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]

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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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?

[Emili]

I TR'd Rosewood ... as - yes a Pure Spell Singer - again. I debated changing races, and many stats yet driends talked me into ... guess what? Yes the same old bard she was before. Seems everyone loved Rosewood as is, I guess when come down to it all working off something you think gimpy yet still it works by shear bloody luck and skim thru by the seat of your pants it pays off...

Rosewood is level 17 now (rank 88 so somewhere in I guess is somewhere 18 due xp? Do not know I hold back lvls.) and I'm having fun with her despite throwing away her near favour cap. Least she back over 2500 again now. The meleeing spell singer who still casts, lands spells, and is a decent healer too.

I am also under impression she is going to land spells in epics too, even though she melees - how do I know? I tested my wizard and tried a few things I estimate will be about Rosewood's DC and spell use. Still remains to be seen but the little elf bard who's been looking for her '63 strat for over five years ... although on a new life is looking forward to getting back into epics.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

I TR'd Rosewood ... as - yes a Pure Spell Singer - again. I debated changing races, and many stats yet driends talked me into ... guess what? Yes the same old bard she was before. Seems everyone loved Rosewood as is, I guess when come down to it all working off something you think gimpy yet still it works by shear bloody luck and skim thru by the seat of your pants it pays off...

Rosewood is level 17 now (rank 88 so somewhere in 19 due xp) and I'm having fun with her despite throwing away her near favour cap. Least she back over 2500 again now. Despite it all a melee spell singer who still casts and lands spells, and is a decent healer too.

I am also under impression she is going to land spells in epics too, even though she melees - how do I know? I tested my wizard and tried a few things I estimate will be about Rosewood's DC and spell use. Still remains to be seen but the little elf bard who's been looking for her '63 strat for over five years ... although on a new life is looking forward to getting back into epics.

Interesting read. Mississippee Queen is being retrofitted for more of a melee role. I HAVE totally given up in Turbine to do what so many spellsingers have asked them to do.

Leveling a DPS spellsinger now. Its not nearly as fun for me as it was building Mississippee (before they gimped the bard cc to hell) or Genghis Khan (mixed class bard/fighter/barbarian).

[maddmatt70]

I TR'd Rosewood ... as - yes a Pure Spell Singer - again. I debated changing races, and many stats yet driends talked me into ... guess what? Yes the same old bard she was before. Seems everyone loved Rosewood as is, I guess when come down to it all working off something you think gimpy yet still it works by shear bloody luck and skim thru by the seat of your pants it pays off...

Rosewood is level 17 now (rank 88 so somewhere in I guess is somewhere 18 due xp? Do not know I hold back lvls.) and I'm having fun with her despite throwing away her near favour cap. Least she back over 2500 again now. The meleeing spell singer who still casts, lands spells, and is a decent healer too.

I am also under impression she is going to land spells in epics too, even though she melees - how do I know? I tested my wizard and tried a few things I estimate will be about Rosewood's DC and spell use. Still remains to be seen but the little elf bard who's been looking for her '63 strat for over five years ... although on a new life is looking forward to getting back into epics.

It is not a question of landing spells, but rather it is a question of the effectiveness of the spells bards cast. As time has gone by bard spells have become increasingly less effective. Back when the cap was 14 the bard cc spells where very powerful in the gianthold,etc. Fast forward to update 8 and the bard spells were quite a bit less effective then and now post U9 with the spell changes and bard spells have become virtually obsolete in comparison to Wiz/sorc/fvs/cleric spells.

You are a traditionalist i.e. you do not tend to like to change characters even where they are less effective. Hangover, my old spellsinger healer/cc bard I will still run in raids but in 6 mans she is done until they fix the changes either that or I will throw an SOS on her and respec her. Sadly I am leaning toward putting her in hibernation until the devs change things. I think the devs investing into bards in order to make them more diverse is a worthy effort because the current bard is too one dimensional and stale.

[IAmNotAWaffle]

It is not a question of landing spells, but rather it is a question of the effectiveness of the spells bards cast. As time has gone by bard spells have become increasingly less effective.

Thanks for mentioning this, I haven't put enough thought in that end. Hold monster, greater shout, even otto's irresistable...These just don't compare with an enchantment wizard, even if you can land the first two consistently.