Bard One-on-One solo?

[Nagoya]

Just a out-of-curiosity question about one the classes I understand the least in EQ;

I obviously know that bard are King's of soloing with their kiting abilities. I also understand what a bard does in a group, but I never played one.

My question is so-forth: can they go one-on-one versus a white and just solo the mob in a relatively fast (read: faster than running in circles) way?

I'm not asking if it's a good way to xp or anything. Just curious how they would do it.

Charm another mob and make them duel?
Slow mob, haste self and melee is enough?

Say you're level 45 or so, waiting outside City of Mist when you get jumped by a blue gorilla; do you just selo/dot kite it? Do you zone? Or can you whack it down one-on-one relatively easily? (Let's cheat and say you'd have the perfect songs to do so memmed up :))

Once again, just because I don't know and I'm curious; nothing to do with the viability of such a strategy :)

Thanks bards if you can answer!

[Legidias]

Fear dot / melee = easy, single charm kite = easy (just keep charming mobs in alternate till both like 10%), if geared can slow / melee buff / dot, but why would you sit and tank it when you could just fear it and take 0 dmg

[Nagoya]

Thank you both for your answers!
That makes sense. Crazy how easy it sounds hehe. Damn bards I might have to finally play one at some point :)

[Arkanjil]

If you go the charm solo route, speed it up exponentially by dotting up the uncharmed mob. Once charm breaks, charm the dotted mob, rinse and repeat. It speeds up charm killing/efficiency quite a bit.

[Troxx]

Charm vs dots are your options.

Dots with instruments will do a lot more damage than trying to melee. Dots + snare + fear up to high 50s if you can't charm. At 60 you have enough dots (plus a 1 minute dot + slow) that I generally would just face tank while twisting dots. At 60 you can load up around 70dps in dots.

[Lhancelot]

The problem with leveling via swarmkiting as a bard is you miss learning how to group properly and use your songs depending on the situation.

Sure, you kill 25 mobs at once, and level extremely fast, but you also skip out on learning your class.

Unless you are an experienced bard player, and don't need to become familiar with your vast array of songs, you shouldn't focus only on swarmkiting for XP.

[Troxx]

I actually regret spending so much time swarming. I took breaks along the way to stop and smell the roses but even back when there was a 40% bard penalty the leveling was so fast that I missed out on a lot.

Now that the bard is xp capped 60? I barely ever play him.

The fun with p99 for most people is in the experiences up until level 60. Being level 60 is not inherently fun.

[Troxx]

Being level 60 is super not fun once you have got that weapon you always dreamed of and complete the Velious armor quests. My monk hardly sees any play time unless I am farming something fro an alt

I have my velious armor (8 pieces). The only weapon I've dreamed of is my epic which requires a 200k (now a very low estimate) scale or selling my soul to a raid guild (unlikely but not impossible) which will probably never happen. I farm really well. Trivial content I can pull 12+ mobs and simultaneously do 30-40dps to them all (>300 dps easily). Solo I can manage most anything given enough time -- including Seb minor named. As a bard, I do my best work in a group or raid. I've done all the realistic content possible on p99 without selling my soul to the fucked up raid scene we have here.

My solution? Play alts.

For most people the road to 60 IS the fun. Level 60 forces you to either join one of the big guilds, throttle back your efforts, or downgrade your playtime to chasing small upgrades here/there while saving cash for the gear or epic pieces you'll never see because of p99's raiding community.

Don't rush to 60.

[Lhancelot]

I have my velious armor (8 pieces). The only weapon I've dreamed of is my epic which requires a 200k (now a very low estimate) scale or selling my soul to a raid guild (unlikely but not impossible) which will probably never happen. I farm really well. Trivial content I can pull 12+ mobs and simultaneously do 30-40dps to them all (>300 dps easily). Solo I can manage most anything given enough time -- including Seb minor named. As a bard, I do my best work in a group or raid. I've done all the realistic content possible on p99 without selling my soul to the fucked up raid scene we have here.

My solution? Play alts.

For most people the road to 60 IS the fun. Level 60 forces you to either join one of the big guilds, throttle back your efforts, or downgrade your playtime to chasing small upgrades here/there while saving cash for the gear or epic pieces you'll never see because of p99's raiding community.

Don't rush to 60.

This paints a somber picture.

[Dolalin]

circle kiting is really the way to go. yes, it's tedious and takes forever to clear out a pull, but you're killing 25 mobs at a time.


I kited way more than 25 at a time in OT. More like 50, and yes this is post nerf. Your songs only hit 25 at a time, but as they die it hits new ones in the swarm, so your kill takes longer but most of the work is in the pulling. I would make huge pulls and just grind them down.

[fastboy21]

if you are intentionally melee'ing blue exp mobs then you are doing something very very wrong.

yes, if you are geared you can win...but it would be the least efficient (fear kiting, dot kiting, charm swarming, AE kiting) of any possible way to play a bard.

the only real exception i can think of is if you were in tight quarters and needed to melee something down...even then the strat would be melee (haste, slow, dot, etc.) mez/heal back to full, repeat. but you wouldn't do that just for exp.

[jolanar]

In theory bards make amazing melee soloers. They wear plate, have some pretty good ratio weapons, can cast haste and regen on themselves, slow and snare mobs. However in practice your dps just isn't there and your defensive skill aren't going to keep up either.

If you don't want to swarm, just group up. You can still melee that way most of the time anyways.

[Nagoya]

Just in case it wasn't clear enough from my first post, I was not planing to melee on a bard :p I was honestly just curious how you would deal with a mob jumping on you while you... well bards don't med but ... Whatever :p I have no idea how the class is played, but this is EQ so I still think you can be randomly aggroed? so I was thinking do you just Selo and run, or can you actually kill the mob down and get the XP and then continue whatever you were doing? :)

However the thread has perfectly answered the question thanks to all who participated! Even though I still don't know how to play the class I do agree that it is probably not an optimal solo-xp strategy - but that wasn't the question ^o^/

[Tann]

optimal solo-xp strategy

aside from mana loss via the 2nd charm song pretty much anything a bard does is "optimal solo-xp". even the least effective way a bard can solo is still above what any other class can do, IMHO because you have no down time, ever.

[Bluedarksun]

Bards are the most fun class to play. I played mine until 10 then stopped because I thought all they could do was AOE kite. Later I started back and have fear and chant kited my way to 48 and have had a blast doing it. Any melee done is to keep skills maxed, but since they are already, it’s business as usual.

[fash]

Indoor or if you can't fear kite for some other reason, you can melee and/or charm mobs on one another while mezing periodically to restore hp before continuing.