Spellsinger and Warchanter - Build Concepts and Goals

[Shinjiteru]

What bugs me most is that people who played bards and TRed or LRed to test the new swashbuckler say it doesn't feel like playing a bard... This is enough reason for me to say that bards still need another melee focused tree that feels like playing a bard. It doesn't have to compete with swashbuckler though in melee dps, but should have enough melee dps to beat down mobs in a decent amount of time.

The warchanter always felt like playing a bard, you didn't have enough melee dps to compete with a barb but you had enough melee dps to solo some mobs in a decent time. On top you had strong buffs for melee partymembers, these vanished with the changes to several game mechanics and new loot enhancements. One of the main reasons why many warchanters are not playing anymore. If you feel useless because of missing dps and no kind of buffs to compensate for it anymore it's harder to have fun with a toon. The possibility to toss heal scrolls when needed is devalued by all the self healing toons running around atm, many players not only don't need self heal, their toons have enough stuff to help healing others, so that's not a bard specific trait anymore.

#GENERAL BARD Changes#

To fix the song problem which are one of the main reasons less people play bards atm (and swashbuckler didn't fix any of them) I think we need the following changes (some already got mentioned):

1. All songs should be converted to a bardic type of buff that stacks with all other soures.
2. Inspire Courage +attack and +damage needs to be converted to a +x% buff. This might hit the low level bards but is the only option to scale with the current endgame and future updates that are going to increase the power of characters even further.
3. Ironskin song, probably would be better to be a stacking +2/4/6% stacking physical damage reduction. Any DR value doesn't scale from level 1-28, especially becoming useless in epic content when mobs hit for 200dmg. (And yes the barbarian DR should be changed this way too, since it doesn't scale with current endgame anymore)
4. Inpire recklessness, needs to be bardic type of buff as already mentioned in 1. Currently it only offers a -10% fort debuff because most melees are wearing a doublestrike item already and they don't stack.
5. Inspire greatness, I always didn't like this song because I thought every melee who needs more attack already has a+2 competence bonus to attack item anyways. 20 HP are more or less useless in endgame content and +1 fort save... not enough benefit to make me waste time singing this song.
6. combining some songs would help with all the players who prefer to zerg and are impatient to wait for buffs.

#WARCHANTER CHANGES#

And if you now give the warchanter capstone the ability to double your song effects then I'd say this can compete with the evasion of the swashbuckler tree. On top this would make a pure bard warchanter a real warchanter who deserves this name.

Then there is only the frozen fury enhancement which is IMO completely 'broken' and needs some work, because unless you are a PDK there are no possibilities to go charisma based as melee warchanter so we either need two versions of this enhancement, one cha and one str based or some options on the warchanter tree to use charisma as attack and damage mod.

With these changes I would even say if you add some more self and in combat healing warchanters might not need any additional dps increase. And we would have a bard which plays like a real bard and warchanter.

You can use the spots of the enhancements that increase damage if you get hit by ice damage for adding new self healing options if needed. Apart from that I can't repeat all the other nice stuff players had mentioned who would like to stay a viable thf warchanter.

Biggest problem of the current warchanter is not the lack of dps, it's the uselessness of the current bard songs. A warchanter was always relying on his own songs to buff himself as well, even that is not working right atm...

#SPELLSINGER Thoughts/Changes#

Only touching spellsinger tree slightly. Spellsingers won't be overpowered if they get CC, spell dps and healing. Because they don't need to be top notch at every of these 3 things so they wouldn't be overpowered. Clerics/FvS can be build to do decent dps and still heal good enough for most groups/raids ( they don't need to because of all the selfsufficient toons atm, but they can be build to be good at both). Wizards can be build to be good at CC and still be good at nuking, not as good as a nuking sorc, but not very far from that.

So why don't we just give bards the option to be very good at CC?
Especially the spellsinger core ability could make all bard spells count as level 9 spells when cast.
So currently they can build for healing, but without mass heal they are never going to be as efficient at healing as a cleric/FvS in many raid situations. I know there are bards who build to be very good solo healers, but if you play a cleric/fvs it's much easier and needs less skill to heal at that level.
And about sonic dps spells... I think bards don't want to nuke as good as sorcs/wizards (otherwise I'd say they just don't know that bard is the wrong class for them :P ), but bards are missing the possibility to deal at least decent damage with their spells so that they are not forced to go melee if they want to kill a mob.
That's why I think it wouldn't be overpowered if spellsingers would get 1-2 new spells/SLAs to deal damage so that they can have all the 3 things they want(CC,spell dps and healing), just at the right degree. (Clerics/FvS already got spell dps and healing and bards won't be able to compete with them at same player skill level and CC is something which only works if you have the highest DCs otherwise you can just skip it :S )

And I think it's not a mistake that some positive energy stuff is split between spellsinger and warchanter. Because warchanters are still bards and sometimes cast healing spells.


#CONCLUSION#

There were many other great suggestions in this thread that could be used to be combine with my suggestions to get great spellsinger and warchanter trees, and just make these kind of bards a viable class again.

We don't need a complete overhowl of the spellsinger and warchanter tree, we need scaling and stacking songs better capstones and only some slight changes to each tree and the whole bard experience would be back.
Adding Buffs to the base bard songs instead of having so many different songs would also be nice.

----------------------------------------------------------------


And to the second graphs of geoffhanna, posted as a response to varg:

So more like this? This is your intent?

Why do we have to differentiate between general support, caster support and melee support. And what's the difference between general support and caster/melee support?
And I think casting needs to differentiate between spell dps and CC. Because if spellsingers get same DCs as wizards or at least are only 1-2 DC points off, then their spell dps should be much less than a nuking sorc and even less than a wizard build for CC (because you still have songs and group healing). But yeah, still good enough spell dps to be able to kill something with it.

Apart from that the healing capabilities listed are plain wrong. Spellsingers have same healing capabilities as swashbucklers? Do Swashbucklers have the same SP amount as spellsingers? Because the SP amount is helping healing too. If I have 1800 SP I can heal much more than with 900 SP. And spellsingers usually have feats that also help boosting the cure spells if needed...

And when I look at the warchanter graphs... if that's going to be the goal for the warchanter tree... than please just delete the tree. It doesn't even get top notch healing, although healing as a bard is already more difficult than healing with a cleric/FvS. And you need someone who is good at playing his bard to even reach the healing of a mediocre cleric/fvs player... On top of that he has nothing but buffs to contribute to the party. 2.5/10 melee dps is nothing I'd call contributing and nothing that looks like the ability to solo even EN quests.
Looks like the incarnation of boring gameplay to me, unless you have some tendencies to punish yourself in your free time. :S
It's worse than playing a healbot cleric and even they are not very famous...

And some players mentioned FvS and Sorcs are now better at melee than warchanters... isn't that a flaw of design if a class that is mainly build around buffing is weaker in melee combat than a class that has so much nice damage spells, which still can be used while meleeing, even if they are not as strong anymore they are much stronger than the bard spells...

I know it's hard to balance out the bard gameplay experience and enhancement trees. That's why I would favour some general changes that bard songs are stacking and scaling with the endgame again and in the future. Then I think we only need slight adjustments of the current enhancement trees so that most long time bard players are going to be happy.


"We don't like to break existing characters"

If that is really your intention the swashbuckler tree should have never hit the live servers(at least if you use it as excuse now to take/delete the melee capabilities from the warchanter tree). Because as far as I can see you say swashbuckler is the new melee focused tree for bards and warchanter needs a new role. I already feared this would happen when reading about the swashbuckler on the lammania forum.
And don't forget some players were farming equipment for their melee focues bard since years, some finally managed to get an eSoS. Swashbuckler is build around light armors and one handed weapons where the warchanter melee until u22 was build around thf or twf and medium armor...
If you really wanted to make the swashbuckler the new and only melee focused tree for bards you should have thought about that stuff, especially if you really intent not to break existing characters.
But now we have a new melee dps bard tree with nice melee dps, experienced bard players just think it doesn'T feel like playing a bard anymore... enhancement tree inserted in the wrong class?


And if you are only aiming for some design goals:

Spellsinger:
- crowd control
- spell dps (not at the level of wizard/sorcs, but enough to get some mobs killed)
- caster buffs
(- healing would more or less be included since SP pool and empower healing give a great boost to healing anyways)

Warchanter:
- decent melee dps (not at the level of swashbuckler)
- melee buffs
- some additional healing (+ defense)

[Taurnish]

And if you are only aiming for some design goals:

Spellsinger:
- crowd control
- spell dps (not at the level of wizard/sorcs, but enough to get some mobs killed)
- caster buffs
(- healing would more or less be included since SP pool and empower healing give a great boost to healing anyways)

Warchanter:
- decent melee dps (not at the level of swashbuckler)
- melee buffs
- some additional healing (+ defense)

I do not wish to make a long post. In general I think the swashbuckler should be the "tank" type bard. Mostly attack capabilities and damage with some fighter type skills (trip, stun, etc). The swashbuckler should have the least focus on healing. I think this has been accomplished.

Spellsinger should be very good at crowd control, maybe not to the level of a wizard of the same level but with proper gear and extra feats or enhancements focusing on the DC of enchantment and illusion spells the spellsinger should be an opponent that can literally "make a fool of you" by trickery of magic. I think the spellsinger should be the most effective healer of the bard line and have enhancements that can be taken to improve healing.

The warchanter should be the bard in the midst of the melee ranks in war. Very good buffs and enemy debuffs that are not easily removed or dismissed. Above average melee abilities (not to the point of making these barbarians with songs) that allow the warchanter to contribute to dps of a party. The warchanter could be more focused on removing curses or harmful magic in battle... not direct divine healing. Maybe they could have an enhancement song that would remove some common bard / wizard afflictions (curse, stat damage from spells--ray of enfeeblement, despair, magical poison, etc).

I hope this helps. Thanks for reading.

[Typographer]

Haven’t had time to read the entire thread, but I think theres a bigger issue here thats causing this desire to make changes to Spellsingers and Warchanters.

With the introduction of Swashbuckler, you're left with the problem of distinguishing them from Warchanter, which is having a trickle-down effect on Spellsinger.

Swashbuckler essentially made Warchanter even *less* desirable as a mele bard so now you have given yourself a make-work project on how to distinguish Warchanter from Swashbuckler.

Giving buffs and heals to Warchanter would do that, but that would pretty much make Spellsingers irrelevant. Buffs and heals is what Spellsingers do. Uber-support.

So let's say you like the idea of giving buffs and heals to Warchanters, and you're happy with how that distinguishes them from Swashbucklers. Now you need to have another make-work project: How do we distinguish Warchanters from Spellsingers?. You’re solution? Give Spellsingers more offensive magic.

People have been talking on making DC or offensive magic Bards for ages, but be honest, if you wanted to dish it out magic style, you wouldn't pick a Bard.

So you implement what you want to: Give heals and buffs to Warchanters, offensive magic to Spellsingers, and what have you left us with?

1. Swashbuckler: A bizarre mele with lousy HP and DPS compared to any other mele build possible.

2. Warchanter: Some sort of mele bard that can do some buffs, and heal. Poorly.

3. Spellsingers: The absolute worst magic-bassed class in the game with a few token songs because they happen to be a “Bard.”

Congratulations. You just created three useless classes.


Solutions?

1. Leave Spellsingers as they are, they don’t need offensive magic, thats what magic-users are for. They are still the uber support member if built properly.

2. Put the majority of your thinking into how to make Warchanters a better DPS mele class. Find a way to give them better 2H/2 weapon fighting. Glancing blows &c. There's got to be a few things you can borrow from other classes.

3. Leave swashbucklers as they are for now, but think about giving them something that distinguishes them from a mele Bard, and a support Bard. They have promise yet.


Bards are under-utalized as a class, possibly more than any other class, but that’s not because of their design, it’s because the average gamer isn’t drawn to support-roles. They want to charge in there with the biggest gun in class and out DPS everyone on the playground (when was the last time you ran with a Cleric that actually cleric'd? Got buffs without having to ask &c.).

I understand your desire to give Bards some love by making a new Swashbuckler, and your heart is in the right place, but start mucking about with two other classes that were already in need of a lot of thought, with your sole motivation being…

“How can we make all three classes different from one another?"

…instead of…

"How can we fix what isn’t quite working?"

…and you will end up with three absolutely horrible classes.


Presently, the only Bard build that has any significant value to contribute to the game is 20 Bard, Spellsinger with capstone, focused on healing and support. That’s all they can do better than any other class. If you nerf the healing and support of Spellsingers, you just killed the entire class. You might as well delete all three.

All because of an inevitably obsolete Swashbuckler.

Please, do not diminish Spellsinger healing or support in *any* way, it’s hard enough to find a cleric to run with. Don’t ruin the next best thing.

If you implement what you intend to, it will be one step forward (Swashbuckeler), three steps back (three new useless Bard classes).

Want to make Bards a better class and have more people play them? Stop focusing on “how can we give them a bigger gun than the last movie?” Hollywood cliché, and find ways to make playing a support class a little more attractive.

Heck, if you can crack that code, you might even get a few more clerics out there!

[Typographer]

“enhancement tree inserted in the wrong class?”

Couldn’t agree more. This is not a rhetorical question to the Devs: How is a Swashbuckler more like a Bard than a Fighter?

[mezzorco]

“enhancement tree inserted in the wrong class?”

Couldn’t agree more. This is not a rhetorical question to the Devs: How is a Swashbuckler more like a Bard than a Fighter?

Swashbuckler should definitely be more of a fighter/rogue, indeed. PnP swashbuckler has:
- high bab (bard has med)
- high fort, low ref and will (bard has low fort, high ref and will)
- int to damage (bard is cha based)
- no spellcasting

I really don't understand why swashbuckler is tied to bard.
In addition, in PnP a fighter/monk multiclass is extremely rare and kensai can be picked only by lawful guys, while in DDO every fighter seems to take a sacred oath.....

[BinyaminTsadik]

Here are some suggestions, PLEASE, I play bards a lot and I do have some good input tbd:

Spellsinger

I would like to see a multi-selector for that wail of the banshee and give us the option to take mass hold monster. That is the only thing a CC bard is currently lacking. (or just replace the wail because it makes no sense for a bard to have that)
Also, all of the sonic spells do very little damage. I tried going Evocation as a spellsinger one life and it failed horribly because of the severe lack in damage. You need to add a 3 tier stacking sonic damage DOT to the bards spell-list. And maybe an AOE sonic SLA
a dancing song that affects fascinated foes

Warchanter

Add buffs and debuffs (for the enemy) to the inspire courage,
Cleave attacks,
song duration (a lot),
A short AoE displacement,
DR and/or PRR and/or a free toughness feat,
Rage abilities,
Positive healing spellpower and/or healing amp (or maybe repair option for robots),
Add sonic damage to the glancing blows effect,
Instead of making them suited to medium armor give a blanket spell failure reduction that can be boosted by (gear/race tree) so that they could even end up using fullplate and sheild if they focused for it or even apply to multiclass spellfailure reduction
And I suggest you move the Heal spell from the Spellsinger to the Warchanter.
And perhaps different Warcry (Aura) stances that give a 1 minute buff (to anyone in range) when you switch to them and a lasting aura while in that stance beyond the first minute (perhaps make the AoE displacement buff above into the 1 minute buff from a specific aura stance)

[Typographer]

lease explain the logic behind making Warchanter the “buffing and healing support bard” and Spellsingers some kind of funky magic bard?

With the introduction of Swashbuckler, and we now simply going to shuffle around the Spellsingers and Warchanters enhancements/spells between one another and make two horrible hybrids?

Spellsinger was and should be the primary support, buff, healing bard, as it was intended. The capstone of Heal is critical to this.

————

Suggestions

1. Now that Swashbuckler is the go-to mele Bard, take the mele-releated enhancements from Warchanter, and insert it into Swashbuckler.

2.Take the support based enhancements from Warchanter, insert them into Spellsinger, and fix stacking/scaling.

3. Forget about magic bards all together. Forever. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

————

Done! You now have a mele Bard, and a support Bard. And they both start with the letter “S”!!

Be mindful, no mele Bard will ever remain popular. People who want to play mele simply don’t choose Bards. Rhetorical question: What percent of your gamers who enjoy playing mele have a L20 pure Bard capstoned Warchanter as their main? Wait a few months, ask the same question with Swashbuckler, and you will get the same response (make a magic-bassed Spellsinger, same response).

Don’t “improve” (nerf) two other classes with great potential due to the introduction of a novelty-act that will be forgotten before the summer is over.

If you want a good return on investment, focus your efforts on designing a single, valuable, support-bassed Bard which will continue to play a valuable role in groups, as Bards were intended.

[Typographer]

“And I suggest you move the Heal spell from the Spellsinger to the Warchanter.”

Couldn’t disagree more. The heal capstone with U19 was the best thing to happen to Spellsinger. Total gamechanger.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

“And I suggest you move the Heal spell from the Spellsinger to the Warchanter.”

Couldn’t disagree more. The heal capstone with U19 was the best thing to happen to Spellsinger. Total gamechanger.

I totally agree with you here. Nerfing spellsinger healing, even in the slightest, will be a crushing blow to the class. Leave spellsinger healing alone. Warchanter and Swashbuckler should have their own ways to heal as well. Warchanter should get a healing aura instead to provide excellent "inside healing" in combat.

[Silverleafeon]

I totally agree with you here. Nerfing spellsinger healing, even in the slightest, will be a crushing blow to the class. Leave spellsinger healing alone. Warchanter and Swashbuckler should have their own ways to heal as well. Warchanter should get a healing aura instead to provide excellent "inside healing" in combat.

I completely agree with you.

I am trying my best to press for good changes for bards/paladins/barbarians while on the PC.
Poor Varg, trying to keep up with my many, many posts in the places you cannot see...

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

I completely agree with you.

I am trying my best to press for good changes for bards/paladins/barbarians while on the PC.
Poor Varg, trying to keep up with my many, many posts in the places you cannot see...

You definitely have some good ideas Silverleafeon. You GO!

I am siked Varg is taking the torch and doing a solid for us bards. Im excited to see what comes of this... and STILL HOPEFUL the dev team takes the time to work on this class to completion this time before moving on.

What is planned may or not make things better, as the addition of Swashbuckler quite honestly may confuse more people than it helps, and take much relied upon abilities away from current spellsinger and warchanter builds. Id have rather seen them use the same time to improve spellsinger and warchanter spellbooks and cut down buff time DRAMATICALLY. THIS is what bards Ive spoken to want in game.

You know what though, people are TALKING about bards again... people are arguing what they want and dont want... heck its beginning to sound like old times again!

[Silverleafeon]

and cut down buff time DRAMATICALLY.

Yes, that is a goal of mine, Fawngate did a final tour thru bard to help me playtest.

Sing time should be reduced.

Four seconds to cast a song that everyone else casts in one is too long.
The warchanter auras are by product of that goal, but I still want more reduction any way I can get it.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Yes, that is a goal of mine, Fawngate did a final tour thru bard to help me playtest.

Sing time should be reduced.

Four seconds to cast a song that everyone else casts in one is too long.
The warchanter auras are by product of that goal, but I still want more reduction any way I can get it.

Perhaps I did want ice cream after all...



... named Medley of course...

[Typographer]

Four seconds to cast a song that everyone else casts in one is too long.
The warchanter auras are by product of that goal, but I still want more reduction any way I can get it.

It’s not so much the time it takes to sing (not cast) the song, but the cooldown between them. For example, Spell Song Vigor (mana regen) can practically be played back to back. The cooldown is 5 seconds, and it takes ~4 seconds to play it. Sustaining Song (HP regen) is pretty much the same “tune” in terms of audio, but has a 10 second cooldown. So you sing it (~4 sec), and have to wait 5 seconds to sing it again. That’s a bit of a pain x 6 people.

As long as the player sees/hears you doing something, they are usually ok. The (perceptual psychology) problem arrises when a player sees a Bard sing a song, stop, and is then forced to wait on a the Bard’s cooldown, without even being sure if there are more songs coming.

To “quicken” it (metamagic style), you would have to deal with shortening a more complex animation of playing the song, not to mention the sound of the song itself. A “quickened” Bard might seem a bit like the Chipmunks on meth.

Solution: As soon as the sound of a song is finished, you should be able to play another one. Traditional metrics of spell cool-downs shouldn’t apply to songs.

[khremlajn]

Or... we can try totally different approach. Problem with singing as is:
- casting time
- long cooldowns
- no sane proposal so far to speed it up - sing at 2x speed? cut tune in half?

So how about making singing a stance:
- uses song to activate
- consume more songs over time
- works within certain radius(warchanter could expand it)
- you can add more effects to stance by right click - just the way meta magic works for spells.
Use case: Johny right click his stance icon. Small menu shows up. Johny can sellect additional effects for his stance.
Each consume additional songs.
- another approach is to make multiple stances(need to be able to use them all at once). This way each stance can have different radius and other stats.

Take last idea. Lets say that inspire courage works within great radius - both melees and archers/casters are affected.
Warchanter and spellsinger stuff with smaller radius - warchanter buffs affects only melees, spellsinger - casters.

Oh and I believe that mana regen song should be aoe. Every song should be aoe.
If you want to keep elyd edge uniquenes(or add more stuff like this)make certain buffs self only, with elyd edge they gain radius(and yeah, bring more weapons like this... or special orb-like shields... harp?)

- fascinate could be changed like this aswell, for example: each creature that enter radius area is affected. Every 30s every creature within radius is affected.

Just a thought.

[Typographer]

I could go both ways on cooldowns. IMO, if someone can’t sit still long enough to take a few buffs, theres a strong chance they'll find some other way to get themselves killed. Darwin.

Nothing will ever be fast enough for a ritalin-depraved gamer drinking Redbull laced with cocaine, so it might be a fools errand to pander to the lowest common denominator.

However, you could entertain the idea of a new Bard Meta-music feat called…

..wait for it…

POWER-CHORD

When it's on, I guess it would have to consume more songs?

The effect would be esseltially instead of singing (and hearing) the song, all you sing (hear) is one big strum. It would also be easy to make different sounding powercords for diferent songs. Presently, the same sounding song for many different effects isn’t that colourful.

In addition, a single modified animation of a giant straight-arm swinging power-chord would look pretty bad-saa.

You could even throw in a little hair-swinging/head banging as a tribute to all the wonderful hair-metal bands from the 80’s.

Even if it took 2 songs to do a “Power-chord” version, at L28 with 40+ songs that last from 10-40 mins, I would gladly sacrifice 10-12 extra songs to get my first round of group buffs off. And that’s a massive extra cost compared to +10 mana for Quicken.

Take a poll. Anyone who regularly plays a solid support Bard will attest to how completely maddening it is to be in a group where people wont wait for buffs. I’m pretty confident they’d pay the price for a Power-chord.

And I’m pretty confident that the group would appreciate and enjoy the show as well.

Power-chord. You heard it here first.

(and regarding the uniqueness of the Epic Elyd Edge and Inspiring Echoes, you should definitely maintain its value, uniqueness, and the reward gained from the hundreds and hundreds of hours required to farm one. Nerf that, and I'll shave my head).

*Edit: Perhaps it could be a Spellsinger “stance” of sorts, allowing them to hold their rightful place as buff/support/heals. Give Warchanters “auras” (healing, ironskin, &c.).

[vhortex]

You're wrong. Many players would dual wield or use a two-hander with a warchanter, as an alternative to swashbuckler.
It's ok that warchanter is buff-focused, but it has to do good damage itself. I'm not saying here it should compete with swashbuckler damage, but a warchanter can't simply buff -> wait 5 minutes -> reapply buffs -> wait 5 minutes...

Warchanter needs his chunk of melee capability, an improvement over current tree has to be done in that regard.

I solved the problem for Swashbuckling and 2WF but I need feat respect but can only use flight weapons.. I am currently using a SWF swashbuckler which also have 2WF. In short I am a swash buckling warchanter. Problem is that it wont work on all kind of race and I need to be Charimas/Dex focused. Min/Max players wont love it.

[vhortex]

One of the main reasons why many warchanters are not playing anymore.

Lol, I sometimes become speechless when party members chat or shout in the mic.. "Yay, we got a bard!".