yorname

Thinking about finally starting a barbarian run, my first choice is a SC Furyshaper, to use blood ward + old siec + barbarian retaliation. While barbarian has a million tools to deal with mobs, I don't want him to become basically a worse tank when facing a boss. How much does barbarian retaliation help with single target damage? Is it restricted to strictly melee weapon attacks, or broader like monk's Soul Mirror? Since I'm taking Dazing Shout eventually, I'd pick Blood Storm over Spirit Tornado as BPM buffed it to +3s per crit. All things combined SC Furyshaper gets speed, a DoT, a quite long Dazed and retaliation for single target. Doesn't look too good even if enemy crit him every hit to be honest. What are good MC choices for barbarian by the way? They only provide speed, stagger on hit and some survivability to a caster so I guess it's not a great trade. For martial characters, maybe a mass interrupt build or berserker/streetfighter? (tricky to get the passives in BPM otherwise).

I'm playing with SC ascendant Serafen (didn't change his stats though) and he's not nearly as good as ascendant watcher with all the buffs. Every cast of ascendant is precious, while a watcher can sometimes skip borrowed instinct, a companion/mercenary will miss a lot due to lower accuracy. His mediocre INT didn't help either, even with salvation of time his ascended didn't last very long, to the point I believe he's worse than a SC vanilla cipher in many cases. I feel some classes are by design more attribute-reliant than others. Offensive casters, especially SC ones come to mind. MC casters can get some accuracy from another class so that they can catch up with enemy defenses, but for SC ones I feel they really need the extra accuracy a watcher can stack to be effective. Damage spells can benefit so much from high MIG and spells like symbols, freezing pillar and crushing doom scale very well with INT. In comparison martial classes seem to suffer less from mediocre stats. They either have built-in bonus accuracy (fighter, ranger) or just mechanics that make stats less impactful (sneak attack). Maybe barbarian is an exception, as carnage is more like a spell. I remember Serafen performing very bad when I used him as barb or witch. Or perhaps I just didn't know how to find a use for barbarian. Cipher usually is very stats-hungry, though I find picking mindstalker solves many problems. Trying SC Beguiler on Serafen also proved pretty okay. It's really just ascendant that can easily go into a downward spiral due to a couple of misses or grazes. Maybe also Psion since they can't afford wasting a spell?

I was thinking maybe something can be done with SA too, but wouldn't it be extra complicated to describe, since SA is a core ability? I guess you need to make another version of BW for soulblade? Saying "does more damage with a tier 3 upgrade" in SA description at lv1 is weird.

Can you make the shield from old "cannot die" effect visible, at least the duration? Also priests' resurrection still has cannot die effect, is it intentional that only they have access to it?

with *2 multiplier and 25% raw lash, the difference is 8%. IDK, if BW is "overall" 8% more damage it's probably worth considering, but we're only looking at a very specific use and the advantage is still so small that if we just occasionally cast a spell it disappears. But I agree the lash can't be too high because the AoE applications you mentioned. I'm still rooting for your 0.625 SW/BW solution

did a quick test, it's indeed 5%, and weapon part also benefits from PL. the corrected result would be M<376/(108+135L), so even with a lash, DW needs a ~300% multiplier to match BW. still, with 250% multiplier and no lash, the difference is very small: DW 153.0625 vs BW 158.3625, a 3.46% difference if change BW to 30% lash the difference is 10.7%, slightly more visible but probably not good enough

Yeah the argument for BW would be "why wouldn't I want more focus". There're so many high tier spells that couldn't fit into a build because focus isn't enough for everything even with DW.

from here I think I probably saw PL affecting the weapon part when doing tests earlier today (20.3 roll with a sabre). Not sure as I'm not on computer right now.

That's a pretty elegant solution. Other lashes will still make the end result favor DW a little bit, but with reasonable amount of lashes it's at least 15% more damage and 70% focus gain, not bad at all.

If we buff it to 30% raw lash, for a typical cipher with 8 PL, 2.5 multiplier (low for mindstalker, pretty high for others) and no other lashes, the attack + SA combo damage will be BW 163.5 vs DW 154.375. The difference is only 6% and I still would never take it. suggestion: base 25% raw lash, another 25% if target is affected by shred spell DoTs (if it's possible). Or just bonus attack and/or PEN vs said targets on top of lash. Double focus from DW simply is this impactful.

trying to get it clear from the basics: set M = (1 + all_weapon_and_damage_bonuses), L = all_other_lashes_ratio, let a PL8 cipher do the alternative attacks with a sabre with average base damage of 16, look at 2 attacks: DW: 16*M*(1+L) + 16*M*(1+L) + [4*M*(1+L)+7.5]*1.7*M BW: 16*M*(1.2+L)+ 16*M*(1.2+L) + [2*M*(1.2+L)+7.5]*1.7*M If we want DW < BW: 32*M*(1+L)+6.8*(1+L)*M^2+12.75*M < 32*M*(1.2+L)+3.4*(1.2+L)*M^2+12.75*M M < 160/(68+85*L) Every other lash or damage bonus makes BW worse by comparison. To make BW as good as DW, the total damage multiplier can't be higher than ~2.35. Legendary weapon + Soul Whip is already 1.8, if we add just one lash, the difference is unnoticeable. Not to mention we naturally want more damage bonuses on any damage dealer, and it only makes DW better. Also yes, CP BW works on weapon abilities. Personally I think BW needs to be a clear winner in this case to compensate for the severe lack of flexibility in all other cases, and 25% lash is far from enough. Maybe even a redesign so it doesn't punish getting more damage bonuses.

I think you're skipping too much on multipliers. A MC cipher with 8 PL and 10 MIG, legendary weapon and no other bonuses makes the difference into 6 * 1.7 * 1.8 = 18.36. And it only gets better with every bonus you can add. It's in fact really rare that a cipher only has this few bonuses. Also before getting to late game it's just worthwhile to waste focus on SA as they already struggle to keep the usual cipher spells. Edit: I forget the lash applies to the weapon part of SA attack, but still: if we can hit 60 weapon damage without other lash, the bonus would be much more than just 0.6 from legendary, for example with a multiplier of 2.5, it's 6 * 1.7 * 2.5 = 25.5. If they have other lashes, BW also becomes less important. this pattern also doesn't take up all of the cipher's total combat time. Borrowed Instinct is the bare minimum, and Disintegration is always more efficient for single target. Taking all these casting and focus generating time into account, the attack - SA loop is even less important. A BW cipher will have a much harder time to sustain BI and Disintegration that if they have any advantage with SA at all, the end result is still worse.

Beguiler really needs focus from weapons when enemy numbers is low, e.g. in many boss's case. They aren't much different from vanilla cipher in that situation, and Biting Whip just heavily underperforms as usual. Even though SA is already not very efficient by damage per focus standard, it is still pretty easy to reach at least 1 focus -> 1 damage. In this case, let's say a SB with Draining Whip and no other lash deals 200 weapon damage to get 200 focus, and uses SA to deal another 200 raw damage (plus the primary attack) A SB with Biting Whip in the same time deals 200 weapon damage, 40 raw lash and 120 SA damage. This is an extreme case because we don't really want to dump focus into SA every time. For every other purpose BW is much worse. Even in this extreme case, BW is still worse than DW. If the cipher has other lashes or has a DPF better than 1:1, the numbers favor DW more. IMO DW cipher as baseline is fine, I don't mind a slight nerf like down to +80% focus, but BW really needs some buffs to be viable, because it's less flexible by a mile and still strictly worse than DW.

is this effect multiplicative like Enfeebled? seems like something can be abused. Also this doesn't have to be a kill from the weapon?

I just finished a Berath run, actually there're very few special interactions for them, maybe slightly more than other priests but much less than I expected. If you really want to play it, I highly recommend go single class. SC priests have a very different playstyle compared to MC ones, and Berath is one of the better pure casters among all subclasses.

The main advantages of DW are: 1. you get special effects from 2 weapons. and some of 1h weapons have very powerful effects. 2. because everything in deadfire is slower, you'll have much longer recovery time with 2h, that makes you much less responsive. 3. when you use an ability with full attack, DW makes it easier to apply the effect. In terms of DPS, 2H and DW are surprisingly really close, usually around 10% difference.

I've tested it, Writ of War can stop Dorudugan from using any ability, all the way down to 0hp. Also with 25 INT character it lasts ~15s on it, so keeping the effect on is very practical. I think this is somewhere between perma-paralyzing and normal kiting strategy. After debuffing Dorudugan only has 90+ will, so keeping all the debuffs on is much easier. Tanking auto-attacks is also as not difficult as dodging barrage/dealing with the pull.

I see. It does need some time to get used to, but makes sense. Ideally a tier 9 spell every 15s is still pretty good

Can the higher ticks prioritize higher tier slots? or are they just random? Also how does the time counter work when it's frequently reapplied? When I set a very basic AI script to cast Ancestor's Memory on a caster whenever cipher has enough focus, if they have multiple slots to fill, the tier 7-9 slots can never be filled. Is this because the frequent reapply made the counter always cycling 3-6-3-6, or because the "9" ticks don't prioritize higher spell slots?

When a brilliant is longer than 15s, the max lv of spells regained is 3-6-9-3-6-9... right?

I think frightened is different, it's very common to stop queued abilities with cipher's secret horror.

Yeah this happened once, it queued Hellfire Barrage before I could apply the writ and used it anyway. I'm doing a Berath run, maybe I'll just add the spell to the spellbook and see what happens then. My party composition won't be able to fight it comfortably anyway.

Tested this for a while. At least with Unity Console refreshing spells constantly, Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment + Writ of War can keep Dorudugan doing only auto attacks for a few minutes. I didn't get its hp down so can't say this works for all its abilities, but even disabling Brutal Cleave only is a vast improvement. This makes Priest of Woedica a very interesing MC choice, their spells aren't that great outside writs but they don't get symbols anyway, so I don't feel I'm losing as much as with other priests.

That's a fair point. By the way, nothing to do with cipher, but isn't White Flame's AOE super tiny? IIRC it's way smaller than paladin aura or chant, last time when I played one with 20ish INT he couldn't even cover melee characters if I wanted to flank a boss

I mean the cipher is probably the last person in the party I want to do tanking or healing, so wasting the best stuff from the paladin side.