The Official Bard Enhancements Discussion Thread!

**Hajutze** · 06-30-2013, 04:30 PM

Technically you can make a Halfling and have Heal xD

**BentoBox** · 06-30-2013, 05:06 PM

I also found the skaldic rage was prohibitively short, though all the abilities it comes with are very neat. Perhaps make it a toggle, like a stance? Something needs to be done, though, since with so much cool stuff that can happen based on Skaldic Rage in the tree, you want to be under that rage most of the time.

Gathering cold is interesting:

(At tier 3) Toggle: +3 cold resist. When enemy spells deal you cold damage, .5 chance to get armor of frost.

Armor of frost: +1 stacking cold resist, +1 stacking AC. Can stack up to five times.

However, the idea of adding cold resistance to an ability that triggers cold damage seems a bit weird. If you get high enough cold resist, you won't take enough cold damage to trigger the ability! However, that isn't a huge issue since the bonus you get to cold resistance isn't very significant (just +1 per tier, up to third tier) but if you increase the resistance to make it more useful it will ipso facto make the ability less useful.

The ice damage bonuses on melee when certain things happen is neat.

Why not make the ability proc upon taking any damage, or perhaps on taking melee damage?

And here's some alternative effects that might be better:

* +1dn cold damage guard. Whenever you get hit, add another stacking +dn cold damage to the guard, up to some maximum.

* Your critical hits make the enemy vulnerable to cold damage.

* Immune to cold damage for some number of seconds.

Various thoughts:

Regarding "Words of Encouragement":

Inspire courage grants +10/+20/+30 temporary HP for one minute.

Not very impressive. +30 HP would be better, as otherwise the buff is only useful upon taking the first 30 damage.

(At tier 3) Frozen fury: Make a melee attack with +1.5[W], reflex save or become frozen solid (DC 14 + cha modifier): Interesting. I like that it doesn't appear to interrupt attack animations.

(At tier 3) Frozen fury: Make a melee attack with +1.5[W], reflex save or become frozen solid (DC 14 + cha modifier): Interesting. I like that it doesn't appear to interrupt attack animations.

(At tier 3) High Spirits: Immune to crushing despair, waves of fatigue, waves of exhaustion, sleep, fatigue (including fatigue from rage).

Cool in principle, but why not make it just : immune to fatigue and exhaustion? Perhaps at tier 3 make you immune to neg levels. Would that be too powerful? What about a bonus to saves versus mind affecting stuff?

**Chette** · 06-30-2013, 05:40 PM

Originally Posted by maddmatt70

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.

You're going to have 40 less positive spell power than you currently do. You're also going to have 200 fewer spell points, unless I missed some additional spell point granting abilities somewhere (other than the 3 pts in tier 1 of spellsinger). That's a pretty freaking huge hit to bard healing if you ask me.

Not to mention the fact that you're giving up ALL racial enhancements to do that. Something I certainly don't have to do now on live.

Originally Posted by maddmatt70

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.

The DPS of such a build would be so substantially below that of a full blown melee if you're blowing points in the spellsinger tree. It will also have a damage song that's significantly behind that of a warchanter (since all the damage enhancements are in the warchanter tree) and will have an extremely limited spell point pool to work with for healing. I'm not sure what the purpose of such a character would be if it can't justify it's poor DPS by bringing either a good damage song or significant healing capability.

**Systern** · 06-30-2013, 05:58 PM

Originally Posted by maddmatt70

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.

You're assuming.
I've copied my bard, and created a new one. It doesn't stack.

With the exception of Action boost: Sprint, all speed boosts are enhancement boosts on Lammania. Haste has gone from a 32% movement speed bonus to 30%. If it was untyped, like the Monk and Bard enhancement bonus, that would be awesome, but, it's not. Your striding 30% is the current max consistent movement speed bonus.

I agree, the tier 5s are lackluster. I have a warchanter and the only Tier 5 that is appealing is Armorer, which I think needs a 2nd rank to reduce ASF on non-tower shields. The Overwhelming Critical for Doubled Power Attack Penalty is too punitive for anything other than a min/maxxed str based warchanter. The Weapon Group would be nice, but Bards get so few feats that it is not worth taking Weapon Focus to gain access to it. Rallying Cry in it's iconic form does not complement bards at all. So, the only Tier 5 ability that my warchanter wants is Armorer.

**maddmatt70** · 06-30-2013, 06:35 PM

Originally Posted by Chette

You're going to have 40 less positive spell power than you currently do. You're also going to have 200 fewer spell points, unless I missed some additional spell point granting abilities somewhere (other than the 3 pts in tier 1 of spellsinger). That's a pretty freaking huge hit to bard healing if you ask me.

Not to mention the fact that you're giving up ALL racial enhancements to do that. Something I certainly don't have to do now on live.

It is about how healing is in relation to other classes and whether something is still practicable. The heal spell is a nice bump in heal power so in regards to focused healing I just got a bump now that I can use heal spell and heal scroll combo instead of cure crit wounds and heal scroll. Bards got a nerf with their mass healing, but how does that compare to cleric/fvs?

The DPS of such a build would be so substantially below that of a full blown melee if you're blowing points in the spellsinger tree. It will also have a damage song that's significantly behind that of a warchanter (since all the damage enhancements are in the warchanter tree) and will have an extremely limited spell point pool to work with for healing. I'm not sure what the purpose of such a character would be if it can't justify it's poor DPS by bringing either a good damage song or significant healing capability.

with 6 trees available you can still put a fair amount into warchanter and get the inspire courage bumps. The spellsinger really would only need to get vigor and spend enough points for more positive spell power. You could have say do the following with enhance points 25 in kensai, 20 in warchanter, 35 spellsinger, 5 racial or something like that. There are plenty of spell point supplements in game and heal scrolls as well (not talking about mana pots).

I was examining this system from a multi class perspective and it seems to me having more classes available and spending on the lower cheaper enhancements is a great way to go. Like from a tank perspective a lot of dodge and the like bonuses are lower tiers so I was thinking of definetly making a tank with three classes. Now the same can be said for bards so although I advocated a 16 4 a 16 2 2 might be a lot better. 2 rogue has 3 prestige enhance available as does 2 ranger. I have not broken down the dps yet. I was working on my tank and archer last night.

**Hajutze** · 06-30-2013, 06:48 PM

I find the lack of enhancement of the type "CHA to damage and to-hit for certain weapons" quite disturbing.
- Rogues can add int to damage for X-Bows and thrown. DEX to-hit and damage for staves.
- Monks can add DEX to-hit and damage to slashing weapons they are centered with
- Rangers can add DEX to-hit and damage for light weapons
- Artificers and Druids can add INT/WIS with a spell

Devs: Bards ... meh why bother xD

**Shinjiteru** · 07-01-2013, 04:28 AM

So... Warchanter tree is still not a consistent tree.

You put a melee attack with a save of 14+charisma modificator into warchanter tree, that itself is very strange. Looks more like an enhancement for a battle oriented spellsinger.

I could understand this ability if there would be a possibility to add charisma to atk and dmg for warchanters but even the capstone only gives str and con. So the capstone says you think a warchanter is not cha based, why do you give him a melee attack which is nearly worthless without charisma?

I think the weapon group training should also open up the possibility to use cha for atk/dmg if it's higher than your str modifier for the selected group. Maybe also as a second tier of the enhancements without the 'if higher than str modifier' part, so the people who want to use cha for atk/dmg can get the second tier of this enhancement and the others can save some AP.

I also think that the capstone should give +2-5 dmg for your inspire courage. +1 dmg and +2str/con might be enough for a melee bard, but especially for a melee bard who knows that he is a bard and not a fighter/barbarian the possibility to toss a heal without the need to switch to scrolls while at the front fighting a mob is very strong and still somehow more appealing than the current warchanter capstone I'd say.
The pure melee bards are still better off getting two fighter levels, in kensai tree they can get +2 dmg with their weapon too, so they only miss the +2con and a +1dmg for all other melees. On top of that they get weapon profiencies and probably enough feats to go for overwhelming critical.
For me it seems that also the improved warchanter tree is still not good enough to make a warchanter bard stay pure, unless he wants the spellsinger capstone. :S

And when I see at how some spellsingers think that the heal spell itself isn't very appealing it seems getting the heal spell is more valuable for a warchanter than for a spellsinger.

**Rusty_Can** · 07-01-2013, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by Chette

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.

Lvl 25 human bard, Cha-based but with full TWF line.

I spent 41 AP in the Spellsinger tree, 14 in the human tree (full DM line, 2 tiers of Improved Recovery, +1 CHA), rest in the Warchanter tree in order to get Fighting Spirits and Song of Heroism. Compared to live, I ended up with 250 more spellpoints and same positive spellpower (+20 Heal skill from Gauntlets of Immortality made up for the drop from 60 to 40).

As a side note, my bard currently runs in Draconic Incarnation and Universal Spellpower provided by the Spellsinger tree actually helped.

Originally Posted by Chette

You're going to have 40 less positive spell power than you currently do. You're also going to have 200 fewer spell points, unless I missed some additional spell point granting abilities somewhere (other than the 3 pts in tier 1 of spellsinger). That's a pretty freaking huge hit to bard healing if you ask me.

Advanced Magical Studies, 3-tiered lvl 5 enhancement in the Spellsinger tree, can provide up to 400ish spell points.

**Chette** · 07-01-2013, 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by maddmatt70

with 6 trees available you can still put a fair amount into warchanter and get the inspire courage bumps. The spellsinger really would only need to get vigor and spend enough points for more positive spell power.

Vigor is a top tier ability and the last damage enhancement for warchanters is the very last core class ability. Have you even tried to go and do this? You're going to have a hand time buying up both of those and having points left over for anything good in another tree, never mind more points for positive energy. Garbage damage or garbage healing. Those are your choices.

**Vargouille** · 07-01-2013, 06:30 PM

Thank you to the many who have given and continue to give useful feedback. Thank you!

Originally Posted by khremlajn

So... No changes?

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...d-6-27-2013%29

Bard Warchanter:

Tree has been significantly rearranged
Inspire Recklessness now works as intended
Ironskin Chant now works as intended
Northwind now works as intended
Iced Edges now works as intended
Armorer now has the correct AP cost
Wassail is gone, and now included in the 2nd Core Ability
Poetic Edda is now in Tier 1
Fervor has been removed
Heroes' Feast has been removed
Skaldic Rage now scales based on song duration
Bard Action Boost: Sprint is now an Action Boost rather than a Bard Song
Boast should no longer stack with itself
Bard Gathering Cold now is a stance that, when active, grants a 20/35/50% chance of getting the "Armor of Frost" effect: Armor of Frost: +1 Stacking AC and Cold Resist. Stacks up to 5 times.
The AC bonus on Rough & Ready is now 2/4/6
Rallying Cry (the old one – Tier 2) is now called Words of Encouragement
The “New” Rallying Cry (Tier 5) is an Action Boost: “You and all allies within range of your songs gain +10% movement speed and a +1 Morale bonus to Saving Throws for twenty seconds. This ability can be used while feared, and dispels fear effects.”
Added Bard Frozen Fury: Melee attack with a chance of freezing enemies
Added Enchant Weapons

Bard Spellsinger:

Song of Arcane Might and Spellsong Trance are now working as intended
Flicker now works as intended
Haunting Melody now works as intended

**Systern** · 07-01-2013, 07:01 PM

Is Flicker going to change? Well, I guess, better put, is Invisibility going to change with Fooz's stealth changes?
Blur is 20% concealment.
Displacement is 50% concealment.
Wouldn't it follow if Invisibility was 75+% concealment/miss chance?

Cuz at the moment, being invisible with aggro isn't any different from just having aggro.

**Cetus** · 07-01-2013, 08:22 PM

Originally Posted by Vargouille

Thank you to the many who have given and continue to give useful feedback. Thank you!

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...d-6-27-2013%29

Bard Warchanter:

Tree has been significantly rearranged
Inspire Recklessness now works as intended
Ironskin Chant now works as intended
Northwind now works as intended
Iced Edges now works as intended
Armorer now has the correct AP cost
Wassail is gone, and now included in the 2nd Core Ability
Poetic Edda is now in Tier 1
Fervor has been removed
Heroes' Feast has been removed
Skaldic Rage now scales based on song duration
Bard Action Boost: Sprint is now an Action Boost rather than a Bard Song
Boast should no longer stack with itself
Bard Gathering Cold now is a stance that, when active, grants a 20/35/50% chance of getting the "Armor of Frost" effect: Armor of Frost: +1 Stacking AC and Cold Resist. Stacks up to 5 times.
The AC bonus on Rough & Ready is now 2/4/6
Rallying Cry (the old one – Tier 2) is now called Words of Encouragement
The “New” Rallying Cry (Tier 5) is an Action Boost: “You and all allies within range of your songs gain +10% movement speed and a +1 Morale bonus to Saving Throws for twenty seconds. This ability can be used while feared, and dispels fear effects.”
Added Bard Frozen Fury: Melee attack with a chance of freezing enemies
Added Enchant Weapons

Bard Spellsinger:

Song of Arcane Might and Spellsong Trance are now working as intended
Flicker now works as intended
Haunting Melody now works as intended

Lots of people are worried and concerned about many issues, and you quote the release notes...

Wheres the communication on behalf of the more pressing issues today?

**maddmatt70** · 07-01-2013, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by Chette

Vigor is a top tier ability and the last damage enhancement for warchanters is the very last core class ability. Have you even tried to go and do this? You're going to have a hand time buying up both of those and having points left over for anything good in another tree, never mind more points for positive energy. Garbage damage or garbage healing. Those are your choices.

Such non constructive insights. As was pointed out by another poster you can pick up the awesome spell point enhancement from spellsinger for more spell points and you can wear some sort of heal skill item to make up some of this positive spell power ability that you claim you miss out on. On my warchanter she currently does not have the vigor obviously. Now she is a level 25 human. Human does have some nice things like healing amp for example, but is anything in the human racial enhancement really necessary? Nope. Now there are some lousy stuff in each enhancements that I might be forced to take, but that heal spell and max inspire courage songs sounds great to me and fits my personnel build.

My opinion the top four things that I would change:
1. lengthen the skaldic rage or vastly increase its power.
2. Make sure that rallying cry stacks with haste (it should be actiona boost which does not stack with other movement boosts although). If you need to limit the uses per shrine go ahead. Sorry Vargoille but fear has never been a major concern in ddo and there is remove fear which is a level 1 spell so movement is what this ability is all about.
3. frozen fury is strength or charisma dc based.
4. inspire recklessness stacks with just about everything in game.

**Claver** · 07-02-2013, 07:55 AM

Originally Posted by Vargouille

Bard Warchanter:

Tree has been significantly rearranged

Wassail is gone, and now included in the 2nd Core Ability

Fervor has been removed

I couldn't find Wassail.
Core 0 = Skaldic Rage
Core 1 = Fighting Spirit
Core 2 = Song of Heroism
Core 3 = Fighting Spirit
Core 4 = Victory Song
Core 5 = Warmaster

I loved Wassail. It made me want to play War Chanter more than any of the other enhancements. True, I can always take brutal throw as Feat on my own. There was just a coolness factor to it that made me want to build drunken dwarf singing songs and chucking axes and the occasional empty beer mug.

Please consider incorporating Wassail into the final build.

I also miss Fervor. I was trying to figure out how to build around this for a summoner multiclass bard. It's the fringe enhancements that lead to unusual class combinations that give DDO life. Each class tree should have one or two quirky enhancements to allow creativity to flourish.

**Gratch** · 07-02-2013, 05:01 PM

Originally Posted by Vargouille

Bard Warchanter:
Iced Edges now works as intended

The description says: Gain Buff on crit, but in testing the buff only comes on vorpal. Making the d6 damage a lot less often. Please fix to be on crit and leave description as is.

Howl of the North is WRONG in testing. It's giving +1 crit range instead of +1 crit mult on 19-20 as described. I can see 1 crit range added to the item list sheet and I see the same damage whether I roll 14 (the added range# with ESOS) or 20.

High Spirits tier1 says it ignore Skadic rage fatigue. I believe that's only tier3 that does that. In fact the tier1 description appears to be the same as tier3.

Aside from those bugs. Things I'd like to see.

Move some of the extra tier5 SP from Spellsinger into tier3 Spellsinger so warchanters have a chance to get it.
Put in some sort of CHA-based warchanter melee ability (yes there's a low damage epic rapier in the bumbling shard/scroll/seal/base item epic lametastic upgrade system that gives song bumps and cha damage - but that's no Balizarde).
Can we even get .5 universal spell power per tree point in warchanter? or a positivie/sonic spell point +20 in warchanter. Seems we've gone from selectable 80 positive/sonic to 0 if pure warchanter... though obv you can pickup some universal in spellsinger... but nowhere near 80.
Get rid of "when at low health" abilities *OR* make them much much better.
+30 Temp HP is lame. 30 temp PRR much betterer.
Ironskin chant is based on old old old DDO. Needs to be stacking and PRR instead of DR.

**Shinjiteru** · 07-02-2013, 10:53 PM

@Gratch:Nice Idea with the Ironskin Chant. Giving 5 or 6% stacking DR seems to be a nice song and doesn't seem to break the PRR system.

Now some general ideas:

For the Warchanter capstone... I think we need two capstones here. One with +2str/+2Con and the other one with +2cha/+2con. (I also think the +damage to inspire courage should be increase to +2 or even +3, keep in mind the spellsinger capstone is also very strong for warchanters, tossing heals without switching to heal scrolls when facing a boss is very valuable and the warchanter capstone has to compete with that)
And the warchanter tree also needs an improvement to be able to use charisma for atk/dmg with at least the weapons of weapon group training.
Maybe also change the lvl 18 core ability to give full BAB for these weapons instead of some strange 20 sec song. Or just add this as passive bonus so the core ability is still 'useful' if you don't want to take tier 5 warchanter enhancements.

Frozen Fury changed to use str or cha modifier and I think this would already be a very nice improvement again of the warchanter tree. Because this would offer the possibility to go str or cha based warchanter.

**Moltier** · 07-03-2013, 02:56 AM

Just a few quick idea:
USP isnt really usefull for a bard, make it sonic+positive SP, but 1.5/ap.
Or even better: 1/ap spent for these, but for both SS and warchanter.

Plus, let greater shout scale to higher levels.

**Shmuel** · 07-03-2013, 10:07 AM

Bards are already one of the weakest classes in the game (if not THE weakest), and are getting nerfed harder than nearly any other class with this enhancement pass. It does threaten to make the very few remaining bards playing this game entirely irrelevant. I sincerely hope there are MAJOR changes and improvements to both bard trees before this goes live.

Some examples (mainly after testing my level 25 bard on live and lam):

With new enhancements i have:
less positive spellpower, even with +20 heal item.

less spell penetration, which used to be a core class enhancement and now is at the top of a long tree that offers very little of any actual benefit. This is critical because on ee the only effective bard cc spell is irresistible dance, and spell penetration is critical for this spell.

no spellpoint regen on singing to party members

less spellpoints

no spell crit for positive healing

less damage boost from my inspire courage

What I am getting, a few more songs, none of which is particularly useful, and maybe a useless wail spell and useful heal spell, dont even come close to making up for it.

Please rework the bard trees entirely. you are taking a class which really needs some major buffing to bring it up to par with other classes and giving it major nerf instead.

Following form the last change to affect bards, the nerf of inspire excellence, it really is starting to see like you want to just eliminate this class entirely.

**Rusty_Can** · 07-03-2013, 11:04 AM