It doesn't interact with the unarmed damage bonus at all, nor receive the accuracy bonus. Not only does the cipher bring a lot of powerful abilities to the table, they help per-rest casters like Wizards, Priests, and Druids go further between rests, since often you can avoid burning a per-rest spell in favor of a Cipher equivalent.Īnyone know what the functionality is like for a Monk that has reaping knives cast on them? How does it interact with unarmed damage bonus? Pain Block: useful to cast on a tank who's getting beat on for +10 DR and some regen.Many have a large effect radius, so you can cover most or all of the battlefield. Unlike priest spells, you can cast them many times between rests.

Lots of useful debuffs, like Phantom Foes, Secret Horrors, Recall Agony, etc.Reaping knives: You can cast this on a fighter type, and have more focus than you know what to do with.It overlaps with some wizard spells, and is shorter duration, but unlike the wizard spells you can cast it every fight - even multiple times in a single fight. Suddenly those PotD fights in WM against huge hordes of creatures aren't so scary. Defensive Mindweb: near-invulnerability for your whole group.It trivializes most fights against just 1 or 2 enemies. You do much more damage to them, and they aren't beating on you. This can take many types of powerful enemies temporarily out of the fight, and at the same time, it's a powerful debuff. One of the best abilities in the game, IMHO. Fifth, because it can help preserve battle lines when something breaks through. Forth, because it can often get a frail party member out of trouble if they're getting hit by something they can't stand up to. Third, because other enemies attack it instead of your own guys, so you take less of a beating. Second, because of the damage it takes: sometimes this can destroy it completely. First, because of the damage it dishes out. Only 10 focus, and getting a powerful enemy fighting for your side is huge. This is enormously powerful, and I use it through most of the game. But here are some abilities that I've found highly valuable:

I haven't studied the details of stats and builds to the extent that many people have, so I'll defer to others' wisdom there. I build mine as ranged, rather than melee, but I think both can work fine. I didn't use one for my first play through, did on my second, and now wouldn't play without one. I have about 15 focus at level4 and can never really do much. I normaly never have ciphers or chanters but thought I may take a ipher insted of a wizard. Llawran's staff is cool because of the speed - together with Time Parasite you will be hitting very, very fast with lots oft damage per hit. I tried Durance's staff once and it's nice because it's the only reach weapon with two damage types. If you give him a reach weapon he doesn't even need to be super sturdy and can reach enemies easier without running around too much. He will kill things quickly but also gain a lot of focus per hit. An elemental lash will also add a lot of damage and focus. Maybe his weapon is exceptional, then he will be at +184%. Damage bonus to flanked targets (survival, items, up to +40%)įor a total damage bonus of +154% just by casting Phantom Foes. So a melee cipher with a two hander for example could use following things to raise damage per hit: The more weapon dps and the lower the enemies' DR is the higher the focus gain will be. I mean +40% weapon damage through soul whip without any drawback is a lot. They balance this out with pure per encounter usage (or better: per resource) and the higher weapon damage. They just can't spam them in quick sussession like wizards/priest/druids can. Luckily you have spells that disable foes.Ĭiphers are sort of hybrids: they do a lot of weapon damage with their soul whip but they also can cast really nice CC and support spells. But with melee attacks you will get more focus because of the higher attack speed and/or the additional dmg mods, but you will more likely be knocked out.

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