The state of Chanters

[Benedictous]

What is really mind blowing to me is that 90% of chants are just worthless. 25% damage is fine, the deflection is OK but your tanks never get hit anways, the Dragon DoT is fine but the fights never last long enough for it to tick enough to matter, and attack speed for ranged is OK but imo ranged auto damage is ridiculously low/overrated. 

 

Where are the debuff chants? Sicked/Weakened/Blinded/Hobbled? Where is a chant that lowers armor penalty or general recovery speed for the entire party? It is almost like they WANT the chanter to be good, but if he is good then they think he is OP so they just settle making him garbage. The ONLY reason I take a Chanter tank in PotD is to buff my sabre/crit mutiplier rogue break 140 damage crits. I never ONCE used his summons during the game because the fights were over so quickly when you use Wizards properly.

 

The part the REALLY grinds my gears is Fergus going to PC Gamer and spouting crap about how the Chanter is SO MUCH BETTER than the worthless Bard in DnD games and was made so because they really want support characters to shine. Does Josh just hand him a script? Because if he played the game he wouldn't have said that junk.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Benedictous

[tinysalamander]

Given that the chanter's main claim to fame is the automatic buffs he doles out to party members, this could perhaps be based on the amount of damage party members inflict on enemies while under the influence of the chanter's buffs -- a thematically similar though less selfish extension of the way ciphers earn focus through greater personal melee/missle damage on enemies. 

 

Which is, while interesting, means chanter will shine whenever you are already dealing heavy damage (pointless) and in harder fights where you deal less damage and need all the help you can find chanter is penalized…

Edited August 6, 2015 by tinysalamander

[evilcat]

I dont think radical change in chanter mechanic is needed. Current mechanic make sense even if its not most easy to use class mechanic (Cipher mechanic is funnier). Also game should encourage different ways to play class, one way is chanter buffbot, but the other is berzerker spreading dragon breath and fear around him.

Its more about having enought talents, chants, invocations to make allow specialization. So far chanters cant specialize much, and cant improve own class abilities (unlike other classes) so they may look inferior.

 

Maybe event a talent which will allow to start combat with 3 stacks is not so out of question. The need to build chants is beatiful but also prohibiting. ( And keeping the idea of chanter not being able to start combat with stacks is like sticking to the idea that casters spells should be always per rest or no free focus for ciphers, or Barbarians only with 2h weapon.

 

Even in current system there is a point when chants will be good enought, with just picking right numbers. Or increasing variation of chants to open more roles. Like chant regenerating health to allies, so if we build that way we can skip priest and go chanter.

Edited August 7, 2015 by evilcat

[Benedictous]

I dont think radical change in chanter mechanic is needed. Current mechanic make sense even if its not most easy to use class mechanic (Cipher mechanic is funnier). Also game should encourage different ways to play class, one way is chanter buffbot, but the other is berzerker spreading dragon breath and fear around him.

Its more about having enought talents, chants, invocations to make allow specialization. So far chanters cant specialize much, and cant improve own class abilities (unlike other classes) so they may look inferior.

 

Maybe event a talent which will allow to start combat with 3 stacks is not so out of question. The need to build chants is beatiful but also prohibiting. ( And keeping the idea of chanter not being able to start combat with stacks is like sticking to the idea that casters spells should be always per rest or no free focus for ciphers, or Barbarians only with 2h weapon.

 

Even in current system there is a point when chants will be good enought, with just picking right numbers. Or increasing variation of chants to open more roles. Like chant regenerating health to allies, so if we build that way we can skip priest and go chanter.

 

Ya a complete overhaul isn't necessary.  New songs that provide more/faster Invos and I agree with the Spec part you mention there really is nothing to get for the class. 

[loewenheim]

Isn't there also the problem that chanters currently don't profit from stats in the way that you would expect them to? IIRC int doesn't increase the linger time and dex doesn't reduce the casting time of chants. Am I mistaken?

[Boeroer]

No, that's right. It improves the casting time of invocations though.

[evilcat]

Wait isnt Int increasing chants aoe size and linger? That would be horrible design. I think Kana linger was longer than 2 sec.

 

Here is a question: How people play chants?

Do they go for small ones to quic get Invocations, or pick one of big chants if so then which one?

[Elric Galad]

So, now we are in front of the problem.

 

10s chants with 6 phrases invocations.

Even with 4s level 1 chants, you need 24s to cast a level 4 Invocation.

Nothing is worse that having some useless abilities.

 

For me, the only issue with chanter is Ressource Scaling for Invocations. Apart this, I think Chanters are really fine (they have the most unique design of PoE classes in my opinion).

 

I definitely think this is the hardest PoE design issue to correct.

So, let's try to make a design ^^

 

In the end, we could :

- Submit it to Obsidian (Which mean the more simple is the change, the more likely it has a chance to draw attention)...

- Hope a moder would like to use it ^^

 

 

My opinion is that we could try to start by defining "Requirements" :

 

 

For example :

 

- Low level chants should generate more ressource than high level ones

 

- High Level Invocations should cost more ressources than low level ones

 

- Ressource generation should be mostly based on passive chanting (a couple of talents generating ressources in a more active way could be possible, but I think it should never become the main source of "phrases")

 

- Chanter philosophy should be to be more useful in long battles.

 

- Chanter are a special type of "spellcasters." Spellcasters should be versatile. Not to say that Chanters are not versatile. I think they are (that's not the current problem), but we should keep this in mind.

 

- Chanters should not be paladins. (They have close roles in a party, as they are Tanky Support and Supportive Tank. This is not a problem as long as their abilities are different enough. Design change on Chanter should emphasize their differences.)

 

- Chanters should have a rather passive gameplay. "Rather passive" should not mean "utterly boring". 

 

 

I have a couple of ideas for Solutions, but I think my ideas are less important than a kind of consensus, especially about could be needed ^^

Edited September 27, 2015 by Elric Galad

[MadDemiurg]

The solution has already been stated: Higher level invocations should not take more time at higher levels, lower level should take less. This is pretty obvious. Average battle duration can be considered more or less the same at all levels, however most of the lower level invocations become less useful at higher levels. The battle duration is the value the ability power should be normalized against. So if a level 1 chanter can use a powerful invocation in the middle of the battle, level 14 chanter should also be able to use an equally powerful invocation (relative to his level) in the middle of the battle, and lower level invocations (which are relatively much less powerful now) should be accessible much earlier. How this is achieved mechanically is another question, but there were some workable suggestions on the previous page.

 

This is not without issues, as some of the lower level invocations scale very well (like paralyze or stun cones for instance), but this change would require rebalancing of existing invocations anyway.

[Elric Galad]

Basically, you're right, and the analysis you made in previous page is what I think to be the best way to do (with a couple of open points, like summon duration, which has been implemented in 2.0 anyway).

 

There should be something like a fix duration (12s, based on level 1 chants and invocations)

 

The key interesting details to raise should be things like :

 

- How much time for a level 1 invocation powered by level 1 chants at level 14 ?

 

- When we speak about same duration for maximum level chant with maximum level invocation, are we speaking about chanting only maximum level chants, or having at least 1 in the mix ?

12s to summon ogres with Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr + Come come swift wind,

OR

12s to summon ogres with Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr + Dragon slashe, dragon Trashed)

 

There is also the other (minor) problem of chanters that is class talents which are currently poor. THis could be interesting to discuss but is clearly not critical.

[KDubya]

What if instead of a certain number of chants needed to cast an invocation it was instead just a period of time?

 

You could fill that time period with whatever combination of chants that you want. Lower level chants would still be useful in that you can tuck them inside the linger duration of the later chants. Using your more powerful chants would not limit your invocation casting.

 

Add a talent to increase chant linger.

 

Add a talent to reduce time needed to cast an invocation.

 

Then you just need to balance the time needed, it doesn't have to be linear either. Let the cast at 10 seconds for level one, 19 seconds for level two, 27 seconds for level three, 33 seconds for level four and 39 seconds for level five invocations. Or whatever sounds good.

 

If this has been suggested before I missed it.

[gkathellar]

Wait isnt Int increasing chants aoe size and linger?

 

They didn't used to, which may or may not have been a bug. Pretty much positive that they actually do now.

[Elerond]

In my opinion they could scale chanters to same level with other casters by lessening how many phrases invocation needs by one every time chanter gets access to higher level invocations.

 

So at start chanter need 3 phrases to cast 1 level invocation, when they get access to level 2 invocations level one invocations cost 2 phrases and level 2 invocations 3 phrases, and when they get access to level 3 invocations then level one invocations cost 1 phrase, level 2 invocations 2 phrases and level 3 invocations 3 phrases, when chanter gets level 4 invocations then level 1 invocations cost 0 phrases, level 2 1 phrase, level 3 2 phrases and level 4 3 phrases. And so on and so forth. 

 

And to limit spamming of 0 cost invocations, by limiting number of times chanter can cast them to once per phrase they have generated.

 

I don't see any need to tamper with how chants work as they are in my opinion fine as they are now.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Elerond

[pi2repsion]

 

Wait isnt Int increasing chants aoe size and linger?

 

They didn't used to, which may or may not have been a bug. Pretty much positive that they actually do now.

 

As of 2.0 they both increase size and linger, not just size as they used to, and it is quite handy.

 

As for the state of chanters, I am conflicted.

 

 

On the one hand, I consider chanters very powerful from level 9 and for the rest of the game. On the other hand, I consider them rather dull.

 

The reason for this is that what makes them powerful are a few phrases providing unique high-powered party wide buffs (25% more damage for EVERYBODY (25% of damage inflicted before DR, then affected by target's fire DR), life drain for everybody (mostly useful in the few longer fights), faster reload and ranged attack speed) and some pretty strong party wide buffs that duplicate effects otherwise available from priests, but have the advantage of being active from the moment combat starts if you set them as the first phrase. A few of the invocations, primarily the summons, are great too. But most of the phrases and invocations are of little worth compared to the superstars. Frankly, in the late game I mostly use Chanters as autoattack bots that maintain one of the superstar phrases while interleaving some shorter and less useful phrases.

 

 

EDIT: I like Elerond's idea of reducing phrase cost as higher level chants are learned, though I'd put the minimum cost at 1 phrase chanted rather than 0.

Edited September 27, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Elric Galad]

A part of the problem seems that it is hard to "divide" phrase. Decreasing their cost by 1 unit bascially means substracting 33% of their cost.

 

Multiply by 10 generated phrases and Invocation costs will greatly help balancing task. (This is just an example)

 

In the proposal from Elerond, for example, Invocation cost could by reduced by 5 units instead of 10(1)

His idea is reasonable but decreasing to 0 Phrases indeed leads to side-effects.

 

 

I agree about one thing in the above posts : Chants are fine as they are and don't require any buff.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Elric Galad

[Elerond]

A part of the problem seems that it is hard to "divide" phrase. Decreasing their cost by 1 unit bascially means substracting 33% of their cost.

 

Multiply by 10 generated phrases and Invocation costs will greatly help balancing task. (This is just an example)

 

In the proposal from Elerond, for example, Invocation cost could by reduced by 5 units instead of 10(1)

His idea is reasonable but decreasing to 0 Phrases indeed leads to side-effects.

 

 

I agree about one thing in the above posts : Chants are fine as they are and don't require any buff.

 

There are side effects I agree when you get 0 phrase invocations, but you don't get them until level 13 and that is when wizards, priests and druids get to use their 3 level spell in every encounter, which gives them ability to cast over 10 spells per encounter. So if you limit chanter ability to cast 0 phrase invocations as many times as they have generated phrases in that fight they usually still could not get even close to capacity that those classes have and chants aren't that powerful that they would turn scales to chanter in late game encounters at least not usually.

 

Of course this is just calculations in my head and reality may actually show different results, but I have my doubts on that happening.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Elerond

[Elric Galad]

Hehe, if you read the thread about per encounter spells, you'll see that I m actually arguing about the necessity to remove per encounter spells for the sake of balance ^^

[Ymarsakar]

Per encounter doesn't need to be removed. The number of spell casts should be reduced once it becomes per encounter.

[gkathellar]

 

A part of the problem seems that it is hard to "divide" phrase. Decreasing their cost by 1 unit bascially means substracting 33% of their cost.

 

Multiply by 10 generated phrases and Invocation costs will greatly help balancing task. (This is just an example)

 

In the proposal from Elerond, for example, Invocation cost could by reduced by 5 units instead of 10(1)

His idea is reasonable but decreasing to 0 Phrases indeed leads to side-effects.

 

 

I agree about one thing in the above posts : Chants are fine as they are and don't require any buff.

 

There are side effects I agree when you get 0 phrase invocations, but you don't get them until level 13 and that is when wizards, priests and druids get to use their 3 level spell in every encounter, which gives them ability to cast over 10 spells per encounter. So if you limit chanter ability to cast 0 phrase invocations as many times as they have generated phrases in that fight they usually still could not get even close to capacity that those classes have and chants aren't that powerful that they would turn scales to chanter in late game encounters at least not usually.

 

Of course this is just calculations in my head and reality may actually show different results, but I have my doubts on that happening.

 

I generally agree and quite like your idea. I think many of the particular phrases and invocations need renovation as well (un-nerf Thrice She Was Wronged, you barbarians! *shakes fist*), but this would definitely be a good starting point.

 

The two invocations I'd be wary of if phrases were allowed to reach cost 0 are the two stun cones. They're pretty reasonable if you have to charge them up, but if they were at all spammable, they'd be stunningly* good. Those on their own are a good argument for why a minimum cost of 1 phrase would probably be a good call.

 

Per encounter doesn't need to be removed. The number of spell casts should be reduced once it becomes per encounter.

 

That's just incoherent. I level up, and suddenly I can't nova as effectively? What?

 

But you're right, per-encounter doesn't need to be removed. Other things need to be brought up to par. Like, you know, Chanters.

 

*Eh? Eh? EH?

[Remix]

Chanter is one of my favorite favorite classes to play. I tend to lean toward builds that focus on shorter phrases and, therefore, utilize more invocations. 

However, it feels like after the 2.0 patch this build become far less useful... especially of higher levels. And this includes almost all but the more difficult battles in PoTD and Trial of Iron. The pace of combat has increased in such a way that they don't feel as much fun to play. 

The best solutions I can think looks at chanters in a way similar to the other spell-caster classes. 

The simple solution is to treat them like wizards. All invocations cost one less phrase across the board once they get to level X. Wizards get level 1, 2 and 3 per-encounter spells at level 9, 11 and 13 respectively. Plus, they get access to all of their other spells.

It doesn't seem so outrageous to scale chanters so that their invocations cost one less phrase at levels 9, 11 and 13. By the time chanters reach level 13 their level one invocations will cost one phrase. That is pretty similar to the 5-second delay that the "multiclass" talent variants of Whispers of Treason and Skeleton Summons get already. It could even be Levels 10, 12 and 14 if that makes any difference. Or it can only occur twice at levels 11 and 13 only. Whichever works best for game balance. 

Or, if that seems too overpowered, the chanters can always be treated like ciphers. Specifically, force builds of this manner to take a class-specific talents in order for invocations to be cast with fewer phrases. At least people will have to sacrifice certain talents with their builds in order to utilize invocations more often. Ciphers have a similar catch with regards to the fact that they have to pick up talents that maximize their focus. If simply allowing chanters to cast invocations with fewer phrases accumulated once they hit level X seems too overpowered, this seems like a solution that would make for a more balanced invocation build. 

 

[Elric Galad]

So, now that it is said in another thread that per encounter spells are going to be completely changed, we can now speak about reasonable changes to chanter class.

[Ymarsakar]

<B>That's just incoherent. I level up, and suddenly I can't nova as effectively? What?</b>

 

So it doesn't make sense because of the math, is that it.

 

A wizard with level 3 per encounter spells has 4+4+4 active abilities per encounter.

 

This means many builds don't even use the higher level spells and focus more on cast times to dump those free abilities on the enemy.

 

2+2+1 will not give as much benefit per encounter, but between rests it will still be much higher damage totals than some wizard that runs out of spells every 4 casts per level.

 

It's the difference between a paladin having 5 per rest use of lay on hands vs 2 per encounter use of lay on hands. Or even the difference between the old paladin's one per encounter use and now two per encounter use.

[gkathellar]

<B>That's just incoherent. I level up, and suddenly I can't nova as effectively? What?</b>

 

So it doesn't make sense because of the math, is that it.

 

No, it doesn't make sense because you're proposing a system where casters have the ability to do a thing at level 8, and suddenly lose the ability to do that thing at level 9.

[Ymarsakar]

You don't have per encounter spells at level 8, so you don't lose per encounter spells at level 9. What is lost is level 1 spells being rest.

 

What I'm talking about is a rebalance to the system. How many spells do you want your wizard to cast per encounter, gk at level 13? 12 + the rings? How many battles last that long?

Edited September 29, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[gkathellar]

You don't have per encounter spells at level 8, so you don't lose per encounter spells at level 9. What is lost is level 1 spells being rest.

 

What I'm talking about is a rebalance to the system. How many spells do you want your wizard to cast per encounter, gk at level 13? 12 + the rings? How many battles last that long?

 

Alright, lemme see if I've misunderstood your proposal. Here's what you've said:

 

The number of spell casts should be reduced once it becomes per encounter.

 

Here's how I read that: "When a caster reaches level 9, he loses the ability to cast four 1st-level spells per rest, and gains the ability to cast a smaller number (let's say two, for the sake of argument) of spells per-encounter."

 

Have I misunderstood this?

Edited September 29, 2015 by gkathellar