Level 1 Cipher powers

[PugPug]

I started out really liking Whisper of Treason, but then I read it becomes obsolete with dominate powers later on. Tenuous Grasp (fear/confuse) seems kind of pointless when you can charm or dominate them for a longer duration. Though I guess you could use it against a solo enemy and have it not break on damage.

 

Antipathetic Field apparently does its listed damage once per second, I read, despite the description not stating this. Which makes it do way, way more damage than Soul Shock. A beam shouldn't be too hard to avoid friendly fire with. Though strangely, the description says nothing about an intellect duration bonus, so I guess it doesn't have one?

 

Eyestrike seems like a great debuff.

 

Mind Wave sounds good because it does irresistible raw damage and knocks down a crowd (no friendly fire, either).

 

Do I have all that right?

[petrivanzyl]

Soul Shock does way more damage, maybe not at the start or solo, but later on

[MoxyWoo]

Tenuous grasp is handy as an opener.  Confuse = ally = enemies beat down on them.  Also has an average cast time vs the other slower Whisper.

 

I also liked Mind Wave, Soul Shock, and Antipathetic field at lvl 3 instead of going for another pick of a 2nd lvl power.

 

Of course, once you hit level 3+, Mental Binding is too good to just not keep casting on just about everything.

[Eos]

Only really used two of the level 1 spells.

 

Mind Wave - the AoE knockdown: which is totally overpowered.. little no to focus cost, great range, quick cast speed and almost always knocks down several/all of the opponents.. if you'd feel so you can trivialize many encounters just by spamming this level 1 spell and disabling pretty much all enemies throughout the whole fight

 

Soul Shock - the AoE nuke: cast on your main tank and melt down your opposition, my go-to AoE until Silent Scream becomes available

 

All the other level 1 powers seemed weaker than their alternatives or tried to fulfill roles better filled by other characters

Edited April 24, 2015 by Eos

[Kaigen42]

Antipathetic Field is great, but you have to be careful with it, as it is sometimes hard to read whose hit boxes the beam is passing through, so you sometimes end up hurting your people even though it doesn't look like the beam is touching them. You also have to be careful if the enemy you target with it moves on you and alters the path of the beam. Enemy archers make good anchor points, as they tend not to move. AF carries a buff to beam damage as well, so it can be fun to combine it with Ectopsychic Echo or a scroll of Ray of Fire. Just don't get the beams mixed up.

 

I often take Whispers of Treason and skip the higher level Dominate power, because what I mainly want out of the power is an enemy not attacking me and other enemies distracted by attacking it. The fact that Charmed carries a defense debuff means that I can count on my enemies severely damaging the charmed one for me. Dominate preserves the enemy's damage dealing capability, so it's handy if you want to suborn a nasty enemy for the purposes of cutting up their own allies, but it also costs twice as much Focus.

 

Mindwave shines against enemies with really high DR, like Shades. I don't use it much apart from that once I get level 2 powers, most of which have better damage dealing potential.