Marigoldran

Use sceptre modal to get wounds. Get 10 wounds. +10 Might. +10 Intellect with wounds. Ascend (intellect from turning wheel increases ascending time). Thunderous Blows for more Might and Penetration. Cast swift flurry for more action speed. Then cast disintegrates and amplified waves and WIN. Disintegrates with 25 might and 28 intellect are insane. A single cast almost kills dragons. (Have heralds to provide healing and summons). Without the use of Per Encounter weapon abilties, I think this is the highest DPS in the game.

Start new game, but with Port Maje done? It's so boring.

Any cipher with disintegrate and a team member with Body Blows can take him down.

Devoted/Zerker (swords with Modwyr). Devoted/Paladin (healing and tankiness) Devoted/Ranger (hunting bow- Essence Interrupter). Devoted/Cipher (blunderbuss). Devoted/Chanter (cuz every party is better with a chanter). The downside with this comp is that against certain bosses (with massive AR) most of your team is useless. You really need a full cipher to give Driving Echoes in the late game for the Penetration.

Bring a cipher with Driving Echoes for +8 pen and sabers are fine. Unfortunately, you won't get that until late game.

No, no, as in: have another teammate cipher give you Driving Echoes for missile spam.

Except you can't empower with Bloodmage. Which is what make missiles really special, even post nerfs. yes, but you can spam them more. Have a cipher give you Driving Echoes and it should be fine. Like this:

Um, yes. [Hypothetically speaking, of course].

Pure Cipher. Also, now with Wizard you can consider Bloodmage. Never run out of wiz resources. Perfect for fire for missile spam.

Why not both and dump res?

Man.

Monk. Punch things into the ground with your fists.

And that's why you have HERALDS. (Paladin that can unhypnotize Monks by smacking them). Do you see the brilliance of this? BTW, what happens if your cipher dominates a dominated monk? Does it just revert?

See video.

Exactly. Driving Echoes with Sabres does more damage. Even assuming your numbers are correct, +30% is a lot considering that your monks make 6 attacks at once. You can't hit the tough bosses consistently enough for A Thousand Cuts to kill them and Disintegrate, while powerful, is rolled against Fort. Also, the more damage you do as a cipher, the more aggro you draw, and that's a very very bad thing as you're kinda squishy Cipher is DPS in the early mid game but transitions to buff bot at high levels when the monks can take on the role. As late game Nukers, Monks can do a better job than Cipher. The problem is that before Whispers of the Wind, single class monks kinda suck.

Driving Echoes does zero damage. Well, yes, but Driving Echoes with Sabres (low penetration, high damage weapons) and Whsipers of the Wind does LOTS of damage.

It's too much micro. BDD doesn't last long enough. Cipher buffs last a long time so you can cast them and forget them for a while. Monks have the easiest powerful spammable ability in the game (Whsipers of the Wind and Resonant Touch- no worries about resources). Heralds are auto pilot. These 3 classes will pretty much never run out of resources. Also, a party of heralds, monks, and ciphers doesn't require much of any positioning (keep the cipher near the heralds for healing and give the monks Pain Block and damage buffs). The probem with priests is they use AOE buffs, which means that it's difficult to get those buffs on the monks who teleport everywhere.

You only need 1 monk with Reaping Knives to regenerate focus. Driving Echoes does more damage.

Well, yeah, but it's precisely those SSS fights and big bosses that matter. On the tough fights- the ones that matter- ciphers have no reliable way of generating focus other than reaping knives. Thunderous Report works only once per encounter. Glass cannon DPS teams work great for trivial fights and then collapse on the important ones when the enemy DOESN'T die in the first 2 minutes (or locks you down with perma paralaysis like in one of the SSS fights- I won that one with Heralds covering behind large shields as the spiders simply couldn't do enough damage to kill them).

Read again. There's two monks. One gets the reaping knives. The other gets the Driving Echoes. As an ascendant, you can spam both. The best thing about cipher is at the higher levels you don't have to do damage on your own to generate focus.

You give it to your Monks, who then use Whispers of the Wind (works especially well if they also have +8 Penetration from Driving Echoes). With high int, those knives last 45-50 seconds, which will quickly give you the focus to Ascend again.

Wouldn't the really tough fights just beat you down? If you can't kill them in the first minute or two of a fight, it's over for you. BTW, what is YOUR party comp?

Yes, but they require micro (maybe not the monk). Besides, why not bring a monk AND a herald?

Echoplastic Echo works even better with Heralds and Summons in the party. Point is: heralds make everything better.

Well that's a funny idea. A party of Divine Immolation. You'll struggle against Fire Immunes though.