Returning player, pure bard questions

[AzB]

I've come back after a fair break. When I last played, I had a completionist pure bard who was pretty awesome. I played warlock through heroic to get the completionist feat back, (what a cakewalk that was!) and had a really nice end game viable swash bard with single target damage, decent enough dcs to get disco ball to hit. and enough spell pen to get otto's irresistable to land, even on elite drow. Single target damage was impressive, and I twisted burst for AOE damage. It worked great until they nerfed bard by reducing the doublestrike and damage quite a bit. I got discouraged having spent so much time and effort building such a cool toon just to lose about half it's damage capability overnight. This is especially bad when soloing as bards have never had any tools in the toolbox that work on bosses, so there's no strategy on boss fights, just a beat down. That gets old really fast when the beat downs take 10 minutes. Before the bard pass, I had an excellent PDK bard that swung a two hander and in Legendary Dreadnought was unstoppable. I could easily get all the wood woads soloing Overgrowth.

At any rate, I've spent some time redoing the bard as swashbuckler and have focused on DPS and given up on DCs for CC. I just use fascinate when soloing, and when in a group there's usually at least 2 warlocks so there's no need for CCs.

I've gotten my dps at level 30 up to about 1500 per crit, and there are a lot of crits. Not great, but it works ok. Energy burst is about 3500. Is this about as good as it gets or am I missing anything? I've just completed my first Slave Lord item and went with CHA, deadly, and perform. He swings a greensteel rapier, but it's just bare bones right now.

So here are my questions: Is the DPS the best I can get? My coup de grace is pretty hit and miss, even on hard. Is a perform of 103 simply not enough? What point does it get to be at least 90%? In a similar vein, my low blow and frozen fury are also not particularly reliable. I know stunning can help frozen fury, would it be worth slotting stunning +20 on my next slave lord item? I currently have a +10 stunning item.

I've twisted energy burst and invested in spell power items that can boost the burst. I've also been playing with Reign and wonder if spellpower will help it's damage? (electric and sonic) Or is it not worth the twist slot? I'm trying to up my dps to be more viable in LE.

Defense is 120 PRR, 1100 hp, 249% fort, etc. But I need to take the bad guys down faster for the best defense.

Thanks for any ideas, tips, criticisms or comments.

[slarden]

Coup requires two things - they need to meet the requirement (stunned, etc.) and you need to hit which is harder on LE than it used to be. A +24 accuracy item will help quite a bit with "to hit" as well as maxing your to hit stat. You need to figure out why it's failing and that will help you improve the odds. I use low blow (buckler build) to prep coup. Even though you are using charisma for damage "to hit" is strength which might be your problem (even PDK doesn't get cha to hit with a rapier). I went dex to damage with weapon finesse.

With slavers gear you can max both your main stat and charisma. For main stat I think int (synergies with harper tree KTA) or dex make the most sense. I think int is the absolute best and also then you can use dire charge (level 29 destiny feat) as another way to prep coup as KTA boosts dire charge. Secondly is dex with weapon finesse.

In my opinion the best swashbuckler at the moment involves having 6 fighter levels and using a handaxe. The reason is that the fighter kensai 6 core (+1 crit multiplier) stacks with the swashbuckler bonuses (giving +2 to range). Also LD has headsman chop giving another +1 multiplier on 19-20 for just axes on top of the +1 multiplier on 19-20 with devastating critical.

Pulverizer in LD doesn't stack with exploit weakness so it's hard to quantify the benefit of using a blunt weapon, but probably not enough.

[AzB]

Changing to a multi level would require more work that I'm willing to put into this toon. And I have no gear for a fighter/bard/ using hand axes. I'd really prefer to optimize what I have.

I did a little experimenting with the method of initially incapacitating the mobs beore coup, and I've noticed a few things. First off, if they're on the floor I can only use coup if I put them there intentionally. Coup doesn't seem to work if they fall down because of some other outside force or a guard. Also, timing is critical with low blow followed by coup. Some monster animation (gnolls, for example) have a lengthy animation for being knocked down. Hit coup too fast after low blow and you're less likely to have a successful coup. But I can use Otto's irresistable and coup is much more reliable. It could also be a lag/latency issue on my computer if no one else is noticing this.

[slarden]

Changing to a multi level would require more work that I'm willing to put into this toon. And I have no gear for a fighter/bard/ using hand axes. I'd really prefer to optimize what I have.

I did a little experimenting with the method of initially incapacitating the mobs beore coup, and I've noticed a few things. First off, if they're on the floor I can only use coup if I put them there intentionally. Coup doesn't seem to work if they fall down because of some other outside force or a guard. Also, timing is critical with low blow followed by coup. Some monster animation (gnolls, for example) have a lengthy animation for being knocked down. Hit coup too fast after low blow and you're less likely to have a successful coup. But I can use Otto's irresistable and coup is much more reliable. It could also be a lag/latency issue on my computer if no one else is noticing this.

Yes I think you are right about animations. Dire charge has a 6 second cool down and may be a more reliable option for prepping coup if you can get your stunning value high enough.

[AzB]

Yes I think you are right about animations. Dire charge has a 6 second cool down and may be a more reliable option for prepping coup if you can get your stunning value high enough.

Excellent idea. I'll check into that. Thanks!