Bards sometimes get no respect

[brinclhof]

Last night I am running a pug shroud on my lvl 20 spellsinger bard. He is heal speced and normally casts around a 85 pt mass cure light and a 100 to 115 point cure mass mod. Respectible numbers.

We have 2 clerics in the party and things go fairly smoothly have one lag death in part 4 but other than that no problems. End of part 4 one of the 2 clerics DC's We give them about 10 minutes to reconnect after that figure they aren't coming back so after much discussion (me pointing out that I'm heal speced and with me and the other cleric its not a problem) we decided to go on into part 5. During the discussion of my bard being heal speced it is basically said that yeah...the bard can maybe fill the gaps while the cleric is on cool down. THe cleric then talks about going and standing under harry so they can use there aura since they will be solo healing part 5.

We complete part 5 with having one of our DPS toons disconnect at some point so we are down 2 people and we have no deaths.

At the end everyone raves at what a wonderful job the cleric did healing he was great That was incredible....blah blah blah....not a single word about how good a job the bard did helping out even though I blew through 15 cure mod scrolls and about 1500 sp...

Not a word of congrats the to bard for being a healer...and giving the cleric sp back in the middle of the fight...

sometimes bards get no respect....

[ArloOne]

Self gratification can circumvent the frustration felt through situations such as this.

Good Job!

[Chette]

Saddly you'll have to get used to it. Warchanters get at least some respect from moderately skilled players, but you'd be surprised how often I still run into people who don't know that bard songs give bonuses to hit and damage for the entire party. Spellsinger and virtuosos get no respect except from the smallest fraction of the player community who understand how powerful they can be. You'll never be asked to heal, you'll never be asked to charm. You'll occasionally be asked to haste, and that's about it.

[Llewndyn]

It's called the "Bard Respectability Belt", or shortened to Korromar's Belt. When you feel disrespected, wait for a fight to go on, then cast dance on random people. Sometimes I wish we could have that as a real spell, to randomly dance party members, since a sorcs mass suggestion is just as good and any arcane can hog out Otto's Sphere... it seems a little closer to what a bard would actually do, anyway. And that would GUARANTEE some respect, as in this short skit:

Melee: Bards can't heal, and they can't fight, outside of being a buffbot what go-"
melee begins dancing wildly in front of Sully
Bard: Take that, you fiend!
Rogue: I have no HP!
Other Melee: Uh Oh, Spaghetti-Os!
Min/Max TR: links Epic Item though no one asked anything about it

As you can see above, the Bard wins this showdown because now everyone is dead. I could go on and on, and will.

Bards should be able to dance bosses. Make them make their saves faster if you like, but come on. We don't USUALLY (I know a bunch of people are gonna chime in with "My bard does 4893028 damage per hit even WITHOUT critting!" and to them I say: No you don't, sit down and shut up) do anywhere near as much damage as your normal unwashed melee, we don't have as many spell points as most of the casters, a lot of times we don't have as many buffs as the sorc does (songs not included), and the biggest reason you run a bard - outside of the fact that chicks dig lutes and WF codpieces - is to make stuff dance while you giggle and clap your hands. Factor in as a Virtuoso the save on Enthrallment is 68 and why CAN'T I dance bosses? Even if it immediately causes a party wipe who would NOT get a kick out of seeing Aerritrikos do the Kid n' Play, or Sully doing the Running man, or even funnier The Abbot grabbing a random party member and doing the Junior High Slow dance?

And beholders have ALL this intelligence and the only thing they can do is wiggle from side to side like Tyrone Biggums? When you get outdanced by a half orc, something's wrong. VERY wrong.

What was the question again?

[ainmosni]

bards make better healers for 4 main reasons and a lot of others

1 bards can do other cool stuff like sing songs and music is cool
2bards have more than one PRe
3. clerics are stupid and i dont like them
4 barbarians are great dps


all jokes aside, a good bard can REPLACE a healer in a party. my warchanter does just fine healing <insert any epic quest/raid here>, and contributes so much more than my cleric does. the only thing my cleric can do that my bard can't is stun (clonk, 44 dc stunning fist) and DOT.

+1 for bard appreciation day

[brinclhof]

It's called the "Bard Respectability Belt", or shortened to Korromar's Belt. When you feel disrespected, wait for a fight to go on, then cast dance on random people. Sometimes I wish we could have that as a real spell, to randomly dance party members, since a sorcs mass suggestion is just as good and any arcane can hog out Otto's Sphere... it seems a little closer to what a bard would actually do, anyway. And that would GUARANTEE some respect, as in this short skit:

Melee: Bards can't heal, and they can't fight, outside of being a buffbot what go-"
melee begins dancing wildly in front of Sully
Bard: Take that, you fiend!
Rogue: I have no HP!
Other Melee: Uh Oh, Spaghetti-Os!
Min/Max TR: links Epic Item though no one asked anything about it

As you can see above, the Bard wins this showdown because now everyone is dead. I could go on and on, and will.

Bards should be able to dance bosses. Make them make their saves faster if you like, but come on. We don't USUALLY (I know a bunch of people are gonna chime in with "My bard does 4893028 damage per hit even WITHOUT critting!" and to them I say: No you don't, sit down and shut up) do anywhere near as much damage as your normal unwashed melee, we don't have as many spell points as most of the casters, a lot of times we don't have as many buffs as the sorc does (songs not included), and the biggest reason you run a bard - outside of the fact that chicks dig lutes and WF codpieces - is to make stuff dance while you giggle and clap your hands. Factor in as a Virtuoso the save on Enthrallment is 68 and why CAN'T I dance bosses? Even if it immediately causes a party wipe who would NOT get a kick out of seeing Aerritrikos do the Kid n' Play, or Sully doing the Running man, or even funnier The Abbot grabbing a random party member and doing the Junior High Slow dance?

And beholders have ALL this intelligence and the only thing they can do is wiggle from side to side like Tyrone Biggums? When you get outdanced by a half orc, something's wrong. VERY wrong.

What was the question again?

LOL Thanks for that I needed the laugh.

Yeah my Bard can solo heal (and has)just about any quest on any pug....Amrath needs to be sure there is some good dps just to make sure the fights don't last too long....

Just wish we would get the credit

[maddmatt70]

Yes, I have been playing a healing bard for years. This is sadly par for the course that utter lack of respect bard healing get. Even with people that know that I can do the job still do not respect bard healing really.

My favorite recently was a Tower raid. Like most tower raids we had trouble getting healers. I was on my bard Rabiez so we got one FVS to join and decided to go with just Rabiez and the FVS. The FVS and myself healed the main tank on Horoth with a recon caster on the sulu tank. The entire raid was easy and smooth several pugs remarked at the end ( we had 0 deaths or something like that). The FVS sent me a tell thanking me for helping him out at the end of the quest. I laughed because the reality is he helped me out and allowed me to not drink pots really which I would have had to if I had to solo heal the thing. I have 2500 spell points on Rabiez when you factor in baubles, epic spell storing rings, etc. A FVS has barely more then that. The FVS was a noob so I did not expect too much from a healing standpoing and in fact one of my guildies had encountered this FVS while levelling and said not to expect much from him.

The other side of things is when you actually solo heal something other players think your the best thing since sliced bread which is actually sort of insulting as well when really why wouldn't you be able to solo heal something as a bard? Heck you are just doing your job.

[Llewndyn]

And have since gotten his post tattooed on my lower back as a permanent reminder of bard's awesomeness. I think bards, like rogues and overweight guys driving small cars, are insulted/ disliked because they are misunderstood. (seriously, my Neon gets GREAT gas mileage!) Sadly, the only real way to get bard appreciation is also the best way to get on a lot of blacklists, which is by only buffing/ healing yourself. I find the best way to do it is to be caught healing the cleric, or raising the dead a few times, or hitting your CC spells before the group can get there and listening to the oohs and aahs as they see all these mobs fascinated...

Not to get off on a tangent, but why does no one know what fascinate does? WHy is it when you hit fascinate and everything stops, people inevitably wade in and hit EVERYTHING, unfascinating all of them? EVERY time? I can't count how many times fascinate has COMPLETELY turned the tables when I am soloing (being a multi TR it seems pugging is out as no one ever wants to run at level stuff), and the few times the party knew what it did we didn't even NEED healing, but the vast, VAST majority of players have no idea what it does?

[TheDearLeader]

My Spellsinger has been the sole Blue Bar in Epics before. That's how I amuse myself when people start going on about how the good the cleric/fvs in group is.

[ainmosni]

Not to get off on a tangent, but why does no one know what fascinate does?

just one example

epic deeps, healing on my bard

dungeon alert, **** happens. mobs get out of control, people start dying

FASCINATE!!!

barbarian freaks the **** out, making sure to attack every fascinated mob in the room without actually killing anything

barbarian dies

[Indoran]

you expect anything else from a pug?

Come on I hear all the time: awesome healing job and I think: does this ppl know what healing shroud entails? it's not that hard at all!!!!! if you take 2 healers its in the case 1 dc's... and to keep up the squishies with the barrage of healing 2 healers with good timing can provide.

Good job mr. Bard. But don't expect them to realize how unintelligent was the cleric by even suggesting standing close to harry or how fortunate they where to have you. That requires getting out of their preconceptions and few humans bother to do that when everything goes fine.

[Phidius]

Maybe it's just me, but this is what I love about my bard.

While he can (and does) heal the party (when he's not piking), no one expects diddly from him but songs.

[Luckness]

True. With great respect comes great expectations. ^^

All hail the healing of the cleric! Bards and even FvS thank you for being the de facto healer class.

[Seikojin]

I love bards. They are my luck charm. Even if they don't have the finding marks, loot always seems to be ebtetr when a bard is the one opening the chest.

As a matter of numbers... In the 52 Shroud runs on my main, I have pulled 8 large devil scales... Each time, a bard was popping the chest. Once, I got one in part 4 and part 5. Bard again.

So for me, bards are the best member of my group.

As far as skill, ability, and what they bring to a table, I love bards even more. People don't respect less than max dps/ability. So they are just jelly of your unique awesome bardic skills. Not like their fighter can add damage, ac, saves, skill boosts, etc to the whole party like a bard can. Or like an arcane can, or a divine can, or when they come, an artificer can.

[gwenniez]

this is a normal thing and the main reason why i respecced my spellsinger into a paladin :P

in a non raid setting bard are better then any healer out there

displacement - 50% miss

songs - things die faster

healing - all the heal counts no overhealing

cc - fascinate/dance another way of mit. damage. things that are cc'ed dont hit people.

sp song - regen sp while running around

10% sp discount song - more bang for your sp.

master of umd - scroll healing/raise dead and other buffs possible.

can contribute with dps if needed and if build right.

the majority of the people see bard as a buffbot with healing capability equal to a ranger/paladin tho..

[Zenako]

If you watch closely, you will observe that many times it is the veteran guild groups that cruise thru quests and raids ...with a Bard in their headcount... They know what the class brings to the table and welcome it every time. I never have a problem getting into runs when on a bard. Guild runs tend to include lots of players who do have a clue about things like Fascinate and they know how to take advantage of it.

One favorite run of my was a long time ago with low to mid level characters trying a Red Willow Run (superb place for a bard to play!). The other players were wanting to be careful and only go in on normal or maybe hard. I told them, do not worry, Bard is here and then explained quickly how the run would be a piece of cake if they just let me Fascinate each cluster of mobs first. (Only encounter we skirted was the dang Scorpions....evil vermin things!! with no taste in music!). Those players, who apparently had not seen a bard in action before were rather surprised and ultimately pleased and impressed at how things went down. When the characters can gang up on the mobs, instead of the other way around, quests become simple.

[RangerOne]

You may not have gotten the recognition you deserved there, but believe me, bards are appreciated.

Arcane and divine buffs are okay, but whenever I see a bard join the group, I want to shout. Damage and crits seem to multiply when bard-buffed. Watching my manyshot crit several times for 5 times normal is super.

So, bards everywhere. We salute you.

[Chai]

My situation was slightly different where I did get respect, because the cleric solo healing the raid died to a meteorswarm, and I was the only one left with any mass cures, on my spellsinger.

Thats when people get all surprised that bards can heal well enough, even though we been doing it for years now, heh.

ZOMG the clerics dead what are we going to do!!! Then they see that cures are still coming in and keeping the party up.

[Aashrym]

I like it better when the casters state flat out that it wasn't them and they think it was the bard although I think a lot of the high level groups understand it better than the low level groups. I have had healers and wizards point it out in the past and there is often someone who is still surprised.

I think it has more to do with the variations on bard builds than the fact we play bards. A person knows they should expect the bard to be able to IC and fascinate but beyond that when someone sees a bard icon there really isn't any guarantees beyond those abilities depending on how the bard is built.

[SetofBs]

I've been there. You think you are unappreciated when things go OK? Wait until things go south. My spellsinger was 2nd healer on a PUG shroud that went wrong. We completed, but just barely(like 3 toons alive when harry went down). The leader said "That's the last time I run without 2 healers" as his thanks to me for using like 45 heal scrolls, 1500+ SPs, probably 5-8 raise dead scrolls, a few cure mass mod scrolls, etc. IIRC I might even have been the only one not to die in part 5.

Of course, the fact that we had 2 meat bag WF that literally never got topped up by our masses in the fight had nothing to do with it. I'm not sure if the cleric wasn't casting mass heals and was just using mass cures like I was was the reason or what. I was even throwing the odd heal scroll at them in between mass cures and they still wouldn't get topped up. I don't think the cleric did any scroll healing at all, he just died as soon as he ran out of SPs. Also, melees were jumping out from mass heal range, and had poor DPS, it was just a poor group.

The reason for all this though is the mindset that only clerics and FVS are healers. This is partly because healer bards are very rare. TBH, I don't remember ever running with a spellsinger as healer in my DDO career except for when I've been on my spellsinger.