How to do with "useful" Serafen

[GunnshFF]

Hello, everyone.
I'm not hardcore player in DnD games, but I have some experience - done DoS2 on tactician as barb and Tyranny on hard as mage.
And now I started to play PoE2 and found Serafen as party member. I choose class syfer for him and.. he is totally useless. I don't really know what to do with him or maybe it's just me being super bad.

Difficult of the game 3/5, first playthrough. My main is Eothas priest. Eder - tank, Xoti - tanky-monk, Alot - pure mage.

[Dallas S]

My recommendation is to punt seraphen, because his wild magic ability aids the enemy at the most inopportune moment, like turn all the enemies invisible.

[Du-Vu]

It'll only be the target enemies who turn invisible, but if the AOE is big enough, that can be all of them. But a wild surge can also help the party. It's less of a big deal if you're not playing on Path of Iron or anything. But it's basically just wild magic, you probably already know if you hate it in games like this. There are mods to change him into other things.

Re: him being useless, though -- how do you mean? How did you build him/kit him out? Ciphers get extra weapon damage by default and dealing damage is how they build Focus which is what they spend on their spells (10 for 1st level, 20 for second, etc), some of which require micromanaging to get the position right, but some others are just useful CC effects. They're good for dealing damage and/or temporarily disabling enemies.

Cipher is more of a rogue/mage, so if you've already got a pure mage and priest, you might want to focus on damage. There are better cipher builds for damage, but he's also got his hand mortar which deals AOE damage, so you might build toward that depending on what you've got Aloth doing.

[GunnshFF]

Originally posted by Du-Vu:

It'll only be the target enemies who turn invisible, but if the AOE is big enough, that can be all of them. But a wild surge can also help the party. It's less of a big deal if you're not playing on Path of Iron or anything. But it's basically just wild magic, you probably already know if you hate it in games like this. There are mods to change him into other things.

Re: him being useless, though -- how do you mean? How did you build him/kit him out? Ciphers get extra weapon damage by default and dealing damage is how they build Focus which is what they spend on their spells (10 for 1st level, 20 for second, etc), some of which require micromanaging to get the position right, but some others are just useful CC effects. They're good for dealing damage and/or temporarily disabling enemies.

Cipher is more of a rogue/mage, so if you've already got a pure mage and priest, you might want to focus on damage. There are better cipher builds for damage, but he's also got his hand mortar which deals AOE damage, so you might build toward that depending on what you've got Aloth doing.

His mortar is good, yeah. But I will replace him anyway with druid, I heard I can do this in future. Cipher is too hard for me for understanding, because I still can't handle him :(
You know, Eder tank and just tank, do nothing more. Xoti do her fast hands as monk, Alot do his MEGA BOOM and my priest just heal. That's simple and it's working.
Seraphen just starting fight, deal one shot from mortar and dying before I can heal him. That's it. Small uselesss human-bird :D

[SpiralRazor]

Cyphers start off fairly weak but get much more powerful as the story goes on. Very gear dependent. Personally i ditch the pistols because you want to do as many attacks as possible from range, and that means usually dual wield pistols.

[Boneyard Bob]

Originally posted by Psychotron69666:

My recommendation is to punt seraphen, because his wild magic ability aids the enemy at the most inopportune moment, like turn all the enemies invisible.

What?!? Two playthroughs with him and I've never had anything like this happen. I'm starting to feel ripped off.

BTW, I am that guy who picked the "Jinxed" trait for his char in FO1, and was disappointed that it wasn't as catastrophic as it sounded.

[Dallas S]

Originally posted by Boneyard Bob:

Originally posted by Psychotron69666:

My recommendation is to punt seraphen, because his wild magic ability aids the enemy at the most inopportune moment, like turn all the enemies invisible.

What?!? Two playthroughs with him and I've never had anything like this happen. I'm starting to feel ripped off.

BTW, I am that guy who picked the "Jinxed" trait for his char in FO1, and was disappointed that it wasn't as catastrophic as it sounded.

It happened to me when I was fighting the Kraken boss and caused me to lose the battle because he was almost dead but so was my party and it was enough to screw us because I couldn't target him for so long.

Also happened to me fighting concelhaut, and turned him and his entire party invisible, I barely pulled the win from that fight.

The bonuses he can give you, like increasing everyone's power level temporarily is never noticeable and imo not worth the catastrophic events that happen from the negatives he brings.

Jinxed in fallout 2 is the best trait though. Became boxing champion without throwing a single punch, just stand there and let the enemy break their arm or knock themselves out

[Boneyard Bob]

Originally posted by Psychotron69666:

Jinxed in fallout 2 is the best trait though. Became boxing champion without throwing a single punch, just stand there and let the enemy break their arm or knock themselves out

Now that is the kind of hilarity I was hoping for when I picked it in FO1, but instead it was mostly just the occasional gun jamming.

[The Haney]

His dialogue is too good to kick him out so I used the Unityconsole to change him into a dual-pistol Debonair Rogue / Beguiler Cipher with rebalanced stats. He's pretty badass that way.

Really I'd recommend using the unity console to rebalance ALL of the companion's stats since it's ridiculous that we can't do that vanilla. I shouldn't have to accept a bad stat alignment / poor subclass combos for the sake of a decent backstory.

[ÄmJii]

Use him for Stealthing and Pickpocketing and finish up his personal quest. Besides that, swap to another party member.

[Boneyard Bob]

Originally posted by The Haney:

His dialogue is too good to kick him out so I used the Unityconsole to change him into a dual-pistol Debonair Rogue / Beguiler Cipher with rebalanced stats. He's pretty badass that way.

Really I'd recommend using the unity console to rebalance ALL of the companion's stats since it's ridiculous that we can't do that vanilla. I shouldn't have to accept a bad stat alignment / poor subclass combos for the sake of a decent backstory.

I've never done it, but can't you just respec them at an inn?

ETA: @Psychotron:

What do you know, it finally happened. Just yesterday he turned a small group of enemies invisible for a moment, but they were close to death and I was still in great shape, so it wasn't nearly as catastrophic as your event.

[Du-Vu]

Can't respec first levels, for you or your companions. You also can't change their class/multiclass after the selection screen when you first recruit them. Not really sure why, doesn't seem like it would've taken that much time to implement.

[The Haney]

Originally posted by Boneyard Bob:

I've never done it, but can't you just respec them at an inn?

The vanilla system lets you redistribute skills/points from level 2 onwards. You can't change their stat allocation or base classes/subclasses unless you use the mod or console.

Which, to me, is a crying shame.

[wespe___o=/;;;:*]

Serafen should be played ranged Hybrid, so his dmg is ok (while being 5-6m away) and his AoE can´t kill other squishies with 200+ dmg
Also don´t bring him for bigger bossfights as he is near useless and likes to buff enemies.

Serafen is your Early/Midgame companion that gets replaced.. usually by Konstanten, Ydwin or Rekke (check ->Party Setup)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2581749394

[Vcard]

He definitely comes into his own around mid-game. Once you get disintegrate he becomes an absolute monster. You can build him around using dual pistols, prioritizing recovery speed and skills that increase Focus generation when attacking, then having him spam disintegrate every time his focus gets to 60. It's a really heavy-hitting DoT that does around 240 raw damage over 12 seconds I believe, and melts most enemies all the way through end-game.

[jotwebe]

I've played him as a witch, specced him into 2h/halberd and gave him Lord Darryn's voulge. At first he's a bit squishy but later he came into his own and then some: Perks for mainly a barbarian with some cipher support buffs - stealing armor and precision/def from peops, sometimes doing disintegrate but really that did less than his weapon damage output. That way when the wild magic kicks in it's less of a big deal than as a pure cipher, which yeah I would be a bit wary of.