How many classes do we really have?

[MrCow]

I would think of it as a Ranger -. You lose 2 favored enemies, some ac from barkskin, and at least 1 rank of favored damage for an average song that could easily be beat by any other bard. You also run the risk of losing Tempest 2 and 3.

The described Ranger 12/8 Bard would not lose any AC from barkskin (1 + 1 per 3 levels, caps at a total of 5). With prior Prestige Enhancements being listed as 6/12/18 they won't have to fear a loss of Tempest/Arcane Archer/Deepwood Sniper II. Also, there are still occasions where my current 9 Ranger/7 Bard can "out-song" the Inspire Courage of some bards in a raid while often being the only source of Inspire Courage in a 6-man group.

The Ranger/Bard is can be a very versatile character and has a unique property where they are viewed as less useful as a group grows larger.

On a side note, the best part of a Ranger/Bard split like this is I'm absolutely loved in "Ranger only" Shroud runs and whatnot. A Ranger icon with a decent pack of songs.

[Wizzly_Bear]

[snip]

Forgot the levelling effects of barkskin, thanks.

May be able to get warchanter or tempest 2, but not both, nor 3rd rank of either.

The fact that one excellent player can achieve above average results with such a build doesn't prove it to be a good build.

[Zenix_Leviticus]

Oh Mr. Cow,

You usually hit the nail on the head and I typically agree with you, but the power of
the bard is multiplied by every melee class in the party.

If you look at a bard that added +5 to attack and +6 to damage.

6 man group = +24 to damage per swing/attack (if you exclude 1 mage & 1 Cleric)

12 man group = +48 to damage per swing/attack ( If you exclude 1 mage & 3 Clerics)



Anyway this whole thing is not about me playing whatever class I want to play. It is
about the developers slowly rendering certain classes or builds in effective or gimped.


Chances are that if there were only Clerics and DPS I would still play, but it would
be alot more boring.

[MrCow]

Oh Mr. Cow,

You usually hit the nail on the head and I typically agree with you, but the power of
the bard is multiplied by every melee class in the party.

The power of a bard does indeed grow with the party.

The power of a ranger/bard drastically drops when a more bardic bard comes into the party.

The larger the party, the more likely a more bardic bard will be in that party.

Thus, the larger the party, the less a ranger/bard tends to be able to do for that party (and therefore viewed as "weaker").

Chances are that if there were only Clerics and DPS I would still play, but it would
be alot more boring.

There are enough rebels and non-build-conformists out there that I don't think this will ever happen.

[Cahira]

why are their so many complaints? its seems to me that people have a problem with how the player base adapts to the game the devs make and refine. there is so much focus on the 'best build' and the perception that there is only one way to play the game. this is 100% against the entire idea of DnD. how can all of these people who love DnD be hellbent on making this representation of DnD so oppoiste of its original concept?

Just as a rebuttal to your comments...

In my case, I am not complaining about how the player base adapts. I'm concerned that the abilities that my main character uses the most and relies on (bard songs and spell CC) are being rendered unusable due to blanket immunities that the developers are granting to non-red-named mobs and also to the mini-bosses (orange named mobs are still immune to Fascinate...unless they've recently changed it...which I doubt).

I choose to play a spellsinging bard (who is a 28 pt build and had a starting CHA of 16) as my main character (she's also my only lvl 16 character). She is wonderfully fun to play...at least, she is wonderfully fun to play on all the quests that don't rely on blanket immunities or red-named bad guys constantly. She has very little that she can do to be useful against those guys....

And currently, the only character I've ever re-rolled was a lvl 1 mule. When they announced the server merges, I checked the other servers and discovered that there was a character with the same name as her...so I deleted her and created a new character. I didn't want to chance taking a name away from somebody who may have actually been using it.

So, I definitely don't fall in the grouping of people who are concerned about constant re-rolls to have the best character of the month...and I have concerns about blanket immunities that are making it more difficult for my character to do anything besides buff before a fight, hold heal scrolls in one hand and a potency item in the other hand, and use my 2 cure spells that I have to be a back-up healer...on a character who is not specc-ed for healing.

If this is the forward plan of the game to make these blanket immunities more and more common, then I'm making sure to politely express my concern now in the hopes that the developers and community specialists will read these comments and think about how they are affecting these types of characters with all of the blanket immunities.

[PentegarnDarras]

why are their so many complaints? its seems to me that people have a problem with how the player base adapts to the game the devs make and refine. there is so much focus on the 'best build' and the perception that there is only one way to play the game. this is 100% against the entire idea of DnD. how can all of these people who love DnD be hellbent on making this representation of DnD so oppoiste of its original concept?

you find a build/character you like, find some peeps, hit the road, kill some baddies, rescue the wench, etc. where does "must have WOP" or "must have max intimidate" come into play?

the point is to have fun playing the game, and what builds are teh uberest are not important. if you wanna build that toon, great, have fun. if you dont, great, have fun. the quests are to hard without that type of build you say? ******** i say. the classes are SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT and bring different things to the table. use your head and figure out a different way to do it. who cares about maximizing the amount of loot, ingreds, xp, favor, or whatever you get while you play??? that sounds like a ****ing job to me man. this is a video game not a job. this is about fun. tell me that yall dont have stories about that time you and the weird party makeup totally pwnd suchnsuch quest? you remember those cause they were fun.

jesus christ

I like this answer best.