Mystic of Woedica

[Desmodeus]

Got an idea of combining prist of woedica 20% raw damage from summoned fists with +20 raw damage frombiting whip added from community patch coupled with soul annihilation for PotD run but I actually wonder how well it will work in practice.

• On one hand cipher side has some very good melee passives and +40% as raw is pretty big raw damage output. Woedica has some very nice unique spells for more aggressive playstile. 
• On other hand in term of selfbuff priest lives a lot to be desired, compared to wizard for example, minor avatar is a shade of what it was in PoE1. Same with priest passives - most of them are not that useful for melee focused build. Rapid casting and martial casting are always welcome on summoned weapon user. Additionally this class combo completely lacks any type of full attack so no dps boosting

Anyone tried this combo themselves? Is it viable for melee focused build with dash of party support or casting and supporting part will mostly overpower melee side even with +40% raw damage?

Edited October 11, 2022 by Desmodeus

[dgray62]

It would work very well, I think. The Woedica fists are fantastic weapons that hit hard and fast, and with biting whip with CP you'd get a very sizable raw lash, which is very nice. While soul blade would be nice if you plan on focusing on melee, in my experience you'll likely spend more time casting spells later in the game, in which case ascendent might be an even better pick, since as a priest you can prolong the ascendent state indefinitely. This would give you a 30% boost to weapon damage (10%=20% when ascended) along with the 20% biting whip raw lash as well as up to 31% raw lash from the woedica fists if you max out the favored dispositions and avoid the unfavored ones. Your cipher powers and priest spells will also get a 20% damage boost so long as you are ascended. You can also cast cipher powers as much as you wish. If you want to go mainly melee, soul blade is of course an option. Since your fists will hit so hard you'll max out focus quickly, and thus can spam soul annihilation relatively frequently. The extra concentration stacks are also very nice.

[Desmodeus]

This is the thing I am worrying about - that buffing and debuffing capabilities of Mythic will still outweight amount of damage it can deal even with two raw lashes and soul annihilation.

 

[dgray62]

There's always the issue of action economy, but this combo could be a fine hybrid caster/warrior. You could buff up at the start of battle, then go to town with your supercharged fists, and then cast spells from time to time when needed. Soul blade is particularly well suited from this due to the all of the stacks of concentration you'll get. The last thing you want is to be interrupted when casting a spell. The troublesome part is that you'll do a lot of damage, and thus gain focus quickly, so you have to keep an eye on the focus and either cast a power or use soul annihilation when it comes close to maxing out, otherwise you'll lose your soul whip bonus. The nice thing about ascendants is you gain an extra bonus when your focus is maxed, and you can prolong this indefinitely with salvation of time. Both subclasses are great for different reasons.