Warchanter Review

[maddmatt70]

The first comment on warchanter is why is there a nerf to inspire courage for bards? In pnp and in DDO this is a bards bread and butter so why do warchanters give 2 less damage with inspire courage and spellsingers an additional 3 less damage. Warchanter should receive at least a +1/+2/+3 damage to inspire courage line in the second tier that a spellsinger can also get.

I think skaldic rage is o.k., but I would like for higher constitution characters to have a longer duration for skaldic rage so 60 seconds + (con modifier * 10 or at least *6). This would reward beefier bards which is fine.

The +10 to hit points is nice for fighting spirit.

So right after a bard plays inspire courage they then have 20 seconds to get a vorpal to keep the base attack bonus going? How very litle time to keep such a small buff going. The base attack bonus gain for a pure level 20 is only +5 to hit and negligible dps gain (perhaps 0 as I am not sure if having a higher attack bonus improves attack speed) which at level 18 is terrible anyway especially since bards do not have much trouble missing or anyone for that matter. At the very least this should be full base attack bonus while a bard has the inspire courage active, but a cooler ability would be both full base attack bonus for the bard and for everyone else that gets the inspire courage.

Warmaster is actually one of the better capstones assuming the edyls edge works for it and I do not have to sit there and play it 5 times. The warmaster I think will be most useful on the non tanks actually. Like throw it on a cleric or something because they can likely use all those buffs. I am a little hestitant regarding the +5 comptence to damage, but I am o.k. with this as long as you put out a great dps set of goggles that are better then dream visor or at least comparable and stack with competence. Do not give bards some lousy dps buffing jibber jabber for a capstone.

Inspire bravery: more buffs for to hit and fear both of which are not too useful in game.

Wassail: nice flavor.

Fervor: this should be in spellsinger/virtuoso not sure why in this enhancment tree.

rough and ready: solid good enhancement.

Focused: has nice value for the few intimidate bards out there.

Boast: not very useful, but teh extra rage is something anyway.

Gathering cold/Iced edges: far too short of a duration. Bards are a very active playstyle and often cast cure spells, buff spells, play songs, fascinate, etc. while fighting and in between swinging their melee weapon. Any personnel buff with a very short duration is terrible for bards. There are some bards out there that buff and think they are done buffing and just fight but those bards would have a heavy melee splash and be focused in the melee levels for enhancements they would be a frenzy 5 warchanter 4 sort of character. Those characters are more barbarian then bard in a sense anyway. Make this permanent damage for a bard or close to it even if you have to nerf the damage it adds.

Action Boost Sprint: might be the best new thing for bards in here. It is very nice to hit sprint boost and run ahead of the rest of the party for a quick fascinate.

Ironskin Chant: make it so this stacks with all forms of DR and make it 5/10/15. Bards are traditionally the best buffers so give them more buffs that stack.

Obstinance: bah no one will take this. Maybe +5 at each tier, but even then why are you promoting suicidal tendencies in a video game. I have trouble enough reading the crazyness in the barbarian trees.

Poetic Edda: I like +3 songs, just not sure about the to hit. You ever going to put mobs or bosses in game that are hard to it?

Northwind: so short that is a what have you. I do not mind the cold damage aspect of this just give a reason for a battle bard player a reason to be a warchanter.

Inspire recklessness: I do not mind the -10% fortification, but i can not stand that the +6% doublestrike is a morale bonus and stacks with no items. Make it so this stacks with everything.

High spirits: would be very cool if you associated it with inspire courage and make it so no would suffer these effects while under courage. That would be awesome. As is it is lackluster.

Heroes Feast: Since this is already a spell kind of ho hum, but does grant some poison stuff. No one will take this. Add some additional benefits.

Armorer: how about both medium and heavy armor? That would actually be a decent tier 5 warchanter ability. It would also get those few intimidate bard tanks excited about this enhancment.

Horn of Thunder: Very different tier 5 on a melee character that likely has no metamagics other then empower healing, extend or quicken. This is just a mess really. Make it so the bard's weapon pulses with this damage every 45 seconds or something like that while this ability is active with a toggle. That way the bard does not have to perform an action for this to happen. Make it so metamagics do not have affect this ability, but the damage is higher d8 +3 maybe.

Howl of North: +1 to crit damage on 19-20 that will run out after like 5 minutes currently - is this really a tier 5 ability? Just upgrade this any of a million ways.

Weapon Training: this should be a tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3 ability not sure why is it tier 5. Monkey Grip how about that? Bard can play a song on himself/herself that adds a second ability score to damage or instead of strength they can play the song and get charisma, con, wisdom, int, etc. to damage. Oh man now that would be cool.

[Aashrym]

I agree with most of that, but spell singers aren't taking a big penalty to IC. I fit it in just grabbing AP to get up to the +2 CHA in the war chanter tree for another DC. Those stack with the spellsinger tree and opens up fighting spirit to get +2 damage to IC.

What really hurts the war chanter tree is no positive spell power for AP spent. Any splashed war chanter is behind any pure spell singer specced bard in IC. Splashed WC is +5 damage IC, pure spell singer is +6 damage taking 2 war chanter innates, and I think spell singers are more worth going pure.

IC was definitely nerfed by removing the war chanter bonus, moving the damage enhancements to the innates for war chanter and making that last innate part of the capstone.

I don't think filling out a war chanter tree for IC is worth it, or the tier 5 abilities, and would have a hard time giving up spell power for healing. I kind of like adding boast to my spellsinger for the damage bonus because the temp hit points don't seem to be that relevant when CC'ing.

What I don't like about the capstone is the duration. That's something I think is an issue with the tree in general. I like some of the flavor but not the short durations or pretty much the whole top tier.