Chanters need a way to speed up phrase gain

[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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't doubt that Chanters can have their uses, but so do other classes.  However ...

 

I don't know what "save scumming" is.  Nor do I pay attention to those idiotic chant or invocation names, which is a BIG reason the Chanter class turns me off.  It's like someone went miles out of their way to come up with the most idiotic, most difficult to remember, most annoying names for a class' abilities.

 

To me, you've got the reloading chant, a burning damage chant.... you've got Ogre summoning invocations, and so forth.  Hiding these simple to describe abilities behind ridiculously foolish, ridiculously long names is a complete turn off, at least for me.  Hell, there are a number of wizard spells with names that I find silly and makes recognizing them quickly for what they do unnecessarily difficult.

 

/rant

Edited May 9, 2015 by Crucis

[anameforobsidian]

Eh, I think they could probably comfortably take higher level invocations out of the game and the chanter would still be a great class.  Lots of neat close abilities like thrice she was wronged, and an insanely powerful lower level summons.  

[The Josip]

Chanter is the number one character to pull you out of nearly dead situations and into victory.

 

 

And it's the number one character that gets you into these near-defeat situations because it's not doing anything during the critical moments of the battle.

 

 

Description of Chanter class is: "Does nothing for x seconds. If you manage to survive because your party was handicapped during this time, you have 90% chance to instantly win battle."

 

Chanter class is like Eagle class in Tolkien's world. They are nowhere to be seen but if you're doomed there's a 90% chance they will appear and do something useful.

Edited May 9, 2015 by The Josip

[Emeus]

If it is a choir party(chanters & paladins), chanter is fine, otherwise they are a bit slow compare to other classes, in patch 1.05 it is more apparent due to the new chant cooldown.

[the streaker]

 

Chanter is the number one character to pull you out of nearly dead situations and into victory.

 

 

And it's the number one character that gets you into these near-defeat situations because it's not doing anything during the critical moments of the battle.

 

 

Description of Chanter class is: "Does nothing for x seconds. If you manage to survive because your party was handicapped during this time, you have 90% chance to instantly win battle."

 

Chanter class is like Eagle class in Tolkien's world. They are nowhere to be seen but if you're doomed there's a 90% chance they will appear and do something useful.

 

 

Oh come on, exaggerating much? There's chants that frighten enemies, reduces reload and recovery times for shooters by 20%, add 30% damage. A lot of bad chants, but there's enough good ones considering you only need 2 good ones at any one time, and the rest can be activated situationally.

 

And the summons... assuming you can last 15-20 seconds in a fight, how many times have you summoned two ogres and had them both die? Pretty much guarantees a win at that point. The tough fights last long, the easy fights who cares if the chanter didn't do much?

 

Also, he pretty much only needs strength and dexterity, so you have a lot of flexibility in how you build the attributes. Can make him a solid tank or shooter.

[sunburnedcrow]

If it is a choir party(chanters & paladins), chanter is fine, otherwise they are a bit slow compare to other classes, in patch 1.05 it is more apparent due to the new chant cooldown.

Chant cooldown? What are you talking about, I don't see this being mentioned in the patch notes.

 

[b0rsuk]

Chants are suppressed after using an invocation, I think that's what you mean ? It's not new. This is intentional, to make Chanter play take some thought. You are not supposed to blindly rush to invocations in every single circumstance.

[abaris]

Why do so many people want class A or B being superman. I never even thought about chanters being useless or too slow in their invocations. Yeah, it takes some time to get phrases out, but that doesn't mean they don't have an influence. As has been said, the secret lies in how to set up individual chants.

[peko]

Int seems to affect linger of phrases. The tooltips are a bit weird though. Let's look at Kana's "At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts grew Bold" with 18 Int (+40% duration). This is what it looks like to me:

 

Duration: 4.0 sec

Linger: 2.8 sec

Friendly Aura: +10 Fortitude, +10 Will for 8.4 sec

 

Here the linger time has been modified by Int, it also looks like the total time in the end of the tooltip has been modified by Int ( (4+2)*1,4)=8.4 ). Now we have three possible outcomes that are easily distinguished, 6 second if Int has no effect on duration, 6,8 seconds if Int only modifies Linger duration, and 8.4 seconds if it modifies both Duration+Linger.

When I tried it the phrase is applied for 6.8 seconds so Int only affects Linger time. Whether this is intended behaviour or not I don't know (though I think this is how it's supposed to work) but the tooltip needs to be cleaned up regardless.

[Zwiebelchen]

I really don't know what you guys are doing that all your fights are over before high level invocations come into play.

 

Most of the dangerous battles in PotD easily took me two full invocation cycles. And for the easier battles, I couldn't care less, tbh.

 

 

Chanters are low maintenance and as such the perfect scroll-users. They are also great offtanks. I don't think this class is broken at all; it's just a very situational class that has the power to completely turn around lost battles. I wouldn't play ironman without a chanter as a security net, tbh.

 

Also, when fighting trash mobs with a chanter in your party, you can always pull the second pack before killing off the last foe of the first pack. This way, your summons will carry over to the next battle and wreck havoc. I used that strategy a lot in Od Nua. By the time your sommons will initiate the next battle, you almost recovered your phrases to summon another fresh batch of creatures.

[Prokktor]

Maybe its not the Chanters that are to slow, its the other DD that are to fast.

 

On the standard Difficulties the Wizards/Druids/Whatever DPSes everything down before the Chanter built up his chants so he seems worthless...

 

On PotD on the other Hand all those Mobs are often still alive when all your good spells are used up, and now the Chanter is right there to bridge the gap when everyone else is reduced to standard melee/ranged attacks...

 

I actually like it that way, many builds become obsolete in PotD, interrupting and DPSing everything down quickly is simply not possible, so theres one class that actually becomes more viable!

[doctoruniverse]

Chanters are way to slow and I would never have one in my party. 

 

They do indeed need a way to speed up chants in general. 

 

Like talents that give chant speed 20% or something.

[Guest]

I really don't know what you guys are doing that all your fights are over before high level invocations come into play.

I was messing around with the Thaos fight last night, trying to record enemy stats.

 

As per usual, Pallegina, Kana, and Sagani/Itumaak tag teamed Thaos while Eder and my PC split off to tie up the heavies (Aloth running support).

 

Thaos was dead (not disabled via his soul projection - DEAD) before Kana got to three phrases. That particular chant started with a level 2 phrase followed by a level 1 phrase. So yes, fights are over before you can use higher level invocations. Fights are over before you can use level 1 invocations.

 

I get that PotD is different. And maybe it's not possible to perfectly balance every class for PotD vs non-PotD. However Chanter currently takes it in the shorts and it would be nice if they could do something to rectify that.

[Crucis]

Or maybe there could be an alternate solution to this issue.  Actually a number of alternate solutions may be possible.  One idea could be to allow Chanters to start battles with a certain number of chants already stored up in their "gas tank", so that they could start casting right off the bat.  Another variant of this could be to allow them a certain number of chants in the gas tank PER DAY.  Thus, the first battle after a rest would be with a full tank of "chants", but succeeding battles that say would require the Chanter to wait for his chant count to refill.  And another variant of this could be that perhaps the gas tank of chants refills automatically outside of combat, perhaps at 1 chant per hour, on the assumption that the Chanter is singing and entertaining the party during the day.  (Perhaps the tank shouldn't refill while in scouting mode on the theory that you can hardly be stealthy and be singing at the same time.)

 

Or Chanters could go back to what they were like in BG1/2 where they were a sort of wizard-lite, with a certain number of memorized spells per day.

 

Another option could be to dump the invocations entirely and make them strictly Chant-based.

 

There are a lot of outside the box options here.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Crucis

[Crucis]

Let me ask this question.

 

How good, useful, or effective would Chanters be if you focused almost entirely on getting the most out of your chants and didn't worry about building up Chant counts for invocations?  I'm not saying that you wouldn't use an invocation if your chant count allowed you to.  I'm just wondering how effective Chanters would be if their primary concern was Chanting and invocation casting was a very distant secondary concern.

 

Are the high level Chants good enough (in combination with the Chanters fighting as they chant, of course) to make the class effective members of a party?

[Guest]

Now that I'm home and have access to my screenshots...

 

Posting screenie of aforementioned Thaos-dead-before-Kana-could-get-to-3 encounter.

 

[mystang89]

I normally completely forget about my chanter and he's my PC. I just leave him in the background playing his music and shooting his bow. Occasionally I'll remember his invocation and fire something off but during those hard fights it's nice to know he's there.

[b0rsuk]

You are obsessing over invocations, as if the class was called Invoker, not chanter. It's a bard replacement. It's meant to be passive for the most part. The "best case" scenario - best case for you, that is - ends up with Chanters crossing the line from passive support to casters. And then... someone will have to come up with a new bard substitute.

 

Why do you act like phrases do nothing ? -10% damage dealt is not bad for a first level phrase, and stays good in late. If it sticks on Adra Dragon, that's -6 damage per hit. Endless Host is -10 enemy accuracy. Sure-Handed Ila is about +20% firing speed. Seven Men - lightning, freeze(+10DR!) and prone resistance. There's a chant with +25% fire damage lash for the entire party.

 

And you don't use a single chant at a time, unless you REALLY want a very specific bonus. Chant linger time is half of the duration at base, so if you use chants of the same level...

 

########xxxx
        ########xxxx
                ########xxxx
                        ########xxxx

 

It becomes clear half of the time you have two chants at the same time. On average, 1.5 chants at the same time.

Edited May 13, 2015 by b0rsuk

[Bubbles]

You are obsessing over invocations, as if the class was called Invoker, not chanter. It's a bard replacement. It's meant to be passive for the most part. The "best case" scenario - best case for you, that is - ends up with Chanters crossing the line from passive support to casters. And then... someone will have to come up with a new bard substitute.

 

I think the main problem with understanding this point is that many people assume that Chanters are supposed to replace the BG2 bard. That guy was obviously not passive and cast buffs (including major self buffs) and damage spells right from the start of combat. However, this class was obviously designed to replace the Bard from a completely different ruleset, so it can only fairly be compared to that one.

Edited May 13, 2015 by Bubbles

[Guest]

Yeah, it's not a matter of "bard confusion". It's a matter of blatant class imbalance. If fighters had powers that only unlocked after 30 seconds and none of the fights lasted 30 seconds, I'd be drawing just as much attention to those.

 

The way I see it there are a few possible solutions:

 

1) Ditch invocations. As it stands most of them aren't being used due to chant delay. Also they are wildly imbalanced (one or two *really* good ones and a lot of completely useless ones). Make phrases more powerful to compensate (added benefit - no more need for a chant counter on the UI).

 

2) Drop the invocation requirement by 1. Level 1 invocations unlock after 2 phrases, Level 2 invocations unlock after 3 phrases, and so on. Level 3 invocations are probably still going to mostly collect dust, but probably not as much.

 

3) Swap chant vs linger durations. Chants fire off quicker and last for longer. Hopefully results in the same net effect, but allows phrases to accumulate quicker.

Edited May 14, 2015 by Achilles

[Crucis]

Yeah, it's not a matter of "bard confusion". It's a matter of blatant class imbalance. If fighters had powers that only unlocked after 30 seconds and none of the fights lasted 30 seconds, I'd be drawing just as much attention to those.

 

The way I see it there are a few possible solutions:

 

1) Ditch invocations. As it stands most of them aren't being used due to chant delay. Also they are wildly imbalanced (one or two *really* good ones and a lot of completely useless ones). Make phrases more powerful to compensate (added benefit - no more need for a chant counter on the UI).

 

2) Drop the invocation requirement by 1. Level 1 invocations unlock after 2 phrases, Level 2 invocations unlock after 3 phrases, and so on. Level 3 invocations are probably still going to mostly collect dust, but probably not as much.

 

3) Swap chant vs linger durations. Chants fire off quicker and last for longer. Hopefully results in the same net effect, but allows phrases to accumulate quicker.

 

Another option.  Let Invocations be memorized on a per-rest basis, like some other caster classes.

 

That said, I think the ditch invocations option is a pretty good one.  I just don't like the fact that higher level Invocations create pressure on Chanters to use weaker, faster chants, or vice-versa that higher level chants make getting to the higher level invocations only possible in the longest of battles.    I think that just focusing Chanters on ... chanting ... seems like a good idea, although I suppose that making invocations on a per-rest basis would be workable as well.

[Exoduss]

Chanters has 1.2 Reload speed unique buff that stacks with everything ??? WORTH IT . can close the thread now .

 

Also if you use 2 best chants ( Reload Speed and Fire Damage ) you will never ever get even to 4 phrases not talking 5 unless you want to summon ogres to finish last enemy in fight . Key is to stack like 22-26 INT and use those 2 Chants in team of ranged dps'ers ( Ciphers , Priests , Rogues , Rangers ) and forget about invocations or w/e they are . Good design? No.

Edited May 14, 2015 by Exoduss

[Guest]

Chanters has 1.2 Reload speed unique buff that stacks with everything ??? WORTH IT . can close the thread now ..

No, not really.

 

Unless you're leaving DoT on the table with a rogue (arbalest) or a ranger (hunting bow), it's only helpful with firearms. And it *maybe* shaves a fraction of a second off the time between shots. Chanters 1.2 reload speed unique buff is over-rated.

 

By the way, please learn the different between a *phrase* and an *invocation* before declaring the thread "over" (since the discussion is regarding the latter and you just spewed word salad all over the former).

Edited May 14, 2015 by Achilles