Spellsinger Bard build?

[chronosmaker]

I'm looking for a pure Bard Spellsinger build, full 20 levels of Bard(trying to stay simple for first characters). Could anyone direct me? I can't seem to find it. Well, that or explain why it wouldn't work, at all, and direct me to something better?

Also I intend it to be a buff/heal/all support Spellsinger.

Thanks in advance! Advice would also be welcome for playing a Bard and all, since I'm still relatively new.

[BoBoDaClown]

Mine is a CC/Healer:

Human
Cha: 18 + level ups
Str: 14+
Con: 14+

Feats:
1( TOughness
1) Extend
3) Spell FOc: enchant
6) Maximise
9) Spell Foc: Enchant
12) Quicken
15) Spell Pen
18) Heighten

[Aashrym]

Mine is a CC/Healer:

Human
Cha: 18 + level ups
Str: 14+
Con: 14+

Feats:
1( TOughness
1) Extend
3) Spell FOc: enchant
6) Maximise
9) Spell Foc: Enchant
12) Quicken
15) Spell Pen
18) Heighten

This is pretty similar to what I have set up. I gave up extend and quicken for greater spell penetration and empower healing.

Going with this the list above I might give up both spell penetration feats for extend and quicken and keep empowered healing for more focus on healing and less on CC. A person could give up the spell focus feats for mental toughness / improved mental toughness for bit more SP for healing, and rely more on fascinate for CC.

Just a thought.

[BoBoDaClown]

This is pretty similar to what I have set up. I gave up extend and quicken for greater spell penetration and empower healing.

Going with this the list above I might give up both spell penetration feats for extend and quicken and keep empowered healing for more focus on healing and less on CC. A person could give up the spell focus feats for mental toughness / improved mental toughness for bit more SP for healing, and rely more on fascinate for CC.

Just a thought.

My thoughts

-I haven't had too much trouble with spell pen - I guess until your geared a 2nd one might be worth it.
-Maximise gives you better healing than Empower Healing - unless you run with both?

This is just a personal thing, but I don't find mana valuable enough to justify the mental toughness feats (which really don't give you that many sp). I'd rather be reliable with the spells I do cast.

[Samadhi]

Yes on Quicken.
No on mental toughness.
Running Max and EmpH at the same time I have heard good things about in terms of efficiency but have yet to try personally.
I would rec. keeping extend for a new player as well.

[Aashrym]

I run both maximize and empower healing. Awesome goodness with cure crit for single target and toggling mass cure light and mass cure moderate.

Quicken is the one I was deciding what to swap out for myself. That last Pen II is most likely going to be it.

When I dropped extend originally it was because the min/level buffs were still going when I was ready to shrine, or would sometimes get dispelled and the SP for the extend was getting wasted. Sometimes there was a lot of time on them when the quest was over. The CC spells were lasting long enough without it so it only really made a difference on my shorter buffs.

The mental toughness I don't use. It was one of those just a thought moments for an extra 200 SP. Here is the list of feats my previous comments would have given:

Toughness
Extend
Maximize
Empower Healing
Quicken
Mental Toughness
Improved Mental Toughness
(1 Other to work with)

[chronosmaker]

Thanks for all the advice. Keep 'em coming. :3

[voidholder]

My drow spellsinger at level 13 currently has

toughness, extend, sf:e, quicken and enlarge.

Enlarge I picked to charm mobs from a distance, but I don't use it that much and it is annoying since it needs to be constantly taken off when not used (to not waste sp). It is sometimes nice but I'm guessing it has to make room for something more useful.

Extend is nice for displacement, rage and haste, but does not help much past level 10 since the low buffs last long enough even without it. Keeping it for now though.

I'm thinking taking
empower healing spell and
maximize for healing
spell penetration

Might drop extend for heighten at some point to focus more on cc and less on buffing. Which spells do people find heighten to work best with?

[Irinis]

Check out my main's spellsinger build if you want ideas. There's been some good input in the thread about it as well.

[Firebreed]

On which spells does maximise work on, and on which does empower healing? As far as I can see from the previous posts, you say that max. is better than emp.heal, but If I understand correctly, maxi doesn't affect your heals.

Edit: Also I'm about to take these feats on f drow ss bard.
Toughness, Maxi/emp.heal (depends), Extend Spell, Spell Focus: Enhancements, Greater Spell focus: Enhancements, Quicken Spell, Mental Toughness. I don't know whether I should take anything out for spell penetration or heighten spell.

Edit 2: What are some typical spell choices for spellsingers?

[BoBoDaClown]

On which spells does maximise work on, and on which does empower healing? As far as I can see from the previous posts, you say that max. is better than emp.heal, but If I understand correctly, maxi doesn't affect your heals.

Edit: Also I'm about to take these feats on f drow ss bard.
Toughness, Maxi/emp.heal (depends), Extend Spell, Spell Focus: Enhancements, Greater Spell focus: Enhancements, Quicken Spell, Mental Toughness. I don't know whether I should take anything out for spell penetration or heighten spell.

Edit 2: What are some typical spell choices for spellsingers?

1) Max works on all heal and damage spells. Emp H. on the heal spells. Max is generally taken because it gives you more punch.

2) Personally I would always take Heighten - it increases my Hold Monster and Ball by 2, and my MAss Suggestion by 1.

3) I would lose the mental toughness. The extra sp really isn't worth a feat. You'll learn to manage and replenish your sp.

4) I would take Human over drow. You can get your cha to 19 (with adaptabilty), so only 1 less, while getting higher con and str, plus human toughness enhancements. The extra feat would allow you to pick up spell pen.

[Firebreed]

Thanks. What about spell choices?

[BoBoDaClown]

At 20 these are the spells I would look at (note I would always have 2-3 heal spells, the best versions of heroism, etc):

First:
Focusing Dance, Grease, Master's Touch (Expeditious Retreat is awesome at low levels), Detect Secret Doors, Hypno.

Second:
Blur Glitterdust Invis Rage Soundburst

Third
Crushing Despair, Displacement, Good Hope, Haste, Slow

Fourth:
Break Enchantment, Cure Critical Wounds, Dimension Door, Hold Monster, Freedom of Movement, Otto's Sphere of Dancing, Dominate Person

Fifth:
Mass Cure Light Wounds, GH, Mind Fog, Mass Suggestion

Sixth:
Mass Cure Moderate Wounds, Greater Shout, Irresistible Dance, Hero's Feast, Mass Charm Monster

[BinyaminTsadik]

IMHO, i would not waste feats on maximize or empower heal as a bard.
You will not be the main healer and you have much better things to do with your spells.

[AZgreentea]

I have plug Tihocan's Revisiting the Paths thread. At the very least, it will give you an idea of how a Spellsinger (and other paths) can be built.

[Darkrok]

IMHO, i would not waste feats on maximize or empower heal as a bard.
You will not be the main healer and you have much better things to do with your spells.

Depends on your build really.

If I had a human version of my current build (18str+level,16con,14cha as the base stats) and could fit in empower healing along with the maximize/quicken I currently have I think I could reliably solo-heal shrouds. I'd have about 1k sp's as a human and with a mysterious bauble and a few sp pots in each part I would most likely be fine. Probably have to skip on dps'ing so I could hold a heal scroll to top off that low-hp rogue in between cd's but otherwise it would be very doable.

People really underestimate bard healing. With the proper build your healing really doesn't lack any punch. What's lacking is your endurance...you can toss out very usable heals, you just can't do it for a prolonged period of time without some pots.

[Darkrok]

Yes on Quicken.
No on mental toughness.
Running Max and EmpH at the same time I have heard good things about in terms of efficiency but have yet to try personally.
I would rec. keeping extend for a new player as well.

Yeah, I'd never drop Extend. The human build I mentioned in the previous post is a variation of the Classic Rocker build. 18str+level-ups to str, 16con, 14cha. If you take Toughness/Power Attack, Extend, WF: Slashing, Maximize, IC: Slashing, Quicken, Empower Healing as your feats you'll be able to throw out some pretty beefy heals in between twitching with a nice two-handed weapon. I get good results healing on the Warforged version that lacks Empower Healing and have 2nd healed shrouds as well as solo-healed a ton of stuff. Just be willing to scroll heal/reconstruct to make up for your smaller sp pool when you're in longer quests and make liberal use of blur/displacement.

[BigButter]

You'll probably always be tinkering with your feats in your head, if not in actual practice. When the game went f2p, I followed the Turbine SS pre-rolled path (might've even been a Virt) which gave you Elf and 8 CON starting out----and there were no LRs, GRs or TRs at that time. Then I started reading the forums and started swapping out those feats and trying to ungimp, stubbornly refusing to re-roll b/c everyone loves his/her first character right?

Just note that it gets exponentially more costly to swap out feats at higher levels, even with a high haggle character. At level 20, it's 80kpp (more than the entry-level airship) and 120 TP for the dragonshard (has anyone calculated how many siberys dragonshard fragments you'd have to grind to get one in-game???). Nurse your free feat change from the in-game Lockannia quest (sp?).

Extend is really nice early on, especially as Haste/Displace become available. If you get the Gloves of the Glacier from the Reaver Raid in GH, you will get Efficient Extend II/Maximize II. Combined with your Spellsong Trance SP discount, you're Extends will be doubling for dirt cheap. IIRC, base Haste is 20sp. Extended it's 25sp with the gloves and your song. Same with Displacement I think.

Reasonable people will disagree about Extend. For me, it's a playstyle decision. I just found it was a lot more micromanaging than I wanted to do to keep non-Extended single target buffs up on myself and party members.

My other feats (not in the order I took them sorry I can't remember):

Toughness
Spell Focus: Enchantment
Grtr SF: Enchantment
Imp. Crit: Slashing
Maximize
Spell Pen

I picked up the Imp. Crit: Slashing somewhere around the Vale (lvl 15 maybe?) to try to be able to solo the slayers a little faster and before they nerfed TWF. It's getting on about time to put it down though. With a 22 STR, Gloves of the Titan, and DP clickies at end-game swinging an Epic Antique Greataxe with MT, my DPS feels so bad at later levels I just have really enjoyed the extra crit range. You could drop this feat if you get a Min2 weapon which adds keen at the 3rd tier but it's a lot of large ingredients

I want to play around with Quicken, Heighten, and Empower Healing but like I said switching ain't all that easy from a cost standpoint.

Of those 3 my thoughts are this:

Quicken-max Conc and find a good + item and you won't fail a Concentration check. Bards are pretty fast casters as it is. If I've failed a Conc check I honestly didn't notice it except in Tavern brawling (boy they hate bards in taverns). If I were Human and had the extra feat, I'd probably take this and get addicted to it.

Heighten-there's a good argument to take this but only later on in your build Lvl 15 or 18 I'd say. With a 36 CHA, Dreamspitter from Reaver's raid equipped and both Sp Focus: Enchantments, but no Heighten, my single target Hold Monster lands almost all the time on Epic trash mobs (not casters) but less reliably on devils and orthons in Amrath. I don't think it's a Spell Pen issue because pretty much everything dances first time with Irresistible Dance so I must need to boost my DC. I may even drop the Spell Pen feat but I'd hate to do it and find that Ottos' Irresistible stopped landing. This is most likely the one I'll add.

With Maximize, the right Sup VI equipment, a bunch of Healing Lore from items/enhancements plus any Healing Amp people have on, you can seriously be a turbocharged healer with just a little amount of discretion. I'm almost curious to see how Empower Healing would goose this. No PUG will let you solo heal the Shroud part IV and V but you can with no/minimal resources.

Finally, there's a strong argument to be made going Human for the Bonus feat (more survivability, skill points) on a pure Bard, although with lots of new Bard love coming and new races, I'm kind of just standing pat until I see what comes out.

[Irinis]

Recently I was part of an all-Bard Shroud on Ghallanda. I was level 16 and the second healer. Only had maximized mass cures, scrolls of mass cure mod (that hit for less than my light) and not quite 100% on heal scrolls yet, not even a potency item! (I'm poor on that server, lol) The main healer was 20 Bard I think, did very well, my cures just topped off in between and helped out. Pretty sure there were no pots used in part 4, definitely none in part 5. Of course, we did have the DPS with so many amazing Bards.

On my 20 Spellsinger before TR I have been second healer several times in raids, of course then the Cleric claims they solo healed the run.
On my Warchanter who only has 16 Bard, I have several times stepped up to second healer when the second healer gets a cometfall to the face, I do use pots then though because 800 sp doesn't go very far.

I recommend Maximize. I wish I could fit in Empower Healing as well but I already have to choose GSF: Enchant OR Quicken...

[BigButter]

Recently I was part of an all-Bard Shroud on Ghallanda. I was level 16 and the second healer. Only had maximized mass cures, scrolls of mass cure mod (that hit for less than my light) and not quite 100% on heal scrolls yet, not even a potency item! (I'm poor on that server, lol) The main healer was 20 Bard I think, did very well, my cures just topped off in between and helped out. Pretty sure there were no pots used in part 4, definitely none in part 5. Of course, we did have the DPS with so many amazing Bards.

On my 20 Spellsinger before TR I have been second healer several times in raids, of course then the Cleric claims they solo healed the run.
On my Warchanter who only has 16 Bard, I have several times stepped up to second healer when the second healer gets a cometfall to the face, I do use pots then though because 800 sp doesn't go very far.

I recommend Maximize. I wish I could fit in Empower Healing as well but I already have to choose GSF: Enchant OR Quicken...

Sweet on the Bard Shroud! It's lonely raiding as a Bard on Ghallanda (and elsewhere I presume). Most PUGs get that one Bard and then don't take another. I RARELY ever get to run with another Bard.

I recently ran a Shroud on my 20 SS with a pure Cleric/healer and a cleric/monky splash. The 'true healer' DC'd at the end of Part 3. The cleric/monky splash was visibly nervous at the thought of being the 'main' and said 'I don't have Mass Heal." I said I was heal spec'd and had mean MCLW/MCMW as long as I didn't get a case of the computer stutters. Party waited around, a few said 'we can't do it.' I said I was heal spec'd and could toss out some crazy, high crit % heals (max, sup ardor VI, sup pot VI, near full healing line enh) again. We zone into part IV and two rounded Harry and the same in Part V. I chugged one pot each round just because 1) I was overhealing in case I started getting conx problems, 2) I didn't want to let that melee rogue die (I mean I did a little bit)....but 3) I felt like I'd put the Bard healing reputation on the line. Well, no one died, it was totally fine and at the end of the round everyone thanked/congratulated.........the cleric/monk and started shoveling pots to him. ROFL.