NotDumbEnough

Conjurers are pretty decent in melee with summoned weapons and self-buffs. You also can't really go wrong with Caedebald's Blackbow outside of single targets with very high defenses. Keep in mind that any phantoms you summon inherit summoned weapons so 2x Caedebald's Blackbow usually steamrolls most fights.

I feel that the Sure-Handed Ila chant could use a bit of a nerf. I get the feeling that it was designed before the devs made recovery bonuses also affect reloading, and the current bonus for reloading weapons is a bit obscene, so much so that basically any sort of all gun/crossbow party can wreck everything as long as it has a chanter in it. I think a simple -25% recovery time (or even just -20%) for all ranged weapons would still be quite worth using without being obscenely powerful.

Yes, IIRC Carnage is a status effect. There used to be a bug where Heart of Fury would not trigger multiple instances of Carnage because of this.

I actually never thought of using Voidwheel on a monk, but it does seem ridiculously powerful particularly if it's paired with the Old Siec chant to offset the self damage.

The Red Hand had the most amazing damage output among all weapons in the game (bugs, cheese and unique interactions aside), but was nerfed in the balanced polishing mod. However it still has really high damage output.

Sabre proficiency modal was changed in Community Patch. Since you're doing only single classes some of the longer range ranged weapons are quite powerful for ciphers (though pay attention to the range of your spells, some of which are quite short). Time Parasite can get you obscene attack speeds and is therefore almost always worth picking on a SC cipher -- however, you get so much attack speed that you lose out on quite a bit of damage from melee weapons due to the need to move around (i.e. your damage output is bottlenecked by the time you're spending moving around while having already recovered from your previous action). You can just search for the list of unique weapons on the wiki for PoE2 and find whatever is suitable, though keep in mind that lots of enemies are immune to pierce damage so you shouldn't rely exclusively on arquebuses, crossbows, etc. I personally like Spearcaster as single class ciphers are incentivized to pump Arcana (Shared Nightmare works with bombs and scrolls). Pair with a chanter singing Sure-Handed Ila, steal Maia's armor and pick up the tricorne sold at Tikawara to shoot faster.

You should post this in the strategy forum instead as you'll get more attention there. Anyhow you should take Sacred Immolation and upgrade it to the team heal variant (Divine Immolation). The self damage can be split with a SC fighter with Take the Hit (which costs no discipline with the mod) so you can have Eder share half the damage which immediately gets healed by the healing component of your ability. The healing over time is fairly amazing if you keep your party bunched up and together with Take the Hit they'll likely be mostly unkillable.

Perhaps a silly idea, but how about something like this: Full attack with secondary effects in the following order (but they follow one another almost instantaneously like Jernaugh's Equalizing Burst): 15s Sickened roll against Fortitude with +40 accuracy bonus 15s Weakened roll against Fortitude with +10 accuracy bonus 15s Enfeebled roll against Fortitude with -20 accuracy malus Assuming the rogue is dual wielding, it would be an almost surefire way of guaranteeing some sort of constitution affliction against the target (even against a constitution resistant enemy with constitution inspiration, you are still likely to at least Sicken them), with enemies that have lower Fortitude suffering more severe afflictions. While Enfeeble is a possible outcome, it is not as reliable as Cipher's Fractured Volition, which preserves its unique status.

I think it should just be a straight Enfeebled affliction even if it deserves a duration nerf. The problem with the ability was always that enemies often died before the Enfeeble actually happened especially with higher intellect. So this would be two birds with one stone.

It's a separate mod on Nexus.

If a sidekick gets good amounts of dialogue in one DLC then they also do in subsequent ones, e.g. Ydwin will offer insight in the finale of SSS.

I think it's worth noting that DoT's scale much more strongly with might, intellect and power level. A 35.5 base damage DoT + 17.5 base damage would hit incredibly hard at max level. On the other hand, Rangers are really bad at utilizing intellect (it's very easy to build a single class ranger that literally does not use intellect at all) so I think it's fine here.

They can die from Disintegration or any other ability that kills without leaving a corpse.

As Boeroer pointed out, Heart of Fury is actually not that great. What you want to do is to just spam the shout that dazes and damages in a large AoE. Turn on your battleaxe modal and wear heavy armor, and just stand there and let enemies crit you. Hopefully they'll underpenetrate due to being dazed, and Barbaric Retaliation simply bypasses all of the recovery time maluses you have. In case you didn't know the retaliation attacks also have a massive accuracy and penetration bonus so they're really really good.

I don't think there's much of a dark side in PoE. The gods are fundamentally "hard-coded" to serve kith society even if they differ wildly in how they attempt to do so (with varying levels of competency), even Skaen and Woedica. They might be cold or occasionally petty, but none of them are fundamentally out to commit genocide, and it's probably more accurate to interpret their actions as misguided tough love rather than malice. You might argue that Rymrgand is trying to end the world, but on the other hand he does allow you to close the portal, and I suspect that the gods are set up in such a way to keep each other in check to prevent the others from running wild (i.e. Rymrgand's presence is likely necessary to counterbalance the other gods). All of this also extends to their followers. For Bleak Walkers in particular the game also states that their aggression is intended to help them eschew actual combat and bloodshed in favor of intimidation, even if it's not very nice. There's also really no such thing as "dark" magic in the game. Magic is powered by soul energy (stored in grimoires for wizards, drawn from nature for druids, drawn from the caster for priests and paladins, drawn from the enemy for ciphers, and drawn from the ambient environment for chanters) which is really just fantasy electricity, with at most ethical concerns as to how you acquire the soul energy (i.e. is excavating adra pillars to power grimoires harmful). The presence of a reincarnation process which everyone believes in (even Pallegina is anti-theistic, not atheistic) also means that pretty much everyone you meet has a pretty fatalistic outlook on life in general. As long as there isn't actual torture, slavery, suffering, sacrifices to Skaen or bugs that prevent the dead from moving on to the wheel, people generally have an "Oh no! Anyway..." reaction to death (see: the Vailian cook after you tell him the entire expedition died in Poko Kahara). Even the spirits themselves are generally pretty chill about being dead when you talk to them. Generally I think the game touches on ethical issues (is it OK to excavate adra? Tolerate slavery? Sacrfice someone to Skaen?) but does not have anything you can broadly paint as "dark" on a large scale.

I actually never took the evasive fire upgrade due to it being so terrible so that does seem a bit better. For Flurry of Blades I think it should have less damage but a larger radius. A single class rogue usually isn't going to be hugging multiple enemies in melee range too often.

And do they scale? I'm guessing that Might and universal damage modifiers apply, but how about Sneak Attack, Soul Whip, weapon upgrades etc.?

Freezing Pillar isn't a ground effect, it's huge floating pillar of ice.

1. I think I would expect it to be hit by pierce damage, just like how you would circumvent a skeleton's pierce immunity if you use a mixed damage type weapon. 2. I would expect it to work just like how it works for Fire Nagas right now. If Burn AR>Pierce AR, I deal pierce damage. If Burn AR<Pierce AR, I deal burn damage which gets converted into healing.

Nannasin's Cobra Strike DOES have a damage over time effect which counts as poison. I think it's best to keep the keyword in place so players aren't confused as to why skeletons are not suffering from the DoT damage.

Yes, Veilpiercer is also quite good. You get your recovery negated If you get a crit on either the primary target or the bounce, so you can spam Twinned Shots like a machine gun. It's very expensive but can also end fights very quickly.

Yes, Current's Rush in offhand is insane if you use Whirling Strikes. Brought it to SSS and instantly wiped many encounters even on upscaled PotD; the more enemies there are the more likely you wipe them out instantly.

You need really high intellect and/or PL for Reaping Knives to actually break even. Base duration is 30 seconds and you need 16 hits to break even. Depending on armor/dexterity you can really only reasonably expect one attack per 3 seconds, and I don't believe you get focus if you swing and miss. So, if you have a 90% chance to land your attack, you'd need ~50 second duration on Reaping Knives for it to break even. IMO actually using it to generate focus is only viable on a Psion who can just stack PL at the expense of having decent auto-attack that other ciphers require. Namely a Nature Godlike Psion holding Lance of the Midwood Stag affected by Woodskin and Acute and/or food that gives +1 PL can reliably reach PL 14 not counting resting bonus stacking bugs. Even then with ~20 intellect you can just barely reach a 60 second duration on your Reaping Knives, i.e. a net profit of maybe 20ish focus depending on attack speed and hit chance. Or, you can be an Ascendant and not care about the focus cost. It's rather fun to build an entire party around Reaping Knives spam. On the other hand if the ability worked as it stated it would potentially be very powerful, perhaps too powerful. A rogue multiclass can easily hit for upwards of 50 per swing while spamming Crippling Strike (30 focus per use). It would quickly lead to a positive feedback loop where you can spam Brilliant and Reaping Knives on Swashbuckler Eder and he would just alternately spam Crippling Strike and Mule Kick (i.e. with one attack per 3 seconds, no net resource usage if Brilliant is active).

The problem with Toxic Strike, I think, is that the damage scaling makes it only useful for bosses, but lots of bosses are simply immune to poison.

I guess the point is that you're getting a lash for your lash, making Deep Wounds a bit better than just a normal lash effect.