Healer/Melee Spellsinger

[Owch]

Hello All;

I new to DDO and need some help developing my bard. My goal is to make a strong healing bard, that can also do some melee. I do not care as much for CC. But I do want to be able to sell items at a great discount. So I dont want to nerf charisma. I plan to put all point in charisma.

I am currently level 4 human bard and I think my character is quite weak. My starting stats from the 32 point build are

Strengh:14
Constitution:16
Charisma:18

I started using the feats from the standard SS build listed in the forums. So I hope I have not nerfed myself already.

So how do I make a healer with a little melee (while I watch paint dry).

Thanks
Grey

[Gooch]

i have a young bard (6th) and am trying to roughly go the route you are describing. (tho i'm still holding out for decent cc) I've found that going with a 2-hander with master's touch is pretty effective so far. (tho this is my first melee so i have nothing to compare to) There aren't many decent spells early on and that includes healing so there's not much else you can do at this point until you level up more. I tried making my healing more viable via clickies and what gear i could find but it still isn't great. But it's also not really needed so much early on anyway. So I figure things will work out better once I get higher levels and have more spells and get empowered healing/maximize.

You say you are weak but don't say how so.

I feel my bard is very lame, (i find melee too boring) but I'm perfectly capable of doing my part, or soloing. I'm assuming it will get more interesting later on.

[Aashrym]

14 starting CHA and 18 STR with level ups in STR wouldn't nerf the character. Haggle is a great skill but it won't increase the money earned off the AH or help during at quest.

If you do insist on CHA then melee isn't your focus, so CC spells would be the alternative to go with that. I'm currently advising go full caster class instead of bard caster but caster would suit a max CHA better.

TBH, the amount of plat you will get from the difference isn't that important. Running vale and above tends to give us more that enough vendor trash for plat. I can supply myself with a lot of consumable just from weekly shroud runs.

[Alleyna]

If you want to have high haggle, heal, and melee and don't care about CC, I would swap your str and cha:

Str: 18
Con: 16
Cha: 14

Put all lvl ups into Str. The difference is minimal between a 14 cha and 24 cha (18 + 5 lvl ups + 1 human enh, assuming all other cha items and enhancements the same). A difference of 10 cha is 5 cha modifier. This gives you an additional +5 haggle and 145 spell points. Increments of 4 skill points only matter for haggle, netting you a whopping + 0.25% (yes, a quarter of a percent) bonus to sales and at most 0.675% discount on buying from certain vendors. So, maxing str over charisma might lose you 0.5% on sales and 1.35% on buying from vendors (where more likely you'll be buying from the auction house, where haggle does not help you).

Your current stats are what I would recommend for a CC caster bard.

It doesn't mean you have to go caster based if you max your Charisma, it's just that you'll find the returns for an additional 10 charisma minimal where an additional 10 strength would help your melee greatly.

[Owch]

Thanks for the advice. I guessing it time to trash my old bard and restart. I still want to be able to heal and have lots of mana for healing. What generates my mana pool is it charisma based?

[Namey]

Thanks for the advice. I guessing it time to trash my old bard and restart. I still want to be able to heal and have lots of mana for healing. What generates my mana pool is it charisma based?

It's charisma based, but the increases are minimal. It is by no means a good reason to invest in Cha. You are much better off with items that boost your Spell Points instead. The only reason you'd want to focus on Cha on a bard, is when you are building a CC build, or for some reason are supermaxing a skill. Otherwise starting with Cha 8 can be enough.