Chanter - Dragon Thrashed, Dragon Wailed Build?

[Squilla]

One of my favorite characters from POE 1 was my Aumau chanter who turned into an eventual wrecking ball with Dragon Thrashed, Dragon Wailed (pretty sure I mirrored it off a build on this forum by Boeroer).

 

I've been trying to re-create it in Deadfire and it just seems that it was changed too much to be as effective.

 

Is there a way to make something like that work for the Chanter?  Like a damaging chant that you can build and scale around? It doesn't have to be Dragon Thrashed, but basically a really tanky chanter that slowly wears down foes with infinite chants and has all the utility of invocations?

 

Thanks!

[Boeroer]

With a Helwalker/Troubadour you can build a Dragon Thrashed guy. Not as tanky though because Helwalker makes it a bit squishy. But if you build him tanky with high AR and good defenses it's manageable.

 

With Helwalker's high MIG and INT bonuses you can achieve decent Dragon-Thrashed damage I guess. You could put in some Soft Winds of Death to deal some raw dmasge while healing which would counter the Helwalker squishyness.

 

Unfortunately Dragon Thrashed is not half as good in Deadfire as it was in PoE. But with the +10 INT from the Monk you can catch a lot of enemies.

[Elric Galad]

The damages don't look that bad. 8 per 3s tick is okay, given you can have several active at the same time.

 

Maybe it is underrated simply because it was so incredibly good in PoE1 and is much weaker now.

 

Many OP tools from PoE1 have been nerfed (sacred immolation, carnage, twinned arrows), thus I am not sure that Dragon Trashed is comparatively that bad.

 

Besides, in PoE1, it was often close to 90% of what a chanter did. Now a chanter can perform much more (especially if multiclassed) so Dragon Trashed don't have to be that good to be enough.

[Raven Darkholme]

I played a dragon slashed chanter in both deadfire and poe 1 and the only thing good about it in deadfire is the fact that brisk recitation doesn't remove the linger from enemies, so you can stack similar to poe 1.

The base damage is so bad and the fact you need pen for it makes it so much worse it can not be remotely compared.

Best thing you can do is go single class chanter so you have upgraded Eld Nary which will be the thing actually carrying your build but it's kinda nice to also do damage while building phrases.

[Ensign]

The damages don't look that bad. 8 per 3s tick is okay, given you can have several active at the same time.

It chooses between the two procs randomly, and only deals 4 damage per 3s tick. It's pretty aggressively bad.

[Elric Galad]

Oh...

 

Never trust the wiki...

Or the description for the matter ^^

 

However, 4 per tick that you can stack...

With ~30Int the chant would last ~12s. 12s means 5 ticks of 4 (due to 0s tick) means 20. So it's 20AoE damages triggered every 6s (not counting Mig, and AR...).

 

I don't say it's enough to carry a build by itself, but it should add up with anything the chanter does in the meantime.

 

I think it looks like a balanced chant (which is indeed a pale shadow of its former glory).

Edited January 11, 2019 by Elric Galad

[Squilla]

So what can be done to increase the penetration of the Dragon Thrashed attacks, or is it just based on PL similar to spells?

 

And I'm guessing single class Chanter for a higher power level / progression would be the only way to make this worthwhile? Or would a multi-class bring some synergies to Dragon Thrashed?

 

I love having attrition battles and building my party that way for higher difficulty with the unlimited resource classes.

[Boeroer]

Didn't we say that Helwalker/Troubadour would be best due to +10 MIG and INT? Also Thunderous Blows will give you +2 PEN with Dragon Thrashed.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Boeroer

[Frak]

So what can be done to increase the penetration of the Dragon Thrashed attacks, or is it just based on PL similar to spells?

 

And I'm guessing single class Chanter for a higher power level / progression would be the only way to make this worthwhile? Or would a multi-class bring some synergies to Dragon Thrashed?

 

I love having attrition battles and building my party that way for higher difficulty with the unlimited resource classes.

 

Well, as one of the chanterphiles on the board, you could try bellower.

 

He has increased accuracy on invocations, higher pen, duration and damage.

 

Bellower is in flux though, as one of the abilites does nothing and I'm expecting a bugpatch to correct this. But as a tanky defensive debuffing sword'n'boarder he does pretty well.

 

I did a bit of combat simulation between skald and bellower with offensive invocations, and the results were pretty unsurprising.

Bellower is not exactly bursty - no chanter is - but his invocations can be pretty decisive.

Onehanded skald is more sustained in damage due to more invocations, but also more misses and lower damage pr invocation.

Skald does good weapon damage, whereas bellower will miss more with his weapon. Bellower is more sturdy though, and fights more prolonged. In some cases the bellower fights were over pretty quicly due to good attack rolls with invocations.

Skald had a pretty sustained accumulated damage curve, whereas bellowers accumulated damage was like watching a staircase from the side.

 

Edit: Let's not talk about troubadour. It's a vailian concept, and I'm not saying that vailians are immoral, but gamefiles show that a discarded quest had you decide what you would do with Pallegina, as you discovered she was the oblivious carrier of avian flu, meant to eradicate the huana. Those valian wizards are devious.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Frak

[Elric Galad]

Bellowers have reduced chant AoE and a bonus to invocation. I can't see any synergy with Dragon Trashed chant.

 

A single class Skald can start battle with 2 upgraded eld Nary, 4 with sasha's and an empowed point. ~50 hits of jumping interrupting tornadoes sound pretty offensive for me.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Elric Galad

[baldurs_gate_2]

Easy solution: Make the damage raw and you don't need watch for penetration anymore. That would make a tanky DT chanter mc possible and it would acutally deal good damage.

[Squilla]

Didn't we say that Helwalker/Troubadour would be best due to +10 MIG and INT? Also Thunderous Blows will give you +2 PEN with Dragon Thrashed.

 

Rookie mistake - I goofed on the quote, meant to have that as a response to the Elric / Raven / Ensign train of thought.  I didn't see you reference thunderous blows in your original response, but that's a great and cheap way to increase penetration that I can keep up constantly.

[Raven Darkholme]

Even with +2 Pen Dragon thrased pen is bad, sorry to speak against your suggestion Boroer, but the base pen of the chant is so bad you can't pen against enemies WEAK to Fire, like BOW Dragon (at least on upscaled PoTD, if you're high enough level the dragon gets upscaled it has a 10 AR vs Fire)

With a multiclassed chanter you will be able to pen against the handful enemies weak to fire, but will be useless against everyone else, while with a singleclass chanter you'll have Eld Nary which is only useless against frost immune enemies but outside of BOW there is not a lot of those.

(Even in BOW it's only the dracolich and the ice blights, maybe some polar bears)

The amount of enemies a single class chanter is strong against is much higher and anyway the amount of damage upgraded Eld nary does with empower by Sashas is not even close to comparable to the meagre damage of dragon slashed even with pen.

Oh btw base pen of dragon chant is 7! and at PL7 (max for multiclass) it's 8.5, so +2 from Tenacious will make you JUST pen a creature weak to fire.

edit: also just remembered the chanter gets an invocation for +2 pen as well, it doesn't stack with thunderous blows.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Raven Darkholme

[Boeroer]

Yeah I didn't say that Dragon Thrashed is good. I just said what would by the most effective way of using it in my opinion. That still doesn't mean it's good.

 

Anyways: you can't make it so that it's worthwhile to build a whole char concept around it, but as an additional source of damage it's ok. I mean on a Helwalker the AoE is so big that you usually reach all the enemies and deal a little bit of dmg every tick. Once you stack it it's good against weak mobs. Against high AR enemies you should maybe switch to Soft Winds?

 

I never tried: does Dragon Thrashed/Soft Winds trigger Staggered from Spirit Frenzy on the initial hit roll?

Edited January 16, 2019 by Boeroer

[Nssheepster]

 

Edit: Let's not talk about troubadour. It's a vailian concept, and I'm not saying that vailians are immoral, but gamefiles show that a discarded quest had you decide what you would do with Pallegina, as you discovered she was the oblivious carrier of avian flu, meant to eradicate the huana. Those valian wizards are devious.

 

I suddenly feel far, far worse about every time I ever sided with the Valians. 

[Elric Galad]

Nothing is immoral but Blunderbuss streefighter.

[Frak]

Bellowers have reduced chant AoE and a bonus to invocation. I can't see any synergy with Dragon Trashed chant.

 

A single class Skald can start battle with 2 upgraded eld Nary, 4 with sasha's and an empowed point. ~50 hits of jumping interrupting tornadoes sound pretty offensive for me.

 

There currently is no synergy with Dragon Thrashed, for any of the chanter subclasses. Bellower might get it, if the invoc-linger gets patched. Sure, bellower has less radius, but if melee, it will definitely hit the first and maybe second row of enemies

I noted that OP liked attrition fights. That would mean tanky chanter. But tanky means shield -> Very few crits -> skald less effective.

Casting two Eld Narys in sucession cannot be done from the start. I wanted to point out that the playstyle between bellower and skald is that skald is more squishy, weapon damage reliant and have a more stable damage curve.

Bellower is tanky, based on attrition, weapon damage is unreliable, but invocations can make a spike in damage when they hit.

[Kaylon]

The troubadour is clearly the best option because of the +50% linger duration which will increase Dragon Thrashed length (and overall damage). Also the helwalker is the best combo because of the might/int bonuses. Add the Blackened plate for better survivability, more passive AoE damage and the armor debuff. The Peter pet adds 15%dmg to AoE spells, but I'm not sure if it affects Dragon Thrashed and/or Death in Life...

[Boeroer]

Doesn't Peter give you 5% dmg and 5% AoE size (party)? Had him in the critter today.

[Nssheepster]

Sounds like Dragon Thrashed is a good target for a mod to make it more similar to POE 1... Or just to give it better damage/pen.

[Squilla]

Sounds like Dragon Thrashed is a good target for a mod to make it more similar to POE 1... Or just to give it better damage/pen.

 

It was so satisfying in POE1 when you were geared to the teeth and a higher level, just waltzing into combat and chunking down health.  Also had so much flexibility with the casts on the harder bounty / big bosses to summon or nuke while maintaining the chip damage.  A mod would be great, but kinda niche and I'm not sure there's ways to specifically target spell mechanics rather than just simple increase / decreases?

[thelee]

Possible self-synergy for dragon thrashed is to also use The Shield Breaks invocation for -3 enemy AR, which gets extra duration with each tick of the chant (basically stretching it into perpetuity). Combined with Thunderous Blows (helwalker multiclass) or some other source of tenacious (a priest support or multiclass, berserker, or any might inspiration plus slayer's claw axe) and the PEN issue might be non existent in most cases on even PotD + upscaling.

Edited January 16, 2019 by thelee

[DozingDragon]

Anyone know if phrases are categorized as spells? If so, you could also boost the Pen with the Crusted Swordfish bonus, right?

[Nssheepster]

 

Sounds like Dragon Thrashed is a good target for a mod to make it more similar to POE 1... Or just to give it better damage/pen.

 

It was so satisfying in POE1 when you were geared to the teeth and a higher level, just waltzing into combat and chunking down health.  Also had so much flexibility with the casts on the harder bounty / big bosses to summon or nuke while maintaining the chip damage.  A mod would be great, but kinda niche and I'm not sure there's ways to specifically target spell mechanics rather than just simple increase / decreases?

 

Dragon and Sure Handed were basically the only reason I ever took a Chanter in POE1. If I wasn't going to be using either, I didn't even take Kana. As for Niche... I mean there are OTHER niche mods, and presumably, they'd not mod ALL phrases, they'd just specifically meddle with the game files for this ONE chant. I'd presume this would take less time than many othermods. Hell, there's a 'niche' mod for Whispers of the Endless Paths, that's pretty niche too. IDK, I don't mod anything, it's not like I'd be doing it.

[Raven Darkholme]

While it might still not be good enough, dragon chant is a lot better in turn based than in real time.

Like a lot of other Aoe tick spells it ticks 3 times per round, so if you stack 3+ chants with troubadour it will tick 9x + per round.

Main problem is pen, but one could take a 2nd class with fire pen passive, like wizard, paladin or druid, use the energize invocation for another 2 pen and use the shield debuff invocation on top.

Much more practical, at least for solo would be to combine the chanter with cipher and just use disintegrate, when dragon chant fails, cuz disintegrate is also op in turn based, like many other similar abilities it does its damage twice per round, which can be quite massive with maxed might and +20% damage from captain's banquet.

(it goes against fort, but even grazes hurt a lot and at least the cipher gets +20 acc from borrowed instinct)

 

edit: ofc these several ticks per rounds might all be unintentional and get fixed eventually.

Edited February 21, 2019 by Raven Darkholme