The Official Bard Enhancements Discussion Thread!

[Aashrym]

But back to the point:
If I remember right and each skill point gives 1 spellpower...
We will end up having better heal power. I assume that ss bard invest 40 AP in ss tree...

It's the relative change where we see the impact. +1.5 positive in healing tree and +1 universal in protection tree and full heal skill ranks in a wis based skill versus +1 universal spell power in spell singer, no spell power in war chanter, and cross classing heal skill is the same proxy nerfing effect we've been seeing for years.

A healer style cleric who previously had +80 positive spell power is easily over +120 now while healing bards are pushing 90ish.

Giving a bonus to bards and then giving a bigger bonus to other classes continues to give bards less relative effectiveness.

Bards don't need less spell power than other classes. They are already restricted in the spell lists and by smaller SP pools. Additional class based spell power adjustments just compound the game mechanics against them.

Giving bards a big bonus to sonic spell power doesn't do them any good until sonic spell power applies to something where the damage is realistic to other spells. What they need is spell power that works towards the spells they are most frequently using and that would be healing, of which there are 7 spells on the bard list as opposed to 4 sonic spells.

If I really wanted a jack-of-all-trades character it would be a wizard 18 / rogue 2 using a staff for melee (and acrobat) and scroll healing the party. That covers traps skills, spell casting, healing, some melee options, and stronger spell casting options.

If I'm making a bard it's for buffs and healing, and sometimes CC.

The devs need to take step back and look at why they are restricting bards so much and seem to be missing the benefits they are stacking on to other classes.

[californiapiper]

Just please bring Virtuosos back and have some additional song enhancements

[Cacyreia]

@ Aashrym- I basically agree with all your points. I am satisfied with what I see in the enhancements and they will be further calibrated, so I am hopefull. But you make a very good point for years the bard class has been looked down for both players and devs!

Allow me to explain:
Although many people like to play this game solo, it is in it 's essence a cooperation game. This means that all classes should have something to make them attractive and usefull to the party. The bard does have that, but people only notice in raids.

When I started played as bard (4 years ago) having people accepting me in their groups was really hard, and I am referring to the situations I know very well that the bard would fit in the group just right. Instead people would just fill it with something else. The reason "bards are pikers, bards cant heal, etc"

In my own guild one of the best players and builders said this sad thing: "Bard is a piker class"
This opinion that bard isnt to be taken serious really ****es me off. It has every right to have as much attention and dedication has any other.

I remember when guild vendors came out. I went there to buy bard spell components AND they werent there anywhere. Even the developers...

Fatesinger was one of the epic destinies with more changes

Happened to see a character with an interesting biography- it was going for completionist and it had a description with the amount of time taken to level on each live. Bard was the longer one.

Did a few statistics with data from ddoracle.com and bards are the least free played class, only surpassed by
druid. this is quite ilustrative.
classes stratification considering number of active characters from most to least played:

Fighter=Cleric=Wizard=Rogue > Sorcerer=Monk > Barbarian=Paladin=Ranger=Artificer > Favoured Soul >
Bard > Druid


All this put together shows why bard need a brush up. Personally, as a bard enthusiast I was looking at the new enhancement system as an opportunity to end this "classism". And I think that Aashrym was trying to express this feeling in the earlier comment too. It would be a shame if again bard would be "left aside".

@ trixi
bard has 6+ int skills, a 36 build would go for cha 20 con 16, so no bonus int, we got 6. how would we spend them?

balance- almost mandatory for every class
concentration- mandatory, bards have a VERY SLOW casting
perform- mandatory
use magic device- mandatory

2 left
haggle, always nice to get more plat. jump cause bards dont have the spell. now some social skills either diplomacy or bluff, maybe both.

Wait by now its already 8 skills- assuming you have a +4 int tome, you could take them all without having to choose, with different investements, but all.

Adding another mandatory skill for bard as the way to mantain its healing power seems to me a bit punitive. there should be another way to do it.

By the way trixi you evoke epic destinies on your "calculations", leave them aside we are discussing level 1 to 20 enhancements!


@ devs anxious to see your refinement of bard enhancements. A shame only a few players seem interested in contibuting to this discussion, but I think we have expressed our concernings and made explicit our critics. Take some time to consider

[~trixi]

Oh dear... Such an accusation...

I am first one to say that bards deserve some love. I cant imagine the situation when bards become overpowered and everyone starts to play them...

As for skills: My ccer(with recent updates is more healer actually...) needs only con and cha. As human you can pick 4 starting int more...
Though it appears that drow is a must for enchantmend dc casting.
So, 6 skills +1(from int tome).
Atm i got ballance,bluff,concetration,diplo,jump,perform,umd . I wont cry for loosing bluff and jump.

You are looking at the lack of skills... My main concern as bard is a lack of feats. It appear to me that most versatile class should have some extra. Im never able to fit in empower metas or spell pen.

Such changes would not make bard the ultimate solo builds. They will just make better addition to parties. Who people wants more: bard with his song or arti with deadly and dps?
Bards buffs should be powerful enough to make them superior choice in parties.

As for fatesinger... It doesnt offer my bard anything(well... with charisma line as exception). Caster lvl bonuses always broken(i send bug reports... hard to say if anyone notice them). Actually... I can play any destiny with charisma line and put nice stuff in twists... As a matter of fact I do so and it change nothing. But this is another thing with destinies... Like with rog and shadowdancer... most choose fury or something else.

@Cacyreia
I wont part with epic stuff in here, nor i believe that i should... I play end game.
Those to atm are designed to work together. If you look at one, you must keep in mind the other. Imagine playing bard that is osum on heroic, and then u take epic lvls and nothing stacks...

So few people contribute to this threat, specially because of forum migration.

Lets spam devs with ideas to change situation of this class. The more we show, the better. Point enhancements that are useless... But dont stop in here. Suggest what to change, give totally new ideas.

If we wont contribute, devs wont contribute too and put their efforts on the more wanted classes.

[Himura]

Honestly, I would just like to see a purpose for resonance. Who seriously cares about increasing your sonic spell damage when the strongest sonic spell is greater shout lol. Not only is the damage pathetic, but it's based on a fortitude save. have fun ever trying to land that on epic monsters. I think by adding more useful sonic spells you could really see an improvement spell singers ability to help a party. I feel like the sonic spells are just.. there, taking up space. If you keep emphasizing increased sonic spell power, how about you actually make it applicable to something? I'm going to go ahead and assume not a single darn person who has played a bard would miss that sonic spell power if it were to just vanish. Why even make them!?

I would also like to say that the combination of spell singer and virtuoso was somewhat of a odd choice. Virtuoso's were more combat savy individuals. Wouldn't make more sense to have combined virtuoso with war chanter? A warrior who can perform a sustaining song sounds a lot more like it. As a virtuoso bard I never had a reason to max out my charisma, seeing my perform skill alone made my songs quite effective for CC. This leads me back to my previous point! Useful sonic spells PLEASE! Bards should be more than just some raid tool for increasing the DPS on the meat-heads.

[btolson]

Now that I can finally log in and post again, I'll offer some thoughts I jotted down a couple weeks ago.


General

Song Duration: on live, you can get +80% song duration, not including PrE-specific bonuses. On alpha, this maxes out at +60%, which makes playing bards 20% more tedious than ever. This should have increased to +100% to make bards more enjoyable, not decreased to +60%.


Warchanter

Inspire Courage: On live, you can get +3 damage to your song at bard level 12. In alpha, this requires bard 20. This renders all multiclassed warchanters redundant compared to EE Dream Visor. Suggestion: replace the Inspire Courage bonuses in the Core Abilities line with personal +damage bonuses, and put the song damage bonuses up in the tree somewhere. Alternatively, make all 6 Core Abilities grant a damage bonus to Inspire Courage, which will make the song better able to eclipse EE Dream Visor.

Skaldic Rage: Please let this last longer than 60 seconds. Managing bard buffs is tedious enough as is, we don't need any more really short ones. It would be great if it could optionally function as a personal-only rider to the Rage spell (for those who have it), with equal duration.

Song of Heroism: Without fear immunity, this is nothing but a waste of AP, and a song, which are now scarcer than ever due to Skaldic Rage and shorter song durations.

Victory Song: Duration is way too short. This will be hard enough to keep going during a fight, and is practically guaranteed to be lost between fights.

Warmaster: I touched on the Inspire Courage part above, so will ignore that here. A 12-second buff that requires song animation is not remotely appealing; aside from being extremely annoying to manage, using it mid-fight would certainly be a DPS loss due to song animation.

Boast: This benefit is not strong enough for how quickly it will generally be lost, especially since it costs a song use.

Ironskin Chant: This is too easily overwritten by gear. It needs better scaling, even if that scaling is character-level-based and extends into epic levels. If necessary, break this apart into a couple separate effects: a relatively weak (but still stronger than now) dr /-, plus a stronger dr /lawful (because bards are anti-lawful).

Inspire Recklessness: Another buff too easily overwritten by gear. Suggest adding 1/2/3% untyped bonus to doublestrike on top of its current functionality.

The Boast/Ironskin Chant/Inspire Recklessness chain: Even if they gated something that was unconditionally good, this lengthy chain is unwarranted. Break these dependencies: they make no sense together as they are not thematically related and just waste AP as required filler.

Gathering Cold: This is a fairly bizarre set up. A lot of things that deal cold damage are either immune to or healed by cold damage. It would be nice if this enhancement was more useful all by itself, without relying on Iced Edges. For instance, if the Cold Breath buff just randomly appeared on you every 1d30 seconds while in the stance. Also, the 3 second buff is a bit too short: given the relatively long time between auto-attacks, you would often expect about 25% of it be clipped off (i.e., you make an attack while the buff has ~0.7 seconds remaining, and it barely expires before you can time your next one).

Northwind: Too expensive. This offers an average of 0.55 damage per hit for 2 AP. Weapon specialization enhancements offer 1 or 2 average damage per hit for 2 AP (more when you factor in the average crit multiplier). They also do not suffer reduction from elemental resistance/immunity on enemies, or the unreliability stemming from requisite rolling of a 20. This enhancement needs to be at least doubled in power, or halved in cost, to be of comparable strength.

Weapon Training: Really disappointed to see the feat requirement here, especially since the feat itself is a very weak option on a class with not a lot of feats. This is one of many reasons that warchanter is still basically begging to multiclassed with e.g. Fighter 4.

Horn of Thunder: Not at all impressed with this. Total damage for a typical warchanter is not much stronger than a cleave, yet it hits far fewer things than cleave, has a long cooldown and consumes a song. If it were not a pre-req for Howl of the North, I don't think any warchanter would bother with this.

Howl of the North: Not sure why the -5 attack penalty is needed, considering Frenzied Berserkers get double the bonus for 0 penalty, but attack penalties don't mean much these days so it doesn't really matter. Also don't see why the stance needs a 30 second cooldown, and why that cooldown must be shared with Gathering Cold. Super annoying.

One thing I really wanted to see here: An ability to sing songs without animation. Call it "Acapella" or "Inspiring Voice" or something else that gets across the idea of not requiring an instrument to rouse spirits. The ability to play songs without interrupting my attack chain would be awesome. Put it in tier 5.

Another thing I wanted to see was an increase to the duration of warchanter songs to match that of Inspire Courage. Bards are probably the most annoying class in the game to play due to the way songs work.

Overall this tree is disappointing. It suffers all the same issues bards suffer today on live with regard to buff-stacking and tedium (and exacerbates this to a degree), and doesn't do a lot to reliably augment the bard's personal dps in an environment where most melee damage will be going up.


Spellsinger

Spell Penetration: too many junky pre-reqs.

[Systern]

I've been playing since Lamma opened this morning, and here's some observations...


Warchanter

Rallying Cry might be cool for the PDK Iconic, but it utterly useless for a Bard. +15% Movement to a class known for chain casting haste (btw, It's movement benefit dropped from 32% to 30% per the effects channel? there's no difference between wearing striding 30 and hasted now). +1 Morale bonus to saving throws is utterly useless since Bards get Song of Heroism as a core ability, greater heroism, and inspire courage/greatness/all the other songs that will never stack or even have little overlap.

Inspire Recklessness says it's giving 5% morale bonus to doublestrike, while the enhancement says it should be giving 6%.

Skaldic rage is too **** short. Rage lasts for 3:30 at level 20/25, Skaldic Rage still only 1:36 (on a Pure bard that took all the song duration enhancements in spell singer). Remember this isn't the only buff that you have to maintain.

Boast: It doesn't scale well at all. Step into eGH wilderness and you've lost the 30 HP by the time you're done laughing.

Greater Heroism, Inspire Heroics, Song of Heroism.... Hunh? Which does which again? I can't tell the names apart. Greater Heroism is the spell which will last 25 minutes at cap. Song of Heroism is a 4.5ish minute Mass greater Heroism. Inspire Heroics gives 4% dodge and duplicates GH's saves but doesn't give HP... Confusing names, overlapping abilities.

Inspired Bravery: +3 to hit, and an effect that will be quickly trumped. (Morale bonus to saves vs fear.)

Iced Edges / Skaldic Rage / Gathering Cold / Northwind / Howl of the North : There were vikings on Xendrik?

Ironskin Chant : Enhancement says 6/-, Effects channel says 5/-. Char sheet confirms 6/-.

Armorer: Could you add ASF Immunity to non-tower shields as well?

Weapon Group Training : Weapon Focus is the weakest feat-tax ever. +1 to hit is not worth a feat. Either the feat needs a serious bump in effectiveness, or the requirement needs to go away.

Obstinance : <80% < 60% < 40% mechanic on a d6 hitpoint class that normally only wears light armor and no shield is extremely painful and niche. The higher ranks will almost never be meaningful to the players.

Northwind: In this very narrow window of time, 4.7% of your hits do an extra 2d8 cold damage. Whoopie. :|

Howl of the North Wind: Since you paid the feat tax of Weapon Focus for the group training, and have no hope of fitting in overwhelming critical, here's Overwhelming Critical for the Power Attack penalty once again to hit. Hope you took Victory Song (and have 18 levels of Bard) because you're gunna need it.

Victory Song: 20 seconds is way too short. Inspire Courage's animation takes over 5 seconds. On Vorpal to extend it is also extremely marginal... Perhaps on Crit? Since a warchanter is a melee focused bard, is it really too powerfull if the Full-BAB lasts the duration of Inspire Courage?

Warmaster: 5 second animation. 12 second effect duration. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too short. By the time you've finished reading this sentence, the effect is over. The duration needs to be AT LEAST a minute for it to ever be feasible to use. Remember this isn't the only buff that you have to maintain. The capstone adds the final bit of damage to what a current warchanter can do with 15 levels of bard (+8 damage from Inspire Courage)? That's kinda blah.




Spellsinger

Spell Pen is dependant on Reviving Verve which is dependant on Flicker? Ummmmmm... Why? These three abilities don't even share a theme to their effect.

Magical Studies: 3 AP for 20 SP and the feat that should be autogranted into the class to begin with...

Wand Heightening : Hasn't the feedback been that this requirement is universally despised? That offensive wands, in their present form, do not fit into the present state of DDO?

Inspired Flicker : Uninspired name. Silly Effect... Maybe the stealth changes will make this more worthwhile.

Sharp Note: Do you know how hard it is to train the average player to resist the urge to Cleave in the middle of a pack of fascinated mobs? Thanks for making that temptation that much harder...

Reviving Verse: +1 saves vs "Energy Drain"? They have saves? Piloto/Varg said no, the spell isn't getting a save... just +1 save vs all 'energy drain spells'... Those don't have saves either...

Raucous Refrain: When you inspire courage, ally's effects channels gain the text "you have multiple effects that do not stack: Morale bonus to..."

Spell song / Arcane Might / Spell song Vigor: Maybe my warchanter would be better giving up medium armor and getting ManaCrack...

Advanced Magical Studies: Here in Tier 5 are the SP we didn't give you for the Tier 1 AP you spent...

Frolic: When you sing the song of freedom on an ally, they gain the spell you already cast on them with much shorter duration.




Skill Taxes

Bards get 6 skill points per class level. Well, they get 5 really because Perform is a mandatory tax to get the class abilities. Adding 2 more Tax Skills: Spellcraft and Heal cuts them down to 3 skill points per level. Also factor in that the feat-starved Bard are already MAD (Multiple Attribute Dependant), and none of those multiple attributes that are needed are Intelligence or Wisdom. They're generally dump-stats for bards. Basing a bard's spell power off these skills is punishing an already weak class.


Overall
Overall, the play style has become a lot more clicky intensive. Currently my Bard's kind of a Buff-N-Go kind of character, with options and versatility. The durations are so short that you're constantly refreshing all the songs and at 5 seconds+ per animation it's really not that fun to play. Waiting to be able to retaliate or defend yourself while you're getting the snot beat out of you isn't very fun. While fully buffed the character performs a bit better, but that window of time that you are fully buffed doesn't even last throughout an encounter. My Bard's damage still isn't stellar by any means, even with the stances that only add negligible damage 4.7% of the time. The Spellcraft/Heal/USP-in-the-other-tree mechanic means that my healing abilities are noticeably hampered. Please remember that for each song you want the player to play, there needs to be 7 seconds per, on the duration of all other songs as that's the smallest resonable amount of time it takes to perform the song and be able to take another action.

p.s. sorry if the above seems snarky, just trying to make the critique a little playful and witty...

[Chette]

Playing around with bard enhancements on Lamannia right now and I'm still not particularly impressed.

Bards just don't lend themselves well to the way you've designed the new enhancements, with the separating out of different abilities into different trees each requiring a significant number of points spent in that tree. Bards have always been my favourite class because of their versatility. My bard isn't the best at any one thing, but she does many things well. I currently play a pure melee TWF spellsinger bard on live which is capable of healing epic elite parties, or DPSing with the barbarians if we've got more dedicated healing. The way you've set up bard enhancements in the new format you're killing the versatile bard. You can now be a melee bard that only casts haste and otherwise needn't even carry components, or you can be a casting bard that will end up healing most of the time anyway because DC casting is worthless at end game right now and they have no decent damage spells.

There is an easy way to solve this. Very easy. Make enhancement pre-requisites based on TOTAL points spent, not based on points spent in that tree. Allow people to decide what their characters should specialize in, instead of you telling them what it should be (and forcing them to pick up junk they don't want along the way).

Anyway, that's my main gripe with bards. The enhancements may work well for other classes which are generally specialized in one way or another, but they don't work well for the "jack of all trades" bard class. Here are my more specific issues with these enhancements.

1. Positive spell power only based on points spent in spellsinger tree. Make this points spent in any bard tree. Also get rid of the stupid heal = positive spell power. Roll all spell power into a single skill: concentration. Something not based on int please...

2. Inspire recklessness is still a morale bonus to doublestrike. Please take this opportunity to change it to something that actually stacks with items, and so is an actual buff, instead of just a fortification debuff.

3. The enhancement providing temporary hitpoints (words of encouragement), and especially the enhancements based on keeping those temporary HP (boast), are worthless when you look at incoming damage at end game. That's a single glancing blow.

4. Scaldic rage is too short. Make it the same length as reign, right now it's about 30% the length.

5. Why is wand heightening a pre-requisite for wand/scroll mastery? People do not cast DC spells from wands. This enhancement has no place in any enhancement list, never mind as a pre-requisite for an essential enhancement. I was of the understanding this was being removed.

6. Rallying cry seems pretty pointless, why is it a tier 5 ability? Movement speed and morale bonuses to saves are things everybody already has from haste and GH, which provide other benefits as well.

7. Weapon training and armorer as tier 5 abilities? These are convenience abilities at best, why are these at the top of the tree?

8. Action boost: spring. I like it. Whoever put that in, good job.

9. Only +3 damage enhancements, for spending 40+ points in the warchanter tree? Bard songs are so watered down at this point, you should take this opportunity to improve them by adding more damage enhancements. Also, make these available to spellsingers and virtuosos! Already nobody wants casting bards in their parties because CC is worthless at endgame, they can't heal as well as divines, and they have no good damage spells. At least let them provide good songs if you're not actually going to make them good.

10. Obstinance. No. No enhancements based on having low health. Don't encourage people to let their health drop, that's just teaching people to play poorly.

11. Raucaus Refrain: Doesn't stack with GH. Worthless.

Still playing around with the new abilities like gathering cold and frozen fury. Will respond again after more time spent testing.

[Elishia]

To those saying bards aren't and can't be healers you are wrong. If you weren't warchanter and melee'ing on boss fights you didn't have anything else to do but to help the healers heal a lot of times using scrolls to do this. My first life on my bard over 3 years ago I healed epics. I ran with a group who at times wouldn't even bother waiting the long time to find healer and would just have me heal, with spells and scrolls along with my fascinating/other cc abilities.

Bards are feat starved bad, it's very hard to take all the needed feats as we do not get class feats to help bring in those metas or things like spell pen or spell focus which is all needed for a bard. Feel free giving up toughness for those other feats only to be denied a group because now everyone can see your low hp it doesn't matter what your playstyle is.

Wail of the banshee really? As a spellsinger this goes completely against my playstyle, I run in fascinate/play whatever other song might be used and then I stand back casting spells or again whatever else is needed to help heal or cc mobs, I do not want to have to run and stand in the middle of a group of mobs praying they don't kill me before wail of the banshee finishes going off. Give us something useful please like wall of sound or mass hold masters that goes with spellsinger.

Heal skill: Every Bard uses some kind of positive energy whether on themselves or others in the group. If you don't wanna add positive energy to perform as well at least make heal a bard skill. It'll go no where only earning .5 points and starting at a negative due to bards not needing wisdom for something else. Add positive energy to perform like sonic or make heal a bard skill in the least please.

Flicker as stated to me is useless. When in combat there's no point going invisible the mobs will still know you're there, not to mention it's only a 5% chance so even if it would make the mobs leave you alone temporarily it's still useless. I don't want to be forced to take this enhancement in order to take the additional spell pen for myself and others which is very useful for me.

I like the merging of virtuoso and spellsinger it adds a little more to spellsinger, as well as making it all only require 1 song vs 3 different songs.

Devs please look into the things listed in this post and reply.

[HatsuharuZ]

I think that bards, especially in the warchanter tree, have way to many short-term buffs. How about some passive defensive abilities, like bonuses to AC and Dodge?

[khremlajn]

So... No changes?

Want feedback? Shall I give u a link to previous one or you can just go back few pages?

I wonder if anyone red it... It appears that's the issue with other classes too.

[Delacroix21]

Man was the ball drop again on the bard trees, mainly the war chanter tree. Trying to calm my nerves and play testing this trash is very difficult.


Here are some main issues:
1. Abilities added are weak with poor scaling. How is just 1d6 cold damage ever hoping to. Matter at level 10, let alone level 28.
2. Requiring a for pal strike every. 20 seconds to keep BAB at level is not fun, its annoying. Make the song have a set duration that scales with perform skill. Make vorpal hits provide a sonic thunderclap effect, that scales with spell power.
3. Songs granting morale bonus to doublestrike means this double strike won't stack with everyone else's item, meaning its JUNK.
4. Iron skin chant, 3 tiers for a whimpy 6 dr. Devs since you make DR get counted BEFORE PRR it makes DR dang near worthless, let alone a lousy 6 (btw where is the long term scaling of this ability?)
5. Enhancements that provide temporary health, and a effect that lasts as long as the temp health last are STUPID! At higher levels that temporary health will be gone in one swing so you can forget about any of the bonuses these provide.



I will make a more detailed review later but in the meantime i charge you Devs with this simple test:
Go make a level 20 bard with all of these war chanter enhancements, and play any giant hold quest on normal, heck casual even. Then you will see just how weak and crappy they are. What an embarrassment!

[Chette]

4. Iron skin chant, 3 tiers for a whimpy 6 dr. Devs since you make DR get counted BEFORE PRR it makes DR dang near worthless, let alone a lousy 6 (btw where is the long term scaling of this ability?)

Very good point that I missed entirely. Make this a stacking amount of PRR, like 10 or something.
Bard songs haven't scaled with the ridiculous power creep over the past year and it's mind boggling. The new enhancement changes are the perfect opportunity to change this and make bards matter again. Otherwise they'll be a waste of a party slot from now on. Maybe an 8 level splash for haste/displace and a mediocre song.

[FlaviusMaximus]

The Skaldic Rage ability is great. While the duration has been improved, clocking in at 1:36 with the +60% duration from Spellsinger is still going to make it a drain on the song total, and having to refresh a buff that frequently isn't optimal. Those are only minor complaints about a good ability, however.

I'm very happy with the addition of Frozen Fury, but I think it needs to be reworked a little. My Spell Singer can muster a 58 charisma, which is a +24 bonus. Yugo pots, a +5 tome instead of +4, a charisma instead of spell pen stance in spellsinger, and being a drow instead of human could raise it into the low 60s, but I don't think it would be enough to make Frozen Fury effective.
Third tier of Frozen Fury is 14 + charisma mod (24 in this case), for a total of a 38 dex save. Now I'm not super familiar with enemy dex saves, and I know they are generally the lowest of the 3 save types, but I can't imagine the ability working often enough to be attempted. I understand the six second cooldown helps offset the low success rate, but even with the short cooldown it may be too difficult to land in serious endgame content. Again, I would need to test it to really know, but eyeballing it makes me think that it might be a better ability if it had a higher save. This could be balanced out with a longer cooldown.

The requirements of needing to be hit with a cold spell and then rolling a vorpal are too much to make Iced Edges useful. With proc damage mattering less and less with the addition of epic destinies, since the destinies really affect weapon damage, the 1d6 would be decent but not overwhelming if it was just handed out without any special things needing to happen.

I can see that some work has gone into improving Warchanter, and that work is much appreciated. I still don't think I would personally roll one if it didn't have something toward the top tiers that really benefited the group in a major way. The doublestrike bonus, as many have stated, needs to stack. The -10% fort debuff should just go. Bard abilities, especially Warchanter abilities, aren't game breaking enough to require a big downside.

Something on the Warchanter 5th tier that benefits the parties DPS would be nice. The lvl 20 core ability is a nice thing to take advantage of while running from battle to battle, if it benefits from an Elyd Edge, but almost no Warchanters are pure bards, so it becomes all the more important for a Bard to have something strong for the whole party on Tier 5. The movement speed buff is great. It should really come with something like a group haste action boost instead of a saves boost, though. Being able to pass out 20 seconds of everyone moving and attacking fast would definitely make Warchanter bards something worth rolling.

The last thing is that bards need heal as a class skill. I think that has been pretty thoroughly mentioned in this thread. Just want to sign on with the suggestion.

[maddmatt70]

Hmm so still only 130 on skaldic rage - that needs to either get a big power bump for 1:30 or to at least 3 minish in length at its current power level. I think rallying cry is pretty great if it stacks with haste although it is pretty clicky intensive. I like the concept of frozen fury, but wish it was strength or charisma whatever is higher. Most warchanters will be strength based. As others have pointed out inspire recklessness does not make sense in the current game. I like that it is a morale bonus, but think you should change all the items that grant doublestrike to a different bonus. Why would an item give a morale bonus - that stinks of a placeholder?

[maddmatt70]

6. Rallying cry seems pretty pointless, why is it a tier 5 ability? Movement speed and morale bonuses to saves are things everybody already has from haste and GH, which provide other benefits as well.

I disagree with every single poster on this assuming this stacks with haste if it does not stack with haste then I concur. 30% movement speed boost to everyone in a party for 20 seconds with a 30 second cooldown is very powerful both situationally and as a general rule to be used over and over again. This for me this is the only real reason to be a warchanter is to get this ability at tier 5. This leads to quicker quest completion times, is great for stealth based groups, is going to reduce the damage the party takes, leads to tactical advantages, can help a party survive if they are in trouble, etc.

[Chette]

I disagree with every single poster on this assuming this stacks with haste if it does not stack with haste then I concur. 30% movement speed boost to everyone in a party for 20 seconds with a 30 second cooldown is very powerful both situationally and as a general rule to be used over and over again. This for me this is the only real reason to be a warchanter is to get this ability at tier 5. This leads to quicker quest completion times, is great for stealth based groups, is going to reduce the damage the party takes, leads to tactical advantages, can help a party survive if they are in trouble, etc.

It doesn't stack with haste. Like many of the useless abilities in the bard enhancement tree, it doesn't stack with a basic spell that every bard can already cast.

[Chette]

I currently play a melee spellsinger. I have given up a small amount of personal and party DPS in order to be a moderately useful healer, as well as providing DC and spell point benefits to caster classes. This set up will no longer be viable. In fact, none of the "hybrid" builds (combining both weapon damage and spell casting ability) will be viable anymore, because of the separation of the enhancements for these two styles into different trees and the requirements based on points spent per tree instead of points spent per class, or points spent total. This enhancement system destroys versatile hybrid builds, which hurts bards particularly hard.

Anyway, I wanted to provide a comparison of my healing ability on Lama compared to currently on live. I picked up abilities from the spellsinger tree up to the spellsong trance, but no further, as there was nothing else in that tree useful for me. I would need to spend an additional 10-20 points in virtuoso or DC based casting abilities in order to pick up song of arcane might or spellsong vigor (which is less useful these days since it overwrites vile blasphemy if you have that ticking). I did not pick up any of the "core" abilities in the spellsinger tree other than the first one, because these aren't spellsinger abilities, they're virtuoso abilities, and of no use to the melee healer bard variant. I picked up the necessary abilities in the warchanter tree to get the +3 damage enhancements which I currently have on live. Denying caster bards these damage enhancements is a huge hit to an already unloved class variant.

After getting back the abilities that I currently have on live and picking up a few other odds and ends that fit the melee-healer hybrid I found myself with 200 fewer spell points than I currently have almost 70 fewer positive spellpower, thanks to no spellpower in the warchanter tree. I could get back about 15 from the heal skill (more if they make it a class skill) except that I don't really have any spare skill points. I'll find them somewhere I suppose. My crit chance and crit multiplier are also way down, because these are tied to the core abilities in spellsinger/virtuoso, but all of the core abilities except the first and last are virtuoso abilities.

So it seems you can heal, or you can melee, but you can no longer do both, and hence the usefullness of bards at end game has been thoroughly killed.

[maddmatt70]

It doesn't stack with haste. Like many of the useless abilities in the bard enhancement tree, it doesn't stack with a basic spell that every bard can already cast.

bug report that. My guess is the devs intend that it does stack with haste otherwise the ability is nonsensical unless they are nerfing the haste spell of course which would not surprise me.

[maddmatt70]

I currently play a melee spellsinger. I have given up a small amount of personal and party DPS in order to be a moderately useful healer, as well as providing DC and spell point benefits to caster classes. This set up will no longer be viable. In fact, none of the "hybrid" builds (combining both weapon damage and spell casting ability) will be viable anymore, because of the separation of the enhancements for these two styles into different trees and the requirements based on points spent per tree instead of points spent per class, or points spent total. This enhancement system destroys versatile hybrid builds, which hurts bards particularly hard.

Anyway, I wanted to provide a comparison of my healing ability on Lama compared to currently on live. I picked up abilities from the spellsinger tree up to the spellsong trance, but no further, as there was nothing else in that tree useful for me. I would need to spend an additional 10-20 points in virtuoso or DC based casting abilities in order to pick up song of arcane might or spellsong vigor (which is less useful these days since it overwrites vile blasphemy if you have that ticking). I did not pick up any of the "core" abilities in the spellsinger tree other than the first one, because these aren't spellsinger abilities, they're virtuoso abilities, and of no use to the melee healer bard variant. I picked up the necessary abilities in the warchanter tree to get the +3 damage enhancements which I currently have on live. Denying caster bards these damage enhancements is a huge hit to an already unloved class variant.

After getting back the abilities that I currently have on live and picking up a few other odds and ends that fit the melee-healer hybrid I found myself with 200 fewer spell points than I currently have almost 70 fewer positive spellpower, thanks to no spellpower in the warchanter tree. I could get back about 15 from the heal skill (more if they make it a class skill) except that I don't really have any spare skill points. I'll find them somewhere I suppose. My crit chance and crit multiplier are also way down, because these are tied to the core abilities in spellsinger/virtuoso, but all of the core abilities except the first and last are virtuoso abilities.

So it seems you can heal, or you can melee, but you can no longer do both, and hence the usefullness of bards at end game has been thoroughly killed.

I would analyze whether clerics and FVS got similar nerfs regarding positive spell power - that really is the question is how does bard healing compare to FVS/Cleric healing.

Well I was thinking for my healing/melee level 20 bard warchanter that I would actually spend all my enhancement points in the warchanter and spellsinger tree and none in racial tree thus I could get both level 20 capstones (I think you can spend 40 pts in warchanter and 40 pts in spellsinger and get both level 20 core abilities ( not sure what they cost though). Not sure why that character could not heal unless you are saying that bard healing general is killed do to positive spell power loss.

A player could make a 16 bard 4 fighter or 4 ranger or 4 rogue and still be a decent melee and be a spellsinger - you would not get the heal spell, but the heal spell has always been overrated.