U41 Preview 2: Bard Songs Revamp

[Cocomajobo]

Bard Songs are being improved!

• Bards no longer sing their songs individually, and will instead have their songs consolidated into a singular feat - Bardic Inspiration.
• Bardic Inspiration will include all Single-Target Bard Songs, and all area of effect Bard Songs will now constantly pulse from their location in an Ballad.
• Bardic Ballad becomes active at level 1, and contains Inspire Courage at the start. Bards gain Bardic Inspiration at Bard level 3, which contains Inspire Competence. Active Bard Songs that would be granted are instead changed to passive feats that display their effects and how they are applied.
• Inspire Courage now grants a Music bonus to Attack, Damage, saves versus Fear, and Universal Spell Power. These start at a base of +1 Attack, Damage, Saves vs Fear, and three Universal Spell Power.
• Inspire Competence now grants a +4 Music bonus to all Skills.
• Inspire Greatness now grants a Music bonus to Physical Resistance Rating and Healing Amplification, as well as 20 temporary hit points.
• Inspire Heroics will give a +4 Music bonus to all saves, +4 Music bonus to Armor Class, and +4% Music bonus to Dodge.
• Bards at level 8 are automatically granted Soothing Song, an active feat that heals all allies in a large area and costs one Bard Song.
• The Ballad
• • At Bard level 1, with 3 ranks in Perform, all players in the [COLOR=#40e0d0][B]Ballad receive the benefits of Inspire Courage.
  • At Bard level 9 with 12 ranks in Perform, all players in the Ballad receive the benefits of Inspire Greatness.
  • Arcane Shield Chant is now part of the Ballad, providing 2/4/6 to Elemental Resistance.
  • Ironskin Chant is now part of the Ballad, providing DR 2/4/6 and adds 2/4/6 to the Physical Resistance Rating granted from Inspire Greatness.
  • Reckless Chant is now part of the Ballad, providing 2/4/6 Doublestrike, Doubleshot, and adds 2/4/6 to the Universal Spell Power of Inspire Courage.
  • Expeditious Chant is now part of the Ballad, providing a 5/10/15% Action Boost bonus to Movement Speed.
  • Chant of Power is now part of the Ballad, providing a 2/4/6% melee and ranged damage and spell critical chance for all spells.
  • Inspire Excellence is now part of the Ballad, providing a +2 Music bonus to each ability score.
  • All previously active feats that are now portions of the passive Ballad have octagonal icons instead of square icons.
  • Inspire Excellence no longer is an active ability, benignly drops off active list. will remain in hotbars until dragged off, can no longer be dragged to hotbars.
• Bardic Inspiration
• • After a brief animation and some music, this single Song will apply all of the previously available single target songs, and the shorter Spellsinger songs, to one ally (or yourself) at the same time. This costs one Bard Song.
  • The duration is now one minute, plus 30 seconds per Bard level. Abilities that ride along with a Bard Song (such as Frolic from Song of Freedom), have its durations changed to match your Bard song. Effects and abilities that increase your Bard Song duration increase both the base Bard song effects in your Bardic Inspiration as well as anything else that comes with it.
  • At Bard level 3, with 6 ranks of perform, this will include Inspire Competence.
  • At Bard level 15, with 18 ranks in Perform, this will include Inspire Heroics.
  • Spell Song Vigor is now part of this song, restoring spell points over time.
  • Sustaining Song is now part of this song, restoring health.
  • Music of the Dead adds to this, applying a negative energy heal to undead characters.
  • Music of the Makers applies a Repair heal to Constructs and Living Constructs, and all scale with Positive, Negative, and Repair spell power.
  • Spell Song Trance is now part of this song, granting a +1 Music bonus to all DCs, and a 10% Music bonus spell discount.
  • Song of Arcane Might is now part of this song, granting +1 Music bonus to caster levels.
  • The Song Fragments from Fatesinger now apply when you use your Bardic Inspiration, and are otherwise unchanged.
  • There is now a general feat available to Bards level 12 and above with 15 trained ranks in Perform called Improved Bardic Music. This feat adds +1 to all Skills when Inspire Greatness is used, and grants an additional +1 to Armor Class, Dodge, and all saves when Inspire Heroics is used.
• Fatesinger
• • Fatesinger will only prove the older activated Song version of Inspire Courage, not the Ballad or Bardic Inspiration. Fatesingers' ride-along buffs will trigger on both your Bardic Inspiration and the Fatesinger Inspire Courage. Some Fatesinger abilities will scale your Bard Songs in new ways:
  • O Fortuna: +1/2/3 Physical Resistance Rating from Inspire Greatness, +1/2/3 personal Fortification and reflex saving throws.
  • Allure: +3/6/9 Universal Spell Power from Inspire Courage, +2/4/6 to Perform, Haggle, and Bluff. +1 Song.
  • Tailwind: +0/0/1 Damage from Inspire Courage, +1/2/3 competence to damage for missile weapons.
  • Lucidity: +0/0/1 Attack from Inspire Courage, +2/4/6 Concentration/Diplomacy, +1/2/3 UMD, +1 Song.
• Warchanter
• • Warchanter's 12th level Core Fighting Spirit now reads: +10 hit points, +1 Damage from Inspire Courage. Your Inspire Greatness now uses your Charisma score for its Temporary hit points, doubled in Epic levels.
  • Warchanter's 18th level Core Victory Song now reads: The range of your Bardic Ballad is doubled. You have +20 hit points, and a Base Attack Bonus equal to your character level.
  • The Warchanter Capstone now reads: You have +25 hit points, +2 Strength, and +2 Constitution. You can expend a Bard Song to scream the songs of your frozen ancestors, forcing enemies in an area to make a Fortitude saving throw versus Freeze, or be slowed significantly.

[Chacka_DDO]

At the start, I want to say these changes are indeed great news and I just tested a bit around on Lamannia (foremost the range of the songs and how it feels so far) and I'm very satisfied with this changes.
Now it should be foremost much more group friendly to play a bard and also solo it is now much less work to keep the bard songs up on yourself.
Thumbs up! for this changes.



But what I still don't understand is that the Suggestion and Mass Suggestion songs still use this odd DC calculation.
Effectively this means that these abilities are simple almost useless, a monster needs to fail a save on a 1 and only then these songs work at all and this is in my opinion plain wrong.
Of course ideally, you would use exactly the same DC calculation you use for the fascination song (the perform skill should increase the DC).
I just don't know if other adjustments are needed then (e.g. less duration).

My opinion is, that you should have the option to make all abilities work if you build your character right.

For the Song of Freedom, I just hope it always removes detrimental effects when you use it without any additional DC check.

For the Warchanter capstone ability Warmaster, I have the feeling that 2 minutes cooldown are clearly too long.
I would like to see 1 minute (or even less) and it could be a 360° effect instead of a cone in my opinion.

Another wish I would have is that fascination could have an effect on orange named monsters I don't think that this would be overpowered but that's of course only my opinion but I want to bring this at least to your attention.

[CeltEireson]

Cocomajobo

Re the song fragments from epic destiny - do their durations change to match your bardic inspiration. It was somewhat annoying to have different durations for them and the inspire songs.

[Aelonwy]

I brought all three of my bards over to Lamannia to checkout the changes. (Each is focused on a different Prestige tree) I am happy to report that in addition to making song buffing more convenient this incidentally also gave me more shortcut bar space.

In most cases the duration of my bard songs increased, with one notable exception. On live my Lvl 21 swash (18bard/2rog) can sing Reign and it lasts for 5 mins 40 secs. But on Lamma Reign is strictly 3 mins. This is a self only song, having to re-sing it every 3 mins is going to be a PITA. If we cannot have Reign duration scale with Bard level would it be possible since Reign has 3 ranks to have it be 3mins first rank, +1 min each additional rank ending in 5 mins total? The duration would still be a decrease but not as egregiously annoying as at 3mins.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the changes.
__________

Also I noticed that Suggestion/Mass Suggestion songs DC won't even increase when I play my Spellsong trance. Without spell DCs such as spell focus mastery, or spell focus enchantment adding to these songs they are definitely falling behind on viability in epics. Its especially weird that Spellsingers get so many ways to increase their enchantment DCs but these don't help their enchanting songs at all.

One final note and this may not be applicable to anyone else but I noticed on my PDK/warchanter (2fighter/10bard) that I really didn't have enough songs at level 12 to buff a raid party say for Tempest Spine heroic. AP were already very tight and yes I could spend some to get some more songs in each bard tree but it made me think about old items that had an effect that gave extra turns/bard songs/etc. Maybe we could see that show up again? An example would be the Alchemical Conservation on the Alchemist's Pendant.

https://ddowiki.com/page/Alchemist%27s_Pendant

[Damian]

"Inspire Greatness now grants a Music bonus to Physical Resistance Rating and Healing Amplification"

Question: How much PRR and Heal Amp exactly? (by itself, without O Fortuna and Ironskin Chant)

[Seikojin]

Great changes, and I know the preview is done. I hope the song DC's get their boost.

I think this may help with some latency issues that are around auras and songs.

[thunir]

I didn't know if I should post here or on the Lamania thread, but I hope this will suffice.

The Bard song revamp is really strong, I appreciate the effort.

I still think Bardic Inspiration should be carrying "Inspire Excellence" No one should be hanging around a bard for a Stat increases.

That being said I also look forward to the rebalancing of Warchanter. Kudos for the decision to change the Cap to +2 CHA. Overall I think the lvl 20 Cap is weak and does not offer anything I couldn't live without.

When you get around to looking at this you should make the Cap +2 CON +25 Hp and +3 to hit/damage and +3 to Combat feats so it serves both Str and Cha builds, keep it "Warmaster" then move the frozen cry/song into the frozen line.

Starting with the Song, the name is horrible, if anything it should have been "Warcry", but Howl of the North would have been best. Its almost completely useless in its current form, there is no reliable CC in the game on a 2 Min cool down timer. The only thing that would save this is to give it Frozen permanence so there is no timer to unfreeze, then it could really be the "Oh ****!" button I think it was designed to be. I tested it and the frozen timing of the mobs seemed really short when compared even to spinning ice. But, seriously as it currently stands this thing is worthless in game. Cool, but worthless.

I also think you should take current Frozen Furry and build the x1 Crit Multiplier into Skaldic rage and allow all the standard barbarian Rage abilities and items to function with it. Just call it Skaldic rage and make it the new tier 5. It makes more sense and it has more playability. Also it allows Cha builds to participate is Skaldic rage. If it were me Id have it an open +1 to Crit instead of 19/20, which has also been consistent feedback in this thread.

Also, the Fatesinger abilities that are on song timer, meaning Reign, Aria, and the Fragments of the song Valor/ Clarity need to be re evaluated on how song time is granted.

M2C

[MasterAO]

From what I could see on Lamannia, Song of Heroism wasnt included in the Ballad or the Bardic Inspiration. Will we have to play that in addition to the Bardic Inspiration, or could it be added to it?