So the +3 power level of Ascendant is not working at all right now, everytime you cast a spell at full focus, the spell's power level is counted as -1 lol. I think it's because spell power level is decided on your current power level, not decided at the time when it is casted. So once u release the spell, your focus is reduce and u get the -1 power level debuff, same as your spell.

Edited January 7, 20188 yr by dunehunter

Aw man! Good that you tried that class (which nobody likes to play atm because it's so bad).

Aw man! Good that you tried that class (which nobody likes to play atm because it's so bad).

 

I just wanna test Empower's effect on all caster spells

 

Btw it is so weird that +Mas focus is shown as a bonus for Ascendant, if their bonus only works at Max focus, isn't it better to have lower Max focus so we can reach Max focus faster ?????

Edited January 7, 20188 yr by dunehunter

Yeah, I’ve seen that mentioned before. We need MOAR consistency XD

Would obviously be better to give Ascendant more starting focus as well (or instead)....

 

The bonus lash damage at full focus is only 10% over an ordinary cipher. (Because Ascendant soul whip has 10% rather than 20% damage, and full focus grants +20%. Btw to test this it wasn't sufficient to give my Ascendant 100 perception and 100 dexterity---everything still died before he got max focus---I also had to give him 1000 strength.) Theoretically a ranged assassin ascendant might be pretty good but ranged assassinate from invisibility isn't working either....

 

Cipher (other than Soul Blade using Soul Annihilation) is so bad and so bugged right now it's almost comical. All the restrictions on Ascendant make it seem like they were really worried about making it OP, and yet the result....

Edited January 7, 20188 yr by SaruNi

Would obviously be better to give Ascendant more starting focus as well (or instead)....

 

The bonus lash damage at full focus is only 10% over an ordinary cipher. (Because Ascendant soul whip has 10% rather than 20% damage, and full focus grants +20%. Btw to test this it wasn't sufficient to give my Ascendant 100 perception and 100 dexterity---everything still died before he got max focus---I also had to give him 1000 strength.) Theoretically a ranged assassin ascendant might be pretty good but ranged assassinate from invisibility isn't working either....

 

Cipher (other than Soul Blade using Soul Annihilation) is so bad and so bugged right now it's almost comical. All the restrictions on Ascendant make it seem like they were really worried about making it OP, and yet the result....

 

Probably just remove the 5 second duration of the +3 power level buff. Because your soul whip is less effective while under max focus. It is a fair trade off.

 

Now the only playstyle an Ascendant has is reach max focus -> blast -> reach max focus -> blast.

 

+20% lash damage will never work now because you can only cast spell when max focus.

 

Would obviously be better to give Ascendant more starting focus as well (or instead)....

 

The bonus lash damage at full focus is only 10% over an ordinary cipher. (Because Ascendant soul whip has 10% rather than 20% damage, and full focus grants +20%. Btw to test this it wasn't sufficient to give my Ascendant 100 perception and 100 dexterity---everything still died before he got max focus---I also had to give him 1000 strength.) Theoretically a ranged assassin ascendant might be pretty good but ranged assassinate from invisibility isn't working either....

 

Cipher (other than Soul Blade using Soul Annihilation) is so bad and so bugged right now it's almost comical. All the restrictions on Ascendant make it seem like they were really worried about making it OP, and yet the result....

 

Probably just remove the 5 second duration of the +3 power level buff. Because your soul whip is less effective while under max focus. It is a fair trade off.

 

Now the only playstyle an Ascendant has is reach max focus -> blast -> reach max focus -> blast.

 

+20% lash damage will never work now because you can only cast spell when max focus.

 

 

The +20% lash applies to weapon damage too, right? That's how they implemented the "soul whip does more damage when at max focus" part of the description. So if you can quickly reach max focus (assassinate) then you have 5 seconds at +50% damage from biting whip (because base soul whip is reduced to +10% and does not change when you reach max power level), so you can alternate your assassinate blows with ranged sneak attacks (assassinate tends to kill its target anyway without extra cipher damage, this should spread out assassin dps and give greater survivability---even with ranged assassinate from smoke veil bugged, can alternate melee assassinates with ranged attacks... assuming assassinate gives you full focus). Having the +20% lash also apply to spells may not have been intended, since it's not in the description (just power level increase---btw 3 power levels doesn't exactly seem like "greatly increased power level"...).

Isn't cipher soul whip lash just normal additive damage bonus? Normal cipher get 40% damage when max focus, Ascendant get +50% damage when max, I didn't see any significant boost here.

Isn't cipher soul whip lash just normal additive damage bonus? Normal cipher get 40% damage when max focus, Ascendant get +50% damage when max, I didn't see any significant boost here.

 

Agree that +10% damage barely seems worth it. Though it is a slight bonus.

Although a normal cipher's soul whip turns off at max focus... but Ascendant's "soul whip does not turn off at max focus". So if your weapon attacks rapidly bring you to max focus, Ascendant gets a full [edit: just tested this, biting whip adds +30% so it's up to +60%] bonus over other ciphers.

 

So if you want to multiclass a ranged character for soul whip and almost never use cipher powers Ascendant may be better (if you can get to max focus quickly enough).

 

OTOH focus gain with Biting Whip is so slow that a Blackjacket-Ascendant has to do 3 massive arquebus crits just to get to max focus.

Edited January 8, 20188 yr by SaruNi

On Assassin/Ascendant---did some testing, and you need to do about 200 damage to get "Focus Filled" at level 9. If Assassinate and Backstab were working with ranged weapons from invisibility, this could be good. But now it requires a mixed melee and ranged that barely seems worth it (even with 20 strength 19 perception sneak attacks, using assassinate with a fast one handed weapon with sceptre in the other hand for dual wield speed bonus just takes too long to build focus, and even with 18 dexterity and the pistol modal firearms take too long for the 5 second bonus to be very worthwhile).

Edited January 9, 20188 yr by SaruNi