Cipher shooty-person build advice, v5.0

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, with the release of 5.0, and the good timing, I think it is finally time for me to got back and try a second pass after my aborted attempted early on (Iwaited for bug fixes, then the expansion and then though sod it, might as well wait until they're all done and dusted...!)

(So, I actually asked this question ages and ages and ages ago, but we've have umpteen patches since...!)

 

My cipher in PoE 1 was a blunberbuss wielder, whom I concentrated on dealing damage (especially with Mind Blades and Amplified Wave.) (I never thought a great deal of the top-level powers in PoE1, so I didnt use them much).

 

What are my best options for doing a similar ranged cypher in PoE2? Specifically, to single or multiclass, and what specialisation would be good to pick? Ascendant seems like a strong possibility, either way; if multiclass, what would be good options for that?

 

As the latter in particular likely may change on what my party is,  my nominal plan os to have Eder, Aloth and Xoti as party members... My first run through, I started with Pallengina, but quickly found her to be a bit tedious, so I think this time I might take Maia (who I don't think I really talked to much the first time, but sounded perhaps a bit jollier.) So, secondarily, recommendations as to whether said companions are best single or multiclassed as I before (I lean towards that direction). I think I went Swashbuclker for Eder, straight Wiz for Aloth and contemplative for Xoti. (I can't remember what I for Pallengina.)

 

 

 

[AeonsLegend]

Yea Blunderbuss Ascendant is very strong. You could multi it with Ranger or anything that allows your Cipher to gain Focus faster. I like pure Ascendant better because it just levels Cipher much faster. But if your goal is to just shoot stuff and not use Cipher abilities that much then Ascendant may not be your go-to subclass.

Edited May 8, 2019 by AeonsLegend

[Boeroer]

If you want to stick to blunderbusses:

• Streetfighter/Ascendant with dual mortars and max INT. Afflictions are getting applied to AoE with mortars again in 5.0. Turn on Powder Burns, trigger "Heating Up" which gives you higher Sneak Attack and + 100% recovery speed - or 50% recovery time (how you like to word it). Which is very nice when becoming ascended.
• Single Class is also nice because of Time Siphon (stacks with itself and also gives you a big speed advantage while ascended).
• Barbarian (Fury Shaper)/Ascendant: Use the speed bonuses of Frenzy Ward, Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst while ascended. Spirit Frenzy will put "Staggered" on all enemies you hit with damaging cipher spells.
• Troubadour/Ascendant: Use Sure Handed Ila to get double the recovery bonus for your blunderbusses/mortars and Mith Fyr for a lot better focus generation and dps. Use The Shield Cracks in order to reduce enemies' AR. While ascended use cipher powers, while not use invocations.
• Wizard/Ascendant: Use Infuse with Vital Essence and Wall of Draining to prolong your ascended state. Use Alacrity to speed you up. Use normal dual blunderbusses or mortars and cipher beams and Wall of Flames with Combusting Wounds. Use Essential Phantom to double your attack roll output (for Combusting Wounds).
• Helwalker/Ascendant: Use Stunning Surge and Enduring Dance to get near limitless Full Attacks with Blunderbusses/mortars through crits/refund. Use the bonus MIG to boost all your dmg (including cipher powers) and bonus INT to prolong DoTs like Disintegrate and more importantly your ascension phase. Use Lightning Strikes to speed you up and amp up the focus generation. Use Flagellanth's Path to skip reloading phase and immediately trigger a move+Full Attack (which is followed by recovery, not reload). Use The Long Pain for an awesome backup alternative for pierce resistant/immune enemies.
• Black Jacket/Ascendant: Use 3 weapon slots and Quick Switch with dual blunderbusses to instantly fill your focus via Penetrating Strike and start casting cipher powers while ascended. Use Tactial Barrage to get longer ascension and +1 PL with cipher spells (in addition to your ascension PL bonus). Use Conqueror Stance. Use Clear Out on mobs  with your 4th setup: a mortar  in the offhand and a melee weapon in the main hand. Switch to that setup right before executing Clear Out. This will fill your focus immediately (and most likly kill some mobs right away). 

[AeonsLegend]

And Blunderbuss was already broken...

[Aotrs Commander]

 

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

If you want to stick to blunderbusses:

• Streetfighter/Ascendant with dual mortars and max INT. Afflictions are getting applied to AoE with mortars again in 5.0. Turn on Powder Burns, trigger "Heating Up" which gives you higher Sneak Attack and + 100% recovery speed - or 50% recovery time (how you like to word it). Which is very nice when becoming ascended.
• Single Class is also nice because of Time Siphon (stacks with itself and also gives you a big speed advantage while ascended).
• Barbarian (Fury Shaper)/Ascendant: Use the speed bonuses of Frenzy Ward, Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst while ascended. Spirit Frenzy will put "Staggered" on all enemies you hit with damaging cipher spells.
• Troubadour/Ascendant: Use Sure Handed Ila to get double the recovery bonus for your blunderbusses/mortars and Mith Fyr for a lot better focus generation and dps. Use The Shield Cracks in order to reduce enemies' AR. While ascended use cipher powers, while not use invocations.
• Wizard/Ascendant: Use Infuse with Vital Essence and Wall of Draining to prolong your ascended state. Use Alacrity to speed you up. Use normal dual blunderbusses or mortars and cipher beams and Wall of Flames with Combusting Wounds. Use Essential Phantom to double your attack roll output (for Combusting Wounds).
• Helwalker/Ascendant: Use Stunning Surge and Enduring Dance to get near limitless Full Attacks with Blunderbusses/mortars through crits/refund. Use the bonus MIG to boost all your dmg (including cipher powers) and bonus INT to prolong DoTs like Disintegrate and more importantly your ascension phase. Use Lightning Strikes to speed you up and amp up the focus generation. Use Flagellanth's Path to skip reloading phase and immediately trigger a move+Full Attack (which is followed by recovery, not reload). Use The Long Pain for an awesome backup alternative for pierce resistant/immune enemies.
• Black Jacket/Ascendant: Use 3 weapon slots and Quick Switch with dual blunderbusses to instantly fill your focus via Penetrating Strike and start casting cipher powers while ascended. Use Tactial Barrage to get longer ascension and +1 PL with cipher spells (in addition to your ascension PL bonus). Use Conqueror Stance. Use Clear Out on mobs  with your 4th setup: a mortar  in the offhand and a melee weapon in the main hand. Switch to that setup right before executing Clear Out. This will fill your focus immediately (and most likly kill some mobs right away). 

Noted. (I haven't got time now to do more than give that a cursory read-over, I'll go through it later in more detial.)

Though I'm not tied to blunderbusses specifically, that was just the best option in PoE1 - in that if filled my focus really fast because of the multipler bullets - (before I got one, I was using arbalests). (And they were two-handed weapons in PoE1, weren't they? Or I was BADLY missing some tricks...!) Looks like I'd tried with arqubuses to start with on my last run - basically I'm open for suggestions on ranged (as-support-for-spells), as opposed to melee cipher-ing.

Edited May 9, 2019 by Aotrs Commander

[Rafeil]

I think pure priest for Xoti is better. Single class fighter for a sturdier Eder tank, or Swashbuckler for a more DPS tank. If you go swash with Eder, he can put more debuffs on enemies (persistent distraction talent), which makes Ranger/Rogue Maia do lots of damage (deathblows talent), otherwise, pure Ranger Maia is good. Ranger/Wiz might be good if you only get self-buffs that don't have long cast/recovery time. 

If you really want a ranged support, then Troubadour is really good. With high Int, you can have several passive buffs going at once, and you can also summon tons of skeletons passively later, like Boeroer said above. 

[Boeroer]

If you want a tank on whom you can cast friendly fire AoE spells like Fireball and stuff without hesitating I would recommend Swashbuckler. It's actually more tanky in this case because Adept Evasion + Refreshing Defense + The Wall is very good against anything that's targeting Reflex. All grazes (and that's most rolls against you) turn to misses - and occasional hits or crits don't do that much damage due to The Wall.

At the same time you can deal more dmg AND perma-debuff your surroundings passively with Persistent Distraction + 5 engagement slots.

Swashbuckler tank is my favorite. Usually it's Unbroken/Trickster but Edér also does well enough.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Boeroer

[Jayd]

Possibly strange question: do some weapons benefit more from time parasite than others? On Ydwin I feel like Frostseeker turns into a machine gun but Red Hand doesn't feel that much better. Maybe it has a different effect on reload or maybe it's just my mind? Either way there might be some interesting mathematical argument about which weapons benefit most.

[Boeroer]

It depends on how many instances of TS you can stack. It jumps and every jump will cause a stack. So make sure you cast it on tight groups so that it can jump often. Also bonus PL increases jumps.

The weapon shouldn't influence how high you can stack it. Maybe it was just a coincidence or you thought Red Hand wasn't sped up much because it skips one reload anyway?

[Jayd]

Oh shucks, I didn't even know each jump causes a stack. Shows how much I know. Probably had something to do with that because I didn't exactly test it. It was that Red Hand seemed to still be taking long to reload.

[Boeroer]

Well arquebuses do have a very long reload phase. Even with two stacks of TS it will still feel long compared to something like Frostseeker - especially if you activated the modal. 

But in general TS's speed bonus should affect all weapons equally. 

[Aotrs Commander]

For me, I went with pure Cipher again, after much debate; though this time, I took arquebuss, blunderbuss as my weapons (as I hadn't realised until this time around that blunderbusses are basically not penalised in melee, so there's not point having a back-up melee weapon, right?)

Frostseeker is a hunting bow, yes? (i picked Hunting bow as my third weapon prof, after finding skeletons being completely immune to piercing was kind of a bugger...)

 

I will want TWF later, but stupid question - does two-handed weapon style work on the ranged weapons (i.e. arquebus/bow) as well as the melle weapons? As that almost might be worth an investment.

 

22 hours ago, Boeroer said:

If you want a tank on whom you can cast friendly fire AoE spells like Fireball and stuff without hesitating I would recommend Swashbuckler. It's actually more tanky in this case because Adept Evasion + Refreshing Defense + The Wall is very good against anything that's targeting Reflex. All grazes (and that's most rolls against you) turn to misses - and occasional hits or crits don't do that much damage due to The Wall.

At the same time you can deal more dmg AND perma-debuff your surroundings passively with Persistent Distraction + 5 engagement slots.

Swashbuckler tank is my favorite. Usually it's Unbroken/Trickster but Edér also does well enough.

That's is where I'm aiming for Eder. Adept Evasion I found, but refreshing defence and the wall? Are they items or...?

 

Xoti is going to be more "monk with a bit of priest" (it's nearly worth it just for the first level reaping spell, first time I used that I shot my single damage record to 122 damage and I haven't cleared the Dig site yet...!) She's going to be sort of the off-tank, to help Eder hold the front with the rest of the part stand back and neem/blam.

I was really unsure about Dance of Death verses Mortification of the Soul; in the end, I opted for the latter on the basis that only required one ability investment at PL 2 and PL 3 looks like it has more stuff to fight over...?

 

Aloth I have gone for pure wizard again. (Didn't see any particular reason why with Eder, I needed another rogue or fighter on top of wizard.)

 

I'm nominally looking at Maia as number five (given Pallengina blooted her copy-book for being a pain, despite Herald being quite useful mechanically...) suggestions as to would fit with the current party...?

 

 

[Boeroer]

All styles work with ranged weapons. Two Handed Style works for the two handed ranged weapons, Two Weapon and One Handed Style with the one handed ones.

Refreshing Defense is the Upgrade of Vigorous Defense (active ability). The Wall is the modal of the Large Shield Proficiency.

Dance of Death --> Enduring Dance is very good. Once you ativate it you will immediately get 1 wound and +3 ACC (after 3 secs you already have 2 wounds and +6 ACC). No problem using moth Mortification of the Soul AND Enduring Dance. Enduring Dance does not count self damage, only damage that gets through attack resolution (attack roll vs. defense and so on).

 

[Aotrs Commander]

 

20 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

All styles work with ranged weapons. Two Handed Style works for the two handed ranged weapons, Two Weapon and One Handed Style with the one handed ones.

Cool.

20 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Refreshing Defense is the Upgrade of Vigorous Defense (active ability). The Wall is the modal of the Large Shield Proficiency.

Ah, found it now.  So Large Shield is better than medium?

20 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Dance of Death --> Enduring Dance is very good. Once you ativate it you will immediately get 1 wound and +3 ACC (after 3 secs you already have 2 wounds and +6 ACC). No problem using moth Mortification of the Soul AND Enduring Dance. Enduring Dance does not count self damage, only damage that gets through attack resolution (attack roll vs. defense and so on).

Is there enough room for that on the Monk/Priest (and if so, what should I skip?)

[Jayd]

I've played 3 different kinds of monk so far and I can say that I've never taken Mortification of the Soul and never missed it. It might be good in some builds but I'd just play it by ear and not worry about it in advance.

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Aotrs Commander said:

So Large Shield is better than medium?

If you want to bombard your own tank (or more precisely the enemies he keeps engaged) with AoE spells like Fireball and such then yes. He will not get hit much but if he does the dmg reduction is significant. Then it's the best option. Against melee attackers the generic medium shield can be better. But on the other hand the unique large shields are better again. 

Edited May 11, 2019 by Boeroer

[Aotrs Commander]

Double post...

Edited May 11, 2019 by Aotrs Commander

[Aotrs Commander]

8 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

If you want to bombard your own tank (or the enemies he keeps engaged) with AoE spells like Fireball and such then yes. Then it's the best option. Against melee attackers the medium shield can be better. But on the other hand the unique large shields are better again. 

 

Hmm... Probably not worth going back to the save-before-last to repick Eder's level 4 proficiency, then, just get Large Shield later on (when he can tank a bit better for that).... Unless it's worth doing for Xoti to pick Dance of Death instead of Mortification of the Soul... Hrm...

 

 

...

 

Okay, I have no idea how I douple posted from an edit... Can you deley posts on this forum...?

Edited May 11, 2019 by Aotrs Commander

[Boeroer]

If depends how often Xoti gets hit. If she does get hit often I would wait until you can take Enduring Dance and then retrain, not before.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Boeroer

[Aotrs Commander]

Good point, actually; Eder's not got a super-high engagement at the moment, so she's taking a bit of flak. Will do that, then, cheers.

[Manveru123]

21 hours ago, Aotrs Commander said:

Frostseeker is a hunting bow, yes? (i picked Hunting bow as my third weapon prof, after finding skeletons being completely immune to piercing was kind of a bugger...)

Nope, it's a War Bow. This was my go-to weapon for a single class Ydwin before the nerfs, but now I'm thinking Aamina's Legacy might be better.

Also Essence Interrupter is worth considering, but knowing Obsidian they still haven't fixed the weapon yet and I wouldn't want to destroy unique loot ._.

[Boeroer]

It is fixed. As I reported in the corresponding bug thread. 

[Manveru123]

Thanks, great to know.

[citrixscu]

Was there any particular stat distribution you went with for this build?