Spiritualist MC (Bellower/soul blade) questions

[SArgentus]

So I am returning to Deadfire again – meaning endlessly browsing the forums and theorycrafting builds rather than playing the damn game! Hopefully I can get myself started after a few questions..

I have been looking at a SC chanter – I really like the passive buffs from chants and the powerful offensive invocations (Eld Nary’s is awesome!). However I find that the gameplay can be a bit unengaging after casting the first invocation and using up the bonus phrases from Sasha’s singing scimitar while also having trouble when facing singular tough enemies (although the powerful chanter summons are likely part of the answer here).

 

So I was thinking whether introducing a multiclass to the build would improve this – specifically, I am considering cipher soul blade which would add some powerful DoTs, CC, and burst damage with soul annihilation. My problem is whether this combination would actually synergize (and make up for the loss of SC abilities and PL) beyond covering each other’s weaknesses somewhat:

• From the perspective of the chanter, cipher mainly adds something to do while waiting for phrases, but does not empower their casting beyond borrowed instincts adding a considerable accuracy boon.
• Cipher benefits from access to chants which range from okay (e.g. burn lash, fortitude debuffing) to powerful (combining Many lives with grave calling or wahai poraga for focus generation or WoTEP defensive parry with disengagement defense from The Fox and Silver knights chants). I don’t intend to over abuse grave calling which would likely trivialize the game even for less experienced people like me. I am taking inspiration from this thread BTW.

So, do you guys think this multiclass combination is worth it (using above tricks for additional focus generation) compared to the well liked troubadour/psion combo with fully passive resource generation?
And does the lack of considerable boni towards focus generation (compared to a martial multi) make soul annihilation less viable? (I see it as a burst damage attack when DoTs have already been applied and not the only cipher spell I will be casting)

Regarding chanter subclass, skald seems obvious for cheap offensive invocations and common resource generation with the cipher, but currently I am leaning more towards bellower, which would give me more bang for the buck in terms of damage per time spent casting, leaving more time for cipher spells and normal attacks. Troubadour seems to be commonly accepted as (perhaps) the best subclass choice for quick phrase generation and its interactions with the Many lives chant in this case, which leaves me wondering if the skeleton generation will be enough without quick recitation for focus generation purposes using grave calling or wahai poraga? And do you think bellower actually adds enough with its extra PLs considering it also saves some casting time? (perhaps generally, where do you think bellower fits in a multiclass context?)

Lastly, what chanter spells are worth it with a multiclass? Eld Nary’s is awesome, but is the unupgraded version worth casting compared to other invocations (Perhaps with the bellower PLs?). How about the other offensive invocations? Her revenge seems very popular and for good reason, but is White worms and Seven nights and their upgrades worth the points spent?

 

Apologies for the somewhat unordered post and questions and happy to hear input from the ever active deadfire community!

 

[limaxophobiacq]

More experienced players than me will probably chime in but it is kind of trying to do a lot of things, so I understand why you're going for bellower to try to dump as many phrases as possible into one invocation.

Outside the grave calling abuse I do feel like soulblade generally wants things from a multiclass that chanter just doesn't provide like martial passives or strong self-buffs/defenses that stack with with borrowed instinct. It will probably work because fundamentally neither chanter or soublade lose anything vital by multiclassing and have good action-economy but a lot or other soulblade multiclasses like Heirophant/Mindstalker(Trickster)/Transcendent/Mystic(Wael) will work a lot better.

If you are going for chants for combat buffs like Mith Fyr and Silver knights, the reduced chant radius from bellower is also a pretty significant downside since you won't be giving them to much of your party.

Edit: Obviously you can go full in on abusing many lives pass and grave calling, but then you still would be better of with a more martial multiclass and a friendly troubadur chanting it.

Edit 2: It is kind of hard to answer because you say you don't want to abuse the grave calling to hard, but getting focus from the chill fogs is really what makes the classes synergize, so the amount you are willing to abuse it is going to determine how well it works.

Edited October 19 by limaxophobiacq

[SArgentus]

Thanks, I guess you are right that I might be trying to do too many things at the same time with two casting classes in addition to resource generation for one of them.. perhaps I should give Psion another spin, although I wonder how well it plays with bellower compared to troubadour (perhaps even more low focus powers since the chanter side will be doing things less often).

Comparing soul annihilation damage output on this MC vs one with a rogue also really accentuates the importance of good passives and buffs, although as you say this will likely be fine due the base strength of the classes.

And I say that I want to avoid abuse grave calling as I fear that this one-trick-pony might get tiresome quickly and thus I will want to respec or change directions if that happens - but I do imagine it makes it quite hard to answer my questions of viability when one of the stronger "cheeses" are on the table - sort of

[yorname]

I don't think bellower (or chanter in general) helps much with soulblade.

You really want to heavily use SA as a soulblade, or they're just ciphers but worse. Chanter doesn't add any speed or damage to your attack - SA loop. The only synergy is a lash, another chanter can simply give you that. Every time you cast a chanter spell, you're slowing down the attack - SA loop.

Remember the retaliation of WotEP comes with a Dazed affliction, which makes enemies unable to engage you, so using disengagement attacks only works once in a while. I've tried using WotEP with Nomad's Brigandine, which makes enemy disengagement attacks automatically miss, and it's still meh, so WoTEP with The Fox... chant is just not worth it.

If you want to improve single target damage of a chanter, you can:

• spamming Her Revenge... as skald (single or multi-class). It actually hits really hard
• Stand next to the target and cast Seven Nights... and its upgrade. If you hit it with at least 3 bolts, it's probably better than Her Revenge... in terms of efficiency.
• make use of Sure-handed... with ranged weapons and ranged-focused classes
• as caster, you can simply multiclass with wizard. Multiclass wizard still has incredible offensive single-target spells, provides speed bonus to the chanter, and benefits from Their Champion... They also want exactly the same attributes, which makes them easier to build than chanter/martial multiclass.

Edited October 20 by yorname

[Boeroer]

8 hours ago, yorname said:

You really want to heavily use SA as a soulblade, or they're just ciphers but worse.

Depends. Soulblades also have cheaper shred spells and gain more max focus on kill. You can def. build around that and only view Soul Annihilation as a nice-to-have occasional ability.

Also I think many players underestimate the potency of Aefyllath Mith Fyr + Soul Whip in general. 

But I agree that Bellower/Soulblade feels/reads like an odd combination. Skald/Soulblade would be the obvious choice (if you want to go melee Chanter/Cipher in the first place I mean).

But... maybe if you want to really concentrate on casting damaging invocations and shred spells it might make some sense (although I'd still prefer Psion for that).

Maybe the added versatility of having the occasional strong raw dmg melee attack - especially when you can exploit Chilling Grave + skeletons - is worth it.

I can't really say, I haven't tried it. And what countless runs with a lot of odd combos have taught me: you can never be 100% sure how a build idea really works out (for you) unless you try it. On the other hand you don't want to waste precious playing time with things that don't work out for you. 

That's why I like the console. I simply load up any savegame, alter a character to the combo I want to try, spawn some enemies and try it out for a bit. This still isn't a guarantee that it works well throughout the game but imo it gives you a better sense for it. And sometimes you immediately notice "nope, doesn't work for me" - which is also very useful imo. 

You'll have three potential enjoyable things going for this combo: a) bombastic invocations, b) cheap shreds and c) a strong melee punch. Or four, if you count in the fact that you have d) two potentially bottomless resource pools.

My gut felling says it wouldn't be a nice choice for me personally, but everybody's different so maybe this could really work for you.

Sorry for the vagueness...

 

 

 

[yorname]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Depends. Soulblades also have cheaper shred spells and gain more max focus on kill. You can def. build around that and only view Soul Annihilation as a nice-to-have occasional ability.

 

I feel this is similar to the case for Psion: spamming low level damage spells works, but in the end they're doing a less impactful loop. Sure you can cast 10 Mind Waves or Soul Shocks with merely 50 focus, but it's not even as good as only 1 or 2 AoE spells from wizard or druid, and your DPS is just Lv1 spell/cast. Soulblade has even less of a reason to do this, since nothing keeps them from gaining more focus with AoE weapons and dump it with better spells.

[Boeroer]

Psion has the advantage of not screwing up the action enonomy of a caster and not needing to invest into anything martial (abilities, items etc.) in order to gain focus.
This makes it a lot better against tough foes which are hard to deal weapon damage to than a regular cipher. Those ciphers are usually more potent against weaker (and more numerous) foes. 

But why would a Psion only use low level dps spells (I mean why use dps spells in the first place - but that's another discussion)?
There's no real reason to limit yourself to low level spells unless you cannot bear to wait for a few seconds. Sure, it takes longer to collect the focus for the higher tier spells - but that's the case for all ciphers, they have to deal more weapon damage while they cannot cast.

The difference with a Psion multiclass is that you don't need to attack (in a non-optimized way in this particular case) with a weapon to collect focus - but they can instead cast spells with the other class' resource in the meantime.

Also I think many players forget that Soul Mind scales with Power Level and it doesn't actually take that long to fill up focus - especially if the other class spells that you like to use have longer casting time/recovery. Soul Mind doesn't stop to generate focus even when the Psion is doing a lengthy action, recovering, prone, disabled, debuffed etc. I think it's one of those things a player has to experience to really value its advantages (and also disadvantages if you play it in a "wrong" way).    

If a player now wants to concentrate on shred spells AND provide focus without actively investing time by attacking with a weapon (instead using the Chilling Grave trick) - and thus circumvent the action economy problems that Soublade/Caster combo normally would have - I can at least see the possibility that this might work.

49 minutes ago, yorname said:

Soulblade has even less of a reason to do this, since nothing keeps them from gaining more focus with AoE weapons and dump it with better spells.

Tough enemies with high defenses will keep a Soulblade from gaining more focus with weapons. This includes Chilling Grave. I think it's really frustrating to play a cipher who cannot gain enough focus in certain fights. The Psion removes that problem and makes focus gain relatively predictable without investing into anything. As I said the need to attack with a weapon messes up the action economy and overall optimizing towards either spellcasting xor weapon usage.

I think it's not a coincidence that the most liked Soulblade combos are made with martial classes and then focus on weapon usage + Soul Annihilation (and see the spells as an addon) and the most liked caster/Cipher combos usually gravitate towards Beguiler or Psion.

But...  if somebody tries to use the other advatages of the Soulblade (like cheaper shred spells) for a change and wants to see Soul Annihilation as the optional add-on and not main part of the build: I'm all for it. I just cannot predict if it will work well.     

 

Edited October 20 by Boeroer

[SArgentus]

Thanks for the great discussion and inputs, I'm definitely considering psion more now for better build alignment towards casting and easier focus generation against tough enemies. Wizard also seems like an interesting choice which also would allow more chanter abilities and passives thanks to grimoires.

I do some testing with the console, but usually those tests are not super representative of the varied in-game encounters, thus I like to hear other peoples experiences (or near experiences).

Regarding chanter invocations, I am wondering how well White worms (with the polishing mod, thus no disease keyword) and And Evil turned away compare with other invocations? From my testing, they seem a bit underwhelming compared to Seven nights and So Singt.

[Boeroer]

I personally don't like Seven Nights a lot because I feel that the phrase/damage ratio is worse than Her Revenge in most cases. Eld Nary is great when you have more spread out enemies.

I generally like White Worms. Its casting range, base damage and AoE size are decent, it's foe only. The drawbacks are long casting time (compared to Her Revenge for example) and that you need a corpse to cast it on (which gets consumed, so you need another one for the next cast). That makes it not viable against spirits for examples and makes it harder to use with other enemies that don't leave bodies (like disintegrated ones - or ones that explode from crits if you don't turn off the gib option). It also makes it harder to position.

That's why I often skip it, even if I don't think it's bad. But with a character who doesn't want to get too close it could be a good alternative to stuff like Her Revenge and Seven Nights which require you to get somewhat near the enemies. But Eld Nary is also good with that - it just comes a lot later than White Worms. 

I almost never use And Evil turned away. The AoE is just too quirky and the effects are not really impressive for the cost. 

Edited October 20 by Boeroer

[Chaospread]

21 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I almost never use And Evil turned away. The AoE is just too quirky and the effects are not really impressive for the cost. 

I have used it in one situation: with it, you can cheese first battle with Neriscyrlas in Harbinger's Watch; simply put yourself top of the map, Neriscyrlas stay in the center, shot And Evil turned away till he die. If you position yourself weel, you can hit the Dragon with tow rays, one direct and one with one or two bounces

Edit: I forget, the AoE shape is very weird, but with high INT you can hit very very far enemies

Edited October 21 by Chaospread