Jayd

each day, something new to learn. And I just posted my Cantor build without trying this out.

Wind Path Cantor Helwalker/Skald Cantor build Great crowd control and nuking power with good weapon damage on top. Sprint around the battlefield at high speed, incapacitating and dismantling enemies in groups or one by one. Room for exciting variants to suit personal taste/playstyle. Not intended for solo. Introduction: I LOVE the Cantor multiclass. Firstly because it has such an incredible flavour: real monks do chant as part of religious rituals, so the Monk fantasy and Chanter fantasy blend together seamlessly. When it comes to gameplay mechanics, the Monk’s uniquely achievable INT bonus beefs up everything a Chanter does, and both classes enjoy renewable resources. These basics make the multiclass ripe for fun, interesting builds. The build I’m talking about in this post is extremely fun and very effective at every stage of the game. You’ll have something to look forward to, whether ability or gear, constantly until very late – but you’ll never feel like you’re waiting for the build to be good. The principle here is you have access to 3 types of hard crowd control (CC) targeting different defences, 2+ types of soft crowd control, and spicy nukes, all off of renewable resources. Add powerful weapon attacks to the mix and you have a flexible gameplay loop with a character who almost always has a high-impact action to take. I chose to call it “Wind Path” because it sprints around the field like the wind and is very versatile. The 3 types hard CC I have in mind are: Paralysis: At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff Stun: Stunning Surge/Raised Torment Charm: The Lover Cried out to the Beloved, "I am Yours!" The soft CC takes the form of summons and Force of Anguish. Your nukes are Her Revenge Swept Across the Land and Seven Nights She Waited While the White Winds Wept. Every Wound a Helwalker has can buff the area of effect of all of your invocation cones, the duration of your hostile effects, and the power of all your damage. It’s hard to overstate how big of an impact this makes. Here’s a gameplay snippet so you can get a sense of how this guy plays (sped up to respect your time; use 0.5 playback speed to approximate gameplay). It's not supposed to be a tough fight or anything - just something to give you a sense of what this guy does. It's just the Cantor, plus Eder drawing some aggro (since the build is meant to play around a tank). Hopefully that looked as enjoyable as it is to play. Let’s dig into the commentary. What I’m going to do is list all the abilities I personally am using at level 20, grouped by power level, and comment on the choices. I’ll also list alternative choices – this is a rich multiclass with lots of tools to try! Note that this is not a levelling guide – levelling Skalds is always weird because you should periodically take a non-offensive invocation here and there to get more max phrases and then respec later to reallocate the points. The stats I used (Berath’s Blessings included): MIG: 20 CON: 10 DEX: 15 (incl. Elf) PER: 20 (incl. Elf+White that Wends) INT: 20 RES: 5 I used Pale Elf, White that Wends, and Mystic backgrounds mostly for fun. Skills aren’t too important either – I used Arcana and roleplay stuff. If you really want to devote everything to combat you can max Survival for Ruata’s Walking Cloak but that won’t make too much difference. Power Level One Thrice was She Wronged, and Thrice Justly Avenged Come, Come, Soft Winds of Death Blessed was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe Swift Strikes Force of Anguish I don’t tend to use Blessed was Wengridh much at max level, but its nice to have as optional bonus Stride. Stride is a key stat for this character. It helps you swiftly position yourself so that your invocation cones can have maximum effect, and it keeps you alive through outrunning melee enemies and getting out of dangerous area effects. Anywhere you can squeeze more in is nice. Force of Anguish is useful for times when an enemy manages to engage you. Often you will just Stun/Para/Charm them, but sometimes blowing them back is the best option. (I originally tried to build this character to have high disengagement for those situations, but found that the opportunity cost in gear and perks was high for too little return: on PotD difficulty, you need a LOT of disengagement defence to not get hit. Better to deal with engagement through CC.) Alternative picks: You can certainly replace one of the chants with any other Chanter talent. Hel-Hyraf is always nice and should last a decent time with this character even if it’s not upgraded. The Thunder Rolled is another CC you can use. I had it for a while but just never used it over other options. Certainly the right pick if you decide you don’t want Raised Torment later on, though. Power Level Two Two Weapon Fighting At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff Dance of Death Clarity of Agony Long Stride After “Thrice was She Wronged”, “At the Sound of His Voice” will be your most used invocation if you play this anything like me. They represent the twin pillars of damage and CC that this character stands on. Dance of Death and its upgrade should be used every fight as you don’t intend to be hit much. Clarity of Agony is so generally good it would take a lot of work to convince me that it shouldn’t be on absolutely every Monk build. I’ve already explained the use of Stride, so the Monk’s special passive bonus here is very attractive. Alternative picks: Not too much wiggle room here. Graceful Retreat will help if you go in for the disengagement shtick, but I don’t recommend that route. White Worms does sweet damage in a good area of effect, but it’s slower than Thrice, dependent on the existence and position of a dead body, and is useless against enemies immune to disease (I thought it was the force that did the damage, not the yuckiness…whatever); it’s not worth the point, in my opinion. Power Level Three Her Revenge Swept Across the Land Swift Flurry Torment’s Reach Stunning Blow Her Revenge might be the most important talent you pick in the whole build. That upgrade is nuts. Swift Flurry will help make your weapon damage occasionally explosive. Stunning Blow is a key pick – it keeps you safe while you’re beating on someone and makes them easier to crit. It’s awesome upgrade makes it free if you do crit. Torment’s Reach and upgrade form the Monk side of your AoE CC/damage kit. You can use them to let your chants build up while using Wounds instead to put out some AoE punishment. That increases the character’s flexibility and is therefore very nice to have, though not as important as Stunning Blow/Surge. Alternative picks: I purposefully made the “official” version of this build vanilla-friendly, but if you’re into modding, the Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod buffs The Fox from the Farmer to give a -15 Reflex debuff. Very nice even if you’re not trying to disengage since it softens enemies up for Thrice was She Wronged, Seven Nights she Waited, and Raised Torment. Otherwise you may want to go for Reny Daret’s Ghost and upgrade for the long frighten and very valuable all defences debuff (which stacks with debuffs to specific defences), though I find it’s 3-phrase opportunity cost doesn’t stack up well with Killers Froze stiff+upgrade’s 2-phrase cost, especially since that also frightens enemies. Ancient Memory is OK if your party really likes passive healing, but even with 35 Might, its healing is only a trickle. Power Level Four The Long Night’s Drink Birthed the Revenge of the Morning The Lover Cried Out to the Beloved, “I am Yours!” …And their Fear Followed them to the Foothills Duality of Mortal Presence Enduring Dance The Long Night’s Drink is my jam. Seriously powerful chant: Constitution afflictions reduce maximum health, increasing the impact of all damage you do, even after it wears off (as discussed here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/109118-how-good-is-enervating-blows-really/), plus you get a hefty Fortitude debuff, plus reduced healing and a touch less damage output from affected enemies. It just always helps. The Lover Cried Out can be a massive gamechanger in tough fights. In ordinary fights it’s usually not worth casting because you’re better off just bursting down enemies as enemies, but when you’re under pressure, the ability to turn a group of enemies into allies in an instant can turn a desperate situation into an easy win. Duality and Enduring Dance are no-brainers. Alternative picks: The lack of Thunderous Blows here may seem blasphemous, but we’re saving our Might Inspiration slot for Their Companion on the Chanter side. It’s possible you might want to pick this as well for its instant cast time and the fact that it uses Wounds rather than your more precious Phrases resource. Power Level Five Seven Nights She Waited While the White Winds Wept Together they Slew Forth a River of Red Raised Torment Stunning Surge Seven Nights is there for when you need a burst of single-target damage. Get right next to an enemy and position the lines so that three hit them and a cast of this will easily do well over 300 damage. The other lines can also smack other enemies at the same time. For AoE damage, it won’t do as much as two casts of Her Revenge (I compare it to two casts because Her Revenge costs half the Phrases and is much quicker to cast). Together they Slew is a nice +30% buff to your Charmed minions’ auto-attacks (I couldn’t find this information anywhere on the internet so I checked the game data files and it’s a 1.3 modifier). That’s the damage equivalent of +10 Might. Especially helpful if you can get your minions to bully a single enemy, which is where the damage potential of this spell can be seen most clearly. Alternate picks: You can get The Long Pain here as a prerequisite for Instruments of Pain, which is an awesome tool for this build. Basically it means you don’t need as much Stride for safety (though it’s still needed for quickly positioning your cones) or worry about engagement as much, because you’ll be able to use al your melee abilities at a safe distance (and feel like a badass mystical warrior). I played with it for a while but ultimately decided that I prefer the points elsewhere. But there’s definitely nothing wrong with going for Instruments. If you use the Community Patch, you can also use the Dragon Thrashed chant which will passively do good AoE damage over time (DoT). I found that this wasn’t as helpful as The Long Night’s Drink since DoTs work best with other DoTs, while this character does burst damage. Constitution affliction work very well with burst damage. Because this guy casts so many invocations so quickly, he often never uses more than one chant anyway (bit more on that later). Power Level Six Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone Turning Wheel In addition to the extra Might and Penetration, Energized from Their Champion makes you interrupt on every crit you get. That means from weapons, spells and chants. Every offensive action you do now has a CC component – just amazing. Turning Wheel gives you more weapon damage and, in my game, it affects my spells too. I think this might be behaviour from the Community Patch which changed it to affect ranged weapons and perhaps (inadvertently?) caused it to affect ranged spells as well. Worth the pick either way. Alternate picks: Flagellant’s Path would certainly be nice. It fits the mobile nature of the character well and would be yet another escape tool. I just rarely find myself in a situation where I would actually want to use it, so I can’t justify it over another pick. Maybe you can. Biting Winds o’Eld Nary is a great spell and worth considering as an alternative to Seven Nights, especially if you want to go for an Instruments of Pain build that stays far away from enemies. Your single target burst damage potential will suffer, though, and Eld Nary is rarely as good against a group of enemies as two meaty Her Revenge casts. Power Level Seven Called to His Bidding, the Ancient Instruments of Death Heartbeat Drumming The Dichotomous Soul Here’s the thing: I take Called to His Bidding only so that I will have 7 max Phrases. This is necessary because the Deadfire Balance Polishing mod changes Their Champion to an Offensive invocation specifically to encourage its synergy with Skalds. That’s very nice, but it means my max Phrases at this point would only be 4, while a vanilla counterpart would have 6, based on the more expensive Their Companion. If I were playing this build vanilla, I would choose Her Tears Fell Like Rain instead, and consider using Thunderous Blows in addition to or even instead of Their Companion. Dichotomous Soul is a great way to increase your domination of the battlefield. It’s what tipped the scales against the Instruments of Pain variant for me. I haven’t gotten to gear yet, but since you’re wearing robes, their attacks are very fast, giving them decent damage as they absorb enemy attention. And since you’re wearing Footsteps of the Best, they Hobble enemies around them as they run. Alternate picks: Already pretty much covered this talking about Instruments of Pain, which is a viable option. Her Tears is a sad thing to miss: it’s a good upgrade. I decided Dichotomous Souls is kinda always better since it also adds single target damage, which would be the main point of Her Tears. Gear Head – Helm of the White Void So good for so many builds. With several important affliction abilities and extra effects on crits, +10 accuracy to all of them is just unbeatable. Neck – Strand of Favour Armour – Robes of the Weyc The benefits are very obvious. I used Aloth’s Robes or Effigy’s Husk before getting them. Rings – Kuaru’s Prize and Prosperity’s Fortune Chameleon’s Touch is good as well and you should use it before you’re rich enough for PF. It’ll give +1 to both DEX and INT. Feet – Footsteps of the Beast You’re running around a lot. Why not Hobble everyone for free? Especially useful when you’re trying to get away. You can see some of the enemies in the gameplay clip start hobbling as they try to close in. Anti-synergistic with Instruments of Pain – another reason I didn’t take it in the end. Boots of Speed before you get this. Cloak – Ruata’s Walking Cloak Arms – Mortification Gauntlets Belt – Upright Captain’s Belt No need to take Combat Focus and prevents push and pull abilities from ruining your day. Huana Charm Belt otherwise. Pet – Trixie For Stride and a tiny bit of Hit-Crit with weapons. If you don’t love the speed quite as much as I do, Loki is good for extra AoE plus a little speed (definitely would recommend Loki when using Boots of Speed). Weapons: This is a pretty dynamic part of the character as well. I Run Sasha’s Singing Scimitar and Wand of the Weyc in one weapon set (for obvious reasons, I think), and bare fists in another. The fun thing is that after empowering, the generic +3 power level from the wand pushes you to the same power level as a single class character with prestige. And, since Monk fists scale with power level, that means that you temporarily have fists as strong as those of a single class Monk. Those are (special effects aside) the most powerful weapons in the game. Being able to get them this easily in every fight, as a multiclass, even if it’s only temporary, is a feat unique to Cantors. And the wand’s recovery skip compensates for the extra time you spend switching weapons. Pretty great. I also use Shark Soup so that my Fists are always at least at the power level 8 strength. In my game, this power level stacks with the active bonus from the wand (stacking rules for food are inconsistent/bugged/I don’t know in this game so this might be different for you). The Weyc’s Wand is also an amazing weapon in its own right. That raw damage sigil it can summon on crit pulses for good damage every second (!). And you know what that means – it can crit, so it can interrupt every second (!). It’s worth flinging a few shots with this to get the sigil before you go into melee. Sometimes there’s no reason to switch at all. Before getting the wand, I was using Magistrate’s Cudgel for extra accuracy. You could always just go with Sasha’s +Scordeos which, while not as powerful as the fists (comparable damage but slower speed), have nice effects – and there’s something just nice-looking about dual-wielded sabres. Chanting: Nothing complicated about chanting with this guy for me. I made a thread about weird chant mechanics here: [link] but the bottom line for this guy is that he casts a lot, and casting resets your chant progression, so you mostly only see one chant. (Though after you get Robes of the Weyc you can get to see the second one more often.) That chant is The Long Drink’s Night for me, because it’s awesome and gets extra accuracy from the White Void helmet. I put Come, Come, Soft Winds after because it’s free and is offensive, so it interrupts if it crits and does a bit of damage and healing. Weaknesses: The major weakness of this guy is his squishiness. He has plenty of options to avoid melee enemies, but if ranged enemies get a bead on him there’s little you can do except guzzle a potion of invisibility, use Withdraw, or Barring Death’s Door. Unfortunately you can’t run fast enough to dodge bullets and arrows in this game! But this won’t happen too often if you use your tools – most importantly getting aggro on your tank(s) at the beginning of a fight before unstealthing, as I did in that little clip. Conclusion: Again, the Cantor class is awesome for the synergy in both its flavour and its mechanics. I think this was my most consistently fun playthrough to date. Fast-paced, dynamic, and powerful at every stage. I couldn’t not share it on the forums. Hopefully it inspires some other Cantor playthroughs – and I’m sure some of you will do it even better!

Zihaa is the naga in the Watershaper temple, not the Strand of Favor one (that's Sugaan).

Yes, Druid is a fantastic choice! The bonus intellect from Duality of Mortal presence and bonus might from Helwalker both make Druid spells deliciously more effective. For example, Relentless Storm really locks down a fight and damage over time spells become much more deadly. The natural thing to do is spiritshift for melee but you can use fists too. If you want to melee I would pick Shifter even if you never shift because its bonus spells are designed to help melee Druids (and there is no downside if you don't shift). Monk fists scale up every even power level, so as a multiclass it's important to get at least +1 PL bonus while you fight, which you can most easily get from one of several food bonuses or the nature godlike passive. My other favourite class to pair with Monk is Chanter (in fact, I plan to post an in-depth build within the next few days). Similar thing where Monk stat bonuses make spells much more effective. There is also a late-game synergy with using fists. When you get and upgrade the Wand of the Weyc, you can dual-wield it with Sasha's Singing Scimitar and empower an invocation at the beginning of every fight. This gives you +3PL for a moderate duration at the start of every fight, which means that your fists are temporarily as strong as a single class monk with the Prestige talent. So you can just empower and then immediately switch weapons (which isn't so punishing time-wise because the wand removes recovery on empowered abilities). That's the easiest way to get such powerful fists every fight as a multiclass without spending resources and only Monk/Chanters can do it. Druid and Chanter are my favourites but I'd be remiss not to mention Wizards, which are also great with Monk and are more sturdy with their great defensive buffs. Druids or Chanters have to rely on CC, spiritshift, and running away to deal with Helwalker squishiness. You could choose another subclass but the might and even extra wound at combat start are really nice for casters.

You won't do a huge amount of weapon damage with this. Weapon+Shield style is slow and clubs have low base damage. Your weapon damage will definitely be eclipsed by Her Revenge alone. Her Revenge is good and since you're a Fighter who will move in to get surrounded, Seven Nights can deal out big damage. The key to making a guy/gal like this shine would be to leverage their tankiness to invite aggro, get up in enemies' faces, and smash them up with those close range invocations. That, at least, is the synergy that strikes me. I'd get rid of Ancient Memory for Seven Nights and Unbreakable for Her Tears Fell (never much liked on-death effects - if the character is good you shouldn't be using it). @dgray62 is right about Ancient Memory. You won't notice it with your other healing. I disagree with dgray about Ben Fidel being better than Killers/And Their Fear. As a Skald, Ben Fidel costs 50% more resource than Killers. Big deal because Skalds chain invocations quickly. Comparing them 1 to 1, you can cast Killers three times with the resources it takes to cast Ben Fidel twice. With high INT (you'll have with Tactical Barrage and investment) the hard CC from Paralysis lasts a solid time, and debuffs the enemies for both Her Revenge and Seven Nights. The Frighten is very much worth it in my opinion - shutting off enemies' dangerous abilities is great, their power level is lowered, their will, deflection, and resistance to hostile effects are lowered. And you can chain between paralysing them and frightening them. The point of being a Skald is to cast invocations a lot, and casting an invocation resets your chant progression. For this reason, Skalds don't get to benefit from many chants too often. Getting rid of AM, you still have three, which is fine, but you might find yourself barely benefiting from one or two. Also, I don't think Weapon Specialization will do much because, as I said, I don't see you doing much weapon damage. You'll use the weapon to debuff and farm crits for phrases. So, if it were me, I'd take out weapons specialization and/or a chant and put in Their Champion braved the Horde Alone and/or Charge. Energized can be awesome, and I personally like to play Fighters by Charging into the middle of enemies from stealth (your choice to see if you like this - this character might prefer to have enemies start closing in before paralysing them and then dismantling them). Hope this is helpful and not too far from your original vision. Just finishing up a Skald playthrough now myself.

A good Chanter doesn't have to summon. I've been playing a multiclass Skald focused on damage and crowd control and it's excellent. If you specifically want the class focusing on buffs/debuffs with some healing and dps on the side, I think Priest is probably what you're looking for.

The invocations "Thrice was She Wronged", "Seven Nights She Waited", and "So Singt thy Biting Winds o' Eld Mary" (plus their upgrades) all do very good damage. Going single class, upgraded Eld Nary alone will carry many fights. Make sure you invest in Might (most important for getting damage out of all three spells). The best subclass for spell DPS is the Skald. It can cast these damage spells much more often than other subclasses. The best balanced subclass for exploring everything the Chanter is capable of is Troubadour. Make sure you grab Sasha's Singing Scimitar and get the upgrade which restores your empower point every time you empower an invocation. Edit: BTW I wouldn't say that Chanters are more about buffing and debuffing - Chanters are better at summoning than anything. Buff/debuff and DPS are things they can do well but other classes can do just as well or better. No one summons better than a Chanter.

@rebelio I thought I'd make sure you knew about how to get Scordeo's Trophy early. Make sure you pump a character's mechanics as high as possible from early and buy the Burglar's Gloves from the clothing store in Periki's Overlook in Neketaka. Before long you should be able to pick the lock on the chest behind the desk in the gun shop in the Brass Citadel. You don't have to be stealthed to pick a lock - NPCs will only attack if you take an item. Scordeo's Trophy is in that chest. Use one party member to draw the shopkeeper away with Sparkcrackers or the spell Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights and have another character slip in behind to steal the gun. Now you've got arguably the best pistol in the game from very early. (Don't feel bad about stealing from the RDC, they are imperialists.) On the gun, the upgrade that gives more crit damage is the safe choice. Critical hits get 1.5x bonus penetration so you won't need extra pen on a crit to penetrate. However it will give you +30% bonus damage if you overpenetrate (i.e. get a penetration score at least double the pierce armour of your enemy). So the question is whether you always want a bit more crit damage or a lot more when enemy armour is kinda low. Thinking about your build, you may actually want to take penetration upgrade because you're a sharpshooter (extra pen) and you can use The Shield Cracks from your Chanter side to lower enemy armour. With lots of crits from Ranger accuracy, this could be a good strat to guarantee overpenetration on almost every enemy in the game when you crit them, which would be a solid damage increase. (Nothing wrong with picking the no-nonsense more crit damage option though.) You'll also want the Ring of the Marksman and Acina's Tricorn as priorities. Sorry if you knew all this already, just thought I'd explain it all since you say you're new-ish.

Across multiple playthroughs (and even multiple computers) for me Mohora Wraps haven't stacked. It's like we're playing slightly but significantly different games... Don't know for sure that it's consistent for all my playthroughs though.

I just explained that rest bonuses to the same stat, Might, stacked with an inspiration in the case of Shark Soup but not Mohora Wraps. I'm pretty sure none of us understand this.

Man, this is tripping me out. First of all, I was not only fully convinced that food bonuses were considered active and did not stack with other active bonuses, but I distinctly remember checking myself (with Mohora Wraps). I loaded up my game to check and found that the DEX bonus from Konstanten's room, and the MIG bonus from Shark Soup were stacking with actives. I then decided that I needed to check Mohora Wraps, and here's the thing - the Mohora Wrap MIG bonus does NOT stack. In the exact same fight I used Xoti to cast a MIG inspiration on the whole party. Watcher had Shark Soup and Serafen had Mohora Wraps. The inspiration suppressed the bonus from Mohora Wraps but stacked with Shark Soup. What the @$%&? Is it that some rest bonuses always stack and other don't? Is it just Mohora? I have to start my work day now so can't investigate (nor am I excited to - it will be tedious). Can anyone at least replicate what I'm seeing here? Edit: I also distinctly remember Captain's Banquet's action speed bonus not stacking with Frenzy's. Haven't checked that again yet.

Druid spells Plague of Insects and Insect Swarm are also long duration effects which make it impossible for the enemy to have concentration, so you can guarantee effective interrupts. Notably, though, Tekehu doesn't get them. But they are in scrolls. Ranger's Concussive Tranquilizer is the best single-target cleanse in the game considering both effectiveness and cost.

I've been taking Ancient Memory as an auto-pick on Chanters since I started the game. Passive healing for the whole party without spending resources - what's not to like? But recently I was looking to free up space on a Chanter build and decided to take a hard look at how much it was truly helping. I was kind of surprised. At 30+ Might at level 20 it really felt like the healing was a trickle. When everyone has a few hundred health, a bit over 2 hp/s really isn't too much. It would take much longer than most fights are to fill an average health bar just once. That made me think: there's a pretty good chance that having this has never been the difference between a party member dying or not - which is to say there's a good chance it's been entirely useless (no point in healing if it doesn't prevent a KO). Even if not entirely useless, maybe it's only saved a character once or twice in a playthrough - and is that worth the ability point and opportunity cost of queuing it over another chant? This isn't to say I think it is bad, just that it might be more niche than I thought. It could could be valuable for a party built for attrition. But if you're running a party that's only likely to die from being burst down, is this likely to help at all? Your other healer(s) might by carrying all the weight. Thoughts? Do you folks treat it as a mainstay or a meh-stay? Is it on every Chanter, or only when you think your team composition calls for it? Could it be that it is strong early game, but falls off later when health pools are deeper and incoming damage is higher?

Eld Nary, sure, but single targets is where Her Tears shines. By hitting a single enemy with three lines you can easily get >300 burst damage per cast, and a Skald can cast it pretty frequently. Not world-beating but good damage. I agree with everything else you say. Crits are icing.

I was thinking about a build like this recently. Parting Sorrow (and nasty disengagement attacks) will also trigger a lot from terrified enemies due to Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage, right? Did you use Tuotilo's Palm to go in on the tankiness?

As @Exanos said, there are ways to stay alive as a squishy character. The big difference between tanky and squishy is, in my opinion, the playstyle possibilities they unlock. Fighters can almost always charge right into a group of enemies and survive while pelting out damage toe-to-toe. Rogues and other squishies need to rely on other characters taking up attention, or on crowd control abilities. Basically, you have to prevent enemies from focusing on them for the most part. So the question isn't really how long you want the character to stay alive but how you want to play them. Generally, you will be able to get more damage output out of a squishy character, but you will be forced to play them less aggressively than a sturdier character (and aggressive playing is fun, I think). So it's up to you what to prioritize.

It's ok and maybe I should try it out again, but I stopped using it in favour of Long Night's Drink. Constitution afflictions are very good (see the thread below) and LND gets +10 accuracy from Helm of the White Void. I haven't actually checked but I'm pretty sure that Dragon Thrashed will only potentially interrupt on its first application - like the other offensive chants it's an effect with a duration so only its first application has an attack roll that it can crit with. With Helwalker Might and all it was doing ~18 damage per tick if both damage types penetrate, which is solid so far as DoTs go, but this character does a lot of burst damage, so I valued the extra accurate CON affliction more (if you blow up an enemy with a nuke, reduced max health is more likely to help than a DoT) as well as the mod-buffed Fox from Farmer, which has a hefty debuff to Reflex for Her Revenge and Seven Nights as well as helping with disengagement for survivability. Forgot to link the thread:

You have a lot of faith in the devs' wisdom haha. I think they did a good job too but there are definitely decisions I disagree with. That said, I think the Troubadour idea I mentioned could be pretty cool. May roll a SC Troub to play around with this kind of thing now that I know how much there is to chanting. Problem with Her Courage is that it seems that if it's to be any good you have to work to make it good. Maybe that's ok but it's a trap for anyone not going all-in with it.

If an enemy does low dmg and isn't fast then it's not a problem in the first place I imagine their reasoning was comparing it to healing. With decent might/healing bonuses, AM can heal about 2hp/s, so in a 6s period you can expect about 12hp from it. It doesn't benefit from Brisk Recitation or early phrase switching, and Her Courage does. So I imagine the idea was to give it roughly a equivalent hp bonus to AM with the added possibility of reapplying it quickly for a greater benefit. Of course, the weakness of it is that it doesn't...heal. Healing replenishes health you lost earlier, but Her Courage only has any benefit whatsover when you take damage while it is active. Ideally I guess you will use it with AM for extra psuedo-healing (your "real" health continues to get healed while Her Courage protects it). Maybe you could do fun Troubadour stuff like applying AM then switching to Her Courage and activate Brisk R to have a refreshing hp shield for the duration of your especially long AM duration. That could be pretty good... Anyway, not very impressed with Her Courage as a level V phrase. At least it's better than vanilla Dragon Thrashed...

Often when games have damage shield abilities, the shield is something that the enemy has to break before they start doing damage to you, even if they break it with much more damage than it has hit points. Other times, the shield is just added as a hit point buffer, so if an attack does more damage than the shield adds hit points, the difference goes through. Unfortunately, I just tested it and found that Her Courage works the second way. A shame, but I suppose it could get ridiculous if it were the first type.

With my current Cantor (one of my favourite builds ever so far) I used to have Ancient Memory in first place because I like the security of having healing constantly active, but recently I've switched to Long Night's Drink first (taken to that over modded Dragon Thrashed) because after using Their Companion, phrase crits interrupt, so after I cast an invocation and the song resets, there's a chance for a big AoE interrupt and the debuff is refreshed (you also get accuracy for Long Night from Helm of the White Void and Enduring Dance). This character focuses on the cheap invocations Her Revenge and At the Sound - which means lots of casts, lots of interrupts, lots of a single phrase. If you favour high-level invocations like Eld Nary, I would think that you could expect to be waiting enough to see your second phrase more often, earlier in the fight, especially if not using Sasha's. I don't even think I'm going to pick Eld Nary on this guy (never thought I'd say that when I started the playthrough). My chants are laid out so that I can switch chants to get AM, or FF quickly if I need them. I don't even bother slotting a third phrase. @thelee I hadn't considered how Her Courage could be really strong with the constant resetting. Do you know offhand if it will block hits and therefore preserve Enduring Dance? Cuz that would be wild! I assume Her Courage is a damage gate that will block a single instance of damage of any magnitude, instead of just reducing it by ten... Tested it and unfortunately it's just an bit of extra hp

After a lot of time with this game I’ve only just realised some fundamental, critical mechanics with Chanters. The game makes no effort to explain them to you, so I expect many people are as clueless as I have been all this time. This is something I’ve only just discovered so I expect I will have a lot to learn from others in this thread who are more familiar with this. This is what I’ve found playing a Skald/Helwalker with the chants Ancient Memory (hereafter AM), The Fox from the Farmer (FF), and The Dragon Thrashed (DT). I’m using the Deadfire Polishing mod and Community Patch (they buff the latter two) Let me itemise the key points to make this more digestible: 1) For at least the chants listed above, what happens is that at the beginning of the phrase, an effect is applied to allies (for AM) or enemies (for the others). The duration of these effects is your 6s +3s linger, and the linger only is affected by INT. AM will always have this same duration, but chants which perform an attack roll like FF and DT have their duration modified by whether they graze, hit, or crit. 2) Once the effect is applied, nothing the chanter does affects it (with the exception of re-applying it). This means that you can start combat, begin chanting AM, then immediately switch chants to FF and, once FF hits (or grazes, or crits), both AM and FF will apply their full effects for their full durations. So, you can have two (or more) full-fledged phrases active within about a second of each other. The only penalty for this is that you only accumulate phrases (the resource used for invocations) when your chanting of a phrase naturally elapses – so switching your chants over and over again will mean that you never accumulate phrases. That aside, you can just cycle through four chants whenever you want and enjoy the benefits of all of them one after the other. Note, though, that there is an unchangeable cooldown on chant switching whenever you start a new chant. I now realise that this exists so that you can’t have the full effects of four phrases going instantly – it will at least take you a few seconds to cycle through them (but you can have four active at once – easily). 3) Casting an invocation does not only pause your chant progression, it resets it. Let’s say your chant progression is AM->FF->DT. You start combat and begin to chant AM: the effect is applied to you and your team for, let’s say, a 10s duration. If you cast an invocation three seconds into the fight, your chant progression will pause for a second, and then it will completely reset. So, you will start chanting AM again from the beginning, resetting its duration to every ally in range. This means that if you cast invocations quickly one after the other within six seconds of each other (easy for Skald) you will never benefit from more than a single phrase. It also means that if you cast an invocation when you are chanting your second phrase (FF in the progression above), you will go back to chanting your first phrase and not get a chance to chant your third unless you refrain from casting or switching chants for a further 12s! So in our example progression, you will never see DT get applied once you are casting invocations every 12s (I started noticing this weird stuff when I realised that my Skald’s third chant never seemed to get applied unless I sat around waiting for it). This is especially a problem for Skalds because they have powerful invocations that cost only 2 phrases. Other chanters usually need to get 3 phrases to cast their cheapest invocations and so should theoretically cycle through 3 chants when waiting for them. Brilliant, Sasha's Singing Scimitar, and the Weyc's Robes all have obvious implications here as well. Point (2) makes chanting much more dynamic than I originally thought. You can basically chose what chant you want to apply at any instant with the sole penalty of slowing down your accumulation of phrases. Point (3) can be incredibly frustrating, but it can also be used to your advantage if you play smart and use point (2) to your advantage. If your chanter can cast invocations quickly, what you should do is wait until you begin chanting at least the second phrase in your list. After you cast, your chant will restart from the first phrase. The restarting process takes less than 6s, so if there are only two phrases in your chant, you will actually have saved time by resetting the chant. Note that casting an invocation will always slow down your accumulation of more phrases but it will slow it down more the longer you wait to cast after you BEGIN to chant a phrase. For example, if you let a phrase go on for 4s and then cast, those 4s will be lost on the reset (they didn’t help you accumulate another resource-phrase). Ideally, you should always cast an invocation at the very instant that you begin to chant a phrase. Maybe I’m late to the party but I had no idea chanting worked this way. It’s partly exciting because chanting is much more dynamic than I thought before, but it’s also quite finnicky and odd.

Yes what I get from this is that the bug doesn't really affect normal playing (in fact I know this because I have played with the Balance Polishing mod and haven't felt like I had a weak boar). And it actually seems kind of awkward to exploit it in a way that would be very impactful. A good shifter build will kill single targets long before the long duration matters and the time it takes to spread the DoTs around would simply never be worth it (it'll always be better to kill what's in front of you than running around spreading bleeds one by one) . Could be that Shifter Boar was better against bosses than I realised because Druid vs Boss is always a ridiculous number of damage ticks from spells and how strong the boar's contribution is was disguised. As you say, it'll be good to have things work consistently among the subclasses but this isn't a big deal imo.

As someone who's also played a hell of a lot of vanilla Shifter, I've also not noticed Boar DoT as anything crazy. Are we quite sure that this is as OP in practice as it is apparently is theoretically? Because I've not registered it with hundreds of hours on Shifter (I could just be dense).

If we're talking about modding, I just did a SC Shifter run with the Deadfire Balance Polishing mod and I think @Elric Galad it makes them an awesome choice. Making Frenzy proc on Crit and buffing entropy gave enough goodies (along with high level spells) to make it very competitive with some of the best multiclasses. I still think Helwalker/Shifter is stronger but SC is no slouch with that mod.