Advice on crowd control spells

[Slapphappy]

What mix of spells provides efective crowd control at low, mid and high levels?

(I am posting this question on the wizard forum too.)

thanks,
Slapphappy, (on behalf of Mezmer)

[~Jules921]

My bards love:
Glitterdust
Soundburst
Otto's Dance (all versions)
Hypnotize
Daze Monster
Hold Person/Monster

Jules

[CSFurious]

my capped sor can just do it better

i think bards help their fellow players best as buffers &, for me, as warchanters

fascinate is the bard's best cc

[Avonwey]

Hogwash that a sorcerer can do it better because I have both. :P

On my bard about 90% of my CC (other than fascinate) is a heightened hypnotize, with a few others (charm monster) thrown in.

[EinarMal]

my capped sor can just do it better

i think bards help their fellow players best as buffers &, for me, as warchanters

fascinate is the bard's best cc

Battle Bards work fine without the warchanter enhancement. A pure Bard is usually about even with a warchanter because most of them MC and end up with about the same song power as a Pure Bard.

Even with two pure 14 level Bards 8/6 versus 9/8 is hardly the end of the world.

Plus there are lots of other very useful Bard builds...

[EinarMal]

The only other spell that I would add to Jules list is mass suggestion which is very effective and also a crowd control spell of sorts.

[CSFurious]

i used to take heighten on my dead bards as well

wasted feat on a feat-starved class IMO

sors cast about twice as fast & have at minimum 50% more mana then bards

so if your bard can enchant as effectively as your sor, i would reroll your sor

Hogwash that a sorcerer can do it better because I have both. :P

On my bard about 90% of my CC (other than fascinate) is a heightened hypnotize, with a few others (charm monster) thrown in.

[CSFurious]

if you just want to buff & stand in the back & watch & maybe throw in a heal now & then

Plus there are lots of other very useful Bard builds...

[CSFurious]

there are only so many things that you can do in a fight

i would think that a battle bard would let the squishy sor or wiz enchant & just wade right into battle

but, if you have great fast-twitch skills & drink lots of mountain dew (i love diet code red), enchant away

also, calling yourself a battle-bard without the warchanter enhancement is sort of like buying a porsche with an automatic transmission

Battle Bards work fine without the warchanter enhancement. A pure Bard is usually about even with a warchanter because most of them MC and end up with about the same song power as a Pure Bard.

Even with two pure 14 level Bards 8/6 versus 9/8 is hardly the end of the world.

Plus there are lots of other very useful Bard builds...

[nbhs275]

there are only so many things that you can do in a fight

i would think that a battle bard would let the squishy sor or wiz enchant & just wade right into battle

but, if you have great fast-twitch skills & drink lots of mountain dew (i love diet code red), enchant away

also, calling yourself a battle-bard without the warchanter enhancement is sort of like buying a porsche with an automatic transmission

lol why? they get a total of +1 damage over a bards maxed songs if they arent pure bard, and even if they are pure its still a neglegible difference except in the rarest of situations.

Thats like saying a melee without a shield cant have ac.

[Schmackdown]

i would think that a battle bard would let the squishy sor or wiz enchant & just wade right into battle

Yeah, and I would think that a battle bard would use his ephn brain and fascinate everything before he started swinging. But the above is likely the outer limits of the confines of your toon- if you're a casting bard, cast. If you're a fighting bard, fight. Unga-bung.

also, calling yourself a battle-bard without the warchanter enhancement is sort of like buying a porsche with an automatic transmission

Massively, massively cramped thinking. It will be nice when someone comes along to feed you something intelligent to parrot, but until then comments like this are tiresome and serve only to demonstrate your complete lack of creativity.

[EinarMal]

also, calling yourself a battle-bard without the warchanter enhancement is sort of like buying a porsche with an automatic transmission

Yeah because prior to that existing no Bard could actually fight without that additional +1/+2 to inspire courage

It's not worth commenting further than that as you have shown time and again how narrow minded you are when it comes to anything that is not cookie cutter flavor of the month...

[Avonwey]

so if your bard can enchant as effectively as your sor, i would reroll your sor

The Charisma on my Bard (32) is almost as same as the Charisma on my Sorc (34). So I give up 1 on my dc. But other than that I don't get how a hypnotize from a Bard is any less effective than a hypnotize from my sorcerer.

Yes, my Sorcerer is able to enchant more quickly than my Bard. And my Sorcerer can cast more hypnotizes than my bard. But since I never run out of SP, and you don't need to spam cast CC spells, I still dispute your claim that there's any noticeable difference.

[CSFurious]

your enchanting bard's other stats are going to be low because of your min/maxxed chr

your ability to do other things during a quest is going to suffer because of that

i personally already enchant enough with my sor when i am in the mood or am running with a party that needs bodyguards

i have played enchanting bards, but no longer need to because my sor already does it faster & with more mana

if you want to have an enchanting sor & an enchanting bard, i understand, i just don't see the point of having 2 characters who essentially are casting the same spells, i.e., the enchantment-based ones

i would rather play a bard that does something else

The Charisma on my Bard (32) is almost as same as the Charisma on my Sorc (34). So I give up 1 on my dc. But other than that I don't get how a hypnotize from a Bard is any less effective than a hypnotize from my sorcerer.

Yes, my Sorcerer is able to enchant more quickly than my Bard. And my Sorcerer can cast more hypnotizes than my bard. But since I never run out of SP, and you don't need to spam cast CC spells, I still dispute your claim that there's any noticeable difference.

[WeaselKing]

I have a Warchanter WF 6 brd/1 ftr. I have found myself fascinating everything for cc and leaving all the spells for self buffing. The only trick is to run ahead in group (at least pugs) and fascinate b4 the others catch up. Otherwise some tank grabs all the agro and swings a two hander at the mob breaking the entire groups fascinate. Did this on a TR run the other day the group thought I was crazy at first but eventually caught on.

[CSFurious]

a year ago, i would have laughed at using any race other than drow or human for a bard

now, as the game has developed, dps & hitpoints are the most important at endgame

therefore, it makes sense that now dwarves & wf can also be bards even though they have a penalty with respect to chr

but, i do not think that dwarven & wf bards are as good at enchanting as drow bards, that is not why you use that race to play a bard IMO; if i rolled a dwarf or wf bard, i would not bother with enchantment-based spells

so, if it is the flavor of the month to want to have more hitpoints & be able to cause more damage in combat, i am guilty

i just killed a level 9bard/2fighter because he was not fun, and that was my mistake because i used a drow and had high chr & dex

so i think i made it pretty clear in my initial post that i gave up on enchantment-based bards, i probably killed about 3 to 4 at level 11 before i said "no mas"

i am just telling someone who is new at playing bards my experiences with playing enchantment-based bards

Yeah because prior to that existing no Bard could actually fight without that additional +1/+2 to inspire courage

It's not worth commenting further than that as you have shown time and again how narrow minded you are when it comes to anything that is not cookie cutter flavor of the month...

[CSFurious]

this is the way that i am playing now & it is more fun than the way that i used to play with my deceased bards

I have a Warchanter WF 6 brd/1 ftr. I have found myself fascinating everything for cc and leaving all the spells for self buffing. The only trick is to run ahead in group (at least pugs) and fascinate b4 the others catch up. Otherwise some tank grabs all the agro and swings a two hander at the mob breaking the entire groups fascinate. Did this on a TR run the other day the group thought I was crazy at first but eventually caught on.

[Schmackdown]

I have a Warchanter WF 6 brd/1 ftr. I have found myself fascinating everything for cc and leaving all the spells for self buffing. The only trick is to run ahead in group (at least pugs) and fascinate b4 the others catch up. Otherwise some tank grabs all the agro and swings a two hander at the mob breaking the entire groups fascinate.

This is staging, which I've been advocating since launch when people whined that Fascinate is "too slow" or requires too much communication with the party. This approach can dominate, and with it you need neither spell CC nor CHA. I started my last dwarf 11/1/2 build with a 9 CHA, in fact. The trick on a THF Warchanter is not messing up your own mez, and why TWF can be a more attractive choice for melee bards. Any build using this method needs to know zones pretty well, too- if you're blindly forging ahead hoping to find some good targets for your mez, you're likely going to be in trouble.
[eaten by cube]

[EinarMal]

this is the way that i am playing now & it is more fun than the way that i used to play with my deceased bards

What you are missing is my point about MC warchanters versus pure Bards who fight but choose spellsinger. Once you dip out of Bard you lose most of the benefits that warchanter gives.

So, if you dip even 1 level you end up with +0 to hit and +1 damage over a pure Bard non-warchanter. That is trivial....

On the other hand the pure Bard spellsinger (who also fights) gains 100 spell points and +2 UMD and still has the same song power as the MC warchanter....

You will also not outdamage a TWF strength based build (spellsinger or warchanter) by going two handed with a Dwarf. The hit points well that is about the only advantage really.

[Delt]

Warning...this is 'probably' a bug/glitch.

I recently met a bard who uses fascinate on a large group, then casted fear. Once they are feared, they don't move when you hit them.

Using this combo is pretty much danger-free, saves massive SP and is two-handed-fighters-in-a-PUG safe.

Edit: I meant the spell fear, not scare - sorry