How best to use Bellower

[crdvis16]

In my most recent playthrough I modded Rekke into an Enchanter/Bellower (fun fact: in the code, Bellower is actually called Murmurer and more off-topic, Fassina is Fessina).  I intended to make him a tank with chants catered to his own benefit (given the smaller chanting radius) who can dish out some occasionally big invocation casts.  He ended up not being tanky enough for my tastes even with the Enchanter self buffs and I ended up wanting him to use Sasha's Singing Scimitar and Weyc's Wand together for the empowered cast synergies (no more room for a shield so even less tanky).  However, I wasn't sure if I was really getting my money's worth from his high ability power.

I know from experience and from reading @thelee 's ability power post that certain spells REALLY benefit from empowerment (minoletta's missiles, for instance).  I was hoping that the chanter's Thrice Was She Wronged ability would similarly benefit but I think the number of projectiles for it is kept at 3 even when empowered.  I think Eld Nary's is benefiting a lot from ability power with extra damage and jumps.  I can't tell how much Her Tears Fell Like Rain benefits- it's kind of hard to test it out with how hard it is to see who will get hit (unlike minoletta's missiles which is really easy to test).

My gut feeling is that Bellower might need to be multiclassed with another class to really use the ability power.  Enchanter was a bad one I think- not very many spells within school to make good use of ability power.  Evoker would work I'm sure.  But maybe there are other classes/subclasses that would pair well?

Arcane Archer comes to mind.  Use a multi-hit weapon and driving flight for 3 empowered fireballs?

I'm sure there must be some Druid spells that would benefit more from ability power?

Also- does anyone know for sure that the  Bellower's ability power from their chants will then stack with a followup empowered ability?  I assume it stacks with any item ability power buffs.

Would the following work:

A  Bellower/Arcane Archer invokes with, say, 6 phrases for +6 ability power and then follows up with an empowered (+5 ability power) Imbue:Fireball (maybe using a bouncing weapon like Tekehu's wand and Driving Flight for 3 hits of it).  And maybe this character also has some +fire ability power items (I believe there's a ring and a pet at the very least).  Arcane Archer would also have access to Imbue:Missiles to blow up a single target.

I guess I'm wondering how high one can get their ability power and then what the best use of that ability power would be.

[Not So Clever Hound]

2 minutes ago, crdvis16 said:

Fassina is Fessina

Fessina strikes again... on the other cheek.

[crdvis16]

Yeah- her being Fessina was really confusing when trying to mod her.  It took me a long time to find her in the gamedatabundle and when I finally saw why I nearly threw my laptop across the room haha. 

[thelee]

careful: bellower power level bonus only applies to chanter invocations (not even chanter chants). it didn't seem clear that you understood this distinction.

 

1 hour ago, crdvis16 said:

was hoping that the chanter's Thrice Was She Wronged ability would similarly benefit but I think the number of projectiles for it is kept at 3 even when empowered.

a few abilities have their projectile counts fixed at a hard number and don't scale. Thrice Was She Wronged is one of them. it is still very good for a bellower because the bonus PL can help with penetration (on top of the accuracy and damage).

 

1 hour ago, crdvis16 said:

I think Eld Nary's is benefiting a lot from ability power with extra damage and jumps.

eld nary benefits hugely from empowerment and bellower, but only for bellower in turn-based mode. In RTWP, the bellower buff doesn't last long enough (and the bounce is so slow) that you actually lose the buff and the bonus PL before you even get to the best part of the extra PL (the extra bounces).

 

1 hour ago, crdvis16 said:

 I can't tell how much Her Tears Fell Like Rain benefits

pretty sure this is also fixed. at this point a bellower gets some nice damage and PEN and acc bonuses, so missing out on extra projectiles isn't bad (+25% dmg, +1.25 PEN, +5 ACC)

 

in terms of damage invocations, white wurms is also very good.

 

1 hour ago, crdvis16 said:

Also- does anyone know for sure that the  Bellower's ability power from their chants will then stack with a followup empowered ability?

it will. one of my fun late game tricks was, with sasha's singing scimitar enchanted with full phrases, was to get to 3 phrases somehow (starting off with far from defeated which grants +3 phrases is one way) and empower "her revenge" to get at least +17 PL invocation (+8 from all the ability tiers you unlocked above tier 1, +1 from prestige, +5 from empower, +3 from bellower) and then you get refreshed up to full phrase count to do another invocation (sometimes i'd do "her revenge" again just because of how fast it is and its repeat hits) with +7 PL from phrase count.

[crdvis16]

Ah, yes.  I definitely assumed the power level buff extended to anything cast while the buff was active and not just invocations.  That certainly hurts the multiclass applications

That's a bummer that Eld Nary doesn't benefit from power level with its bounces.  I assumed the power level would be set when you cast it and then it would go off and do the extra bounces even though the power level buff had since fallen off.  If anything, it seems like extra computation and a pain for the spell to adapt to your changing power level.  Weird.

[dgray62]

You can extend the buff I believe with high INT and items like Strand of Favor. But I don't know if you can extend it long enough to last for all of the Eld Nary bounces. The whirlwind moves very slowly, unfortunately.

[NotDumbEnough]

I'd definitely use Her Tears Fell Like Rain instead.

 

1. With the Sasha's enchantment that refunds 3 phrases and 1 empower point the spell is bugged to give you multiple procs of the refund. i.e. you can use it and almost instantly have full phrases again.

2. It's simply a thoroughly ridiculous spell for damage. On my Skald + Devoted multiclass Watcher it was often hitting for upwards of 2000 damage per cast total in the late game and I could shotgun single enemies at point blank for upwards of 600 damage (each primary projectile routinely hit for upwards of 200 damage).

[Constentin Lévine]

3 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

the spell is bugged to give you multiple procs of the refund. i.e. you can use it and almost instantly have full phrases again.

 

It is not bugged, simply each explosion for each bolt count as an empowered spell, then 3 phrases refound per explosions