A few chanter (bellower) related questions

[Myrtillo]

So I am back to the game after a long break to experience all the new content, and I started a new playthrough with a single class bellower. So far I really like the "few very powerful invocations" playstyle.

 

Chanter is the class I have the leat experience with (with maybe monks), so I have a few miscanellous questions you guys can hopefully answer to help me do some planning.
To give you some context, I am playing on veteran with no scaling (except up only for critical path) with full party of story companions.

 

 

In no particular order:

 

- Is the dragon relevant ? More precisely, for tough battles, is it going to be as efficient as, say, a +7pl Eld Nary that might wipe the non elites. What about the summoned weapons ?

- Boil Their Flesh question: Is the chance to explode calculated before or after the raw damage. In short, if the raw damage takes a bloodied ennemy to Near Death, can it explode ? I am looking for options to not repeat Eld Nary ad nauseam.

- For some reason I have always loved protective shields, but is there any reason to take Her Courage Thick as Steel for a non-troubadour ?

- What are interesting chant setups for a melee bellower ? Right now I am relying on Old Siec and Silver Knights.

 

Now less a question but more a discussion starter: Are there any interesting bellower-centric interaction/strats that I might have overlooked? Invocations that might seem subpar but scale well with power levels ?

 

Bellower is I think the subclass that benefits the most from extra phrases, as a phrase is not only a ressource but a +1PL, so any phrase generating effect has increased value here.

 

Sasha's is a given (I have not picked it yet because I can't let bae Modwyr go, but I will do when I tackle higher level content). Also, bellower hoards phrases longer.

 

Far from Defeated feels extremely potent: Longer duration of Energized inspiration, 3 extra phrases.

 

Also, bellower might be the one of the best candidates for brilliant inspiration. Is there currently any way to get brilliant other than the cipher pl7 spell ?

 

Thanks!

Edited March 31, 2019 by Myrtillo

[Boeroer]

The invocation which profits the most from PL increase is Eld Nary's Curse. Phrases/Chants don't profit from increased PL at all.

 

Summons are the invocation that profit least from PL bonuses because it only leads to increased base duration. THat's still not too bad, but not as good as compared to the bonuses that other invocations get.

 

An often overlooked Invocation which scales well with PL is White Worms (non-upgraded) because it starts at a rel. low PL but has rel. high base dmg. That will scale by 5% with every additional PL. That increased base dmg then gets multiplied with the collection of additiive dmg bonuses (often only MIG and crit, but still) and does pretty decent damage for its low phrase cost.

 

But usually Eld Nary's Curse is the best.

 

Note that you should pick an invocation which has the max phrase cost. Because that will determine how high your phrase counter will climb. If you highest invocation cost is only 5 your counter will only climb to 5. If you have an invocation that costs 7 (even if you never use it) you can go up to 7 phrase ppoints an thus get a higher PL bonus as Bellower.

 

Best offensive chants for the Bellower himself are Mith Fyr and The Long Night's Drink. The first gives you a muliplicative lash and the second makes it a lot easier to hit with Eld Nary's Curse. 

[Myrtillo]

The invocation which profits the most from PL increase is Eld Nary's Curse. Phrases/Chants don't profit from increased PL at all.

 

Summons are the invocation that profit least from PL bonuses because it only leads to increased base duration. THat's still not too bad, but not as good as compared to the bonuses that other invocations get.

 

An often overlooked Invocation which scales well with PL is White Worms (non-upgraded) because it starts at a rel. low PL but has rel. high base dmg. That will scale by 5% with every additional PL. That increased base dmg then gets multiplied with the collection of additiive dmg bonuses (often only MIG and crit, but still) and does pretty decent damage for its low phrase cost.

 

But usually Eld Nary's Curse is the best.

 

Note that you should pick an invocation which has the max phrase cost. Because that will determine how high your phrase counter will climb. If you highest invocation cost is only 5 your counter will only climb to 5. If you have an invocation that costs 7 (even if you never use it) you can go up to 7 phrase ppoints an thus get a higher PL bonus as Bellower.

 

Best offensive chants for the Bellower himself are Mith Fyr and The Long Night's Drink. The first gives you a muliplicative lash and the second makes it a lot easier to hit with Eld Nary's Curse. 

 

Wait, so the max phrases isn't unlocked with the PL tier but when you actually pick an invocation ? That's odd.

 

Otherwise, thanks for the tips, I'll give Wihite Worms a go. Do you know about the Boil their Flesh mechanics ?

 

As for the chants, he is still at the point where I feel he needs a bit of defensive ones, but I will include Myth Fyr at some point. No need for the long night as my witch seraphen takes care of the sickening

[Boeroer]

I tried Boil the Flesh several times and the only case where it makes sense is against very high AR targets.

 

Yes, the max phrase count is not determined by level or power level but by the invocation with the highest cost. It's because unlike PoE in Deadfire the invocations of one PL can have different costs. This mechanic got criticized several times (because it's easy to miss) but it never got changed.

Edited March 31, 2019 by Boeroer

[Myrtillo]

I tried Boil the Flesh several times and the only case where it makes sense is against very high AR targets.

 

 

 

I see. And being permanently energized with invocations being "artificially empowered" as a bellower, very high AR targets might almost never be a thing.

 

I guess it is hard to even remotely approach Eld Nary's efficiency....

[Boeroer]

With a Bellower - especially when using Sasha's Singing Scimitar with the 1Empower/encounter enchantment - there's nothing better (offensively) than Eld Nary's Curse.

 

Against single targets Seven Nights is not bad if you can manage to hit the enemy with several spikes at once. But it doesn't scale exceptionally well with PL.

 

Thrice She was Wronged also scales ok since it's PL 1 and thus gets a lot of PL scalings which also improve PEN a lot. Also pretty handy against Ironclads and such.

[Jayd]

I don't see how Boil their Flesh is worth it. I wanted it to be and tried it out, but it's just too situational considering the competition in the chanter tree. It was basically never the right time to use it. I'd be happy for someone to prove me wrong but I don't think it'll happen.

 

Don't sleep on Seven Nights She Waited. It kinda sucks that it and Eld Nary share a damage type, but they are both worth having as Seven Nights is capable of pretty awesome burst damage. If you're right up under enemies and hit them with multiple beams they can get deleted. And it is also great against crowds surrounding you, especially when upgraded. I remember making the Porokoa disappear with it (and when you're fighting a single boss Eld Nary can't bounce). My experience with this was using Konstanten as pure Scald.

Edited March 31, 2019 by Jayd

[thelee]

Don't sleep on Seven Nights She Waited. It kinda sucks that it and Eld Nary share a damage type, but they are both worth having as Seven Nights is capable of pretty awesome burst damage. If you're right up under enemies and hit them with multiple beams they can get deleted. And it is also great against crowds surrounding you, especially when upgraded. I remember making the Porokoa disappear with it (and when you're fighting a single boss Eld Nary can't bounce). My experience with this was using Konstanten as pure Scald.

Boeroer himself noted that if you have a lot of bounces on Eld Nary, you might not have sufficient duration on your bellower invocation +PL boost to make it last the entire time, so Seven Nights has that advantage.

 

Also, Eld Nary only really shines if you can get all those bounces. In single-enemy boss fights or where enemies are dispersed, absolutely a dragon or animated weapons are going to be great (literally infinite knockouts). The +PL will actually help out because it can stretch out the summon duration long enough so that you have 100% uptime (which *can* translate into more total damage done and possible more damage done to your party prevented via being a tank, though it's not a great numerical comparison to do this).

 

Both White Wurms and Thrice are useful, but be warned that White Wurms is buggy and frequently won't explode a corpse. I don't know what determines whether it works or not. When it works it works great. Thrice you really need to upgrade to be useful, but it is a different damage type and you can use it rapidly (don't bother waiting ot accumulate more phrases, just use it when you have 3).

 

Even the non-damage-based invocations can be useful, because +PL means bonus accuracy and duration for the debuffs. Not exactly world-beating, but can fill in various niches as necessary.

 

I was having a run that I enjoyed quite a bit with bellower, though I put it on pause because it was particularly susceptible to the affliction/inspiration/suppression bug currently raging in 4.1.x.

Edited March 31, 2019 by thelee

[Myrtillo]

 

I was having a run that I enjoyed quite a bit with bellower, though I put it on pause because it was particularly susceptible to the affliction/inspiration/suppression bug currently raging in 4.1.x.

 

 

Can you give me a quick explanation of the bug ? 

[thelee]

 

I was having a run that I enjoyed quite a bit with bellower, though I put it on pause because it was particularly susceptible to the affliction/inspiration/suppression bug currently raging in 4.1.x.

 

 

Can you give me a quick explanation of the bug ?

See top of https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/108836-412-major-bug-broken-core-mechanic-afflictions-not-supressablenot-removable-by-inspirations/

 

Do note that for me it wasn't the bellower per se it was the general party set up that I had, which was going to/already depending on suppress/liberating.

[Boeroer]

With a lot of Eld Nary jumps (Phrase bonus + Empower) you will see that the Bellower bonus will expire before all jumps have been finished. But it seems that the number of jumps is not affected. It's just so that the last few jumps will have less dmg etc. due to less PL. Basically as if another chanter had cast them. It's a bit ehh but not that bad. Important that you keep the number of jumps.

 

Seven Nights, unfortunately, is only a shadow of its PoE version. As I said it can be cool in certain situations but most of the time Eld Nary is the best choice.

 

I don't know if it's still the case but Two Fingers+upgrade had fixed dmg which was not affected by grazes.

[Myrtillo]

With a lot of Eld Nary jumps (Phrase bonus + Empower) you will see that the Bellower bonus will expire before all jumps have been finished. But it seems that the number of jumps is not affected. It's just so that the last few jumps will have less dmg etc. due to less PL. Basically as if another chanter had cast them. It's a bit ehh but not that bad. Important that you keep the number of jumps.

 

Seven Nights, unfortunately, is only a shadow of its PoE version. As I said it can be cool in certain situations but most of the time Eld Nary is the best choice.

 

I don't know if it's still the case but Two Fingers+upgrade had fixed dmg which was not affected by grazes.

 

Yeah, right now I'm lvl 12 and even without Eld Nary's upgrade, if the ennemies are spaced out I run out of bellower buff before the last jump. Oh well, by then two or three baddies have already slow-mo exploded so I can live with that.

 

I remember in PoE1, Kana Rua was obliterating dragons with seven nights...

 

I never used Two Fingers, but if I understand it properly, it perform best with these conditions:

- Closed environnements

- Vessels and Spirits

- Resolve afflictions

- Weak to fire (and cold resistant so Eld Nary is less potent)

 

And these conditions often happen together in the various crypts. I might give two fingers a shot, and it's good to have a panic heal at hand.

Is the number of wall bounces affected by power level ?

Edited April 1, 2019 by Myrtillo