Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Oddly, I have had some party members somehow get XP totals as much as a full level *above* the PC. No clue how that happens.

first of all, unlike wizards, ciphers are actually useful before level 10. their CC is the best by far. most of their spells are faster (which is really important). they get better combat stats per level (i think). they can replenish their spells, which is crucial for longer fights (if there were any longer fights, that is.. and there was no empower point replenishment, which i think is OP and should be removed). with good speed, ascendants can spam many more casts than even a 20th level wizard (like several times more). You can break level 8 with minimal combat though (level 5 on the starting island and then non combat questing the rest of the way, deadlight and neketaka). Really "balance" is most important from about level 10 to about level 16, as that's the meat of the game.

This is a really good point but i believe technically incorrect As long as the Cipher's powers happen to have the right Wizard keyword, they will also get the PL boost!

Wizards were good too, sure, as were druids, but "AoE charm" is a stronger CC effect than AoE stun or AoE paralyze. It was the combination of AoE charms + solid single-target paralyzes from an early level that made the class work. Then at high levels you got things like Amplified Wave etc. To an extent "best at" is more a function of build than anything else. You could build a Cipher to dominate as a DPS caster if you wanted, but you could build a wizard or even a priest to do that job too. Each class was fairly flexible. It's that flexibility that's missing for CIphers now, more than just the raw power. You can still build a cipher that's relatively effective, there's just a very narrow range of ways that cipher can be effective and most builds are going to be identical especially in the late game.

Just to raise the historical point, but the job of Ciphers in the first game wasn't just "the charm guy." Ciphers in PoE 1 were the best at crowd control generally -- mental binding was as much a part of that as Charm was, if not more, as well as the other debuffs --- if specialized for CC and debuffs, and then competitive with wizards and rangers as ranged DPS weapon/casters if specialized for damage, and tertiary after priests and then chanters as support casters. Of all those roles, what's left now is basically "charm dudes". Most of the best Cipher CC got either directly or indirectly nerfed (Mental Binding getting doubly hit -- Paralyze is now a weaker effect, and the duration of the power is also much shorter for a longer casting time). Even setting aside summons, Chanters are now otherwise stronger on crowd control (Killers Froze Stiff is excellent); Wizards and Chanters are both superior debuffers; the only really strong support caster power Ciphers have left is Pain Block (Body Attunement is nerfed to the ground and Defensive Mindweb is a soap bubble now) and all Pain Block does is a single-target Robust inspiration. There is still a role for multiclassed CIphers as DPS but single-classed ciphers can no longer keep up with wizards (or even, I suspect, well-built priests or druids) as damage casters, simply due to the per-encounter shift; nothing a Cipher has, not even an Ascendant spamming Disintegrate, can compete with a high level wizard dumping a spellbook full of Minoletta's variants.

My *guess* is that because first-tier Confusion affliction turns off friendly fire limitations, charmed enemies would too frequently de-charm themselves by hitting each other; also it makes the paladin ability of de-charm on hit redundant. What they should do is implement a check where if charmed enemies are the only remaining active enemies, they de-charm.

That may have been more a feature of old-potd than anything else. I mean, if you build your characters for high accuracy, then yeah, they should usually hit -- misses suck! I do agree the duration on Ringleader is way too long -- it goes beyond overpowered and into annoying, with every fight ending in a minute's worth of green circle bashing. On the other hand though it's really annoying to build the focus for a good power and then repeatedly miss with it. I'd rather Ringleader hit reliably, but for a short duration. It's a potent AoE, it could have a fairly short base duration and still be very worthwhile.

Thanks, this is a really interesting build. Did you consider / do you consider using one-handed rapiers?

Technical point, but a Skald chanter can actually generate phrases very fast. I think an accuracy penalty to Charm would be dramatic overkill. Something like four years of balancing work went into the first game; let's not throw that out. Take the current cast+recovery times of the current charm powers, add the durations they had in the first game, you get a sixteen second or so base duration for most charms, which is long enough to still be useful but about 25% shorter than the current implementation. (Note that if you do the same thing to Mental Binding, you get a 14 second duration, more than double the current duration. Why were charm durations lengthened but paralyze durations halved? The World May Never Know). To be clear though I'm not saying the Cipher is unplayable or anything. It's possible to build a strong Cipher character. They're just lackluster compared to other classes that actually got new toys for the new game.

A chanter skald can cast an AoE charm invocation repeatedly also ("the lover cried out to the beloved, I am yours!"), and also have party heals, summons, etc. Ciphers are not the only class who can cast repeatable intellect afflictions. Cipher charms are potent, sure, but it's ok to let classes be powerful. Let players have nice things! Cipher charm durations are a little long -- you could reduce their durations by a quarter or even a third without hurting much -- but we have a whole first game that let charm effects work and they worked fine, there's nothing inherently too powerful with charms as such, they just seem powerful compared to the rest of the crap that's filling the cipher toolbox currently. Past that, I don't think it's all that valid to cite the focus mechanic as an advantage because the per-encounter limits are very rarely all that meaningful after the first few levels. Fights rarely last long enough for a higher level caster to dump his spellbook, and if they *do* last that long you can burn an Empower. More importantly though, casters can open the fight with their strongest powers, while ciphers can't, which is a huge difference in tactical strength, because the opening moments of the fight are the most tactically valuable. I'll agree that "legacy class" is inexact. A better descriptor would be unfinished, which is odd considering this is a sequel. Playing a cipher right now feels like cooking in a new kitchen the day after moving houses: all your tools are in the wrong place or broken, and half of them are still missing.

AT this point Cipher is basically a legacy class from the first game. Most of their powers are sub-par, which was needed in the first game to balance out per-encounter/per-rest disparity. The general shift to per-encounter bypassed the Ciphers, and then a lot of other across-the-board changes (to casting times, effect durations, Afflictions system, etc.) have hit the class en passant, without much thought apparently given to how the changes impacted CIphers specifically. The net result is that most of their powers aren't that great in comparison to similar tier spells from other classes (compare cipher powers vs wizard or chanter or druid powers), and their former star powers have gotten badly nerfed or broken (who here remembers when mental binding was a star power, before its cast+recovery was equal to its duration?). There's enough left to keep the class sortof minimally functionall -- the charms, amplified wave, time parasite -- but there's very little active positive reason to play the class. The Tier VII powers especially -- the capstones for a multiclass!! -- are almost obnoxiously worthless. Net result, the few decent powers (eyestrike, antipathetic field, etc.) mean the class makes a decent multiclass choice, but if you're trying to play a pure caster and you don't want to cheese things with time parasite, there's just not much there there. Any other caster you can find two or three good solid powers per casting level; with wizards you can swap out grimoires and cast all sorts of things. Single class Ciphers, you're stuck picking the one good active power at any given level and then a couple passives, and the rest of the time you just autoattack. There's a fifth tier wizard spell they can swap in a grimoire for that is better in every single way than a tier 9 cipher power. It's even an AoE while the cipher capstone is single-target. All that said, revising your list: 1) Nice thing about Mind Wave is its an interrupt on hit, in an AoE. One of the better 1st tier powers really, 2) Mind Blades is redundant with the entire rest of the party because it's slashing damage; you don't need it for anything. Phantom Foes seems nice at first because it has a large AoE, but eyestrike is a better debuff in every way and also gives flanking. 3) Ectopsychic Echo is very easy to use once you get the knack of it and consistently useful even at high levels, excellent power. 4) Body Attunement got nerfed down to -2 armor debuff in the beta patch, which would be reasonable if it were an AoE like Expose Vulnerabilities or Hel-Hyraf's. Sicne it's single-target, it's now objectively worse than a first level Chanter power and a second-tier Wizard spell. 5) Wild leech has never been useful not even in the first game. 6) Ancestor's Honor is a joke and "ciphers are bad" is the punchline. Screaming Souls would be a decent spell in a wizard's grimoire but is godawful as a locked in cipher power because it's too situational. 7) Defensive Mindweb was a star in the last game but pops like a soap bubble on PotD in the new beta patch because it pops on any damage, i.e., including a graze. Haunting Chains is the same joke as Ancestor's Honor, except this time the punchline is "play a wizard instead."

Barbarians *are* kinda boring actually I'll agree. They do have a decent assortment of active powers though -- yell, leap, frenzy, heart of fury, etc. They aren't casters though is the distinction I'd draw. Barbarians do what they say on the label -- they scream and leap and hit things with weapons. That's all they really need to do. Ciphers though, they no longer fill the role they did in the first game. They're much weaker at crowd control and due to the changes to per-encounter they have a hard time competing on casting damage.

No that kind of build is basically the best remaining use case for the cipher -- multiclassed with a damage dealer like a rogue or ranger, and just using a small number of powers for some added versatility. There are some decent Cipher powers, it's just that their total power list is crazy short. Ciphers have three active abilities available to choose from for ranks 9, 8, 7, and 6; wizards have 7 spells to choose from at each of those levels; druids have five. Any given priest has a fairly short list admittedly but at least a priest of Skaen gets a different list from a priest of Eothas. When you adjust those numbers for "half of all abilities are crap," which is a decent general rule of thumb at this stage, the Cipher list ends up really short. I don't necessarily mind there being good and bad picks at a given level, but it's annoying as heck when I reach a new power tier and literally all the best available options are to go back and pick lower level abilities I'd bypassed instead.

Not really a counterargument (I actually agree with you) but Recall Agony is actually a better power than it is credited for. Yeah, there are probably . .ten, maybe fifteen Cipher powers that can be at least situationally useful. The problem is more that there's very little the Cipher can bring to the party that can't be better brought by a wizard or chanter, both of whom have bigger, deeper, more powerful toolboxes. The only real remaining niche for ciphers right now is as the dual class for a ranger or rogue, so you can take maximum advantage of the damage boost from Soul Whip and add a little versatility from a casting power or two, and even there, you're probably better off with a buffing wizard if you spec right.

? Ciphers are amazing this build, both as a single caster or multi because they have early access to charm/dominate. Charm, dominate, summons and explosives make every encounter much easier. There's a term for that, unfortunately: "One-Trick Pony." And chanters also get an AoE charm effect at Tier IV, actually earlier than Ciphers get Ringleader.

Right, but presumably a specific captain from a specific encounter is the one that drops the Red Hand. There are a few specific naval encounters which were bugged previously and didn't drop loot -- Malnaj was one -- but which now do drop loot in the new beta branch patch (Malnaj drops loot now but not the Red Hand). So if we knew which specific encounter the Red Hand was supposed to drop from, we could go test .. .

which captain

Pfft. Try being a fan of Priests. (That said, I haven't ventured above Veteran yet, and probably won't until I need the difficulty to offset metaknowledge advantages. I play slowly-- my most advanced character was only level 10 before I installed the beta and started over.) Eh, I've only played Xoti up to like level 14 or so but priests at least have a party role. They're solid healers, they have strong buffs and inspirations, and at higher levels you can build them for at least moderately strong nuking and debuffing. There are definitely a number of weak Priest powers and there were definitely a couple of priest levels where I had a hard time picking a useful ability and ultimately went back and picked a lower-level passive instead, but there was never a tier I looked at and thought "this whole tier is useless, time to stock up on passives entirely," and that happened more than once with Ciphers.* See, e.g., the Rank VII spell choices for Priest and for Cipher respectively: Priest has four moderately useful choices at that level -- cleansing flame, resurrection, storm of holy fire, minor avatar. Sure they're not exactly barn-burners and Resurrection is basically just a repeat of Revive the Fallen but an extra cast of Resurrect Ally is always useful. They do damage or they heal, cleansing flame wipes enemy buffs, etc. Like, I get why these aren't anything to write home about, but at least they're functional. By comparison, ciphers? The only worthwhile active rank VII power is a stasis spell that functions as a "fight me later" button for one monster. Ancestor's Honor is literally useless because it doesn't raise the per-fight uses of Empower -- it's functionally just a rest button you have to press in-combat -- and Screaming Souls only works against spirits or vessels, which might make it useful in a Wizard's grimoire where you could swap it in for a vessel fight, but makes it a dead dud waste for a Cipher's active power choice (unless maybe you respec it in for the undead island or something), because in every fight where you aren't facing vessels it's taking up a power slot instead of helping. ----------- *Specifically, level VII and level II, ciphers are better off taking all passives or almost all passives at both those levels. And it's not because the passives are particularly amazing, it's just that generic passives like "bonus damage with two handed weapons" are superior to all available active spell options the Cipher could pick instead.

Yeah, it's fixed, I beat Malnaj last night and was able to loot all the gear. Thanks! Did you get any other conclusion to the quest or does it still just end with that? It ends with that. Really the Malnaj fight is sortof a coda.

I don't think that is the consensus at all. Please try to beat the ruins using a skald chanter as your PC and let me know how that goes I beat it on the beta patch using a single class cipher PC, which is probably harder. I didn't get a hireling but I did burn a lot of consumables.

She shows up on a weird time clock.

Yeah, it's fixed, I beat Malnaj last night and was able to loot all the gear.

I agree with and support 99% of the changes but I'm still probably going to shelve the game for a bit after this patch just because it's clear that Ciphers are generally broken now and aren't getting fixed with this pass. I said before that the game was far too easy generally and Ciphers far too weak as a class, with the result that Ciphers could kind of coast, but that if the difficulty were fixed, Ciphers would get broken en passant, as it were: any enhancements to difficult would bring out the Cipher's failures in sharp relief. Now that PotD has enhanced the difficulty, I'm finding I was correct in that prediction. It's not just the two nerfs to cipher powers (body attunement and time parasite) with the patch. Now that the game is actually difficult, the uselessness of other Cipher abilities is far more obvious -- Defensive Mindweb pops like a soap bubble, etc. Now that the game's actually difficult, if you want offensive damage or CC casting, you want a wizard; if you want support casting you bring a chanter. Anything Ciphers can do, other classes can do better, and now that that matters, there's no reason to bring a cipher when you'd get better results with a wizard or chanter.

No, it's significantly worse than that. Wizard's Double breaks on hit. Defensive Mindweb breaks on damage, so will break on a graze. Given the stat boosts everything gets on PotD, that basically means it's a soap bubble. My suggestion (considering wizard's double is a first level spell and Defensive Mindweb is a Rank 8 power) would be for critical hits to knock characters out of the web, not any hits or any damage. Even that I'd have to playtest though. The old version was powerful, but it's a rank 8 power. Let players have nice things!

Gatecrashers are 15% chance to do their knockdown on a critical hit. It seems excessive. 50% chance would be plenty.