Taudis

Well, it sounds like you just have a specific playstyle that Priests don't cater to*. Your arguments also lend more to "nerf wizard" than they do to "buff priest", seeing as even you admit that the Priest can be effective. If you feel heavily pushed towards 5x Wizard/Multi, then the issue would be that Wiz is overtuned. I don't actually think that Wiz needs a nerf but that is really more the point you're making. *Though it seems like you just don't want to play a Priest since Priest can participate in an opening nuke/cc barrage just fine.

Just randomly bashing Priests when the OP states they're having fun with one is fairly unhelpful. I doubt it's a constructive way to get your point across to the devs, either. You come across as rude and trolling. You also don't actually give numbers or examples as to how other classes are faster/better. A developer definitely isn't going to change the Priest without concrete evidence of how they're "bad".

I pretty much always have a Priest in my party because IMO every party needs a group accuracy buff and Devotions is the best option. I actually do take Litany for the Spirit fairly often and think it's in a good place balance-wise, but that's the only one. I know a lot of people have a bit of an irrational dislike of Priests in Deadfire for some reason but I'm not coming from that place. They're probably my most played class and are only beat out by Rogue because basically every Companion/Sidekick has a Rogue multi (Escape+cheap interrupts is incredibly useful and I don't mind that I have a lot of Rogue options but there is a lot). This is the issue. It's a pretty big caster issue in general because casters are kind of stuck with a pile of active abilities but it's definitely exacerbated by underwhelming effects. That was my idea in suggesting it be 0.5/0.0. What I discovered when testing that in is that it's way too far in the other direction. There's really two tempos going on here: the Priest and the buff-ee. Getting a totally free action buff basically instantly is amazing on the buff-ee (well, maybe not just +5 CON but that has more to do with the state of CON as an attribute). The Priest having to have some sort of recovery was definitely a balancing factor on that. I don't think there's a solution that is "polishing" rather than rebuilding the class. My preferred solution here would be to entirely remove all of the strictly worse spells from the Priest list (the Prayers and Blessing are awful game design and just shouldn't exist) and to give additional effects on the litanies (maybe +1 HP/6 sec on Body and +1 sec duration of beneficial effects/6 sec on Mind? just throwing stuff out there, not much thought on this yet).

Thank you MaxQuest for putting the work into this. EDIT: Also thank you to Phenomenum for doing the work on the keyword stuff.

They're definitely is reactivity to Never Far From The Queen. It's just a bit of dialogue, though you are somewhat admonished for the violence. Not very convincingly.

Seeing this explanation makes keeping the "Other: Please explain" responses to the forum make sense to me. I think there should at least be some sort of "This should change but not in these ways" option. Possibly also a "skip this question" option because it's not obvious that you can just not answer a question - people for example defaulting to "do not change" on things they don't care about might give extra weight to that option. I went and actually just tested these. 0.5/0.0 feels like a little much, even with the reduced duration. I still feel like they're underpowered in their current form. I thought they felt right power-wise at 15 secs but IMO that's too far off from their origins - they're basically different spells. I don't actually feel like it's overly stepping on the toes of Pallys. Buffing others/removing afflictions is a pretty big niche for Priests, so they ought to be pretty good at it. It's a bit confusing. Where are you planning to link the polished survey from? The context of seeing it from page 9 of this thread versus say page 1 is obviously different. I'm testing this out now but I think I might be the wrong person for it as well. It is a pretty big boon on Port Maje when it's quite a bit better than some unenchanted garbage weapon but when I test it for SSS fights, I'm thinking "why am I not spending my time casting more spells?" because I also prefer my Priest as not a physical damage dealer. I'm also not a professional developer and don't really have the time to test how changes through the whole game, so my testing is heavily biased towards the SSS challenges as a sort of "these are medium difficult and require a character to show enough different skill sets" arena. And the Digsite Drake if the ability is PL1 or PL2. Fast Spiritual Weapon was pretty fun on a Skaen Priest, though. Still trying to decide if 0.5/0.0 is a good adjustment or if the 3.0/0.0 is in the "not broken, don't fix it" category. I might try a few more multiclasses of Skaen and Woedica, seeing as they strike me as the most likely to profit. Single class I feel is still better off just casting more spells/having good weapons in the first place. Iconic Projection is a little too good as a 0.5/4.0 cast once you figure in Footsteps of Ahu Taka giving you a third level 2 cast. It went from mild help to hero in endurance trials. Improving the damage to be symmetrical with the healing seems fine at 3.0/4.0, though. I know I'll be keeping that change in my own game.

It would have been nice to get back more than just the "evil choice" boons and I would have greatly preferred if you kept the PoE1 god boon instead of getting... a cake. At least getting some extra talents at that third meeting would have made sense, given how it ends wrt to your soul. That said, there is a fair amount of reactivity to your PoE1 choices. The list you linked is very much incomplete and inaccurate for some points. Some of the talents you want implemented could also be somewhat difficult and/or impossible to implement with the new system. I remember looking at a mod that gave them back and that modder had to change Flick of the Wrist to dagger/stiletto proficiency because the way weapons are tagged (or not tagged) doesn't allow a clean implementation of the way the talent was in PoE1. I'd hope Obsidian is better at implementing abilities than a random modder but it's still an example of how it could have been a lot more work (more $) for something that only affects a very small subset of player (those that repeatedly gambled in a PoE1 DLC and want to use daggers/stilettos).

Pretty sure the Hollowborn Crisis was entirely Thaos/Woedica and Eothas/Waidwen was just a convenient scapegoat. Eothas besides being the god of light is also the god of rebirth through death. I'm pretty sure that Xoti repeatedly saying "that's not Eothas that's Gaun" is supposed to reinforce the idea that narratively, this is a representation of the Gaun aspect of Eothas. While it is maybe the worst plan ever (why not at least try to gather a bunch of kith to make a Wheel that doesn't feed the gods before breaking the one that everyone is using to live? why not reincarnate into like one of the Engwithan Titans that is already at Ukaizo instead of walking halfway across Eora in the most spectacularly destructive way?), destroying the current system so that a new one might grow from the ashes is perfectly in line with Eothas' portfolio. I think you're right that Eothas' primary goal is to shape the world into what he wants without much care as to how destructive that might be. I don't think it's psychopathic but just because that implies sentience - the gods are essentially fancy Engwithan computers. We also see several times Eothas wondering if certain ways of thinking are easier for other gods (he seems to have trouble with the concept of inevitability and asks if Rymrgand finds it easier), which makes me think that the gods are actually kind of stupid/dumb/inexperienced when trying to think outside the programming of their portfolio. While I'm sure the more likely answer is that Obs didn't really think this through very well, it's also fairly possible that the intent is that Eothas can't imagine anything BUT rebirth coming from death. He's literally incapable of not having hope for the dawn to arrive after a dark night, as he might phrase it. Course that doesn't make his plan smart. Just makes it on brand. You reincarnated still but it was slow (like potentially hundreds of years slow) and your soul was just as likely to be dispersed into random energy as to reincarnate. For all that the Engwithans are sketchy and evil, the Wheel is probably a kindness wrt souls. We see several times (Poko Kohora, the SSS arena) that not moving through the reincarnation cycle quickly is uncomfortable or even painful for souls. The reason why everyone keeps bringing up rivers and dams is because that's the metaphor Josh used when someone first asked your question (and was apparently the explanation that got cut from the game for some reason). house2fly's answer is pretty much the canon explanation as to why breaking the Wheel won't just revert things to the original natural process.

Spirit of Decay is useful for Vatnir, too! Even though I don't agree in the instance of Uncanny Luck, I personally appreciate thelee arguing so consistently for a more conservative stance. Even if the end result of this exercise is modders building the changes, I'd rather see the more balanced version. I'm not great at modding (I've pretty much just figured out how to change values on specific abilities) but I've started implementing and testing some of the changes being suggested on here (well, basically the keywords (thanks to Phenomenum's mod!) and cast time/duration changes.) and while a lot of them feel about right (ie Ranger healing buffs are pretty much spot on, so are the keywords), I'm beginning to appreciate the more conservative stance. WRT hit-to-crit: It's been a while since I've looked at Dirty Fighting (I remembered it being 15%! That's what I get for just blindly grabbing it instead of reading the ability each time I pick it up) but frankly it could use a buff too. I agree with thelee on class identity - Rogues have a reputation for being crit masters in RPGs - and I think that Rogues should be able to better compete with Fighters on the hit-to-crit front. I'd suggest bumping Dirty fighting up to 15% and knocking Intuitive down to 20%, in addition to the change to Uncanny Luck. I also think that even if the design reason for abilities being higher level is to space things out and not overwhelm players, players will still have an expectation that higher level abilities ought to have a bit more oomph. I don't think lowering the level of higher AL abilities is useful either, for similar reasons: picking an underlevel ability can "feel bad" for a player. You'd have to heavily redesign the table and make it clear that you're expected to pick low-level generics at some point or another. How things actually look to players is fairly important in considering their design, even when the actual effect/reason might be a bit off from that view. FWIW, while I brought up how Uncanny Luck looks aesthetically similar to a Nat 20/Nat 1 as a joke, I actually think that the less useful but more aesthetically pleasing option of 5%/5% does hold value. I would never make it 8% because numbers that don't divide by 5 look bad. Or if it was 8%, it should be 8% HTC/4% resist to totally break from the expectation of being on the multiples of 5 scale. The paint job might not help the car run but it sure helps it sell!

One thing worth noting too is that changing from 5% crit chance and 5% auto-miss chance removes the Nat 20/Nat 1 aspect of the talent. We'd lose the tiny D&D reference!

I think that being on PL5 and still being smaller than the PL2 hit-to-crits is ok for Uncanny Luck. Rogue still gets its niche earlier (plus it still gets more hit-to-crit even if they don't stack well) and non-Rogue crit-based builds get lifted up.

While we're on the subject of Priest (again), I personally think the Prayers/Litanies could go from 0.5/3.0 cast and 60 sec duration to 0.5/0.0 cast and 30 sec duration (duration shorter to be more in line with other 0.5/0.0 buffs). It'd do a lot to make the priest list feel more full, since they'd become more desirable picks in the way that other classes' fast inspirations are. Iconic Projection could be 0.5/4.0. I also think it would be nice if it got boosted 20 base damage to be symmetrical with its healing effect. For what it's worth, Corrosive Siphon effectively has base damage 24/heal 24 in AoE and it's also AL2. Spiritual Weapon really ought to be a 0.5/0.0 spell. I feel like the devs made it cast slower to prevent it from being an effective super Quick Switch but it has a lot of action time competition for what is essentially a DPS spell. The Priest subs could all also get different spells at AL6 to make it feel as though there is more player choice on that level. Berath: Death Ring Eothas: Sunlance Magran: Fireball (Pillar of Flame is very good for Magran, so I don't know about this one. Fireball is extremely underlevel but it also feels weird that the Fire Priest doesn't have the most iconic fire spell? Another option could be the spell from the Godhammer Bomb trinket (Detonator Shard, iirc?), which is essentially a healing fireball. That's a pretty potent spell though.) Skaen: Toxic Strike or Ringleader (Skaen thematically ought to get a charm but keeping it as the Rogue Priest is probably more in line with the mechanical theme) Woedica: Nature's Terror, preferably renamed (Not too sure about this thematically but she does get Divine Terror and fear doesn't feel inappropriate. Makes way more sense than Pillar of Flame, IMO. Plus it's another reason for Priests to have Heart of the Storm!) I have some reservations wrt to messing around with the subs as it flies a little close to redesign instead of polish. Just throwing the idea out in case people don't think that's the case. The Poll: Starts at 3. Afflictions for me. Not sure if marking afflictions #3 instead of 1 is the error or if I'm missing points 1 & 2. I think a while back Boeroer suggested 10% instead of 8% for Uncanny Luck and I really think it should be. It's a high level skill so it could stand to be even that little bit stronger and non-round numbers look weird. Do it for the aesthetics. LOL at Stag Carnage "do not change (keep it broken)" Speaking of broken stuff, I don't really understand where the line is on bug fixing versus polishing. I'd definitely like to Arcane Archer's no-scaling fixed, and that feels like it could be on the list? I would like to see more "yes, but low priority" options. Most notably on things that I consider minor exploits, like Avenging Storm Procs and Resonant Touch stacking. I would like to see those changed but they're even lower on my priority list than the character creation stuff (especially since you can just avoid the broken parts of them manually, even while still using those skills). I'd just generically add the option to everything that is just binary "Yes, do this" or "no, don't change" because I think figuring out what is consistently a higher priority for players taking the poll is also helpful information. Does the poll program allow for "Other, Please Describe: [insert form here]"? Because that should likely be an option on a lot things as well if it's implementable.

Cipher can give it to others through the Ancestor's Memory power. Tactician (Fighter subclass) can gain it for themselves by flanking all enemies currently in combat without having any allies be flanked.

There's always the console if you want it for the whole game.

They work together in the sense that AA doesn't tend to have Bond to spare for interrupt abilities, so Xbow weapon modal is a nice benefit. It won't remove the accuracy penalty on non-imbued shots. IIRC, The only ranged weapons that avoid the penalty are: - Frostseeker - Thundercrack Pistol - Essence Interruptor - Dragon's Dowry FWIW, I ran a single class Arcane Archer hireling through the SSS expansion (PotD upsacled), and never found the malus to be too significant after I was out of Bond. The utility of the Xbow is probably very worth it on a Chanter multiclass, too, because you're going to go through Bond like crazy and Chanters naturally have some downtime, so you'll be auto-attacking often enough.

This is it. I've been on a big TB kick since it was released and have done a few builds around it. It doesn't break engagement at all in TB*. Hope it's intentional and not a bug because it's tons of fun. Kind of hope it works like that now in RTwP, because I just started a Trickster/Soulblade there. I'm hoping to make use of the trick. The main point of that build is a WotEP riposte set-up though, so not the end of the world if it doesn't work out since I mostly just want to AoE riposte. *It's been a moment since I've been using one of those builds so this isn't a definitive statement. I'll pull up an old save and test what's actually going on, then report back. If I'm remembering right, there is just straight up no engagement break, rather than a quick re-engage (although a quick reengage would also be great with a rogue! Double Persistent Distraction to remove an inspiration, then apply the debuff).

What's the rest of the party now? If you're missing Blind and Confuse, sounds like you want a Trickster Rogue. I'd go Troub/Trickster if you're staying at range. If you're set on Paladin or Wizard, Paladin is likely better since it leans into the support role that Chanter provides. IMO single class Chanter or single class Wizard is better than multiclassing the two. They both primarily have active abilities, so don't mix very well.

The to-hit % above a char's head is the percentage for anything to not miss; it includes the graze range. So that 85% or higher is 85% to at least graze, not 85% to hit. What gives? Well, if you're using Eder and Xoti, PER: 12. That's a pretty low score before you start getting items/buffs/levels. They're not gonna be great at hitting the stuff on Port Maje.

Not sure if OP is talking about team comp or single char, so I'll answer both. Single Char: Always get a kick out of Trickster/Skald or Cipher - the simple combo that is Ryngrim's Enervating Terror + engagement so you can get resource generation on disengagement is one of my favorite set-ups. It's just so satisfying. Distant second is the Ghost Heart/Cipher, focused on the leash powers like Ectopsychic Echo. Summoning a bear behind enemy lines, then just wrecking stuff with leashes is fun. Team Comp: Honest Answer: Any set up of Eder, Tekehu, Rekke, Vatnir, Maia, and/or Fassina, just because I like them. Vatnir, Maia, and Tekehu are also probably stronger than most hirelings, so that's helpful though not the actual reason I bring them along. Game Mechanics Answer: Trio team of Harbinger (Trickster/Skald), Ascetic (Fury/Helwaker), and Priest of Rymrgand (modded in for a hireling) on TB. All three were capable of significant amounts of DPR, and the Harbinger or Ascetic could lay down hard control on huge groups of NPCs. I started with a full team and just found the extra characters were a waste of time. I like companions too much to do just hirelings again, but it was pretty fun to just rapidly nuke every encounter with a small efficient team.

The Helwalker/Fury is a very different beast than a single class druid. The OP didn't say anything about multiclassing the druid. Also, the extra +1 PEN isn't really that great. You only get it when shifted and when shifted you don't have a weapon equipped. That means for the best spells (relentless storm, great maelstrom, etc) you are better off not shifting so you don't lose Lord Darryn's bonus. Helwalker/Fury is a great glass cannon and one of my favorite characters, but if what you want is a druid (which is what the OP said) then an ancient is much better. You definitely get the PEN all the time and not just when shifted. I also already mentioned in my post that Ancient Druid has more Druid-y feel. EDIT: Ninja'd by Boeroer! If you make a custom history (you can do this from the main menu), select the Spare Harmke option for Devil of Caroc's History. If you're dedicated to your POE1 history, the most important part of the DoC Breastplate is the INT resistance, which is covered by Captain's Banquet. The food shop in Sayuka tends to have the ingredients available.

A penalty to Diplomacy and Bluff would be kind of like a Charisma penalty. That's basically non-existent as a penalty on a hireling, though. Or you could remove the recovery from Flesh Communion, that might be enough of a buff.

1. Seconding Mikex5's advice. Avoiding CON afflictions really helps your Crusader keep Exalted Endurance and Rapid Recovery going strong. 2. I really like Bleak Walker Paladin/Berzerker Barbarian as a fairly sturdy FORT debuffer/damage dealer. Spirit Frenzy + Bleak Walker Flames of Devotion + Morningstar Modal = -45 FORT. The Willbreaker morningstar upgraded with The Mind Makes Real works very well with Spirit Frenzy's terrified upgrade to consistently apply a raw DoT, and it gets a hit-to-crit upgrade that can help you interrupt with Barbarian's Interrupting Blows passive. Not the best possible DPS ever but with Falcon Helm you can still whack pretty fast and IMO the added utility/defenses are more than worth it. IIRC Paladin's +5 accuracy aura doesn't stack with Devotions for the Faithful so I wouldn't run a second Pally and a Priest - choose one or the other. 3. Nature Godlike Helwalker Monk/Fury Druid. Wicked good caster DPS. Get the Deltro's Cage and Lord Darryn's Voulge for PL stacking and go to town. Strongly disagree with SRSChaos, the extra PEN is extremely worth it on PotD. Of course if you want your Druid to do support, Ancient with The Spine of Thicket Green is also quite powerful. I'd go with the support Druid if you did dual Pallys and no Priest, and the Fury Druid if your melee DPS isn't a Pally and you keep the Priest. Not really sure what specifically appeals to you about Druids but I'll also say that an Ancient Druid feels more like a Druid, while a Fury/Helwalker is basically just a nuke. 4. IMO Vatnir is the best Priest by quite a long shot because his bonus spells fill holes in the Priest spell list (well, one hole: non-fire damage) and, with the exception of his PL9, are all actually bonus spells and not forced picks. If you want a Priest, I would just take him. My second choice Priest would be Wael if you don't want Vatnir (Or want a Priest earlier). You'll want a good AI set-up to handle the quick buffs because otherwise it's a lot of micro but it's very sturdy and has some powerful endgame debuffs. If you want a second Pally, I'd roll with a Trickster Rogue/Skald Chanter here (or Trickster/Troubadour if you want to be ranged). The build can be set up to be able to apply afflictions to every stat and is a jack-of-all-trades debuffer. Which is sort of an inversion of the Priest and kind of fills the same role? 5. Seconding Boeroer on the Arcane Archer/Paladin. I'm playing one right now and it's a very potent combo of both single target and AoE damage. Worth noting Arcane Archer spells are bugged wrt PL scaling, if that sort of thing is a deal breaker to you. They're still quite good but you're gonna get a lot of No PEN notifications. My second choice for ranged DPS would be a little setup I like to call the Storm Dragon. You go single class Bellower, wield Sasha's Singing Scimitar and the Kitchen Stove and wear the Dragon Pendant and the Mantle of Seven Bolts. Every combat goes something like Empowered Eld Nary, followed by Thunderous Report, Breath of Flames and/or Storm of Seven Bolts. Cast a second Eld Nary when you've gone through your item abilities, and that's probably it for most enemies. It's a bit repetitive to play the whole game through with and the abilities are bit too finicky to leave to the AI. The amount of face Bellowed Empowered Eld Narys smash is well worth it, though.

Ranked: 1. Gorecci Street pre-digsite XP. It's very hard. I've only ever actually beat it pre-digsite by approaching from the south and using sort of cheesy double-AoE-from-stealth tactics to take out the porch dwellers. Most of the time I wait til I have Aloth and am comfortably level 4 or 5. 2. Fights that you are intentionally doing underlevel. I have a few of these in every playthrough because I hate waiting for certain things. 3. The Oracle of Wael, Dorudugan, and Auranic. These all sit in the same sort of place to me. The path to victory is obvious enough but actually following that path can be difficult and slip ups are fairly punishing. The actual order on these would be Dorudugan, Auranic, Oracle but they're all close enough to take up one spot on my list. 4. Neriscyrlas (without spirit help and at an appropriate level). Same reasons as above but enough easier that it's knocked down a rank. Drops by like a million ranks in TB because it's basically impossible to miss the interrupt window on Llengrath's Safeguard. 5. Maerwald. This fight depends on how weak your party is to your party and how well the AI can actually manage your party, of course, so it ranges from slot 5 to not even on the tough fight radar. I give it a higher ranking because it's just about the only fight in the game that I don't think respeccing is a fair tactic - to me it's the same as losing this fight. 6. The Ooze and Spider megabosses. The methods to beat these aren't hard to execute but the pure numbers and health bloat on these bosses is enough to push them into the tough zone. 7. Any battle with a "puzzle" solution you don't know or are not following. There's quite a few of these. The Digsite Drake is very hard if you don't have a Druid or a Cipher to Charm half the enemies, the Naga in the shallow water at Hasongo if you don't know to use the flooded tunnels to approach them from the west, the Fampyrs if you don't feed your party a Captain's Banquet, etc. I don't really want to qualify these as truly tough, though, because the solution to the "puzzle" makes them a cakewalk (or at the very least not significantly harder than an average fight). I don't think this game is actually very hard, though. I think most of the difficulty comes from being unwilling to change tack or respec. Hard habit to get over because 95% of the content is beatable by just brute forcing the problem.

Level 18+ can be like half the game's content if you don't have a slow XP mod. How fast you can hit level cap is a whole different can of worms wrt game balance but as long as you can play a good chunk of the game at level 20, things being at their best at high level can't be regarded as a serious barrier. A Wizard emptying half their spellbook on Inspirations (from spells that often don't even cleanly stack) is not really comparable to a Cipher casting a single powerful buff that also debuffs an enemy and stacks with all inspirations/afflictions. Nor is Citzal's Martial Power a reasonable comparison to Borrowed Instinct, considering it shuts off your casting for 30 or more seconds and takes long enough to cast that it's interruptable. I basically don't agree with what you're saying here, and you're not providing actual numbers/concrete examples to back it up. You're essentially looking at small parts of the two classes in a vacuum, which is a useless way to evaluate them in a party/multiclass game. Hammering Thoughts, Soul Whip, and Soul Annihilation I'd say contribute plenty to a striker toolkit, and that's before potential Cipher buffs/debuffs.

Fast cast and long recoveries makes ascended a huge trap option in turn-based for one; by the time you have access to disintegrate, ascending gives you 3 rounds to cast 3 disintegrates (which are slow casts on a class that has basically no way to get concentration outside of Soul Blade melee kills) at +1 PL, the focus cost however would be enough to cast 4-5 of them on another spec. If anything I'd say it doesn't make it a trap option as much as it shows how much of one it already is, it just makes the structural issue of the concept more blatant. That said I realize that you seem to be fine with the fact that cipher's literal only niche is charms, which makes me wonder how did you not see the problem against Intellect immune and resistant enemies. It's super easy to get Ascended to hit 4 rounds, and quite possible to get it to hit 5. It's also +3 PL iirc and Ascending is so easy in most fights that it's basically a free bonus. The whole "niche" thing also puts the burden of proof on Ciphers. Like, what niche does a Wizard have? Nuking? Druids arguably nuke better. So do some Priests, TBH. Self-buffs? What self buffs do they have that're better than a Cipher's +20 everything in Borrowed Instinct? Are they better at self-buffs than a Fighter/Trickster or a Priest of Wael? Debuffing? Only if you don't count single target, because every martial class beats them there. Versatility? Can you call that a niche in a system so friendly to multiclassing? I of course think Wizards are quite potent with any of these things as their "niche" but the point is that they're not actually niches. Cipher being the clear best at Charms might actually have them as the only class that does have a niche. Ciphers also do have a bunch of individually powerful abilities. Disintegration has got to be at least top 3 for action-time-spent-to-total-damage-done if it isn't straight up the best in that area. Borrowed Instinct is one of the best self-buffs (+20 everything!) and it adds a fairly unique debuff on top of that for just 0.5/4.0 seconds cast time. Psychovampiric Shield is another potent self-buff/stackable debuff that's also a source of concentration and is cheap and fast enough to open combat to all but guarantee your other abilities don't get interrupted (EDIT: Mixed up what Steadfast and Resolute do). Hammering Thoughts and The Empty Soul are strong unique passives. I could go on. I don't really understand the issue with ciphers and TB either. I actually think they feel more natural to play in TB - you tend to only do one round or two rounds of focus gen, allowing you to be mostly a caster if you want to. Is that the 0.5/4.0 cast time powers are effectively nerfed to last 6.0 seconds? I don't really have a big issue with -20% sneak attack damage (Tricksters would still be good enough even with that penalty) but -10% is currently fine for putting them solidly in their role of "rogue subclass where defensive tricks and debuffs are the focus over damage". Plus the actual penalty of a Trickster is sustain. Even being fairly cheap, their spells eat through Guile like crazy and compete with abilities that are the reason to be playing a Rogue and not a Wizard. It's way too close to "not broken, so don't fix it" IMO.