Spellsinger and Warchanter - Build Concepts and Goals

[Dawnsblood]

We're sensitive to the fact that some players may have characters they don't want to change. That doesn't mean that adding new areas of expertise to existing trees should never happen. "It's always been this way!" is a valid argument because we don't like to force change upon existing characters, but it doesn't automatically trump all other concerns. It's also not compelling to us to maintain previous expectations of what all trees or abilities do; if that were true we wouldn't even be considering changes to Gathering Cold, or the Flicker abilities, etc. Part of what this thread is about is asking these high level questions, and we're obviously seeing a variety of answers between different players.

It's also the case that Spellsinger simply has an exceptionally large amount of the Bard's "ability pie" right now. For it to be the primary healing and DC/CC and offensive DPS casting tree asks for it to be somewhat on par with Divine Disciple + Radiant Servant combined. On the other hand, Warchanter's traditional primary focus (melee) partially overlaps with Swashbuckler, and we'd like to find other significant elements to introduce to Warchanter.

Put another way, it's not clear that Spellsingers should be top notch Healers, DC Casters, and DPS casters, all at the same time, yet we feel each of these elements needs stronger options.

Yes, we are trying to listen to the feedback in this thread, that's true. At the time of that post quite a few more individuals favored Healing in Warchanter rather than Healing in Spellsinger based on the feedback in this thread. I explicitly mentioned this so other players who haven't spoken up might notice and chime in.

The main reason existing Bard-Healers are Spellsingers is because the support for healing is already in that tree. That's not a great reason for it to remain that way in the future. This is a distinct argument from the idea that someone might need to reset their enhancements to continue as they have been, which is absolutely concerning to us. If you think there's other important reasons why Bard-Healers are Spellsingers that are going unaddressed, we're listening.

Note that this still doesn't mean anything in particular has to be removed from trees (though there are some abilities that are likely to be put on the chopping block or heavily revised). Warchanter can become a stronger healing tree without taking anything away from Spellsinger. This may or may not make sense, but it's one of the options we've explicitly said we're open to.

Warchanter also doesn't need to lose any of it's current important melee abilities, but there's an open question as to how much more they should be getting.



This is part of our motivation and why we are even considering moving abilities around at all. This could be similar to how melee abilities left Exalted Angel and moved into Divine Crusader, which made Exalted Angel more focused and clear in what the tree allowed you to do, and helped strengthen Divine Crusader's focus at the same time, instead of multiple choices giving similar things.

Again, this is not a trumping argument that automatically wins over other concerns; we're absolutely not going to automatically take all Spellsinger abilities that target allies and put them in Warchanter (and possibly none at all).

The reason Spellsingers have a large part of the Bardic ability 'pie' is because you folks chose to remove a Pre and fold the vast majority of its abilities into SS. This kinda made SS the more powerful of the two and most migrated into that Pre. The reason most 'healing' bards are in SS is most likely because healing in DDO has almost always drawn folks that place primary emphasis on the spell casting attribute of the class. If they wanted to CC primarily there was little to no power loss in that area if they tossed healing on top as an added bonus. CHA worked fine for both goals. For WC, most folks built for melee and pumping up the spellcasting side of the equation is a lot harder considering the demands melee is placing on ability scores and feats. Healing doesn't fit naturally into what WC is in the game currently.

It sounds like you all decided to essentially make SS the casting tree and SB the melee tree. At some point you remembered Bard had a melee tree (such as it is) and are now trying to find a role for it since you gave its purpose away to the new tree. My suggestion is that if you want a third tree to be healing then you need to delete, rework and rename the Warchanter
tree. Warchanter has never been the place you go to be a healer. The two have never been linked in DDO in any way, shape or form. Warchanter has largely been where folks went if they wanted a gish type character. That is probably going to be Swashbuckler now.

I have read a lot of comments prior to this one expressing a hope that WC could continue on as a place for melee bards that prefer twf and thf. I really do not see that happening the way it has been explained so far. Bards get no additional feats so that is 7 up 'til lvl 20. If you want to be a TWF type you need: TWF, ITWF, GTWF, IC whatever, PA, Cleave and G. Cleave. No room there for any metamagics. There is a bit more room in THF: PA, Cleave, G. Cleave and IC whatever, assuming you are willing to part with the THF feats. Ability scores demand Str and Con for THF and TWF needs Dex too. Where do they get the points for Cha too? Now when a melee bard shows up in a group with a THF or two weapons there will be an expectation they are healers too and I just do not see how they do both in epic levels without more feats and spell points.

Healing makes a lot more sense for a casting bard. SS is going to be the casting Pre. Ergo SS should be the healing spec. That or just remove WC and build a third tree that is the healing tree just like Cleric has a Damage, Healing and Fighting tree.

[Thar]

Nice chart. The current proposal would give Warchanter superior Support (of all kinds) and Healing, compared to other trees, including caster (but not for self-casting as much as Spellsinger would get). This doesn't mean Spellsinger necessarily loses the abilities it has that relate to that, and we're happy to hear feedback about whether or not that should happen. (Leaving some of those in Spellsinger would make it harder to focus on support, but impact existing characters less.)

So far it seems like more players prefer Warchanter as the primary Healing tree vs. Spellsinger (though that doesn't mean Warchanter needs to be primarily about healing), though that's one of the more contentious points. There also appears to be a range of opinions as to how much melee support should be included in Warchanter. Again, this doesn't mean we're necessarily removing much of what's there as options.

Some of the changes to support Spellsinger may include spell changes, though exactly how much is not determined. (Wall of Sound still isn't anything more than accidentally leaked text.)

Thanks for the the great general feedback. We'll be looking into the individual ideas in more detail later, of course.

if my spell singer loses the heal spell, there will be sadness.

[Thar]

The main reason existing Bard-Healers are Spellsingers is because the support for healing is already in that tree. That's not a great reason for it to remain that way in the future. This is a distinct argument from the idea that someone might need to reset their enhancements to continue as they have been, which is absolutely concerning to us. If you think there's other important reasons why Bard-Healers are Spellsingers that are going unaddressed, we're listening.

.

main reasion is because they get the heal spell at end game and it makes it possible to heal a 1000 point tank.

[katz]

i am very glad to see this topic finally. it's been a long time in coming. i only read the first few responses, and skipped to the end to reply, because i want to relay my own personal thoughts as a player who favors bards (heck, i've got four of em!) without my impressions, expectations, and opinions being colored by other posts, so i apologize in advance if i rehash anything that's been said numerous times.

first thought: spellsinger. i'm liking the preliminary thinking for these... add DC casting utility, SLAs, etc. i terms of sheer outright power, spellsingers are the weakest right now, and even the things that make them "strong" is, at end game, mediocre at best. mana regen song is great... at low levels, but when the caster in your group who might benefit from it has 3000, 4000, 5000 SP... it's a drop in the bucket. beefing up their spell augmenting songs in some way might be nice. damage spells for bards are... pretty much non-existent. i'm not expecting the firepower of a wizard, sorcerer, or druid, but something better than greater shout might be nice. adding helpless damage to soundburst was a step in the right direction, as it gives a casting focused bard a "poor man's mass hold" we need more concessions like that. another issue, which i'm sure has already been mentioned, is that bards only get up to level 6 spells, which severely hurts their DC casting abilities in the higher level game. perhaps an improved heighten for spellsingers only... if you have the heighten feat and can cast level 6 spells, spells are heightened to spell level 9 instead of 6. even something that simple would be a huge help.

second thought: warchanters. my first impression when i saw you had healing and "some melee" under warchanter, was to want to object... its the way things are... or were... spellsingers are casters, warchanters are melee... however, then i took some time and thought about it, and with the addition of swashbuckler things are no longer so cut and dry, and thinking about it... it makes sense. swashbuckler is the dashing swordsman (or woman ^_^ ) not relying on brute strength, but still melee focused. warCHANTER, while still a combatant, sings songs to better augment their own and their party-mates combat abilities. warchanters USED to have the best boost to damage/to-hit song with the extra boosts they got to inspire courage above and beyond what spellsingers got. they don't have that edge anymore, AND with the changes to to-hit and AC, even the bonus we get, while decent, is nowhere near as good and valuable as it once was. make warchanters the king of buffing again. make groups happy to see a warchanter again, instead of asking 'why didn't you go spellsinger? we could use the mana regen and arcane might." warchanters had a nice synergy going with barbarian before the enhancement pass.. it's still there a little bit, but much less so. something that disappointed me was to find out that the AP abilities that buffed barbarian rage did not also buff skaldic rage. that would have been a nice touch, and really preserved the original synergy.

as for healing... that one i'm not too sure about. spellsingers have always been the traditional healers, as warchanters tended to focus on str at the expense of cha. for example, my main bard, Pointless, depending on destiny, has roughly equal HP and SP most of the time. altho i know some warchanters have much more SP, this is still not conducive to good blue bar healing. the times i've been called upon to be a backup healer, i've always broken out my trusty stack of 100 heal scrolls and used that, not my blue bar.

songs: they take forever. i know, i know, they've been sped up and no longer share cooldowns. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. this is a great thing, but bards still have a lot of songs to sing... and people tend to not be patient. consolidation of songs would be a very nice thing, and greatly appreciated by all. instead of giving warchanters and spellsingers a half a dozen extra songs to sing, give them one each.. that tiers up in power. spellsingers start with the +1 to DCs, then add +1 to caster level, then HP regen, then mana regen (along with anything else that might get added in) so by the time a spellsinger has reached the top of their tree, a single song covers all the effects (and have the time of them scale CORRECTLY, unlike the add-ons to inspire courage in fatesinger that only last 3 minutes when the rest of my songs last 8. that's a royal pain in the ass ). warchanters song would combine song of heroism, song of recklessness (without the -fortification would be nice, but meh if it needs to stay), and potentially songs that do interesting things... like heal amp, or increase crit range/multiplier for everyone in group. trust me, you add that, EVERYONE will want a 'chanter along for the party XD. that way, it's 2-3 songs and go (courage, excellence (if epic), and WC/SS special), instead of waiting, and especially with a spellsinger with targeted not AoE songs, the non-bards in the group have no idea how long they're going to have to wait for all songs to be completed. no one, not even other bards, like to stand around saying 'is he done singing yet? i think so, no wait, he started again... he paused - maybe now? no wait... now he's singing something different... and another... and another...didn't he sing that one twice already?.. argh!.."

i'm sure there's more i'll think of, but its late for me, i'm a tiny bit tired from work, and this is a pretty sizable wall-o-text for me. i don't normally go that crazy on a topic. but hey. bard. one of my favorite topics! XD

[PsychoBlonde]

The main reason existing Bard-Healers are Spellsingers is because the support for healing is already in that tree.

Erm, I'd say that the MAIN reason existing bard/healers are Spellsingers is because YOU NEED THE SPELL POINTS FROM SPELLSINGER IF YOU'RE GOING TO HEAL ON A BARD. Being a healer still revolves a lot around the size of your blue bar. That and most of the top-tier warchanter abilities are INCREDIBLY mediocre. So, given a choice between "tree that makes you a lousy attempt at a melee" and "tree that actually makes you better at core bard stuff", people go for Door #2. Warchanter/melee bards are almost always multi-classed bards who (like paladins) pick up their DPS stuff from the DPS trees of their *other* classes.

There's not a lot of other healing "support" in Spellsinger . . . in fact, one of the few abilities that grants positive spellpower is in . . . Warchanter. For no apparent reason.

But if you're looking for more ideas, here's one:

Make Sustaining Song better (and AOE again), and move IT over to Warchanter.

Make a new top-tier ability for Spellsinger that lets them throw Fascinate/Enthrall/Suggestion/Dance of Capering as a ranged ability. So now you have a more spellcaster-y feel without necessarily turning them into "the bard-sorc". Give them some big, bad scaling-to-epic charms via Suggestion. Maybe throw in some stealth support (bards get hide and move silently as class skills dontcha know). So now you're looking at spellsinger as sneaky-man throws-CC-from-a-distance-instead-of-charging-into-melee. Give them some "boosts your charmed critters" buffs. Boost their enchantment and illusion DC's to the SKY and give them some SERIOUS spell penetration. Maybe consider letting their various "Music of the" abilities work toward their other CC abilities so they can dance constructs or charm oozes.

Now you have a "bard caster" concept that isn't "bard-sorc" but is potentially highly unique and very useful--and has solo potential, even. I've run enchanters before who used charmed mobs as their main DPS, it works great. They have way more HP than you do so they can tank for you, and you can sit back and plink away with a ranged weapon or similar.

If you want to turn Warchanter into a Healer you're either going to have to let them primarily heal with songs or do something to encourage them to stack up enough Cha to get some SPELL POINTS. Most Warchanters have SP totals in the 800 range simply because putting anything into cha on a warchanter nerfs your combat abilities. There's no benefit to it.

[ForgettableNPC]

Maybe we could have Warchanter's Gathering Cold revised a bit? Getting +1 Cold Resist and +1 AC sometimes when getting hit by a Cold Spell for 12 seconds (And stacking up to +5) is really situational.

Maybe instead of that, we could have Gathering Cold modify the equipped weapon so it deals 1d6/2d6/3d6 Cold Damage on Hit, and additional Cold Damage or a Cold AOE Burst on Crits.

Of course, if we did that, we'd have to change Iced Edges as well...


And maybe we could give Spellsinger's Core Enhancements more Sonic Spellpower so Spellsingers could deal a decent amount of Sonic Damage with Shout/Greater Shout or some other third spell that we could get through the Spellsinger Tree.

[kmoustakas]

Actually I forgot but many people mentioned: you can't have the 'deadly' prefix be incompatible with bard songs that really ruins a big part of the bard's usefulness. (Another proof that whoever came up with the loot overhaul didn't have a clue).

[cru121]

Actually I forgot but many people mentioned: you can't have the 'deadly' prefix be incompatible with bard songs that really ruins a big part of the bard's usefulness. (Another proof that whoever came up with the loot overhaul didn't have a clue).

deadly is competence bonus to damage
inspire courage is morale bonus to damage. the only other "common" source of morale bonus to damage is the spell Good Hope.

[BoBoDaClown]

deadly is competence bonus to damage
inspire courage is morale bonus to damage. the only other "common" source of morale bonus to damage is the spell Good Hope.

Think they are talking about the competence damage bonus that's part of the Warchanter's Capstone, conflicting with deadly items... stupid non-stacking warchanters ftw

[dunklezhan]

Listen, I don't care what you do with warchanter, but if you dilute what's left of virtuoso under spellsinger any further I will be well upset. Also if you take the Party spell point/caster level buffs out of spellsinger and put them in Warchanter you'd better just rename the whole tree, because that's the entire signature of spellsinger.

This is what *I* want from a pure build bard:
Crowd Control that is second to none and quick to apply before the party has murdered everything. Oh, and that doesn't break every other update. The unreliability in the game engine is a big part of why I don't play my bard very much.
Highly desirable Party buffs. A bard joining your party should leave people cheering for how much better they're going to make everything. I don't care if my name never appears on the kill count, but if the death count at the end of the mission is zero then I did my job.
UMD up the wazoo.

That's the core of what I want from a bard, because I like being useful but I don't need my bard to be a melee or offensive god - I have other characters for that. I'm not saying that others don't want their bards to do different things, or that what they want is a bad thing. I'm just saying that's what *I* want from my bard. Which is not to say I might not roll up a NEW bard to play a swashbuckler because... well because Errol Flyn is cool that's why. As long as I can get all of the above from a L20 pure bard, then I'm reasonably happy. Anything else is just gravy.

Anyway. I got what I wanted from the original Virtuoso, it just was never finished which made it a poor choice. Then you merged it with Spellsinger and that was actually pretty cool cos I got the core of the never finished virtuoso, and the nice extra spell buffs from spellsinger. But of course a load of the CC songs were then broken for ages making my bard unplayable. I haven't seen any notes that suggest that's fixed actually, so I now don't play my bard: if I can't CC anything I want, I don't see the point of playing that particular bard.

I like that I can basically invest in one tree and get what I wanted from Bard (I want the same from Druid actually. Bear druid I am looking at YOU), I didn't like that for what I wanted I had to dump my leftover points into warchanter for melee abilities I really didn't want or need, just to get to the extra buffs to hand out. With your current changes I can see that situation in particular improving - now I can ignore swashbuckler instead and willingly invest in Warchanter to get more support stuff.

But here's the thing: the bard enhancement trees have very evocative, flavourful names and I don't want to see that flavour diluted. "Warchanter" says to me 'I chant during times of war' and that evokes an image in my head of something related to melee more than anything else. Spellsinger says to me 'I sing to create or improve spells'. Swashbucklers says to me 'I fight in melee with a cheery grin and avoiding get hit while I mock my enemies' which basically translates to 'if there's anything more important than my ego in this room I want it caught and shot now'.

Concept wise, to me Swashbuckler is the "charismatic hero" DPSer who seems to dance through combat giving the death of a thousand cuts - takes a while to bring down a room full of mobs but he'll survive and look **** good doing so. Warchanter and Spellsinger you should just be very very glad to see rock up to the dungeon entrance - because you know you're all going to have a way easier time.

Group Melee buffs and debuffs belong to Warchanter, group spell buffs and debuffs belong in Spellsinger. Personal buffs belong in swashbuckler.

Don't muddy the waters by moving things around that actually naturally align with a tree's core flavour, please.

[BananaHat]

My 2 gp, for what it's worth:

Spellsinger - More of a casting type bard. Offense, crowd control, 'traditional' healing, DC's, all things from that little blue bar. What do I mean by traditional healing? Standing back and using the Cure spells or Heal from the capstone. Sustaining song is good too for a maintenance heal. Add some more offensive SLA's here, such as sound burst, shout, greater shout, or even sound lance from pnp or that wall of sound spell that we briefly heard was being bounced around. A wall of fire type AoE with a built in dance, that would be awesome, just lower the damage of the wall to bard and sonic damage appropriate levels. Or, add a stacking sonic DoT (call it like... Reverberate or Natural Frequency) and just let it work alongside the sorc/wiz cold and elec ones (and NOT overwrite them like the druids' creeping cold line).

Warchanter - Melee damage, buffing a warparty, 'non-traditional' healing, damage mitigation. So, in this case, for non-traditional healing, I would look towards a new trick of the warpriest, healing with a smite. Give the WC a cleave attack that puts a healing over time effect on those around you. You get a stack for every guy hit, have it stack up to that characters level times, last 12 seconds, and heal 1d3 per stack (not affected by spellpower, but yes to healing amp) every 3 seconds. This gives an alternate maintenance heal to sustaining song and could get decent at full stacks, healing you for twice your level on average times your healing amp. Then, have a song that grants the ability to gain those HoT stacks in an AoE on vorpal hits so that your allies can get them spreading to the party too. Bonus credit if they also repair or apply negative energy appropriately (only 1 of course) similar to some other ability I can't remember. Other ideas for Warchanter would be a song that provides PRR, temporary HP at regular intervals, better double strike and doubleshot, stacking attack speed, sonic damage on vorpals, or perhaps providing weapon based crowd control like felling the oak or giving everyone's attacks a 1 second stun on vorpal.

Swashbuckler - Single target damage, defensive through dodging, being jaunty, fancy hats, wobbly swords, buckling swashes, taunting your foes, springing around the battlefield, riding ropes attached to chandeliers. I generally think of the Princess Bride here for some reason... This is a new enhancement line, so it can really be whatever the devs wish.

[Maelodic]

I was reading through all this and was planning on quoting a lot of people and making this big long post but I decided to try and offer a unique perspective.

In most classes we have a tree or multiple trees that are essentially the class trying to be itself:

For example:
Shintao
Assassin
Radiant Servant
Kensei
Ravager
Sacred Defender
Deepwood Sniper
Archmage
Savant

Then we have the other trees that are one or more other classes:

For example:
Ninja Spy is a Rogue
Eldritch Knight is a Fighter/Pally
Mechanic is an Artificer
Warpriest is a Paladin/Fighter
Angel of Vengance is a Sorcerer
Swashbuckler is a Rogue/Monk
Divine Disciple is a Wizard

Though each has a flavor that is specific to the class. For the trees that are acting like other classes- it's because these trees are like other classes that we feel a draw to them. Sometimes, we want a little bit of Rogue in our Monk.
Swashbuckler has the benefit of being very defined- we know exactly what it does, what it's supposed to do, and what we want from it. Other trees are as simplistic- Ninja Spy, Divine Disciple, Kensei, and Archmage are all very streamlined in this way.

Warchanter has never been nearly as defined as any other tree. The only one now that comes close to how confusing the trees are is Eldritch Knight. Spellsinger is not far behind either- it's just hard to figure out what these trees are supposed to be doing.

Virtuoso was, in all honesty, the "pure" Bard tree though it wasn't often used or considered viable because it was incomplete. Virtuoso was the most demanded build for the original Revisiting Paths thread, and had a massive amount of interest. In the current state, we do not have a tree that is just, pure, bard.

In lou of that, I'd recommend these changes:
Spellsinger is a Cleric/Wizard - a lot of changes in this thread outline this and a lot are very good.
Swashbuckler is a Rogue/Monk
Warchanter is a Barbarian/Paladin
Virtuoso is a Bard

(I know four trees are hard to balance)

[xberto]

Warchanter would move towards greater party buffing and support.

Warchanter Evasion Song granting temporary evasion to friend.

[SealedInSong]

Thanks so much for starting this discussion, Varg!

I’d like to revisit this thread personally with my thoughts, but for now I’d like to lend weight to anything Lesliewest_guitargod has said in the past about reformatting bards, and also these two posts:

Here are my suggestions.

I already stated here what I don’t like about the current trees and there are already a lot of good suggestions in this thread.

Again, I can’t thank you enough for rekindling this dialogue. As you can see from my forum name and my character compendium (22+ characters) I love my bards. I started as a bard; they’re my favorite class.

Anything we can do to give this poor, neglected class and help it start another renaissance--we should do it!

<3 Devs

[thunir]

Why is the melee warchanter being mixed with the healing of spellsinger currently. It would make sense to keep the spells consolidated into one focus (spellcasting, whether it be healing or damage) than splitting up the melee tree and having bards really stretch their action points to be able to keep their spells or gain some new ones to help the party as there is downtime in incoming damage.

Pure Bard Warchanter is never going to keep up with pure melee, and shouldn't. I think it should be a melee compliment with Decent heals.

Why should spell singer get all DC and spell focuses, and heals also? Arcane casters don't traditionally get any heals (generally speaking), I think that a Bard on the battle field, not a Spell singer would focus on healing in a natural progression. My two cents.

Ive been begging for this change, please implement this.

Spellsinger remains the caster-oriented tree for Bards. At a high level, we're looking at improving spellcasting by adding some enhancements to support:

DC based Casting
Offensive DPS Casting
Adding in SLAs (Spell-Like Abilities)



Warchanter would move towards greater party buffing and support.

Party Buffing
Healing
Some Melee and Defense

[maddmatt70]

We tried to give melee Warchanters some good options in Swashbuckler that function with TWF and THF. Most of the low level abilities don't require Swashbuckling. It's subjective exactly where the line should be drawn, as we do want Swashbuckler to retain some things that make it cool and powerful for the thing that it does.

In Swashbuckler I would also make Sword Dance, Resonant Arms, and Battering Barrage affect all combat types. It really is not worthwhile to do a deep splash in swashbuckler if a character is a twf or thf character rather its a little dabble of 12 ap or less whereas I would like for 22 AP deep splash to be an option. I was also thinking that you should give some sort of opportunity for some of the doublestrike to apply to other weapon styles as well I am specifically thinking about Two handed fighting characters - perhaps the core abilities doublestrike should apply to all weapon styles.

[Dawnsblood]

Why should spell singer get all DC and spell focuses, and heals also?

Two reasons really: The first is because SS is the Pre that does now and will in the future invest in metas and spell points. The second is because Turbine recognised that SS was the healing Pre when they gave them Heal as a capstone along with the Sustaining song.

This was a Turbine screw up from top to bottom. They gave all the spell points and special healing abilities to SS, kinda telling folks that SS is for healing. Warchanter was always melee and melee related buffs. Then Turbine came up with the great idea to make the melee bard Swashbuckler (I like SB so far). I can only assume they forgot (like most of us) that Warchanter even existed. Now they are trapped in the position that SS has all the spell related feats, abilities and a lot more spell points (including two healing abilities in their tree) and SB was given all the cool combat abilities. So they are stuck trying to re-engineer WC. Now I suspect the few remaining WCs have stuck to the Pre to run a Gish type character, not a healer.

All I can say is I am glad I TRed my Warchanter Bard into a melee ranger because it sounds like WC is becoming something it has never been in the past. I just hope Turbine is kind enough to give those still playing one a free heart to fix the mess it sounds like WC is about to become.

[katz]

All I can say is I am glad I TRed my Warchanter Bard into a melee ranger because it sounds like WC is becoming something it has never been in the past. I just hope Turbine is kind enough to give those still playing one a free heart to fix the mess it sounds like WC is about to become.

on the other hand, i may need another +20 heart (or at least a +2. lol) because i finally, after over 3 years with the same build, swapped my 2 barb out for 2 ranger. depending how things play out, i may need to put it back in! XD

[thunir]

Two reasons really:

This was a Turbine screw up from top to bottom. They gave all the spell points and special healing abilities to SS, .

Not entirely true, The warchanter pre contains the boosts to healing spell power with Words of Encouragement, Obstinance, and High Spirits. There is no boost to healing spell power in the SS pre. Only universal spell power in the core enhancements.

[Kadriel]

I agree it will be unlikely to fit healing and meele in a bard as is. The only way to make it viable is to make the WC tree give the needed basis for one of the other.

IMO the best way to do that is giving the WC core free feats (TWF/THF, ITWF/ITHF, GTWF/GTHF) as a toogle so you can pick your fighting stile and have spare feats for healing (while still needing to invest some feats into meele).

There is still the issue of the abilities split. a meele will need str, con and possible dex, while still needing cha for spells to be able to heal. Solution: let one of the cores add cha to damage.

With that it might work.

But what I really would love to see even though that would kinda be a new add, is WC with debuffs that would work on bosses. That was something that was common back then and is a flavor game was missing. I enjoyed the days when wizards would ray of enfeeble/exaustion and waves of fatigue/exaustion harry and actually make a difference