Single-Classed Cipher in Turn-Based

[Killabkilled]

 

Is it better to better to go Ascendant and build around the idea of spamming out insta-cast abilities while ascended, or to go No Subclass and build around casting shared nightmare-sized amplified waves consistently over time? (I read somewhere that ascended only last 2 or 3 turns in TB.)

 

The would be for a use in a party, btw.

 

Follow-up question: What's the fastest way for a single-classed Ascendant to reach ascended in TB, considering that 2H Dual-wielding/speed-based melee is less good, and assuming that the hand mortars are reserved for another character? (Possible candidates: Watershaper's Focus, Amira's Wing, Red Hand, Essence Interrupter)

 

EDIT: I meant dual-wielding, not 2H

Edited February 20, 2019 by Killabkilled

[Taudis]

Ascendant vs No-Sub in TB depends on a lot of what you want to do. Ascended should last 3 rounds, or 4 at 22+ INT (20 INT w/Strand of Favor will also get you 4). Wanna spam high level powers? Ascendant does it better; No-Sub would also be out of focus after casting Amplified Wave 3 rounds in a row. Wanna cast buffs or CC? No-Sub will probably end out having more than 3-4 rounds of uninterrupted casting.

 

Course you said you'll have a party: bring a Priest and cast Salvation of Time. It's +2 rounds on your beneficial effects. 5-6 rounds of Ascended is plenty. No more drawback on Ascendant, since you can cast for the same amount of rounds as a No-Sub (or longer).

 

As for weapons, I'd dual-wield Kitchen Stove [Thunderous Report/Everything and Anything] and Xefa's Empirical Explication [Jagged Load/Open Choke]. Kitchen Stove's Thunderous Report will take you to Ascended pretty consistently. When it doesn't, auto attacking easily covers the remainder.

 

For backup, I'd consider a bow. Frostseeker can also generate lots of focus but it's inconsistent if it's not critting. Essence Interrupter is better for focus generation in RTwP, but it's still good in TB for the unique damage type and lash. Saint Omaku's Mercy giving big hits is great in TB where its slowness doesn't hurt very much. I would use any one of these in my second weapon slot for pierce immune enemies, with my personal preference being Saint Omaku's, since it's very good against the high AR opponents that Blunderbusses have a hard time with.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

i would suggest Beguiler, not Ascendant, for turn-based. Ascendants rely a lot on action speed increases from things like Time Parasite and those are much less effective in TB.

[Raven Darkholme]

Ascendant is plain bad in TB.

You can't "spam" abilities while Ascended, you can use exactly 3, one per round.

Atm Disintegrate is godlike on TB, it costs 60 focus base, 55 as Soul Blade, three times 60 = 180, max focus is something like 275 as Ascendant, which you have to reach to become Ascended, so you have to achieve almost 100 more focus for using the same ability, but since Soul Blade is the best cipher anyway, as a Soul Blade you only need 165 focus for 3 disintegrate.

On top of that the Soul Blade has the added utility of Soul Annihilation, which does less damage than Disintegrate, but is much better against Dorudugan with 180 Fort and only 140ish deflection.

(Tbf most higher fortitude enemies can be easily disintegrated tho, since you can weaken enemies with Fractured Volition = -10 fort, which wouldn't be enough against Doru but there is not many other enemies with even close to 180 fort in the game.)

[Taudis]

Ascendant isn't "plain bad", it's a build around now. You need weapons that'll consistently max your focus round 1 and to get INT to 20 or 22. It's just not the over-the-top OP, spam-1000-Disintegrates auto-pick it was in TB. The PL boost is fairly significant and pre-max level (you know, 3/4s of the game?), other subs won't be able to throw out more high level powers. Even if they can cast the same amount before running out of focus, Ascendant does it at +3 PL.

 

It's fairly disingenuous to say they only get three rounds, when 18 INT plus two items available in Neketaka (Heaven's Cacophony and Charm of Bones) get you four rounds. You can also hit four rounds with 19 INT (available to Godlikes and Old Vaillians) and Strand of Favor, another fairly early item. 5 rounds is even possible:

Non-Godlikes: 18 INT (+40% duration) + Strand of Favor (+15% Duration) + Heaven's Cacophony (+10% Duration) + Mari Crudia (+25% Duration) + Pick two: Kuaru's Prize/Cauldron Brew/Old Vaillia (2x +5% Duration) = +100% duration = 30 seconds = 5 rounds.

Godlikes: 19 INT (+45% duration) + Strand of Favor (+15% Duration) + Mari Crudia (+25% Duration) + Kuaru's Prize (+5% Duration) + Cauldron Brew (+5% Duration) + Old Vaillia (+5% Duration) = +100% duration = 30 seconds = 5 rounds.

 

Where TB Ascendant is actually bad:

• Port Maje/early game. Without the gear for a longer duration Ascension, the weapons to quickly reach it, and the really great powers to spam, Ascendant is worse than the other subs on Port Maje. This was also true in RTwP. In general, pre-level 11 Ascendant also isn't great since spamming things like Mind Blades is something all Ciphers are capable of. This is an issue specific to TB; spamming high action speed Mind Blades at +3 PL was great in RTwP.
• Fights that don't start with enough adds to farm for focus. Any fight where you're forced to open with auto-attacks for more than two rounds sucks. This was also true in RTwP but is actually slightly alleviated in TB. Why? Well, you can have your party debuff the tougher enemy or buff you and just delay until after your buffs/debuffs land. There was a time cost to doing that in RTwP that is gone with TB - it basically doesn't matter when you auto-attack in a round.
• If you want to Disintegrate an entire screen. No Cipher can do this in TB, btw. Play RTwP if that's your jam.
• In the very end game, specifically just in comparison to other subs. Ascendant is at its strongest from level 11 to level 19, where you should have your iconic level 6+ powers and the gear to sustain Ascendance. These are also the levels where the other subs won't be able to match 4 rounds of +3 PL high level Powers. I'll admit to being unfamiliar with Soulblade max Focus (is it 210+? Cos w/Greater Focus, that's the magic number), but Beguilers and No-Subs will be able to sustain 4 rounds of Disintegration/Amplified Wave at exactly 20th and being able to emulate Ascendant's schtick that well while still being useful when you can't quickly gain focus puts them ahead.
• Drawn out fights. Specifically any fight where you have to Ascend more than twice. Reaching Ascension a second time is kind of boring and will probably take 2-3 rounds but that's likely not going to be more total time spent generating focus than a differently subclassed Cipher. If you have to do that a 3rd time? That's a lot of rounds spent doing basically nothing, especially since you'll be out of easy targets and low on buffs/debuffs by the time you need to generate focus for Ascendance #3. This point is only valid if you don't have a Priest to cast Salvation of Time on you.
• Fights where it's hard not to be interrupted. Interrupts are absolutely brutal for TB Ascendants, losing 25% of your full power mode is a major bad deal. Interrupts of course weren't great in RTwP but they weren't as awful as they are in TB.

Basically, Ascendant is bad if you think the best fights in the game are the Dragons, SSS Survivor fights, Dorudugan, and Hauani O Whe. Considering that some players really love these challenging fights, it's definitely important to say that Ascendant is somewhere between mildly underwhelming and strictly worse than any other Cipher option in those fights.

 

For all I'm defending it, I wouldn't personally take Ascendant if Mortars are reserved for another character, since those are easiest way to quickly Ascend. They'll take you to max focus 1st turn in like 90% of fights, whereas with other options you're looking at like 70-80% 1st turn Ascendance (completely anecdotal numbers). Consistently Ascending right away is a big deal.

 

But it's not "bad now", it's still basically a free +3 PL for a meaningful chunk of a fight. Or an entire fight and not just a meaningful chunk if you coordinate your party (Salvation of Time Priest, AoE damage dealers to clear crowds while you Disintegrate big targets or single target damage dealers while you Amplified Wave away the crowds, Morningstar Modal user so you don't miss, etc.).

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

That's a fair analysis but it seems like you're basically admitting that Ascendants are flat a worse option in turn based on all the most challenging parts of the game -- levels 1-5 (Port Maje) and the DLC content (level 19 and after). 

 

Unless you're using a mod to re-norm your experience gain it's very easy to hit 19th only having completed about 2/3rds of the base-game content; heck, you can go from 6th to about 10th just on non-combat quest and exploration XP. I mean, yeah, ok, sure, I guess it's playable, and reasonably effective 11-19, but it's explicitly less effective in all the areas of the game where effectiveness actually matters. 

Edited February 21, 2019 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Raven Darkholme]

Ascendant isn't "plain bad", it's a build around now. You need weapons that'll consistently max your focus round 1...

I stopped reading there, if you max your focus in round 1, what stops you from using Soul Annihilation with a Soul Blade, which will do more damage as Disintegrate and go against deflection, which is the lowest defense in the game especially for dragons/megabosses/bosses, anyone thats not trash?

Also if you max your focus and still wanna cast disintegrate a Soul Blade can cast 5 disintegrates with that amount of focus, why stop at 3 with the Ascendant?

[Taudis]

I stopped reading there [...] why stop at 3 with the Ascendant?

 

(highlight mine) Wow, you honestly didn't read my post and still responded to it. I legitimately don't know what to say, that's kind of amazing in its boldness.

 

That's a fair analysis but it seems like you're basically admitting that Ascendants are flat a worse option in turn based on all the most challenging parts of the game -- levels 1-5 (Port Maje) and the DLC content (level 19 and after).

 

I was trying to respond to this and kept looking back at my other post and you're right: I really did make it seem like they were worse where it mattered. Some revisions that are more line with what I mean:

 

I think 20th level Ascendants are roughly on par with 20th level Beguilers and no-Subs. I haven't played a Soulblade so I don't feel qualified to comment but I'd guess they're around the same, otherwise every Cipher thread would be about how you should play Soulblade. As far as end game content goes, I only think they're explicitly worse on 2/4 megabosses (I actually think they're significantly better against Belranga and about on par against the Sigilmaster) and just the Survivor fights in SSS. And I'd still prefer an Ascendant in the Survivor fights to no Cipher at all.

 

My other point that I guess I wasn't clear on was that the places where a TB Ascendant struggles compared to other Ciphers are mostly the same places a RTwP Ascendant struggles - fights where it's hard to generate focus right off the bat, fights where you'll need to try to ascend multiple times, and the period of the early game where your Ascendance is just okay and not really much better than being a normal Cipher. RTwP is better in some areas, of course. But RTwP Ascendant was really good and shouldn't be a balancing point for if TB Ascendant is good enough.

 

My real big point is that it's so easy to ascend in most of the game, including some of the hard fights, that gaining +3 PL on 4 or 5 powers is basically free. A different Cipher sub was probably also going to open with that same big hit that took the Ascendant to max Focus and be casting for a similar amount of rounds.

 

I mostly don't really like that people are crying out "Ascendant is dead!" without looking at how it actually ends up playing like. There's also a bit of a disconnect where people seem to be ignoring the thing that "kills" Ascendant hurt Ciphers as a whole in TB. They were fairly fast casters and would definitely have thrown out more than 1 power every 6 seconds in RTwP. I probably shouldn't make this my hill to die on, though, especially not in OP's build help thread.

 

FWIW, I do use a slow XP gain mod, which I forget about sometimes since its effects aren't obvious or in your face and I didn't realize how that might color my view of things. 11-19 might not be as big of a portion of the game as I'm personally used to.

[Raven Darkholme]

 

I stopped reading there [...] why stop at 3 with the Ascendant?

 

(highlight mine) Wow, you honestly didn't read my post and still responded to it. I legitimately don't know what to say, that's kind of amazing in its boldness.

 

 

It's your highlight, that while I literally wrote I stopped reading there, I actually did it???

5 rounds duration doesn't make the Ascendant better, same amount of disintegrate casts as SB, but thats not even the point, since using max focus on Soul Annihilation is much better than waiting 5 rounds for casting Disintegrates.

(and it targets a better defense)

 

Also you basically agree Ascendant is bad against the enemies where it actually matters whether it's efficient or not, who even cares about trash enemies, you aren't gonna cast high level powers there anyway, do you want to cast mind blades for 5 rounds and spend max focus on it?

Edited February 21, 2019 by Raven Darkholme

[Taudis]

Well, first off, Soulblade can't actually cast 5 Disintegrates in a row. They max out at 200 Focus. That's only enough for 3 Disintegrates. You need to kill at least two enemies in melee before you can even cast four like a Beguiler or no-Sub can from max.

 

I tested it and Max Focus Soul Annihilation deals about the same amount of damage as the same Soulblade's Disintegrate does on its first round. That's pretty impressive for a melee attack, but then Disintegration ticks again the next round, and an Ascendant would be casting a second one instead of following up with the, what, 60-80ish damage of a Soulblade trying to rebuild focus?

 

Though now that I've actually looked at Soul Annihilation, I'd say trying to compare the two things like that as you've been doing is unfair to the Soulblade, since Soul Annihilation still hits like a truck at lower focus counts.

 

I've never had an issue hitting the defenses I want to in a party. In a vacuum or solo play, Deflection might be easier to hit, sure. Fortitude is super easy to debuff, though. For example, out of all the Companions and Sidekicks, literally only Serafen can't apply a second tier MIG/CON affliction and the Morningstar Modal in the same turn. That's 12/13 game-suggested party members that can give something at least -35 FORT through MIG/CON resistance while applying damage.

 

I know I did a piss-poor job of expressing it but what I was trying to say in my above post was that Ascendant is worse than the other subs at certain fights that in no way comprise the entirety of the tough fights in the game. I think they're actually better than other Subs for a lot of end-game content, like most of SSS and Belranga for example.

[Raven Darkholme]

All this talk about Ascendant made me think about how to actually make the Ascendant amazing (and it works both in TB and real time but ofc is more relevant in TB, since Ascendant is already ok in real time) and as for pretty much every class the answer is blood mage.

Don't wanna derail the original topic too much which was single class, but the short version is wall of Draining + Ascended + Blood Sacrifice to get walls back.

Your Ascended status will never end and ofc other effects like potion of final stand will never end, so even solo you will never die and can use stuff like Willbreaker or Magrans chosen belt/hostiles from killing tentacles with Essence interrupter, if you feel like enemy will is too high for your walls.

Honestly just Willbreaker and psychovampiric shield should be enough even vs Doru's high ish will.

[brasilgringo]

All this talk about Ascendant made me think about how to actually make the Ascendant amazing (and it works both in TB and real time but ofc is more relevant in TB, since Ascendant is already ok in real time) and as for pretty much every class the answer is blood mage.

Don't wanna derail the original topic too much which was single class, but the short version is wall of Draining + Ascended + Blood Sacrifice to get walls back.

Your Ascended status will never end and ofc other effects like potion of final stand will never end, so even solo you will never die and can use stuff like Willbreaker or Magrans chosen belt/hostiles from killing tentacles with Essence interrupter, if you feel like enemy will is too high for your walls.

Honestly just Willbreaker and psychovampiric shield should be enough even vs Doru's high ish will.

You'll still die if you're relying on Potion of the Final Stand and you get Dampened/Cleansed and can't heal thru it, tho, right?

Same problems as a BDD build....

 

It's an interesting idea, though, an Ascendant/Bloodmage ... do you think it would be more powerful than a BDD-based Thaumaturge?

[Raven Darkholme]

The fights with Arcane Cleanse/Dampener are all easy enough to never even use Final Stand, especially in turn based you just use siphon for heals and if not possible cast conselhauts missiles on tentacles (siphon is enough for conselhaut, because ads are super weak and a lot of them).

The fights were you need potion are FS and megabosses, maybe some of the SS, haven't done all of them so idk.

I'm playing Thauma atm and it has the added benefit of being able to use Salvation of time, in case you get brilliant from cloak, so against Doru you don't necessarily need to wait for flame blight from magran's belt, if you get brilliant first you can just cast that each round.

Edited February 23, 2019 by Raven Darkholme

[Killabkilled]

You can't "spam" abilities while Ascended, you can use exactly 3, one per round.

 

Hang on: All those abilities with 0.5 sec cast time in RTwP, are they not insta-cast in TB?

[Raven Darkholme]

Some are instacast but the ciphers don't have free actions, so they all consume his action, you only get one action per round and movement.

[Venatoris78]

So for a TB Cipher using Spells / Ranged Attacks what is the way to go? Ascendant?

Friend of mine bought PoE 2 recently and played ranged Cipher in PoE 1.

[Taudis]

Pretty much anything but Soulblade would be fine for a ranged Cipher. I also wouldn't recommend Ascendant for someone just coming out of PoE1, since the flow of it can be kind of weird to pick up especially on top of all the other changes. So, Beguiler if they like control powers and No-Sub if they prefer damage.

 

If they were playing the Blunderbuss Cipher in PoE1, my biggest recommendation would be to grab the dual Hand Mortars more than concern yourself with a subclass. That's gonna be the closest thing to the PoE1 Gun Cipher.