Bards seem just really lousy this update especially melee bards

[Dingleburr]

Sacrificing some dps for the aracne/divine school abilities and songs is not unheard of. The price of higher crit numbers lies in being heal/party dependent. Not everyone enjoys that style of play.

Hard to pose an argument for being dependent on everyone else to function when you can 1-2 shot mobs nearly as often.

Look again at the post I was responding to - you don't think just maybe that was the eSOS / eChrono set / +4 tomes / multiple EDs talking? I'd be curious as to your perspective on how common bards with that class of gear are.

[Hilltrot]

You are correct, I also have improved crit. slashing.

18+ 4tome + 6Item+ 3 ToD Ring + 6 Level stats +3 Abishai set+ 3 Inspire excellence +2 rage +2 yugoloth +2 ship buff +3 Primal scream= 52
I think I had a few points from epic destinies also which I will probably drop once I have all the twists I want. 50 will probably be more accurate once the grinding is done, although there are +8 str items now...

Looking at these buffs . . . couldn't a "wizard" be an awesome melee fighter too? Though I could be wrong, extend does not seems like a worthwhile feat for a bard. Displacement doesn't last long, but if you can sustain yugoloth potions (at how much a pop?), maintaining displacement should be easy.


It gave me pause when I found out how you got your damage. I was hoping you had found something about the classs I had missed. Instead it seems like you have items I will likely never have.

[Anthios888]

Look again at the post I was responding to - you don't think just maybe that was the eSOS / eChrono set / +4 tomes / multiple EDs talking? I'd be curious as to your perspective on how common bards with that class of gear are.

Barbarians without epic SoS suck a lot more than those with one, too. Don't bash the guy for actually playing his bard for a long time - obviously he cares if he has invested into a bard.

Every class is a spectrum based on gear. Madmatt has overexaggerated how "lousy" bards are. They're always playable, whether you are newbard or ubard. But the point is that there are some issues with the class itself as compared to other classes on the basic level. Can we stick to that? Spell selection, spell immunities, PrE weakness, inspire courage being diluted, these things will all be issues no matter what your myddo looks like. My bards play fine, but not as fine as they did a few years ago. It has become my weakest character by far despite having the best gear.

And no, a wizard with SoS, claw set, abishai set etc. still does not melee as well as you'd like

[Dingleburr]

Barbarians without epic SoS suck a lot more than those with one, too. Don't bash the guy for actually playing his bard for a long time - obviously he cares if he has invested into a bard.

Where did you get that I was bashing him? On the contrary, I believe his gear and build are pretty darned exceptional. The point is, that is not a reasonable baseline for your average bard. Of course a bard with the best gear available is going to perform well relative to a mere mortal anything else.

Every class is a spectrum based on gear. Madmatt has overexaggerated how "lousy" bards are. They're always playable, whether you are newbard or ubard. But the point is that there are some issues with the class itself as compared to other classes on the basic level. Can we stick to that? Spell selection, spell immunities, PrE weakness, inspire courage being diluted, these things will all be issues no matter what your myddo looks like. My bards play fine, but not as fine as they did a few years ago. It has become my weakest character by far despite having the best gear.

Right. Again, my point is that the power of a class or build is relative to all others with a similar level of gear and build complexity. Thus the barbarian comparison. My take on the lesson to be drawn is that for a melee focused bard to perform well relative to other melee classes requires a fairly complex build and insane gear.

In other words, the base class could use some help.

[Chai]

I love my combat bards this update. Inspire excellence was the best feat addition to the game imo. Even my 18/2 spellsinger adds 8 points of damage with courage/str song. I can add moar mana and +3 DC to any caster with +1 dc song + stat song. I give the entire party +4 con (Ive heard this one called the "degimpification song")

Fascinate is good CC when the party knows how to play with that kind of CC. If you have a sorc who is running stuff through ice storm constantly, fascinate isnt helping there. I have to communicate that I am using it or it ends up being ruined by an AE casting arcane or cleave happy melee.

The fatesinger destiny rules. I was walking around with 38 songs topped out, with each having multiple effects happening.

This update made my vision of bards and what I build them for coincide with many abilities that they have. I can bring substantial damage capabilities to the table, but the largest impact is being able to analyze what people in the party focused their builds to do well on, then make them even better at it. When Im done doing that, having a sustainable str score over 50 allows me to add DPS when needed and not miss too often.

[azrael4h]

I love my combat bards this update. Inspire excellence was the best feat addition to the game imo. Even my 18/2 spellsinger adds 8 points of damage with courage/str song. I can add moar mana and +3 DC to any caster with +1 dc song + stat song. I give the entire party +4 con (Ive heard this one called the "degimpification song")

My guildy was quite upset when I mentioned IE, and she hadn't heard of it. I'm not sure what her Bard took at 21, but she wasn't happy. I think she's planning on redoing her Bard with the free LR now.

Fascinate is good CC when the party knows how to play with that kind of CC. If you have a sorc who is running stuff through ice storm constantly, fascinate isnt helping there. I have to communicate that I am using it or it ends up being ruined by an AE casting arcane or cleave happy melee.

Good luck with that. With the one other Bard player in my group, I can get some coordination on the mobs. Otherwise, it's fireball time. I have much the same problems on my Sorc, who is built to CC as a secondary now. Dancing Spheres getting blown apart by Cyclonic Blast and Webs burned to a crisp. At least MHM can't be easily knocked out yet, though I expect the devs to nerf it hard soon.

This is whether I pug or group with guildies; only other, experienced (I'm not) Bard players appreciate Fascinate and work with the Bard. All others, forget it.

[Ragnar7]

0.0

This is evidence that bards are peachy? You've ground out about everything that could possibly be ground out pre-MOTU, then tacked on a twist from a destiny 4 clicks away from your likely starting point. You probably realized that this puts you in about the top 0.00001th percentile bracket of all bards on all servers.

You'd darn well better hit pretty hard after putting that much effort into a focused melee build. But have you taken a moment to consider what your melee crits might look like if you put that much effort into a barbarian build?

Yeah I know, I know bards are gimps. I have thought about converting to a real melee but I don't like the state of fighters atm and barbs are just too squishy now, they have absolutely no mitigation or healing.

Bards may not me the most powerful class but I enjoy playing one.
Our typical group consists of a monk or stalwart, a monk or kensai, 2 favored souls, and sometimes 1 pug. For this group fascinate is actually useful crowd control in some of the new content.

[taurean430]

Look again at the post I was responding to - you don't think just maybe that was the eSOS / eChrono set / +4 tomes / multiple EDs talking? I'd be curious as to your perspective on how common bards with that class of gear are.

As I said before; some players enjoy reaching moderately high dps with the ability to fend for themselves in most situations. My Warchanter; who when finished will run with high 60's str/cleave/great cleave/momentum swing/adrenaline/lay waste, will be more fun for me to play than when he was a barbarian. He'll be a more defensible, dps dealing, party buffing, self healing, singing machine.

He's a good addition to a party, but can solo whenever he wants. Actually solo, not drag cleric hirelings around.

He's a heavy metal singer lol.

[maddmatt70]

I like the reign ability in fatesinger alot and some of the other melee oriented aspects of fatesinger as well. I have been running my spellsinger/ cc/healer bard quite a bit and she is still quite good with magister. She has solo healed epic e belly in the beast and done the cc in a number of content although at times she has trouble ccing because of mob types.

A bunch of my guildies have run different types of melee oriented bards some two weapon fighting khopesh and others ESOS bards. In an epic normal or epic hard setting melee bards are nice because of their self sufficiency so they can easily solo alot quests or portions of quests. Some of my friends that play melee bards are really good melee players, but I can see the difference when they play their dps melee characters vs. their melee bards. I know their dps suffers. If one of my friends plays his monk instead of his bard or another one of my friends plays his barb instead of his bard his dps suffers. A couple of my other guildies have played their ESOS bards and like how they are playing but just watching the kill count and seeing how things play out bards are suffering on epic elite vs. real melee.

IE really is pretty overrated because it only provides +1 to a modifier generally and requires 4-6 songs every 7-8 minutes so I see bards just really play Con and Str in practice and not all the songs really. Hopefully they change IE, but I am not holding my breath. Things that buff the 6 primary stats are generally overrated in game by the way.

[Aashrym]

The fatesinger destiny is decent and I like inspire excellence, but that still doesn't change the fact that bard PrE's are underdeveloped in comparison to other PrE's and they suffer from limited spell selection / spell restrictions more than they should, which is where a lot of my personal opinions regarding the decline in bard effectiveness over the last few years come from.

There are also a lot of sonic bonuses (edit: in the destiny) but sonic spells really do suck. A 4th level wizard/sorcerer/bard sonic spell (shout) does much less damage than a 4th level cleric/fvs alignment spell, which also has secondary effect, and that same 4th level wizard/sorcerer/bard spell only does half the damage of 3rd level wizard/sorcerer spells let alone higher spells.

Matt, I don't suppose you had a chance to see if master of school could increase healing spells while in magister?

[fco-karatekid]

The buffs of a bard are good as ever.

What i feel more and more is a weakness in personal power, in that what you do after you sang the songs and between rebuffs. May it be personal DPS with a Warchanter, or CC/Healing with a Spellsinger/Virtuoso.

Buffing the personal power of a Bard is not important for overall balance, in differnece to what bufing his buffpower could cause. Even stronger he wont reach the personal DPS of a dedicated melee, or the CC/Damage/Healingpower of a Fullcaster.

Bards need a hand in this regard. And also before level 20 kicks in.

This is why my Warchanter Walternate just TR'ed. I could solo (ok, solo + hireling) up to Normal Elite (tough, but doable) and Epic Hard (which was admittedly a bit bloody); but my problem was speed in killing. I could fascinate, stun, and paralyze well enough, but then it felt like lumberjacking a redwood with a herring.

Since I solo a lot, I just wasn't patient enough to hang around beating on monsters - and regenerating monsters made it even more tedious. Got too used to monks, I guess.

NOT a bad class, but you have to be ready for that kind of slowdown. Themoment U14 hit, it felt like it slowed down even more - ok TR time.

[fco-karatekid]

...Dancing Spheres getting blown apart by Cyclonic Blast ...

And I have to ask (after having played a character with the sphere now) WHO thought that was either logical OR necessary? Vets - has the ball always been that way? Blowing away firewall or sleet storm makes total sense - but an illusionary disco ball?

[maddmatt70]

The fatesinger destiny is decent and I like inspire excellence, but that still doesn't change the fact that bard PrE's are underdeveloped in comparison to other PrE's and they suffer from limited spell selection / spell restrictions more than they should, which is where a lot of my personal opinions regarding the decline in bard effectiveness over the last few years come from.

There are also a lot of sonic bonuses (edit: in the destiny) but sonic spells really do suck. A 4th level wizard/sorcerer/bard sonic spell (shout) does much less damage than a 4th level cleric/fvs alignment spell, which also has secondary effect, and that same 4th level wizard/sorcerer/bard spell only does half the damage of 3rd level wizard/sorcerer spells let alone higher spells.

Matt, I don't suppose you had a chance to see if master of school could increase healing spells while in magister?

I am a master of enchantment, but think I would have to be master of conjuration to increase my healing spells. Actually everyones doom on healing and bards was misplaced in my opinion and in fact there are some very nice twists for heal bot type characters. In fatesinger, EA, and Unyielding there are some twist possiblities for postivie spells.

On hangover I could go with 3 healing twists and have some pretty powerful healing capabilities if I want but I will probably go for 2 healing and 1 draconic spell penetration twist or something like that. On rabiez I am trying to figure out what to do but I probably will really jack up rabiez healing capabilities and I am checking out melee/sonic damage if that makes any sense at all so could be healing/sonic/melee damage. On my pure melee bard waiting until they show us the enhancements.

[Nitesco]

That's odd. I feel like Bards got a huge boost this update. I like playing mine more than ever now.

Me too. My Bard 16/Fighter 4 Warchanter already qualified for Overwhelming Critical and got a ton of extra songs and boosts to DPS. I'm using an Epic Antique Greataxe at the moment but I might have to look into sonic based weapons now for an even greater DPS boost.

[Anthios888]

You guys really like singing Inspire Excellence with its 30 second cooldown and overlapping cooldown with Inspire Courage? I love +1 damage and everything but my parties just don't move that slowly ...

I skipped it at 21, and the bards I've played with have performed pretty badly because of how they are in the song animation so much and can't use that time to fight or heal.

[Ragnar7]

You guys really like singing Inspire Excellence with its 30 second cooldown and overlapping cooldown with Inspire Courage? I love +1 damage and everything but my parties just don't move that slowly ...

I skipped it at 21, and the bards I've played with have performed pretty badly because of how they are in the song animation so much and can't use that time to fight or heal.

In raids I generally just do strength and constitution. In quests I run with 2 monks a fvs and a fvs/monk quite a bit, so a wisdom song boosts all their dc's nicely. Most groups I play in move very quickly and we usually don't kill trash if its not necessary, but I still find time to get a couple in between fights.

[maddmatt70]

You guys really like singing Inspire Excellence with its 30 second cooldown and overlapping cooldown with Inspire Courage? I love +1 damage and everything but my parties just don't move that slowly ...

I skipped it at 21, and the bards I've played with have performed pretty badly because of how they are in the song animation so much and can't use that time to fight or heal.

Yep this is the way I am leaning myself. Thank you for capturing IE so well. I like it more on my CC/healing bard because of the charisma and being not a front line character so much so buffing on the run is not so big a deal, but I do not think I will take it on my melee bard when I get around to playing her and on rabiez it seems to hurt more then it helps.

[cru121]

I like the versatility of Inspire Excellence. I never sing all songs because of the cooldown; what I sing depends on the party. When I lately joined an e-hard Lords of Dust with 3 palemasters, the first song I sang was the Int song.

[taurean430]

You guys really like singing Inspire Excellence with its 30 second cooldown and overlapping cooldown with Inspire Courage? I love +1 damage and everything but my parties just don't move that slowly ...

I skipped it at 21, and the bards I've played with have performed pretty badly because of how they are in the song animation so much and can't use that time to fight or heal.

No I don't actually. The cooldown is excessive.

I sing it, and manage to keep it going in rotation while grouping, but it is tedious. It takes away many opportunities for me to apply other abilities or be active in some fights. I'd really like to see the 30 second cooldown looked at.

The ability itself I like though. Even in high powered parties where it's benefits are marginal. There have been a number of times now that giving int or charisma allowed an arcane to utilize their spells more effectively. I always make sure to throw str/con though regardless of what others say. So many people don't understand how things stack and say wow and such when they receive an increase.

I can't displace people anymore to save healing sp. I can't heal very well with the choices I've made with this version of Elkabongg. But I sure can make everyone more powerful with every tool at my disposal. This includes scrolls and such as well.

[DeafeningWhisper]

You guys really like singing Inspire Excellence with its 30 second cooldown and overlapping cooldown with Inspire Courage? I love +1 damage and everything but my parties just don't move that slowly ...

I skipped it at 21, and the bards I've played with have performed pretty badly because of how they are in the song animation so much and can't use that time to fight or heal.

I don't like it much, but the party loves it. In between fights I pop one, str/con are always on and maybe int/cha for DCs if asked or wis for DCs/TenK. If anything singing for parties got easier, they no longer continue running when hearing the first few notes, in fact they come running back.


My spell singer bardcher: bard 16 ranger 2 rogue 2, performs really well in a group, full Shiradi Champion with primal scream twisted, bab 17 (thank you epic levels!), trap skills, evasion and with spell singer and IE has powerful buffs for all members of the party.