TheSickness

I'm using weapons for their enchantments, thus 2 weapon fighting with Squid's Grasp and Modwyr provides resistance to my greatest weakness (Flanked), immunity to the most disabling class of Afflictions (Intellect), plus Modwyr's great DMG lash and speed boost. Knockdown is a primary attack though, so two weapon fighting doesn't do much there. If you don't use Berath's Blessings I think Squid's Grasp is affordable to buy and uncurse once you steal/sell everything not nailed down in Nekketaka + some early bounties. I had no problems with the early levels, just staying aware of positioning at all times and knocking down the right enemies can keep you from ever getting flanked. Squid's Grasp just removes all associated micromanagement. Spirit Lance AoE is good, but in the time it takes to cast it I could have popped off Concussive Missiles/Ninugauth's Shadowflame/Ect. for huge DMG and Crit rate PLUS probable interrupt/paralyze, AND gotten halfway through casting Curse of Blackened Sight. I guess I'm playing the class as a frontline offensive caster, but there's a ton of flexibility for other Fighter/Wiz playstyles. Fearless (or Wild Orlan) + DoC breastplate (easily stolen) takes care of the afflictions of Tactical Dilemma, but the coolest thing about Squid's Grasp is that the Tactician can't muck up their own Brilliant Tactician by getting Flanked no matter how much you zip around, and requires no other particular items or abilities. You could definitely focus more on fighter powers and defensive spells if you want to go summoned weapons, but then you're stuck with DoC breastplate (not necessarily a bad thing). Castia Samelia BP is what I used until I got Fleshmender. The +Deflection was useful, but better for my Paladin/Trickster with Riposte/WoTEP. I'm definitely encountering some fights that are near impossible to Flank the entire map now due to mob placement/aggro range or ultra-high will saves. Beware Ship Combat. The bane of many builds, I know, but especially bad for Tactician with ranged mobs in spread-out chokepoints, no control over your party's starting formation, and everyone who isn't currently in your party mucking things up all over the place. You likely will never get Brilliant Tactician in ship combat, though the fights aren't particularly hard for this party even at 1 Skull (or scaled). Just very annoying. This is much less of a problem at L13 than it was earlier due to key gear and plenty spell levels, and Ydwin just picked up Ancestor's Memory to make ANYONE in the party Brilliant. Enemies that shrug off afflictions easily are becoming more common, but Proccing Brilliant Tactician for even 1 rd can be a huge boost in staying power. Even without resources or buffs to burn I remain deadly with auto-attacks and moderately durable despite crappy Resolve and Con. Cipher teammate is invaluable in this situation, as always with this build.

I'm running a Tactician/Wizard (No Subclass) through mid-game on PoTD right now, and it's definitely a powerful combo with the right team. Knockdown/Mule kick are great for interrupts, and ToTV is a good backup ranged option for messing with casters. Setting AI to cast ToTV on Is Spell Caster/Farthest Target when Discipline >2 produces some viable interrupts. Proccing spell/ability interrupts takes a lot of micro even with smart AI settings though, and Brilliant Tactician does the same thing (regenerate resources) better and more reliably as long as you get every enemy flanked. Having a SC Cipher to back you up is the most important ingredient for getting Brilliant reliably, Phantom Foes has a massive AoE and only costs 20 focus. Ydwin works fine for this role, or hire a high-perception Beguiler. Rogue tanks (I'm using Eder as a SC Shield rogue and a hired Steel Garrote/Trickster with Whispers of Endless Paths) are excellent as well with Confounding Blind and then Persistent Distraction. Chill Fog and Curse of Blackened Sight are crucial in early levels for finishing the job of flanking the whole map, though I stopped using Chill Fog due to its tendency to blind my team when they get pushed around or their AI decides to pick a target inside the fog. Tekehu's Foe-only version is superior and Tekehu (especially Theurge config) is a good party pick for this build in general. Paralyze is always awesome, and Paralyzed enemies can't flank. Lesser Might afflicts prevent engagement, but don't seem to prevent flanking. Deleterious Alacrity grants immunity to Engagement, but this does NOT make you immune to Flanked. Constant Recovery negates the HP loss and then some. Get Squid's Grasp ASAP and remove the curse to gain immunity to Flanked (definitely works with Brilliant Tactician). Once you have Fearless for resistance to Resolve afflict (or pick Wild Orlan) and the DoC breastplate w/Int Afflict resist you can negate Tactical Dilemma and use a different weapon if you want, but Squid's Grasp is the most effective solution. Two Weapon fighting is recommended to always have Squid's Grasp in hand + Whatever. Fights tend to feel lopsided until you get Brilliant, but once your on top its over real fast for enemies as they get pummeled by regenerating offensive spells and constant blinding while you refresh defensive spells as necessary. Even if you never get there due to high enemy saves/too many spread out mobs, microing Knockdown/ToTV Interrupts can at least keep you swimming in discipline. I've found that engagement and actual flanking are kinda irrelevant with this team, and Tactical Wiz watcher is nigh-untouchable in melee with Deleterious Alacrity and whatever deflection-boosting spell active. Disciplined Strikes and other fighter abilities grant concentration for low cost, making you very hard to interrupt if anything does manage to hit you. Charge is a good mobility power when you get it, if you get physically trapped by a mob. Enemies resistant to Percept Afflict are annoying, but Blind downgraded to Distracted still makes enemies flanked. I believe Phantom Foes still works on these because "Flanked" is technically not a Percept afflict, though I'm not 100% sure on that one. Bloodmage seems like it has synergy, but is actually redundant with Brilliant Tactician and denies you Empowered spells and emergency resource recovery. On the rare occasions I actually run out of spells and the Cipher is unable to Phantom Foes everything on the map, I still have tons of discipline to keep Disciplined Barrage up and Knockdown/Mule Kick everything in sight, which often regains Discipline just running on AI settings. Tactician/Evoker could work, but battles are more about control and afflictions than DMG, and the loss of versatility with potentially infinite spell casts probably doesn't make up for the marginal DPS boost. Could work if you want to focus on Ninagauth's grimoire. Certain abilities and classes are totally incompatible with any Tactician build. Summons are a huge liability because they can be flanked thus ruining your Brilliant. I haven't tested all summons, but an Ancient Druid's Sporelings getting flanked definitely counts as someone on your team being flanked. Charm/Dominate can sometimes backfire (useful in the beginning of fights if there are tons of spread-out foes, same problems as summons it seems), Streetfighters are right out, Blunderbuss modal is out unless the user has resistance to Percept Afflict. Tactician/Psion seems tempting, but Psion is real weak and Wiz spells are better at interrupting multiple enemies at high Acc/Crit anyway. Tactician/Rogue is probably viable, but requires being close enough to enemies for Persistent Distraction to have an effect, whereas Tactical Wiz can just zip around at insane speed ignoring engagement while spamming spells/knockdown. Spell slots are a more valuable resource than Guile or Focus IMO. There's probably some synergy with Paladin multi and Zeal is a powerful resource, but I haven't tested it.

In addition, it is also rather massive -20 will, long lasting debuff, counts as, I think, deception (of some importance to beguiler) but not as mind (unlike Psychovampiric Shield, which in turn does not count as resolve affliction) and, given how inspiration/affliction system works, it battles against enemies with intellect/reslove weakness gets upgraded and becomes practically instacast 10 focus charm (spoiler): EDIT: btw, I just noticed that some changes are coming: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/103043-patch-120-updates-thread/?do=findComment&comment=2064427 Among other things, Whisper of Treason has range and duration reduced. Also generally hitting charmed enemies will cancel charm. That is drastic, but will put an end to some abuse (see image above). Good points, but Tenuous Grasp is still single target, and you have to hit an enemy in the first place to get -20 will on that one dude. There are also very few enemy types that are weak vs intellect afflictions if I remember. Giant Grub is a hard fight early game on PotD but I usually cast fear then DoT and heavy damage spells on it anyways instead of bothering trying to charm a stationary meatwad. I think the beta patch changes to Cipher are a huge step in the right direction (going off patch notes alone, haven't gotten a chance to mess around yet). Mental Binding's Cast/Duration ratio is much more appealing now (eyestrike as well), and Ciphers can cast Brilliant inspiration with reworked Ancestors Whatever power that used to give an empower point (awesome). Penetration has been increased for lots of powers as well, which is nice for giving at least some advantage to their damage spells. Plus tactical meld is back! Charm being broken on hit is a huge change but a welcome one for me. Forcing attack on helpless charmed enemies at the end of battles was really annoying. Hoping the changes will reduce the one-trick-pony feel and make the class more versatile, as it should be.

I ran through PoE 1 with a melee cipher before Deadfire released to get reacquainted and finish Pallegina's quest (since I'd never taken her in my party due to NPC paladins being gimped in early patches) and the White March content. I was stoked to play cipher again, tried it as my first character... and i shelved him very quickly. Even on normal at release ciphers were being outpaced in every category by every other class reguardless of stats/build. Guess I'm a weirdo who doesn't like the charm powers much, and I rarely used them in the first game. I think I took whispers of treason just for flavor, but Mental Binding, Silent Scream, Amplified Wave, Body Attunement and hell even Mind Blades were rock solid, easily competing with other casters for damage and CC while not treading on the same territory exactly. They also had significant accuracy bonuses, whereas I feel like now cipher powers in particular miss most of the time even with extremely pumped up PER and decent power level. Most spells not grazing in general is kinda frustrating, but especially so for single-target or foe-centered AOE powers, which are the majority of cipher's repertoire. Mental binding's relative uselessness via its extremely short duration relative to cast/recovery in Deadfire was particularly heartbreaking, since that was my bread-and-butter crit factory and failsafe for melee engagement. Chanters get a near-instant cast large AoE paralyze at the same level that I believe lasts longer as well. In fact, the treatment of chanter in deadfire is a great example of how to make a class that wasn't great in the first game unique, viable and balanced. I wish ciphers would have gotten similar attention. Tactical Meld was a great ability and its sad it isn't in Deadfire. The vastly decreased utility of Raw damage also hurts a lot, on top of all their attack spells having significantly less damage across the board. I've been goofing around with the "Deadfire Tweaks" re-balance mod for cipher powers that changes all of them to be 1.5/2s cast/recovery and that definitely helps with feeling "powerful," though it is a bit extreme and doesn't mesh with the feel of other caster classes at all. Plus it makes Ascended subclass way too powerful w/r/t spamming powers while ascended. Charm spells are fine being super slow, I actually hope their duration gets reduced quite a bit in a future patch as it is annoying to have 2-3 glasseyed mooks standing around waiting to get culled at the end of every fight. I feel like every damage spell needs to go back to PoE 1 levels, and cipher spells should be able to graze and/or have inherent accuracy boosts to make them unique from other casters. Currently the stat spread you need to be "as good" as a wizard is impossible. A lack of early/mid game speed boosts (wizards get Nimble basically on demand from level 1, monks have swift strikes ect.) really accentuates how building focus is a malus now rather than an advantage. Every 4-8 second casting and recovery cycle is that much more downtime from building focus, and all but a handful of powers that aren't buffs are average-slow. Only priests have worse problems with casting and recovery speed, but at least they have other roles they can fill in a party and can just chain-cast buffs or attack spells until they are out of ammo. Ciphers are kind of like paladins that can't hit the broadside of a barn or effectively support their party, or weak wizards who come to the fight when its 3/4 over already. The inspirations/afflictions are also too weak for cipher powers across the board. Take Tenuous Grasp from PoE 1: Frightened for 15 sec, Confused for 6 sec acc+10 vs will. Confused was extremely good in PoE 1, on par with Frightened/Terrified in deadfire. Still not half as good a power overall as other 1st level cipher spells, but way better than Deadfire, where Shaken is a minor defense debuff and Confused is borderline useless. Likewise, stuff like Wild Leech and Mind Plague, level 4 and 6!!! respectively, inflict tier-1 afflictions/gain inspirations. They should both be at least tier-2, and I would still pass them up even for amplified wave with prone being much weaker than it once was. I just want cipher to be fun again. I feel like game balance is mad decent after 1.1, except for my fave class :/

Sweet use of Streetfighter/X. I tried Streetfighter/Berzerker, which was definitely powerful but kinda dull since I had very few actives, just spammed Finishing Blow/Barbaric Blow - which competed for killing strikes after upgrading Barb Blow to the refund on kill. Terrible deflection due to frenzy was a problem as well. I was playing on Veteran/Scale up Everything, and I found it difficult to get naturally flanked by mid-game because there just weren't enough enemies in encounters, and they seemed to split their attention between all party members at once. POTD so far seems to have significantly more mooks, might be worth it to try again with a Streetfighter multi. Though the continuous crits and insane damage record on my watcher was satisfying, this looks like a lot more fun, plus with casting abilities to play with. Dual wielding blunderbuss/melee is great for early game, and mad flavorful. I kept wishing that full attacks let me point-blank shot with my gun so I could keep using it later on. I never thought about using sparkcrackers to trigger Heating Up. This is definitely more than just a class guide, great info dump on mechanics.

Stock up on enough Wael's Wind (booze, can be bought from several ports/bars/found in loot) to gain per-rest immunity to intellect afflictions for the party for several rest cycles. Then you don't have to worry about will or party composition and just focus on out-damaging them. Fampyrs have very high fortitude/medium reflex but no immunities (except resistance to int affliction) so target deflection or will. Even if your party is immune to charm/dominate they have tons of rogue skills and will span finishing blow and withering strike all day, so stay at full health and resist con afflictions if you can. The gravehounds that run with the fampyrs are a bigger threat than it seems, as they have Persistent Distraction. Unless you want your whole frontline constantly debuffed prioritize killing them. They are immune to tons of stuff, like poison and various afflictions. "Grave Calling" unique sabre (from Crookspur Merchant) has +15 acc vs vessels and a gnarly chill fog on kill effect as an upgrade that will make things much easier as well. Highly situational cipher power "Screaming Souls" would get plenty mileage here.