Bards in Kunark Era

[innocent51]

My 1st character ever in Everquest was a wood elf bard called Phillane Selmo (*wave Pantera fans out there). I stoped her at level 30ish with a couple of Lambent at Karana's Aviak tree to play on Vazaelle server when it came up.

I kina remember my friends making fun of me because bards were unpopular, they couldnt deal damage or have "good" buffs (that means Clarity or damage shield for us at this time) and the only good thing with bard was selo speed with Mistmoore Drums.

Anyways, at the moment on live Everquest bards are the king of buffers, CC as good as chanters, deals the fuck out of damages (behind pure dps classes, very ahead of tanks, and hybrid healers) and is by a incredible margin the best pulling class. Nonsense.

I my class research came out the idea of rolling a bard on P99.
How to they perform on Kunark Era in term of Crown control, tracking and buffing?

[SamwiseRed]

they control the crown very well

[Musetii]

they control the crown very well

Indeed.

[Dweed]

A bard that's good enough and willing to CC with charm is amazing dps and CC. If he also rotates clarity song and other essentials, then he's a rare prize.

Disclaimer: not all bard results are the same

[webrunner5]

A lot of people on here hate anyone with a Bard. I am not fond of them either. :D

[innocent51]

How is their track ability?

[Bronia]

Track is poor - but on the other hand, when they're already swarm kiting every mob in the zone, track becomes pretty irrelevant anyway :)

[Calibix]

As a bard myself I can give you some insight as to how it goes. Bard is an amazing class played well. You can solo nearly any mob as long as you have room, albeit slowly. Bards fit well into any group because they are so versatile although people generally want a pure (type here) that doesn't have the 40% xp penalty. They are amazing for pulling in places like Seb with lots of casters. They are also really good at "running" groups as I call it. Its very easy for a bard to dictate how fights go and how frequently they happen. I've been in 3 person groups in KC at RCY where we were out killing a full group at LCY. That's 3 good, adaptable players, but you get the point.

90% of the people hate bards because of swarming. Most of these people are lower-ish in level. The other 10% love them (and tend to be higher level) for all the crazy shit a bard can pull off. Bards aren't gear dependent unless you want to raid. They aren't a money maker unless you sell PL's. Being able to PL lowbies easily is nice as well. And Selo's is the most glorious thing in game.

[Tiax]

In the right hands Bards perform very well in Kunark. They are probably the most difficult class to play though.

Regarding CC, Bards are the best CC class until about level 35 at which point their aoe mez starts getting resisted a lot, and chanters become better. However I would still say that practically there isn't much difference between them. By that I mean, as a Bard you should be in control of all the mobs into the camp, and you should be aware of what is popping when, and you have your 6th sense (track). If you are doing all this correctly there shouldn't be more than 3 mobs in the camp at any time. If you get trained though you want an enc :)

I rate Bards the best pulling class for a group in the game. I think they are better than Monks because of all the tools available to them - lull, snare, mez, track, charm, eye of zomm, selos, invis. They are especially good at pulling camps full of casters where Monks struggle.

Regarding Buffs, encs are better - Bard haste and the 32 mana song are both poor compared to Enchanter haste and Clarity. The level 55 manasong is as good as c2 however.

Where Bards really struggle vs encs is DPS - enc charm is OP, and makes them one of the best dps classes in the game, combined with the best buffs, and their ability to cc make encs OP as a class. I still prefer my Bard though because they are by far the coolest class in the game =)

[Tiax]

Cailbix makes a good point about 'running' the group - this is what a good Bard should be doing, keeping control of the camp and allowing everyone else able to perform their role. Bards that play as buff bots are doing it wrong.

[MasterKiljaedon]

I don't get why people think that bard should be playing at optimum performance in order to be viable at dungeons. It puts a shit of a strain on people's hands and not worth it IMO unless the group is in trouble. Reliving eq exp rocks but one thing sony did right was to add in auto twist to a degree. I welcome any bard who is semi competent who only wants to do 1-2 song twists in a normal Xp setting.

[Tecmos Deception]

I welcome any bard who is semi competent who only wants to do 1-2 song twists in a normal Xp setting.

Those 1-song twists are BRUTAL.


More seriously though, melody or whatever it was called just ezmoded bards. Every modern MMO requires as much button mashing as a classic bard did, but no one playing WoW is complaining that they wish their nukes had 6.5-second cast times followed by a few seconds of cooldown.

Edit - actually, modern MMOs need way, way more button mashing than classic bards. Last time I was playing WoW in the middle of Pandaria, most melees were hitting an ability almost every GCD (1.0-1.5 seconds) and even casters' spells were all shorter than 3-second casts, with rotations sprinkled with instants and bursts of super haste and shit.

[Swish]

Excessive bard play...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Carpal_Tunnel_Operation_Trauma_(Tittled).JPG/1280px-Carpal_Tunnel_Operation_Trauma_(Tittled).JPG

[MasterKiljaedon]

I dunno. I remember feeling way more pain twisting songs in eq then playing my wind walk monk in wow. Twisting 4 songs back in eq was painful and I was proficient enough on my monk to be in a heroic guild during tot on wow. Wow is more about timing abilities at the proper moment over repetitive twisting in eq so you can't really compare.

This server just has a weird stigma with bards. I was on my shaman in wk killing bandits when a bard asked to duo. I said sure and we did well with scarecrows and bandits for a good 3 level session together til he hit 18. He promptly thanked me then stipulated he was going to get new songs. I asked if he wanted to do a dungeon in a few since my monk and warrior friend were going to do a dungeon together. He said no because it is a waste of his time compared to swarming.

I felt I died a little on the inside but still people let those few bards put such a huge stigma on the dozens of killer bards on this server.

[Unidus]

I always curse other bards I see swarming. I think it's a scrub play style and ruins zones for people trying to solo/group for exp. Play your class and group like you are supposed to do.

[hopped]

I always curse other bards I see swarming. I think it's a scrub play style and ruins zones for people trying to solo/group for exp. Play your class and group like you are supposed to do.

This is like telling a Druid or a Necro to stop soloing because snaring or fear kiting is a scrub move. People use the mechanics their class has in the most effective way they can. I agree swarming should not be done in a way that ruins it for other people in the zone, but if it's empty or you leave the camps alone that people are sitting on I don't see a problem with it.

[fastboy21]

The problem with "swarm kiting" on p99, for the most part, is that it isn't what folks used the term for back on live.

On live "swarm kiting" referred to charm kiting huge social groups of mobs (i.e. pull 30 orcs, charm one to attack another, get the other 28 mobs to assist against your pet, break the charm with your pet at 1%, hit with one dot, and collect your exp). On some servers during live "swarm kiting" referred to AEing large groups of mobs (i.e. pull a large number of mobs, run in a circle carefully closing the radius until you could hit the mobs with your AE damage songs while twisting selos without getting hit).

What most people on p99 mean when they say "swarm kiting" is low hp aggro kiting. This, as far as I know, did not work on live the way that it works here.

Not only is the low-hp kiting somewhat unclassic (again, iirc low hp aggro or "blood aggro" from live correctly) but it takes very very little skill compared to the bard that is AEing or swarm (i.e. charm) kiting. Although it is not against the rules it is closer to an exploit than any display of bard uberness. You can't fault players for taking advantage of it as it isn't against the rules...but many folks flaunt it by doing it zones that cause disruption.

What is most disrupting about it isn't that it kills too many mobs, but that it takes a long time. As the bard and friend collect mobs and then slowly AE them down it might monopolize 50-60 mobs or more for 20 minutes or longer. If you do this in DL (as so many like to do) it deprives the entire grouping area around KC of mobs for noticeable periods of time. Not to mention the havoc if the kite fails as mobs re-aggro on their way home or are already aggro to other players.

People would definitely have more respect for the bards on p99 if they didn't disrupt zones so frequently or do so in such an exploitative way. Then again, the two player low-hp aggro team is only half bard most of the time...

[Laok]

I like to think I'm pretty good at Bard. I played one on live for almost 10 years and got him to level 85. I played pre /melody and post. /melody was nice, but as was stated earlier, made bards easymode. There was a large influx of PL'ed bard alts that weren't very skilled and it got to be difficult to get a group because nobody wanted a dumpster bard.

I feel like it is very similar at times here. Self PL'ed bards that don't take the time to properly learn the class coupled with the EXP penalty hurts, but I will say that most groups beg me to stay when the time comes for me to hang up my lute for the evening.

A good P99 bard should be able to mez 4 mobs. If there are more adds than that, it is probably time to run, enchanter or not.

As for pulling, I have yet to play with a group that can handle my pulling without stopping. With lull, snare, mez and Selo's, I can keep a mob with the party and mez park one in queue. On live with the advent of AA's such as Fading Memories and Bellow, bards became the hands down best pullers in game. A good monk can keep up with a bard.

We do have a few advantages over live though. This is pre-nerf. Bards mitigate a bit better and their agro hasn't been nerfed yet. I was tanking in CoM in my 40's with mediocre gear with a Shammy main healer. I have pulled, tanked, CC, snared, slowed, hasted and even main healed (Lots of downtime lol). Try mezzing 2 mobs while keeping agro on a third some time, it's fun in a twisted, massochistic kind of way lol.

I like to give my best to a group to show that there are some skilled players out there still. Plus, it's nice to get compliments from people that weren't sure about adding a bard to a group in the first place.

If you need just about any role filled in a group, find a good bard :)

[twizztid]

90% of the people hate bards because of swarming. Most of these people are lower-ish in level. The other 10% love them (and tend to be higher level) for all the crazy shit a bard can pull off.

I'm a level 60. I still wanna stab a bard when I see him being a piece of mass selfish garbage and no consideration for others pulling 100 mobs or more ( not even close to exaggeration ). Yeah bards do awesome stuff. I like them if they are performing well in my group, but not when they are just using there group powers to suck his own co..c.... you get the drift...

[Calibix]

Its 2 keystrokes every 3s. Thats hardly button mashing to be fair.

[Doors]

Bards are one the best and most abusive classes in classic both red and blue boxes.

[Laok]

It's rhythm and timing. Go figure a bard would need that.