Is Loud and Clear any good? - AKA why would I want sonic spellpower?

[Selvera]

So recently I've decided one my characters is going to look into swashbuckling with an orb in her offhand, I'm looking at caster builds, melee builds and healer builds with a sword+orb swashbucker splash for my favorite of int/dex/cha for damage with a good critical profile. So naturally I'll take Arcane Marauder, which will let me get that offhand that adds a bunch of spell power and makes me look uniquely caster-like.

And that opens up the option of taking Loud and Clear, which I'm considering for ANY build, caster focused, doublestrike/attackspeed focused or support focused, but I'm struggling to find good sources of sonic damage to make 20 sonic spellpower worth that 1 AP that it costs. What I've found so far:

Resonant Arms: Up to 6d6 sonic damage scaling with sonic spell power on critical hit.
- Moderate damage that only happens on a critical hit, okay, but is it enough to make 20 spell power worth it? Seems like I need more sonic damage somehow

Sonic Blast (and sound burst): Up to 5d2+10 sonic damage in an AoE, with a save vs Daze.
- Sure, it's a highly recommended spell because it costs very few spell points and it's a great box breaker, has good CC and the damage is good below level 10ish, but the damage seems like the least important part of this skill and drops off quickly. It's also the only skill effected by spell power.

Shout/Greater Shout: up to 20d3+60 sonic damage in a cone, save vs daze.
- Seem to be similar to sonic blast, but with damage that is relevant a little longer and a mana cost that's much higher. Seems to me a build based on sonic damage spells would have rather low damage in general.

Scion of the Feyworld: 2d20 sonic damage on weapon attacks, scaling with spellpower
- Got to wait until level 30 to take this, then it's only 2d20 damage on hit and is competing with a bunch of other very good level 30 feats. Besides the fact that I'd usually be planning to TR at 30, is even this enough to make sonic spellpower worth it?

[Jetrule]

My Static group Character is currently a Lvl 12 bard spell singer focused. The sla's hit for good damage for the level. Especially horn of thunder the tier 5 sla. And they are all area of effect. Sonic blast is maxed at lvl 8 it hits for 90ish and crits 180 to 200ish. this is the maximized empowered sla. the shout is 300's critting in 700's sla. it caps at lvl 15. the horn of thunder is 300ish sonic 200 or so electric with crits about double. It caps at 20 I think. The d.o.t. was underwhelming from the tree and I dropped it for other things.

This bard has no points in swash and not much in anything except spell singer. I have been contemplating going fey pact warlock for 6 levels for some aura tic damage and e.s. defenses but mostly for the crit damage boost from t.s. and packing in more pact dice fron the same tree. I would give up Greater shout and too much spell pen for cc spells though and that is not appealing. It may work better with a swashie.

[Selvera]

Judging by the lack of responses to this thread and some more investigation by me to find more sonic-damage things to stack spellpower for...

I'm strongly considering sonic spell-power to be largely not worth it, even at a rate of 20 power for 1 enhancement point for any build EXCEPT for a sonic-based bard caster. Sonic-bards seem to have a few heroic spells that work well enough pre-20 and the fate-singer destiny has a few sonic spells which look good enough for epic levels (no testing and very little research here, but their numbers sound like they check out). The main question is if a spell-based bard would benefit enough to invest up to T4 swashbuckler enhancements.

For a melee-focused character, I don't see enough things scaling with sonic spellpower possible. If EK had an option for sonic weapons with their elemental weapons, that would be one thing, but they don't, which means basically all the sonic spellpower does before level 30 is increases the 6d6 sonic damage on crit.... for about 4 bonus sonic damage per crit (if my math checks out), which isn't nothing, but it doesn't scale with crit multiplier so it isn't great.

[kmoustakas]

I've been playing this build for a while. Even went human to grab the sword and orb +10 spellpower enhancement. What I've discovered is that on epic, the actual damage you do from the spellsinger sla's doesn't compare favourably to the scaling the monster's hit points get. So while for heroic this build is amazing, on hitting level 20 it drops considerably, even taking into account the new level 24 feat that increases your sla maximum caster level and the bonus primal scream sonic damage. I will soon be able to test with forced escape as well.

I repeat, on heroic levels this was one shotting whole concentrations of mobs. Didn't start hitting issues until heroic elite stormhorns monsters with their tons of hp.

edit: For me, that 6d6 on crits does around 200 damage per critical so I wouldn't consider it uninteresting! Alongside a weapon that crits often (aka all cute and interesting swashbuckling weapons!) that's a lot!

[Maelodic]

Sonic spellpower is good, and you get plenty of sources of it. Loud and Clear for a melee bard is well overshadowed by the usefulness of using a buckler, which comes with 10% dodge as well as opening up the shield mastery feat line and legendary shield mastery twist from unyielding sentinel.

For a caster bard, loud and clear does look attractive, but the points spent to get there could easily be spent in spellsinger which each point spent also gives you sonic spellpower.

In other words, comparatively it's not that great.

[Selvera]

Despite the words of caution about the limited usefulness of Loud and Clear, I've done a little testing with the enhancement and I found a bug.

Loud and Clear turns off (does not provide spellpower) under a few circumstances:
1) If you turn off swashbuckling then turn it back on.
2) If you switch your equipped weapon and do not also switch orb
3) If you log off and log back on.

And the way to turn it back on is to switch orbs or to un-equip and re-equip your orb. (respeccing and taking the enhancement again also works, but that's quite a bit more work).

All of those methods turn off the loud+clear buff 100% of the time, even if you still end up swashbuckling with an orb equipped, while the fix also works 100% of the time.

I'd thought I'd make a note of that here as a word of warning for anyone hoping to use loud+clear, and as a quickfix until SSG gets around to fixing this bug (if they do).

[adrian69]

So recently I've decided one my characters is going to look into swashbuckling with an orb in her offhand, I'm looking at caster builds, melee builds and healer builds with a sword+orb swashbucker splash for my favorite of int/dex/cha for damage with a good critical profile. So naturally I'll take Arcane Marauder, which will let me get that offhand that adds a bunch of spell power and makes me look uniquely caster-like.

And that opens up the option of taking Loud and Clear, which I'm considering for ANY build, caster focused, doublestrike/attackspeed focused or support focused, but I'm struggling to find good sources of sonic damage to make 20 sonic spellpower worth that 1 AP that it costs. What I've found so far:

Resonant Arms: Up to 6d6 sonic damage scaling with sonic spell power on critical hit.
- Moderate damage that only happens on a critical hit, okay, but is it enough to make 20 spell power worth it? Seems like I need more sonic damage somehow

Sonic Blast (and sound burst): Up to 5d2+10 sonic damage in an AoE, with a save vs Daze.
- Sure, it's a highly recommended spell because it costs very few spell points and it's a great box breaker, has good CC and the damage is good below level 10ish, but the damage seems like the least important part of this skill and drops off quickly. It's also the only skill effected by spell power.

Shout/Greater Shout: up to 20d3+60 sonic damage in a cone, save vs daze.
- Seem to be similar to sonic blast, but with damage that is relevant a little longer and a mana cost that's much higher. Seems to me a build based on sonic damage spells would have rather low damage in general.

Scion of the Feyworld: 2d20 sonic damage on weapon attacks, scaling with spellpower
- Got to wait until level 30 to take this, then it's only 2d20 damage on hit and is competing with a bunch of other very good level 30 feats. Besides the fact that I'd usually be planning to TR at 30, is even this enough to make sonic spellpower worth it?

If you're going melee and have Resonant Arms, you want all the sonic spell power you can add on without giving up the other important stuff. Swash is a crit focused build. That means they crit a lot more often than other builds thanks to their tier 5, but not as big as the heavier hitters (usually 2 multipliers off). At 430ish+ Sonic Spell Power I see Damage with Resonant arms in the upper 180-220s, and hit 280 when vulnerability stacks up. A lot of players over look how big this when you are criting ever other hit, practically.