Making a bard. Looking for advice.

[pijan]

Looking to make a bard and play him totally self relent. Not going to twin him out at all. Any tips on playing a bard with no gear? Should I focus on kiting? What stat allocation should be used knowing I'll have only self found gear?

Any just general tips? Never played a bard.

[Darkyle]

There is nothing really different to playing a bard with no twinking as gear really doesn't make that much difference to a bard (outside of raiding resists etc but that's obviously a different ball game). You can kite to 60 naked and you can group near on naked too, bard melee dps isn't the greatest and sometimes using your instruments for the mods are more useful than the 10 pt dmg you'll do to a mob.

[Legidias]

Basically max STA (maybe 5 or 10 points in STR to carry loot / gear). Ignore dex / cha.

instruments are very helpful, and the mistmoore drums / lute are your priority / will last you a long time until you really need the higher instrument mods. Until you DW (and maybe after), you can keep weapon out for majority of a fight, and just swap in the instrument right before song lands to get instrument bonus but still fight with weapons out.

if you reeeeeally wanted to, you can swarm kite starting at 2 with the first PBAE dot.

[pijan]

Basically max STA (maybe 5 or 10 points in STR to carry loot / gear). Ignore dex / cha.


Wiki seems to make Dex seem important for songs and cha for charming? Can I really ignore them? I was going to make a woodelf what stat allocation would be best for that?

[Legidias]

I did 5 STR, rest STA myself on my WE bard/

Dex is meaningless unless you really want those procs (which you wont have much of since non-twink). Yes, it does help your songs with missed notes a bit, but missed notes arent fizzles; they cost no mana and you can just recast with like 0.1 sec delay.

Cha is more of an ongoing arguement. I personally don't believe it affects bard charm or mez in the least bit (through personal obserations). Cha DOES help with critical lull resists, which is important because bard pulling is pretty prolific early on and mid career. However, CHA gear is extremely cheap. For example, a +30 CHA head piece is ~500p. You can look at cheap enchanter cha gear for examples, but you really dont need CHA that badly as long as its over 100 at least. Later on, like 30+, you might want a CHA set if you're really set on being a puller.

[Legidias]

Bard melee is fine (and arguably better than other melees due to self haste) early on an until 20's.

[demokatt]

I always end up dead when I kite with only strafing, probably because I always play on 4G connection so some occational lag spiked. So I always keep a sow from potion up too, so I dont have to press selos ;)

[Yasi]

Go CHA. The only thing that matters is lull not getting resisted, as wrong lull resisted = dead. I always believed it affects charm. So if it does indeed, thats another reason to go for CHA, but the lull one is the major one. Benefit of other stats not that big (yes, STR is nice, but not that big of an issue later on, same for STA hp bonus).

Melee is indeed not too strong later on as you lack double attack/extra attack (backstab, flying kick etc.) and have lower skill caps for melee skills.

Bard only weapons offer nice dmg/delay ratios and some decent procs, but they don't make up for the lack of double attack. Furthermore, once you get your epic, you'll want to use it all the time and the 16/26 ratio gets worse once you're in Velious - and so does your melee dps.

AoE strafe kiting is boring and for morons (and was fixed on live at some point for good reason). Also it is annoying to anyone else in the zone and bad for the reputation of Bards of Norrath Ltd. So don't do it.

Find a group. Bards are awesome in groups. Everyone loves bards in groups. If needed, you can also charm kite or simply dot kite later on.

[Raavak]

I always end up dead when I kite with only strafing, probably because I always play on 4G connection so some occational lag spiked. So I always keep a sow from potion up too, so I dont have to press selos ;)You learn to be very sensitive to lag spikes... you can notice when someone zones in. If you are swarm kiting expect lots of deaths, but the exp you get is almost gross its so much.