Building Konstanten as an Howler

[kronozord]

I need some help building Konstanten as an Howler.

 

I reached level 20 and now im trying some of the companions that i never used.

Im trying several stuff and i came up with this, so i would like you guys to give some advice about it because i dont really understand all the mechanics of the game.

Is this a good build?

 

 

Leveling:

• Blooded
• Frenzy
• Thick Skinned + Two Weapon Style
• Barbaric Blow
• And Hel-Hyraf Crashed Upon the Shield
• One Stands Alone + The Shield Cracks
• Bloodlust
• Bloody Slaughter
• Spirit Frenzy + The Long Night's Drink Birthed the Revenge of Morning
• Unflinching
• At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff
• Barbaric Smash + And Their Fear Followed Them into the Foothills
• Uncanny Luck
• Interrupting Blows
• Brute Force, Improved Critical
• So Singt thy Biting Winds o' Eld Nary
• Its Crash Could Not Be Denied
• Spirit Tornado Blood Thirst + Reny Daret's Ghost Spake, "I'll Catch You, Ben Fidel"
• Barbaric Shout Ben Fidel's Neck Was Exposed

 

Active Skills:  Athletics 10 then Alchemy 10

Passive Skills: 20 Religion History

Proficiency: Sabre, Club, Flail, ???

Gear:

• Head: Thaos Headdress
• Neck: Stone of Power
• Armor: Patinated Plate / Reckless Brigandine
• Ring 1: Ring of Regeneration
• Ring 2: Ring of Greater Regeneration
• Waist: Boots of Stone
• Belt: The Undying Burden
• Hands: Gauntlets of Accuracy / Apothecary Gloves
• Cape: The Giftbearer’s Cloth / Cloak of Greater Deflection

 

Weapons:

Some combination of Aldris Blade of Captain Crow, Sasha Singing Scimitar, Min's Fortune

Shattered Vengeance.

Or 2 hatchets for greater melee deflection (Acolyte's Frostbite + Xoti's Sickle).

 

Pet: Nalvi

Edited November 7, 2021 by kronozord

[Boeroer]

Yes, it looks pretty solid.

Two small things:

1. You cannot take Improved Critical twice

2. Spirit Frenzy is great because it will apply staggered with all attack rolls you do, be it melee, ranged, invocations and even chants like The Long Night's Drink. This will also periodically remove all MIG inspirations from enemies. But once you upgrade to Spirit Tornado that feature will be gone and the stagger will only get applied to weapon hits. So I would spare the ability point for Spirit Tornado and not upgrade Spirit Frenzy. 

Further opinions:

Imo you should always pick Blood Thirst - for example instead of Barbaric Shout. You already have a fear ability with Ben Fidel. If you don't really need the bonus engagement of the Shout I would leave it out and take Blood Thirst. 

Since you already picked "I'll catch you, Ben Fidel" I would suggest to pick the upgrade "Ben Fidel's Neck", too - because the defense debuff it comes with will stack with all singular defense debuffs (something that lowers just one or two defense, for example Nature's Mark or so), making you very good at debuff stacking. There's also no immunity to this effect which sometimes is very handy against certain enemies. 

 

[kronozord]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Yes, it looks pretty solid.

Two small things:

1. You cannot take Improved Critical twice

2. Spirit Frenzy is great because it will apply staggered with all attack rolls you do, be it melee, ranged, invocations and even chants like The Long Night's Drink. This will also periodically remove all MIG inspirations from enemies. But once you upgrade to Spirit Tornado that feature will be gone and the stagger will only get applied to weapon hits. So I would spare the ability point for Spirit Tornado and not upgrade Spirit Frenzy. 

Further opinions:

Imo you should always pick Blood Thirst - for example instead of Barbaric Shout. You already have a fear ability with Ben Fidel. If you don't really need the bonus engagement of the Shout I would leave it out and take Blood Thirst. 

Since you already picked "I'll catch you, Ben Fidel" I would suggest to pick the upgrade "Ben Fidel's Neck", too - because the defense debuff it comes with will stack with all singular defense debuffs (something that lowers just one or two defense, for example Nature's Mark or so), making you very good at debuff stacking. There's also no immunity to this effect which sometimes is very handy against certain enemies. 

 

Duplicated Improved Critical removed.

How do you know that Spirit Tornado doesnt work with spells?

The label of the Tornado doesnt say anything about changing the previous ability, it is supposed to be as you said or are you exploiting a bug?

Edited November 7, 2021 by kronozord

[Boeroer]

16 hours ago, kronozord said:

How do you know that Spirit Tornado doesnt work with spells?

- I experienced the behaviour during a playthrough.

- I read about this problem from several forum users.

- We discussed it here and for example @Elric Galadincluded a fix in his Balance Polishing mod. 

- it should get included in the Community Patch mod as well (hello @MaxQuest). Maybe it already is in the newest draft?

Besides that I think I don't exaggerate or brag if I say that the regulars here combined do know more about the game mechanics than the devs themselves nowadays. It takes some time to get answers but the subforum here is certainly a more reliable and also self correcting source of information than the in-game descriptions are. 

That's because over the many patch cycles abilities were tweaked (which is good) but faulty descriptions often weren't changed accordingly (which is not so good). Partially because pieces of description texts are auto-generated so maybe Obsidian thought that would update itself splendidly (it didn't always).

16 hours ago, kronozord said:

The label of the Tornado doesnt say anything about changing the previous ability

As I said: expect not too precise or sometimes even wrong descriptions. It's a game with loads of content - and also some minor glitches were found after the final patch was released, so Obsidian couldn't change that anymore. 

16 hours ago, kronozord said:

it is supposed to be as you said or are you exploiting a bug?

Nobody here really knows whether Spirit Frenzy or Spirit Tornado work as intended. But one of them has a small "bug". I can only give you my personal assessment.

Here's a small history of Blood Frenzy and Spirit Frenzy:

1. At release Blood Frenzy (and its upgrade Blood Storm) only worked with weapon crit rolls - Spirit Frenzy on the other hand worked with all hit rolls, but Spirit Tornado didn't (it worked like Blood Frenzy/Blood Storm: only with weapon hits/crits).

I guess at that time Obsidian considered Spirit Frenzy to be the buggy ability (well not really bugged, but implemented with a different mechanic).

2. But most players said they really liked the effect of Spirit Frenzy; most didn't take Blood Frenzy because Spirit Frenzy was just better in most situation/for most builds, while not being overpowered. Just a nice source of synergy in most builds. 

3. Blood Frenzy and Blood Storm got changed so that they worked with all crit rolls (like Spirit Frenzy but only crits, not hits+crits). So now players can use it with spells, chants etc. which is cool and balances it with Spirit Frenzy. Now it's really a tough decision which one to pick (which is good). 

But unfortunately Spirit Tornado didn't get that change...

I suspect Obsidian just forgot - or didn't even realize - that Spirit Tornado didn't work like Spirit Frenzy. So they forgot to alter it like they altered Blood Frenzy/Storm. 

 

At least that's the most logical explanation for me personally. But it's not that I know what really happened and why. 

What you can do now if you really want to keep the stagger with all hit rolls:

- not pick Spirit Tornado

- install a mod that fixes Spirit Tornado

The last one is not possible when playing on a console iirc.

Have fun and don't hesitate to ask. It may take some time but you will get an answer from somebody here.

 

Edited November 7, 2021 by Boeroer

[kronozord]

8 hours ago, Boeroer said:

- I experienced the behaviour during a playthrough.

- I read about this problem from several forum users.

- We discussed it here and for example @Elric Galadincluded a fix in his Balance Polishing mod. 

- it should get included in the Community Patch mod as well (hello @MaxQuest). Maybe it already is in the newest draft?

Besides that I think I don't exaggerate or brag if I say that the regulars here combined do know more about the game mechanics than the devs themselves nowadays. It takes some time to get answers but the subforum here is certainly a more reliable and also self correcting source of information than the in-game descriptions are. 

That's because over the many patch cycles abilities were tweaked (which is good) but faulty descriptions often weren't changed accordingly (which is not so good). Partially because pieces of description texts are auto-generated so maybe Obsidian thought that would update itself splendidly (it didn't always).

As I said: expect not too precise or sometimes even wrong descriptions. It's a game with loads of content and also some minor glitches were found after the final patch was released so Obsidian couldn't change that anymore. 

Nobody here really knows whether Spirit Frenzy or Spirit Tornado work as intended. But one of them has a small "bug". I can only give you my personal assessment.

Here's a small history of Blood Frenzy and Spirit Frenzy:

1. At release Blood Frenzy (and its upgrade Blood Storm) only worked with weapon crit rolls - Spirit Frenzy on the other hand worked with all hit rolls, but Spirit Tornado didn't (it worked like Blood Frenzy/Blood Storm: only with weapon hits/crits).

I guess at that time Obsidian considered Spirit Frenzy to be the buggy ability (well not really bugged, but implemented with a different mechanic).

2. But most players said they really like the effect of Spirit Frenzy and nobody took Blood Frenzy because Spirit Frenzy was just better in most situation/for most builds - while not being overpowered. Just a nice source of synergy in most builds. 

3. Blood Frenzy and Blood Storm got changed so that they worked with all crit rolls (like Spirit Frenzy but only crits, not hits+crits). So now players can use it with spells, chants etc. which is cool and balances it with Spirit Frenzy. Now it's really a tough decision which one to pick, which is good. 

But unfortunately Spirit Tornado didn't get that change...

I suspect Obsidian just forgot - or didn't even realize - that Spirit Tornado didn't work like Spirit Frenzy. So they forgot to alter it like they altered Blood Frenzy/Storm. 

 

At least that's the most logical explanation for me personally. But it's not that I know what really happened and why. 

What you can do now if you really want to keep the stagger with all hit rolls:

- not pick Spirit Tornado

- install a mod that fixes Spirit Tornado

The last one is not possible when playing on a console iirc.

Have fun and don't hesitate to ask. It may take some time but you will get an answer from somebody here.

 

Thank you for the detailed answer.

Goodbye Spirit Tornado

Edited November 7, 2021 by kronozord

[NotDumbEnough]

Spirit Tornado is buffed to apply stagger in the balance polishing mod

[hansvedic]

Trying to remember… is Lion’s sprint not useful for a howler due to the accuracy bonus getting used on a chant and then going away if one is using an offensive chant?

[Boeroer]

I don't understand. How can it be useful for a chant if that chant is not doing a hit roll (= being offensive)?

Lion's Sprint es pretty borked imo. I didn't find a good rule of thumb in which cases the ACC bonus works and in which it doesn't. I just stopped using it because it seems to be implemented pretty weirdly...

If it had more impact (or if Barb would have refreshing resources so that spending 1 Rage wasn't a big deal) I guess I might have investigated further, but as is it didn't seem worthwhile to me.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Boeroer

[hansvedic]

Let me see if I can clarify things.

Does Lion’s Sprint’s accuracy bonus go away after an offensive chant (e.g. come, come soft winds of death) makes an attack roll on an enemy?

[Boeroer]

Ah!

I haven't tested this. But from my experience one of those two three things will happen:

a) The chant's hit roll gets the bonus ACC and then the bonus effect gets removed.

b) The chant doesn't profit but the bonus effect still gets removed

c) The chant doesn't profit and the bonus effect remains untouched. 

I've seen all three behaviors with Lion's Sprint but never did I see:

d) an ability (here: chant) profits from Lion's Sprint acc bonus but the effect doesn't get removed. 

But maybe it works like that - as I said I didn't test that specific setup (at least not that I can remember). 

[MaxQuest]

On 11/7/2021 at 11:05 AM, Boeroer said:

- it should get included in the Community Patch mod as well (hello @MaxQuest). Maybe it already is in the newest draft?

We have discussed this with Phenomenum several months ago, and agreed that it would make sense to let:

• Spirit Frenzy (and it's upgrades) proc only on slash/pierce/crush/raw damage
• Blood Frenzy (and it's upgrades) proc only on crits that accompany slash/pierce/crush/raw damage

Also, I want to emphasize that it's one thing to have a list of drafted changes, another to know how to actually implement them, and another to have time for all that

---

Btw, does anyone know?:

• how to combine onDamaged with OnCriticallyHit and OnHitOrCriticallyHit statusEffect event types?
• how to implement channeling casting. I.e. and effect happens only during active casting; and when the character performs any other action, the effect immediately stops?
• how to make a trinket unswappable during combat?

Edited November 11, 2021 by MaxQuest

[Boeroer]

5 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

We have discussed this with Phenomenum several months ago, and agreed that it would make sense to let:

• Spirit Frenzy (and it's upgrades) proc only on slash/pierce/crush/raw damage
• Blood Frenzy (and it's upgrades) proc only on crits that accompany slash/pierce/crush/raw damage

Afaik players are very happy with the way Spirit Frenzy and Blood Frenzy (and Blood Storm) work. I know that I am.

At the same time it's not really an overpowered mechanic since Barbarians aren't considered a particularly powerful class in the first place. What's fun about the current Spirit Frenzy/Blood Frenzy implementation is that it opens up so many interesting synergies. Would you implement the changes how you describe them you would kill those synergies and make the use cases of Barbs more narrow. Currently, due to Spirit Frenzy, Barbs can be more than dumb damage dealers. They can be nice debuffers, too. So your change would take away options - but at the same time nothing interesting/fun would be added.  

I personally would just alter Spirit Tornado so that the stagger works like with Spirit Frenzy. It's also way less complicated. Also no change to description needed.  

Sometimes a more "realistic(TM)" approach isn't he better game mechanic. This is such a case imo. 
 

[MaxQuest]

I understand your arguments)

But want to clarify first:

Is current Spirit Frenzy behavior in the right spot, or it feels a bit cheesy? Am asking because it is relatively easy to apply Stagger with it, and thus have "engagement immunity" of some sorts without the detriment that comes with the Grog pet.

[Boeroer]

I think it's fine. There are lots of ways to escape engagement and I didn't intentionally use Spirit Frenzy as anti-engagement tool so far. More as fortitude debuffing tool. There are many other ways to escape engagement (first of all hard CC) so I never saw the appeal to use Spirit Frenzy for that specifically.  

Spirit Frenzy is one reason why I think Barb/Chanters are awesome & fun debuffers (Barb/Druids, too). And it also kind of makes sense that a brutish bard burps out phrases so horrible that enemies get staggered.    

I mean we have Dazing Shout, invocations that stun and paralyze and so on. Why shouldn't AoE effects that don't deal physical damage stagger foes with "Spirit" Frenzy? I mean it's about the spirit, not crush/pierce/slash/raw.  

 

[Elric Galad]

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

At the same time it's not really an overpowered mechanic since Barbarians aren't considered a particularly powerful class in the first place. What's fun about the current Spirit Frenzy/Blood Frenzy implementation is that it opens up so many interesting synergies. Would you implement the changes how you describe them you would kill those synergies and make the use cases of Barbs more narrow. Currently, due to Spirit Frenzy, Barbs can be more than dumb damage dealers. They can be nice debuffers, too. So your change would take away options - but at the same time nothing interesting/fun would be added.  

I personally would just alter Spirit Tornado so that the stagger works like with Spirit Frenzy. It's also way less complicated. Also no change to description needed.  
 

This is what I've done in BPM, and the reason why I did so in a nutshell.

[MaxQuest]

17 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I think it's fine. There are lots of ways to escape engagement and I didn't intentionally use Spirit Frenzy as anti-engagement tool so far. More as fortitude debuffing tool. There are many other ways to escape engagement (first of all hard CC) so I never saw the appeal to use Spirit Frenzy for that specifically.  

Spirit Frenzy is one reason why I think Barb/Chanters are awesome & fun debuffers (Barb/Druids, too). And it also kind of makes sense that a brutish bard burps out phrases so horrible that enemies get staggered.    

That's pretty much what I was looking for)

Argumented opinion supported by experience of how it feels in the actual game and combat.

I have included a fix for that in CP:Extra v2.0.5. Spirit Tornado will now cause Stagger from All sources (like Spirit Frenzy does).

Also there is a fix for Talfor's EncounterLevel (1->4) in CP:Basic.

 

On 11/7/2021 at 11:05 AM, Boeroer said:

1. At release Blood Frenzy (and its upgrade Blood Storm) only worked with weapon crit rolls - Spirit Frenzy on the other hand worked with all hit rolls, but Spirit Tornado didn't (it worked like Blood Frenzy/Blood Storm: only with weapon hits/crits).

I want to note that Spirit Frenzy and Spirit Tornado trigger OnScoringGrazeHitOrCriticalHit.

Edited November 12, 2021 by MaxQuest