Build Principles for Soul Blades

[masterty66]

I just completed a playthrough of a Seer (Stalker/Soul Blade) last night. 

My routine in fights tended to be to cast Borrowed Instinct and then just spam Soul Annihilation and re-apply Borrowed Instinct as needed. Sometimes I would toss out a Secret Horrors to try and shut down enemy abilities. I did not use Shred abilities at all. Very rarely I would charm enemies if there were big tanky (yet low will def) enemies on the battlefield. 

For weapons I relied on Sun & Moon + Tuotilos for the vast majority of the game. Gravecalling/Modwhyr was my backup set. Towards the end I started using Seeker's Fang/Gravecalling. I didn't do this because Sun & Moon was bad, but more for variety's sake and because I wanted to test out Seeker's Fang.

I used Seeker's Fang for the entirety of Forgotten Sanctum and was quite impressed with it. Not sure if it's strictly speaking better than Sun & Moon (being able to spam SA is so nice) but I did enjoy it a lot and the dps was quite high.

I feel like Obsidian wanted Soul Blades to use Shred powers still but SA almost always felt like the most efficient use of my focus. Honestly in some fights I would even not necessarily cast Borrowed Instinct if I didn't feel like I needed the extra accuracy or defenses. Or just if I needed to burst down a target asap.

The dps on this build was disgustingly good. I dpsed the Oracle down so fast that I didn't even bother with its allies and just killed it first. I used summons and a Wizard with Blackbow to keep the other enemies busy. 

[dgray62]

Seeker's Fang is a great weapon for any melee cipher, as you noted. Keeper of the Flame is also good for ciphers, especially if you max religion, since the flame AOEs it procs build focus, and the its will debuffing aura is great for landing cipher powers like Borrowed Instinct and Secret Horrors. 

[masterty66]

16 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Seeker's Fang is a great weapon for any melee cipher, as you noted. Keeper of the Flame is also good for ciphers, especially if you max religion, since the flame AOEs it procs build focus, and the its will debuffing aura is great for landing cipher powers like Borrowed Instinct and Secret Horrors. 

I did not try Keeper of the Flame, but I'll keep that in mind if I ever do another Soul Blade. 

I was impressed by the Seer overall. I'd heard people rave about it, and it did not disappoint. It's amazing how much easier bosses are when you have a character who does that much single target dps.