Chants/chant order?

[masterty66]

Currently working through Poe1 on a Cipher that I want to go Psion/Troubadour with in Deadfire (thanks Boeroer for that idea). 

What I'm curious about is what chants should I go for? I know for invocations the basic workable idea is killers + soul shock as a combo, but what chants do you guys like to focus on? Do you do a certain order with them? How many do you take? There's a lot of really good ones but I'm always at a loss with my chanters of how many chants to take and what order is good to put them in. There's just so many pretty useful ones! 

[thelee]

i always do a lot of ahead-planning with chanters, because it's easy to go "bad" on the chants IMO. if you have too many it's hard to make good use of them all. chant mechanics are also significantly different from poe1, just as a reminder. (everything is a flat 6s on, 3s linger [except for troubadour stuff], whereas in poe1 it varied based on character level and chant level)

to your questions: i love all the resistance chants. in order of usefulness, i would go "one dozen" (resolve/con resistance), "fampyr's gaze" (int/perception resistance), and then "hit the deck" (might/dex). one dozen because i always do megabosses so a chanter is an easy way to fight auranic, plus i find frightened and sickened/weakened awful common for how annoying they are. int/perception because charm/dominate is super annoying in fights where it has, and perception resistance is super useful especially in fights where enemies have persistent distraction.

• because they're so niche, it helps avoid the "too many chants" problem because i create one or two songs that just focus on the resistance chants and switch to them only if needed.
• i always start with the one dozen chant in any "resistance" song, because especially when sickened/weakened/enfeebled kick in i want to dispel it asap so i can heal.
• literally every chanter i ever have these days (and in like the past 500-600 hours of gameplay) picks up one dozen, that's how much i love having it around. really punches above its weight for being just a tier-two chant.
  • i used to love thick grew their tongue a lot in the earlier days, but i have a lot more ways to deal with concentration and am more deliberate about interrupts so it's a little bit less important.

 

everything else is more situational on what my party/chanter are like and what my design goal is. i'd say ancient memory is a pretty safe choice for all setups because of its great utility. sometimes ordering can help, especially when you consider that when you use an invocation or you switch songs you immediately jump back to your first chant, so effects that can double up or benefit from being refreshed faster or are offensive and need attack rolls so having multiple checks are good. like the skeleton summoning chant, or the damage shield chant, or the anti-concentration chant. it might not sounds like it comes up a lot, but in practice with the most obvious indication (the skeleton summoning chant) i would end up with a lot of extra skeletons just from having it as the first song. there are also a couple minor synergies, like having mercy mercy (+50% heal) or one dozen before an ancient memory chant, to boost the healing effectiveness. 

in general though i would argue against having more than three songs in a chant. the math changes a bit with a troubadour's better linger (up to four maybe), but typically beyond three you're not really adding more power and you're just adding more variability:

• with any choice in a game, there's always a "best" choice, a "second best" choice, etc. when you fill up chants in a song, what you're really doing is selecting a "best" chant, a "second best" chant, etc. after a certain point, each additional chant you add to a song lowers the average quality of that song. ideally you don't exceed two chants in a song, because with proper intellect you have 100% uptime on your two best chants. but in practice i find it a worthwhile to add a third to add a little bit more flexibility (especially if it's adding something like ancient memory where even a little goes a long way) even at the cost of uptime of your other arguably better chants.

this is different than in poe1 where the different chant durations and the reduced active chant time as you level up means there's some interesting math and strategizing about mixing in shorter chants with longer chants that have huge linger.

Edited February 17, 2021 by thelee

[thelee]

i have to add that over time i've grown really fond of the chanter in deadfire (i've started bringing one along in some shape or from pretty regularly). i used to stan for priests back in the day and while i'm still pretty big on priests, i think chanters just have a lot of interesting potential especially with how you can complement your party in different ways, and there are enough oddball chants and invocations to give you a lot of fun possibilities for how to take your character.

for a psion/troubadour you might want to give extra consideration to "thick grew their tongues" and "long night's" chants. thick will make sure enemies will always be vulnerable to your soul whip interrupts, and long night will soften enemies up for the cipher's fortitude powers, of which the cipher has a lot and sometimes they are very hard hitting (like disintegrate or soul ignition)

 

edit: oops forgot to add that for a troubadour in particular, brisk recitation + the damage shield chant or the skeleton chant are aces. a troubadour with the damage shield chant and brisk recitation can carry a party against Hauane O Whe, for example.

Edited February 17, 2021 by thelee

[thelee]

One final thing I forgot about ordering chants. My play style means that in the opening moments of combat I’m staying back and letting enemies approach while I buff or keep parts of my party hidden. So I don’t put offensive chants first and favor defensive chants first in my all-purpose songs. It might not seem like it matters a lot but on PotD things can snowball and spiral out of control from the opening moments of a fight, so just having the right first chant can be relevant.

[masterty66]

Thanks, that's a lot of really good info to consider. Interesting that you favor the resistance chants so much. I actually hadn't thought to pick them up before since they seemed so situational but you make a compelling argument for them. I'll definitely give them a try this go-around.

I wonder...does one dozen stack with a wild orlan's racial? My guy is a wild orlan and it'd be hilarious if having that chant + the racial made him really hard to fear. 

[Boeroer]

Resistances don't stack unfortunately. So Wild Orlan + that Chant = no further effect (on RES afflictions).

If you want to use "Their Champion" and deliver lots of crit-interrupts via chants you should use some chants that do hit rolls - for example "The Long Night" & "Thick Grew their Tongues". It depends a bit on the enemies' defenses which chants are best in a fight. But "Thick Grew" removes concentration which is a great synergy with causing interrupts. 

If you want an absolut no-brainer chant that you can simply use at any times with no further thinking I'd pick Many Lives Pass by. With a Troub. it pops out an auto-steered Skeleton every 3 secs which stack up to a small army - and that's just very useful in all fights. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Boeroer

[thelee]

10 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Resistances don't stack unfortunately. So Wild Orlan + that Chant = no further effect (on RES afflictions).

iirc the way the resistance chants work this is not quite true. normally this is true because resistances don't stack, but the way the resistance chants work is that they are checked the moment they are applied and not just when an affliction tries to happen. this means that every time a resistance chance applies, it re-downgrades all existing afflictions, even if all it's doing is refreshing its own buff or applying on a character that already has resistance somehow.

so e.g. if you have a wild orlan buffed with one dozen and gets hit with frightened, it'll downgrade to shakened (as expected, no stacking). if that same wild orlan doesn't have one dozen and gets hit with frightened, it'll downgrade to shakened (again, as expected). however, in either case, once one dozen refreshes, that shakened gets downgraded to nothing at all, even though theoretically a wild orlan shouldn't benefit at all. (edit: it's been a while on me having this specific interaction active [i prefer hearth orlans] so i might be wrong on this, and i don't have a party handy that can easily test this. but i am pretty confident on my memory of this)

 

a troubadour can make really meaty resistance chants with brisk recitation; the pulse every 3s (instead of every 6s) means you can pretty much cleanse your entire party of any affliction rapidly.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2021 by thelee

[thelee]

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

With a Troub. it pops out an auto-steered Skeleton every 3 secs which stack up to a small army - and that's just very useful in all fights. 

oh yeah, this is great. it used to be a lot better before they broke the chant somewhere along the way between 4.0 -> 5.0 (the skeleton no longer scales with level). before, a lone troubadour could probably attrition out any fight in the game. now, you can't quite do that, but the skeletons help flank, and every spell or melee hit that takes out a skeleton is a wasted enemy action, and ironically because of their low defenses/health now they tend to be extra-favored for targeting. i wonder if it would be extremely effective on turn-based mode: the action economy is so much more constrained so having enemies waste it on garbage that you resummon for free 2x every turn sounds neat.

Edited February 17, 2021 by thelee

[Boeroer]

10 minutes ago, thelee said:

iirc the way the resistance chants work this is not quite true. normally this is true because resistances don't stack, but the way the resistance chants work is that they are checked the moment they are applied and not just when an affliction tries to happen. this means that every time a resistance chance applies, it re-downgrades all existing afflictions, even if all it's doing is refreshing its own buff or applying on a character that already has resistance somehow.

Seriously? I never noticed. That's great! It's not as good as getting a counter-inspiration periodically (would be too good) but still very useful and way better than a plain resistance.

See - you never know everything about Deadfire.  

[Boeroer]

6 minutes ago, thelee said:

oh yeah, this is great. it used to be a lot better before they broke the chant somewhere along the way between 4.0 -> 5.0 (the skeleton no longer scales with level). before, a lone troubadour could probably attrition out any fight in the game. now, you can't quite do that, but the skeletons help flank, and every spell or melee hit that takes out a skeleton is a wasted enemy action, and ironically because of their low defenses/health now they tend to be extra-favored for targeting. i wonder if it would be extremely effective on turn-based mode: the action economy is so much more constrained so having enemies waste it on garbage that you resummon for free 2x every turn sounds neat.

Yes, it's not as bad as I thought it would be - especially if you are using any build in the party that profits from "allies killed" or have a Berserker with Grave Calling. 

I mean some other chants may def. have more impact - but this one is so universally useful imo that you can just leave it on autorepeat and be happy.  

[thelee]

1 minute ago, Boeroer said:

especially if you are using any build in the party that profits from "allies killed"

oh lol i didn't even know about this interaction. i guess i can finally make use of that +1 might/resolve per party member knock out accessory.

[Boeroer]

@thelee Yes, but some of those only work with "party members" and others with "allies". The game even differentiates between steerable summons and auto-piloted in some cases (see cipher spells you need to cast on allies). 
 

I don't recall which items work with which conditional. But usually the words "party member" and "ally" give a hint.

For example the Woedica Necklace only works with party members (IIRC, may be wrong) and Paladin's Divine Retribution with all allies (like those skellies). 

Edit: If a Troubadour has that chant going and those skeletons die all the time an SC Paladin in the party has basically unlimited Zeal. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Boeroer

[Jayd]

21 hours ago, thelee said:

i have to add that over time i've grown really fond of the chanter in deadfire (i've started bringing one along in some shape or from pretty regularly). i used to stan for priests back in the day and while i'm still pretty big on priests, i think chanters just have a lot of interesting potential especially with how you can complement your party in different ways, and there are enough oddball chants and invocations to give you a lot of fun possibilities for how to take your character.

Since you love priests and chanters so much do you usually run Vatnir as a celebrant? I was thinking of doing so this playthrough and wondering whether you have any secret tech to share. About Vatnir or just celebrants in general. 

Think I'll give Vatty Blightheart (thematic!) and go for debuffing+murder.

Sorry if this is a bit tangential to the topic but thought it might be useful.

[dgray62]

Celebrants are amazing. Equip them with Sasha's Singing Scimitar and (eventually) Weyc's Wand in the off hand. Empower Her Revenge and then extend the buffs with SoT. I prefer the skald/priest of magran combo for cheaper offensive invocations and a few extra fire nukes to complement the chanter's electric and cold nukes.

[masterty66]

1 hour ago, Jayd said:

Since you love priests and chanters so much do you usually run Vatnir as a celebrant? I was thinking of doing so this playthrough and wondering whether you have any secret tech to share. About Vatnir or just celebrants in general. 

Think I'll give Vatty Blightheart (thematic!) and go for debuffing+murder.

Sorry if this is a bit tangential to the topic but thought it might be useful.

I can't speak to Vatnir but I was messing around with Tekehu as a single class chanter last playthrough and it was not bad. Some of the class only invocations he got were pretty nice and you can make a somewhat funny build of having Tekehu use dual mortars and use the free level 8 avenging storm invocation he gets to dish out pretty good dps.

It's a really bizarre build for Tekehu to use thematically but it does work lol.

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Jayd said:

Since you love priests and chanters so much do you usually run Vatnir as a celebrant? I was thinking of doing so this playthrough and wondering whether you have any secret tech to share. About Vatnir or just celebrants in general. 

ironically despite my support of priests/chanters i've only done a celebrant fully once, and it was more of a tanky/summon build. (i find it's very hard to satisfyingly mesh them because there's so much party-role overlap)

my most recent run i was doing vatnir as a celebrant, but got bored with mainchar-ing a fury and restarted with a beastmaster. but i did enjoy vatnir as a celebrant way more than other possible priest-chanter combos because vatnir's subclass is so unique. nothing terribly exciting, but what i had going:

1. long night's chant + ben fidel's neck was exposed => much better priest-side spell casting (lots of fortitude targeting from vatnir's bonus spells)
2. their companion plus champion's boon => much better PEN and damage for priest-side spellcasting (both for redundancy since a stun/daze will wipe it out). their companion will also let you interrupt on hits, though it wasn't a focus
3. the shield cracks + freezing pillar => some partial synergy with the damage from freezing pillar extending the shield cracks, though this wasn't the strongest synergy.

eventually i was planning on mixing in mercy and kindness to enhance spot heals. #1 was more effective than i thought - vatnir ended up doing quite a bit of damage despite his short time in my party. it also helped that i picked up his spiritual weapon and would use that in conjunction with shield cracks (if i had planned it better i would've picked up aefyllath); dual-wielded spiritual axes is pretty slick (+25% lash for being an npc, but very nice with the bleeding wounds modal; the auto-scale to superb and legendary at mid/high levels is very nice).

sasha's is always an easy way to enhance any chanter setup like dgray62 suggests, though my eventual plan was to empower priest spells so the synergy wasn't there. he was definitely going to be a weyc's build instead.

[Boeroer]

TheirChampion braved the Horde alone - but was pretty sad that he got degraded to a mere companion. He then founded the DCU (Deadfire Champion Union).

Coming back to the Psion/Troubadour I also really love to bring a Wizard as Will debuffer (Dazzling Lights + Miasma, Aloth works). Because it makes Killers Froze Stiff (and lots of other Cipher and Priest spells) so much more effective and Miasma also helps with lowering deflection indirectly (stacking with direct debuffs).

The Psion/Troub. can be a good debuffer as well. For example Long Night's Drink + Ben Fidel + stunning invocation drops fortitude by 30 points in an AoE. Takes some time to cast all that and I usually prefer Howler for that role bc. of Spirit Frenzy + Long Night's Drink being such an awesome combo - but it's a nice additional option nonetheless. 

Speaking of Howler: put on Ngati's Tusk (with maxed Survival) and Cap of the Laughingstock and you'll put -10 to all defenses on all enemies I range automatically without any hit roll. If you also wear the Ice Helmet thing this will make you a very reliable AoE debuffer. If you want to use terrify effects you have to skip the Cap though.

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by Boeroer