Building range cipher

[siema87]

Trying to add range cipher to my party. Tried SC Ascendant with Kitchen Stove and Xefa Empiricial Explication but feel like it takes too much time to build focus. I'm playing PoTD upscaled with Deadly Deadfire mod so weapons have trouble doing full dmg. Tried also Hand Mortar and Fire in the Hole but it felt worse. I know about MC with monk and mortars but looking for specifically range build. Is it even worth for cipher as just to be caster? Maybe someone can help with maybe MC it? Maybe build I could later also use Seekers Rapier as backup? 

Edited March 23, 2023 by siema87

[Shai Hulud]

41 minutes ago, siema87 said:

Trying to add range cipher to my party. Tried SC Ascendant with Kitchen Stove and Xefa Empiricial Explication but feel like it takes too much time to build focus. I'm playing PoTD upscaled with Deadly Deadfire mod so weapons have trouble doing full dmg. Tried also Hand Mortar and Fire in the Hole but it felt worse. I know about MC with monk and mortars but looking for specifically range build. Is it even worth for cipher as just to be caster? Maybe someone can help with maybe MC it? Maybe build I could later also use Seekers Rapier as backup? 

FF / soul blade is pretty interesting but requires community patch for FF attacks to build focus. It can work as a ranged build with instruments of pain, stacks a lot of accuracy, weapon penetration, defenses, and healing from FF attacks. Well, ranged-ish, instruments of pain gives a range of like 4.8, usually enough to hide behind dichotomous soul summons if need be. 

I haven't used Deadly Deadfire but I'm guessing weapons still scale better than spells. Ranged ciphers can stack tons of accuracy, particularly seers and psyblades. The Hunting Bow Essence Interrupter would be my go-to, sick bow available very early, secondary Aamina's Legacy. With pierce/shock at mythic it has enough penetration since few enemies have high AR vs both, and summoning fodder on crit is just lovely. Can multiclass devoted for some +accuracy with disciplined strikes, conqueror stance, and weapon mastery (+20, and some hit to crit). Stacks with borrowed instinct and psychovampric shield. And devoted gives +2PEN and more hit to crit, on top of +1 from hammering thoughts. Take monastic unarmed training, the devoted bonus also applies to fists if you come up against something where pierce/shock/slash won't do it. Devoted also adds a lot of survivability with unbending and rapid recovery. 

Hierophant blood mage / soul blade is lot of fun too, not ranged, but using soul annihilation through citzal's spirit lance is just fantastic.

Also have to mention psion/troubadour if you like summoning things, though you could also make a troubadour/cipher and stick a bow in his hands. 

[siema87]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

FF / soul blade is pretty interesting but requires community patch for FF attacks to build focus. It can work as a ranged build with instruments of pain, stacks a lot of accuracy, weapon penetration, defenses, and healing from FF attacks. Well, ranged-ish, instruments of pain gives a range of like 4.8, usually enough to hide behind dichotomous soul summons if need be. 

I haven't used Deadly Deadfire but I'm guessing weapons still scale better than spells. Ranged ciphers can stack tons of accuracy, particularly seers and psyblades. The Hunting Bow Essence Interrupter would be my go-to, sick bow available very early, secondary Aamina's Legacy. With pierce/shock at mythic it has enough penetration since few enemies have high AR vs both, and summoning fodder on crit is just lovely. Can multiclass devoted for some +accuracy with disciplined strikes, conqueror stance, and weapon mastery (+20, and some hit to crit). Stacks with borrowed instinct and psychovampric shield. And devoted gives +2PEN and more hit to crit, on top of +1 from hammering thoughts. Take monastic unarmed training, the devoted bonus also applies to fists if you come up against something where pierce/shock/slash won't do it. Devoted also adds a lot of survivability with unbending and rapid recovery. 

Hierophant blood mage / soul blade is lot of fun too, not ranged, but using soul annihilation through citzal's spirit lance is just fantastic.

Also have to mention psion/troubadour if you like summoning things, though you could also make a troubadour/cipher and stick a bow in his hands. 

I play with almost all important mods like community patch and tweaks. Your idea seems interesting about FF with instruments of pain. Altough already played soul blade class but imo its just not typical cipher gameplay as you spend your focus only on soul anihilation skill. 

I've read a bit about psion/troubadour MC and seems quite good too but one of my frontline heroes is kind wayfarer/troubadour. I guess I could have both and just take different chants/invocations. 

 

[Shai Hulud]

4 hours ago, siema87 said:

I play with almost all important mods like community patch and tweaks. Your idea seems interesting about FF with instruments of pain. Altough already played soul blade class but imo its just not typical cipher gameplay as you spend your focus only on soul anihilation skill. 

I've read a bit about psion/troubadour MC and seems quite good too but one of my frontline heroes is kind wayfarer/troubadour. I guess I could have both and just take different chants/invocations. 

 

Are you in a party or is this solo? If in a party your cipher will mostly be occupied casting buffs (including self-buffs) and occasional CC. For solo yeah soul blade is mostly about using soul annihilation though I always keep up psychovampiric shield and borrowed instinct and occasionally use mental binding or big debuffs like secret horrors. Forbidden fist attacks do so much damage you can usually fill focus in 3 hits. You still cast spells but the majority of focus should be spent on soul annihilation since it so damaging.

It's the overall strongest most versatile build I've found that doesn't rely on overpowered mechanics like extending potions of final stand with wall of draining.

Chanters are pretty versatile you can definitively have two especially if multiclassed. Your herald can punch things and use the good offensive invocations while a backline troubadour / psion can spend invocations on summons (animated weapons are really really good) and party buffs like set to their purpose. 

Also might want them running different chants. I really like the "many lives pass by" chant, one could use that and the other "sure handed ila".  Most useful chants IMO. 

But if you want a high DPS and spellcasting cipher a devoted/cipher or devoted/ascendant is hard to beat. Or a sharpshooter / ascendant. You get a ton of accuracy bonuses with either. The devoted would do a bit more dps but seers also get pets (bears and boars are the best) which you can buff with pain block and echoing shield making them decent tanks.

Pure cipher is also really good in parties, mostly because of defensive mindweb and reaping knives. If you have at least one character with high deflection, another with high fortitude, another high reflex, and another high will, defensive mindweb makes your whole party tanks, and reaping knives bring in focus really fast. 

Personally I find the cipher damage spells kinda underwhelming compared to weapons in most situations, since deflection is usually lower than other defenses and you get more accuracy bonus on weapons (though empty soul does give +10 vs will), although you do have some really good CC spells. The charm spells and mental binding mostly.

Oh another cool thing about soul blade is you can stack the focus gain you get from killing things. You can do this with a hierophant's wall of draining or more easily strand of favor and cabalists gambeson at the end of fights. Admittedly cheesy yes but I did an ultimate run with a hierophant like this and it was a lot of fun, eventually you start combat with like 15k focus and can just mass zerg things with citzal's spirit lance which distributes soul annihilation and builds focus crazy fast. Also the seekers fang becomes stupidly strong if you stack focus like this. One hit will do like 600 damage upfront and thousands over time.

My preference with ciphers is definitely soul blades though in a party a devoted/ascendant or sharpshooter/ascendant would be pretty nice. Essence Interrupter all the way

I'd pick stats something like 13/9/13/20/18/3 for melee, for ranged similar but can dump con more and dont need might as much, probably more like 11/6/18/20/18/3.  If you go forbidden fist the stat spread looks very different, more like 14/7/3/18/13/20

Lots of items that stack ranged accuracy, damage and penetration also. Ring of the marksman, sky dragon wurm or harley, blackblade hood / thaos headdress, claim and refusal, high harbinger robe, gauntlets of accuracy, ring of prosperitys fortune, etc

 

[Boeroer]

If "ranged" not only means ranged weapons but also (or mainly) spells then I would dearly recommend the Psion, especially with the Community Patch which is more generous with the "stops generating focus when being damaged" drawback the unmodded Psion has. 

Psion's focus generation almost never stops, not even when you are recovering or doing other things - like casting a non-cipher-spell. When receiving a crit it will stop briefly and also some hard CC like a stun might pause it, but in most other cases it just keeps on piling up. It also scales with Power Level, so obtaining some PL buffs also makes a noticable difference.

Players often read about the focus generation mechanics of the Psion and think "that's not much, is it?" - but most fail to understand that a regular cipher will only generate focus between recovery phases - and if he has to move or do anything else than attack with a weapon he won't generate focus at all. And this also hampers the ability to cast spells more than most players initially realize. Not a problem per se - because with the right setup/combo a Cipher can also do great weapon damage so it's not a loss that he can't cast so much - but in some fights regular ciphers can really struggel to build focus because they can't damage the enemy properly (not enough ACC, enemies AR too high etc.). The Psion is not bothered by this. He just gets focus trickling in all the time.

Usually I would pair a Psion with another caster class. That way you can cast from one class while focus i building up - then cast something with focus, then back to the other spells and so on.

All caster/Psion combos work well, but imo the most versatile and fun combo is Psion/Troubadour or Psion/Bellower. 

Weapons don't matter for their damage but can be nice "stat sticks" - see Lance of the Mdwood Stag, Sasha's Singing Scimitar or Blightheart for example. The best endgame setup is most likely Sasha's SC + The Weycs Wand. While the scimitar can be obtained very early (which is always nice for a build idea imo) the wand comes very, very late, so I personally prefer a scimitar+small shield setup. It not only makes it less likely you recevie a crit (which would stop focus generation) but also lets most enemies target somebody else with less of a defensive setup.

At the same time you can basically cast no-stop with a Psion/Troubadour (focus and phrase resources never run out) - which I find to be very satisfying. Almost no idle time between spells. I personally loved with combo of KIllers Froze Stiff + Soul Shock early(ish) in the game and later combined summons with mind control in order to turn a whole army against the enemy. But you don't have to do that. As I said the combo is very versatile and can do almost anything: damage, CC - even support and a bit of healing. But it all achieves this with spells, not weapon usage.

Psion/Troubadour is also one of the verified builds that beat the Ultimate Challenge. This alone doesn't say too much about it's overall usefulness for a whole party - but in this case I can ssure you it also does that very nicely. 

Psion/Wizard is also a nice combination, also with Bloodmage althoug you can't use empower with Sasha's Singing Scimitar then. With Community Patch the self damage of Blood Sacrifice doesn't stop focus generation (don't know if that's the case with the vanilla game but it might be a concern). But of course any other Wizard will work, too. Conjurers have this funny quirk that their familiar bonuses will persist until the end of battle even if the familiar is gone. So you could cast two or three familiars and stack all the bonuses from them. It's not worth it in shorter fights but in the longer ones it's nice to have several bonuses going without a timed duration. Just an idea though... 

But: if a nice ranged weapon setup is a must for the ranged cipher then this is probably not a good recommendation for you.

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A very strong ranged Cipher combination is Arcane Archer/Ascendant or /Beguiler with Frostseeker (the on-crit AoE of Frostseeker generates focus, too). If it's more about CC then Beguiler (who gets a lot of focus from hitting numerous enemies with cheap Deception spells auch as Phantom Foes and Secret Horrors) -

if it's more about weapon damage then Ascendant (because soul whips's dmg bonus doesn't turn off when focus is full). Ranger/Cipher can have amazing accuracy which leads to a lot of crits. And a lot of crits with Frostseeker leads to a lot of AoE procs which generate focus and deal great damage. Also against hard-to-hit enemies usually this build fares pretty well compared to other cipher combos that usually struggle building focus against tough enemies.  

 

[siema87]

Thanks both for extensive response  I have party of 3 melee and Maia so wanted to pick non melee char and wanted to have some fun with cipher spells. The best fit from your propositions is psion/troubadour, altough one of my frontliners is kind wayfarer/troubadour, 2nd will fit perfectly (offtopic question:  Probably gonna try to change my party a bit later to try and play around Seekers Rapier with melee build maybe MC with FF. 

Although I have feeling I'm missing out on some fun with top lvl spells. Death of 1k cuts, driving echoes for my berserker/nalpazca, shared nightmare passive also looks interesting. Dunno how fun/effective they are. 

[Shai Hulud]

2 hours ago, siema87 said:

Thanks both for extensive response  I have party of 3 melee and Maia so wanted to pick non melee char and wanted to have some fun with cipher spells. The best fit from your propositions is psion/troubadour, altough one of my frontliners is kind wayfarer/troubadour, 2nd will fit perfectly (offtopic question:  Probably gonna try to change my party a bit later to try and play around Seekers Rapier with melee build maybe MC with FF. 

Although I have feeling I'm missing out on some fun with top lvl spells. Death of 1k cuts, driving echoes for my berserker/nalpazca, shared nightmare passive also looks interesting. Dunno how fun/effective they are. 

Tier 9 spells rather meh IMO though the Tier 8s are quite strong 

[siema87]

Played a bit and feel like caster cipher is underwhelming without anyone from party debuffing will/fortitude as with my mods I play most spells are resisted. Pity I have only 1 space for caster maybe will try to offspec a bit someone but kinda like the builds atm. Maybe offtopic here but what are most essential casters which are strongest taking into consideration in 1st place debuffs, 2nd buffs. I don't care about big dmg number as have killers in frontline nor summoning? Druid, priest, mage, cipher? Maybe MC ?

[Shai Hulud]

15 hours ago, siema87 said:

Played a bit and feel like caster cipher is underwhelming without anyone from party debuffing will/fortitude as with my mods I play most spells are resisted. Pity I have only 1 space for caster maybe will try to offspec a bit someone but kinda like the builds atm. Maybe offtopic here but what are most essential casters which are strongest taking into consideration in 1st place debuffs, 2nd buffs. I don't care about big dmg number as have killers in frontline nor summoning? Druid, priest, mage, cipher? Maybe MC ?

If we only care about buffs and debuffs....

Wizards have very good debuff spells (jernaugh's equalizing burst, miasma of dull-mindedness, Arkemyr's wondrous torment, even chill fog) though wizard accuracy tends to be worse than ciphers. Wizards have topnotch self-buffs (everything in llengrath grimoire, arcane veil, etc) but basically no party buffs. Also have decent CC spells 

Priests have very good debuffs (whole condemnation tree and woedica writs) and buffs, plus healing. Devotions for the faithful, Champion's Boon, Minor Intercession, Shining Beacon, Minor Avatar, etc. Landing debuffs is fairly hard, though easier than wizard if you have up devotions for the faithful. Not much hard CC.

Druids have a few good debuff spells. Rusted Armor is good. Nature's Mark. Have good party buffs particularly moonwell and nature's balm which can stack a lot of healing and defenses. Natures Bounty is very good though clunky to use as you need empty quick slots. Have decent CC with Tornado, embrace of the earth talon, calling the world's maw. Accuracy is poor compared to ciphers.

Ciphers get +10 accuracy on most debuff spells, anything targeting will benefits from the empty soul. You also want borrowed instinct up always which gives +20 accuracy and +20 all defenses. Usually want psychovampiric shield up for melee ciphers, raises your resolve and debuffs enemy resolve. Body Attunement is okay but targets fortitude. Secret Horrors is very good cheap area debuff (sicken+frighten), phantom foes is enormous aoe flanked debuff, very useful if you have a tactician. Doesnt stack with other sources of flanking. Lots of great self+ally or ally buffs like echoing shield, pain block, tactical meld. L8 spell Defensive Mindweb is one of the strongest buffs in the game. Time Parasite very strong buff/debuff. Ancestor's Memory on-demand brilliant. Also great CC with mental binding, whispers of treason, ringleader etc.

You didn't list chanters but they also have tons of buffs, debuffs, and CC. The Thunder rolled and at the sound of his voice, and the lover cried out are all great CC (stun / paralyze / charm). Many chants debuff enemies in various ways. Some unique buffs like sure handed ila chant also. Long duration AOE buffs like each kill fed his fury, set to their purpose, and the great self buff their champion braved the horde alone.

And of course ciphers and chanters have the advantage of being able to keep casting things over long fights. Blood mage can do this too though may need a lot of healing. 

It should be noted that casting pure debuff spells isn't always the best tactic since they can take a while to cast and may not stay up long, and time spent casting debuffs is time you could be doing something else. But there are definitely situations where the right debuff makes things much easier. Like ciphers echoing shield removes all concentration stacks immediately (+ long duration aoe resolute). Ciphers have a lot of mixed buff/debuff also.

Personally for buffs and debuffs I'd rank them like this: cipher > priest > chanter > wizard > druid

Though it really depends what you're trying to do. Like if we care about self-buffing to make oneself tanky, then wizards move higher up. Plus wizards have a ton of versatility with damage spells, cc, and summoning as well. And wizards have some amazing debuffs, just not much in the party buff area...

IMO every party should have a blood mage, a chanter, and a cipher. Multiclassing makes it easier to fit things since you can for example have a spiritualist and not lose out on much compared to dedicated chanter and cipher. And thaumaturge is quite competitive with blood mage + priest. Multiclassing can also help increase accuracy for casters. If you stick Ranger, cipher, or fighter onto a caster class like wizard, druid, priest, chanter, you can gain a lot of accuracy at the cost of a couple spell tiers and slower progression. 

Also keep in mind if you have characters with morningstar, club, or flail modals you can greatly debuff (-25 for 10s, modified by INT) fortitude, will, and reflex. And unlike spells there is no separate roll, as long as the attack at least grazes vs deflection then the debuff sticks. Also it is irresistible since its straight stat debuff instead of an affliction.

The Morningstar will breaker also debuffs will (-3 per hit stacks to -15), but Sara sichr you can get earlier.

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Also your cipher spells that single target fortitude may miss a lot, but most of your good spells target will and they shouldn't be outright missing that often even with the deadly deadfire mod. You may not be stacking enough boons and stats. If you're playing on max difficulty with extra scaling mods every little bit helps. Not sure whether all these boons (see link) apply to the whole party but like nature's resolve is +10 accuracy. Nearly all your characters should have 18 to 20 base PER also.

Anyway with a cipher you really need to keep up borrowed instinct, which should be pretty easy except in some rare cases where you fight one strong enemy (dorudugan). If borrowed instinct won't hit your main target, look for a secondary one. You get the +20 accuracy +20 all defenses regardless who you target. So like fighting sigilmaster auranic, her will is super high so hitting her with borrowed instinct can be difficult. Instead you target one of her henchmen. On POTD upscaled they have like 85 and 95 will. Should at least graze, but you can make it even easier by debuffing target will first, normally with psychovampiric shield and/or smacking them with a club. PVS not only grants you steadfast, it debuffs the target by 20 will (-10 resolve). 

So you have +10 from natures resolve, +10 from the empty soul, +25 from a club hit, +20 from PVS, and another +20 from borrowed instinct, and borrowed instinct also debuffs 8 INT and 8 PER for another +16 vs will. The Helm of the white void gives another +10 on anything that causes afflictions. If you have echoing horror that can help as well as it frequently frightens nearby enemies on kill

Sometimes you'll just graze a secondary target, in this case you can cast borrowed instinct again until you hit (ideally crit). It has a fairly long duration with high INT even on a hit though. Another trick is you then cast a charm spell like puppet master. This has multiple purposes, first it keeps your team from attacking the enemy you're draining (when he dies, borrowed instinct effect dies), and it also indirectly increases the duration of borrowed instinct.

When I soloed auranic with a transcendent this was my tactic to keep up borrowed instinct, killed the sigil first, then auranic, then the henchman so I had up borrowed instinct constantly

No rest guide (can also install no forced rests mod)

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/101300-guide-permanent-bonuses-approach-for-a-no-rest-run/

Edited March 25, 2023 by Shai Hulud