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Rygmrand's "Artist" Class: Spiritualist ( Soulblade/Chanter ) Difficulty: PotD+ Version: 2.1 Solo: Hel Yes DESCRIPTION: A powerful build that snowballs early into a biawac of destruction and test the power of your gaming contraption! Kill your enemies with ice and decay. If you thought Grave Calling/Hel Beckoning's imp route was neat, you're in for a real big treat. Soul annihilating summons all day! RP: A character I imagined who would rise up to be Rymgrand's top agent. (EDIT) Patch 2.1 - Soul Annihilation's killing blow now has been fixed, but the skeleton and chillfog synergy is still going strong. Difference is now you can either dump SA on enemies or spam cipher spells during chillfog bursts kind of like a semi-ascendant that has Soul Annihilation. I also recommend trying out a Berserker Howler (skeleton nukes) or Harbinger multiclass (deathblow passives) for damage output if you can make do without the cipher utility to increase accuracy or weaken enemy fortitude defenses. There are 2 things that make this build work: 1. Soulblade's Soul Annihilation (SA) despite saying "Primary Attack", will trigger any weapon "on kill" effects if the target dies from the raw damage portion of the attack even if the weapon with the effect is equipped on the offhand. Apparently it also ignores the type of creature it is when it is killed, which will fulfill any "on kill" effect that requires a certain monster type (kith, etc). CAUTION: I am sure this is unintended so enjoy it while it lasts. D: 2. Most abilities that are activated or procced from a weapon will usually calculate damage and special effects using the weapon and any passive abilities the character has. In the case of the cipher, it will generate focus for them. There are some exceptions, but it is usually the case. Technically you could use SA's agnostic killing blow on any soulblade multiclass, which would probably make soulblade/rogue into an insane force of destruction on trash, but the chanter multiclass was the safer choice in order to supply your own "easy fuel" for SA kills and to default back to a chanter summon line on harder fights. Using the raw damage hit of the Soulblade's Soul Annihilation, I am able to 1-2 shot my low HP summons and able to proc the on kill effects of Grave Calling and Hel Beckoning regardless if they are a vessel or spirit. For Grave Calling I have enchanted it to cast chill fog on a vessel kill which will be my skellies. This will result in a free AoE non-hazardous chillfog spell when I kill my summon that blinds and pulses damage to enemies that ALSO contribute to my focus gain, which means I can then use soul annihilation immediately again on an enemy or spam cipher spells. This also stacks my ice lash buff and with the paralyzation on crit enchant, many of the enemies caught in the chillfog spam become blinded and paralyzed as they get torn apart. The afflictions will still persist even if they are immune to freeze damage. The even nastier thing is that if a vessel dies from chillfog it will spawn another chillfog because it is still benefiting from Grave Calling's passives. You will want to cull near-death non-vessels with SA to take advantage of their deaths. POST 2.1 - While this still can work when fighting spirits, it now requires a bit more micro of what blade does killing blows. The other styles seem a lot more viable now and even weapon/ranged can work since the build has no full attacks. In the case for Hel Beckoning, which has procs on a spirit kill and behaves similar to Grave Calling, the two options are a corrode AoE or a corrode imp summon. Although the AoE option is definitely the higher damage option on normal fights, the single aoe cast can miss since it is after all going against fortitude defense, can be resisted by poison immunes, and it doesn't pulse like chillfog does. So for this weapon in solo mode I opted to turn it into a imp summoning tool though in a party you can opt for the AoE instead since you won't have to worry about resistances and survivability as much. The main benefit is to gain ranged cannon fodder separate from the chanter's summons that will also leave usable bodies for "The White Worms AKA Corpse Explosion," which will give a crush damage vs reflex option. Note: The bodies still have the summoning timer and will disappear when it expires. Also of course, the white worms can be used aggressively to unload even more damage on top of the chillfog deathzone to end encounters even quicker without needing focus to spam amplified wave. Hel Beckoning may not always be your main offhand since there are options like Resounding Hammer that gives a free Might+PEN inspiration when killing your summons. Now the obvious weaknesses of the 2 weapons is that the major damage abilties go against fortitude, chillfog is only freeze damage, and maintaining an imp army can only go so far with their pitiful corrode damage PEN. In these specific situations, we can then fallback to the summon meatshield wall of chanters while we pick off targets to gain focus and grind them down via cipher spells or switch to another weapon with another kill effect (although not as strong as Grave Calling but they are "good enough"). We also still have the options from chanter and cipher abilties to lower defenses for the weapon's abilities to land. Some freeze immunes like rime constructs still are vulnerable to the paralyzing effects of chillfog so even if you do no damage, the enemy is prepped to be killed via other means. POST 2.1 - Auto skellies instead and dump SA on enemies while chillfog taps them for focus. While the fire lash chant is great for focus gain, the build does not use it because SA gets countered if your summon is benefitting from the fire lash chant for some reason. In this build, I've opted to use 2 chants: 1. Life Leech Chant: Since you will be doing a lot of damage on trash and hitting your weak defense summons, this chant works great as a healing option. In times of desperation you can back away and "tap" your minions to recover. 2. Skelly Summon Chant: This frees up phrases that would have been used to initiate battles with summons to allow different invocations to be used. Unlike the invocation skellies, the bodies of these skellies can be used for corpse explosion if you are fast enough to trigger it before the body disappears. OTHER NOTES: You do not gain focus from hitting your own summons even with confuse just to be clear with it. There is also a bit of mental micro of needing to know, which blade is being used when auto-attacking your summons. This build also makes use of the Magran belt. While the additional burn damage is nice for minor focus gain, the primary reason is to gain a chance to summon a fire elemental whenever you hit, which is a lot when you have several weapon aoes hitting mobs. The elemental will then serve as easy focus fuel in the midst of tougher or dwindling enemies. There is one really interesting caveat you need watch out for and that is the confused affliction. With the affliction, your aoe zones will damage you which will result in death if you don't have the defenses to get out or survive it if you happen to be in the thick of it. For this reason, INT and DEX resistances are recommended to have. It also serves as an amazing mechanic since now you can just summon your skeletons directly into the chillfog and have them blow up into a nuclear chillfog, which is pretty amazing to watch honestly if your computer can handle it. In a party, have some berserker caster or rogue put a controlled confusion on you for skelly chillfog bombs that would violate the Geneva Convention so hard. Having said that, a howler (berserker/chanter) can do this all by himself using Grave Calling normally. With the SA trick, you could also go double imp enchants for 2 imps for the price of one body. Keep killing your imps to generate more imps as long as you alternate hitting an enemy in between since hitting your own summons does not generate any focus for you. Using this trick, even a non-chanter can build up a ton of imps really quick that can fuel other types of mob builds, but chillfog is too good to give up for an imp. SUBCLASSES: Each chanter subclass has its perks in the build. Skald - Skeletons and wisps have really low defenses so hitting them will generate phrases really quickly, which then can be spent on discounted offensive invocations. Unfortunately it does not generate any phrases from chillfog or noxious blast. Troubadour - Not as bursty as skald's phrase generation, but a lot more consistent than beckoner for rapid phrase generation and helpful when retreating after enemies ripped apart your summons really fast. A skelly every 3 seconds from the skelly chant is also amazing for lazy summon fuel. Beckoner - The lowered HP of the summons helps for initial kills with SA. Even with the lowered duration of summons, a high INT build is still sufficient to be able to have summons constantly up and there is usually enough time to kill a few. It is however, tighter on resources on tough fights until level 19 where the skelly chant will free up some room to use phrases on non-summoning invocations and a bit difficult to use on lower INT builds. It also is the strongest nuclear chillfog subclass when using confuse affliction. Ascended - If you prefer autoattacking summons with just Grave Calling, Ascended works just as well, but this guide will be about Soul Blades since ascended builds perform similar to each other once hitting the ascended buff. RACES: Pale Elf - I chose pale elf to be more in line with the lore of being Rymgrand's BFF, but the real benefit of it is that the fire and freeze AR is extremely helpful when finding several summoned fire elementals chasing your character around or a sudden intellect affliction has the character in the middle of a chillfog deathzone. Wood Elf - Same stats as Pale Elf, but gives a free dexterity resistance. Human - Can be useful in a party since the accuracy boost and damage boost from being bloodied is easier to maintain and control, but you will have to forgo using the life leech aura. CULTURE & BACKGROUND: The White that Wends for perception since accuracy is the highest priority in the build. Matches with the whole RP thing too. You're free to choose whatever though. ATTRIBUTES: SKILLS: WEAPONS & MODALS: ABILITIES: +Good / ?Notable / -Bad EQUIPMENT: +Good / ?Conditional / -Bad

Problem Soul blades are a terrific class concept, but tend to feel dull when you actually play them. Most people tend to use their Focus to just spam Soul Annihilation over and over. As a result, the rest of the Cipher's ability set just gets ignored because it is generally better to spend Focus on Annihilation than on another spell. This leads to an effective, but ultimately bland playing experience. Proposed Feature I want to introduce a cooldown to Soul Annihilation. Proposal Value Limiting a player's usage of Soul Annihilation will force him/her to be more tactical in its use and will also encourage the use of other Cipher abilities while Soul Annihilation is on cooldown. Suggested Implementation Apply a debuff to the player upon using Soul Annihilation The debuff should be designed to increase the base cost of Annihilation to an unattainably high value (e.g. 500 Focus instead of 10) The inflated cost to use Annihilation will effectively lock out the skill until the debuff ends, in effect creating a cooldown The debuff can be set in the Status.gamedatabundle files and can be configured by each player to best fit their tastes - I would propose roughly 10 seconds During the 10 seconds, the player can continue to use Focus on other buffs, debuffs or damage abilities without penalty or benefit - only Soul Annihilation is affected Request I am fairly confident that this mod can be designed within the gamedatabundle files, but likely requires more competence than I have with this sort of thing. Is there anyone here who shares my thoughts about Soul Blades that would like to help in creating this mod? Thanks! -N

Hey all, I can't decide between a Battlemage (Fighter/Wizard) and a Psyblade (Fighter/Cipher). I want to make a character with good melee capability as well as decent magic/casting to help augment that melee ability further and occasionally cause damage with casting. Essentially I don't mind occasionally using jolting touch or mind wave to cause damage (I certainly want to use these abilities), but most of the time I want to stay in melee and fight it out. That means I want to use (most of the time) instantaneous casting abilities as augments, because if I'm in melee I don't wanna spend too much time in recovery (I'm also a fan of heavy armor). I find a fighter is a great base class with a nice mix of defensive and offensive passives which is why I am going with that, though I'm open to suggestions. The Wizard and Cipher both bring casting to the table but they do it in different ways. I usually look at buffs/debuffs in terms of "does this increase my chances of hitting them and reduce their chance to hit me?". I feel the wizard is more focused, or rather, has better options for self buffing (arcane veil, mirror image, displaced image, citzal's martial power) increasing my melee abilities and most/all of these are instant cast. Cipher can do something similar but does it by debuffing enemies more with eyestrike and other abilities. These abilities have long cast times which makes me iffy about how much time I'll spend in recovery. But on the other hand I can get soul whip and soul annihilation for increased damage. This is essentially my problem, do I take instant, strong buffs over soul whip and slower debuffs? If anyone has any one tried these classes, please share your opinion of their effectiveness and just how much fun you had.