Questions about 3 chants: Sure Handed Ila and Lo; Their Endless Host; Come Soft Winds of Death

[Vasvary5050]

Quick questions about 3 specific chanter chants:

1) With Sure-Handed Ila, I presume this benefits crossbow and gun users much more than bows and implements, as I presume guns and crossbows gets a +20% bonus to their attack animation and their reload time, and the reload time is a long stretch of time so 20% of that is significant, whereas the attack animation for bows is rather short (and in the case of all ranged weapon types, it doesn't effect the recovery time). So my question is, is it worth using this phrase if you are only using bows and implements for ranged weapons?

2) With Lo, Their Endless Host, what is its base duration when it hits (i.e. for normal hit, not graze or crit, with 0 intelligence bonus), and how often during the phrase's duration and linger does it roll for hit (is it rolling to hit every 3 seconds?)

3) With Come Soft Winds of Death: How is the damage calculated. For example, with Kana, it currently says in the spell description: "-2.4 endurance per 3 seconds". However, in a fight I'm in at this moment, I just got a crit against Flame Blight and in the log is says: "-8.2 endurance over 7.4 seconds", and also a graze against a spectre, and it says: "-6 endurance over 4.6 seconds". Interestingly, -6 endurance over 4.6 seconds is more damage per second for the graze (6 / 4.6 = 1.43 dps) than the crit which did 8.2 over 7.4 seconds (8.2 / 7.4 = 1.11 dps). And on a subsequent tick, a normal hit is -7.1 over 6 seconds (7.1 / 6 = 1.2)!?

And as with "Lo, Their Endless Host", I'm not sure how often it rolls for hit, and how this relates to the duration and linger. I presume it can't just be rolling to hit at the beginning of the chant duration, as that would make the linger pointless, and the duration of the damage doesn't seem to have any relationship to the duration of the chant or the linger.

I could ask similar questions for other chants but I'm thinking clearing up the above will help my general understanding of chant phrases as well as specifically the 3 chants above.

Edited May 12 by Vasvary5050

[Boeroer]

10 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

1) With Sure-Handed Ila, I presume this benefits crossbow and gun users much more than bows and implements, as I presume guns and crossbows gets a +20% bonus to their attack animation and their reload time, and the reload time is a long stretch of time so 20% of that is significant, whereas the attack animation for bows is rather short (and in the case of all ranged weapon types, it doesn't effect the recovery time). So my question is, is it worth using this phrase if you are only using bows and implements for ranged weapons?

Nothing shortens attack animation except DEX. Unfortunately the wording with "attack speed" in PoE is often stupid.

DEX shortens everything (attack animation, recovery and reload) while all other things that talk about attack speed mean recovery only.

Sure-Handed Ila shortens recovery time and reloading time. It is equally effective for all ranged weapons! If you think about it like this: "how much time do I spend waiting  between shooting?" - with recovery weapons that's only recovery time (which gets reduced by x%), with reloading weapons it's recovery time plus reloading time (which both get reduced by x%, so the total sum of recovery + reload also gets reduced by x%). So there's no difference in that regard between the ranged weapons. They all get their "pause" reduced by the same percentage.

If you want to experiement with different ranged weapons and the effect of Sure-Handed Ila (and other speed bonuses) try this tool:

https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/

 

10 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

2) With Lo, Their Endless Host, what is its base duration when it hits (i.e. for normal hit, not graze or crit, with 0 intelligence bonus), and how often during the phrase's duration and linger does it roll for hit (is it rolling to hit every 3 seconds?)

I don't remember the base duration (I suspect it's base phrase time + linger originally?), it rolls once per phrase (every 4 secs if you chain it).

With Brisk Recitation (auto ability of chanters which reduces the phrase times every 4 lvls by 10%, up to -50% at lvl 16) the phrase will become shorter (rolls every 2 secs at lvl 16).

  

10 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

3) With Come Soft Winds of Death: How is the damage calculated. For example, with Kana, it currently says in the spell description: "-2.4 endurance per 3 seconds". However, in a fight I'm in at this moment, I just got a crit against Flame Blight and in the log is says: "-8.2 endurance over 7.4 seconds", and also a graze against a spectre, and it says: "-6 endurance over 4.6 seconds". Interestingly, -6 endurance over 4.6 seconds is more damage per second for the graze (6 / 4.6 = 1.43 dps) than the crit which did 8.2 over 7.4 seconds (8.2 / 7.4 = 1.11 dps). And on a subsequent tick, a normal hit is -7.1 over 6 seconds (7.1 / 6 = 1.2)!?

 Yeah that's not really clear. Crits do prolong tick damage and duration, so in theory it should do more dmg if implemented correctly, but sometimes it's the overall damage that gets raised and not the tick damage. I don't remember how it works in this case. You have to watch the dmg numbers over the enemies' heads to be absolutely sure, because the combat log can give misguiding info on DoTs unfortunately.

Important is that Come Soft Winds (and Dragon Thrashed) does stack its DoT instances (does not prolong them when it hits again) which is great. So if you have a long crit you can stack more DoT ticks on top of each other. If it would only prolong the duration a crit would be wasted - but that's not the case. With Brisk Recitation, good acc and INT you can stack a lot of those DoTs on enemies while building up phrase points very quickly (1.5 secs at lvl 16). Not as devastating as Dragon Thrashed by a mile, but not bad. 

Edited May 13 by Boeroer

[Vasvary5050]

Thanks Boeroer!

I'm glad you corrected my mis-understanding about Sure-Handed Ila (and attack speed in general). I'm sure I used to know this, but prior to this run, it had a while since I last played Deadfire, and even longer since I last played Pillars 1, and the knowledge (especially the nuances) tends to leak out of my mind in between each playthrough. This chant has now increased in importance (by a lot) for my party! I'll be using it more often I think.

I find it difficult to judge Come Soft Winds of Death because it doesn't seem to record the damage from it in the personal records page for the character (as I think we discussed elsewhere in another post), and it only shows the damage and roll details in the combat log if its hitting a small number of enemies, which often isn't the case. As soon as it hits lots of enemies (usually the case), it summarises the information to the number of grazes, hits and crits. I think its doing decent-ish damage, but its hard to be sure.

Edited May 13 by Vasvary5050

[Chaospread]

21 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

is it worth using this phrase if you are only using bows and implements for ranged weapons?

Yes. EVERY effect that shortens action time and/or increases speed action is ALWAYS convenient.

21 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

(is it rolling to hit every 3 seconds?)

It should be so. Thus, a normal duration of 6 seconds and linger of 3 seconds is 9 seconds and give 3 hits, anyway IIRC there is always an "added" tick and therefore it should hit 4 times.

10 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Important is that Come Soft Winds (and Dragon Thrashed) does stack its DoT instances (does not prolong them when it hits again) which is great. So if you have a long crit you can stack more DoT ticks on top of each other. If it would only prolong the duration a crit would be wasted - but that's not the case. With Brisk Recitation, good acc and INT you can stack a lot of those DoTs on enemies while building up phrase points very quickly (1.5 secs at lvl 16). Not as devastating as Dragon Thrashed by a mile, but not bad.

It is good also if you have 2 (or 3, or 4, or...) chanters, with effects applied on damage and on DoT (i.e. Combusting Wounds) and if you have some effects such as heal on damage dealt etc... In Deadfire it is far better because heal is "incorporated" Too good early levels, it's a pity it doesn't scale the following levels.