[Chanter] Chants, Invocations and Stats

[Faydark]

Hi All,

 

When I was choosing my first character to play through PoE, I decided that Chanter sounded like my kind of thing. So, I rolled one up and started to play. I wasn't very satisfied with it, and started combing google for tips on how to make one and how to play it. In the process I came across a fair bit of information that didn't seem to match up with what I was seeing in game, so tonight I started doing some testing myself to make sure.

 

First up: Chants and Phrases.

 

1) My testing confirms that Phrases are completely unaffected directly in duration or effect by any stat. Many websites and forum posts are saying that Intellect (increased duration) affects the Linger portion of a Phrase, but this doesn't appear to be the case when viewing the Phrase description, the buff icon on characters, the debuff info on enemies or in the combat log.

 

2) Intellect only increases the "outer" area of effect. The inner circle is unchanged.

 

3) Dexterity doesn't affect Chants at all (I've seen some suggesting that it can speed up Chants)

 

4) Debuff Phrases can graze and crit just like any other attack. It's based off your mainhand accuracy vs the defense listed in the description. A Phrase that Grazes will have it's duration reduced by 50%, and Phrases that Crit have the duration increased by 50%. The effect part of a Phrase (eg endurance drain amount) is unchanged

 

Next: Invocations

 

1) Summons appear to be unaffected by any stat. Duration, endurance/hp, damage done etc.

2) Intellect increases the outer ring size of invocations that have it, but the inner size remains the same.

3) Dexterity has no effect on Invocation recovery time.

 

I'd like to do some testing on Might wrt Summons as well perhaps. But I expect it will have no effect.

 

I'm interested to hear from anyone else who is testing chanter builds and such, but right now thinking about making a tank chanter who uses summons I'm considering just leaving int at 10.

 

Edit: Fixed up some place where I said Chant when I meant Phrase.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Faydark

[gkathellar]

Intellect only ever affects the outer circle of any AoE, which is explicitly the bonus to the size from Int. The only difference is that allies don't suffer friendly fire damage from the outer circle.

 

As to chants not lingering - hopefully they'll fix that (or the tool tips) in the next patch. Maybe submit a bug report?

[Zarkhes]

I only know that same buffs from multiple chanters dont stack, and that i coudnt buff my will/fortitude past 60.

But this is realy troubling, because i created a tanky chanter with high int to ensure linger of chants and duration of summons...

[DragonDai]

So this would mean that Int has a MUCH lessened effect on Chanters...interesting. This just even more solidifies their role as tanks, IMO. You can keep Int much lower than you would on, say, a Wizard or Priest without hurting the duration of your buffs/debuffs from your Chants or the duration of your summons. And since Dex seems to basically have no effect on them unless they are using actual weapons, you can dump the crap out of Dex. You should then be able to max Resolve and Perception (for tanking) and still have plenty left over for Might so that any damaging Invocations you want to use still pack a decent punch.

Thanks for the info, Faydark.

[Faydark]

Yeah, but Intellect does still affect Invocation duration's. Eg you can increase the Stun duration on "The Thunder Rolled Like Waves on Black Seas", so it's still a tough choice. (2.5 seconds of extra stun is pretty good).

[amiable]

Speaking of chanter mechanics:  Does anyone know if Come, Come Soft Winds of Death actually does anything?  It doesn't seem to drain enemy stamina at all.  (I am playing on PoD so maybe it is getting soaked up by enemies DR?)

[XomRhoK]

First up: Chants and Phrases.

1) My testing confirms that Phrases are completely unaffected directly in duration or effect by any stat.

2) Intellect only increases the "outer" area of effect. The inner circle is unchanged.

 

Next: Invocations

2) Intellect increases the outer ring size of invocations that have it, but the inner size remains the same.

- I can confirm that Chants completely unaffected by stats.

- Intellect work correct with "inner" area of effect too, so with Int 3 you will have much smaller area of effect for chants and invocations. But what broken is indicator of area. They have standart area indicator(green) and aditional area indicator(light blue) but have no indicator for smaller area. 

 

Speaking of chanter mechanics:  Does anyone know if Come, Come Soft Winds of Death actually does anything?  It doesn't seem to drain enemy stamina at all.  (I am playing on PoD so maybe it is getting soaked up by enemies DR?)

It does damage(checked at first two wolves) but i thought(cause of word "drain" in description) it also must heal stamina to character, but it's not =(  i am so sad, i want to roleplay vampire character

[Voss]

So this would mean that Int has a MUCH lessened effect on Chanters...interesting. This just even more solidifies their role as tanks, IMO. You can keep Int much lower than you would on, say, a Wizard or Priest without hurting the duration of your buffs/debuffs from your Chants or the duration of your summons. And since Dex seems to basically have no effect on them unless they are using actual weapons, you can dump the crap out of Dex.

An odd couple conclusions.  They have nothing to do but use weapons most of the time.  Personally I can't usually make combat last long enough to use invocations most of the time.

 

 And I can't figure out why you'd tank, rather than taking an arquebus/arbalest and chant (only) the ranged attack buff back with the other ranged characters.   

[Dongom]

So this would mean that Int has a MUCH lessened effect on Chanters...interesting. This just even more solidifies their role as tanks, IMO.  

 

 

Yeah he makes a great tank.

 

But he serves as bar none the best party dps buffer via the "Arrow" chant in the back lines, if you have multiple ranged weapon users (Which are apparently the best weapons to use int he game).  In this spec he's no slouch himself, with maxed Mig/Dex (since you don't need that much INT, as per OP suggestions) the direct dmg Incantations along with full Gun talents make you amazing all around.

 

I bet someone could make a decent if not awesome long range melee dps Chanter too (pike/staff), I have to test that out.  Full melee talents, full MIG/DEX, fear aura chant, the direct dmg cone attacks.  Possibly completely dump int since you are close anyways.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Dongom

[pi2repsion]

So this would mean that Int has a MUCH lessened effect on Chanters...interesting. This just even more solidifies their role as tanks, IMO. You can keep Int much lower than you would on, say, a Wizard or Priest without hurting the duration of your buffs/debuffs from your Chants or the duration of your summons.

Err..

 

The best ability of Chanters is not their weapon damage, tanking, invocations, or summons, but their flexible chants that they perform simultaneously with everything else, as you with a two talent point investment give significant endurance regeneration to all team members in AOE range as well as either buffing them in various ways or debuffing/draining all enemies in AOE range.

 

Sure, you can dump a Chanter's INT, but unless you are going for some niche build where you don't buff the group or debuff the enemies except for those right next to you (e.g. if you are running a multi-chanter party), why would you do that?

 

A Chanter makes a good tank and a decent damage dealer, but above all he is a force-multiplier on the group due to his chants.

Edited March 31, 2015 by pi2repsion

[cctobias]

I have been messing around with chanter and the OP seems mostly accurate.

 

It may be a UI bug but I have a low int tank chanter (trying to solo with it) and chants seem to be not affected at all including the linger.  

 

You may only have one summon at a time.  If you have Reny out then summon Skeletons Reny goes away.

 

Can anyone comment on the higher up summons.  Reny is pretty nice for early levels I didn't realize he stuns and has sneak attack and 60 deflection is nothing to sneeze at.

 

Since you can only have one summon at a time and each level has two how do they compare?  Two ogres sound like they would do a lot of damage.  IMO Reny is much better than the skeletons at damage, but a long long margin.  

 

Stat wise Int seems to be only particularly important for invocations which behave basically like any spell/power for it.  If you plan on mostly summoning you can go pretty low int.

 

If you want to be an invocation focused chanter then you basically want to do lvl 1 chants only.  IMO the chants need to be rebalanced to take this into account.  Lvl 3 chants are literally cutting into your Invocation output by cutting your rate by 50% but I would not call them twice as powerful really.

 

Dex seems like a rather poor stat for chanters unless you are really melee focused.  Might seems really important since invocation output is so throttled you want it to hit as hard as possible when you do.  Same goes for accuracy.

 

 

[Ceranai]

Literally the only reason to give chanters any int at all is for thier shouts, it is perfectly feasible to run 4 dexterity and 4 intelect without suffering many consequences, this enables you to flood other attributes with points to make them semi decent tanks, I had a really nice build with 4 chanters casting four invocations but I decided to move on to new builds, i never stick to one build for very long.

 

One neat trick is that in an easy fight you can get the enemy down to one mob and cast all 4 summons, you can then use the summons to scout the entire map, pulling mobs to a chokepoint of your chosing. The only real weakness in a chater heavy build is a lack of tankiness and dps while you wait for your summons and this bypasses that by essentially turning the entire dungeon into one long fight. 4 chanters worked great and I might go back to it when i hit the levelcap and can summon drakes (4 drakes super OP) atm im having too much fun with my 2 1 2 1 build (2 paladins, 1 chanter, 2 ciphers, 1 druid) which is just too OP in dungeons, the ciphers ad druid just tear through mobs as long as you get the positioning right.

[Ceranai]

 

So this would mean that Int has a MUCH lessened effect on Chanters...interesting. This just even more solidifies their role as tanks, IMO. You can keep Int much lower than you would on, say, a Wizard or Priest without hurting the duration of your buffs/debuffs from your Chants or the duration of your summons.

Err..

 

The best ability of Chanters is not their weapon damage, tanking, invocations, or summons, but their flexible chants that they perform simultaneously with everything else, as you with a two talent point investment give significant endurance regeneration to all team members in AOE range as well as either buffing them in various ways or debuffing/draining all enemies in AOE range.

 

Sure, you can dump a Chanter's INT, but unless you are going for some niche build where you don't buff the group or debuff the enemies except for those right next to you (e.g. if you are running a multi-chanter party), why would you do that?

 

A Chanter makes a good tank and a decent damage dealer, but above all he is a force-multiplier on the group due to his chants.

 

I would argue that summons are the chanters most powerful ability, especially when running builds with multiple chanters

[Cragnous]

I have a Chanter Tank and he is doing great. He isn't as great as Eder but he's great as a secondary tank. He doesn't do much I can give you that, he's front row so he focuses on Debuffing the enemies and casting power summons or other invocation when the summon is still alive.

 

I was inspired by that video 

 

My stats: 8/12/8/18/12/18 (IIRC)

 

You don't need Might because your most powerful dsp is your summons and your othe rinvocations will be for Debuffing aswell. You want max Perception and Resolve to get deflect as high as possible. You don't need a lot of Int because you'll be front row but I gave myself some for Debuffing better. Dex is very low aswell, the only attacks you do are with a lowly machetty for the deflect bonus and it has an added bonus of interrupting the enemies a little bit. The rest is in con.

[Faydark]

Hmm, I don't seem to be able to edit my original post any more.

 

Someone asked in another thread about the Phrase counter for powering Invocations, so I tested that out as well.

 

You get 1 counter per Phrase spoken, at the point where the "cast" finishes.  The "cast" is the light green area on the Chant bar, after which the Linger starts (darker green area), and where you start casting your next Phrase in the Chant.

 

If you only put one Phrase in a Chant, then the Chant loops at the end of the "cast". The effect will "refresh" (effectively making the Linger redundant).

 

If you put two Phrases in a Chant, then there will be a 2 second window where each Phrase will not be applied while the other Phrase is in the last 2 seconds of casting.

 

This makes Twisting a trade-off: If you use one Phrase, you get full uptime of 1 debuff/buff. If you use two (or more) Phrases then you get more effects at the cost of 75% uptime on each Phrase (6 seconds on, 2 off, for level 1 Phrases for example). This might change with higher level Phrases, I haven't got that far in the game yet due to all the class testing I'm doing for myself atm

[Epsilon Rose]

Hmm, I don't seem to be able to edit my original post any more.

 

Someone asked in another thread about the Phrase counter for powering Invocations, so I tested that out as well.

 

You get 1 counter per Phrase spoken, at the point where the "cast" finishes.  The "cast" is the light green area on the Chant bar, after which the Linger starts (darker green area), and where you start casting your next Phrase in the Chant.

 

If you only put one Phrase in a Chant, then the Chant loops at the end of the "cast". The effect will "refresh" (effectively making the Linger redundant).

 

If you put two Phrases in a Chant, then there will be a 2 second window where each Phrase will not be applied while the other Phrase is in the last 2 seconds of casting.

 

This makes Twisting a trade-off: If you use one Phrase, you get full uptime of 1 debuff/buff. If you use two (or more) Phrases then you get more effects at the cost of 75% uptime on each Phrase (6 seconds on, 2 off, for level 1 Phrases for example). This might change with higher level Phrases, I haven't got that far in the game yet due to all the class testing I'm doing for myself atm

I was actually about to ask what twisting was, so, thank you.

[Cragnous]

Hmm, I don't seem to be able to edit my original post any more.

 

Someone asked in another thread about the Phrase counter for powering Invocations, so I tested that out as well.

 

You get 1 counter per Phrase spoken, at the point where the "cast" finishes.  The "cast" is the light green area on the Chant bar, after which the Linger starts (darker green area), and where you start casting your next Phrase in the Chant.

 

If you only put one Phrase in a Chant, then the Chant loops at the end of the "cast". The effect will "refresh" (effectively making the Linger redundant).

 

If you put two Phrases in a Chant, then there will be a 2 second window where each Phrase will not be applied while the other Phrase is in the last 2 seconds of casting.

 

This makes Twisting a trade-off: If you use one Phrase, you get full uptime of 1 debuff/buff. If you use two (or more) Phrases then you get more effects at the cost of 75% uptime on each Phrase (6 seconds on, 2 off, for level 1 Phrases for example). This might change with higher level Phrases, I haven't got that far in the game yet due to all the class testing I'm doing for myself atm

 

Well the phrases from level 2 last for 6 seconds and have a 3 seconds linger. Level 4 lasts for 8 seconds and linger for 4 seconds. So it becomes a good strategy to combine a long phrase with a shorter one. For example I use a long level 2 and a short level 1. With a linger of 3 seconds on the level 2 phrase, I only get 1 second where that chant isn't active. It gets even better if you do that with a level 3 phrase and a level 1 since you essentially cast your level 1 during the linger part of the level 2, meaning both chants are always active. 

 

Of course the downside of all this is that it takes longer for your phrase count to go up. To get to a chant count of 4, it'll take 16 seconds using only level 1 chants, 20 seconds using a level 2 and a level 1 and it'll take 24 seconds for a level 3 and a level 1.

 

On that note, it's important to mention that as you gain the next level of invocations, your maximum chant count also goes up since level 2 Invocations take 4 chants to cast and level 3 take 5.

[Ansa]

Nice info man, thank you

 

Pretty much confirmed what I have tested:

- Basically, damage changer can safely ignore everything except Might/Dex

- And summoner Chanter doesn't need any stats at all - like, you can virtually put them anywhere you want, he will perform the same

- Twisting chants is not really effective, better to pick 1 chant for every fight for full uptime

[Malk]

bunp

[Faydark]

Thanks for the info Cragnous.

 

I'm finally getting around to actually playing the game, as opposed to messing around at the start with a bunch of classes to try stuff out, so I'm looking forward to trying out some of the higher level spells and abilities.

 

I also noticed that Might does affect the damage/healing on some chants. I haven't done thorough testing on that yet, so many things to do, so little time and all that

[Gs11]

Again... is there maximum number of completed phrases in signle battle , which give  chanter  opportunity to use i.e two invocations one after another( like  +3 required phrase invocation +3 required phrase invocation?

[Nobear]

Again... is there maximum number of completed phrases in signle battle , which give  chanter  opportunity to use i.e two invocations one after another( like  +3 required phrase invocation +3 required phrase invocation?

 

It will only count up to the number of phrases that your highest level invocation requires. So if you got six phrases on a high-level chanter, you could indeed use two low-level invocations back to back.

[Gs11]

 

Again... is there maximum number of completed phrases in signle battle , which give  chanter  opportunity to use i.e two invocations one after another( like  +3 required phrase invocation +3 required phrase invocation?

 

It will only count up to the number of phrases that your highest level invocation requires. So if you got six phrases on a high-level chanter, you could indeed use two low-level invocations back to back.

 

thx a lot finally somebody answered it, coudn't find info before.. from  curiosity ....could You give me a link to source ?

[Nobear]

thx a lot finally somebody answered it, coudn't find info before.. from  curiosity ....could You give me a link to source ?

 

The source, in this case, is my own personal experience playing extensively with Kana in my party, from Normal to PoTD. I'd occasionally prefer an invocation that required less chants than I'd worked up, and the chant counter would keep those remaining chants that I didn't use. I also tried waiting a long time to see if the chant cap went any higher, and it only ever went as high as required for my highest level invocations. Try it out yourself if you want to be double sure lol.

[Gs11]

i trust You...   just strange that coudn't  find    info about this anywhere... seems pretty important information for chanter, though... I've already  even checked manual from the game ;p