Why isn't the hierophant talked about more?

[Tomucci]

Honestly it looks great to me just for miasma because of how much it lowers will and how many cipher spells target will, and even better its all done in an AOE, and better yet you have borrowed instinct to increase accuracy by +20 that targets will so you can drop miasma on a group > cast borrowed instinct and essentially have +60 accuracy for most cipher spells against multiple targets in an aoe.

After activating miasma and borrowed instinct you should also have +40 accuracy vs reflex (and can add ring of focused flame for +50 on the wizard's fire spells). Then you can carry a morning star for body blows, that + bowled instinct will give you +45 vs fortitude for fortitude targeting spells such as disintegrate.

You can also penetrate decently well with cipher spells between +1 for penetrating visions, +1 on individual elemental types, and expose weaknesses (which lowers armor by -2 and also targets will) and ofc landing crits which increases penetration by 50%.

But also they can tank, +20 all defences from borrowed instinct and +30 from mirrored image with other options for defence bonuses and also multiple options targeting multiple defense types (including will) to inflict blind.

Another cool thing is availability of ability points, cipher is a hungry class which can make it difficult to multi but wizard's allow you to invest pretty much all your available ability points into cipher stuff.

Theres also some great martial stuff between cipher and wizard, like citzals spirit lance and soul annihilation which is a great synergy but theres obv also a bunch of other good martial buffs.

So between solid melee, offensive casting and amazing crowd control there's a lot of room for versatility. I know there was a great build posted not that long ago by @Shai Hulud but I feel its been overlooked for a long time, you often hear people talk about multiclasses like arcane knights and spell blades but hierophant doesn't seem like it's ever been popular. Seems strange .

[Shai Hulud]

Great points. I think maybe the build has a higher learning curve than most. They either require a lot of micromanagement or relatively complex scripting. And it takes a while for the build to come together (L13 mostly). Also it *seems* squishy at first glance as two casters but they can be pretty tanky if you want. But hierophants can use healing hands gloves lesser lay on hands to cast a powerful heal over time that can be extended with wall of draining. And you can use potions of final stand if needed, and extend those too. But between the high defenses (arcane veil + llengrath's displaced image + safeguard + borrowed instinct + psychovampiric shield + arcane reflection = +65 deflection, +20 all defenses/accuracy, +5 armor and 30% hit to graze and spell reflection) and healing hands there's few situations where you'd really need a potion of final stand. 

I didn't start playing Deadfire a lot until a couple months before I posted that build, and I wasn't aware then whether hierophants were popular or not, I just theorycrafted something for maximum offensive power based around citzal's spirit lance + soul annihilation and extending various item procs. The lance both builds focus from everyone you hit and distributes soul annihilation to everyone you hit (like WoTEP but better because AOE is circular, larger, and lance does way more damage). I know more about the game now and I'd still say blood mage / soul blade is one of, if not the, most effective fighting builds, even without all my SOF procs. And unlike lots of fighting builds, it is very versatile with the wizard and cipher casts available. Only build that comes close (in my experience) in terms of melee damage is helwalker / blood mage, or possibly a monk spamming WOTW. If you use wall of draining to build max focus (or SOF) it eclipses them. And hierophant works amazingly well if you proc scordeo's edge blade cascade, because most of the cipher casts you want are .5s casts, so you can cast them very rapidly and go back to slaughtering things.

I've also experimented some with a blood mage / ascendant and this build is ridiculously good as a caster. Wall of draining extends the "ascended" effect giving you basically infinite focus as long as you cast wall of draining enough to keep it up. Does vast amounts of single target damage with disintegration, and since focus cost is no longer an issue you can cast it as much as you want, as well as other high cost spells like amplified wave and stasis shell. 

And I only really considered how the classes play solo. In a party it is even better because ancestor's' memory is one of the best buffs in the game with on-demand brilliant. Other great buffs, Pain Block, Echoing Shield, Tactical Meld, that can't be utilized solo.

[thelee]

I think it's important to note that despite the fact that Deadfire is relatively old at this point, a lot of metagame interactions are actually pretty recently discovered. The strand of favor, minor grimoire imprint, and in particular strand of favor with soul blade buff that are IIRC used by shai hulud's build are all pretty new discoveries (they in fact post-date many The Ultimate runs, you only start seeing Strand of Favor crop up in the latter set of runs), well after the bulk of players probably played and put together guides. Before then, I would imagine a hierophant would struggle a bit or require a higher player touch because of typical caster/cipher anti-synergies (namely, that a typical cipher needs to attack to build focus, but a typical caster wants to be casting spells, not attacking)*.

 

that being said, even without some of the newer metagame stuff, i think a hierophant that hooks into a psion would be very powerful. removes the basic anti-synergy between having two casters, and then you just have the nice mix of stuff between wizard and psion. but psion was also a pretty late addition - when the game was nearing end of life cycle, so again well after the bulk of builds and players were done.

 

*a wizard is slightly different because you could summon some pretty powerful weapons that help supercharge focus generation, but this still requires a little bit higher level of deliberation that might explain a lack of hierophant content.

[Waski]

I had blast with one (ascendant/bm) on solo run, just ascend with kitchen stove and WoD it and it is like with Oprah, "You get a disintegration, You get a disintegration, You get a disintegration...."

[Tomucci]

2 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Great points. I think maybe the build has a higher learning curve than most. They either require a lot of micromanagement or relatively complex scripting. And it takes a while for the build to come together (L13 mostly).

This is probably the case for soloing but even at level 4 once you get miasma you already begin to get an amazing synergy.

2 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Also it *seems* squishy at first glance as two casters but they can be pretty tanky if you want.

Maybe because of the low hp I guess but the other defenses are so good lol, and I feel like raising con is good for this build because the blood mage kinda uses it as mana, was actually thinking of having high con / int / dex and 10ish mig / per / res, which is a really unusual spread for me but the build already gets such great bonuses to accuracy and deflection (and might increases self harm from blood mage) I think its beneficial to boost the other stats that are conductive to its universal functions. If I decide to go full caster I'll prob swap con for per.

2 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

The lance both builds focus from everyone you hit and distributes soul annihilation to everyone you hit (like WoTEP but better because AOE is circular, larger, and lance does way more damage). I know more about the game now and I'd still say blood mage / soul blade is one of, if not the, most effective fighting builds, even without all my SOF procs. And unlike lots of fighting builds, it is very versatile with the wizard and cipher casts available.

Seriously so good lol, I'm a sucker for versatile builds, get bored with one trick ponies very quickly, I love that this can be a fantastic caster and then just decide to switch on melee when they want and be great at that too.

2 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

I've also experimented some with a blood mage / ascendant and this build is ridiculously good as a caster.

1 hour ago, thelee said:

i think a hierophant that hooks into a psion would be very powerful. removes the basic anti-synergy between having two casters, and then you just have the nice mix of stuff between wizard and psion.

I'm actually taking a look at all the cipher subclasses and tbh they all look good. I'm leaning towards soul blade because I like having that strong melee option, and the tankiness of the build allows me to cast from the front line regardless.

Beguiler also looks great because of how well this build attacks will, so the synergy of casting miasma then deception spells also seems very strong, if casting deception spells refunds enough focus to chain deception > shred > deception then it could be a great option, im not sure if crits affect how much focus is refunded.

Psion looks good for the reason thelee mentioned, and ascendant also looks great for the reasons shai mentioned. Blood mage is the only wizard sub I'd want but every cipher subclass looks great for this build.

1 hour ago, thelee said:

I think it's important to note that despite the fact that Deadfire is relatively old at this point, a lot of metagame interactions are actually pretty recently discovered. The strand of favor, minor grimoire imprint, and in particular strand of favor with soul blade buff that are IIRC used by shai hulud's build are all pretty new discoveries (they in fact post-date many The Ultimate runs, you only start seeing Strand of Favor crop up in the latter set of runs), well after the bulk of players probably played and put together guides. Before then, I would imagine a hierophant would struggle a bit or require a higher player touch because of typical caster/cipher anti-synergies (namely, that a typical cipher needs to attack to build focus, but a typical caster wants to be casting spells, not attacking)*.

Yeah makes a lot of sense for that high level of the game, but even at more mid / casual levels it doesn't seem like they've gotten much love. Maybe it's like you say and people find it anti synergistic because they feel like they're doubling up on casting when they could be adding something fresh and different to the build like rogue or monk abilities. Tbh the thing that appeals most to me is miasma reducing will by 40 and reflex by 20 combined with borrowed instinct for crazy accuracy bonuses.

[Tomucci]

28 minutes ago, Waski said:

I had blast with one (ascendant/bm) on solo run, just ascend with kitchen stove and WoD it and it is like with Oprah, "You get a disintegration, You get a disintegration, You get a disintegration...."

Tbh I'm reluctant to choose ascendant for that exact reason, I feel like I'd be too tempted to just cast the most powerful option over and over

[Shai Hulud]

7 hours ago, thelee said:

I think it's important to note that despite the fact that Deadfire is relatively old at this point, a lot of metagame interactions are actually pretty recently discovered. The strand of favor, minor grimoire imprint, and in particular strand of favor with soul blade buff that are IIRC used by shai hulud's build are all pretty new discoveries (they in fact post-date many The Ultimate runs, you only start seeing Strand of Favor crop up in the latter set of runs), well after the bulk of players probably played and put together guides. Before then, I would imagine a hierophant would struggle a bit or require a higher player touch because of typical caster/cipher anti-synergies (namely, that a typical cipher needs to attack to build focus, but a typical caster wants to be casting spells, not attacking)*.

Strand of Favor wasn't required for the blood mage / soul blade synergy, one can also extend focus quite a lot just using wall of draining (not to ludicrous levels, but pretty high), but the built up focus could go away on long sea voyages without out of combat extension. Still, you don't need the out of combat extension, I have tested the build just using wall of draining like with similar blood mage / x melees and it is extremely powerful. You can reach max focus (200 at l20) in one lance attack versus crowds, so you can literally go attack -> soul annihilation -> attack -> soul annihilation, and since each soul annihilation is applied to every enemy if you hit 5 enemies at 50 damage + 150 raw that's 1000 damage every ~6s (for example, made up these specific values). If you proc Scordeo's you absolutely annihilate things. Kalakoth's minor blights are also excellent for building focus, my 9 might hierophant was gaining 40 to 50 focus per target and the blast effect builds focus just like the lance. The lance has a larger AOE (1.5 base radius vs 1.3) but it is still large enough to hit 3 to 6 foes. 

I hadn't realized strand of favor was a more recent discovery. I played Deadfire briefly closer to when it came out (like 50 hours maybe) and did a nalpazca where I noticed my drug effects kept going up, and I figured out it was from either the necklace or I might have been wearing cabalist's gambeson, can't remember. At the time I didn't think to extrapolate this to things like weapon and armor procs, however, and I had lost interest in the game to other things anyway.

I don't really see the anti-synergy given wizards make some of the best melee characters in the game. Even the level 1 spell Concelhaut's Parasitic Quarterstaff is quite good and can be used behind tanks.

And for casting they also make good ranged elemental damage dealers with kalakoth's minor blights. This spell actually goes extremely well with ascendants, you can stay out of the fray and still reach ascended in a couple of attacks. And at high levels they become supreme casters able to extend the ascended effect they can do nothing but cast.

7 hours ago, thelee said:

that being said, even without some of the newer metagame stuff, i think a hierophant that hooks into a psion would be very powerful. removes the basic anti-synergy between having two casters, and then you just have the nice mix of stuff between wizard and psion. but psion was also a pretty late addition - when the game was nearing end of life cycle, so again well after the bulk of builds and players were done.

That is interesting. A blood mage / psion would be pretty good throughout the game, but you have to keep the caster from getting hit and psion is eventually eclipsed by an ascendant (maybe early even, I haven't tested ascendants at low levels). 

5 hours ago, Tomucci said:

This is probably the case for soloing but even at level 4 once you get miasma you already begin to get an amazing synergy.

I guess, but most builds don't really become powerful until L10+ anyway. At L13 you get borrowed instinct as well as citzal's spirit lance (and safeguard, though the defenses don't stack with BI), and these spells give you huge accuracy and defense bonuses, plus enemy debuff, and ability to gain focus rapidly and spam soul annihilation, so there is a huge spike in power at L13. The next huge spike is at L19 when you get wall of draining and can sustain buffs indefinitely. From 14 to 18 you don't really get anything that significant besides some passives like the empty soul. 

5 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Maybe because of the low hp I guess but the other defenses are so good lol, and I feel like raising con is good for this build because the blood mage kinda uses it as mana, was actually thinking of having high con / int / dex and 10ish mig / per / res, which is a really unusual spread for me but the build already gets such great bonuses to accuracy and deflection (and might increases self harm from blood mage) I think its beneficial to boost the other stats that are conductive to its universal functions. If I decide to go full caster I'll prob swap con for per.

I like to max PER so the cipher spells crit more (+50% duration). The less often you have to cast them the more you can attack things, and with high PER you also crit more. But I guess due to psychovampiric shield and borrowed instinct, miasma, you could get away with low PER if you need to, I just don't consider any of the other stats besides INT all that important. INT is a definite max for both effect duration and lance AOE. MIG is slightly more important than with most builds because soul annihilation's raw damage only scales with power level and might, I like around 12 to 15, but you can get away with less. RES doesn't really matter except for hostile effect reduction. With arcane veil + safeguard + displaced image + psychovampiric shield you eventually have like +85 deflection (95 with hylea's bounty) so you can dump it and be fine, or if you want to be extra tanky can go the other way. CON shouldn't be dumped but doesn't need to be maxed or anything. With 14 base CON I have 458 health with hylea's bounty + tough + fit (infuse) +boons, which is really more than I need, I wouldn't go below 8, so something in that range is good. With 18 CON it's just 496 health so IMO not worth the extra investment. Around 400 health is plenty, you just want to be able to get off a few blood sacrifices without dying, and if you use healing hands you can get off more because it will heal like 10 health per second with 10ish MIG and dawnstar. 

9/14/13/18/18/3 is what I went with in a recent test build, but I think I like 14/9/13 better since you get more healing and soul annihilation damage. 

5 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Seriously so good lol, I'm a sucker for versatile builds, get bored with one trick ponies very quickly, I love that this can be a fantastic caster and then just decide to switch on melee when they want and be great at that too.

I generally build it to cast only defensive spells on the wizard side, only spells I'd memorize are wall of draining and maybe pull of eora, can cast the rest out of llengrath's martial mysteries. My melee-focused "soul devourer" build casts a lot of cipher buffs/debuffs but mostly just zergs things with the lance. The wizard spells you need (besides safeguard and lance) are all .4s casts (.2s with buffs) All the cipher spells you need are .5s casts (.3s with buffs), so if you cancel recoveries with blade cascade you can cast borrowed instinct, PVS, phantom foes, secret horrors, and mental binding in 1.5s and they'll typically last about a minute. I scripted most of the behavior, it mostly pokes things with a stick but still 35 blocks long. I didn't use a lot of wizard spells except as openers mostly because they have longer casts, but if you haven't cancelled recoveries there's more incentive to mix in wizard spells like expose vulnerabilities, miasma, etc. Jernaugh's Equalizing Burst is also extremely good with this build, I like it as an opener, does mass weaken/immobilize/frighten/disoriented. Jernaugh + miasma is devastating, with those plus borrowed instinct and empty soul your cipher spells v will are going to crit nearly every time. 

5 hours ago, Tomucci said:

I'm actually taking a look at all the cipher subclasses and tbh they all look good. I'm leaning towards soul blade because I like having that strong melee option, and the tankiness of the build allows me to cast from the front line regardless.

My favorite as well. Ascendants are interesting as casters but I tend to prefer fighter/mage type builds. Psion looks decent as caster also. Beguiler...

5 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Beguiler also looks great because of how well this build attacks will, so the synergy of casting miasma then deception spells also seems very strong, if casting deception spells refunds enough focus to chain deception > shred > deception then it could be a great option, im not sure if crits affect how much focus is refunded.

I haven't really played beguilers, looks better than vanilla cipher, the decreased damage/focus vs things not subject to sneak attack isn't much of an issue if you just cast phantom foes or secret horrors now and then. Still, the benefit of increased range on deception spells is meh IMO, they all have good range besides WOT / Ringleader, and you gain +14 focus at L20 which is pretty good, but focus generation is really not a problem for hierophants as you can regain all your focus in 1 to 2 attacks with lance or blights. 

You can cast WOT endlessly I guess. If you used potions of ascension it's 16 refunded. I guess 18 with power level from food, assuming they stack? Seems decent if you want to cast mainly and really like deception spells (they do tend to be the best non-damage spells). Soul blades do get refunds on shred spells but it's a flat -5. Really doesn't fit well either since soul blades don't use shred spells that often. Would have been better if they got mind-keyword refunds but the class is good enough without that. 

I did some testing, psion is much better if you aren't getting hit. In the time it takes to cast the spells and recover you gain much more focus from soul mind. It's 6 focus per second with +5 cipher power level (what I have at L20). So if it takes about 3s to cast WOT you gain 30 focus back. Even if you proc blade cascade in the 1.6s it takes me to cast I get back about 14 focus, same as beguilers. And unlike beguilers psion works with all spells, plus while you're doing melee or casting wizard spells. 

5 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Psion looks good for the reason thelee mentioned, and ascendant also looks great for the reasons shai mentioned. Blood mage is the only wizard sub I'd want but every cipher subclass looks great for this build.

Yeah makes a lot of sense for that high level of the game, but even at more mid / casual levels it doesn't seem like they've gotten much love. Maybe it's like you say and people find it anti synergistic because they feel like they're doubling up on casting when they could be adding something fresh and different to the build like rogue or monk abilities. Tbh the thing that appeals most to me is miasma reducing will by 40 and reflex by 20 combined with borrowed instinct for crazy accuracy bonuses.

Thelee has a point, but at the more casual level I think it's mostly the learning curve. Like you have to be aware of all these inspirations and afflictions, what they do, which things stack, which wizard spells to use, like the casual player is not going to think to cast miasma of dull mindedness -> secret horrors -> mental binding, they'll just cast mental binding. Nor will they likely realize the lance and blights can gain massive focus and distribute soul annihilation, if they're aware of this kind of effect at all they'd probably just use WoTEP. Or that ascended phase can be extended indefinitely. Have to know which spells to use in order to really appreciate the monstrous cipher accuracy (unlike say a ranger). Etc... There is a ton of synergy between the classes but it isn't obvious without some deeper game knowledge

Also ciphers in general are a new thing and not all players would be familiar with them like they would be wizards and druids and priests. I don't see loremasters talked about a ton eithe (chanter being another new type of caster). 

  

5 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Tbh I'm reluctant to choose ascendant for that exact reason, I feel like I'd be too tempted to just cast the most powerful option over and over

You could do that, though if you proc blade cascade you can also do things like paralyze every enemy on the screen in a couple seconds, unload every cipher buff + debuff, etc. Can also be king of charming things, use puppet master and ringleader to gather an army, then cast disintegrate on the dominated ones (the charmed ones turn hostile). Or you can focus on wizard spell-casting once ascended is up and just cast cipher spells when you feel like it. Disintegrate does a lot of damage but it takes a long time for everyone to die. At L20 my guy is doing 378 raw damage over 38s. In that amount of time I could have beat him to death 10 times over. 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Tomucci]

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

All the cipher spells you need are .5s casts (.3s with buffs), so if you cancel recoveries with blade cascade you can cast borrowed instinct, PVS, phantom foes, secret horrors, and mental binding in 1.5s and they'll typically last about a minute

You wouldn't be building around blade cascade though would you? Because thats a chance ability on a specific weapon hit and most of the time you'll have a summoned weapon anyway right?

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

CON shouldn't be dumped but doesn't need to be maxed or anything. With 14 base CON I have 458 health with hylea's bounty + tough + fit (infuse) +boons, which is really more than I need, I wouldn't go below 8, so something in that range is good. With 18 CON it's just 496 health so IMO not worth the extra investment. Around 400 health is plenty, you just want to be able to get off a few blood sacrifices without dying, and if you use healing hands you can get off more because it will heal like 10 health per second with 10ish MIG and dawnstar. 

9/14/13/18/18/3 is what I went with in a recent test build, but I think I like 14/9/13 better since you get more healing and soul annihilation

Good point, didnt realise the difference was so minimal but it makes sense given the multiclass, I might aim for (with berath bonuses) 10 mig / 12 con / 16 dex / 21 per / 21 int / 10 res. I don't like dumping resolve for rp reasons, and I kinda see dex as being important just because how much this build will be aiming to do at once, tbf that might also be due to me not understanding your process for minimising recovery on spells

[Shai Hulud]

5 minutes ago, Tomucci said:

You wouldn't be building around blade cascade though would you? Because thats a chance ability on a specific weapon hit and most of the time you'll have a summoned weapon anyway right?

Not building around it, no, but once you get Scordeo's Edge your offensive abilities skyrocket should you avail yourself of the sabre. Blade Cascade is a *universal* recovery speed buff (remove it). This applies to every weapon as well as spells. You only need to proc the effect once if you use strand of favor to extend it. Without strand of favor you need to proc it once per battle (possibly less if the battles are close enough together), then extend with wall of draining. I just proc it near the beginning of hard battles. One in twenty isn't that bad, I have a script that casts wall of draining intermittently, casts lesser lay on hands, and drinks a potion of final stand if necessary, I go fast mode and meanwhile I just attack things with scordeo's edge until it procs. This takes up to a couple minutes but rarely more. Then I summon the lance manually (no way for script to tell when you proc blade cascade) and the script uses "has summoned weapon" as a conditional for the rest of the blocks (various buffs/debuffs, attack groups, use soul annihilation, etc.)

Build works fine without blade cascade but things are a lot slower. If you want to kill Hauani O Whe in 2 minutes without disintegration you need it

You can also stack -recovery time from Scordeo's Trophy opening barrage enchant, which also applies universally but doesn't eliminate recovery, merely reduces it by 5%. Also this recovery reduction never gets to 100, with every stack you get diminishing returns. To get something like 98% recovery reduction takes like 500 shots or something. Not really worth going that far IMO, also because each shot is such a small recovery reduction you really need to use strand of favor if you go this route, which I'm trying to avoid using at the moment. But Scordeo's Trophy is available quite early (steal from Uto in brass citadel) so if you want to supercharge your character early you can shoot companions or crew (they don't seem to mind lol) and extend the effect.

5 minutes ago, Tomucci said:

Good point, didnt realise the difference was so minimal but it makes sense given the multiclass, I might aim for (with berath bonuses) 10 mig / 12 con / 16 dex / 21 per / 21 int / 10 res. I don't like dumping resolve for rp reasons, and I kinda see dex as being important just because how much this build will be aiming to do at once, tbf that might also be due to me not understanding your process for minimising recovery on spells

Blade Cascade is zero recovery on everything but weapon and grimoire switches which are coded separately. So casts that take a long time up front with shorter recoveries, like summoning spells, go down in value (since you only remove the short recovery), and spells that are fast (2s or less, preferably .5s or less) or have longer recoveries go up in value, when you proc blade cascade. You certainly don't have to use scordeo's edge, but it works especially well with this build because nearly all the casts we use are .5s or less anyway, with "miasma" taking like 1.5s which isn't bad, making the build lightning-fast.

Those stats sound fine. The most important thing is maxing INT (old vailia, cauldron shard), then PER IMO. Don't have to dump RES. Do keep in mind though you should have psychovampiric shield up most of the time which gives steadfast, that and rikuhu's blessing with berath mean even if you dump resolve to 3 at character creation, your end resolve is still 12ish before items, and you can wear ring of the solitary wanderer if soling which is equivalent to 8 resolve for hostile effect reduction. 

[Tomucci]

58 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

You only need to proc the effect once if you use strand of favor to extend it.

Just looked into strand of favor, looks like an exploit? Makes sense for meta gaming/solo play but prob wont use it for my regular team potd run, good to know though.

If I remember correctly blade cascade only lasts like 5 secs (maybe 7.5 with 20 int) so without strand of favor is the idea to buff up with quick wizard martial buffs, proc it then cram in as many attack spells/spirit lance attacks as you can?

[Shai Hulud]

1 hour ago, Tomucci said:

Just looked into strand of favor, looks like an exploit? Makes sense for meta gaming/solo play but prob wont use it for my regular team potd run, good to know though.

If I remember correctly blade cascade only lasts like 5 secs (maybe 7.5 with 20 int) so without strand of favor is the idea to buff up with quick wizard martial buffs, proc it then cram in as many attack spells/spirit lance attacks as you can?

I had a long response written about this when my cat stepped on my keyboard and quit chrome, lol...

Yes SOF is an exploit. I used it in my ultimate run as it makes life easier, but it isn't really necessary. You can just proc blade cascade when you need it and extend it yourself with wall of draining, and/or have party members cast salvation of time on you. It's ultimately best to have a script, there is some initial setup but once you understand them they are pretty easy to make/modify, and I'll share mine and you can use it or modify it if you like. I had long explanations of everything but I'll just link the script and you can ask me about it if you want. The blocks aren't labeled so parts will be confusing unfortunately.

In general scripts process thing top down, so you put high priority actions at the top and low priority at the bottom. So generally your block priorities are like this

1. emergency heals (potion of final stand and the like)
2. keep up wall of draining
3. proc specific effects you want (my script procs brilliant from shroud of the phantasm and blade cascade from scordeo's edge, it also procs courageous from outworn buckler because I copied this from another build, hierophant doesn't need courageous due to all the +concentration from killing things)
4. cast fast buffs, generally wizard spells from llengrath's martial mysteries (or celestial grimoire) + arcane veil
5. cast slower wizard buffs, I just have llengrath's safeguard in this category
6. cast cipher debuffs and buffs in roughly the order I have them
7. use soul annihilation at max focus (base game doesn't have a conditional for max focus so instead you use focus > 90 and set a cooldown of 10 to 30 seconds, depending mostly whether you've procced blade cascade)
8. standard attack block

And here is my script. Note for it to work as intended, you need equipped shroud of the phantasm and ideally healing hands, a potion of final stand when not brilliant, and scordeo's edge. I also use minoletta's minor missiles to proc brilliant, but it probably isn't worth doing all this in a party except for megaboss fights. Even without these items, the bottom 2/3 or so should be useful, just negate the blood sacrifice blocks at the top because without the shroud and a potion of final stand, *they will kill you*, they blood sacrifice until you have an intelligence inspiration, that's how I detect whether I've procced mind over matter from the shroud. If you aren't trying to proc brilliant you probably want a block with infuse with vital essence among the fast wizard buffs (near the top, to get longer durations). Can't remember if I have one, I either negated the block or removed it when I equipped the shroud. The second half of the script doesn't trigger unless you've summoned a weapon, I believe. There's no conditional to detect blade cascade so when that procs I summon a weapon manually, usually the lance.

If you want to examine the script or use it just place it in the customaibehaviors folder here
C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity II\CustomAIBehaviors

https://www.mediafire.com/file/5uwvkj80bvy3jnj/Hierophant+Deification+(Cipher+Wizard+Monk)+(439e2d6b-a0e3-4bbc-8049-235cb9344c4c).customai/file

[Tomucci]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

I had a long response written about this when my cat stepped on my keyboard and quit chrome, lol...

Yes SOF is an exploit. I used it in my ultimate run as it makes life easier, but it isn't really necessary. You can just proc blade cascade when you need it and extend it yourself with wall of draining, and/or have party members cast salvation of time on you. It's ultimately best to have a script, there is some initial setup but once you understand them they are pretty easy to make/modify, and I'll share mine and you can use it or modify it if you like. I had long explanations of everything but I'll just link the script and you can ask me about it if you want. The blocks aren't labeled so parts will be confusing unfortunately.

In general scripts process thing top down, so you put high priority actions at the top and low priority at the bottom. So generally your block priorities are like this

1. emergency heals (potion of final stand and the like)
2. keep up wall of draining
3. proc specific effects you want (my script procs brilliant from shroud of the phantasm and blade cascade from scordeo's edge, it also procs courageous from outworn buckler because I copied this from another build, hierophant doesn't need courageous due to all the +concentration from killing things)
4. cast fast buffs, generally wizard spells from llengrath's martial mysteries (or celestial grimoire) + arcane veil
5. cast slower wizard buffs, I just have llengrath's safeguard in this category
6. cast cipher debuffs and buffs in roughly the order I have them
7. use soul annihilation at max focus (base game doesn't have a conditional for max focus so instead you use focus > 90 and set a cooldown of 10 to 30 seconds, depending mostly whether you've procced blade cascade)
8. standard attack block

And here is my script. Note for it to work as intended, you need equipped shroud of the phantasm and ideally healing hands, a potion of final stand when not brilliant, and scordeo's edge. I also use minoletta's minor missiles to proc brilliant, but it probably isn't worth doing all this in a party except for megaboss fights. Even without these items, the bottom 2/3 or so should be useful, just negate the blood sacrifice blocks at the top because without the shroud and a potion of final stand, *they will kill you*, they blood sacrifice until you have an intelligence inspiration, that's how I detect whether I've procced mind over matter from the shroud. If you aren't trying to proc brilliant you probably want a block with infuse with vital essence among the fast wizard buffs (near the top, to get longer durations). Can't remember if I have one, I either negated the block or removed it when I equipped the shroud. The second half of the script doesn't trigger unless you've summoned a weapon, I believe. There's no conditional to detect blade cascade so when that procs I summon a weapon manually, usually the lance.

If you want to examine the script or use it just place it in the customaibehaviors folder here
C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity II\CustomAIBehaviors

https://www.mediafire.com/file/5uwvkj80bvy3jnj/Hierophant+Deification+(Cipher+Wizard+Monk)+(439e2d6b-a0e3-4bbc-8049-235cb9344c4c).customai/file

Thanks for sharing, much appreciated 

[thelee]

15 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

you have to keep the caster from getting hit and psion is eventually eclipsed by an ascendant (maybe early even, I haven't tested ascendants at low levels).

i wouldn't sleep on psion. i was thinking mostly in terms of--from the perspective of a player who doesn't know about or doesn't use cheesy interactions. wall of draining doesn't factor in, at which point psion can pull off the chain-CC that a properly cheesed up ascendant can pull off.

[Shai Hulud]

5 hours ago, thelee said:

i wouldn't sleep on psion. i was thinking mostly in terms of--from the perspective of a player who doesn't know about or doesn't use cheesy interactions. wall of draining doesn't factor in, at which point psion can pull off the chain-CC that a properly cheesed up ascendant can pull off.

I agree psion looks pretty good for casters.

But you consider wall of draining cheesy? The entire purpose of the spell is to extend effects. It is quite powerful but you also don't get it until level 19 and typically have just one cast without blood sacrificing, which brings its own risks and rewards. It also takes some skill and knowledge to place correctly. IMO wall of draining works exactly as intended. It can become OP if you also proc brilliant and extend that, but it isn't easy to proc brilliant and takes a lot of setup, so even this I think is fair game. It isn't like using the SOF cycling where you eat a captain's banquet and proc brilliant once and now you have infinite spells.

Only thing that probably should have been fixed regarding wall of draining is ending all the extended effects when combat ends. Without wall of draining, wizards are pretty...meh.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

But you consider wall of draining cheesy?

I don’t think wall of draining is cheesy most of time, same thing with Salvation of Time. It’s once you get into very specific effect combinations that you start getting derangedly cheesy.

both spells lie in a weird zone where they are either merely interesting for their level or even bad (imagine using a SoT or Wall of Draining just to extend a chanter chant) to, with a bit of metagaming, utterly busted. 
 

edit: anyway the point was that Psion can accomplish things innately that would require some explicit cheese to do in other situations, if less powerful than spamming Disintegrate left and right. Like, once you get to a certain level, you can nonstop spam hard CC, which is like a WoD-Ascendant-lite.

Edited May 4, 2023 by thelee

[Shai Hulud]

43 minutes ago, thelee said:

I don’t think wall of draining is cheesy most of time, same thing with Salvation of Time. It’s once you get into very specific effect combinations that you start getting derangedly cheesy.

both spells lie in a weird zone where they are either merely interesting for their level or even bad (imagine using a SoT or Wall of Draining just to extend a chanter chant) to, with a bit of metagaming, utterly busted. 
 

edit: anyway the point was that Psion can accomplish things innately that would require some explicit cheese to do in other situations, if less powerful than spamming Disintegrate left and right. Like, once you get to a certain level, you can nonstop spam hard CC, which is like a WoD-Ascendant-lite.

Right I agree about psion. You generate enough focus during cast/recovery you could spam mental binding and probably puppet master, at level 20 anyway. Would work well with wizards for people who just want to cast spells and not think about the more advanced interactions. Can spam higher level spells if you alternated wizard spells with cipher spells.

However it is easy to max focus quickly even for an ascendant, even without WOD so an ascendant I suspect may do more damage. I'd have to test more to be sure, but I expect you could do kalakoth blast > kalakoth blast > (ascended) disintegrate x 4. Maybe even just one blast because ascendants get +150% focus from draining whip. But...the synergy isn't as good with wizards (w/o WOD) because while casting wizard spells you don't get focus, and while ascended youd just want to use cipher spells. So I agree that combo has a lot of potential and may be best hierophant choice for casting. Druid/psion and priest/psion would also be pretty good. I wonder if you generate focus while shapeshifted?

I think there was an ultimate run where someone did skaen / ascendant. Didnt watch it but I assume he procs brilliant + ascended and SOTs while spamming disintegration. IMO SOT is worse than wall of draining for a lot of reasons, which I won't list because I'm sure you know already from your tactician/skaen run. Which is why SC blood mages still want to steal salvation of time. To me the wall of draining stuff (most of it) requires enough setup that like blade cascade is fine. Temporal Cocoon is probably the most abusive thing a blood mage has, maybe in the entire game, even before imprints (those require quite a bit of effort if you aren't already cocooned). Permanent invulnerability, which can't even be targeted by arcane dampener. I wonder...can you extend a cocooned vela with stolen SOT or does she reset on map change? If you could extend it you'd just have to script SOT self cast, cocoon vela, SOT, get the spell back, cocoon yourself, then SOT script. If it takes .4s to cast SOT with blade cascade you'd gain 10 minutes of effect extension per minute of running the script. 20 minutes per in fast mode. Leave that going a few hours and you'd be set.