Chanters need a way to speed up phrase gain

[Idleray]

Via either talents or an item that gives you a 1 phrase at start of combat.

 

Currently it's kind of tedious building them up. Using just level 1 chants you'd need 20 seconds to build up 5 for a level 3 Invocation.

 

The Invocations themselves are great but 20 seconds in the late game is a long time considering the weight of the powerful effects you sling around.

[b0rsuk]

Not all classes are for everyone. If you find chanters boring, use other classes. People like them because they're low maintenance. I personally find Yang boring, it's endless city spam.

 

Phrases can be used in clever ways, for example open with Blessed was Wengridth (+speed while charging enemies), Thick grew their tongues (stunlock enemies), then a damage chant to mop up.

Edited May 6, 2015 by b0rsuk

[MadDemiurg]

It works more or less with the current level cap, but if it's ever raised to say 20 (and thus 5 level of chants and invocations) it will show that the design is fundamentally broken. I think chanter's lower level invocations should become faster to charge with level (while current max level maintaining the long charge timer). This would require some rebalancing of the invocations though.

[Zwiebelchen]

I think chanters are fine, it's nice to have a low-maintenance class in your group from time to time. I enjoyed my playthrough with both Sagani and Kana in my party because it was speeding up battles a lot with much less pause-spam and micro management.

 

Obviously, chanters become much more valuable as the difficulty level goes up. PotD is where they really start to shine, when certain battles can take several minutes to finish.

 

 

However, if I were to redesign the class, then I'd probably change the way phrases work:

Instead of summons using up your phrases, they should instead just remain and stack further. This way, chanters become progressively more powerful the longer the battle goes.

 

So, when you reach 3 phrases, you can cast a first level summon which doesn't consume your 3 phrases. At 6 phrases, you can cast a second level summon, and so on. It basicly ensures that:

1) your first level summons don't become useless in lategame (currently, any cast of first level summons in lategame is just a waste of time)

2) you won't just stand there completely idle until your high level summon is finally available

3) your chanter becomes progressively stronger the longer the battle goes... which goes well with the theme of the class

4) a possible "only one cast per summon-level per encounter"-rule could allow for some interesting new summons, like a summon that grants you two extra phrase stacks to speed up phrase gain to reach higher levels faster (obviously, at the cost of using up that summon level on this encounter)

 

All this would lead to better flexibility and less idle combat for chanters.

[Faydark]

I think chanter's lower level invocations should become faster to charge with level.

 

Yeah I like this idea. It could work like some of the other casters spells work, switching from per rest to per encounter. Eg in the chanters case, it could change level 1 invocations from 3 to 2 phrases at level 6 and maybe 1 phrase at level 9 (or just leave it as 2 phrases minimum). level 2 invocations change from 4 phrases to 3 phrases at level 8, 2 phrases at level 11 etc (numbers purely made up here, just using for example).

[Guest]

I think invocations need to be dropped a level (i.e. Level 1 at 2 phrases, Level 2 at 3 phrases, etc).

[Schyzm]

I dont see the fun in making the higher phrases take longer, woulda preferred balance around 4 second phrases.

[Crucis]

It seems to me that Chanters are faced with a painful conundrum.  Either you can use chant lines designed to build up your chant count ASAP so that you can cast powerful Invocation spells ASAP, but only at the cost of weak, low powered chants.  Or, once available, you can use the more powerful and more effective chants, but only at the cost of a much slower chant count progression.  It almost seems like a no win situation because even with fast chants, getting a high enough chant count to cast a high level Invocation spell will take a long time.  And heaven forbid that you try to get a high chant count using a chant line composed of level 3 chants!

 

In some ways, one almost wonders if worrying about the invocations is worth it, and if Chanters would be better off just going with the Chants that they feel would be best for their party, and casting spells from scrolls (with the obvious need to build up Lore along the way).

[Guest]

Yeah, I've given up trying to find anything particularly useful past the first Level 2 invocation (I immediately take the Paralyze one). I don't take the summons because I rely on figurines for those. The defense against hobble, etc one is good on paper, but by the time you can use it...

 

This time through I'm going to take Bride and Bridegroom for the Level 3 invocations. I don't dare take anything I think I'll actually need.

[b0rsuk]

You are trying to shoehorn Chanters into the "caster" group. They are not. They are souped up bards. They are working as designed, providing passive support most of the time and occasionally casting something powerful.

 

There are low level phrases which are still good on high level, for example Dull the Edge, Blunt the Point. Enemy Slash/Pierce damage * 90%. If you stick in on an Adra Dragon, who deals around 60 damage per hit, damage is reduced by 6. Really, most of them.

[Guest]

Are you talking to me? If so, absolutely not.

 

Kana gets offensive Talents and sent to the front line to off-tank with an estoc and a pollaxe.

 

While he's there, I'm thinking about how much is sucks that the fight will be over before he has a chance to use anything stronger than a level 2 invocation. If the fight does last long enough to use a level 2 invocation, it's almost always going to be "At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff", thereby cutting off any chance that I'm ever going to cast a level 3 invocation.

[b0rsuk]

As I said, you're trying to play Kana as a caster.

[Guest]

Because I want Invocations to be useful, I'm playing him as a caster?

 

Even though he's off-tanking with heavy weapons?

 

Alrighty then.

[Slapstick87]

I just finished a potd run where I had a chanter as a tank.  I thought "surely on potd difficulty the fights will be long enough to get some spells off".

I summoned my ogres exactly once. I did summon the phantom a few times. The AOE charm I also used once. Granted I had a melee rogue/cipher/wizard/priest doing damage and evaporating things left and right. Combat was over in the blink of an eye, you know... except for pausing every 4 frames.

 

A paladin would've been a much more usefull tank. I would never pick a chanter for any party again, ever. They can go swinging from a tree for all I care.

[Crucis]

Because I want Invocations to be useful, I'm playing him as a caster?

 

Even though he's off-tanking with heavy weapons?

 

Alrighty then.

 

I think that his point is that you can "want" it all you want, but that isn't going to make it so.  This is what I was referring to above when I said that Chanters face a painful dilemma when choosing between using fast, but weak chants in the hopes of getting to their invocations faster, or using slower, but more powerful chants and having almost no hope of ever building up a high Chant count.

 

I haven't played a Chanter beyond having Kana around for a while, but I'm strongly tempted to say that one may just be better off forgetting about the Invocations and instead making better use of the Chanter's more powerful Chants, since those are far easier to make use of than the high level invocations.

[Guest]

Yeah, I don't think that's what he was saying at all, but I don't have to worry about reading his posts anymore, so I'm not too worried about it.

 

The fact is that most fights are over before higher level invocations can either a) be used or b) be useful (i.e. summoning orges that appear just in time to be dismissed) . This is a balance problem not an "Achilles wishing for unreasonable things" problem. Either lowering the chants required or making invocations free actions would be a step toward fixing this.

[MadDemiurg]

I'm pretty sure Chanters don't need higher level invocations needing more time to charge AND higher level chants being longer.

 

The intention of the 1st one is to make higher level invocations "more expensive", however that's probably the worst mechanics out of all casters (cipher's higher level powers are more expensive, but they also generate focus faster with high level weapons, and vancian casters just have a separate limit for each level). One solution would be to instead make the lower level invocations cheaper with level while maintaining ~12 seconds minimum mark for the highest level.

 

The intention of the 2nd one is to make lower level chants useful at high levels probably, but again it turns out not that great. Instead of making higher level chants longer linger duration of lower level chants can improve with level so you can mix up several of them for instance.

 

I think at least one of these two needs to be changed.

 

That been said, chanter IS quite powerful atm, but this despite these mechanics rather than thanks to them. High level chants are powerful enough to validate the chanter without any invocations and an extremely cheesy part about chanters is that they can dump pretty much any stat. IMO all their damage should scale with might and summons should have duration to fix this issue. Maybe dex should speed up chants as well (although that sounds silly). If base chanter mechanics are changed some invocations would need rebalancing however.

Edited May 8, 2015 by MadDemiurg

[Crucis]

Yeah, I don't think that's what he was saying at all, but I don't have to worry about reading his posts anymore, so I'm not too worried about it.

 

The fact is that most fights are over before higher level invocations can either a) be used or b) be useful (i.e. summoning orges that appear just in time to be dismissed) . This is a balance problem not an "Achilles wishing for unreasonable things" problem. Either lowering the chants required or making invocations free actions would be a step toward fixing this.

 

I completely agree.  Building up enough chants to use a 3rd level invocation takes so long that by the time you could use one, it's often too late to matter, since your party has probably nearly won the battle or is nearly dead.  I think that the devs desperately need to rebalance Chanters.  But in the meantime, I tend to think that the best way to use chanters is to mostly ignore their invocations and just focus on making best use of their chants, including the highest level ones.

[dunehunter]

Make Dex speed up chanting speed can solve the problem IMO, dex is quite useless to chanters now

[Crucis]

Make Dex speed up chanting speed can solve the problem IMO, dex is quite useless to chanters now

 

It's irrelevant to their chanting, but not to their physical combat abilities.  You could in theory have a ranged chanter who just hung back, firing whatever ranged weapon fit their (your) fancy, and DEX might matter plenty.  Or you can be a Kana-like chanter, strap on that plate armor, grab a big ol' greatsword and chant away on the front lines, and DEX might not matter so much, if you're a tanking chanter.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Crucis

[Wolken3156]

Invocations actually see a lot of use in PotD, mainly because fights are much more drawn out. If you want to use Invocations more frequently its best to use the 1st level Chants as the higher level ones have a greater duration. Another tactic is to have your tanks pull the next mob of enemies when the current group is wounded and doesn't have much time to live. Or even pull everything in the entire area, if you're confident in his bulk. This way the engagement doesn't end and the Chanter can keep their Chants intact.

 

At any rate, what they really should've done though is have either INT or DEX affect the lingering effect at the end of each chant. Extending its duration, thus allowing chants to be finished earlier. It would make the higher level invocations a lot more viable if you're using the higher level chants. Though to be honest, the chants themselves are much more powerful than the invocations, the invocations are just icing on the cake.

 

It's irrelevant to their chanting, but not to their physical combat abilities.  You could in theory have a ranged chanter who just hung back, firing whatever ranged weapon fit their (your) fancy, and DEX might matter plenty.  Or you can be a Kana-like chanter, strap on that plate armor, grab a big ol' greatsword and chant away on the front lines, and DEX might not matter so much, if you're a tanking chanter.

This. DEX is actually somewhat important if you're using a damage-based Chanter. I would only dump it if you were using a tank based Chanter.

 

If anything INT should be the first stat to look into for dumping, since it doesn't affect Chants only Invocations, and the only ones that would be hurt by low INT are the status inflicting ones.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Wolken3156

[b0rsuk]

That been said, chanter IS quite powerful atm, but this despite these mechanics rather than thanks to them. High level chants are powerful enough to validate the chanter without any invocations and an extremely cheesy part about chanters is that they can dump pretty much any stat. IMO all their damage should scale with might and summons should have duration to fix this issue. Maybe dex should speed up chants as well (although that sounds silly). If base chanter mechanics are changed some invocations would need rebalancing however.

 

I don't know about you, but I enjoy having some interesting tactical choices in combat. The tradeoff of short vs long phrases is such a decision. If chanters are indeed quite powerful, is there really a problem ? There are some balance problems, especially level2 invocations are lackluster (see the thread on the general subforum).

[Starwars]

I think the Chanter do need a looking over, particularly the invocations as some of them feel like a no-brainer compared to others.

 

It's also a problematic class in that, when I played on Hard, I really agree with the sentiment that most fights are over quickly enough that you don't really feel like you're getting to make *use* of the Chanter. I'm playing on PotD atm and I feel like Kana is way more useful now with the fights taking longer. But that's where the problems come, because how do you balance the chants when difficulty impacts the time needed for a battle so much?

 

Perhaps lower difficulties should have chants stack up faster (or invocations needing less) so that one could get to make use of invocations more. But I'm not sure if a change like that would feel right on PotD because stuff like the paralyze invocation and summons (Ogres in particular) feel pretty powerful as is.

[Crucis]

Invocations actually see a lot of use in PotD, mainly because fights are much more drawn out. If you want to use Invocations more frequently its best to use the 1st level Chants as the higher level ones have a greater duration. Another tactic is to have your tanks pull the next mob of enemies when the current group is wounded and doesn't have much time to live. Or even pull everything in the entire area, if you're confident in his bulk. This way the engagement doesn't end and the Chanter can keep their Chants intact.

 

At any rate, what they really should've done though is have either INT or DEX affect the lingering effect at the end of each chant. Extending its duration, thus allowing chants to be finished earlier. It would make the higher level invocations a lot more viable if you're using the higher level chants. Though to be honest, the chants themselves are much more powerful than the invocations, the invocations are just icing on the cake.

 

It's irrelevant to their chanting, but not to their physical combat abilities.  You could in theory have a ranged chanter who just hung back, firing whatever ranged weapon fit their (your) fancy, and DEX might matter plenty.  Or you can be a Kana-like chanter, strap on that plate armor, grab a big ol' greatsword and chant away on the front lines, and DEX might not matter so much, if you're a tanking chanter.

This. DEX is actually somewhat important if you're using a damage-based Chanter. I would only dump it if you were using a tank based Chanter.

 

If anything INT should be the first stat to look into for dumping, since it doesn't affect Chants only Invocations, and the only ones that would be hurt by low INT are the status inflicting ones.

 

The problem with dumping INT is that it'd reduce the size of Chant's AoE, which doesn't seem like a good thing to me.  That said, if one only used Summoning invocations, INT wouldn't be as much of an issue for them, since IIRC they hang around as long they're not killed or the battle ends.

[the streaker]

 

Yeah, I don't think that's what he was saying at all, but I don't have to worry about reading his posts anymore, so I'm not too worried about it.

 

The fact is that most fights are over before higher level invocations can either a) be used or b) be useful (i.e. summoning orges that appear just in time to be dismissed) . This is a balance problem not an "Achilles wishing for unreasonable things" problem. Either lowering the chants required or making invocations free actions would be a step toward fixing this.

 

I completely agree.  Building up enough chants to use a 3rd level invocation takes so long that by the time you could use one, it's often too late to matter, since your party has probably nearly won the battle or is nearly dead.  I think that the devs desperately need to rebalance Chanters.  But in the meantime, I tend to think that the best way to use chanters is to mostly ignore their invocations and just focus on making best use of their chants, including the highest level ones.

 

 

Chanter is the number one character to pull you out of nearly dead situations and into victory. Extremely useful if you're not save scumming and/or playing ironman. With the speed chant and maybe some speed items or talents, he can almost always save your game. Also, the Ila chant and the +30% lash damage chant are great for shooter-heavy parties. The rest of his abilities aren't that great, but that just means you can outfit him as a damage dealer and spend few points upgrading his chanting ability.