Is 20 Spellsinger worth it after the update?

[DME543]

Looking for opinions b4 i roll a new bard.

[Aashrym]

They still have the most spells points for bards and best UMD out of the bard PRE's. He can be built more for melee and he has buffs, fascinate, and healing still. Make him a caster and he's more of a poor caster than before the spell pass in comparison.

I'm just having a hard time holding on to mine right now. I'm either going to move him into a new life or respec melee. I've been hoping for a glimmer of things to come and that doesn't seem to be happening.

[Symar-FangofLloth]

As some form of melee bard, sure.
As a caster bard? No, they're actually worse by comparison to other casters now.

[Miahoo]

I find melee bards ******!
I really enjoy the one I rolled. Actually two.

[IAmNotAWaffle]

I've been playing my drow spellsinger a lot lately, and I just hit level 19. Healing/CC specc'd bards are definitely not the best at either of those two roles, but with the right gear, enough time and plenty of practice I think you could heal and CC well enough in some of the easier raids and quests. For the harder epics and elite raids, a caster-focused bard might be most useful just singing and piking.

My speculation, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, or share any personal achievements or experiences.

[NaturalHazard]

I've been playing my drow spellsinger a lot lately, and I just hit level 19. Healing/CC specc'd bards are definitely not the best at either of those two roles, but with the right gear, enough time and plenty of practice I think you could heal and CC well enough in some of the easier raids and quests. For the harder epics and elite raids, a caster-focused bard might be most useful just singing and piking.

My speculation, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, or share any personal achievements or experiences.

singing piking buffing fasinate song, support CC and support healing.

[Qezuzu]

singing piking buffing fasinate song, support CC and support healing.

Emphasis on piking.

As long as the +2's are rolling, they know you're helping.

[IAmNotAWaffle]

Emphasis on piking.

As long as the +2's are rolling, they know you're helping.

Yeah spellsingers can really help conserve your party's blue bars with their songs and back-up healing when it's needed.

[IAmNotAWaffle]

singing piking buffing fasinate song, support CC and support healing.

Yes that's all true and things I always do in a party that doesn't need me to act as a main healer or our main CC. But when you're in a situation where you're not built to dps at all, your healer needs absolutely no help, and your DC's just haven't yet gotten to the point where they're high enough for whatever you're running; after buffs where does your role lie? But then against, I guess someting like this can happen with any class if you haven't geared it up enough yet.

I just want to make it clear that I'm not arguing AGAINST a spellsinger bard, simply that if you roll one and want to fill main roles in a quest, you're going to have to either run easy content or put a lot of effort into it.

[Alektronic]

Just wood'd my spellsinger from caster-based to melee-based. Much happier now. I feel like I can contribute to the WHOLE party now (spell song buffs, as well as IC, etc...) and can do appreciable dps.

As a caster-based build, I was nearly never called upon to heal (cep to rez healers and stabilize the group), and my CC did not land enough for me (in harder content) to bother with it unless the party was in over its head. I have enough difficulty pumping my CC up on my pure capped wizard for endgame content, so I decided to respec to melee on bard, since bards will never realize the full potential of an arcane CC build.

In a nutshell, I still like my spellsinger. I think he contributes in a different way (songwise) than WC (oh and Virt too). I just think the offensive casting part was weak before U9, but now after the spell pass, it's ahm.... become less than useful (with a few minor exceptions).

[IAmNotAWaffle]

Just wood'd my spellsinger from caster-based to melee-based. Much happier now. I feel like I can contribute to the WHOLE party now (spell song buffs, as well as IC, etc...) and can do appreciable dps.

I'm considering doing the same thing with my spellsinger when I TR, but I'll have to run more high-level content before I really decide. I'm not really sure about the feats though, and I don't want to multi-class.

[Nightalas]

I have two bard characters. The first one is a melee bard (can be reset between warchanter/virtuoso) and the second one is a caster bard (spellsinger). I don't know about epics yet but at level 16 the caster bard does 2-3 times more damage using sonic blast and greater shout with meta-magic feats. Nowadays you can drink +75% cacophony potions and sp costs have been reduced. There are two alternatives: pure bard or level 17 bard with two levels of sorcerer and one level of wizard to get one extra feat, 300-350 additional sp and -5 sp discount on maximized+empowered spells. It doesn't compare well with real arcane casters but for a buffer/healer/piker spellsinger focus on evocation and sonic spells is a nice and fun addition.

[pharky]

i think it could be said that spellsingers are now professional buff bots. i do nothing else with my blue bar except to keep everyone hasted and displaced and i just keep singing, especially for fast paced parties. CC wise, spellsingers are horrible now especially when they turned up the saves on epics.

if you have at least 12 str, you could still melee and deal significant damage while keeping the party buffs, and all the spell songs on. its not really that bad, just that i wouldnt really call it spellsinging.

[vVAnjilaVv]

I play every casting class there is in this game.....all of them are capped too...what I found with my SS is the same thing I found for all the casting classes because they were all hit by the change.....adapt your playstyle.

My spellsinger for me is just as fun now as it was pre-U9.

Are you gonna be able to play them the way you did before U9....no.
Are they still fun to play....yes.

That's my opinion anyways.

[Raithe]

Bards, by the design of the class, have always been hybrids. That means they are melee with spellcasting and songcasting added in as additional attributes.

Making a bard that can't melee makes just about as much sense as making a paladin that can't melee.

Turbine has simply turned spellsingers into full casters as well because of poor judgement on the part of the developers combined with statistics showing them that bards are not very popular.

The boards and in-game attitudes make me laugh. Spellsingers are so OP right now it's hard to get upset at the OP changes to the other casters. For those complaining about lack of CC, fascinate DC is still hitting in the 60s. Just because you run with stooges that don't know how to use fascinate does not make your bard any less powerful.

[IAmNotAWaffle]

Bards, by the design of the class, have always been hybrids. That means they are melee with spellcasting and songcasting added in as additional attributes.

Making a bard that can't melee makes just about as much sense as making a paladin that can't melee.

Turbine has simply turned spellsingers into full casters as well because of poor judgement on the part of the developers combined with statistics showing them that bards are not very popular.

The boards and in-game attitudes make me laugh. Spellsingers are so OP right now it's hard to get upset at the OP changes to the other casters. For those complaining about lack of CC, fascinate DC is still hitting in the 60s. Just because you run with stooges that don't know how to use fascinate does not make your bard any less powerful.

Could I get some clarification on this post; are you saying that bard spellsingers should NOT build to be purely casters? And I'm sorry but your comparison between bards that can't melee, and paladins that can't melee is extremely and unnecesisarily over-exaggerated; Because of your own buffs, any bard, even with a relatively low (20+?) strength can pick up a keen weapon and still fight. I don't think any bard has any excuse to not have ANY dps potential, but there are simply situations when you get to the end-game runs but don't have the gear yet, where you aren't capable of really helping your party's dps to a significant amount.

That being said, I usually don't melee with my bard simply because I'm lacking the gear to survive and deal decent damage at this time, and I'm moving in the direction of a pure caster that can back-up heal and CC whenever needed, and occasionally fill those roles myself. In harder content it will be more difficult to get away with throwing hold monster and otto's sphere because of my lower DC's, but if that's something you're willing to put the time and effort into, there's nothing wrong with that. They may have been originally designed to be 'hybrids', and I'm strongly considering LR'ing my bard to get back to my specialist dps roots, but there ARE bards out there who can get by as full-time casters.

I honestly don't understand where you were going with this post, because in one paragraph you said all bards should dps. But warchanters are obviously better for a dps role then a spellsinger, so why didn't you count spellsingers out of the equation entirely with your post? At the end of your post you stated that spellsingers were OP (over-powered, right?), because of fascinate DC's.(Or were you referring to all bards?) Well fascinate is extremely hard to use effectively in most situations, so I'm not sure if you could call this 'OP.' You could almost compare this to an assassin sneaking around the dungeon trying to assassinate enemies or lay traps when the rest of the group is just charging through hacking everything to pieces. It can help you out of a bad situation more effectively than most other spells a bard has, but in the time it takes to actually play the song, your party could have killed the entire group of enemies anyways. And once again with my SS vs. WC dps comparison, since Virtuoso and even WC can use fascinate very effectively, why didn't you disregard SS entirely?

[Raithe]

Could I get some clarification on this post; are you saying that bard spellsingers should NOT build to be purely casters?

Well, I'm not here to tell people what they can and can't do, I typically tell people they can play whatever they want, including purposefully building gimps to make the game more challenging. Building a bard that doesn't melee, however, doesn't make the game more challenging - it simply limits options and gameplay to a couple of dimensions.

...but there are simply situations when you get to the end-game runs but don't have the gear yet, where you aren't capable of really helping your party's dps to a significant amount.

According to whom? Take Sorjek, in "Stealer of Souls." Melee are losing a large number of their advantages. Most fighters lose their weapon specializations, barbarians lose their crit enhancements. Everyone loses improved crit or keen on their weapon. A spellsinger that spams a few heals every now and then is totally in the DPS game, even if you don't count the song damage from every weapon in the group in the bard's column.

That being said, I usually don't melee with my bard simply because I'm lacking the gear to survive and deal decent damage at this time,...

Bards are not gear-oriented (one of the signs of an OP class). There are 3 major factors to a bard's survivability:

1) Displacement and possibly stoneskin.
2) Self-healing. Quicken turns a bard into a meat shield.
3) High saves. Self-applied gh, inspire greatness, rage, and haste help, along with Force of Personality (though my bard doesn't need it) and good con and/or dex scores.

They may have been originally designed to be 'hybrids', and I'm strongly considering LR'ing my bard to get back to my specialist dps roots, but there ARE bards out there who can get by as full-time casters.

You can play a warforged sorceror as a primarily melee/self-healer as well. It shouldn't factor into a conversation about whether sorcerors are viable at end game.

But warchanters are obviously better for a dps role then a spellsinger...

They have greater personal melee DPS potential, sure. That does not mean they will cause greater amounts of DPS in a group, however. Spellsingers provide higher DCs, higher spell point efficiency, and better spell penetration as well as, unfortunately, spell point regeneration. That all adds up to higher magic DPS and more haste, rage, and focusing chant. A spellsinger in the party may also free a cleric or favored soul up to contribute their melee DPS as well.

I have never even been tempted to go warchanter.

At the end of your post you stated that spellsingers were OP (over-powered, right?), because of fascinate DC's.

Not just because of fascinate, though fascinate is extremely powerful even with Dungeon Alert. Inspire courage is overpowered in regular quests, let alone raids. How many Shroud runs with a bard in the party kill Arraetrikos before the blade circles even start hitting any melee? How much quicker is a Hound run with a bard? Why will some insecure raid leaders actually sit and wait around for a bard before they start their raid?

Bard's have survivability, utility, and both the best buffs and highest powered crowd control in the game. That is why they were overpowered before spellsinger II came out. Now they are just stupidly overpowered.

[Aashrym]

Bards are not gear-oriented (one of the signs of an OP class).

Bard hunt DPS gear and/or caster gear too. I'm not exactly following how caster bard is OP with no instant death spells and terrible direct damage spells, or how they don't grind gear. I don't need a caster bard for IC and haste, but that certainly doesn't over power them.

There are 3 major factors to a bard's survivability:

1) Displacement and possibly stoneskin.
2) Self-healing. Quicken turns a bard into a meat shield.
3) High saves. Self-applied gh, inspire greatness, rage, and haste help, along with Force of Personality (though my bard doesn't need it) and good con and/or dex scores.

What you have just described is a wizard with insightful reflexes instead of force of personality. Not only that, but those options are available to melee bards. And the wizard has a lot more offensive options.

Not just because of fascinate, though fascinate is extremely powerful even with Dungeon Alert. Inspire courage is overpowered in regular quests, let alone raids. How many Shroud runs with a bard in the party kill Arraetrikos before the blade circles even start hitting any melee? How much quicker is a Hound run with a bard? Why will some insecure raid leaders actually sit and wait around for a bard before they start their raid?

Bard's have survivability, utility, and both the best buffs and highest powered crowd control in the game. That is why they were overpowered before spellsinger II came out. Now they are just stupidly overpowered.

Inspire Courage provides damage relative to the number of people using it. Requiring 3 more players or more to make an ability effective is not overpowered. Compared the same number of wizards casting death spells to the number of players to make IC useful and it turns into a poor comparison for the bard and melees. At least until the wizards lose blue bar power, but the goal these days in game design seems to be focused on making the blue bars last longer.

Fascinate can be limited by creature type, still breaks on hit, and ends up being situational much of the time.

Bards do not have evasion on a low HD class, they do not have protection from death effects or energy type in their abilities or spells, they do not have damage reduction in the spell list (the warchanter ability is some reduction at least). They tend to be one the squishiest classes.

I've played a lot of bards and I do find spellsingers can be strong CC on trash in some quests. They suck against bosses and immunities still hit their CC abilities. I would hardly call them overpowered.

[IAmNotAWaffle]

Bards do not have evasion on a low HD class, they do not have protection from death effects or energy type in their abilities or spells, they do not have damage reduction in the spell list (the warchanter ability is some reduction at least). They tend to be one the squishiest classes.

My bard not having evasion is a huge change from playing high-reflex, evasion classes, and it makes me feel more uncomfortable on the front line because I don't have the hp of a fighter either. I really need to bump up my hp. But as for the other points you mentioned here, we can umd resist energy, protection from elementals, fire shield, and stoneskin...As for protection from death effects, there's always deathblock from items. (Although maybe you could buy scrolls for deathblock in large amounts from vendors, but strangely, I've not looked into this myself so I'm not sure if they sell them...)