Ciphys

I was thinking of making my first playthrough on veteran difficulty with either a: a) Paladin(BW) + Cipher(Soul blade) b) Paladin(BW) + Fighter(Devoted) c) Cipher(Soul blade) + Fighter(Devoted) But it occurred to me that taking Devoted for an initial play-through seems incredibly risky, since we have no idea about what kind of immunities (or just very high resistances) some enemies could have, OR what weapons are available. Sure, taking one of the weapons with dual damage could probably reduce the possible headache, but that saber damage is just so juicy. Worst case would probably end up with my character whipping out her non-monk fists for some silly brawling. Thoughts?

Another defensive variant is using dual hatchets instead of a shield (each gives 3 melee deflection), or a even more defensive variant, 1 hatchet 1 dagger. The hatchet modal reduces the targets accuracy by 10, and the dagger modal gives you an additional 10 melee deflection(both modals reduces your damage by 25%, however). This effectively gives you 23 "effective" deflection against a single target melee, 13 against melee targets you have not hit... but 0 deflection against ranged/spells that target deflection(unless you hit them with the axe). What you gain however, is the massive recovery reduction that is offered by dual-wielding (-30% default, -20% from the talent). The big reduction in recovery causes them to be able to wield the heaviest Armour available without feeling too "sluggish", so I tend to run this setup on a tanks that can provide some support/utility so he can still quickly assist allies. The low damage output of the weapons might cause those type of tanks to be a bit less "sticky", as Boeroer mentioned(although I have not had any problems with that so far for the party setups I have been playing). So multiclassing with unbroken might help a bit with that. Are disengagement attacks full attacks or just primary? Have not really looked into that.

Like Yosharian pointed out; since we haven't seen the complete talent trees, it is impossible to tell how much we are sacrificing for the ability to multiclass. The top tier-abilities will be exclusive to single-classes, but we obviously cant judge how big of an impact they are going to have yet. Currently, in the beta, there are only a few occasions where I would say that picking a single class is better than multiclass( like wizard, or lifegiver nature godlike healing druid etc ), but that is subject to change.

Ah, I see. Yes that is a bit problematic since I usually use the console command for dps testing etc etc. Is there a way to rebind these kind of triggers? Since the same as you; Q is by far my favorite hotkey.

EDIT: Nvm, as Lamppost pointed out, this seems to be a built-in feature for those specific keys when you enable the console commands using "Irolls20s".

Found the source of the transcript on a reddit post dated from over a year ago(so the design decisions may have been changed): https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/5rju7y/link_deadfire_qa_session_with_josh_sawyer_1h05m/

Ya, I was hoping for either they release a list of talents that do have an effect; or just scrub all of them for a fresh start. Though I cant seem to find the exact Q&A, here was a short transcript of a question regarding this I found on another forum: Begin transcription: Will Pillars of Eternity story talents--for example, Gift of the Machine, Effigy's Resentment--be retained if we import our save? JS: The plan is that yes those will appear in some form. I can't say it will take the exakt same form that they did in Pillars 1, but our plan is to carry those over in some way that feels rewarding for making those choices. End transcription. I just would love some clarification of what "some form" means exactly.

Is there any information available on which of the talents earned as rewards for deeds/quest during the course of POE1 that will carry over with the save import feature? Specifically the talents here listen under rewards: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Talent I've only been able to find vague posts and tweets with "hints" that they might carry over in some capacity, or that the devs "wanted it to". Now that we are nearing the official release, I was wondering if there has been any more information has been made available regarding this, since there are quite a lot of stats that could be picked up during the first game(... among them, a whole 7 attribute points). This is coming from just some concern, since in the playthrough I was planning on importing, I choose to fight Llengrath(because I think it is one of the best fights in the game)... but then I miss out on 3 attribute points from Mental Prowess.. which I consider pretty major.

It does not. Passives stack with actives, but actives does not stack with other actives. Both the fighter stance and the paladin aura is sort of an "active" modal, so they go in the latter area of classification.

A question; What is currently considered the strongest build that includes any variation of the Cipher? Thank you for your thoughts!