Chanter build help

[Teldurn]

Preface: I'm still pretty new to this game. As a huge fan of support characters in general and bards in particular, I figured playing a chanter would fit that bill for me closely enough that I wouldn't notice a difference. I was wrong, and the longer I play, the more apparent that is becoming. At this point I realize I'm probably doing something wrong.

 

I had read around the forums for a bit and saw chanters could dump Dex for practically no penalty. So going with what the game was suggesting, I made this:

 

 

I feel like after 4 levels I should have seen some sort of improvement in my output but it just doesn't seem to be what I was expecting. I figure I must have built the character incorrectly. As a tank, she seems to be sticky (frequently seems to steal aggro off of Eder, even though I let him engage first) - but with that health and endurance doesn't seem to be able to stay alive long.

 

As an aoe, "Come, Come Soft Winds of Death" only seems to be doing about 2 damage if I read the combat log correctly - which at level 4 just seems absolutely paltry; and as a damage dealer, her attacks are soooo sloooow - even when equipped with a "fast" hatchet - that damage output is pathetic. Her only real source of damage seems to be the phantom summon.

 

And if I switch to The Disappointer (enchanted with Accurate 1), damage becomes notably better but I can't do anything aside from get one shot off and then wait an eon for the next shot. Meanwhile, the enemies have closed the distance and she's getting hit and hurt and the reloading animation isn't ending fast enough to get a heal/potion/Gaun's Pledge/etc. off in time. 

 

How do I fix this (or, what am I doing wrong)? Am I simply expecting too much from the class, trying to be good at too many things at once? I feel like I should be a more productive party member by level 4, y'know?

 

For the record, the velocity of her losing health seems to have noticeably improved after recruiting Durance, but now I need to camp regularly to get his heals back.

[Derrick]

The stats looks fine for me. When I play chanter the first time and when I was around level 4, I have the same feeling. But as the game goes my chanter gets better and better, especially after level 9.

 

Chanter is actually a class kind of underwhelming in lower difficulty as the combat ends too fast for chanter to shine. However it becomes one of the best class in POTD with prolonged combat.

 

Also early game chanter does have health issue as the main tank. It will be better if you have another tank to reduce the pressure.

 

As for Phrases, summons are good in general early to mid game until level 9 you will get two powerful phrases.

[Boeroer]

Your MIG score is awful for a phrase-based chanter with dumped DEX. Raise your MIG to the max if you can, lower RES and CON to 10, it's fine. DEX can be completely dumped. Get a plate armor, hatchet + shield, weapon & shield style, wait till lvl 9, then only put one single phrase of "The Dragon Thrashed" into your songbook and let your jaw drop... just forget your weapons.

 

You also want to take Ancient Memory, Beloved Spirits and Veteran's Recovery. Then you want to get a Belt of Bountiful Healing and survial min 8 in order to get the +40% healing bonus that will work for all three of those regeneration effects. Then look out for an item with Overseeing (Celebrant's Gloves, some rings) and search for the amulet Voice of the Mountaintop (in Dyrford Village). You will cover a huge AoE with continous burn and slash damage while you are very sturdy. 

 

By the way: the "Come, Soft Winds" phrase also stacks with itself (like Dragon Thrashed). You can use it until lvl 9 to deal some AoE damage. You only need to place one phrase of it into your songbook. Because phrases have linger time they will overlap and the damage will stack. 

 

With lots of MIG and INT even Soft Winds will do ok damage. Remember it's raw damage and it's AoE, it's not too bad. In the meanwhile tank around, heal your chaps passively via Ancient Memory adn Beloved Spirits (same AoE as your chant) and occasionally drop a phantom, cast "White Worms" or "Killers Froze Stiff" from time to time. White Worms can be insanely powerful if you pile up bodies at a chokepoint. Turn off gib-effects in the options menu so that bodies don't explode. It's silly anyway. Corpses can be used over and over again as long as you don't leave the map or reload. This way Lord Raedric is always a one-shot for me. Just don't wear headphones when using White Worms on a huge pile of corpses...

Edited September 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[Torm51]

Ya if you are a phrase changer you want might.

[Valci]

i dont mean to hijack this thread or anything but as im rolling a chanter too atm im trying to understand... on my one the stats are:

 

MIG: 16

CON:12

DEX:10

PER:12

INT:16

RES:12

 

at least as far as i can remember atm seeing as how im at the office right now and cant check.

 

My intention is to make a dual sabre wielding chanter (is it worth it to dual wield duplicated Bittercut?) in medium type armor (chainmail maybe) with a Pistol as a side arm. I'm going for the "blade" spec from BG. I dont want the chants to be useless though and since i want to also fight i thought Might and Int at 16 was decent. Is this setup workable or not?

 

Also, for RP reasons i would prefer not to drop any stat below the average 10. Looking at those 3-4DEX builds makes me imagine some klutz that trips over himself. Wasnt it in BG that if your INT was too low you were borderline illiterate?... lol

Edited September 21, 2017 by Valci

[Boeroer]

Yes, good spread for that.

 

But dual Bittercut is a bit of a waste for a chanter to be honest. No synergy with Spirit of Decay whatsoever. But if this is your whish I can't stop you.

 

If you're going to use the Mith Fyr phrase then take a look at "The Flames of Faîr Rhîan". It's a sabre that gives you 3 Fireballs per Rest. Because Mith Fyr also puts lashes on spells - it's powerful because of that.

Edited September 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[Teldurn]

Your MIG score is awful for a phrase-based chanter with dumped DEX. Raise your MIG to the max if you can, lower RES and CON to 10, it's fine. DEX can be completely dumped. Get a plate armor, hatchet + shield, weapon & shield style, wait till lvl 9, then only put one single phrase of "The Dragon Thrashed" into your songbook and let your jaw drop... just forget your weapons.

 

You also want to take Ancient Memory, Beloved Spirits and Veteran's Recovery. Then you want to get a Belt of Bountiful Healing and survial min 8 in order to get the +40% healing bonus that will work for all three of those regeneration effects. Then look out for an item with Overseeing (Celebrant's Gloves, some rings) and search for the amulet Voice of the Mountaintop (in Dyrford Village). You will cover a huge AoE with continous burn and slash damage while you are very sturdy. 

 

By the way: the "Come, Soft Winds" phrase also stacks with itself (like Dragon Thrashed). You can use it until lvl 9 to deal some AoE damage. You only need to place one phrase of it into your songbook. Because phrases have linger time they will overlap and the damage will stack. 

 

With lots of MIG and INT even Soft Winds will do ok damage. Remember it's raw damage and it's AoE, it's not too bad. In the meanwhile tank around, heal your chaps passively via Ancient Memory adn Beloved Spirits (same AoE as your chant) and occasionally drop a phantom, cast "White Worms" or "Killers Froze Stiff" from time to time. White Worms can be insanely powerful if you pile up bodies at a chokepoint. Turn off gib-effects in the options menu so that bodies don't explode. It's silly anyway. Corpses can be used over and over again as long as you don't leave the map or reload. This way Lord Raedric is always a one-shot for me. Just don't wear headphones when using White Worms on a huge pile of corpses...

Awesome. That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. Thank you!

 

For the record, I had taken Ancient Memory but not any of the others. I had gib effects on because I've always loved the IE games' pink mist effect, but with something like "White Worms" I can see why it would be better having that off.

 

So how's this instead:

 

MIG 18

CON 10

DEX 4

PER 16

INT 20 (including +1 Old Vailia)

RES 10

 

What I'm hearing from your reply is that I can basically forget about contributing via weapon attacks and just focus on being a chanting machine. That works for me. Thank you!

[Boeroer]

Lovely. That will work. Just keep in mind: you will be superslow when it comes to anything other than singing phrases.

 

So yes, you can totally forget about weapon damage and concentrate on positioning yourself perfectly well or blocking paths of enemies who want to reach your backline and so on. Some people even take Hold the line and pick up a guarding weapon (+2 engagement slots). That way you can stop up to 3 enemies who want to run past you - briefly, but better than nothing. Getting engaged stops movement and that can buy time for you.

 

Other pick weapons with spell bindings so that they can cast a spell here and there. I did this with the following (old) build: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83491-class-build-the-drakes-ambassador-searing-mesmerizing-chanter-tank/

 

What you can also do to make your game a bit more "active" is to get a weapon with marking (sword Shame or Glory, spear Cladhaliath) and flank enemies for one of your melee dps guys. He will then get the equivalent of +20 ACC (-10 deflection from flanking, +10 ACC from marking). That would be single ally support mostly but it may be more insteresting than just standing around.

 

But standing around is not a problem - because you combine support (AoE passive healing), tankyness (great regeneration, high DR and decent deflection/reflex) with very high passive AoE damage from lvl 9 on.

 

Lvl 1 - 8 are a bit less exciting of course. Soft Winds doesn't do as much damage. But it's nice to speed up the phrase counter a bit and to cast some invocations here and there (you can totally stop doing this when you have Dragon Thrashed - casting invocations will disrupt your singing and thus stop your damage-dealing).

Edited September 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

Lovely. That will work. Just keep in mind: you will be superslow when it comes to anything other than singing phrases.

 

So yes, you can totally forget about weapon damage and concentrate on positioning yourself perfectly well or blocking paths of enemies who want to reach your backline and so on. Some people even take Hold the line and pick up a guarding weapon (+2 engagement slots). That way you can stop up to 3 enemies who want to run past you - briefly, but better than nothing. Getting engaged stops movement and that can buy time for you.

 

Other pick weapons with spell bindings so that they can cast a spell here and there. I did this with the following (old) build: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83491-class-build-the-drakes-ambassador-searing-mesmerizing-chanter-tank/

 

What you can also do to make your game a bit more "active" is to get a weapon with marking (sword Shame or Glory, spear Cladhaliath) and flank enemies for one of your melee dps guys. He will then get the equivalent of +20 ACC (-10 deflection from flanking, +10 ACC from marking). That would be single ally support mostly but it may be more insteresting than just standing around.

 

But standing around is not a problem - because you combine support (AoE passive healing), tankyness (great regeneration, high DR and decent deflection/reflex) with very high passive AoE damage from lvl 9 on.

 

Lvl 1 - 8 are a bit less exciting of course. Soft Winds doesn't do as much damage. But it's nice to speed up the phrase counter a bit and to cast some invocations here and there (you can totally stop doing this when you have Dragon Thrashed - casting invocations will disrupt your singing and thus stop your damage-dealing).

 

I don't know about dumping Dexterity to that degree frankly. He is going to be super-slow with his Invocations and scroll/trinket spells - if he decides to use them. Elrond (my Chillfog tank) is currently using 18 Might, 18 Intelligence, 12 Perception, and nothing dumped, and he seems to be functioning well. Unlike most D&D-based systems, PoE seems to have no stat that is completely useless to a class or even clearly sub-optimal.

[Boeroer]

If you want maximum damage with Dragon Thrashed you need maxed MIG and INT. maxed PER would be the next preferable stat because cirts add +50% duration which is a 50% multiplicative damage boost compared to the usual +50% base damage crits normally do.

 

DEX isn't used at all for chanting and it's also not necessary for anything else this special chanter does, so it's the dump stat here. You don't really need/don't want to use any invocations when focusing on that phrase because invocations disrupt the chanting.

 

But of course you can get away with more DEX and less of the other stats if you want.

Edited September 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

If you want maximum damage with Dragon Thrashed you need maxed MIG and INT. maxed PER would be the next preferable stat because cirts add +50% duration which is a 50% multiplicative damage boost compared to the usual +50% base damage crits normally do.

 

DEX isn't used at all for chanting and it's also not necessary for anything else this special chanter does, so it's the dump stat here. You don't really need/don't want to use any invocations when focusing on that phrase because invocations disrupt the chanting.

 

But of course you can get away with more DEX and less of the other stats though if you want. 

 

Ah, I did not realize crits add duration. Thanks; I will adjust!

[Torm51]

I just hate dumping stats that low but thats an RP thing that i do.  I guess it would depend what the numbers "represent".  Is a 10 DEX the average  person?  or the average person who is involved in combat/adventuring.  I guess the "average" person could be considered those npcs you potentially fight when you meet aloth.  They are instantly gibbed by even the weakest of characters.  And all the average Citizen NPCs die immediately to your characters lol...I think I just talked myself out of being a dumping stat Nazi lol

 

Paladin is the only class I really hate seeing dumped stats on.  I just leave DEX at 10 but I do not dump it.

[Lampros]

I just hate dumping stats that low but thats an RP thing that i do.  I guess it would depend what the numbers "represent".  Is a 10 DEX the average  person?  or the average person who is involved in combat/adventuring.  I guess the "average" person could be considered those npcs you potentially fight when you meet aloth.  They are instantly gibbed by even the weakest of characters.  And all the average Citizen NPCs die immediately to your characters lol...I think I just talked myself out of being a dumping stat Nazi lol

 

Paladin is the only class I really hate seeing dumped stats on.  I just leave DEX at 10 but I do not dump it.

 

Yes, I hate dumping stats in general, and this game gives me reasons to do it less. It's also not too immersive to have an Elf with 4 Dexterity!

[Valci]

I just hate dumping stats that low but thats an RP thing that i do. I guess it would depend what the numbers "represent". Is a 10 DEX the average person? or the average person who is involved in combat/adventuring. I guess the "average" person could be considered those npcs you potentially fight when you meet aloth. They are instantly gibbed by even the weakest of characters. And all the average Citizen NPCs die immediately to your characters lol...I think I just talked myself out of being a dumping stat Nazi lol

 

Paladin is the only class I really hate seeing dumped stats on. I just leave DEX at 10 but I do not dump it.

I completely relate to the dumping stat nazi thing. I never dump anything below 10 which I take to be average... It's the roleplayer in me. Can't immerse myself into the character if he is a klutz (extremely low dex) a wimp with sticks for arms (extremely low mig), a retard (int), blind as a bat (per), has the willpower of a toad and so on and so forth... I just can't do it... lol. Guess it's a good thing I'm not a min/max-er else I would have developed split personality Edited September 21, 2017 by Valci

[draego]

Ye i dont like min maxing either and the most i have done is go down to 8 but normally i dont go past 9. it just feel dirty. This game is good for that though. Attributes are not as important as other games like this. Usually when i check out builds on the the board here for ideas i may use one and just dont min/max and for the most part it plays pretty much the same because abilities and gear mean alot in this game. 

Edited September 21, 2017 by draego

[Lampros]

Ye i dont like min maxing either and the most i have done is go down to 8 but normally i dont go past 9. it just feel dirty. This game is good for that though. Attributes are not as important as other games like this. Usually when i check out builds on the the board here for ideas i may use one and just dont min/max and for the most part it plays pretty much the same because abilities and gear mean alot in this game. 

 

Bingo. 8 is the lowest I've taken anything.

[Torm51]

Same here it's a believable number for me. That being said what if the "average" civilian has a 5 in all stats. Maybe a 10 is just the average adventurer/soldier/ whatever you want to call it

Edited September 21, 2017 by Torm51

[Valci]

Yes, good spread for that.

 

But dual Bittercut is a bit of a waste for a chanter to be honest. No synergy with Spirit of Decay whatsoever. But if this is your whish I can't stop you.

 

If you're going to use the Mith Fyr phrase then take a look at "The Flames of Faîr Rhîan". It's a sabre that gives you 3 Fireballs per Rest. Because Mith Fyr also puts lashes on spells - it's powerful because of that.

Question... Does the regular fire lash enchant of a weapon stack with the " chanted" one? Meaning you get 50% fire damage?

As for dual bittercut I generally have each character using a different weapon type (and having a different focus) so if I do duplicate it it would only be used to dual anyway... I just thought that it was the best/among the best for damage which is why I wanted to dual them. Also, I'm a sucker for symmetry would it be sub optimal damage wise? Would I get more out of dualing different blades as far as melee damage goes?

As for spirit of decay... Did you mean that whether I dual them or not I still only get the bonus+5 once? Because I'm assuming that's the case...

Edited September 21, 2017 by Valci

[draego]

Same here it's a believable number for me. That being said what if the "average" civilian has a 5 in all stats. Maybe a 10 is just the average adventurer/soldier/ whatever you want to call it

 

I agree with this line of thinking because it ultimately up to how you roleplay and not others. So whatever lore you need for the build its all good. I think if they would have started with all 0 and let you build up it maybe psychologically different. not sure. I guess nostalgia is a strong pull. 

[draego]

I forgot i play rangers alot so if you look at the pet they have 5 int so..........

[Valci]

Same here it's a believable number for me. That being said what if the "average" civilian has a 5 in all stats. Maybe a 10 is just the average adventurer/soldier/ whatever you want to call it

I think 10 was about average (for adventurers anyway) back in BG and it has stuck with me... It's my reference point

[Boeroer]

You would have two 25% lashes on the weapon, not one with 50%. The difference is that each lash has to overcome 1/4 of the burn DR of the enemy.

 

If you (the wielder of the weapon, not the chanter) take Scion of Flame then you would have two 30% burning lashes by the way. That is totally worth it and better than Savage Attack or whatnot.

[Valci]

You would have two 25% lashes on the weapon, not one with 50%. The difference is that each lash has to overcome 1/4 of the burn DR of the enemy.

 

If you (the wielder of the weapon, not the chanter) take Scion of Flame then you would have two 30% burning lashes by the way. That is totally worth it and better than Savage Attack or whatnot.

I get that part but say I am dual wielding burning lashes, have scion of flame and the chant on top of that? Would that be 4 instances of fire damage? As for bittercut and scion of decay not having synergy ... Doesn't scion apply when the damage is dealt as corrosive (not slash) ? What about if I put corrosive lashes on top of that? Edited September 21, 2017 by Valci

[Boeroer]

Don't know if I understand your question, but if you have Bittercut you should also take Spirit of Decay. It will raise Bittercut's damage by 20% no matter which type of damage is applied, it works with the corrode and the slash damage - no drawbacks like with Savage Attack. It's just a regular 20% boost.

Then you should definetly take a corrosive lash for Bittercut as well. The good synergy with Spirit of Decay is that the boosted damage of the saber will lead to more lash damage (since lashes are multiplicative) which itself gets boosted even more (from 25% to 30%) - and all with the same single talent.  

 

If you are now using Mith Fyr, too and wield two Bittercuts then each of the two Bittercuts will have a corrosive lash with 30% as well as an additional burning lash from the chant with 25% (I wouldn't pick Scion of Flame in that case).

[Valci]

Yeah works the way I thought it would then. Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps it would have been easier to just ask in our native language?! lol.

As a side note... As a lvl 4 party of chanter, aloth, eder and durance I found it impossible to kill Raedric and his boys on POTD difficulty... I used the bottleneck strategy after talking to him, threw out CW and the ice fog thing, had eder tanking at the door and everything... But I ran out of spells on my priest and mage before managing to kill them all and eventually the 3-4 that were still alive would ware me down... So, unlike any of my other playthroughs on lower difficulties I decided to kill Klosc and found that fight surprisingly easy... The difference is staggering. I assume the problem was my low ACC at this level and the high deflection on the paladins and such in the throne room? Ofc I could have come back later but I'm a stickler for finishing up an area before moving on...

Edited September 21, 2017 by Valci