Advice for Waelite Mystic, Ascendant or Soul Blade?

[limaxophobiacq]

I'm kinda set on making a mystic (Priest of Wael/Cipher) with this setup but I'm not sure which cipher subclass would be more effective. I'm thinking the general combat plan at max level would be to start fights with the 3rd weapon set (Slayers Claw + Kitchen Stove) and cast Arcane Veil/Mirrored Image -> Minor Avatar (might inspiration buffed to Tenacious from Slayers Claw) -> Thunderous Report -> Borrowed Instincts (possibly Devotions for the Faithful thrown in there somewhere), and then switch to WotEP for retaliation focus gain while using powers or soul annihilation. 

Ascendant seems in a way more synergistic (salvation of time for ascension) but the payoff for ascendant is rather late (level 16 for salvation of time) while Soul Blade can spam Soul Annihilation while protected by Arcane Veil from level 1. Also Ascendant feels like it might just be better of ranged and single classed while the Soul Blade feels like it's losing less from multiclassing as long as you focus on Soul Annihilation.

Also what attributes beside Int and Per are most important? With retaliation Dex loses a little bit of importance but maybe it's still superior to Might due to the bad disintegrate scaling and potential weapon damage modifiers on Soul Annihilation?

Any other good item synergies with such a build?

[Boeroer]

Soul Annihilation gets applied to most enemies in the cone (the number of raw dmg varies though, the initial target gets all the normal raw dmg, the 2nd one nothing iirc, the 3rd one gets some, the 4th even more and so on). If you can expand the cone size a lot (items such as INT+, Ring of Overseeing and stuff like Smart via Minor Avatar or a Litany etc.) then it might be worthwhile to use a Soulblade. Also spamming the focus gained from Offensive Parry into Soul Annihilation is good. 

Soulblade gets +max focus for some time after killing an enemy. This can be prolonged with Salvation of Time, too. Don't know if it's worth it though. 

[thelee]

my thought is that you'll have insane action economy issues as an ascendant (i rolled an ascendant/wael mystic and this was my experience) up until you start doing salvation of time shenanigans. even with wael's fast bonus spells, you'll still want to cast priest spells, which eat up time from attacking, which takes away from your focus generation, etc. retaliation and focus from retaliation might diminish that a bit, but the fundamental issue will be there.

in that vein i think soul blade is better - you don't have to invest too much into cipher powers to be effective, and soul annihilation is a pretty good dump for focus that you can fit in-between spell casts w/out having to worry about specific focus thresholds to hit.

[limaxophobiacq]

Soulblade it is then. At the very least it seems like it should be less fiddly and let me get by with fewer cipher actives.

[dgray62]

On 6/28/2022 at 8:55 AM, thelee said:

in that vein i think soul blade is better - you don't have to invest too much into cipher powers to be effective, and soul annihilation is a pretty good dump for focus that you can fit in-between spell casts w/out having to worry about specific focus thresholds to hit.

I agree completely, provided of course that you want a more melee focused build. For a pure caster, ascendent would be the optimal (along with psion, for focus generation when casting), especially given the fact that the 20% damage bonus when ascended applies to the priest spells as well. You would have action economy issues, but the bonus damage would be worth it IMO.

[thelee]

29 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

I agree completely, provided of course that you want a more melee focused build. For a pure caster, ascendent would be the optimal (along with psion, for focus generation when casting), especially given the fact that the 20% damage bonus when ascended applies to the priest spells as well. You would have action economy issues, but the bonus damage would be worth it IMO.

imo the action economy is worse if you want to be caster. unlike psion, you have to attack to charge up your focus. that's a huge drag on your casting ability that would likely cancel out the 20% damage bonus*. if you want to be a caster-focused mystic, you should just be psion.

 

* unless you are all-in on kitchen stove + thunderous report

[dgray62]

You're right, Psion is probably best for a pure caster. But I'd probably match psion with wizard for a greater range of buffs, debuffs and damage spells. I think for a mystic P. of Wael/Soulblade would be great.