My Fire Barbarian Tankish Build

[Nobear]

The retaliate ability of the cipher works only once per encounter, right?

 

As Boeroer says, that ability (the class talent Psychic Backlash) is generally considered crap. If you're confused because you've heard of retaliate in relation to ciphers, melee ciphers benefit from retaliate items combined with the Carow Golan drug for generating Focus. It has nothing to do with Psychic Backlash.

 

My playtrough before this one had two fast running, dual wielding melee rogues (sabres and battle axes) and two ranged ciphers to trigger deathblows at the beginning of every encounter with Phantom Foes and Blind or Mental Binding - man, that was fun.

 

 

Ok, I just tried out Phantom Foes on my solo melee cipher and was disappointed. OFC I know it's one of the weaker debuffs and of questionable use for soloing, but I figured if my Focus gain eventually became high enough to justify casting another debuff... The more fundamental issues I'm having are the following:

 

1) Sometimes the ability lands according to the combat log, but only the Frightened debuff shows up on enemies, not the Flanked one.

 

2) As soon as I (or my figurine summon) hit the enemy, either Flanked or Frightened disappears. The next time he's hit, the other one disappears too.

 

The enemies I was fighting were priests and acolytes in Raedric's Hold Sanctuary. I thought maybe there was something special they did to purge harmful effects, but then the same thing happened with the bears in the Valewood cave. Do you know what might be going on here? I'm playing on 1.0.6. I know we have gone pretty far off topic on this thread and I'm not helping. I could submit a bug report unless you can enlighten me here.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Nobear

[Boeroer]

You may be right. I'm now playing without rogues and have the same problem. In my playthrough before this one I had the two rogues I mentioned - but that was on 1.05. Maybe these problems occured after 1.06, because with the rogues Phantom Foes worked. OR my rogues instagibbed everything before I could realise that the debuffs where disappearing.

[Madscientist]

The devs have confirmed that phantom foes is bugged. (see technical support where the bugs are reported)

 

something else: does sneak/death attack from rogues work together with retaliate?

[Boeroer]

You mean if the damage modifier (50%/100%) also applies to the retaliation damage? Good question. I don't think so, because these are special requirements the target must fulfill - and this damage bonus would not be applied if these req. were not checked. I don't think that the game checks if the target qualifies for sneak attack or deathblows while executing retaliation. But on the other hand... does "One Stands Alone" work with retaliation? That's another damage bonus that only gets applied in special situations - but this is on the character's side, not that of the enemy.

[Boeroer]

Ok - I tested it with an old savegame in Court of the Penitents against a spectre which I flanked and blinded...

 

.

 

..

 

...

 

It works! Not only sneak attack and deathblows, but also deep wounds! The pierce damage is still kind of low (although I also had reckless assault and vulnarable attack on). Best hit I had was 15. After 5DR was subtracted it was at 10 - still lousy. BUT! Deep wounds added more than 16 raw damage on every retaliation. Now that's nice! Rolling a new rogue retaliation build now... :-D   

 

Next question: Do Blood Testament, Turning Wheel and Enervating Blows apply to retaliation? 

Edited August 17, 2015 by Boeroer

[Nobear]

You may be right. I'm now playing without rogues and have the same problem. In my playthrough before this one I had the two rogues I mentioned - but that was on 1.05. Maybe these problems occured after 1.06, because with the rogues Phantom Foes worked. OR my rogues instagibbed everything before I could realise that the debuffs where disappearing.

 

I think the last thing you suggested is the most likely scenario , since someone started that Phantom Foes thread a long time ago, and I just updated it recently to report that it was still an issue. What I'm finding is that soloing kind of forces you to pay attention to every little thing that your character is doing (or not doing). Recall Agony is another example. Most players just figured that Recall Agony was a lackluster power not worth taking. I took it the first time I played a cipher, and I couldn't tell what it was doing (if anything), but I let myself be convinced that things died a bit faster with it. Turns out that was just placebo. It's only when I soloed that it became undeniable that it does nothing because it's broken, and it would probably make for a decent choice as a third power in that tier if it actually worked lol. Then I went back to a previous save and took Phantom Foes instead. After using it a few times, paying close attention to debuffs because you kind of have to pay attention when you solo PoTD, the bugs stood out to me, and I went back again and took Mind Blades, basically my fifth choice for that tier if Recall Agony and Phantom Foes were working.

 

Overall, soloing seems to be a great way to catch bugs that you normally wouldn't notice.

[Madscientist]

So it looks like retaliate is a melee attack and all modifiers that are used for a normal melee attack are used as well.

Retaliate is a weapon itself (x points pierce damage + all modifiers), it does not use the equipped weapon.

This is just my assumption. I have no evidence.

 

back to topic.

Retaliate seems to be most useful for barbariens. If an enemy attacks you once, you attack all enemies around you 2 or 3 times.

[Boeroer]

Everything you said in above post is right.

[Boeroer]

But carnage has less damage - so maybe most retaliation damage will get eaten up by DR since the pierce damage is so low. Vulnarable Attack and stellar might could help a bit. This deep wounds thing is interesting though, because it adds raw damage - so no DR is involved.