Bellower = underwhelming?

[Zone Jiujitsu]

Can I just say, that compared to a Troub, the bellower is just outclassed in almost every way? I am playing with he BPM and I hate how I am always longing the Troub even with the nerf it got. 

Since the Bellower plays with PL - and when his shouts are supposed to be stronger - can he get a buff to the PL of his chants? So they are stronger - etc? At least while he has stacked invocation/phrases or something.

Or allow him to access certain phrases earlier?

I just hate how powerful troub is - and how he is the defining experience of a chanter. All of the above does not compare to rushing out skellies with many lives, semi immunity to afflictions, fast rebuff on the temp hit point shield, the versatility of pushing out different chants, better chant range, better linger if you choose it. Troub just blows it out of the water with barely any drawbacks. 

WHY DID YOU MAKE TROUB OBSIDIAN??!! (Or why not make Bellower better?)

[yorname]

I don't know how to make bellower work either. +PL makes most sense for offensive incantations, but why not use skald then, they are so efficient with low cost incantations that +PL can't compete

Edited January 22 by yorname

[Elric Galad]

53 minutes ago, yorname said:

I don't know how to make bellower work either. +PL makes most sense for offensive innovations, but why not use skald then, they are so efficient with low cost innovations that +PL can't compete

Skald is specialist of low level Offensive Invocation. It would be a shame if Bellower topped them.

Ask a Skald to summon Ancient Weapons, you'll see the difference with Bellower.

I think Bellower is fine being the only subclass with a net raw power gain at the cost of only flexibility. Eld Nary poorly working with them deserves to be corrected though.

 

I think the optimal Bellower gameplay should be to start with a powerful summon, then spam mid-level offensive spells (7 tears is good before I correct Eld Nary). Your spell duration should allow spamming then while your summons are still active.

 

I still need more numbers to consider BPM Troubadours as OP though. 

Edited January 22 by Elric Galad

[Zone Jiujitsu]

5 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

I think the optimal Bellower gameplay should be to start with a powerful summon, then spam mid-level offensive spells (7 tears is good before I correct Eld Nary). Your spell duration should allow spamming then while your summons are still active.

 

I still need more numbers to consider BPM Troubadours as OP though. 

Even with a monk giving them +10 they don't "spam". They can cast 1 summon spell and then maybe cast a single damage invocation. I mean realistically, the PL bonus gives them what 3 accuracy, and some slight time buffs?

Compare that to a troubador who is not only letting invocations go, at a faster rate - but is also shifting/changing chants (at a greater range too) to be effective at all time of the battle. I don't think that is discussed enough, the troub is chants and invocations, while the other classes are mainly using just invocations and a stuck with the vanilla chants.

No other class can brisk recitation to get 10 pt shields, immunity to mind/constitution attacks, or extend their lash to be able to have two out at level 1. Yes, you can do it if you reach about 27 in INT but that requires items, and guess what the troub can do it too is getting better benefits out of it as well!

Edited January 22 by Zone Jiujitsu

[Elric Galad]

Troub is more like Chant OR Invocation though. Both can be better than vanilla Chanter, but not at the same time. The other part will be worse. It's a nice versatile subclass, but i term of raw power, BPM troub does not feel above vanilla Chanter.

At least I would need numbers comparing both to prove the point. 

33% extra cost for the starting invocations is for example really bad. 

17 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

 

[thelee]

18 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

Can I just say, that compared to a Troub, the bellower is just outclassed in almost every way? I am playing with he BPM and I hate how I am always longing the Troub even with the nerf it got. 

in comparison to other kits, bellower doesn't suffer particularly compared to troubadour. it's more just that troubadour is a pretty good flexible kit compared to all the other kits, and the "downside" of having chants cycle faster but no linger is not really a downside for several chants (as you mention).

 

one thing i'll note that for bellower, it almost never makes sense to charge up chants beyond what you need for an invocation just for the bonus PL. you should be using invocations when you can - the bonus PL makes each invocation really good, but not good enough that it's worth making invocations less frequent in exchange for a handful of extra PL. bellower also benefits from sasha's singing scimitar letting your recharge all your chants after empowering an invocation. and all non-troubs benefit more from blightheart and robe of the weyc's chant boosting than a troub does, which helps close the gap.

[Elric Galad]

51 minutes ago, thelee said:

in comparison to other kits, bellower doesn't suffer particularly compared to troubadour. it's more just that troubadour is a pretty good flexible kit compared to all the other kits, and the "downside" of having chants cycle faster but no linger is not really a downside for several chants (as you mention).

 

one thing i'll note that for bellower, it almost never makes sense to charge up chants beyond what you need for an invocation just for the bonus PL. you should be using invocations when you can - the bonus PL makes each invocation really good, but not good enough that it's worth making invocations less frequent in exchange for a handful of extra PL. bellower also benefits from sasha's singing scimitar letting your recharge all your chants after empowering an invocation. and all non-troubs benefit more from blightheart and robe of the weyc's chant boosting than a troub does, which helps close the gap.

Let's not forget OP and I are discussing about BPM Troub, whose Brisk recitation only has 4s chants (not 3s).

And BPM Great Soul give +25% chanting speed (-20% phrase duration) which indeed benefit more other subclasses.

 

So let's put number in comparison, for MC Troubadour / Chanter with 20 INT (reasonable value) each.

For 3 Phrases chant :

Troubadour without Brisk is pulling 33% less invocation and 14.3% more phrase duration.
Troubadour with Brisk is pulling 12.5% more invocation and 42.9% less phrase duration.

It becomes better with higher level invocations, of course. But that was my point, BPM Troub is quite lame with low level invocations. 

And there's a couple of chants that just benefits faster chanting.

[thelee]

yeah, my original comment before i edited for length pre-submit mentioned that i was talking about the more extreme vanilla case, and it'd be way closer with bpm.

 

troubadour is a default recommendation because it's hard to get wrong, but it also doesn't mean it's a strictly dominant kit (except above vanilla changer probably). i can see that if you're just brisk reciting through shield chants while blasting invocations that can feel very powerful, but you can also do powerful things with other subclasses as well (even in base game), just with a bit more thought.

Edited January 22 by thelee

[Boeroer]

I believe some players underestimate the impact of PL bonuses.

Per 1 PL (where applicable):

Healing +5%
Damage +5%
Duration +5%
Accuracy +1
Penetration +0.25

(one has to ask: why not AoE size...?)

With stuff like damage and duration the PL bonus increases the base value, so it can be multiplicative (with other damage bonuses for example). Even with the least impactful way to use Power Levels (summons) this could be good enough: A dragon summon with a base duration of 25 secs and a PL bonus of min 7 will suddenly have a "base" duration of ~34 secs - which might mean you could uphold a dragon summon at all times with few cast (didn't actually try but I guess this should be pretty valuable). A Troub could simply cast it more quickly again but would have to cast the invocation twice. On the flipside the Troub's second dragon will have fresh HP... But way better than Vanilla chanters' dragons though.   

In some cases it can be more valuable to cast an invocation with +5 PL than casting two invocations with no PL bonus of the same kind - for example when the normal invocation would frequently miss or graze or if it underpenetrates.
And one has to remember that the Troubadour has increased invocation cost which doesn't let him dish out invocations twice as fast - and not only bc. of the +1 cost, but also because of one added "singing" recovery which stops the chanting for some time. +1 phrase cost isn't a big deal with the expensive invocations - but hurts with the cheap ones. So the situation dictates whether +5 or +7 or so PLs are as good as a non-buffed invocation followed by a faster non-buffed invocation.

The small chant AoE is not cool - but it can become meaningless with the right phrase - for example Many Lives

The real advatage of the Troubadour is its versatility - not only during the game but also when planning your character and the role. Is it more about cool chants? +50% linger time! Is it about fast invocations of all different sorts: Brisk Recitation!  And versatility is a big boon in this game imo. Then also some phrases simply don't care if you cut off the linger time (again Many Lives, but also several others) - little design flaw if you ask me.     

Imo Bellowers should use pricey invocation in a way @theleedescribed: cast them when available, don't try to collect more phrases (which will be cut after the invocation).
I find they don't perform notably better than vanilla chanter in normal encounters, but against tough nuts and bosses the always present PL buffs do work quite well.

 

Edited January 22 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

9 minutes ago, thelee said:

yeah, my original comment before i edited for length pre-submit mentioned that i was talking about the more extreme vanilla case, and it'd be way closer with bpm.

 

troubadour is a default recommendation because it's hard to get wrong, but it also doesn't mean it's a strictly dominant kit (except above vanilla changer probably). i can see that if you're just brisk reciting through shield chants while blasting invocations that can feel very powerful, but you can also do powerful things with other subclasses as well (even in base game), just with a bit more thought.

I'm not even sure BPM troub is above base Chanter. If you want to use the wurms, Ben Fidel debuff, and rejoice comrades, with Mercy and Ancient Memory, base Chanter is arguably better. 

But subclasses are in general better than no subclass for all classes, albeit not strictly. 

Edited January 22 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

8 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

A dragon summon with a base duration of 25 () secs and a PL bonus of 7 will suddenly have a "base" duration of 35 secs which can mean you can uphold a dragon summon at all times (didn't actually try but I guess this should be pretty valuable). 

yeah i did a SC bellower once and you can get 100% uptime on dragon. it actually changed my line of thinking on bellower, originally thinking that you should only be using very offensive invocations (to get maximum PL benefit). getting PL just so you can get extend a powerful summon duration for maximum uptime turns out to be very useful as well. only other chanter that can consistently do this is a troubadour, but you'd have to give up linger on chants (which may not be bad if you're spitting out shields or resist chants, but would be bad if you have like a aefyllath ues=>ancient memory song)

Edited January 22 by thelee

[Boeroer]

5 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

But subclasses are in general better than no subclass for all classes, albeit not strictly. 

Usually they are "better" because players are good at emphasizing the advantages and circumventing the downsides.  

[Elric Galad]

2 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Usually they are "better" because players are good at emphasizing the advantages and circumventing the downsides.  

Yeah, and also some just have better upside than downside. Looking at you Fury Shaper. 

[Boeroer]

11 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Yeah, and also some just have better upside than downside. Looking at you Fury Shaper. 

If I were a smart game AI I would use Wizards with with Miasma, Enervating Terror and Draining Touch against a Furyshaper.  

[Zone Jiujitsu]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

in comparison to other kits, bellower doesn't suffer particularly compared to troubadour. it's more just that troubadour is a pretty good flexible kit compared to all the other kits, and the "downside" of having chants cycle faster but no linger is not really a downside for several chants (as you mention).

 

one thing i'll note that for bellower, it almost never makes sense to charge up chants beyond what you need for an invocation just for the bonus PL. you should be using invocations when you can - the bonus PL makes each invocation really good, but not good enough that it's worth making invocations less frequent in exchange for a handful of extra PL. bellower also benefits from sasha's singing scimitar letting your recharge all your chants after empowering an invocation. and all non-troubs benefit more from blightheart and robe of the weyc's chant boosting than a troub does, which helps close the gap.

But Troub also benefits from Sasha's and Blightheart.

 

55 minutes ago, thelee said:

yeah i did a SC bellower once and you can get 100% uptime on dragon. it actually changed my line of thinking on bellower, originally thinking that you should only be using very offensive invocations (to get maximum PL benefit). getting PL just so you can get extend a powerful summon duration for maximum uptime turns out to be very useful as well. only other chanter that can consistently do this is a troubadour, but you'd have to give up linger on chants (which may not be bad if you're spitting out shields or resist chants, but would be bad if you have like a aefyllath ues=>ancient memory song)

So we are limited to one invocation, a high level invocation at that. Meanwhile, with troub you can swap and refresh skellies fast, clear debuffs, grants shields, etc. I feel like I am talking to a wall here, EVERYONE suggests troub. Why?

 

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

I believe some players underestimate the impact of PL bonuses.

Per 1 PL (where applicable):

Healing +5%
Damage +5%
Duration +5%
Accuracy +1
Penetration +0.25

(one has to ask: why not AoE size...?)

With stuff like damage and duration the PL bonus increases the base value, so it can be multiplicative (with other damage bonuses for example). Even with the least impactful way to use Power Levels (summons) this could be good enough: A dragon summon with a base duration of 25 secs and a PL bonus of min 7 will suddenly have a "base" duration of ~34 secs - which might mean you could uphold a dragon summon at all times with few cast (didn't actually try but I guess this should be pretty valuable). A Troub could simply cast it more quickly again but would have to cast the invocation twice. On the flipside the Troub's second dragon will have fresh HP... But way better than Vanilla chanters' dragons though.   

In some cases it can be more valuable to cast an invocation with +5 PL than casting two invocations with no PL bonus of the same kind - for example when the normal invocation would frequently miss or graze or if it underpenetrates.
And one has to remember that the Troubadour has increased invocation cost which doesn't let him dish out invocations twice as fast - and not only bc. of the +1 cost, but also because of one added "singing" recovery which stops the chanting for some time. +1 phrase cost isn't a big deal with the expensive invocations - but hurts with the cheap ones. So the situation dictates whether +5 or +7 or so PLs are as good as a non-buffed invocation followed by a faster non-buffed invocation.

The small chant AoE is not cool - but it can become meaningless with the right phrase - for example Many Lives

The real advatage of the Troubadour is its versatility - not only during the game but also when planning your character and the role. Is it more about cool chants? +50% linger time! Is it about fast invocations of all different sorts: Brisk Recitation!  And versatility is a big boon in this game imo. Then also some phrases simply don't care if you cut off the linger time (again Many Lives, but also several others) - little design flaw if you ask me.     

Imo Bellowers should use pricey invocation in a way @theleedescribed: cast them when available, don't try to collect more phrases (which will be cut after the invocation).
I find they don't perform notably better than vanilla chanter in normal encounters, but against tough nuts and bosses the always present PL buffs do work quite well.

 

Thank you for this, in some instances a troub can pick different summons to match the situation, or different chants at long lingers, etc. If he needs to cast two fingers he can swap to that, or he can swap to pumping out bodies, and it goes on.
I mean there are some good points in here but the overall thing being said is that troub just offers way too much. Most things that are told the bellower can do - the troub can do as well with more versatility.

Sure there is a time that chanting stops, but this is offset with switching chants to the chants that dont need linger, then swapping to the ones that do then letting an invocation off. 

[Constentin Lévine]

By memory i had reach PL32 with a SC Bellower, but with many items and micro at the combat start. But more simply, reach the PL25 is not a big deal. I wrote here my steps and in comment there is a screen of the Old Nary invocation at PL32 (24 bounces).

It is not possible to reach a same power with a troub, but versatility is also a kind of power.  

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

So we are limited to one invocation, a high level invocation at that. Meanwhile, with troub you can swap and refresh skellies fast, clear debuffs, grants shields, etc. I feel like I am talking to a wall here,

Me too. You just keep repating the same arguments about Troubadour being the most versatile subclass, which everyone agrees.

Which translates automatically in your mind into Troubadour is the best. Which isn't that obvious, because other subclasses are just better at what they do.

I took time to give you numbers about raw power, that you didn't even answer to. That's quite hard to discuss, because it is my main point : Troubadour are like the most versatile, but they are not the best at combining both aspects of the subclass. They HAVE TO choose one side.

1 hour ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

EVERYONE suggests troub. Why?

The context of this part isn't clear to me. Everyone in this thread suggests other subclasses.

You mean other threads ?

Simply, because without BPM nerf, it is undeniably the most OP subclass. Doubling the phrase generation is just soooo broken. Extending linger is just the icing on the cake.

Without BPM nerf, I have a hard time not to recommand Troubadour for almost any build. It works better for everything that isn't a niche.

1 hour ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

Thank you for this, in some instances a troub can pick different summons to match the situation, or different chants at long lingers, etc. If he needs to cast two fingers he can swap to that, or he can swap to pumping out bodies, and it goes on.
I mean there are some good points in here but the overall thing being said is that troub just offers way too much. Most things that are told the bellower can do - the troub can do as well with more versatility.

To swap everything, you need to pick a tons of abilities. To have best invocation abilities, you need the base and the upgrade.

Chanters, esp mutliclass ones tend to end up with less abilities than you want in my experience.

Like 3-5 chant, a couple of generalist talents, 4-5 upgraded invocation, a couple of unupgraded ones = your chanter half. Some possibilities, but you're not a wizard either. If you pick more, your other half will suffer a bit.

That's why more specialized version aren't so bad.

1 hour ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

Sure there is a time that chanting stops, but this is offset with switching chants to the chants that dont need linger, then swapping to the ones that do then letting an invocation off. 

I don't even get the point of this sentence.

Like it feels you're being ecstatic about the sheer number of possibilities the subclass. Which is... legit, sure, but... seriously do you realize the subclass just fit your playstyle which is about adapting to the situation ?

Edited January 22 by Elric Galad

[dgray62]

I personally prefer Bellowers. You feel the impact of the their +PLs in the first fights on the ship and on the beach, in that you're much more likely to crit and one shot foes with the Thrice/Her Revenge invocation. Personally, I prefer bellowers with a melee multi class; when you're up on the front line the smaller chant radius doesn't matter much. And my favorite chants with this sort of build, Thick Grew their Tongues and The Long Night's Drink, don't work well with Brisk Recitation.

[Elric Galad]

Anyway BPM hotfix for Bellower's Eld Nary is working and will be released tomorrow.

Be prepared for big bouncing tornadoes.

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

But Troub also benefits from Sasha's and Blightheart.

i'm allowing for possibly a language gap, but the point is that the troub doesn't benefit as much, because they already have phrase generation mechanisms (brisk recitation). sasha's and blightheart and weyc's close the gap for other subclasses. and frankly, bellower can make use of sasha's better than troub. pretty much the standard recommendation with sasha's is to enchant it to get back an empower point. with bellower, i'd say the opposite should be recommended, enchanting to restore all your phrases, because getting one invocation at +PL and then following it up immediately with another one at up to +7 PL is powerful.

5 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:

So we are limited to one invocation, a high level invocation at that. Meanwhile, with troub you can swap and refresh skellies fast, clear debuffs, grants shields, etc. I feel like I am talking to a wall here, EVERYONE suggests troub. Why?

are you actually looking for answers on how other chanter subclasses (esp bellower) can have their niches? because this is an INSANELY bad faith reading of what boeroer and i wrote. we were simply highlighting one particular invocation - my post was even talking about how previously i thought that kind of invocation was bad for bellower until i gave it a try, which if reading comprehension was your forte made a clear implication of what other invocations were obviously good for bellower.

Quote

EVERYONE suggests troub. Why?

almost every other participant in this thread has commented on this. troubadours give you versatility.

edit: as i've said, that versatility means that troubadour is a default recommendation (literally CTRL-F in this thread and i said it before you made this post). i feel like *i'm* talking to a wall, because i'm literally repeating myself here: but this versatility means that it's very easy to have a good chanter, but it doesn't necessarily mean it strictly dominates any other subclass (though in base game i argue that it pretty much dominates vanilla chanter).

Edited January 23 by thelee

[Zone Jiujitsu]

I disagree, but whatever. 

I’ve stopped responding because we are clearly at an impasse. Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

Edited January 23 by Zone Jiujitsu