Has anyone tried a Harbinger ?

[Whitewolfsp]

Skald/Assasin , i dont have a clue how it works , so anyone tried ? It's fun ? It's Sux , etc ...

[Noctaem]

No but because of the crit fishing nature of the Skald I would built it as a dual wielding blunderbuss build for sure.  all out offense and get as much crit chance, damage, acc, penetration, etc as possible.  I have played with a blunderbuss assassin before and a full attack can usually do around 100-125 with mid-late game gear.  It's fun to see the numbers cloud the screen hehe.  Make sure you use Blunderbuss' that have the multishot ability, the more bounces the better.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Noctaem

[Ganrich]

I've been playing it almost solely.  However, take this as somewhat a subjective assessment. 

 

Assassin is the hardest Rogue subclass to make work with Chanter.  You have to take all buffing Phrases.  No, Soft winds of death.  No Blunt the Edge.  Etc.  All the debuff phrases will pull you from stealth.

 

If you are going to try it with Assassin I would recommend Troubadour over Skald as well.   Since Skald benefits from dual wielding to maximize chance to crit, and they benefit from being in constant combat.  Backstab only works with the first weapon strike so you don't want to Dual Wield, but instead use 2 handed weapons or maybe one handed style  Where the Assassin benefits from stealthing and attacking from stealth.  Troubadour would let you do that, has Brisk Recitation to build phrases quickly, and if you turn BR off you can (with 20 intellect) have 2 phrases buffing you at all times. 

 

If you are dead set on Skald then I would look at Non-subclass Rogue or maybe Street Fighter.  They can be more in the thick of it getting crits. 

[Lokithecat]

Backstab only applies to first pellet in a multishot, anyone try seeing if the area damage all benefits from it?

 

As for limiting your Chants to buffs only, you could have 2 sets of chants, but that is kinda intensive both in skill usage, and always swapping around.  Late game though, there are enough 'good' ones that you'd be fine with buffing only... although if Heal pulled you out maybe not.

[Ganrich]

Backstab only applies to first pellet in a multishot, anyone try seeing if the area damage all benefits from it?

 

As for limiting your Chants to buffs only, you could have 2 sets of chants, but that is kinda intensive both in skill usage, and always swapping around.  Late game though, there are enough 'good' ones that you'd be fine with buffing only... although if Heal pulled you out maybe not.

 

Yeah, you can definitely set up a buff set of Chants and a Debuff.  Generally, you only have about 4-5 by end game, and it definitely makes it weird and micro intensive.  Also, the Assassin always wants to restealth, and attack.  There is a Cooldown of sorts when changing Chants, and it may be too long to keep from tripping up when trying to restealth.  I didn't give my attempt enough time to figure out if it is possible or if the cons outweigh the Pros.  It would be far easier to just go all buff chants with an Assassin, and my issue with that is the lack of The Long Night's Drink.  Which is the ONLY chant to give an Affliction.  For Rogue multiclassing it is a choice phrase.  100% uptime on sneak attack, and combined with Persistant Distraction you have 2 Afflictions for Deathblows. 

 

I couldn't get the AoE to apply when I tried, but I may have had my Dex too low and was coming out of stealth before the ability fired.  I was trying it with White Worms, but it has a 4.5 (?) second cast time.  Thrice was She Wronged would only apply 1 of the 3 bolts, and it has .5 second cast time.  As you said it is the first hit in a multishot that works with Assassinate. 

 

I just think Assassin/Chanter is a bit too awkward to get right, but if someone tried it and finds out what works and what doesn't then I will be perfectly willing to give it a go down the road. 

 

As I said earlier, Street FIghter and Vanilla Rogue are really good with Chanter.  As long as you are playing it more like a offtank/mDPS.  mDPS would pretty much just waste the ranged/casters in the backline before committing to the middle of the battle. It gives you something to do while you are building chants, some phrases work nearly perfectly with Rogues, and some of the Invocations have long Afflicitons (EG White Worms upgrade is 30s of Sicken).   However, The Long Night's Drink does what that SIcken does better.  The SIcken only gets -25% healing while The Long Night gets -50% healing and a -2 Might debuff to boot. 

 

The Long Nights Drink + The SIlver Knight's Shield + Persistent Distraction + Weapon and Shield + Spear Modal = -5 Con, -50% healing, -2 might, -5 Perception, Flanked (-10 Deflection) for the enemies, and +10 Deflection, +4 Engagement for you.  Street Fighter/Troubadour with 20 Intellect with Brisk Recitation off so both The Long Night and the Silver Knight's Shield are up 100% of the time.  You are a walking Affliction machine, and if they bloody and/or flank you?  It is good night.  You may be a sword and shield guy, but you start swinging super fast and turn the field into your own personal gib-athon.  And Berath forbid if they break engagement.  Add it some choice gear, and you can sit in the Bloodied sweet spot fairly safely even on PotD.  The only issue is it takes level 10-11 for the build to really come online.  It is only OK at best early on. 

[Mercbeast]

My MC is a Skald/Streetfighter. It's an absolute monster.

 

On easy fights, it gets stuck with a +20% attack speed debuff, but on any difficult fights (My game is pretty heavily modified to make things hard), the -50% recovery speed buff turns it into an absolute freight train.

 

A lot of builds are "win more" builds. What I mean is, they contribute to winning the fight more heavily. This build just gets stronger, the harder the fight is. 

 

Stat wise, I left might at 10, lowered resolve a bit (I want the AI to prioritize this character), pumped perception and dex, and put my left overs into int and con. Equipment wise, I prioritize adding tank to this character, because you want it to be sub 50% hp as much as possible. The more hurt it gets, the stronger it gets. So a big HP pool, less damage taken due to HP loss, stuff like that is great. It's easily out DPSing maia and maia is a DPS monster. This is without dump stats btw. I slightly lowered resolve, I didn't dump it. The stats are not min/maxed, because I don't min/max stats

 

The mods I am using are, a couple of tweaks, about 35% less XP from quests etc, all levelups give only +1 to accuracy/defense (slightly nerfs higher level fights, but massively increases the strength of lower level enemies) POTD enemies have 2x hp, and a level scaling mod that allows enemies when applicable to gain up to 15 levels.

Edited May 21, 2018 by Mercbeast

[Whitewolfsp]

Thanks for all the imput guys , looks like streetfighter is a good option.

[Ascaloth]

I'm currently running a Trickster/Skald. This Watcher has fairly good Deflection with Mirrored Images and the Dagger modal, his reduced crit damage isn't much of an issue since the point of crit-farming is for the Skald phrases anyway, and if you build him right, he can have access to all six types of Afflictions from both the Guile and Phrases resource pools. This gives him the tools to avoid the Affliction Immunities and exploit the Weaknesses of any enemy he comes across; he basically makes his party's lives easier by making the enemy forces' a lot harder.

 

Now all I got to do is to actually finish my first playthrough with this Trickster/Skald Watcher, then I'm clear to post a Class Build here. 

[Mercbeast]

I'm currently running a Trickster/Skald. This Watcher has fairly good Deflection with Mirrored Images and the Dagger modal, his reduced crit damage isn't much of an issue since the point of crit-farming is for the Skald phrases anyway, and if you build him right, he can have access to all six types of Afflictions from both the Guile and Phrases resource pools. This gives him the tools to avoid the Affliction Immunities and exploit the Weaknesses of any enemy he comes across; he basically makes his party's lives easier by making the enemy forces' a lot harder.

 

Now all I got to do is to actually finish my first playthrough with this Trickster/Skald Watcher, then I'm clear to post a Class Build here. 

 

I don't believe the dagger modal will actually stack with mirror images. It will just take the higher of the two, which is the images, until the images drop, then the dagger kicks in. I think.