Are Chanters Baggage in the Original Game?

I had to drop my Priest temporarily to pick up a Chanter that has a region quest (Kana in Caed Nua). Perhaps I'm playing him wrong because he is serious baggage. Fights are generally over before he gets to his 3rd chant to enable summoning. Am I doing something wrong? Also the Arquebus is nice to fire off but after that its useless until the fight is over as well. Missing my ugly Priest Durance!

If you are fully patched up then it might be how you are playing it.

I am going through the game with a chanter tank in Path of the Damned difficulty. I would never use it as a healer tho.

Chanters are the easiest class to solo the game with.

Early on, fights will be generally over before he gets enough phrases for invocations, but then the best Chanter build is chant based, not invocation based.

The Arquebus are supposed to be fired as an opener and then you switch to another set of weapon. Kana comes with an Estoc if I remember properly (it's one of the best melee weapon type), he has good accuracy and health so he can stand in melee with it.

Check his chants. His starter chant setup is crap outside one specific situation (will/fortitude attacks via At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts Grew Bold, useful against spores early on, you get better stuff later for it).

They take a few levels to get into things, until you get level 2 chants really (level 3 chants is where things start to get real goods though).

I dropped him for a bit to do another mission. I'll try rebalancing him when I get back to it.

So 21 hours into this and I know I'm late to the party here but holy hell this is a fantastic game. Reflecting on what people have bitched about I don't see it. Not yet anyway. Leveling is slow due to XP accumulation but I'm far more distracted by the compelling story, rich dialog and the world. My only complain (barring the Chanter) is the annoying pathfinding during combat. Did they do it on purpose to be *exactly* like the Infinity Games? LOL

The problem was mainly the state it was released in. It wasn't super buggy, but combat felt a bit "meh". They improved a lot of aspects in later patches and the DLCs, so it's currently in a very good shape.

Edit: That being said, it was critically acclaimed upon release as well, but I think a lot of people missed D&D and its implementation in the Infinity Engine.

You are playing on the latest version of the game, it helps. Pathfinding used to be worst too.

Most people complains about act 3 when it comes to the story (and the optional backer NPCs), unless they didn't like the mood/atmosphere of the entire game.

I watched a review of Tyranny last night where the reviewer said POE was “boring” so he was approaching Tyranny with caution. To each his own I guess. I like to dark brooding mood of this game.

Did you abandon your playthrough? Now that I'm done playing through the Metro series, I think I'm going to return to PoE.

For real this time.

No I just got distracted by Dark Souls. I have every intent on finishing POE when I'm done there. I'm definitely enjoying POE. I have abandoned Wizardry 7 though. That was more work than fun by any measure.

Chanters are great, it just takes a sec to learn how to use them -- as someone said above, their ability descriptions make their big invocations seem like the point of the class. Actually, those are mostly just nice bonuses for extra-long fights, not the core of how they work.

Kana works very well as a secondary tank.

Originally Posted by azarhal
Most people complains about act 3 when it comes to the story

Unfortunately as a huge fan of the game I have to agree that although the writing is excellent from the point of view of world-building and atmosphere, it is not so great for what should be its big payoff in the conclusion of the main storyline -- sophomoric and preachy while also making no sense in the context of the gods as they exist in the game world. It really seems like Fenstermaker had an axe to grind about IRL religion and just decided to grind it even though it didn't really apply to Eora.