Chanters are op, priests, not so

[hollerer]

No question to it. I'm playing on path of damned and my team consists of 2 ghost heart rangers, 2 chanters and a priest. I'm level 5 and already defeated 3xred skull enemies like some weird wizard with book of storms, some pirate dude with some crazy loot and a steel preacher. Now my team has superb tier weapons and armor already. Nothing to it, I like challenge but I think chanter summons are op. It's because you can do them when in stealth mode and you can do them indefinitely. My team's weakest link is the priest. His spells are finite per battle and often the offensive spells miss because it's always accuracy vs whatever roll. Fights last sometimes very long time, a lot of damage gets dealt back and forth but in the end, priest spells are finite but chanters can just keep on casting and healing. They even get a revive ability.

 

So what are priests needed for?

[Pus-in-Boots]

Dialogue options? But seriously, some of their spells are quite useful if limited.

[baldurs_gate_2]

No question to it. I'm playing on path of damned and my team consists of 2 ghost heart rangers, 2 chanters and a priest. I'm level 5 and already defeated 3xred skull enemies like some weird wizard with book of storms, some pirate dude with some crazy loot and a steel preacher. Now my team has superb tier weapons and armor already. Nothing to it, I like challenge but I think chanter summons are op. It's because you can do them when in stealth mode and you can do them indefinitely. My team's weakest link is the priest. His spells are finite per battle and often the offensive spells miss because it's always accuracy vs whatever roll. Fights last sometimes very long time, a lot of damage gets dealt back and forth but in the end, priest spells are finite but chanters can just keep on casting and healing. They even get a revive ability.

 

So what are priests needed for?

Buffing

[hollerer]

My priest may cast few buffs in the beginning of the battle but after that he's doing pretty much nothing but shooting his crossbow. So I ditched him and took third chanter.

[baldurs_gate_2]

My priest may cast few buffs in the beginning of the battle but after that he's doing pretty much nothing but shooting his crossbow. So I ditched him and took third chanter.

Most usefull is Barrings Death Door + Salvation of Time. If you have an Shadowdancer / Marauder / Holy Slayer, you can cast it on them, so they can not die and deal insane damage. Otherwise with wizard and abuse greater maelstrom scrolls.

Edited December 25, 2018 by baldurs_gate_2

[eternalsins]

For priest i really like barring death's door and salvation of time. If you have some way to get the brilliant inspiration (for example tactician or ancestors memory) You can make your whole party literaly immortal and make all your buffs last forever. Just make sure to interrupt anyone trying to cast arcane dampener.

 

Even without brilliant cheese you can have something like a really squishy assassin/skaen priest that just does crazy damage while refusing to die.

 

There are also some dps caster builds with magran priests going all in on fire and some melee oriented ones that utilize all the deflection gained from wael.

[Boeroer]

Devotions of the Faithful. 'Nuff said...

[Delterius]

So I ditched him and took third chanter.

 

That's what Priests are for, to be honest.

[Flucas]

Devotions of the Faithful. 'Nuff said...

Another dps does a lot more.

 

Really im all for ditching priests.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Flucas

[Boeroer]

So one more char does more than a single spell? Hm... What a ****ty character that must be...

 

Apart from that: on PotD, Devotions for the Faithful, gained early by a single class priest, makes difficult encounters a lot easier. Not only does it give +10 stackable ACC and +4 MIG (+8 Fortitude) to your party but also -10 ACC and -4 MIG (-8 Fortitude) to your enemies. People like to overlook that.

 

And that's only one spell. In addition to that Priests can also heal, support in may different ways and be pretty good nukers, too - without the need to collect phrases first. So they can be used more "on point".

 

I mean Chanters are nice and all - but they can't do the same amount of on-demand support a priest can do. I never regret taking a priest. Actually I never regretted taking any class if I plan for its use correctly in the first place.

 

And even if I wanted to substitute a Priest with another class I wouldn't take yet another Chanter. I'd take a Druid.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Boeroer

[Climhazzard]

Xoti as a contemplative can be quite useful.  That's because with Enlightened agony permanently active she's your most status resistant character on the team, which allows her to resist most status and use suppress affliction to remove them from your team. With Tuotilo's palm upgraded she'll be tanky and be able to dish out her share of damage too, though obviously not as much as a dps character. After that the healing is useful though not as good as a Herald or Druid.  Withdraw is a nice spell, though it lasts a little to long imo.  After about tier 3 onwards you'll have better support spells, especially Devotions for the faithful.

 

Tier 1 and 2 spells are definitely the boring part of being a priest.  They ought to have added some lower level fire spells so you could do a fire priest build right from the start.  Oh well, I'll never main a priest because I think they're boring, but it's nice to have one along for their unique support.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Climhazzard

[masterty66]

Devotions of the Faithful. 'Nuff said...

 

Also Barring Deaths door, Resurrection, etc. Suppress Affliction. Holy Radiance is still very nice as well as an oh **** button.

[guildwriter]

Personally I can't stand playing with Chanters as there's too much waiting involved.  I have the same problem with auto attacking characters.  If I'm not making decisions constantly I get bored fast.  Priest or Druid as a result is much more interesting for me as everything is on demand and I control the flow.

 

Also worth noting is that Dismissal can be useful for clearing out packs of vessels quickly.  Hand of Weal and Woe is a really potent heal as well.  

[Flucas]

So one more char does more than a single spell? Hm... What a ****ty character that must be...

 

Apart from that: on PotD, Devotions for the Faithful, gained early by a single class priest, makes difficult encounters a lot easier. Not only does it give +10 stackable ACC and +4 MIG (+8 Fortitude) to your party but also -10 ACC and -4 MIG (-8 Fortitude) to your enemies. People like to overlook that.

 

And that's only one spell. In addition to that Priests can also heal, support in may different ways and be pretty good nukers, too - without the need to collect phrases first. So they can be used more "on point".

 

I mean Chanters are nice and all - but they can't do the same amount of on-demand support a priest can do. I never regret taking a priest. Actually I never regretted taking any class if I plan for its use correctly in the first place.

 

And even if I wanted to substitute a Priest with another class I wouldn't take yet another Chanter. I'd take a Druid.

 

It doesnt stack with other flat +acc bonuses though. And its limited per encounter. And because of cast time and moving of allies and enemies its a hassle to use efficiently.

 

 

 

Devotions of the Faithful. 'Nuff said...

 

Also Barring Deaths door, Resurrection, etc. Suppress Affliction. Holy Radiance is still very nice as well as an oh **** button.

 

 

As long as i have a dedicated healer i dont need bdd, nor resurecction. These things are also limited, where a chanter/pala is not, nor pollen patch from a lifegiver.

 

Everything a priest does - others can do better.

 

I personally interpret "better" as easier as well, priest is a horrible class to use AI on. It's potency is larger if u micromanage it.

[Verde]

It's a shame how Priests have fallen from being top tier in PoE1 to mediocre in PoE2.

[Ensign]

I feel like priest has enough oomph in it's best spells to be a strong party member, but its power is narrow enough that you have to build your party around the priest to make it shine. You can't just drop one into any party and have it contribute - you need the squishy melee dps to BDD, the external buffs to SoT; you want to avoid other accuracy buffs to maximize DotF.

 

Most other classes have multiple builds and roles you can build to fit into a comp, but priest really has zero flexibility if you want it to pull its weight.

 

Wael and Skaen are exceptions in that their cross class skills let them act like illusionists and rogues enough to fit into their respective multiclass roles. If you are mostly limited to core priest skills there is only so much you can do.

[uuuhhii]

only thing priest missing are penetration

chanter have 3 pen spell and 1 pen chant

cipher give 8 pen to one team member

druid and wizard can lower enemy ar which was less reliable

and priest have one spell give one team member 2 pen

[guildwriter]

Priest of Woedica is good enough that I'd take it single class without hesitation.  Those debuffs are good enough to swing entire fights. 

 

Priest of Magran can nuke quite effectively.  People really underestimate Pillar of Holy Fire and Shining Beacon.  Pillar of Holy Fire for example does Delayed Blast Fireball levels of base damage at a tier where even MC characters can get two casts on it.  And it doesn't have the weird aiming issues that DBF has either.  Can easily toss on all the +Fire PL gear, +Fire PL pet, etc.

 

I think people overfocus on the broken value combos and completely lose sight of everything else.

[hollerer]

If you play the game vanilla style and just follow the plot, I don't think there's gonna be any hard fights no matter what builds you use. But I went straight after the high level three red skull enemies. So you can tell that a priest can do this and that and has high damage if you choose some spells but for example the enemy Steel Preacher has like 500 hp and my characters do like 2 - 5 damage with the early game weapons, if they even hit. And steel preacher does 20 - 50 dmg blows, not to mention it has 5 followers around him aswell. The fight lasted I think few hours. How did I do it? I put 2 chanters in the opposite sides of the map, sending in summons. They slowly killed the followers and then I killed the steel preacher by spamming it with skeletons and whacking it to death with penetrating arquebus modal ability and a mace modal ability. All my priest did was shoot a crossbow for interrupts because he was out of spells so early.

 

Then, I killed a wizard who had book of storms. How? She killed or seriously injured most of her own skeletons with her spells that did insane damage. She was targetting my summons, which I had called in sneak mode.

 

I'm sure priest can be interesting and fun, but summon chanter is an abuse machine.

Edited December 26, 2018 by hollerer

[Flucas]

If you play the game vanilla style and just follow the plot, I don't think there's gonna be any hard fights no matter what builds you use. But I went straight after the high level three red skull enemies. So you can tell that a priest can do this and that and has high damage if you choose some spells but for example the enemy Steel Preacher has like 500 hp and my characters do like 2 - 5 damage with the early game weapons, if they even hit. And steel preacher does 20 - 50 dmg blows, not to mention it has 5 followers around him aswell. The fight lasted I think few hours. How did I do it? I put 2 chanters in the opposite sides of the map, sending in summons. They slowly killed the followers and then I killed the steel preacher by spamming it with skeletons and whacking it to death with penetrating arquebus modal ability and a mace modal ability. All my priest did was shoot a crossbow for interrupts because he was out of spells so early.

 

Then, I killed a wizard who had book of storms. How? She killed or seriously injured most of her own skeletons with her spells that did insane damage. She was targetting my summons, which I had called in sneak mode.

 

I'm sure priest can be interesting and fun, but summon chanter is an abuse machine.

Going right for red skulls only tests a class' first few skills. Some shine early, some shine late. It doesn't tell you anything about a class' potential later on.

[Gregorovich]

Ascendent+Priest=Unlimited resource pool, really

[Nights86]

I dont think it's a priest problem but a wizard/priest/druid compared to chanter/cipher, on POTD, vs bosses. The number of spells the regular casters have for each level is simply pathetic. Having only 2-3 per fight is a joke against bosses, compared to the classes that have an infinite amount. The spells are not better by enough of a margin to justify their scarcity.

[knownastherat]

I dont think it's a priest problem but a wizard/priest/druid compared to chanter/cipher, on POTD, vs bosses. The number of spells the regular casters have for each level is simply pathetic. Having only 2-3 per fight is a joke against bosses, compared to the classes that have an infinite amount. The spells are not better by enough of a margin to justify their scarcity.

 

My bold.

 

Wizard, the strongest class.

 

Don't mind me and carry on.

[Boeroer]

Actually you have 2-3 per Power Level per encounter. So a single class Priest has 18 spell uses at PL 9 for every encounter at least. And then you can use Empower to refresh half of it. If you think that's not enough your resource management and efficiency must be horrible. Solo is another story of course.

 

The advantage is that all your abilities can be used when you want. They are all at your disposal right away. The disadvantage is that the resources are finite.

 

Using a cheesy tactic to show the superiority of a class is questionable. With the same reasoning one could argue that the rogue is a better class than the monk because Gouging Strike kills every boss with 2 Guile.

Edited December 26, 2018 by Boeroer

[Marigoldran]

It doesn't kill enemies with regen.  I learned that the hard way with "brand enemy" in SSS.