Advice on Barbarian/Chanter multiclass (POTD)

[Y2MAC]

Hello

 

I am currently on my first playthrough (Veteran difficulty, PlayStation 4) and will finish the game in the next couple days. I LOVE the game and want to start a second run right after.
I want to play on POTD, because Veteran is too easy. So far I only had a little bit of trouble with the Nemnok fight, but that's it.
My current MC is a Inquisitor (Bleak Walker/Soulblade) with Two Handed Weapon. I used a 4 year old guide from Fextralife for this Inquisitor.

In the second run I want to play a melee again. I decided on a Howler (Barbarian/Chanter multiclass). I want to play with dual wield (want to use Modwyr and probably Sasha's Singing Scimitar). I guess I'll go with Berserker/Skald.

My question is how would I build this character? Attributes, abilities, talents.

I want to play with this team:

Pallegina (Herald) as tank
Tekehu (single class Druid)
Maia Rua (Scout)
Xoti (single class Priest)

I know there is some conflict potential with this party, but it should be manageable without someone leaving for good, right?

 

A few other questions:

1) Is using bombs and traps worth it? I never used any of those in my first playthrough

2) What exactly does the upscale option do when starting a new game? Should I bother with it on my forst POTD run?

3) I never played a Chanter. How should I fill my chant book? Does it make sense to fill one chant with the same phrases? Or is that complete nonsense?

4) Pallegina will be a Herald so I will have two Chanters in my party. I guess my Barbarian/Skald should concentrate on offensive chants and Pallegina on defensive/summon chants?

 

Thanks

[hansvedic]

Are you playing turn-based or real-time? The answer to that will affect ideal builds a bit.

EDIT: For example, in real-time it’s easy to use the berserker’s confusion and a beckoner to summon skeletons (vessels), attack the weak Skeletons with Grave Calling Sabre, and make many chillfogs with decent dexterity.

However, in turn-based this may not be as good of an idea due to the limitation on number of attacks per round not being affected by dexterity or action speed. Still, Barbarians get Spirit Tornado late game that is a free action AOE damage ability; you can spam it to cause a good bit of damage while the enemies sit there and wait their turn. Barbarians also can get a LOT of health, which can be helpful with turn-based increased graze range.

Edited August 3, 2022 by hansvedic
Add more info relevant to OP

[Boeroer]

You can choose Berserker/Troubadour, then summon Ancient Brittle Bones (and later use Many Lives Pass By + Brisk Recitation), Frenzy and hack away at the enemy together with your skeletons. Make sure to pick a pet that does +20 health on kill. If you have Edér+ Breath Blessing "Can I pet him anyway?" then give him Abraham as pet. 

Go for Bloodlust, Barbaric Smash (only as finisher), Bloody Slaughter, Blood Thirst, Blood Storm and Interrupting Blows (and whatever melee Barbs can pick - like One Stands Alone, Two Weapon Style etc).

Use Killers Frozen Stiff as invocation once Many Lives Pass By is running or just hold on to the phrases for Sasha's Scimitar's shocking lash. You can also use Many Lives + Aefyllath for slower skeleton generation and an additional lash, but most of the time Many Lives nonstop will be better.

The trick is to kill the skeletons "accidentially" with Carnage while confused. This grants +20 health via pet (or +30 with Edér/Abraham), Bloodlust, Blood Thirst(!) and makes you superhealthy and superfast because recovery will get skipped a lot. Great mob diminisher and squishy hunter. Use Leap to get to the backline of enemies quickly. Can also Threatening Presence or Nomad's Brigandine to be immune to engagement/ disengagement attacks. 

You need high INT and also maybe some AoE expanders like Ring of Overseeing etc. because while confused your INT goes down and so does your Carnage AoE. You don't want to maneuver too much to get your skeletons into Carnage range, that's too fiddly and annoying. So big AoE it is. 

However: you can't get too near with party members for long or they will get hurt, too (unless they are really tanky).

Anyway: it's a hackfest at some point - and before that it's versatile and useful, too. 

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Boeroer

[Y2MAC]

5 hours ago, hansvedic said:

Are you playing turn-based or real-time? The answer to that will affect ideal builds a bit.

Oh, sorry. I play with RTWP!

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

You can choose Berserker/Troubadour, then summon Ancient Brittle Bones (and later use Many Lives Pass By + Brisk Recitation), Frenzy and hack away at the enemy together with your skeletons. Make sure to pick a pet that does +20 health on kill. If you have Edér+ Breath Blessing "Can I pet him anyway?" then give him Abraham as pet.

Thanks, but I settled on Berserker/Skald, won't be using Eder on this playthrough and I will counter confusion with Modwyr. So this won't work for me

Can you tell me how to build a Berserker/Skald (Attributes, abilities, talents and playstyle)? I see you in almost every thread. You seem to know a lot about the game

 

Also, could someone answer these?:

14 hours ago, Y2MAC said:

A few other questions:

1) Is using bombs and traps worth it? I never used any of those in my first playthrough

2) What exactly does the upscale option do when starting a new game? Should I bother with it on my forst POTD run?

3) I never played a Chanter. How should I fill my chant book? Does it make sense to fill one chant with the same phrases? Or is that complete nonsense?

4) Pallegina will be a Herald so I will have two Chanters in my party. I guess my Berserker/Skald should concentrate on offensive chants and Pallegina on defensive/summon chants?

Thanks!

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Y2MAC said:

Oh, sorry. I play with RTWP!

Thanks, but I settled on Berserker/Skald, won't be using Eder on this playthrough and I will counter confusion with Modwyr. So this won't work for me

Can you tell me how to build a Berserker/Skald (Attributes, abilities, talents and playstyle)? I see you in almost every thread. You seem to know a lot about the game

 

Also, could someone answer these?:

Thanks!

For Berserker/Skald it's beneficial to use Killers Frozen Stiff + fast melee attacks. The perfect weapon for a Berserker/Skald is Sun & Moon because it has two attack rolls per strike (so two chances for a crit instead of one per weapon strike). Other fast weapons with high ACC (Rapier, Dagger) are also good. The next best is heavier one handed weapons like swords and sabres etc. So Modwyr+Sasha's does work well. Sasha's + Scordeo's Edge with Blade Cascade & Adaptive in one weapon set (slash) and Modwyr + Watcher's Blade (pierce/slash) or Sun & Moon (pierce/slash & crush) would be even better imo, but that's negligible. If you like Modwyr + Sasha's as your preferred option it's okay. 

Other good option is a Morning Star because Spirit Frenzy + The Long Night's Drink + Morning Star modal + Brute Force provides a lot Fortitude debuff "on the fly" which grants more crits. Especially Saru Sichr is nice here because it does two hit rolls per attack (one for the physical attack, one for the poison DoT). But it's slower than a dual wielding setup of course.

Killers Froze Stiff is a nice invocation for a Skald because it's cheap, very impactful because early hard CC and also provides 25% crit conversion which stacks with Berserker's crit conversion, Bloody Slaughter, Barbaric Smash and whatever crit conversion you get on top of that (Uncanny Luck or whatever). 

So you not only deliver great CC repeatedly but also increase your chances to get phrases from crits. 

As phrases go I would prefer Aefyllath (stacks nicely with Modwyr's and Sasha's lashes and lashes are always good). If you manage to extend the linger long enough (need a ton of INT) I personally would add Old Siec because it helps with the Berserker's Self damage. But of course it doesn't really matter which of your Chanters is singing which as long as they are in each other's range. 

Pallegina as Herald: I would concentrate on stacking passive healing and defenses with her - such as Exalted Endurance + Ancient Memory (+maybe Her Courage later on). Also having the resistance phrases is great. They can remove all sorts of afflictions of you switch to them. One phrase will remove one layer of afflictions until nothing is left. As invocations I think summons are most impactful with her. 

I would still get a heal-per-kill pet because the Berserker's self damage will reach numbers where it can easily kill you if you don't get any healing - even if you are not attacked. Using the Voidward Ring and other damage reduction gear also helps. Abraham is a great pet because it combines attack speed (or better: less recovery penalty for armor) with healing per kill (only 10, but still good). 

Killers Frozen Stiff doesn't profit from Berserker's Tenacious, so from time to time it's totally worth it to use Her Revenge or so as alternative invocation. Her Tears Falling Like Rain, too.

Make sure that you take a very costly invocation at some point during your level-ups - even if you don't plan to use it. Your max phrase counter is determined by the most expensive invocation. And you want to have the biggest pool size possible. If you stick to the cheap invocations only (which would be the intuitive thing to do) your phrase pool will stay small. But if you only take one expensive invocation it's suddenly way bigger. For example at max level I will retrain and pick my favorite invocations like before and then I will also pick "Ancient Instruments of Death". It's a very good summon and always useful - but for a Skald it's also very expensive - so it gives you a big phrase pool. If you crit a lot and gain phrases more quickly than you want to spend them you can now "charge up" more phrases and then unleash a barrage of up to 3 invocations - for example 3 times Her Revenge in a row - and still have a phrase left.

Traps are not worth it (selling them is the best use for them imo unless you want to lure enemies with them - they make a lil' sound when set up).  Explosives can be good - if you skill a lot of explosives and pick the right bombs for the right enemies.  But honestly I think scrolls and potions are better than explosives overall. 

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by Boeroer

[NotDumbEnough]

Should probably just pump Athletics for critical self heals. You're going to be in dicey situations occasionally due to your self damage, which by the way feels like it scales faster with levels than your HP does.

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Traps are not worth it (selling them is the best use for them imo unless you want to lure enemies with them - they make a lil' sound when set up).  Explosives can be good - if you skill a lot of explosives and pick the right bombs for the right enemies.  But honestly I think scrolls and potions are better than explosives overall. 

i think explosives have a better upper end than potions. potions are pretty decent, but you also don't need a lot of alchemy unless you're doing drugs imo. but imp spray, frost, or shock bombs are great to have tons of accuracy on in late game (and the solid cinder bombs are good throughout the entire game). even the heal bombs are decent mid-late game with explosives investment.

Edited August 3, 2022 by thelee

[abot]

traps may be good for casters in difficult fights as you can start the fight staying stealthed and summon + buff very fast from stealth

[Y2MAC]

A lot of good info. Thanks.

How should I distribute the attributes for this char? I'll play with some Berath's Blessings, so I' l will have +2 to each attribute.

[thelee]

i am a big fan of perception on barbarians, i think it is basically a king stat for them[1]. as a plus, if you're going with skald, high perception will also help you crit more often. i would personally max perception (i would even pick a hearth orlan and choose white that wends to get base 21 perception). after that dex and int are good, though i would not worry as much about them (i would normally rate them king stats for most other classes) since barbarian gets a very nice action bonus from frenzy and the carnage radius is so small you're not going to get much value out of int (and for the types of stuff you're typically going to be doing with a skald you can get away with moderate int, like base of 14 or 15 plus some items).

 

[1] the math is that because carnage only triggers on a hit (vs being a separate roll), each point of perception actually gives you polynomial returns in terms of damage for a while (until you get reeeeeally high accuracy vs enemy defense), which is different from every other class. add-in some synergy with barbarian interrupting on crits with high-level talent.

Edited August 4, 2022 by thelee

[Kaylon]

Modwyr is cool but isn't that great for crit builds - one of the best combos for that is Grave Calling + Scordeo's Edge + Fair Favor (high accuracy and once you start freezing enemies you start chaining crits like crazy), however it takes some time to max your buffs and requires high INT to keep your stacks maxed. Grave Calling opens also some great combos with Chill Fog and your skeletons.