Bard or Chanter End Game

[Wonka11]

Which of the two is better for groups? Both of them share a lot of abilities, each has things the other doesn't offer, and some spells dependent on their mechanics (songs vs spells, and having to recast songs constantly... not a bad thing, but something to note).

The question is, comparing an equally skilled bard vs chanter, which is better for the group?

Also, how do each measure against each other for soloing high level?

If you had to pick only one of them to group with for the rest of eternity, which would it be? (No dodging the question, please)

[godbox]

chanter I think everyone will say chanter for group and for best at lvl 50+ soloing

[azeth]

Depending on the bard's skill with her/her class, I'd have to favor the highest end Bard over the highest end Enchanter.

Bards are just irreplaceable when played correctly. You'll move so fast through grind mobs your head will spin.

As far as soloing, consider a Bard as a guarantee for 1.) ability to kill most anything you'd call an exp mob 2.) do it with little to no risk.

The real downside with bards is the exp penalty, but realistically I think it'd offset again if the Bard is on their toes pumping the group with stellar tunes.

[Supaskillz]

I Would take an ench in a group and ench are sorta better at soloing if you are talking about indoor, but you can swarm kite on a bard to 51 super fast if you are good at it.

[Glasken]

Join Date: Apr 2012

Lots of new forum names lately. I didnt think this server got so much press as to attract new users in troves.

[Wonka11]

Do Bards stop swarm kiting after 51 or is there better options available to them?

[godbox]

i been tellin anyone I know that has ever liked mmos to come to p99 I dont have anything against new mmos but, while they are certainly flashier and modernized, they feel somehow watered down at the same time which is pretty common feeling

[Ephirith]

i been tellin anyone I know that has ever liked mmos to come to p99 I dont have anything against new mmos but, while they are certainly flashier and modernized, they feel somehow watered down at the same time which is pretty common feeling

Agreed. EQ is 8 inches of raw, solid MMO right up your pooper; it hurts but you learn to love the pain.

No homo

Also bards look snazzy in that koada dal twink armor.

[Slave]

There are NEVER enough bards for raids. With good reason. Playing without Melody is an exercise in self mutilation. Exp groups = Enchanter. Raids = Bards.

[doacleric]

Agreed. EQ is 8 inches of raw, solid MMO right up your pooper; it hurts but you learn to love the pain.

No homo



This is the funniest thing i've read all month.

And its funny cause its true.

[Glasken]

Originally Posted by Ephirith View Post
Agreed. EQ is 8 inches of raw, solid MMO right up your pooper; it hurts but you learn to love the pain.

No homo



This is the funniest thing i've read all month.

And its funny cause its true.



+1

[somnia]

Bards are often a misunderstood class and to make matters worse most people are horrific at playing them. To get the most out of the class you must be very active and constantly adapting to the needs of the group which, without melody, often requires pushing buttons repetitively to "twist" songs or, in other words, have multiple songs running at once.

Lull, mezz, clarity, regen, haste, slow, some melee, SoW on meth, Snare on heroin, buff resists through the roof, resist debuffs, dots, fear, invis, levitate, charm, the list goes on and on. The only catch is a 3 tick duration for every song so you have to act quickly and decisively, clicking buttons quickly and adapting on the fly. Monk just pulled 3 casters who are AoEing your group? Switch to instrument and use a resist song for that element and when you get target on casters lock them down with mezz. Mezz also interrupts spells so locking mezz on a caster target prevents casting (watch aggro though).

If you like being very active, playing many roles on the fly, and people taking notice of your abilities then a bard may be for you.

Take note, however, that many people have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to grouping with bards. I think many people feel more comfortable dealing with enchanters because they know that all enchanters will bring a longer duration haste, mezz, and clarity so there is more room for error and laziness aka less risk in compromising the group's ability to maintain high DPS and manage bad pulls. This combined with the hybrid penalty often turns people off to grouping with bards.

[Kraftwerk]

Do Bards stop swarm kiting after 51 or is there better options available to them?

If you're a good Bard with a decent comp you can do BW, I used to snag 90% of bees and skeles (no gorillas too scared of Guller and different hitboxes) in BW pull them to my spot and take 'em out in ~20-30min of actual kiting. Add in 20-30min of gathering and you're looking at an hour. I stopped playing here at lvl 55 but even then I was still getting 2-3 blues per kite at that level. It requires 100% concentration though, and they sometimes drops gems/ruby crowns/saphnnecks. Not bad for zoning out to tunes while kiting for an hour.

[falkun]

Please note the following response is from a L56 Bard:

I'd rather have a top of the line Bard than a top of the Line Enchanter. I'd also rather play an end-game Bard than an end-game Enchanter.

Let's compare:
Raids: Bards pull, mana song (so we're one of the first rezzed), resist debuffs, pull team, group buff and mob debuff (for rare instances resists are a non-issue). Enchanters buff C2, GRM, haste, and mez (until giants screw with everything). Basically, one or two enchanters and a raid is set, while a raid can almost never have enough bards.

Groups: This is almost even. Encs can add a lot of DPS with a charm pet, but bards have all the intangibles that just make the group engine really rev up. Plus, a bard can do virtually everything except heal and tank for a group, so depending on your other group members, they are more adaptable than an ENC.

Solo: In the 50s, encs can level swiftly charming, while bards can still level swiftly AE DoT kiting. Encs do have a bit of an edge in dungeons with longer duration mez, mem blur, and both invis and IVU, but bards have an incredible toolkit of their own if played well.

I will say that I've seen more Encs burn out than bards, and the bard population is much smaller than the Enc population. From my experience as a bard in a raid guild, it looks like Encs really love getting to end-game, but then don't enjoy raiding while bards enjoy getting to end-game, and then enjoy being the jack-of-all-trades in raids as well.

[webrunner5]

A lot of Bards are as useless as tits on a Boar Hog. They just twist one song and go AFK half the time. Most people can't walk and chew gum at the same time, including me. SO I don't play a Bard and most on here can't either like they should be played. Give me a Chanter. Not that a Enchanter is easy either to play well but the twisting thingy is just too hard to do hours on end for most people. There is a reason Sony came out with Melody.

I am not knocking the really good Bards on here. All 30 of them. Done right, they probably are better than a Enchanter overall. Being able to run across a whole zone in like 20 seconds, Priceless.

[Splorf22]

Enchanter's opinion:

Group: All the bards that think they they are as good as an enchanter in a group are just fooling themselves (sorry Deajay). If the enchanter doesn't charm, then I'd say it's about even with perhaps a small edge to the bard if they are really good. If the enchanter charms, well, no amount of bard utility can make up for 125 dps. That's like 1.5 rogues. Having played a warrior and an enchanter I'm quite confident that any group that replaces me with a bard will kill more slowly (especially if that group has a mage or a shaman).

Raid: The problem is that Enchanters are so overpowered that Verant simply disabled their abilities for most raid mobs (obviously being able to keep Trakanon mezzed while your raid heals/cures itself would be ridiculous). Fear/Hate are actually a lot of fun as an Enchanter, but Sky is just terrible. I've tried a number of things to be somewhat more effective on single target bosses, but overall Deajay is right. Especially with the epic (and in Velious, with stun/mez immune Giants and Dragons) you absolutely need those two enchanters to buff you, and then they can go AFK and cook some food while the rest of the raid kills the boss.

Solo: Enchanter all the way. Bards can get great XP swarm kiting, but Enchanters can solo bosses for $ as well as leveling really fast too.

I will say that I've seen more Encs burn out than bards, and the bard population is much smaller than the Enc population. From my experience as a bard in a raid guild, it looks like Encs really love getting to end-game, but then don't enjoy raiding while bards enjoy getting to end-game, and then enjoy being the jack-of-all-trades in raids as well.

This is pretty accurate although Enchanters do get to have some fun farming.

[LizardNecro]

Best group I was ever in was a seb group with a bard and a chanter. Charmed hasted pets, and with c2 + mana song I could nuke all day and never run out of mana.
This greedy mage wants both in groups!

[Kevlar]

Bards are pretty weak in an xp group because what they add is limited to three things at once. A chanter haste and clarity is always active, even while he is dpsing with a charmed pet and locking down adds with mez.

On a raid bards are decent in caster groups, but they are pretty useless in melee groups as haste is taken care of by the chanters and what little a bard adds is more than replaced by any dps class. Without fading memories bards are far inferior to monk pullers and even necro or sk pullers indoors. Highsun is a fun spell, but dangerous. Don't try highsunning a summoning mob that has taken some damage. Its easy to lose corpses doing that in NToV.

[Ikonoclastia]

I had an enchanter for years on live and while they could do some pretty crazy things with charm they're pretty fragile and dying was common. The risk / annoyance of charming in groups usually outweighs the benefits and most importantly interferes with your primary group role, buffing and CC. Raiding was boring as hell.

Bards are a lot safer, more fun, more versatile and make the best pullers imo.

[SirAlvarex]

From a 51 Bard:

Solo: As has been said, swarm kiting is easy mode leveling 1-51. I've done Burning Woods, but I've yet to find a nice spot without roamers so it can be hectic. I still think Chanter's win here simply because I think charm-soloing is more fun than AE-kiting (having done both).

Chanters win in dungeons, as bard charm is so short that any error could mean death. You also can't teleport until you get an item that allows you to.

Group: Bards play the do-anything role. I've tanked pre-kunark dungeons, done crowd control, pulled, and of course been a buffer. I've only had one group that wasn't "Wow, this XP has been amazing", and that was a group at Assassin/Supplier in Lower Guk. We just didn't have enough mobs to kill with everyone else in the zone.

I've been replaced in a group by an enchanter twice after I burned out (Bard burnout is high in groups if you keep twisting 3+ songs on each pull), and both times (Royals in SolB) the group wiped immediately. Bard charm/mez is perfect for grouping, and bards can get beat on by 4+ mobs pre-50 charming/mezzing them all without getting interrupted. A bad break on a chanter is deadly.

Raiding: Similar to groups with bards. On the boss mobs our DPS is so minor that you'll be twisting resist songs + haste + regen with instruments to maximize everyone elses abilities. Burnout can be high here as well if you maximize your efforts on killing trash.

Non-Combat: Uber runspeed is so much fun that it trumps everything else. At 51 you get Selo's Song of Travel which combines 60% runspeed (more with drums), levitate, invis and see invis. Its a lot of fun flying above Kunark zones looking down on everything. This trumps everything else IMO :D

[Onshuu]

Bard. All day long.

[Pierth]

Join Date: Apr 2012

Lots of new forum names lately. I didnt think this server got so much press as to attract new users in troves.

Could also be word of mouth due to the recent F2P conversion for EQ live. Players may try it out for nostalgia and instead come here because of how much the game has changed over the years or due to not wanting to pay in the cash shop for different races/classes. I came here because I'm sick to death of all these solo-to-cap MMOs where it's nigh impossible to find people to group with. I could also care less about class homogenization/nerfs due to PvP, which I think leaves me with this, FFXI, and LOTRO.

[Kevlar]

I had an enchanter for years on live and while they could do some pretty crazy things with charm they're pretty fragile and dying was common. The risk / annoyance of charming in groups usually outweighs the benefits and most importantly interferes with your primary group role, buffing and CC. Raiding was boring as hell.

Bards are a lot safer, more fun, more versatile and make the best pullers imo.

You weren't a very good enchanter though. And Resolution was a shitty guild.

[Lazortag]

The hierarchy goes like this:

Giegue > Enchanters > Bards