Bard Songs & minor updates

[rover223]

Bards are a very welcome and useful addition to any party. In the current game PRR, MRR, Melee Weapon Power, and Ranged Weapon, plus Spell criticals are something players are constantly studying. What Song of Courage increased all of these for the duration of the song?

If song of courage gave a 5, PRR & MRR +1 per bard level to a maximum of 25? What if it gave 1 + 1 for per every 2 levels of Melee and Ranged Weapon Power and what if it gave 1% plus 1% for every two levels of all spell criticals? I don't think that's too overpowered

[Smokewolf]

Lets be real here... "welcome and useful addition" really ?

As things currently stand, Bards are nothing more than glorified buff / heal bots. With almost any other class you replace it with would mean faster kill rates and greater survivability for the party as a whole. Granted, there are a few players that love them but in comparison to basically anything else in the game, they're fodder.

The reason for this is simple... Synergy, where is it exactly?

Melees classes, have the 2HF and Cleaves for good effect and Casters have their AoE / Insta-Kill spells.(All of this focused and work together) Bards on the other hand have abilities that are very much out of date, slow to use and don't appear to scale very well without some serious gear. Worse yet, much of the Bards Enhancement Trees focus on weapons with painfully low base damage or have extreme restrictions to the point of being absurd. This makes it really hard to play a Bard except within a very narrow set of build constraints.

Thus they're the B-child of DDO... Swiss-Army knife of everything but doesn't excel enough in any one thing to be particularly useful.

[Yokido]

@Rover223

I agree that once you get into epic content the old bard song effects don't contribute much. I'd say make something based off of the perform skill to make it interesting/easier to build into as a bard. Fatesinger was recently loved on hard by Lynnabel, but I'm willing to scout things to help the old stuff too.

The higher the perform, the higher the benefits from your songs, which makes perfect sense imho. Also throw in a roll-check too to help determine this bonus, why not, you're performing?

Every 10 points in perform improves your bard song with:
+.5% to hit and damage
+.5% spell damage
+.5% ac
+.5 prr & mrr
+.5 all skills
+.5 spell dc

Not OP, scales, and it'll start kicking in with just 10 points which you could roll even if you only had 1 perform. This would also have to be in addition to the other effects. I think restricting by level might not be the best, considering many bards splash, and that you have to dive heavily into the bard tree to make up for those splashed levels otherwise your songs will have no duration. Pure bards wouldn't have that issue, plus, leveling perform would be easier for them too.

[Smokewolf]

@Yokido

Problem with Bard isn't just the Songs / Buffs but rather their weapon abilities and enhancements that support them suck...

Few Weapons: Everything for a Bard is some form of finesse-weapon which have an incredible set of restrictions (Enhancement Requirements) to build around. Now what should be done to correct this is: 1) Expand the list of weapons that are allowed for use with Swash. Maybe add a few medium-weight weapons such as the Longswords, Khopesh, Light-Repeater and Shortbow. 2) Loosen some of the enhancement requirements thus allowing for more build options.

Lacks Synergy: As it is now, the Bard enhancement trees don't appear to work well with much of anything. From what I've seen in about a dozen or so builds I've read thru, they all use a fixed build model to min-max what little they can. This isn't good for the Class as this really hurts its customization and playability.

No Ranged: Strangely enough short-bows are a base weapon proficiently for Bards but there isn't anything in the Bard Enhancements than enables them to use one with any skill. Granted, while Bards can be good throwers in some situations, this is less than ideal when there are already so many thrower types out there. My suggestion is to allow Bards to use the one Ranged weapon they're naturally proficient in, with the existing Enhancement trees.

Slow: I would like to see is the Bards songs sped up considerably. This would alleviate most of the issues I've seen in-game with Songs due to the huge delay between clicking and effect activation.

Weakness Why is Exploit Weaknesses a T5 ability? Sure on paper the effect sounds great but in practice the enhancement is pretty lack luster for a T5 ability. Maybe if it was T4 it would be better?