Haplok

They kind of do in the latest beta patch. Whether that's enough remains to be seen.

Tenuous Grasp is a nice, cheap and fast primer (-20 Will) for many great powers that you... uh... don't plan to pick. Of course it also lowers Deflection by 5.

Well, Hours of St. Rumbaldt (or to a lesser degree Tall Grass) in the hands of a crit Barbarian (preferably with some party - mainly Priest - support) was a sight to behold...

Not actually necessarily helpful, though, since it's not reliable. It is reliable if you're willing to camp in the shop for a few days forcing a few daily re-stocks.

Vithrak brains are not a late game component. They are randomly spawned at the Periki Overlook herbalist shop, so can be gotten immediately after arrival in Neketaka (shops restock daily).

Well, in my party Aloth usually casts Chill Fog, which does the same as a lasting area effect... and Eder has Persistent Distraction, so I don't use Eyestrike that much. Oneother nasty aspect of this spell is that it fails against the primary target, then it fizzles and does nothing. I use Secret Horrors way more. But sometimes I do. And as you wrote, it's cheap.

Not only does Phantom Foes have a much bigger aoe, but it also targets Will defence (Eyestrike - Fort), which is typically much easier to debuff for a cipher - and beat. That said, I can't fit it in my current build.

Backstab now hardly worth it for melee IMO. Ranged - just forget it.

Phantom foes is good, however there are alternatives like Persistent Distraction or various Blind spells. It has quite a bit of competition (Mind Blades, Mental Binding, Psychovampiric Shield, Recall Agony) . Secret horrors and Mental Binding are pretty great. I also like Tenuous Grasp a lot. Costs nothing and reduces enemy will by 20... Great before a Charm / Dominate. How to beat willsaves? Apart from Tenuous grasp and secret horrors that is? Well club modal bewildering blows, Psychovampiric shield... There's also the very nice wizard level 2 spell to lower will. For Fort there's Morningstar modal and again secret horrors.

You can re-roll.

Not sure about Mind Blades on such a build. Not much can be done to raise the damage and can't really spam it either. Disintegrate would definitely still be a worthy pick, just wouldn't see that much use due to Focus limitations - but could destroy some primary targets anyway. Amplified Wave might be good enough to take also.

For Streetfighter speed, you only need 1 of: 1. Flanked status (either from actually being flanked or from ANY Perception debuff, including Blunderbuss Powder Burns modal or Blindness, like from Chill Fog) or 2. Blooded You need both of those to also get +100% critical damage. If you want the sneak attack damage (with Streetfighter boost), the enemy needs to be either: 1. Flanked or 2. Have ANY affliction Easy-peasy At high levels you may also get Deathblows ability, then the enemy needs to have 2 afflictions to trigger this effect.

Trickster's definitely a good choice, yeah! Someone brought up a good point - it's like having a triple Multiclass with very slight drawbacks (70% damage instead of 80% damage with Deathblows, in addition to all of the other damage buffs I'll be getting), but you're basically a Rogue, Illusion Wizard, and Cipher. Not quite. Base sneak attack scales with Power Level, so it's more like 100% sneak bonus damage at max level with deathblows vs 110% for Assasin (and 160% for Streetfighter). You mention Guile cost for Trickster abilities. But if you want to use Assasinate more then once per combat, then its expensive also. I'm actually not sure that I'd even use Assasinate for weapon attacks. I'd probably use it more to open combat with something like Puppet Master or Ring Leader (with high land chance) from range, which would disrupt enemy ranks from the start. And yeah, for such a character I'd probably go with Beguiler.

Let's not forget Streetfighter's +50% Sneak attack bonus (stacks with Rogue's 30-60%).

If its a Streetfighter/Ascendant, then he kinda compensates the lower damage with rapid power spam. Of course his rogue attacks are more deadly as well.

Well I landed on Sayuka early (level 9, wanted to do Serafen's quest ASAP) and really struggled with the attack there as well. Tons of animals with 3-2 skulls and durable druids which have 14 AR when shapeshifted.

Streetfighter gets 50% extra sneak damage. So early on its +80% vs +30%.

Its exceptional only and the damage buffed has been nerfed to 5% Well, at least the modal is indeed nice.

Streetfighter is currently the most OP class, by far, if you're willing to accept the inconveniences/work around them.

Always a way. But that's always a compromise somewhere. Like lately I've been skipping Two Weapon. The bonus isn't THAT great anymore, particularly for a Streetfighter, particularly when spamming Full Attacks (or casting powers). Feels more flexible this way. Two weapons for speed, one weapon for accuracy or two handed when there's a nice weapon of that type. Of course, the powergamer choice is to spec in just one playstyle.

Blinding Strike is also significantly easier to land on most enemies due to targeting Reflex rather then Fortitude.

Sure, nothing else can quite match a Streetfighter's FullAttack ability spam.

Well, the solution is to use the party to body block/focus enemies, as well as CC (Mental Binding, Whispers, Puppet Master). Dance sometimes will get interrupted.. but then you'll get wounds either way. I try to avoid enemy attention early on. That way most melees can be bound by the tank's engagement.

Yeah, I also went with lightning strikes. More damage and more focus generation is good. Once more, Ecto Echo is one of the best powers

Or multi with a Paladin for Mental Fortress. Or have a friendly Paladin with Aegis of Loyalty smack you with his blade. As has been said, plenty of solutions.