Potd party Chanter Summoner: SC vs Wildrhymer? how inferior are Drakes to summoned weapons? Are dragons even worth it?

[SirMirrorcoat]

Long hiatus, hello everyone!

Looking for some advice here, as my prefered playstyle these days is the summoner.
I would LOVE to have a big ass dragon by the end of the game, so SC is definitely a big consideration, but some MC options offer a certain amount of variety I find appealing.

I will definitely go for a Moon Godlike (so pretty!) explorer from the Living Lands, and I want to be next to my summons and Eder in battle, so an off-tanky char or melee-dmger would be up my forte as well.  Aloth will stand in the back and spam spells. The last 2 slots will switch constantly, as I am not yet sure which way to go with this first full run...

Most appealing MC is Wildrhymer Stalker. Another body, better atk acc, and rangers are awesome, and again, the pet! I can have a Drake AND a bear! Only I haven't read anything flattering about this MC, so I'd like some input, especially considering a relatively blind PotD run. Five Stars for flavor, though.

Herald (in my case Kind Wayfarer) I read a lot of good things about, and the flavor is cool, too, but Wildrhymer is cooler xD

Single Class has DRAGONS! And higher power level for other invocations. But most importantly dragons. I think this would be the strongest and most versatile choice for a summoner, but Wildrhymer, again, has the bear.

[Boeroer]

In terms of overall usefulness no summon beats the Animated Weapons imo. They are not only fairly tanky and can spread out but also they each have several uses of special attacks (Pike: Knockdown, Warbow: Wounding Shot and Great Sword: Flames of Devotion) which adds a lot of offensive potential (for example more accuracy than a standard attack).

The Dragon has one (or two) advantages: he is very tanky (huge health pool) and takes up a lot of ground space, blocking a big area. While his standard attack is weak, his active attack abilities (fire breath, tailswipe and so on) do scale very well with his high Power Level and thus have great effect. Only if you used them all up he starts to suck offensively.

The second advantage is that a Dragon can profit from an Ancient Druid's "Wild Growth" spell. This is just hilarious: not only does it give the beast summon the Robust inspiration for the entire summoning duration (Wild Growth has no duration, it's basically permanent for that summon), making it even harder to kill - it also makes it bigger. You can imagine how cool an already huge Dragon can be if you enlarge him even further. What a mountain of an ally. He will block an enormous amount of space for you. This can be a disadvantage, too: if the space is verys limited he might get stuck. But usually it's very useful because he will occupy a lot of enemies with his big size. 

This also works with Drakes (all summoned beasts), but they are considerably weaker.

If you like Wildrhymer I'd say Animated Weapons is good enough though. Also Many Lives Pass By (phrase on PL7) is accessible as multiclass. The automatically summoned Skeletons don't count towards the summoning limit and "stack" with other summons (and Animal Companion). So you can have Chanter summon + Animal Companion + Skeletons.
A nice synergy of Chanter + Ranger is that you can revive the Animal Companion as often as you want with an invocation. So it's not the end of the world if the Animal Companion goes down early. It cannot get injured so it's as good as new after getting revived.  

My preferred multiclass for summoning is Troubadour/Psion because it can add lots of "temporary allies" (aka charmed/dominated enemies) to the collection of summons. Also both resources (phrases and Psion's focus) work the same for a Chanter/Psion and you will almost never run out of casting fuel (unless you get hit all the time which usually doesn't happen due to so many alternative weak cannon fodder targets).

 

Edited July 7 by Boeroer

[SirMirrorcoat]

Thanks, Boeroer!

Another Plus for Wildrhymer, though the Spiritualist concept is intriguing as well. Any more insight on that? With Psion, I could ignore Might and instead boost Dex for faster casting, though the chanter's healing would suffer... mid M/C/R high D/I/P?

[Chaospread]

17 hours ago, Boeroer said:

In terms of overall usefulness no summon beats the Animated Weapons imo.

17 hours ago, Boeroer said:

If you like Wildrhymer I'd say Animated Weapons is good enough though. Also Many Lives Pass By (phrase on PL7) is accessible as multiclass.

I agree with Boeroer. Moreover Animated Weapons have self healing abilities and Drake can be "weak" against fire resistance enemies.
But as a SC you have also one more weapon...

16 hours ago, SirMirrorcoat said:

I could ignore Might and instead boost Dex for faster casting, though the chanter's healing would suffer... mid M/C/R high D/I/P?

I'm playing a Wildrhymer with mid M, low C/R and max D/I/P. If I went back I'd lower DEX and/or PER and would raise a little M, because you can enhance ACC in other way a part form PER and for casting speed you can count on Rapid Casting and Quick Summoning and as you said MIG is good for healing also than for damage.

[SirMirrorcoat]

Now that I think about it and did some more research, I wonder if I should ditch the 'summoner' aspect and focus on the pet more... As strong as they are, I just don't like the animated weapons

Wildrhymer would still be interesting, simply for the passive and active buffs and the indefinitely useable revive for the pet. I'd consider a more offensive pet for that

A Waelite/Stalker could also be cool, strong self buffs and also heals and revives, albeit not infinite

Geomancer I read a lot of good things about, and I'd still get a strong summon

Seer (not Ghostheart as seems to be preferred on the webs) with strong ACC and stuff

This game has far too many interesting class choices xD

[thelee]

On 7/7/2024 at 7:12 AM, SirMirrorcoat said:

Single Class has DRAGONS! And higher power level for other invocations. But most importantly dragons. I think this would be the strongest and most versatile choice for a summoner, but Wildrhymer, again, has the bear.

while i agree that animated weapons are more generally useful, i wouldn't take the other comments to mean that dragons aren't worth using, or that picking dragons is bad.

i've said it before on these forums, but the dragon summon is so tanky, that it can literally facetank the megabosses for you. this is not an exaggeration. against dorudugan, hauane o whe, and belranga, the dragon will literally just be my tank and only when belranga starts getting really fast do i have to worry about uptime. (for this reason, do not pick up dragons on a beckoner; shortening the duration and nerfing the heatlh removes the main benefit of a dragon summon). like boeroer suggests, the size is an asset: against dorudugan i can avoid dorudugan's vacuum attack by just standing behind my dragon - the dragon is wide enough that it body-blocks me from getting sucked into range of dorudugan. (auranic is a whole other kind of fight so the specific nature of the summon isn't so important.)

Plus, as a SC you can always get both animated weapons and dragons if you want. though honestly, however versatile animated weapons are, a dragon still does fine in most situations - spamming tail sweep as soon as the dragon appears will single-handedly end many trash mobs. at this point we're trying to differentiate between S-tier and A++-tier - they're both still really good.

Edited July 8 by thelee

[NotDumbEnough]

I don't think Wildrhymer offers much that can't be done by a singleclass chanter or a ranger multiclassed with something else. Sure-handed Ila makes you shoot VERY fast with guns (an all gun/crossbow team with this chant is very strong) but there's nothing preventing you from running it on another chanter in your party.

As a high level SC chanter in general you are mostly choosing between opening a fight with an empowered Eld Nary (use Sasha's Singing Scimitar for infinite empower points) which will end most smaller fights instantly by itself. If there's a particularly durable single target you generally summon weapons for sustained damage output. The dragon looks cool but is a bit less useful in high level fights where enemies like fampyrs can just teleport past the dragon and go straight for you; it's extremely slow and clunky and isn't that great against enemies that are smart enough to switch targets.

[Boeroer]

Best Wildrhymer for me is a Troubadour/Arcane Archer with the unique arbalest Spearcaster. Arcane Archer will max Arcana anyway so he might as well profit from the bonus ACC of the arbalest as well. A @NotDumbEnoughsaid, Wildrhymer can shoot reloading weapons very fast bc. of Gunner + Sure-Handed Ila (it applies both the -20% recovery AND -20% reloading buff to all reloading weapons!) and some nice items. Because of that I always keep the modal of the arbalest on and prone every enemy I hit. It is possible to almost prone-lock any single enemy that way that isn't immune to prone. The ultra high ACC of items + Spearcaster + Arcana + Ranger abilities makes it unlikely to even graze.

On top of that you have the insane CC aspect of Pull of Eora and Binding Web imbued shots. With Driving Flight you will trigger 2 Pull/Web AoEs with one shot each.

And then you will also have summons plus an Animal Companion.  

[Chaospread]

17 hours ago, Boeroer said:

and some nice items

As for an example Acina's Tricorn, Aegor's Swift Touch and Necklace of the Harvest Moon