Haggle Bard - Mississippi Queen

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Well my hagglebard is up to 15 and 3 dots, still having fun. However, I feel that I am REALLY hurting for lack of quicken. Fascinate and the dancing ball are just so slow, and the dancing ball (even with good concentration) has a bad habit of getting interrupted at the worst of times. I just can't count on my pug NOT to run ahead while I'm prepping the ball, often screwing up its placement too. I can finally UMD heal scrolls 100% with my human versatility on... at this point is it possible that I'd be better off swapping Empower Healing for Quicken?

Also, I'm carrying for weapons... a truelaw-puregood set, a vorpal set, a paralyzer set, an anarchaic set, a double burst pick set, a greater spell pen 6/superior potency 6 set, a sunblade, the 2h greater enchantment weapon from the reaver raid, a damager crossbow, a paralyzer crossbow, a smiter crossbow, and a banisher crossbow. Is there anything that I am in need of for weapons, particularly with shroud coming up?

See, I have very little problem getting pugs to listen because usually I kindly, and slowly, but emphatically inform them how I'm going to use the dancing balls. Usually, its a green party thats happy to learn. I'll say maybe 5% will be like skrew that and do their own thing. Those are the ones that save me money and resources They dont get healed.

For just starting out in the Shroud all you really want are the best set of greater construct bane weapons you can find(Lol - this is the only other spot I recommend 2wf, because you'll hit the portal on a 2 or more almost every time) and a metaline pure good. As time marches on... you can search for/buy better.

I'd never trade empower healing for any feat. It will truly bork your ability to heal successfully in your tightest situations. If you insist on quicken, definitely keep empower healing. they synergize extremely well. I'd replace negotiator. That way, you dont affect your gameplay.

Weapon wise your in good shape but will question one word you stated... "sets". The only time I put 2 weapons in my hand to DPS is when a monster is held. Your dex is way too low to dual wield without the magic help. Your to-hit/damage will go up exponentially going ThF. Good quarterstaffs can get the job done. Even "sword and board" works well as long as you use the right shield. Remember, you dont want arcane spell failure....

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Hi, found your thread and it looks pretty interesting. I dont understand some of your choices, however. Specially about spells and a feat or 2 (maybe even swapping later). I thought of getting mental toughness and extend spell at 1st lvl to combine it with buffs. Also spell pen at 3rd lvl seems too much too early. Of course that means I'd have to either drop some feat or swap mental toughness later on (say at lvl 15 for greater spell pen, which I thought of dropping).

Regarding spells, whats the pros and cons of this selection? Thx.

I am going to post explanations for spell selection in a bit. I'm just reserving this post for now since I need to head out for a bit. I may also switch around a few feats as well.

For now... Focus before spell pen on feats. For spells, Soundburst is a must at early/mid levels. hypno/soundburst crazy powerful CC combo. I had switched out Soundburst at later levels... will be back in a few with explanations and a better layout

[Zenako]

I am going to post explanations for spell selection in a bit. I'm just reserving this post for now since I need to head out for a bit. I may also switch around a few feats as well.

For now... Focus before spell pen on feats. For spells, Soundburst is a must at early/mid levels. hypno/soundburst crazy powerful CC combo. I had switched out Soundburst at later levels... will be back in a few with explanations and a better layout

That is a key to remaining effective as a Bard. You must be willing to change your spell mix as you level. Spells that were great at low level, are pointless later. Some are obvious like dumping Heroism once you get access to Greater Heroism. With limited spell slots, you really want to make those you have work for you, and give you options you would not be able to do otherwise.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Here's the list of spells I took at each level, what the spells do, and my reasoning behind those decisions.

In my opinion, for a bard ALL spells can be considered optional, wit the exception of haste and otto's dancing ball. You'll seriously be looked at as a visitor from another galaxy if you don't come loaded with those spells Some spells are no brainers, but most truly are up to you. The key to deciding is how many instances can you USE the spells you choose. Also, bards will sometimes want/need to swap spells at the trainer, since you cant mem them all at once. The order you take the spells are completely optional.

Spell definitions from the DDOwiki are in grey, while additional commentary is featured in white.

Level 1:
Cure light wounds - Heals an ally for 1d6 + 2 + max caster level (max=5) hit points, or deals the same amount of damage to an undead creature (a will save reduces this damage by half). No time better than the beginning to practice healing from your spell pool, and learning how the cooldown timers work for wands and scrolls.

Level 2:
Hypnotism - Gestures and droning incantation fascinate nearby enemies, causing them to stop and stare blankly until damaged. This is your first and remains your fastest casting AOE spell. The monsters must make their will save, or they cant move. On a properly build spellsinger, you can stop an orthon in his tracks in the Vale. Pretty cool, huh? Oh, this combines great with soundburst.

Level 3:
Otto's resistible dance - Forces one enemy to dance, preventing it from doing anything else. Pure entertainment! Time to practice your juke 'n jive!

Level 4:
Soundburst - Your first (and possibly only) AOE damage spell. Blasts an area with a tremendous cacophony, dealing 1d8 sonic damage and potentially stunning enemies within the area of effect for 6 seconds. Creatures that cannot hear are not stunned but are still damaged. Monsters must make a fortitude save or they become stunned. Opens up Hypnotise+Soundburst combo.

From level 4 on, CC becomes about which spells work best in which instances, and about which spells work well together.

Cure moderate wounds -Heals an ally for 2d6 + 4 + max caster level (max=10) hit points, or deals the same amount of damage to an undead creature (a will save reduces this damage by half).

Now you need to set up your bar for quick access to your 2 healing spells. Nearby should be your healing wands. Keep in mind wands are cheaper than scrolls, so buy healing wands. As a side note Stoneskin components (granite & diamond dust) are cheaper than Stoneskin wands, and by a good margin.

Level 5:
Focusing Chant - You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to attack rolls and skill checks. This bonus STACKS with EVERYTHING, including bard songs. Ask many vets and they'll have no clue. However, it only works on YOU, not the rest of your party. Remember this spell raises your haggle and UMD by one as well... Very useful and underused spell.

Invisibility - The recipient of the spell becomes invisible for 1 min./level, vanishing from sight including darkvision. Attacking a target or using an object (door, lever) removes this effect. I use invisibility a lot. Most useful feature of invisibility on a spellsinger is that you can heal while remaining invisible. If you need to make a quick escape, nothing beats haste and invisibility. Just remember to cast it before putting yourself into a situation in which you can draw aggro.

Level 7:
Good hope - This area of effect spell instills powerful hope to the recipient, granting a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls, saving throws, ability checks, skill checks, and weapon damage. Many people replace Good Hope when you get Greater Heroism. Not I. I still use it. To understand how Good Hope stacks with your other bard spells, please read this: http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=83

Cure serious wounds -Heals an ally for 3d6 + 6 + max(caster level, 15) hit points, or deals the same amount of damage to an undead creature (a will save reduces this damage by half). Once CSW makes in on your bar, you can decide if you still want CLW. At some point, you will replace CLW.

Suggestion - Influences the actions of an enemy, allowing you to suggest it to fight as your ally for 6 seconds per caster level.Suggested monsters USED to follow you, but do not any longer. Still useful however. Turning one archer, for example, can cause chaos on the opposing team, and still finds a home on my bar.

Level 8:
Haste. That's all folks

Level 10:
Cure critical wounds - Heals an ally for 4d6 + 8 +max(caster level, 20) hit points, or deals the same amount of damage to an undead creature (a will save reduces this damage by half). Now CMW might stay on the bar for awhile, but certainly is a bit more expendable now, if you'd like to swap it out.

Thats what I did and picked up Glitterdust. AOE blindness anyone? Crazy effective spell that's embarrassingly underused. Glitterdust is heaven in prepared doorway fights, and stacks extremely well with other clouds, as well as your own dancing ball.

Displacement - An ally's outline becomes blurred, granting a 50% miss chance. Displacement is the king of melee buffs. It only lasts 4 minutes extended. It doesnt stack with blur but is a much shorter duration. When needed blur + displacement is the way to go. When displacement phases out, blur is still ticking...

Level 11:
Freedom of Movement - This spell enables an ally to move and attack normally for the duration of the spell, even under the influence of magic that normally impedes movement, such as paralysis, entanglement, or solid fog. Super-long 40 minutes buff, extended. Hence, this spell can often be cast without extend. You can save the cleric some mana by casting this one yourself. When you solo heal, its an invaluable addition to your buffs. For yourself, you can go after the Kundarak Delving Boots for an non-dispellable version of this handy buff.

Level 12:
Greater Heroism - Imbues a single ally with great bravery and morale in battle, gaining a +4 morale bonus on attacks, saves and skill checks. The target also receives temporary hit points equal to the caster level and immunity to fear. Maybe the second most requested buff to haste in the game. A must have spell. Specific Buffs your haggle and UMD. Can make your party more resilient to opposition spells, especially of the will-based variety... Mississippee always wears this spell... Better than Mastercard and Visa, I don't leave home without it

Mass Cure Light Wounds - Casts Cure Light Wounds on multiple targets. Positive energy is channeled to heal light wounds of allies or damage undead for 1d8 hit points +1 per caster level (max +25). Undead who make a successful will save reduce the damage by half. This spell is GREATLY improved with a superior potency VI item and metamagics (empower healing/maximize) and items such as Lorricks Necklace, and is part of your your 1-2 healing punch combination in quests/raids (along with Mass Cure Moderate Wounds).

more laterz...

[Anderei]

Level 7:
Good hope - This area of effect spell instills powerful hope to the recipient, granting a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls, saving throws, ability checks, skill checks, and weapon damage. Many people replace Good Hope when you get Greater Heroism. Not I. I still use it. To understand how Good Hope stacks with your other bard spells, please read this: http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=83

I can tell out of experience that Good Hope gets overrided in all advantages with Inspire Courage in combination of other buffs like greater heroism. As on the Buff-bar Good Hope vanishes after I play Courage. However I still cast it, since it are only a few spell points for the whole party and it runs a loooong time, so its a good fallback after Courage Expires for a member and you aren't around him/her to replay immediatly.

[Anderei]

and a metaline pure good. As time marches on... you can search for/buy better.

Well I learned to stay away from Harry with my bard since without Toughness at lvl 19 I've a HP of 280 still a bit sub-par and sometimes one-shotted (a +45HP shroud item would be a bliss, but not quite there) . I go after bufffing with the healers into the pool and throw mass cure moderates.

[Spookyaction]

Is this thread about bards ?

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Good Hope gets overrided in all advantages with Inspire Courage in combination of other buffs like greater heroism.

Yes once you get Greater heroism, Good Hope gets trumped. However, it still comes in handy. I use it instead of GH sometimes to save mana and/or to speed up the buffing process. Also, Good Hope is the only way to cure Crushing Dispair.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Well I learned to stay away from Harry with my bard since without Toughness at lvl 19 I've a HP of 280 still a bit sub-par and sometimes one-shotted (a +45HP shroud item would be a bliss, but not quite there) . I go after bufffing with the healers into the pool and throw mass cure moderates.

Oh yeah, Miss definitely does not mess with Harry in close encounters. That is definately not recommended. Actually in part 5 Shroud I simply spam mass cure mods AND lights and can solo heal it if need be. I'll throw out an occasional heal scroll. Naturally I will go through some pots if I'm spamming. Don"t forget to use your fire shield scrolls!!! When there's two weak clerics (it happens in pug groups) I will just spam right along with them... pausing a bit when I see their mass healing spells actually going off A good healing bard can always make for a smoother shroud.

I will be crafting a 45 hp item next for Miss....

[Anderei]

Regarding Spells, I played a lot with them, and still exchange a spell every 3-7 days. At the end I ended up with a spellset quite similar to Mississipis nevertheless. Most of the times I just exchanged a spell, if I noticed I didn't cast it for a long time. Differences are


Spell (1): Cure Light - removed it later, as I chain just critical and serious, topping of with wands.
Spell (1): Hypnotism - removed it on, as it safes too much, when CCing using a ball/mass charm or greater shout (depending on saves) instead (altough for some it sill might be useful, as it casts pretty fast.
Spell (2): Soundburst - just to note, I still have this, Since contrary to greater shout it works at distance, use only seldom however.
Spell (1): Remove Fear - not taking, since clickies
Spell (4): Break Enchantment - considered it a lot, but didn't want to throw out another lvl 4 spell.
Spell (5): Greater Dispel Magic - same here

What I have instead (what I can remember out of my head)
Merfolks Blessing, very optional, just don't have much use of other lvl 1 spells anymore, makes a faster swim around meridia and in the village
Rage - Just to deal out every possible buff for DPS, optional, not a bad pick comparing other spells in that level.
Hold Monster - your only chance to DPS; most used when tagging along for vale slayers/rares
Masters Touch, occassionally I swing a nice improved cursing/greater shatter great club I found, since STR is set to 20, useing other means to deal out debuffs and the such.
Blurr - altough DIsplacement is supperior outside of Raids with short shrine intervalls its a nice long term effect you do not need to recast.
Greater Shout - best chance to CCing casters with high will saves.

[Samadhi]

Oh yeah, Miss definitely does not mess with Harry in close encounters. That is definately not recommended. Actually in part 5 Shroud I simply spam mass cure mods AND lights and can solo heal it if need be. I'll throw out an occasional heal scroll. Naturally I will go through some pots if I'm spamming. Don"t forget to use your fire shield scrolls!!! When there's two weak clerics (it happens in pug groups) I will just spam right along with them... pausing a bit when I see their mass healing spells actually going off A good healing bard can always make for a smoother shroud.

I will be crafting a 45 hp item next for Miss....

And this is exactly why this build fails.

1) Any CC is obviously useless against Arrae.
2) If you DO have a good cleric, your healing is useless as well. I'm a big fan of rockin heals on a bard (2 of my 3 bards are built for healing); but sometimes it just isn't necessary or beneficial.
3) If you don't have the HP to melee and you have a good cleric, this means that you are basically sitting around doing nothing appreciable at all, whereas a more versatile bard can contribute with DPS.
4) Drinking pots?? If you had the HP to survive in melee range, and equipped a Torc and some Conc/Opp's you would have infinite mana. Without this setup, even your healing becomes weaker comparatively. I hope the extra points of haggle are enough to overcome the need to drink pots ^^

The funny thing is the starting stats, and most of the feat choices, on this build are 100% fine. What you need is to drop a feat for toughness. Shroud item you mentioned + another 42/52 points from Tgh + rage and your HP will be hitting the ballpark of fine. You aren't far off; but adding 100 HP to where you are at now will make a world of difference.

If you want to build a "haggle-spec'd" toon that is your prerogative. But don't be surprised if after seeing you get one-shot in an old raid, if no one has room for you in a real raid. The name of the bard-game is versatility. Spec'ing for healing and CC are 100% viable options. Sacrificing the ability to melee a raid boss when, quite often, that is the best use of your time? Not viable.

As a sidenote on effective raid healing, I find Quicken pretty mandatory these days. In one of the lag free environments we all used to enjoy, I could probably live without it, but the amount of DPS related freezes that seem relatively common in even mediocre groups is enough that I swear by Quicken now - esp. on a class healing with only two mass cures instead of 3or4.

(The contents of this post are not directed towards Leslie but are for any new bard rollers considering this build and those like Anderei that are still hopefully looking to tweak and improve).

[chester99]

ok I just looked. does this build seriously hit the end game with 240 hitpoints? or did you take off your 150 hp item before logging last night?

[Anderei]

(The contents of this post are not directed towards Leslie but are for any new bard rollers considering this build and those like Anderei that are still hopefully looking to tweak and improve).

Samadhi, to be honest once I top him off I do not see muuuch of a need to regulary play that bard, I did it all for the hagglebot as many others. This build continues in my opinion to be a build primary about haggle, secondary to make the best out of the frame this goal has (pure bard, human, maximized charisma, 2 feats less, less APs). Still I experience bards to be at a shortage on thelanis, so I do easily get into shroud groups looking for a bard, and yes in this parties people are satisfied as long as I play Inspire Courage, everything else (being a secondary healer and buffer) comes extra. Sure a DPS oriented warchanter will outperform me on raids, and I don't whine if you pick one of these instead of my bard. With this build I'm happy to cap to 20, and with another toon having a time occasionally completing a shroud. For everything else the bard is there to fuel the other toons that are ment to raid beyond the shroud. Leveling him was a blast nevertheless, during leveling range a well played CC-focused bard stays a big asset to the party, only the endcap is as far I've seen it designed to cater for different builds.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

And this is exactly why this build fails.

Sam and Chester, we have had this conversation a million times. Miss has 320hp walking around. I get to 380+ hp raid buffed. I am not in a race for the highest hp bard. When I get my 45hp greensteel made, I'll be over 420 hp raid buffed, which will be more then enough. I'm in no rush to make it tho...

I choose to provide mostly bard buffs and healing for the Shroud raid with this build. Of course I will don a vorpal to kill trash. Anyone can do that. Got dual gcb and dps weaps when needed. It's just a shroud... I CAN say the Shrouds I am in with her go pretty smooth. There are very, VERY few toons I have felt "inefficient" to heal. If this build cant heal you, you are seriously flawed or seriously being a bone. I don't heal bones. I stick with the party. You zerg, you best be able to heal yerself. You can't? Yer problem not mine

Efficient healing. I have solo healed the Shroud. More then once. You need to be on your toes to heal with empower healing. I do it all the time. Love it. Speed is of the essence. Quicken. Bah. Never needed it. Take a feat soley because of lag? Silly. Sadly, in this game, can be helpful. Did it on my cleric. Good idea for a bard too. But I learned how to heal efficiently without it. Funny enough I respecced quicken into my cleric solely because of lag. Do I use it. Yep. Do I need in 90% of the times I use it? No.

There is nothing wrong with removing (or never taking) SF:Haggle and Negotiator and speccing in toughess and quicken. Probably a very good idea if you choose to run with elite boner types that use MyDDO as gospel when grading a toon's ability to play the game

Miss is not all tweaked out with Torc and concord opp Greensteel. I never truly felt the push to farm it all on Miss because the design of the build allows me to DO what I want to do. 95+% of the raids I join are wins. I almost never die in the Shroud and am usually the last one standing when I'm unlucky enough to join a terrible pug shroud. Im very happy making my clerics job easier.

The moral of the build is still what it was when I first built her, and is written in my opening post in this thread. Max haggle first, then CC/Heal to highest level needed withOUT acquiring any elite gear. I have yet to see a quest I could not end victorious.

If I had my bard in raiding guild with all studded out toons... sure, I think Miss would be a little bored and I'd have to twink out just to have something to do.

Seriously though, if you want your spellsinger to be an everyday, all day presence in hard/elite raids, you'd be silly to not tweak out further than I have. But you can say that with ANY BUILD.

With my responsibilities to my guild, however, I am very happy sacrificing a little bit of hp and healing, to acquire max haggle. I have very little problem bringing Miss in to raid, she is always busy, almost never standing around. So I'm happy with my $15, ya dig?

I am currently working up a warchanter that will be just a tad bit more DPS focused that I'll be divulging in the near future. Then maybe your cries for DPS will finally be answered Siskel & Ebert... err Sam and Chester....

[Kistilan]

In short, as long as you are going to gross over 2% profit for an item, its monetarily worthwhile to mail the item to your haggle bard. Even if your haggle was 78 on your lesser haggle toon, you still net (difference between 84 and 78 haggle = 451 gp. 451-225=226) 226 gold pieces on your 84 haggle toon selling this wand to a vendor.

Remember, I'm using extremely tight math on a relatively inexpensive item. It would be almost silly to waste the time to move 11,000gp items from a 78 to an 84 haggle toon with intent to profit. The reason I used this example though is to prove with inexpensive items, on bards with minimal differences in haggle, I STILL COULD PROFIT. Which then proves it should be a no-brainer if your haggle is at least 15 points greater on your haggle toon, you are making/saving thousands of gold pieces daily by mailing "junk" to your haggle bard for sale.

Hope this helps Kist!

After your proof, I find this the best point-blank representation of when the haggle is worth the mailing cost.

However, you could also represent this another way:

When items are mailed to the higher haggle of 15 or greater, the user is net-profitting a minimal of approximately 800gp per 10k gp base value sold. (This was rough math in my head, but it checks with your numbers you used minus the mailing costs).

And to make it more relevant (after mailing costs):
100k gp @ 15+ haggle variation = 8k gp+ greater profit.
1M gp @ 15+ haggle variation = 80k gp+ greater profit.
10M gp @ 15+ haggle variation = 800k gp+ greater profit.

You've got me wondering why I hadn't made a haggle bard before I left the game. *L* My rogue's 50ish haggle is nothing compared to that bard haggle.

[undercover69]

Leslie, thx for the explanations. I'm running a slightly different build. Since I create the toon at lvl 4 I didnt see the need for CLW, going only for CMW. I do love invis too but will be content buying a few pots right now, later on I'll switcg some spell for invis since casting speed can determine if you live or die. I dropped mental toughness but still taking the feats on a different order: Empower Healing, Extend and SF:Enchantment all set from the get go, then SPen, GreaterSF, GreaterSP and lastly the haggle stuff. Dunno if I should get Greater SF before SPen, but I'm not there yet. Its indeed a cool build, even a FvS is glad I can supplement the healing (I'm at lvl 5 now) and since I took blur at 5 the tanks are working much better and squishies dont die as often (unless they lock themselves in a room filled with mobs =P). Fun!

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Leslie, thx for the explanations. I'm running a slightly different build. Since I create the toon at lvl 4 I didnt see the need for CLW, going only for CMW. I do love invis too but will be content buying a few pots right now, later on I'll switcg some spell for invis since casting speed can determine if you live or die. I dropped mental toughness but still taking the feats on a different order: Empower Healing, Extend and SF:Enchantment all set from the get go, then SPen, GreaterSF, GreaterSP and lastly the haggle stuff. Dunno if I should get Greater SF before SPen, but I'm not there yet. Its indeed a cool build, even a FvS is glad I can supplement the healing (I'm at lvl 5 now) and since I took blur at 5 the tanks are working much better and squishies dont die as often (unless they lock themselves in a room filled with mobs =P). Fun!

Sure, no problem taking the feats in the order you prescribe. Starting with an 18 CHA (and putting level ups into CHA) allows plenty of spell DC for early in the game. I'd recommend having at bare minimum one Spell Focus: Enchantment and one Spell Penetration feat taken before hitting Gianthold. As for which Greater to take first? My system was SF, SP, GSP, and GSF. Certain "armchair generals" will claim both SF then both SP is the only way to go. I say hogwash I did it my way and I very very seldom failed a DC or spell pen check. So on an 18 CHA and CHA career- focused (level ups) spellsinger bard, it doesnt matter what order you take em...just take em all early!

By the by, I have switched Haggle and Spell Focus: Enchantment feats in the template. Now by level 12, you have the full set of CC feats. I'm still keeping the order in which I took them intact, just because the Cajun Lady said to keep it that way!

[Anderei]

Yesterday I did it and topped my Queen bard off. This post is to summ up the leveling experience.

Started in on level 4 as vet 2-3 months ago (yes I'm not that a power leveler). After leveling a pure dex build Rogue to 17 and an healer/evoker FvS to 15 this was my first toon following a build and the first not turning out completly gimped (Rogue had too few CON and Fvs i put levelups into CHA instead of WIS) at the beginning I really enjoyed this as my first experience to be able to hit with str 16 anything in melee without the need of sneak attack. Once you know which quests to do and which to avoid from your previous leveling experiencing jumping by the first levels is really easy. As I posted already several times I discovered sound burst to be the ultimate spell at lower levels (outside of deleras). Its quite of interesting which quests you actually miss by random chance, so I looked in the log and discovered I never ran WW or Gwylands with the bard, altough this were my favorites on the rogue doing over 5 times at least.

On the feats I actually took the haggle feats quite early, since I had a ton of stuff I wanted to sell for the best possible price, and my rogue so far alone hardly could finance its own repairs (yes squishy) and hirelings when going undermanned with friends. The bard was also the first time I actually tried to play a bit more pro, like having a complete resistances and protection set with me in a hot bar, always stacked with wands and scrolls and you know what stuff.

Once Haste comes in things really get yet better and the pure joy starts when Ottos Sphere gets there (far before any wizard can get it), This were the levels I really enjoyed this character when whereever you go into, soon enough the whole dungeon dances. My favorite quests with this build where it shined most brightly was invaders and hidhing in plain sight, you can take your time to put up the sphere before the door, open it, and all of the rendeers/hobgoblins will just dance to be whacked away. Most fun I had in this time with arcanes synergy putting firewalls into my dance balls, when we sung johnny cash in voice chat "and it burns burns burns, burning ring of fire".

Once at lvl 12 it was shadow crypt time to jump to lvl 14 in an afternoon on a bonus XP time - altough I know many take it earlier. Otherwise at this lvl I slayered Giant Hold a lot to get all the relics for giant hold, and the dancing balls still are quite shiny. From my previous experiences I skipped level 16 on purpose since how the quests are distributed in this game, its a ultra hard lvl and did Giant holds on normal/hard until being able to make the jump to 17.

At 17 saves to CC get more tough, and this is where I dared more and more to take over the main healer role in parties (yes so far I also thought bards are gimped healers only useful in this role at low levels, but experience slowly told me otherwise). Lvl 17 is really another breaking point, as you can go with lvl 20 parties without XP loss and the percentage of more experienced players you happen to be with skyrocks, except mass heals here becoming available to the bard, this might be actually more the reason why you can do well as main healer, while the new players around lvl 8-15 require more mana catering.

From 17 to the top I focused almost soley on buffing and healing, since in my experience Crowdcontrol kind of loses sexyness here from the game design. As from now on there are mostly two conditions your party faces: either trash mop which gets vorpaled, fingered, assassinated, burst DPSed in a blink where the mob is dead even before you finish casting a ottos irresistable, not to speak of any mentionworthy reduction in incoming damage. The other situation is bosses which is blanket immune to CC. So standing back and throwing mass cures at bosses is the best you can do after you sung you songs.

This is why I also now specced my enhancments slightly different than the queen. I'm very aware it are the songs that get me the place in PuG raids and nothing else, anything else casting buffs/healing assistance/scrolls throwing is extra you bring in, which sure is appreciated as well. Maxing Haggle does take up a lot of APs itself, so the rest I put into maxing the inspired songs (only the last to-hit +1 bonus I did not take, since I doubt its worth 6 AP). This lowers wants/scrolls increase tier 1 only, well you just cannot have it all. This is maybe another reason why this is one of the few builds that goes without Toughness, since you do not have the APs to make use of racial toughness eitherway.

At the top if I would change something, I'd lower strength, since I'm not meeling anymore anyway, since comparing to others who improved on that this build was quite strong with str 16 in the beginning the DPS is quite low compared to others, the other thing is the lower HP, so if I had TP to waste, I'd respec to 12 strength and increase CON to 16. Also since I stopped CCing much except an occasional unresistable, I think one could even give up on Spell Pen (Oh my god, yes I just said that!), I don't know exactly how much Spell Pen did for me, just noticed that most stuff I _really_ wanted to CC (see the 2 conditions from aboth) resisted anyway. Maybe I'd drop the 2 Pen feats and either take quicken, heighten or even force of personality, so I could join a tower of despair without grinding for boots.

Near the top, I completed a shroud every 3 or a few more days, and took most XP from inspired quarters (I just love to play finding the path, now my second favorite quest after Delirium). I wonder why there were hardly groups to find on bonus XP weekend (maybe because all did low level toons?) but the last bubble I did on the battlefield alone, running like a crazy chicken to all explorers, or hiding near one of the titans and waiting for it to kill stuff). Funny enough I hit the cap while dead (and the titan doing his stuff)

Other than that the sad/happy thing, I just canceled my VIP subscription as well. Maybe I put the the TPs I planned for LR on the rogue/fvs into the vale and the bank instead and continue an occassional shroud. Other than that, after leveling 3 toons at least into the high lvl area, I just got a little bored of the game. I'm the kind of person who loves to figure out stuff, and how games work, and with this DDO with its complexity kept me longer than any other Game/MMO, but I just don't have the stamina to continue grinding once I know how most stuff works. I suppose at this level what keeps most people are the social bonds knit so for. Unfortunally all people I especially enjoyed to group with seemingly recently quit the game. I'm sure I've seen 95% of the games content, and it was a great time, now focusing on spending more time on other stuff.

What I also posted once, and I keep with it, I do think this build is also newbie friendly. Now I never had any worries to about financing any stuff I wanted to have, other than maybe occassionally saving up for a +2 tome.

[gott_ist_tot]

Yes once you get Greater heroism, Good Hope gets trumped.

This has been nagging me for some time. You people mention "monk buff" to bump up your haggle.
Do you mean "walk of the sun" finisher? I've always thought it's the same type of bonus as heroism,
and as such didn't stack? Am I wrong?

[Anderei]

(double)