An even more boring chanter (retailation chanter?)

[Braven]

I have been thinking about my never-ending quest to build a better invincible character in a hypothetical never-ending battle (solo).  It is well established that you can get insane endurance regeneration eventually with a Chanter (with the kindness chant adding 100% healing multiplier, and the fact veterans and the two chanter specific talents stack).   However, because the talents are duration-limited, they will eventually stop.  So, I have been thinking about ways to have a more sustainable damage mitigation that has no duration limit and is able to keep pace with damage.

 

Here is my idea:

 

Str: 21

Con: 18

Dex: 3

Per: 8

Int: 10

Res: 18

 

- The level 4 chant, "Her courage thick as steel", provides a "30 damage shield".  At level 16, this should only take 5 seconds to refresh.  You also don't need intelligence to use it since we don't care about the linger time.    When compared with the DOT endurance, it is equivalent to 18 endurance Regen per tick and it doesn't use health making that non-limiting factor and it can be used over and over again, indefinitely.

 

- Dying Boar Cloak for +5 regeneration, to help cover any damage that manages to get past the damage shield and our defenses.  I am not sure if it stacks with the +1 regen of the belt or scars armor (I know the belt and armor don't stack), but that could be a bit more too.

 

- You can effectively get a 145% healing multiplier from might, a belt, and survival. This makes the Dying Boar mantle heal for +12.5 endurance per tick.  Combined with the damage shield, that is 30.5 damage per 3 seconds mitigated, most of which doesn't count against the health pool.

 

- To increase DR, we use The Champion invocation (you should have enough Intelligence to have its duration last through your phrases).  It provides +10 DR.  Plate armor provides another +20 eventually with legendary enchantment.  Second Skin provides +2.  At low endurance, we get another +15% from the iron circle ring.

 

- Defenses are great.  Mantle of the Dying boar gives +15 will, max might and con give high fortitude, and the shield helps reflex.  We invest all talent points for defense.  With the speed-enchanted hatchet, we can get a bit more deflection and, combined with The Champion invocation, a less painful recovery.  No recovery bar with the swift-action gauntlets, if faster attack speed is desired.

 

Question:

 

Does retaliation effects fire off when the damage shield is hit?  Does DR mitigate the damage it absorbs?  If retaliation works, it could make fire godlike an interesting option.

 

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This character won't kill anything very quickly at all, but is he unkillable even in a 10 minute fight?  Would incoming damage ever outpace the damage shield, dying boar, and DR mitigations?

 

Another variation is to dump INT and place it all into Perception or Dex.  With high dex, you could just stick with summoning invocations that don't use intelligence or perception.   With high perception, you could go with the freezing spells for damage which don't need intelligence.  You give up the 10 DR from the invocation, but gain additional reflex defense; the defense most susceptible to burst damage.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Braven

[Boeroer]

I don't know if retaliation triggers when the shield catches the damage, but I do know that overlapping shields do kind of stack: if the active shield gets used up one of the suppressed ones will jump in. If you combine multiple Chanters who all use that shield phrase it becomes very difficult to hurt them. At least that was the case when I tested it right when that phrase came out. So, longer time is somewhat important.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Boeroer

[Braven]

Ah, I thought they overwrote each other. In that case the linger does help, but only if the shield lasts 6 seconds or so before getting used up. I kind of like the idea of a minimum intelligence chanter in order to avoid the temptations of Dragon Thrashed. Just let your summons do your dirty work while you stay in your nice, iron shell.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Braven

[Dr <3]

Lol the new frontier in a party of 6 immortal chanter that kills everyting with autoattack at 3dex.

 

Sloooowly

 

 

6 shields of 30 dmg that autorenew every 6-10 seconds need a spike of at least 180 dmg to break trough. Defenetly need testing.

[Braven]

They can just sit, huddled together to overlap their tiny chant auras with 3 int and watch 12 summoned ogres slowly kill the enemy (outside of your chant radius so those brutes don’t use your precious damage shield). As they die, just invocate more to take their place. That build requires zero stats since summon durations are not dependent on intelligence. I guess high dex to prevent your shields from going down during the invocation recovery. Too bad you can’t hold a shield in each hand and have no weapon.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Braven

[Braven]

I guess for maximum survivablity, you do both the damage shield and massive endurance regen at different times in the battle. At the start of battle, do the healing multiplier chant until your veterans, etc durations run out, than switch to the damage shield chant and dying boar mantle. Most damage happens during the first minute of battle while the enemy uses thier abilities up. After that, they just auto attack and the damage shield should be enough.

 

You can actually attack very fast with The Champion invocation. Swift guantlets and speed-enchanted weapon will still allow you to wear durganized plate armor and hold a shield with zero attack recovery.

 

With the shield that reflects grazed ranged attacks, many enemies will kill themselves so you don’t have to attack them.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Braven

[Braven]

Apparently ancient memories (and the other chanter talent) have no duration, despite the UI text. That could bode well for a low intelligence solo chanter that uses uses phrases and invocations that don’t really benefit from intellience very much like summons or the ice spells. Skip veterans and rely on no-duration regeneration instead.

 

When soloing, will is generally pretty useless since fear/terrify can be stopped with immunity and charm effects do nothing. There are very few damaging will powers that enemies use. Later you can get immunity from paralyze before needing to fafe enemies with paralyzing will attacks. This makes lowering resolve/intelligence more desirable when it is reasonable to do so.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Braven

[Braven]

I have the damage shield now, but the UI is not very helpful explaining how it works. It seems to absorb damage after attack roll is checked against defense, but before DR is applied. Any remainder damage from a single attack after the shield has run out of “health” is also absorbed by the shield as it disappears. As a result, it actually absorbs more than 30 damage most of the time.

 

What this means is that it is better to wear light armor and go with maxed out defenses to get more misses and avoid the shield getting weakened by the fodder units.

 

Another thing I noticed is that the damage shield seems to trigger before the graze reflection happens with that shield from the monks. As a result, it is better to stick with a large shield instead (or savior).

 

When stacking the chant, the oldest ones always get suppressed and hit last. As a result, a small linger is pretty worthless since the suppressed shield will expire before it will ever be able to take another hit. With really high int it can stick around and help mitigate the streakiness of dice rolls.

 

Perhaps alternating a level 1 phrase and damage shield is best. +10 fortitude and will is nice too and allows for more invocations (or keep up Champion’s invocation duration with less INT) This should work out well with a low INT build since stacking damage shields with only a small linger time is not helpful.

 

The Drawn in Spring dagger can be used with zero recovery with a durganized robe and shield, swift action gauntlets, and Champion invocation. Seems like a good offensive combo with the damage shield to also do decent auto attack damage and wounding is most effective with high might and low int.

 

The captain’s hachet is the best weapon for defense. Basically +10 to all defenses against single enemies that stacks with everything. Add in glittering guantlets and executioner hood’s fear aura for a possible total of +30 Accuracy debuff. With high int and attack speed, they can be applied to more than one enemy by alternating attacks. Does anyone know if the 10% endurance debuff of fatique has any effect on enemies? To my knowledge, there is no such thing as endurance with monsters; they just have a health pool.

Edited October 21, 2017 by Braven

[mosspit]

I think it's the other way around - enemies don't have Health pool. Only Endurance.

 

That's the reason why they can "heal" themselves with abilities. And the beastiary only states the Endurance total of enemies, but not their Health total.

[Braven]

I think it's the other way around - enemies don't have Health pool. Only Endurance.

 

That's the reason why they can "heal" themselves with abilities. And the beastiary only states the Endurance total of enemies, but not their Health total.

. Does temporarily giving enemies fatique make them lose 10% of thier remaining endurance each time? Do they get that endurance all back after the hachet’s effect expires? Is it basically just a fancy way of saying “temporary accuracy debuff that stacks with everything”? It is a confusing weapon. Edited October 21, 2017 by Braven

[Boeroer]

I think you will have to test this.

Edited October 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[mosspit]

 

I think it's the other way around - enemies don't have Health pool. Only Endurance.

 

That's the reason why they can "heal" themselves with abilities. And the beastiary only states the Endurance total of enemies, but not their Health total.

. Does temporarily giving enemies fatique make them lose 10% of thier remaining endurance each time? Do they get that endurance all back after the hachet’s effect expires? Is it basically just a fancy way of saying “temporary accuracy debuff that stacks with everything”? It is a confusing weapon.

 

Previously, I was hitting my own teammates with that weapon, and notice the target will gain back the endurance when the effect expires.