Whisper of Treason vs. Puppet Master

[TheMetaphysician]

My experience on the 1.1 PotD difficulty, due to how long the fights last because of armor buffs for enemies, is that Cipher rechargeable charm spells are something I really need to have in my party. So I'm respeccing my Serafen Cipher/Barbarian to include one. My question is this: should I pick Whisper of Treason or Puppet Master? I'm picking at a higher level, so I can do either. I can't figure out which would be better. Whisper gets more bonus accuracy because of power level, right? Does that outweigh the benefit of getting Dominate over Charm? I'd love some pro/con discussion and advice from those more familiar with cipher gameplay.

[Climhazzard]

Personally I pick whisper of treason because the other tier 1 spells are all ****, puppet master costs 3x more, has half the range, and is only questionably better.  So I use whisper of treason until ring leader is available.  

Edited June 5, 2018 by Climhazzard

[Crumbleton]

Personally I pick whisper of treason because the other tier 1 spells are all ****, puppet master costs 3x more, has half the range, and is only questionably better.  So I use whisper of treason until ring leader is available.  

Completely fair assessment.  One thing to consider with puppet master is creatures resistant to intelligent debuffs are immune to whispers and get charmed from puppet master so it has somewhat of a use until you get ring leader since you can respec out of it.  My cipher uses blunderbuss so i'm typically in range for it but it definitely isn't the strongest ability.

[Guest Jamila]

I prefer not to charm enemies because it has substantial hidden costs; enemies receive your buffs, heals, do not receive debuffs, damage, can not be flanked and, what annoys me to no end, can push party members out of formation while moving from A to B (terrible pathfinding only exacerbates it).

On the other hand, while I did not play 1.1 yet, I have been playing with scaling mod + xp reduction mod and pretty much everyhting I meet has higher level than my party and especially early fights like Gorecci street or Engwittan digsite were remarkably difficult. I won them by spamming cheap 10 focus Whispers of Treason + Withdraw (that 20 sec stun is so crippling that the spell has more utility as CC than heal) just before Whispers wore out.

Of 1st tier spells, I would pick also Soul Shock, damage seems to scale well and goes against reflex, which can be debuffed by Eyestrike (also tier 1) or Mental Binding (tier 2), or both, Eyestrike is long lasting. Perhaps even Valorous Echoes, with 2 ciphers in party, so they would buff each other on combat start.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

galaxy brain: skip them both for ringleader, especially on a respec

Edited June 5, 2018 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Braven]

Take both.  Whispers costs 1/3 the focus power of Ringleader.  The duration will be 10% longer from power levels.   Like others said, the range is better and sometimes you only want to charm one enemy.  Ringleader is still good at the start of a fight to divide and conquer, but later it might be better to just charm one enemy.

 

Charm is either the best affliction in the game, or worthless because the enemy is immune to it or has really high will.  Great tool to have around for sure when it shines and really the reason to have a cipher, in my opinion.  It is true that AOE healing will heal the charmed enemy and it will also get buffed... but why does it matter?  The idea is to charm an enemy to take them out of combat and then just gang up on them with everyone at the end.  Health/Buffs doesn't really matter then.  If they distract the enemy, that is a nice bonus.

 

If they get in the way, I suggest having more party members using ranged weapons.  It is kind of ideal if they get in the way as you would rather have enemies attack them than your own party.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Braven