Melee Cipher - Go Resolve instead of Dex?

[Covaloch]

Hi guys, I followed a youtube video and frankly have seen many builds of Cipher where people put stats in dex instead of resolve.

Now, for a melee Cipher, it stands to reckon that I should have high Deflection to avoid taking too much melee damage, and having my

'spells' be interrupted. Side question - Can cipher's abilities be interrupted, or are they not considered spells?

 

Am I wrong? Is attack speed the main reason for maxing out Dexterity?

[Tigranes]

I think any ability can be interrupted unless it's specifically stated. 

 

I'm playing a cipher that sometimes goes melee with high Dex, and I think the main deal is that faster attacks don't get interrupted as much, and faster attacks mean faster focus gain. I do find that my cipher can't really handle proper frontline combat, it just likes to flank whoever's engaged with someone else to generate some focus.

[Covaloch]

Hi Tigranes, and thanks for the reply. at the moment my party mainly consists of Eder who's the fighter and the rest are Durance and Aloth. I do try as much as possible to avoid taking damage and letting Eder soak it up but there are times when I get targeted because of my AOE damage. That's when it starts to get painful. At the character creation screen it does seem that dex was one of the favoured stats to dump points in. Was wondering if in my case, I should have gone resolve.

 

Out of curiosity about your build.  do you mostly stay ranged with a bow to build focus?

[Voss]

 

 

Hi guys, I followed a youtube video and frankly have seen many builds of Cipher where people put stats in dex instead of resolve.

 

Now, for a melee Cipher, it stands to reckon that I should have high Deflection to avoid taking too much melee damage, and having my

'spells' be interrupted. Side question - Can cipher's abilities be interrupted, or are they not considered spells?

 

Am I wrong? Is attack speed the main reason for maxing out Dexterity?

Anything can be interrupted, even auto-attacks

 

But no, it doesn't stand to reason.  The few points of deflection aren't going to save you, and the interrupt modifier won't make much difference either.

What you have to do is engage second, after enemies have settled on a target, and by preference, attack something the tank is already attacking. 

 

Personally, if I were to build a melee cipher, I'd go with pike or quarterstaff. Because frankly, the pathfinding to move against new targets when the first one drops has netted me more than a few disengagement attacks, and choke points confuse the heck out of the pathfinding AI.  Second rank fighting with reach avoids all that. 

Edited March 28, 2015 by Voss

[Tigranes]

Hi Tigranes, and thanks for the reply. at the moment my party mainly consists of Eder who's the fighter and the rest are Durance and Aloth. I do try as much as possible to avoid taking damage and letting Eder soak it up but there are times when I get targeted because of my AOE damage. That's when it starts to get painful. At the character creation screen it does seem that dex was one of the favoured stats to dump points in. Was wondering if in my case, I should have gone resolve.

 

Out of curiosity about your build.  do you mostly stay ranged with a bow to build focus?

 

I haven't decided myself, so currently (level 4) I go both melee and ranged. I go ranged if the fight is particularly dangerous, if I'm using a chokepoint, and/or if the enemy has high DR so I need to punch through it with a high damage weapon. If there are numerous squishy opponents I might join in the flank and beat them up, since the higher attack speeds of weapons like rapiers let me build up focus quickly as well. I never tried cipher in BB, but those who did claim blunderbuss ciphers are pretty awesome.

[termokanden]

I'm wondering where to go with my ranged cipher and whether to mix in melee. So far I've been using a crossbow (I'm level 3) and even with 19 dex it's excrutiatingly slow to fire (firearms are supposed to be even slower).

 

Perhaps arbalest/arqueus plus a spear as suggested above? I took Biting Whip so I doubt blunderbuss will do much for me. Or maybe pistols are not too slow. Hmm.

[Tigranes]

All firearms in POE world are Renaissance era, so none of them are fast, similar to historical cases. The pistol takes several long seconds of reloading as well.