Cipher PotD advice

[tnb234]

Hey guys 

 

I finished PotD twice now ( with a full party of 6 ) and I'm going to attempt a 4 man party now.

I will be playing once again as a cipher because I love them so much!

This time I was actually thinking of giving a shot at a melee cipher but not really sure how that's going to go..

 

So here's where I'd like some of your wisdom :

 

Both times I've played for me the toughest fights to beat were the adra dragon and raedric undead version.

In both these fights I was a bit disappointed with my cipher ( which wasn't being as awesome as usual ) since it was very hard to land my CCs ( mental binding, puppet master, ring leader, amplified wave, mind plague, etc... ) because of the enemy high defenses. I managed to make it work out by using other characters ( for example scale breaker + wizard + rogue can reduce the AD defense by a lot then my cipher can come in, but even then when those debuffs run out my cipher has a hard time being useful ) but since I was trying to reduce my party size I was wondering what power my cipher has that I am overlooking that could be used for these fights as a good first move(s) to debuff the enemy defense before hitting them with CC

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

[Nobear]

Are you aware that you can cast Tactical Meld on an ally before combat? Your cipher's focus will then reset to its full starting value as long as a short moment (less than a second I think) passes before combat starts. I like casting this on someone who will be mostly auto attacking the same enemy as the cipher will. +20 accuracy is the same as if those tough enemies had -20 to all their defenses for your cipher. You can also have a Darkozzi paladin with Inspiring Liberation, which can be cast twice on the same ally and stack to give your cipher another 20 accuracy. With this much +accuracy, Borrowed Instincts should have a good chance of landing, which is another +20 for +60 total. Yikes! Maybe throw a Psychovampiric Shield in there for good measure, if you have enough Focus after your first Mental Binding.

 

Edit: Now, I did beat Adra Dragon with a full party on PoTD fighting all the adds at once, and not trying to perma-CC the dragon or exploit super-long range. This was honestly the only fight in the game where I've seen fit to cast Pain Block on both my tanks. But with a party of four, the CC approach might be a better bet.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Nobear

[tnb234]

Awesome ! Thanks that's exactly the advice I was looking for I didn't think of using Tactical Meld that way ( nor following with Borrowed Instincts which I tend to overlook )

I'll give this a shot thanks

 

And yeah full party or not I'm not looking to cheese my way into constant CC for the dragon, I also had the same issue with my tanks I thought that the two of them were literally invincible until I fought the dragon...

[Boeroer]

I was using Tactical Meld and Borrowed Instinct with both of my ranged ciphers, sometimes added Body Attunement on high DR enemies. The last will be eben more useful for a melee cipher. Too bad you would need another cipher to cast Pain Block on you. Also be sure to use Sura's Supper Plate and Hiro's Mantle (or Vengietta Rugia), since Retaliation of weapon (shield) and armor/cape stacks. If you eat Carow Golan, you will get +4 Focus when you hit something. So if you get hit by melee attacks, your stacked retaliations will generate focus so quickly you can't run out of it. Retaliation never misses and always does some damage. Combine it with Shod-In-Faith so you don't go down quickly. Dual wielding sabres will possibly be the best option for generating focus when you don't get attacks and nobody hits you. They have huge base damage to punch through DR and are not too slow. Switch to the supper plate when you get mobbed. Maybe it's nice to have draining weapons, but with Shod-In-Faith I don't think it's necessary. Basically you should play him like a melee rogue. Antipathetic Field and Mind Lance are nice powers for melee ciphers too. And Mental Binding of course. The Ring of Wonder is also very nice, since it will give you Second Chance and some minor stat boosts. I found melee ciphers not only to genereate a ton of focus, but lots of fun too. Enjoy! )

[tnb234]

Thank you Boeroer that's tremendously helpful

Edited August 4, 2015 by tnb234

[Nobear]

Boeroer is kind of making me want to try a melee cipher solo, but there are so many classes to choose from!

 

About undead Raedric, I also found that fight quite difficult and it took me several attempts to beat it. However, I think there are some other fights just about as hard, and one of the big differences is that I was level 11 when I fought Raedric. If you wait until level 12 for him, I'd wager being able to open with Amplified Wave would make it a whole lot easier. The biggest problem I had in that fight was the number of fampyrs dominating people left and right, and Amplified Wave is about the only spell that can CC a large area fast enough at the beginning of the fight to let you get into proper position, buff and debuff and get ready to follow up that CC with, say, a wizard's Prone, then have a relatively smooth and controlled fight.

 

With Adra Dragon, however, I wouldn't open with Amplified Wave, because the adds won't be in place yet. Mental Binding would be more likely for my first CC, but keep in mind it's still likely to miss even prebuffed with Tactical Meld. Once you stack more accuracy, though, things should start landing more reliably. If you have a druid for Tanglefoot and Relentless Storm, the cool thing about those is that they will keep rolling for hits, even if they miss most of them. Whenever Adra Dragon is hobbled, her reflex will also be low enough to reliably land more of those reflex-based spells. Your cipher may still be better off attacking other enemies when they come to generate faster focus, and using spells like Amplified Wave mostly to CC the other enemies when they come.

[tnb234]

That makes sense Thanks for the advice, I've started my dual wielding melee cipher and so far it's a lot of fun. I'd love to see if you could pull of the game solo with that!

[Boeroer]

When you want to use Amplified Wave (or other spells that target fortify) a lot and will based spells like Mental Binding, try to combine it with the priest's Painful & Empowered Interdiction. This hits most of the times because it has +25 Acc. The weakening effect lowers fort and will by 20 (besides other nice debuffs like speed penalty). Once it hits, cast Secret Horrors with a cipher (or some other wiz/druid spell with high +acc bonus that adds sickened and targets will or fort) - this will hit more often now because of the lowered defenses of the enemies. You can also use Threatening Presence with a Barbarian. This will add the sickenend affliction on top of weakenend. Now you have a crowd with more than -40 Will and Fortitude. All will and fort based spells hit like trucks. A Barbarian with Brute Force will cleave through these mobs like a LSD abuser thrashes through a foam party (the only case in which Brute Force is worth it). I'm doing that at the moment on PotD and it so rocks... ore raves... not sure. ;-)

[L4wlight]

Sickenend and Weakenend penalty to will and fort stack?

[Boeroer]

Yep. It's minus 40... plus: some stats are also lowered by sickened, which lets will and fort drop even more. Don't know the exact numbers. These slime-things in Cliban Rilag end up with 12 fort. Then comes the Barb. :-D

[Boeroer]

...on PotD that is. Amplified Wave also crits all the time.

[Nobear]

Wow I didn't know Sickened and Weakened stack, I thought it'd go by the general rule that "similar effects suppress each other." I knew of some exceptions, but there seem to be too many to make it a reliable rule of thumb. This game seems as exception-ridden as the English language sometimes!

[Boeroer]

Two different afflictions stack most of the time if they are not too similar in nature. Two times sickened doesn't stack of course and some afflictions override their weaker siblings. For example: terrified overrides frightened and dominated overrides charmed. But that is mentioned in the description. So blind and paralyzed stack and so do sickened and weakenend.

[Nobear]

Two different afflictions stack most of the time if they are not too similar in nature. Two times sickened doesn't stack of course and some afflictions override their weaker siblings. For example: terrified overrides frightened and dominated overrides charmed. But that is mentioned in the description. So blind and paralyzed stack and so do sickened and weakenend.

 

 

Thanks, I guess there are probably less exceptions to the "rule" if you think of it that way. It is looking to me like buffs tend to suppress each other like I described (per individual bonus, e.g. Accuracy, Might...), with only a couple of exceptions, but that debuffs tend to stack unless it is specifically stated that certain effects override others in the respective tooltips. Looking at it from this angle (and I know that multiple applications of the same debuff spell don't stack), are there any exceptions you can think of?

 

The more I learn about this game, the easier it seems I can make it with a full party on PoTD, not that I need to reduce the difficulty there .