Advice, perhaps?

[Kam-Ekaze]

Bards shine due to their incredible buffs. When I was leveling my warchanter, I would run around hasted, with inspire competence, blur, displacement, rage up, the lot and try and simply out-dps things before they killed me. Don't forget that as a fourth level bard you can carry cure moderate wands for wand-whip between fights (or during if you have the twitch skills to avoid damage while topping yourself off)

Fascinate is an incredible ability once you master it, it allows you to immobilize packs of attackers and pick them off one by one. I used to run around in circles while training my enemies while singing then turn around and deliver a hard beating when done. A higher perform score will ensure more successful fascinating.

One of the melee bard's particular weaknesses is their low health, so bump consitution if you can. Greater false life when you can gain it. Heavy fortification is also a must have for any character and you can get it as early as level 9 from a nightforge gorget.

The helm from the orchard (necropolis pack IV) called minos legens is an amazing item and quite easy to get. It's minimum level 11, and provides you with an extra toughness feat (stackable 20 hp) and heavy fortification (crit immunity)

Bards get UMD as a class skill, so play on this strength. Right now, if you are maxing your UMD score, it will be quite weak and won't bring much to the table, but as you level up and get better skill ranks and gear, it will allow you to scroll heal yourself for 150+ health with scroll/wand enhancements.

Getting back to hirelings, you should look for the cleric hirelings which have the divine vitality ability. Which will be able to replenish your spell point pool quite nicely as you go, as well as provide healing between fights. I don't recommend having the hireling follow you, specially if you are new to the game and new to the quests. Once you reach level 9, the cleric hirelings come with raise dead, and you can command them to come and rez you if you die, provided they were not close and died after you did.

[DeviledVillan]

Alrighty, I have a couple of very noob questions...

A: as a bard, should I use a shield?

B: What does Inspire competence do, exactly? I've tried to figure it out, but i'm not 100% on it.

Thanks again!

[Kam-Ekaze]

Alrighty, I have a couple of very noob questions...

A: as a bard, should I use a shield?

B: What does Inspire competence do, exactly? I've tried to figure it out, but i'm not 100% on it.

Thanks again!

At lower level, a shield will help your survivability a little bit. Do be warned that while bards are free to cast spells with no arcane failure while wearing light armor, they still take arcane spell failure chances from shields. However at lower level the benefit from using a shield > Arcane Spell Failure

Inspire competence is a bard song that you can only cast on other people (not yourself) it increases all their skills by +2 (such as jump, balance, concentration, UMD, etc) for the duration.

[Angelus_dead]

A: as a bard, should I use a shield?

A shield can help as long as it doesn't give your spells a chance to fail. Try the mithral shields from Waterworks end rewards.

[Vua]

Hey bud,

You're entitled to argue with me, debate is certainly one of those things where everyone walks away wiser in the end as long as it is kept civil and mature, so I appreciate your point of view.

I'm actually surprised your hireling was smart enough not to zap himself on the door in PoP. Mine walked straight into it and died last time I solo'd it while leveling, lol. I think a smart player can handle their hirelings regardless of what strategy they use. Even with my intimipaladin I used to always attempt to leave the hireling at the entrance, even if I could nab aggro back to me with intimidate because one way or another he would get himself killed at some stage.

There were times when I would call them into the room for a boss fight, but usually put them away in a corner and switch follow off, commanding him to heal me when I needed it. If having them follow you on defend works for oyu, kudos and excellent work, though I believe I'll stick to keeping mine at the entrance and use them as walking shrines. They are far too unexpectable and prone to standing in lava for me to have to worry about them.

While I agree they have alot of AI issues, I always let them follow me around with very few exceptions. When you're a FB Barb, leaving them at the entrance is not an option really. Knowing the quests helps alot. When you know you are going to get into a fight where they will die if they follow too close, park them in a spot where they won't get hit, but close enough to run and heal as your health goes down. As long as you don't call them to you they will run back to the spot you parked them.

Having intimidate can help out alot when using a hireling. The biggest problems are orthons, devils, and fog spells. When you intimidate them, they may follow you away from the hireling, or they may just stand there whacking away. So these quests can cause issues. Then you have the hireling lag from certain spells. I usually duo SOS with a pally and 2 hirelings and getting through the ice area can be a pain if you bring the hireling up top. As soon as the sleet storms and cloud kills hit the hireling, the game basically stops. It's much better to leave them at the bottom and try to get through without the healing. We've been able to get through Epic Quests using them, though that's due to their mana pot consumption more than their great healing ability.