Does "Ringleader" work?

[Darthcast]

Most of the times I used the cipher spell "Ringleader", the enemies are charmed for less then a second, even though it says they're dominated or charmed for 10-20 seconds.

Is this a bug or is there something I don't know about? I didn't have problems like this with the "Puppet Master" spell.

 

[Sphecida]

It's not working for me. I just keep using Puppet Master instead.

 

Lately, every battle starts with the enemy dominating my ciphers in the first microsecond, before my ciphers even get a chance to strike. It's downright irritating. By the time I get Durance to remove the hostile effect, the battle is almost over. I tried to have my character and Grieving Mother run away as their first move, but it's not effective for Cad Nua battles or those that begin with a dialogue - any battle where you can't set the party formation or use stealth.

 

Cipher seemed like a fun choice when I made my character, but the abilities are slooooooow, and it's difficult not to get stomped while trying to get close enough to use them. Most of the time I just end up at the back of the party picking enemies off with a bow.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

It works for me. Very powerful ability.

 

Cipher seemed like a fun choice when I made my character, but the abilities are slooooooow, and it's difficult not to get stomped while trying to get close enough to use them. Most of the time I just end up at the back of the party picking enemies off with a bow.

 

That's just the charm-dominate ones, though. Many of the cipher's other abilities are normal speed, or even very fast. Mental Binding, Mind Lance, Amplified wave, among others, are -very- fast to cast. And have much longer ranges. Cipher's are widely considered to be one of the most powerful classes, and my experience definitely backs this up.

[Nerbert]

The Cipher charm/dominate mind control effects are pretty slow. And I too have noticed they don't seem to last the advertised duration. 2 seconds is too short even for a graze.

[Casildar]

Most of the times I used the cipher spell "Ringleader", the enemies are charmed for less then a second, even though it says they're dominated or charmed for 10-20 seconds.

Is this a bug or is there something I don't know about? I didn't have problems like this with the "Puppet Master" spell.

 

Happens to me, too, so I just gave up on Ringleader.  But since I was sitting at a group of mobs testing some monk things, figured I'd try a few Ringleaders.  If you cast Ringleader and charm all the mobs in the fight, the game sees that you have no current enemies and ends combat.  When combat ends, buffs/debuffs are cleared, including Dominate/Charm.  Most of the time this happens, one of the charmed mobs loses its buff and the game now sees it as a valid enemy so combat instantly starts again before the entire combat clear state completes (meaning, for instance, that you won't return to your out of combat level of  Focus and you won't see messages like "Cipher deactivates Soul Whip."

 

Perhaps it's more correct to say that the clear combat event or routine or whatever gets interrupted.  I doubt combat technically ends, but rather the "End Combat" process starts and then while that process is still running, the game sees the enemy mob and interrupts the "End Combat" process so that combat resumes.

 

Sometimes, however, combat does actually end.  You'll see messages for the deactivation of various combat-only passives or modals, like Soul Whip or a Chanter chanting. Of course when that happens, all of the charmed mobs lose their charm debuff and re-aggro, so combat starts again.  (In these cases your Focus is returned to its out of combat level.)

 

I should mention that when either of these two things occur, they occur near-instantly.  Just as soon as the charm debuff gets applied to all the targets and the game recognizes it.  That may be important because at first I thought this was the whole problem with Ringleader.  But it's not.

 

After trying Ringleader on the full group several times and getting some variation of the above, I pulled the melee mobs away from the archer and cast Ringleader on the melee group.  They were all charmed and charged the archer, as they should.  The Dominated debuff had 22 seconds on it when I looked, but after approx. 3 seconds once they reached the archer (lets overestimate the entire time and call it 6 seconds including the run to get to the archer), the Dominate and Charms all deactivated at the same time and combat ended--while the archer was still alive and, having never been charmed, still aggro.  As soon as combat ended, all of the mobs aggroed again and combat started again.

 

So this part, I dunno.  I would have understood if the melee mobs killed the archer and then, since nothing red was still up, combat ended.  But combat ending with the archer still standing there shooting arrows at me...I have no idea.

 

Also worth mentioning that I have had similar problems with Puppet Master, several times when I've tried charming the last remaining mob (which would just lead back to combat breaking and re-starting as the debuff is cleared by ending combat).  But there's clearly something else causing an issue with either Ringleader specifically or the Charm/Dominate effect in general.

[Hassat Hunter]

Do you have damaging effects on them? I think damage reverts the effect. Also if no enemies remain anymore, they all turn hostile again.

 

The lvl 6 "confusion" is much more powerful, useful and reliable, but this has it's uses till you can get it, like having a certain dragon kill pretty much her adds with her insane damage AoE attack XD

[Casildar]

Do you have damaging effects on them? I think damage reverts the effect. Also if no enemies remain anymore, they all turn hostile again.

 

The lvl 6 "confusion" is much more powerful, useful and reliable, but this has it's uses till you can get it, like having a certain dragon kill pretty much her adds with her insane damage AoE attack XD

 

No damaging effects.  This was all done with Eder standing in the middle of them so I could move the group where I wanted them for spell targeting and the only ability used was Ringleader.