Is this viable at all? POTD difficulty of course...

 

The Dragon Thrashed, The Dragon Wailed is one of the best AOE damage sources in the game, taking that with good Might will more or less guarantee a solid character. For Invocations, I usually prefer to focus on CC and damage anyway (I do usually take Reny Daret's Ghost because of the stuns, but otherwise I find managing summons more trouble than it's worth).

I agree that Reny Daret's Ghost is useful early on, but once my chanter gets At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff I shift the AI to "Aggressive," as this leads the chanter to reliably use this invocation instead, which is generally far more useful.

Yes, chanters are 100% fine without any summons, if you wish so.

Soft winds, Dragon Trashed, Killers Froze will do a lot of work, and high might will allow to deal mechanical damage.

Summons are cool for tanky guys, hiding under the shield and relying on summoned DDs

After the first 4 or 5 levels I seldomly use summons.

I agree that the summons aren't too useful after Act 1. One of the problems with summons is that the summoning AI will always use the level 1 summoning invocations when you hit 3 phrases. If you want to use the more powerful summons, you have to micromanage the chanter. This is one of the main reasons I like the aggressive AI for chanters. You chanter will autoattack while chanting Dragon Thrashed, and periodically cast Killers Froze Stiff or Thunder Rolled.

The true question :

Is there an efficient chanter build that actually relies on summons ?

Yes. There have even been several solo chanters with dumped PER and MIG who used summons as main damaging and defense tool. With Aefyllath and other support phrases it works pretty well. Of course the lower tier summons lose impact at higher levels, but you get more powerful ones - like Ancient Weapons.

Edited March 28, 20187 yr by Boeroer

To be honest I tend to forget to use my Chanter's invocations half the time. They work so well as a passive tank, shouting loudly about some angry dragon, that I forget that they can also shout loudly about the some particularly cold winds they once experienced. 

I usually forget to use them as well, which is the main reason I like to rely on the AI, which is poor, in my experience, if you pick the summoning option, but works better if you select damaging or disabling invocations and the aggressive AI option.