Having a hard time...

[kennyb0713]

Hey there, I am fairly new to the game, I have remade my character three times now, first a STR spellsinger (was always dieing), then a DPS warchanter (worked well, but just wasn't my thing) and finally now I have made a DEX based spellsinger, and I think I must be doing something wrong...

This is where he is at now:

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 3.18
DDO Character Planner Home Page

Level 6 True Neutral Human Male
(6 Bard) 
Hit Points: 86
Spell Points: 390 
BAB: 4\4
Fortitude: 4
Reflex: 8
Will: 4

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
Abilities        Base Stats          Modified Stats
(32 Point)       (Level 1)             (Level 6)
Strength              8                     8
Dexterity            16                    16
Constitution         14                    14
Intelligence          8                     8
Wisdom                8                     8
Charisma             18                    21

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
                 Base Skills         Modified Skills
Skills           (Level 1)            (Level 6)
Balance               3                     3
Bluff                 4                     5
Concentration         2                     6
Diplomacy             8                    12
Disable Device       n/a                   n/a
Haggle                8                    12
Heal                 -1                    -1
Hide                  3                     3
Intimidate            4                     5
Jump                 -1                     5
Listen                3                     6
Move Silently         3                     3
Open Lock             n/a                   n/a
Perform               8                    14
Repair               -1                    -1
Search               -1                    -1
Spot                 -1                    -1
Swim                 -1                    -1
Tumble                7                    12
Use Magic Device      8                    16

Level 1 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Spell Focus: Enchantment
Feat: (Human Bonus) Toughness
Spell (1): Hypnotism
Enhancement: Bard Concentration I
Enhancement: Bard Song Magic I
Enhancement: Bard Energy of the Music I
Enhancement: Bard Wand Mastery I


Level 2 (Bard)
Spell (1): Charm Person
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Damage I
Enhancement: Bard Charisma I


Level 3 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Empower Healing Spell
Spell (1): Expeditious Retreat
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Bard Lyric of Song I


Level 4 (Bard)
Spell (2): Cure Moderate Wounds
Spell (2): Soundburst
Enhancement: Bard Concentration II
Enhancement: Bard Song Magic II


Level 5 (Bard)
Spell (1): Otto's Resistable Dance
Spell (2): Blur
Enhancement: Human Adaptability Charisma I
Enhancement: Bard Improved Spell Penetration I
Enhancement: Bard Energy of the Music II


Level 6 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Heighten Spell
Enhancement: Bard Spellsinger I

I'm really not sure what to do, should I go ranged, or just hang out in the back, my melee damage is horrible, and always miss. Is my spell selection any good? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, bard is my favorite concept character, and would like to be able to get this to work for me

[A_Sheep]

Without the weapon finesse feat, your str still applies to the to-hit of all weapons.

[Bacab]

I would recommend dropping your CHR unless you are planning on doing a lot of Crowd Control. And if thats the case, you may be better off making a WIZ or SOR that specializes in that. I am not saying drop CHR to like a 10 or anything like that. But a starting 18 CHR is very expensive, and BRD is a class that kinda needs a few nice stats.

STR is nice for melee DPS.
CON is important for everything.
INT if you want/need Skill POints/
CHR for DCs and spells.

Now if you plan on being a ranged BRD (repeater BRDs used to be common). Having a low STR will not effect you as much. If you melee at all...an 8 STR just is not acceptable. Even with Weapon Finesse...low STR is really a bad decision. Also if you do not melee at all, consider playing SOR/WIZ or CLR/FVS. You can crowd control with all four of those classes.

Do not delete this character and "re-roll". Just make a new toon and try out the 4 jobs I mentioned. You may enjoy them more. Also if you decide to go Arcane route, I would recommend going Warforged.

Best of Luck
~Bacab

[BoBoDaClown]

I would recommend dropping your CHR unless you are planning on doing a lot of Crowd Control. And if thats the case, you may be better off making a WIZ or SOR that specializes in that. I am not saying drop CHR to like a 10 or anything like that. But a starting 18 CHR is very expensive, and BRD is a class that kinda needs a few nice stats.

STR is nice for melee DPS.
CON is important for everything.
INT if you want/need Skill POints/
CHR for DCs and spells.

Now if you plan on being a ranged BRD (repeater BRDs used to be common). Having a low STR will not effect you as much. If you melee at all...an 8 STR just is not acceptable. Even with Weapon Finesse...low STR is really a bad decision. Also if you do not melee at all, consider playing SOR/WIZ or CLR/FVS. You can crowd control with all four of those classes.

Do not delete this character and "re-roll". Just make a new toon and try out the 4 jobs I mentioned. You may enjoy them more. Also if you decide to go Arcane route, I would recommend going Warforged.

Best of Luck
~Bacab

You can make a perfectly viable CC Bard; they end up with roughly the same DCs as the other classes you have mentioned - on their enchant spells only of course.

They suffer from blanket immunites of course; but those quests are actually less than you might think. (SOS, Prey, bits of Amrath, I think one quest in each of the two IQ quest chains). For those quests you are relegated to poor sonic based dcs, healer, or dps. I found CC very useful in what epics I have done (admittedly I don't have extensive experience here).

To the OP; I don't see too much wrong with your feat selection; basically if you pump the CC feats, i.e. two enchants, two spell pens, and heighten, as well as charisma and the spell pen enhancements, you'll be landing your spells nicely.

However, I don't really see your dex gaining you much of anything. Switch dex with str and you have a decent character (or 15, 15). That means your dps will be solid during low levels, and you can then add a little dps through vorpalling at high levels - this is going to be playing second fiddle to your CC and healing.

With expenditure on consumables you'll be able to heal most content.

For combat, get con items, toughness enhancements, fortification, and buff up with rage, blur, displace, and stoneskin at higher levels. You should no longer feel so squishie.

Hope that helps.

[unbongwah]

Your STR is too low for melee: I would consider swapping Empower Heal for either Heavy Repeaters or Weapon Finesse. You'll still do lousy DPS, especially in melee, but at least you'll miss less often. Either way, look for weapons which do useful things on crits (debuffs, elemental dmg, stuns, etc.). Or if you decide to Lesser Reincarnate, change your base STR & CHA to 14 & 16, respectively.

For a bard, Concentration > Tumble. Start putting more points into the former. Or if you LR, I would make your primary skills Concentration, Diplomacy, Haggle, Perform, and UMD, with your remaining points split between Balance & Jump and 1 point put into Tumble to unlock it.

I know I'm in the minority, but for CC bards I prefer Virtuoso + Entrallment to spells. It's a lot easier to boost your Perform skill than your spell DCs, making your songs quite effective. Plus Virtuosos can get Music of the Dead sooner than other bards, which is one of the few ways to CC undead at that level. The two main drawbacks to CC songs are they take a while to sing and they are a "soft" stun which breaks when an enemy is hit. So your team needs to be good enough to know to focus on one enemy at a time, otherwise they just end up unstunning monsters as soon as you've finished your song. Frankly, most PUGs aren't that smart. But if you're running with friends or a good guild, it can be quite useful.

My drow rogue / bard Virtuoso uses spells to buff & heal, songs to buff & CC, does pretty decent DPS dual-wielding rapiers & short swords, and has pretty good trap skills to boot.

[kennyb0713]

Well basically what I was trying to figure out, is if I should even be bothering trying to get any damage in, be it melee or ranged. Would it be worth it for me to do a LR? I basically just want to be able to specialize in crowd control, I really like the spells like soundburst and shout. And would like to be able to get into melee range and not die everytime...

[Salaman]

If you ask me, I consider the bard to be a buffer first, and then either a DPS or caster (cc/heals) second.

Trying to be both DPS and caster won't really work well for you so probably the best you can do in that regard is get stat damaging weapons (weakening of enfeebling, wounding of puncturing) , paralyzers, and vorpals (vorps are melee only, but the others can come on ranged as well) which can all be effective even if you're not hitting for a whole lot of damage. These can all be rather expensive and are mostly unavailable until around L10 so until then you'll probably be best off getting something like a fire/acid/lightning/holy of pure good weapon and then put the frost or icy burst ice games enchantments on it, so you'll still do significant damage just with the 3 on hit effects, at least at the lower levels.

To help with your hit chance, make sure you're getting the inspired attack song enhancements (adds +1 to hit for each rank you get, and also get the focusing chant spell (gives +1 to hit). Also being dex based you'll probably want the weapon finesse feat unless you decide to go ranged.

[Impaqt]

Hey there, I am fairly new to the game, I have remade my character three times now, first a STR spellsinger (was always dieing), then a DPS warchanter (worked well, but just wasn't my thing) and finally now I have made a DEX based spellsinger, and I think I must be doing something wrong...

This is where he is at now:

I'm really not sure what to do, should I go ranged, or just hang out in the back, my melee damage is horrible, and always miss. Is my spell selection any good? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, bard is my favorite concept character, and would like to be able to get this to work for me

Sounds like Bard may not actually be your Favorite...

What did you not like? 3 Different builds and 3 times your not satisfied. yet, you fail to mention why you found them so bad. "Always Dying" has nothing to do with being a Spellsinger per-say. and what exactly wasnt your thing about the Warchanter? What was the build?

Its hard to provide advice when the problem is so vague.

[kennyb0713]

Sounds like Bard may not actually be your Favorite...

What did you not like? 3 Different builds and 3 times your not satisfied. yet, you fail to mention why you found them so bad. "Always Dying" has nothing to do with being a Spellsinger per-say. and what exactly wasnt your thing about the Warchanter? What was the build?

Its hard to provide advice when the problem is so vague.

My warchanter was technically perfect and had no problems with him. He was a TWF With Khopesh, very nice DPS and survivability, but it just seemed too fighter-ish for my taste. My other spellsinger was STR based, was acceptable in melee, but only after casting, which is what I like, I like Rouge like mages. But I didnt seem to be good at either, never have enough SP to handle CC, and in melee I just get banged up very bad.

My current DEX based Spellsinger is doing fine as ranged, but I am just not content on being ranged from a concept stand. Also its annoying when trying to cast something with the long reloading time. I dont want to spend a bunch of feats just to be able to fight.

I dunno, maybe the bard isnt for me, but nothing else seems to be of any interest to me...

[Gnorbert]

It sounds to me like you'd be better off as a Ranger. Less CC but a strong mix of effective Melee and Ranged combat. They are fun to play and great at both with the same build as long as you have a decent Dex and Strength.

Have to agree with Salaman, for a Bard buffing is a given but you'll need to decide on Melee or Offensive casting with a little ranged combat built in. A Melee bard needs to devote too many resources towards melee, lowering the other facets capabilities.

Human:
Str: 10
Dex: 16
Con: 12
Int: 8
Wis: 8
Cha: 18 (plus level ups)

(no character should start with less than 10 str... you need carrying capacity and want to avoid being rendered helpless by spells)

Human gives you extra skill points to balance out the low Int, an extra feat to accommodate Spell focus and a ranged feat or two in the build, also allows you to use APs to boost both Dex and Cha by +1 as racial enhancement.

For the ranged combat use a x-bow with cursespewing or stat damaging at the beginning of the fight after your initial CC spell. Stop firing after a few volleys and prepare to cast whatever is needed... whether it is more CC or a Cure spell.

[ddaedelus]

My warchanter was technically perfect and had no problems with him. He was a TWF With Khopesh, very nice DPS and survivability, but it just seemed too fighter-ish for my taste. My other spellsinger was STR based, was acceptable in melee, but only after casting, which is what I like, I like Rouge like mages. But I didnt seem to be good at either, never have enough SP to handle CC, and in melee I just get banged up very bad.

My current DEX based Spellsinger is doing fine as ranged, but I am just not content on being ranged from a concept stand. Also its annoying when trying to cast something with the long reloading time. I dont want to spend a bunch of feats just to be able to fight.

I dunno, maybe the bard isnt for me, but nothing else seems to be of any interest to me...

All bards are going to feel fighter-ish. Other than buffing and crowd control, that's what they do (or what they should be doing).

Have you tried a sorceror? Wizard-like but with more spell points and fewer spells.

[kennyb0713]

All bards are going to feel fighter-ish. Other than buffing and crowd control, that's what they do (or what they should be doing).

Have you tried a sorceror? Wizard-like but with more spell points and fewer spells.

Oh, I realize that, but warchanter is just too much of a fighter for my taste, I have a WF Sorceror, played around with it a bit, hes not CC based though...

[kennyb0713]

So I have been playing around with some builds, I got a level 7 bard, and thinking about Lesser Reincarnating him. Keep in mind I am new, fairly casual gamer, not much into raiding. How does this look for a Spellsinger?

STR: 16
DEX: 8
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 8
CHA: 18

Max Balance, Concentration, Haggle, Perform and UMD; 10 Jump, 1 Tumble, and the rest into Diplomacy.

Master's Touch
Charm Person
Hypnotism
Sounburst
Blur
Hold Person
Otto's Reistable Dance
Heroism
Cure Serious Wounds
Haste

Spells I am not so sure about...

should I go THF or Sword/Board? or quarterstaff maybe? I can't seem to find a single Mithril small shield or buckler on the auctioneer...
How useful would it be for me to use robes, or should I stick with light armor?

This seems to be what I am wanting, Crowd Control, but able to contribute a bit in the fight.

[Rav'n]

Heh! I thought the title was

Having a Bard Time


Oh well..../sigh....