Does the Grieving effect of Burden trigger of chanter summons?

[limaxophobiacq]

I'm thinking of making a Beckoner/Devoted and wondering if I could use summons to quickly max the grieving bonus from the Burden greatsword (+1 Might and +5% friendly duration per party member KO) since chanter summons are added to the party?

Also is Sasha's Singing Scimitar just too good for chanters to bother with going for anything but sabers?

Edited June 10, 2020 by limaxophobiacq

[Boeroer]

I'm not 100% sure, but usually when it says "ally" (see Divine Retribution of Paladin) it works with summons and when it says "party member" it only works with your actual party members. Burden says "party member" - but I didn't test it. I know that Woedica's Crown etc. which has the same description does not work with summons. 

Edit: I just checked in-game and while the enchantment Grieving says "party member" its upgrades says "ally" (bravo Tooltip! ).

So I did a quick test:

Killed some skeletons from Beckoner and got nothing, killed Aloth and got the bonus.

Tl;dr: doesn't work with summons. 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Boeroer

[limaxophobiacq]

Maybe I should just go skald with Whispers of the Endless Paths then?

Seems like it would do decent damage and might generate some extra phrases with the counter-attacks, and I'd get to make clumps of enemies go splat with Clear-Out multiple-aoe stacking (if I understand correctly with WotEP it works kind of like how Heart of Fury worked in PoE1 spawning multiple AoE attacks).

Edited June 10, 2020 by limaxophobiacq

[Boeroer]

Clear Out +  WotEP does indeed work like that. 

Skalds can only get 1 phrase per attack though. It's capped. So even if you do a ton of crits with one Clear Out + WotEP you'd still get only 1 phrase (at least that was the case some time ago). Same with the normal AoE cone. But of course the chance to get a phrase in the first place is a lot higher. 

Offensive Parry does generate additional phrases on crits and that can be pretty cool. You just have to make sure that your deflection is high/enemies' accuracy is low.

Edited June 11, 2020 by Boeroer

[limaxophobiacq]

Is 'their companion brawed the horde alone' worth picking up for a War Caller (the interrupt on crit seems like it would combo well with hit-to-crit from Disciplined Strikes and +4 Pen with Devoted sounds cool) or is it a waste with the extra phrase cost?

With soft-winds-of-death and AoE weapon attacks it seems like it could do a lot of interrupts.

[Boeroer]

If I were a Fighter/Skald I would want to put out Killers Froze Stiff all the time (since it only costs 2 phrases for a Skald iirc) to a) increase crit chances even more and b) to hard-CC enemies. It seems like the best synergy between invocation and passive. When using Offensive Parry it obviously leads to less enemies attacking (and missing) you but there's still enough of them who will either be resistant or get missed.

I can see "Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone" being useful for a Tactician/Chanter with WotEP (would be able to regain Discipline just with auto-cone attacks) and of course in all those cases where you desperately need more PEN. But since Fighters can interrupt with a lot of different abilities I guess I wouldn't use it that much. WotEP already has +1 PEN compared to other great swords.

Afaik Soft Winds doesn't interrupt even with Energized. Certainly not the DoT ticks but maybe even the initial attack roll won't do it (not 100% sure though). 

A nice phrase for using Mule Kick and Clear Out with WotEP is "The Long Night's Drink" by the way. It lowers enemies' fortitude by 14 points - which is the defense that both of those abilities will target. Also Weakening lowers enemies max health pool quite a bit (which often gets omitted when talking about useful afflictions). Afaik it's not a poison or disease effect so it should work on everybody who's not immune to CON afflictions. The -2 Might part should always work I guess(?).

Not realated to Champion but to Skald in general: As a Skald you should make sure that you pick one (or a few) non-offensive yet useful invocations every now and then. Skald players tend to only pick and use offensive invocations - which seems to be a smart choice initially - but your max phrase counter is determined by your most costly invocation(!). If you only pick cheap offensive invocations then your max phrase counter will be very low. You don't want that for obvious reasons. Something like "Ancient Instruments of Death" or "Set to their Purpose" can give you a max phrase counter of 6. So if you are full with phrases you could cast 3 Killers Froze Stiff in a row without even gaining one single phrase in between.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Boeroer

[ekt0]

Pardon my interruption. I need to ask something relating to chanter to you guys too.

As a herald, does Sacred Immolation work with Old Siec Would Not Rest til' His Hunger Was Sated ?

 

[Boeroer]

Yes, but the draining is limited to a fixed amount of 2 attack rolls per pulse. So it's not suited to completely counter the self damage. But it helps a bit.

Here's a quote from @Kaylon:

Old Siec won't drain from more than 2 targets per attack. In fact it will drain from the damage you do to yourself (with no enemies around you will heal for 4-5dmg) and from another target.

A better alternative would be the Blood Ward of a Furyshaper. It has no such limits and even works with ticks of DoTs (unlike Old Siec). It's not suitable for a multiclass char but only works with party synergy (e.g. SC Furyshaper + a Paladin/Troubadour with Sacred Immolation + Old Siec). I wrote about the advantages of the Blood Ward here:

 

[ekt0]

Thanks for clearing things up Boeroer. You are great with knowledge as always. 

Edited June 12, 2020 by ekt0