pretty minor overall and doesn’t help your charms as much as the other offensive stats. Soul whip and crits are enough for focus, along with high dex and durations. Could also experiment with wearing armor, at least during the early game.

Yep, that has been my general thought too. I thought the companion would be able to last longer, but they will never get the myrid of insane items and buffs that an actual character earns. The gun enemies really hurt too since they will ignore your companion. I think this combination has the highest accuracy in the game but it is a novelity build. While charm is really powerful, it is still a one trick pony with bigger weaknesses than I originally thought. It would of course be really strong In party, or fine soloing at lower difficulty and could be fun for more causual play to trigger items that require a critical hit.

The echo beam, as mention by others, has strong damage, but does not help your crowd control “engine”, so I skipped it. I normally don’t have a lot of focus to spare since I charm until I run out of focus or enemies to charm. It is good to keep focus in reserve in case you need to reapply a charm; no need to burn it on a damage power unless bored. I haven’t played enough to get a guage of charm immunities. If there are some, you should get something else to deal with those enemies. For this reason, I don’t think this is a good build to use solo unless you know the game well. One thing I don’t like about Deadfire is that it encourages you to skimp out on abilities if you want to min/max. You lose out on a “talent” if you take ability that you might hardly ever use. As a result, you don’t end up using a lot of spells the game has to offer. You find the best couple and just spam them over and over instead of a diverse set of skills. It particularly rubs me bad when you get a strictly better version of a power later on, making the earlier version a worthless waste of ability points. If retraining wasn’t bugged, the best strategy would always be to retrain the earlier tier powers into passives after they have exceed thier usefulness.

I just took passives, mostly; there are so many of them that are helpful. Probably want ring leader for AOE charm later on. I find damage ones early to not really be worth it. Your weapon does just as well and gives you focus while spells don’t. I took a couple of the pet ones, but they are not really needed. The armor one is good to help them last longer. The damage is not really important. Once you have them charmed, you can take your time killing them and your pets damage doesn’t help your focus. They are really just a meatshield to distract the non-charmed enemy and buy you time to charm and build focus.

I went with the bear and stalker to try it out, figuring that he would be pretty good with extra armor. Companions are not as tanky as they used to be. Poor bear gets beat up pretty quick with his poor deflection, but he lasts long enough for me to get charms out. Some CON is certainly helpful as ranged enemies like targeting the player instead of your companion; you need to be able to eat a rifle shot or two at the start of battle. I noticed bear has zero default engagement and some enemies just walk past him. I think it is possible to get one or two with passives, but it is something to keep in mind. I tried to find choke points and used his big body size to physically block. Maybe one of the other companions would be better? I don’t like stalker with this build. Because you have to be close for the bonus, enemies are more likely to prioritize you and often ignore the companion. I didn’t know the ghost animals were immune to engagement penalties. Cool! This build really has nothing to use bond on the first several levels so I am liking the ghost animals. I don’t think wounding shot DOT helps generate focus, making that option less exciting. The heal pet spell just takes too long to cast and costs 2 bond. A much worse version of lay on hands... i would rather just get a new bear after the first one is defeated; that is a much bigger heal for half as much bond. I was so focused on ranger passives that I missed all the good cipher ones. They have an ability to add +10 accuracy to will attacks, increase casting speed, increase casting range, further increase duration of your charms... check them out! Regarding late game cipher powers; I am not that impressed by them. Also, part of the goal with this build is to find a combination that is really good from the start. Everyone is super overpowered after leveled and geared up.

If you are looking for a tanky melee ranger build, I have thought about the following build concept (though have not tried it): Stalker Ranger / Priest of Weal Might: max Con: average Dex: average Per: average Int: max Res: max Weapon: Battle Axe + Large Shield Armor: Medium/Heavy First, stalker provides added deflection and armor. Then, Priest of Weal gets all the deflection and reflex boosting spells that wizard has to have really high deflection. They also have ways to deal with afflictions and good healing spells for yourself on your animal companion. The ranger side can compensate for the accuracy lost due to the large shield and low/average perception. Now, the key is to use your battle axe with the DOT modal once on each enemy to start the damage ticking. With high might, the DOT can effectively add up to +300% extra damage to your axe attacks allowing you to do similiar damage output to a striker role, albeit over a longer period of time. Because the damage is a DOT, your animal companions merciless ability that provides +50% more damage will always be active. Because you are fighting in melee, they will also get the sneak attack and flanking passive ranger perks.

Also, I agree that there should be more Ranger builds. I actually think it is a really great class and multi-classes really well with casters since they benefit so much from accuracy and rangers have more than any other class. Not to mention the free bodyguard to buy time to cast. Also, like paladin, they have a lot of useful passive abilities so they pair well with casters who have few. Cipher is great since you can just spam a couple of the best powers all game and can put all of the “flex” ability points into ranger. Wizard can do the same since they can just use a grimiore for extra spells. Anyone have ideas about which animal companion to pick? I can’t decide which is best. I guess one of the defensive ones, like the bear or boar, but I am not sure what the “stat” differences are and I don’t have a lot of confidence that the devs balanced them well.

By the way, I plan to play with companions for the story elements (and skill checks), but just leave them sitting at the start of each zone to make combat more challenging and reproduce the feel of a solo run.

That depends a bit on if there are key enemies that are charm immune. In theory it should do really well solo because: 1) It starts out really strong. Probably among the strongest of any class combination in the early game. 2) It has great crowd control with charm abilities and your ranger pet. Crowd control is really important when soloing. In particular, the "ghost" ranger is good solo because you can recast your "animal companion" should it die and you don't take penalties when it dies... and it will probably die a lot since it is covering the tanking duties. The "bond" cost isn't really a downside because you don't have anything you really need to use your bond on anyway. 3) In the mid-late game you get the most powerful damage spell in the game and you can cast it over and over and over again while ascended at no cost. This will nearly instantly kill any enemy in the game. Wich spell is that? Detonate?Is the ghost pet a fast cast? It's Disintegration. It has 3.0 sec cast time but I guess if you are ranger and your Charm + Pet keep aggro you can really spam it from distance, basicelly every fast is deleted enemy. Though it's quite late game with multiclass.Yep, that one. It is better to just charm when possible since it is cheaper and faster. A charmed enemy is better than a dead one. However, it is a good option when ascended since it is free and can be used to burst down “bosses” with large health pools. Also, late game you will have items to greatly reduce casting time/recovery. Afflictions can be a problem. However, there are quite a few items that offer immunities and resistances. With a good knowledge of the game and encounters, I don’t think it would be a problem. Not sure if enemies are smart enough to ever remove your charms. If so, things could turn south fast. It really needs to be tested before I can certify whether it is solo friendly. Of course, a super tank build is the easiest class to solo since it requires basically no encounter knowledge to be successful. When I tested out the ghost ranger, the summon ability was nearly instant. With the ability to resummon, it is certainly the most powerful subclass. The little bit of deflection from stalker doesn’t compare.

That depends a bit on if there are key enemies that are charm immune. In theory it should do really well solo because: 1) It starts out really strong. Probably among the strongest of any class combination in the early game. 2) It has great crowd control with charm abilities and your ranger pet. Crowd control is really important when soloing. In particular, the "ghost" ranger is good solo because you can recast your "animal companion" should it die and you don't take penalties when it dies... and it will probably die a lot since it is covering the tanking duties. The "bond" cost isn't really a downside because you don't have anything you really need to use your bond on anyway. 3) In the mid-late game you get the most powerful damage spell in the game and you can cast it over and over and over again while ascended at no cost. This will nearly instantly kill any enemy in the game. It has a base damage of 240 every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. Add in your high intelligence and high accuracy.... this does like 2-3k damage in a single cast.... for absolutely no cost when ascended. By far the biggest danger with this build is that you have no protection against enemy afflictions, and your low resolve will make it tough to just eat them. I suggest immediately charming enemy spell casters and also use items that grant resistances to afflictions that can disable you (intelligence, strength, resolve). For solo, I would go with a race that provides resistance to one of those afflictions. Wild Orlan is probably best since it helps your perception and protects against frighten/terrify afflictions.

If soloing, the chanter summons are really helpful, otherwise I can see not wanting to bother with chanter. The other invocations are pretty weak at low level and "running out of resources" isn't a big deal in a party since it never happens. Chanter really shines at the end game because they have some really Over-Powered late game abilities. In particular, they have an invocation that grants the "brilliance" inspiration. This inspiration super-charges your fighter half because it grants you a nearly endless supply of the "discipline" power source. Almost all of the fighter abilities are "instant cast", making it easy to continually use them over and over again. You can just go back and forth using the powerful fighter "charge" ability while under the effects of that invocation. The bad part is that you won't get it until level 19... and that is a long time to wait when other combinations attain their power peak much earlier.

I mentioned this build concept in another thread, but thought I would detail how it works as a class build. I have not played past the tutorial area yet with this build, but it was pretty insane during that limited play time. How good it is depends a bit on whether or not there are a lot of enemies immune to charm powers. I plan to use it more and find out if there are any hardships farther down the road. The idea of this build is to take the super cost effective ability, whispers of treason, and use it to dominate the game from start to finish. In order to make sure it never misses, and to provide yourself a bodyguard to delay enemies, you multi-class with ranger. Rangers have a ton of passive accuracy buffs that apply to both weapon attacks and your cipher powers. Accuracy is really important with spell-casting since grazes reduce duration by half and critical hits increase durations by 50%. Also, new in POE2, critical hits provide bonus penetration. This is good if you decide to use a low penetration, but high DPS weapon, like a hunting bow or blunderbuss. As for whispers of treason... what is not to like? 20 second base duration charm, reasonable cast time, and the most powerful affliction in the game (charm/dominate), all at level 1. It was super powerful in the first game and it is even more powerful in this one. If you look at similiar powers in other classes, they are all gained at a much higher level and have a much shorter duration. Notes about charmed enemies: 1) You can freely attack them; they don't care at all, so feel free to do so when you have run out of non-charmed enemies to attack. 2) You will not gain focus from attacking your charmed allies. I recommend saving them for last because of this and always keep one enemy not charmed. 3) You will eventually get more powerful charm-like powers, but I am not sure they are ever worth the power cost. I would rather have more charmed enemies than a single dominated one. In POE1, I would use the more powerful charm spells later on just because I had more focus than I knew what to do with. However, having too much focus is a good thing as an Ascendant providing even more reason to just stick with the level 1 whispers of treason. By doing this, you can just take passives instead on other levels and use all those ability points to max out your ranger passives (rangers have a ton of passives that they want). Race: Nature Godlike is not actually that great this time because I don't think your ranger side benefits from Power Level very much. I still need to confirm this, but I think ranger animal companions scale just on character level and your main ranger ability, marked prey, is not helped at all by it. Whispers of Treason benefits only with a slightly increased duration, but you will already have a plenty long duration given your high accuracy and intelligence. Your late-game damage spells are helped by Power Level, but they already do enough damage without it. I think you would actually benefit quite a bit more from race that can wear a helm. I went with Hearth Orlan to continue the "critical hit" theme of the build. Class: Ascendant Cipher / Ranger (your choice of subclass or vanilla; they can all work pretty well if played right. I think the ghost one is the most powerful, though I am not a big fan of the idea of summoning my pet and don't really like the aesthetics. You would rather spend your "bond" power source on things that help build your focus so you don't want to waste your "bond" on healing your pet and you really don't want the accuracy penalty if it should die making this subclass perfect. Stalker can have issues with the range limitation being anti-synergistic with ranger accuracy passives likes marksman and the general goal of being as far away from enemies as possible. Picking no subclass I think is pretty reasonable option if you don't like the ghost pets) Below are the stat priorities: Might: Low Con: High Dex: High Per: High Int: High Res: Low I would personally do this mix: Might: 2 Con: 18 Dex: 18 Per: 18 Int: 18 Res: 4 Weapons: Club (only against high will enemies, due to modal, otherwise avoid melee) and either bows or guns. With guns, you can get the gunner passive for faster reloads, but currently reload time is bugged so I would avoid duel-wielding guns until that is fixed. With bows, you take the reduced recovery penalty passive ability since they use recovery instead of reload. For unique items, there are a lot of good two-handed ranged weapons with reload, so I would personally go that route. You can then benefit from the gunner passive ability fully and get a big alpha strike in for some quick early focus. Armor: Cloth (you want to attack and cast as fast as possible and you don't really need heavy armor since you will try to avoid melee and stay out of range of enemies) Accuracy abilities you want to pick up (they all stack and none applies a perception inspiration, so feel free to use an item or have a friend cast one on you) - Marked Prey (+10 accuracy. Super fast cast and no recovery. Only costs one bond and can be upgraded to jump to new opponents so that you never have to recast) - Stalkers Link (+10 accuracy) - Marksman (+5 accuracy) - The empty soul (+10 accuracy against will) - lingering echoes (increased spell duration for longer charms) - Survival of the fittest (+10 accuracy against enemies with less than 50% health) - Evasive Fire (doesn't help accuracy, but I recommend using your bond on this. It only costs one bond and gives Quick inspiration for high casting speed and also functions like escape, allowing you get away from enemies who insist on trying to engage you in melee... all while dealing damage. Particularly good to use this right before you "Ascend" since casting speed is really important then) Other build notes: Resolve is the dump stat because, well, it is generally a weak stat and we are not going to engage in melee. You don't have any self healing and don't want to be killed immediately by ranged enemy attacks, so we want high CON. Might can be dumped since we have no synergies for it, other than the general desire to do more damage in order to gain focus, but dex/per/int helps your focus enough. Your late game damaging powers are deadly enough without extra might and you have no healing (pet healing isn't really worth over just resummoning). Dexterity is particularly important for this build because of the Ascended state. With that, it is all about pumping out as many spells as quickly as possible. It is also helpful early to get your charm spells out quickly before the enemy can hurt you too much. Int is good for a longer whispers of treason duration; I am not sure if it extends Ascended or not, but if so it is doubly good. Perception is good since it really hurts to miss with your powers as cipher. You could probably drop this a bit, though, if you wish since ranger provides a lot of accuracy. However, my opinion is to just go all out on accuracy so that you can benefit more from synergy with items that require critical hits and just give this character all of them you find. The flow of combat is simple from the beginning to the end of the game. Whenever you have 10 focus, use whispers of treason, otherwise attack. If you are facing an enemy immune to charm instead try to max out your focus so you can power them down with damage spells after ascended. If facing a high will defense enemy, first hit them with a club using the proficiency modal; this will lower their will significantly. I would only do this against a "boss" enemy where that is the only way to hit them reliably, otherwise it isn't worth putting yourself in danger by entering melee and there is only one unique club in the game (and it is not a very impressive). If you get bored in later levels, you can forgo charming and just rush to ascended state and nuke with spells like detonate and disintegrate. The true power of this build is that it is over powered right from the start of the game. Other build eventually become insanely over-powered after getting higher tier powers, but this one starts out over powered and stays that way. 100% of game time over powered > 10% of game over powered. One final note: This build seems like it would work well with the beguiler ranger subclass since you are only ever spending focus on deceptive spells. That can be the most "focus" efficient indeed, but I don't like it because it is too fiddly. I don't want to have to worry about afflicting my enemies before charming them and you also miss out and the fun LOLs of nuking everything with high damage spells in the late game. Even if you never "ascend" in the early game, the ascendant subclass is still great because of the increased focus generation of draining whip and the higher starting focus.

When I was thinking about a cipher build, I came to this conclusion. The best spell they have is tier 1 Whispers of Treason and I imagine it stays insane all game long. It is super cheap to cast, being tier one, and benefits a ton from power levels for the same reason, and with high INT and critical hits you can have the duration basically last to the end of any fight. Not only have you taken an enemy completely out of the fight, but they actually help you kill the others and distract your enemies; it is way better than one-hit assassination powers that everyone likes to cry OP over, and those aren't available until late game while you have this power before you even leave your ship in the tutorial. You can also freely attack your charmed "friends" and they don't seem to mind at all. Unlike the first game, they don't turn on you when all non-charmed enemies are gone. The only bad thing I have noticed is that you don't gain focus for attacking charmed enemies, except oddly for the last hit that kills them, so you should save the charmed ones for last or maybe use something heavy hitting on them in order to gain focus. Though, I guess at the point you are killing off the charmed enemies, you don't really need focus anymore. Early on, I don't think I would bother becoming Ascendant; just charm and kill, since the damage spells are not really worth casting yet and it is better to charm sooner rather than waiting for your focus gauge to max out. Ascendants gain focus faster than others so it is still beneficial to be one. Beguiler is an option too, but it is more fiddly to make sure enemies are always afflicted properly and you miss out on the late game fun of nuking everything for zero power. Speaking of nuking for zero power, ciphers benefit a lot from anything that reduces spell casting time. --- So, here are the main takeaways: 1) Whispers of Treason is crazy powerful for tier one; how do we make it better? 2) Later on when you have item synergies and higher level powers, going Ascendant turns you into a killing machine that nearly instantly gibs everything. Neither of these require a pure cipher (the best damage spells will still be learned eventually), so you might as well multi-class and you will still be super powerful right from level 1 until the end of the game. I can see two classes that can help make the cipher even better: Rogue and Ranger. Ranger has lots of instant ways to massively boost accuracy. This will allow you to more reliably not miss with Whispers of Treason as well as all your other powers since they all have an attack roll. Remember, critical hits increase duration by 50% and grazes reduce it by 50% so accuracy is really important. As a bonus, you can also get a pet to act as a body guard, distracting enemies for a few seconds while you cast your charm spells. This allows you to lower your defenses if you wish and pump up your offensive stats to generate focus faster. Rogue has the ability to generate tons of focus at the start of battle with a big alpha strike (backstab). This can help you quickly ascend, or provide you plenty of starting focus in order to cast your crowd control. If you get in trouble, you can also use invisibility or escape to get away from enemies. Assassin is good for the alpha strikes and street fighter is good for the 50% recovery reduction which also help you spam powers while ascended. If street fighter, you are pretty much forced to use a blunderbuss w/modal since it grants flanked status needed to activate the StreetFighter passive; you certainly don't want to rely on being bloodied or surrounded. Blunderbuss however has a pretty short range, so it is a more risky, and it reduces your defenses making you even weaker if ever attacked. Personally, i like ranger the best because it is safer and more fun to play. Your animal companion keeps you safe so you can fire guns and your accuracy makes all of your power much more effective. Though you miss out on the biggest alpha strike, focus generation seems better in this game so it doesn't take long to build up focus and with passives like gunner and the one that grants you an extra hit with ranged weapons, your DPS will be quite high. It is a real bummer missing with a cipher power and wasting all the focus so I think having something to increase accuracy a lot makes the class more fun. You can get something like 25 extra accuracy with ranger instantly at the start of combat, passively. That accuracy also helps your spells and it doesn't even cost power resources, so you can still heal your pet or use wounding shot. One final note: While you mostly want to stay back with a gun as a cipher so you can focus your synergies on offensive for focus generation, I would also keep a club handy and learn the weapon proficiency. Its special modal massively reduces a targets will. For enemies with really high will (bosses), you can hit them first with the club before casting your powers (which mostly target will). Also keep a morning star handy if you like to use fortitude attacks.

I generally agree with you. Life-giver is not terrible if you just completely ignore shifting. For Example, you could create a super heal bot with something like priest/druid and just do nothing but continually cast AOE heal spells for crazy high health regeneration. Life-giver, in this concept, would be better than a standard druid or the other subclasses. It does feel bad to basically have to ignore the class defining feature, though. No reason to use it unless the battle will end in a few seconds... and at that point you probably don't need any healing anymore. Black Jacket seems to be designed to be used with a gun cycling build, to avoid having to reload. However, long recovery time from guns is no longer an issue in POE2 since there are tons of ways to massively reduce the reload time of firearms such that gun cycling guns is no longer worth the effort.

Cool, glad you had fun with priest/monk; monk is good with casters because of the might and int bonuses, along with swift strikes that speeds up spell casting a ton. I want to try a priest build at somepoint, either with monk or rogue. I like Weal since you get the arcane Veil spell for a big deflection boost at level 1, which is a couple levels earlier than wizard. Great spell for powering through the early game since the best priest spells are tier 4+. Also, I like the idea of being a follower of thr “god of secrets”; all very mysterious.