FYI: bellower + eld nary not a good combo

[thelee]

Just leaving this as a note, because I see recommendations about this around the internet, and I also speculated in the forums here that it was a good idea.

TL;DR: eld nary doesn't work well with bellower. But Eld Nary is pretty good anyway.

 

Basically, the idea behind combining the two is that Bellower gets a lot of +PL when using an invocation, and Eld Nary has basically every single dimension that could possibly be boosted by +PL. However, Eld Nary's projectile travels slowly and it jumps very slowly, so I think either Boeroer or MaxQuest here pointed out that the damage will actually drop off after a few jumps because the Bellower's +PL buff will wear off. It's worse than that, the number of jumps you get is calculated dynamically, and isn't fixed at cast. And due to how long Eld Nary takes to cast, and how slowly the projectile jumps, it's basically impossible to get extra jumps out of Eld Nary especially the upgraded one (unless you are using Salvation of Time or Wall of Draining or that pet that grants +3s to beneficial effects).

So basically, Eld Nary is too slow for the bellower and most of hte benefit of the bellower's +PL will be lost and not apply. But Eld Nary is still an incredibly good invocation (especially upgraded) and I think people around the internet are just coincidentally discovering how good it can be in the context of having a bellower, even though a bellower isn't too relevant to how good it is. If you want to do Eld Nary shenanigans, you're probably better off with a Troubadour or Skald.

 

Anyway, I'm back to the drawing board on my bellower build.

[Blunderboss]

Eld Nary is so good that when I used it first time on multi class chanter I rerolled SC chanter immediately 

With Blightheart it gets even better as quite often you will be able to cast second one before first one expires and then combat is basically finished you can just watch the fireworks

Edited October 23, 2019 by Blunderboss

[Boeroer]

3 hours ago, thelee said:

so I think either Boeroer or MaxQuest here pointed out that the damage will actually drop off after a few jumps because the Bellower's +PL buff will wear off.

It was me who said that. I was answering your (or MaxQuest's?) question that was along the lines of "Why does the Bellower buff have a duration in the first place". And I said that it was because some invocation take longer than instant to be applied so it needs a duration. And so on...

 But isn't that dropoff only an issue once you stack Bellower bonus + Empower? Maybe I remember it wrongly though.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Boeroer

[thelee]

5 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

 But isn't that dropoff only an issue once you stack Bellower bonus + Empower? Maybe I remember it wrongly though.

Is it? I admit I didn't pay too close attention to the damage numbers in my test (I was specifically testing the jumps). I don't know why it wouldn't be an issue without empower either.

 

also, side note - here's where it's weird that the bellower buff is created at the moment that you start an invocation, not upon cast - Eld Nary is also hurt by having a long cast time (4.5s base) so you actually eat up a huge chunk of the bellower buff (even with huge intellect) just from the cast (has base duration of 6s)

Edited October 23, 2019 by thelee

[Boeroer]

I meant that only the combo of phrase PL bonus + Empower PL bonus pushes the "execution time" of Eld Nary's jumps over the duration of the Bellower buff. But as I said I may remember it incorrectly. It's been some time since I tested that and I can't remember if I only tried out Eld Nary + Bellower Buff + Empower only.

I didn't know/notice that the bellower buff starts with casting. That's weird. And good to know. So I guess Furyshaper/Bellower is the way to go, eh? Get that cast off asap!

 

Maybe you can make Eld Nary jump faster with Wengridh, hehe.

But then again a multiclass Bellower can't even get Eld Nary's Curse. Ouf...

Edited October 24, 2019 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

Bellower works with SoT ? Good to know.

I don't remember the bounce period of Eld Nary's. That could easily be checked anyway, since the bounce period appears in the game's file.
It might indeed be a pb only for SC.
I think that additional jumps are more interesting for MC than for SC, since the upgrade already bounce so much that the +5-7 PL would proportionally matter less.

Eventually, it might be worth considering modding bellower bonus duration.

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Bellower works with SoT ? Good to know.

I don't remember the bounce period of Eld Nary's. That could easily be checked anyway, since the bounce period appears in the game's file.
It might indeed be a pb only for SC.
I think that additional jumps are more interesting for MC than for SC, since the upgrade already bounce so much that the +5-7 PL would proportionally matter less.

Eventually, it might be worth considering modding bellower bonus duration.

iirc from tests, the base eld nary has 5 jumps + PL scaling (versus something like 12 jumps + PL scaling). You basically run out of bellower buff after just a few bounces (remember that you use up a lot of the time just from casting it).

 

edit - even though bellower works with SoT keep in mind that you automatically trigger the buff upon starting (not even finishing) an invocation, so 99% of the time that fact is irrelevant, since you can't carry over a particularly large +PL buff to another invocation cast. (And chanter chants don't scale with PL, using character level instead)

Edited October 24, 2019 by thelee

[Kaylon]

The buff should be modded to work like Empower...

[Elric Galad]

Bounce Delay : is 0.9, according to game file.

[JackalTornMoons]

Probably still great in turn based though

[thelee]

19 hours ago, JackalTornMoons said:

Probably still great in turn based though

that's interesting! i hadn't even thought of that. how would this work in turn based? Does the game wait for eld nary to finish? or would you just sit and wait with your next character until eld nary finishes.

either way, that solves the problem pretty effectively and would make for a great turn-based build, imo. just make sure to have sasha's singing scimitar or blightheart so you don't have to wait 6 turns to cast another eld nary

Edited October 29, 2019 by thelee