All Flavors Please

[ThomasHunter]

The 3 new bard trees have me pretty excited to play one of each flavor. Why not I am thinking!

Initially, it seems that staying pure is pretty cool on each tree. However, the SB chat has been pretty popular and multi-classing there seems quite doable, if not preferable. The STR build with Cleaves, etc seems pretty solid for sure. But staying pure CHR seems just as fun.

So, what are others' thoughts on the new trees and how best to build a WC and a SS? Any new takes on SB? My initial thoughts on WC and SS is that they are "best" as "all-in". Maybe this is true with SS mostly?

Note that the only bards I have really played are classic 16/4 Warchanters of pre-U19. Since then, they have been parked...

Looking forward to gleaning ideas!

[mrunlimited]

So currently I am working towards epic completionist on my pure bard and my thoughts wereto try out different stuff each past life. Basically put, with each sphere you can maximize your synergy based on which tree you focus on. For martial, go WC blitzer with high enough str to get power attack and cleaves so you can charge blitz, use single weapon fighting line with bastard sword or dwarf axe( with axe you can get 19/20x6!) but max out cha so you can use the spinning ice attack and maybe even get some other cc going if need be. For the arcane tree you have two options, go swash buckler and mess with fatesinger which despite what people say is pretty decent or do spell singer caster in the other two trees. For divine, again 2 good options. One is spell singer in exalted angel for massive dc boosts and slas. The other is sb in divine crusader. I still need to test it but single weapon fighting with orb in off hand and some fire spell power boosts could work wonders for consecration plus zeal of the righteous is just amazing. On my swash buckler with zeal active i can have nearly 100% double strike for a solid few minutes using action boost twords then end of it also. For primal, id say two options work well. The single weapon line with bastard swords or daxes as a wc in fury is really good. Im also currently trying out an interesting idea I had for funsies and am a sb thrower build in shiradi. This is mostly to exploit how amazing the coffin nail is once you hit ml24. I just etred today so Ill have updates as to how my build actually goes and if it is not gimp ill post the breakdown of it too. Just doing some number crunching in my head, it "looks like" one could have roughly similar dps as a thrower sb as a melee sb can achieve.

Either way my point is, Bards are the kings of versatility now and there is a lot of fun experimenting to be had with them. The versatility in the class really offers some cool interactions with almost every destiny and even if some things are sub optimal in terms of numbers, they are likely to be lots of fun to play around with.

[mrunlimited]

Just an fyi for all the haters out there, yes coffin nail has a save but %5 of the time works all the time lol. And with really fast attack speeds, things just roll ones on saves frequently. Add that with another %7 proc chance with nerve venom and %7 double rainbow, a good portion of the time you are messing with mobs pretty badly. And with ottos whistler you have a way to use ranged coup de grace so at the very least trash isnt an issue. Boss dps is about the only thing I am not sure about yet...