A few bard questions

[Splorf22]

1. More curiosity than anything, since I don't think my L18 bard is going to be getting his epic any time soon, but is the epic primary only? Not being able to use the Breath of Harmony would suck.

2. My bard has been using Kelin's AoE Mez to do some ridiculous shit. But the duration seems really horrible - maybe 1 tick instead of two? If I am mezzing, I cannot twist ANY songs. If I am tanking/mezzing and I get bashed, it's open season on me. Any suggestions? Or does this mez just cap at L30 like the wiki claims and everyone uses the single target one?

3. What are some standard group twists at L20-30? I've been doing Anthem, Regen, Chords mostly. Is guardian rhythms worth it? Seems to be just a bit of MR/AC.

4. Looking ahead, is it just me or is the 32 bard mana song really crappy? It seems to be a pulse of mana, so if I am not tanking (been tanking a lot recently, <3 fungi) and doing a 3-4 song twist that's 1 mana pulse every 1-2 ticks, or clearly worse than clarity.

5. The server ticks don't seem synchronized like they used to be. Like a year ago I had a different bard (never mind) and when I would use Chords I would get like 5 lines of aoe damage spam at once. Now it doesn't happen that way. This makes the Kelin's problem worse because the mobs will break mez at different times and I will just get chain bashed for 10 seconds.

6. It seems like bash interrupts my songs even when I'm not stunned? WTF is up with that.

[Kender]

AE mez is crap. resist rates are insane. at level 50 i couldn't ae mez greens due to resists. it'll only get you agro and killed

mana song for bard is pulsed until you get cantana at level 55. until then it's more of a downtime song, or used if healers are low mana, or in a caster heavy group.
however... then you can cantana and 3 pulse the level 32 mana song for insane mana regen

[Splorf22]

Is that the level cap? Also I just found out the Psalm of Warm and Elemental Rhythms don't stack. So what do you guys play for resists during dragon raids?

[Neryn]

3. What are some standard group twists at L20-30? I've been doing Anthem, Regen, Chords mostly. Is guardian rhythms worth it? Seems to be just a bit of MR/AC.


It all depends on who's in your group. If there's no slower or snarer, you can twist Selo's Consonant Chain. If your warrior has aggro issues, you can twist Chant of Battle to give him some extra dex (it should stack with your party haste song).

Guardians rythm may be worth it against casters. Can also use Crission's Pixie Strike to interrupts casts.

Is that the level cap? Also I just found out the Psalm of Warm and Elemental Rhythms don't stack. So what do you guys play for resists during dragon raids?

Depends on wether the dragon has an AE fear you want to resist. If he does, twist Guardians Rythms and Elemental (or Purifying) Rythms (depends on the element you want to resist). If he doesn't (like Trak), you can twist the Purifying song and something else : DS song, rune song, haste, whatever. Depends on whether you're in the MT group or melee dps group.

[Arrisard]

1. More curiosity than anything, since I don't think my L18 bard is going to be getting his epic any time soon, but is the epic primary only? Not being able to use the Breath of Harmony would suck.

The Singing Short Sword can be equipped in both the primary and secondary slots. The innate instrument effects will only be utilized when equipped in the primary slot until just a bit before Luclin when it can be held in either hand and still have the instrument bonuses applied.

2. My bard has been using Kelin's AoE Mez to do some ridiculous shit. But the duration seems really horrible - maybe 1 tick instead of two? If I am mezzing, I cannot twist ANY songs. If I am tanking/mezzing and I get bashed, it's open season on me. Any suggestions? Or does this mez just cap at L30 like the wiki claims and everyone uses the single target one?

No idea what the actual level cap may be on it, when it was changed I was already 60 and never looked into it.

Kelin has always had a short duration around 3 seconds. Barring resists, you could lock any number of mobs down but you'd have to constantly manually reapply it. It was a dangerous song to use, though, as you mentioned. One resist could ruin your day proportionately to the number of mobs you were mezing. The resist factor is by design, there's a thread around somewhere for it, but it's intentionally useless, to sum it up. If you're still at a level where it's reliable, have at it because it won't last.

Otherwise you'd have silly situations, like oh say, pulling VS to the zoneline and having 2 bards control the entire train/zone with no real danger. :D

3. What are some standard group twists at L20-30? I've been doing Anthem, Regen, Chords mostly. Is guardian rhythms worth it? Seems to be just a bit of MR/AC.

What you're fighting and who you're with will determine ultimately what you will be playing. I know that's a bit of a cop out answer, but it's true, even with the greatest hits like regens and haste. The more you level, the more songs will have overlapping effects with not only your groupmates' buffs/debuffs, but your own songs as well. Just know your songs and trust your judgement.

4. Looking ahead, is it just me or is the 32 bard mana song really crappy? It seems to be a pulse of mana, so if I am not tanking (been tanking a lot recently, <3 fungi) and doing a 3-4 song twist that's 1 mana pulse every 1-2 ticks, or clearly worse than clarity.

It is what it is. Stacking the pulses, it's better in mana regeneration than clarity (actually better than C2 at it's leveled max), but obviously you can't play anything else in that circumstance which is more for downtime unless you're super caster heavy. In a 4 song twist, one pulse of CCC out of four is still around 2.5 mana per tick at base value. I really don't like to say it's better or worse, since it stacks - infact it "stacks" with everything, which lets it stay relevant even after you get the 55 upgrade.

5. The server ticks don't seem synchronized like they used to be. Like a year ago I had a different bard (never mind) and when I would use Chords I would get like 5 lines of aoe damage spam at once. Now it doesn't happen that way. This makes the Kelin's problem worse because the mobs will break mez at different times and I will just get chain bashed for 10 seconds.

6. It seems like bash interrupts my songs even when I'm not stunned? WTF is up with that.

Yeah, those suck.

Also I just found out the Psalm of Warm and Elemental Rhythms don't stack. So what do you guys play for resists during dragon raids?

The Psalms don't really truly become relevant until you get your hands on an SSS, to be honest. Pre-epic it was pretty standard, though, with the rhythms set and a drum. As for which songs I play during which dragons - again, it depends. The particular effects of certain AEs like dispelling, rune components of certain songs, buff/debuff order on myself/groupmates, and song range order are the biggest concerns that have to be considered.

[Splorf22]

Wow thanks for the answers guys. I am definitely enjoying Dramor right now as basically I get to play both my warrior and enchanter at once, albeit in a slightly gimped way ;D

So stacking Guardian/Elemental Rhythms with Selos drum at 60 should give 35*2.4 = 85CR/FR/DR/PR and 170MR ? The MR number is impressive but the other resists not so much. Combined with Circle and DS that only comes to +162. Somehow I expected more. I guess for say the Queen in Chardok I'd just sing Psalm of Warmth and melee.

Right now at 25 my base twist for melee mobs is Selos Consonant Chain, Psalm of Warmth, Healing, and Denon's (when grouped with an enchanter, otherwise swap the Psalm for Jonathan's / Anthem). For Casters I tried using resist songs but I never resist anything even with 100+, so now I basically just spam Kelins (I guess Crissions in 3 more levels) and pray for interrupts as mobs at 25 cast pretty fast.

Four more questions:

7) How well do bards tank at 50+ ? At 25 obviously the fungi fixes everything. At least in my experience on Sak whether or not the mob is slowed totally annihilates any AC/HP difference, and it really doesn't seem that high anyway: our wiki quotes Arrisard at 880AC, Sakuragi at 960, and Sworen at 980 (although all those numbers are off, Sak is like 985 in raid gear). I would think that a Bard with a fungi tanking a 35% slowed mob would do substantially better than a Warrior tanking a 0% slowed mob, plus the bard has no aggro issues with Selos CC. On Sak I was never able to taunt off a bard doing Selos CC. Granted Sak had like 130 unbuffed dex, but it feels like SCC might have the same aggro as a regular slow?

8) Do the unsynchronized ticks make mez/charm durations more consistent? (Model A: every bard song lasts 18 seconds, or Model B: the NPCs are on separate threads which so its even more random than before).

9) Stop dodging my question arrisard! It's reasonable that there is no 1-size-fits-all set of songs, but there should be a few different common twists for different levels/situations.

10) Assuming that you are grouped with an enchanter/shaman and don't have to sing haste, is the Epic really that much better than the Breath of Harmony for xp groups? Its 80% on the stats that arguably are the least important (no mana regen, no attack/movement slow, no haste) and you lose an entire song in the Niv's click. 10/18 probably isn't that much worse than 16/26 for melee damage, although of course you are losing out on a ton of stats.

[Splorf22]

11) I seem to be missing notes ALL the time. Like if I had to guess I miss notes a solid 25% of time on Solons Song of the Sirens at 27.

12) I charm solo a lot on my enchanter so of course I experimented a bit with it on the bard. I have no problem with charming in groups (usually with 1 add i just charm instead of Kelins) but solo it utterly sucks without root. If i snare thing two to make recharming easier, it comes for me and doesn't attack the other. Even 1 add just utterly screws me, although I suppose it gets better with Crissions at 28. I even though well, I can just run away while recharming but it seems the hitboxes here are so fucking big that doesn't work well. I'm curious if anyone has really gotten this to work.

[Kender]

charm 1 snare other. stay at max snare range while pet does the beats. recharm when it breaks and send it back to snared target. resnare repeat. you can also add in chants and regen as needed. always make sure the primary target is snared though, makes it easier

alternatively you can fear kite with a charmed pet helping, but you will take a few hits while recharming

[SirAlvarex]

Awhile ago (over a year now I guess?) they changed the ticks on bard songs to be 3 ticks. This doesn't affect some songs (like selo's and mez), but does affect all damage songs.

You'll miss notes a lot, it just happens. Raising your DEX helps, as does raising the songs relevant skill. I haven't done any experiments to see if playing with an instrument helps or not, but anecdotal evidence screams it doesn't help.

As for Charming, I have a guide in these forums about how I'm able to charm like-factioned mobs. Basically the idea is to keep re-charming the same mob, so as to not build up any aggro on mob2. That way it'll only take a single hit for your re-charmed pet to get aggro.

I haven't tried charming in dungeons except with greens, so can't help you there on strategies.

I've been able to tank LCY and other stuff in KC on my bard at 55. I wouldn't say clerics love it, but it's doable. You just have to be really good at locking down adds, and chain-mezzing/slowing greatly hurts the mobs DPS.

As for a goto song lineup, mine has always been:
1. Haste
2. Mana Song
3. Health Regen Song
4. Snare

Throw in Mez and Charm for crowd control, and that'll leave you one more slot for Selo's and a "flavor of the battle" song.

For solo, I go with:
1. Snare
2. AE Fear
3-5: Single target dots
6. mez
7 charm/selo's song of travel
8 selo's

For raids:
1. Mana Song
2. Regen song
3. Haste
4. Guardian Rhythms
5. Whatever other resist song you'll need
6. Charm
7. Mez
8. Selo's

As you can see, Charm and Mez are mainstays. I like to mez in a group, but every once in awhile you'll run into a groupmember who loves to assist the bard. In those situations, Charm becomes the best CC possible. The rest are my typical lineups, but I'll switch them up as need arises.

As for the Mez ticks. I've never noticed a difference in when mez breaks as opposed to "server ticks". Typically I can always keep 5 locked down, no matter where in the server tick I started. Buffs seem the same way. So I don't think you can game the system that way.

[Splorf22]

OK recharming the same mob over and over definitely helps. I've been owning Mistmoore with that; I'll have to try an indoor zone.

[falkun]

1. Primary (see Arrisard's post)
2. Duration is 1 tick (6 seconds between ticks). My advice is to repeatedly recast this song and twist nothing else. Its great at locking down a TON of mobs, but think of it more like chaincasting stun indefinitely than a mez (except doing damage breaks the stun, so it won't work for AEing).
3. Hymn/Anthem/Selos slow/Chords sounds pretty "standard" as long as you aren't trying to CC.
4. No buff is a mixed blessing, as Arrisard points out. Sure it sucks that it's only when it ticks, but that allows it to stack with EVERYTHING. I believe to be equivalent to clarity you need to cast it every other song, something like haste-mana-slow-mana-haste-etc, but its been a while since I've done the math on it. At end-game, there is no mana regen that compares to 55manasong + 3x 32manasong twists.
5 & 6. Yup.
7. Culprit has tanked lots of seb just fine. Clerics will complain because you'll have ~3khps instead of 5k, but you also provide mana regen, so they shouldn't have to complain. I wouldn't want to tank Juggs, but krups aren't too bad.
8. Songs last 3 ticks (except special ones like AE mez), and once it lands, its good. You won't have "early" charm or mez breaks. I've gotten the feel for charming. For me, 3 ticks is four songs (the 5th is the recharm (charm-twist-twist-twist-twist-charm). But I can judge about where I'm at if I got bashed or had lots of missed notes or something. I've gotten really good at recharming just as the old one fades so I take a single melee round or less between charms. Its much more calm than the Russian roulette enchanters play with hasted pets.
9. Melee party: haste + mana regen + mob slow (usually has -AC mod too) + whatever. Caster party: mana song (pre-55, as often as possible) + self haste + applicable resist debuff(s). Raids: Resists + mana + Runes. If you have the mana, charm > mez. In my perfect group, I'm puller and CC, and someone else gets to worry about haste/slow so I can pull faster. Feel free to pull multiples and CC them on the way back to camp. Get to camp with 1 mob (maybe 1 and a charmed pet) and CC as the others filter in. Don't go all monk and ONLY solo pull.
10. IMO, epic resists/stats > Nivs. Also, epic STR+ATK still stacks even if the haste doesn't.
11. It sucks, I think my least favorite song is McVaxius' Rousing Rondo, IDK why but I fizzle that song all the time.
12. Alternate charm. Charm resets aggro, so charm the other guy when charm wears off to keep them fighting each other. Charm mob1, send on mob2, DoT mob2, charm mob2, send on mob1, DoT mob1, recharm mob1. The DoT damage will still go off even though the mob is now an ally. And they'll beat up on each other instead of you because charm cleared all the DoT and charm aggro.

[Arrisard]

7) How well do bards tank at 50+ ? At 25 obviously the fungi fixes everything. At least in my experience on Sak whether or not the mob is slowed totally annihilates any AC/HP difference, and it really doesn't seem that high anyway: our wiki quotes Arrisard at 880AC, Sakuragi at 960, and Sworen at 980 (although all those numbers are off, Sak is like 985 in raid gear). I would think that a Bard with a fungi tanking a 35% slowed mob would do substantially better than a Warrior tanking a 0% slowed mob, plus the bard has no aggro issues with Selos CC. On Sak I was never able to taunt off a bard doing Selos CC. Granted Sak had like 130 unbuffed dex, but it feels like SCC might have the same aggro as a regular slow?

In a pure tanking comparison, bards fall a tad behind rangers while still being much better than priests or intelligence casters. But like you said, there's more to it than a straight skills comparison when you take into account our various utilities if they are a part of an "either-or" comparison. A consistent 35% slow is a scale turner on it's own, as you said. I think we're very comparable if not preferable in that kind of "either-or" situation, especially in groups without heavy slows.

Overall I've never had trouble tanking anything that was typical of an exp group for my level, but I also focused more on AC HP and wasn't one of them DEXCHAAGI hippies. With a few gear switches I have on me, I can pull 940ish AC with similar HP (2400ish) but lose out a bit on the resists/dual wield. I could do even more AC, but then I'd start eating more into my big HP slots and those trade offs just don't seem as appealing since bards come light on HP. While still tough, juggs are a bit less of the wrecking force they once were.

8) Do the unsynchronized ticks make mez/charm durations more consistent? (Model A: every bard song lasts 18 seconds, or Model B: the NPCs are on separate threads which so its even more random than before).

It's been pretty consistent for me, I really only get message desyncs on large PBAE spam.

9) Stop dodging my question arrisard! It's reasonable that there is no 1-size-fits-all set of songs, but there should be a few different common twists for different levels/situations.

Mes and DA are always up, and both Selo's if outdoor or lull + invis if indoor. Sometimes I'll switch in charm for lull or invis or one of the selo's if it's called for.

Then for the other four slots in experience groups, cover any snares/slows/hastes that need to be done, then regen(s), and then I add whatever pieces of flair suit the group the best depending on the melee/caster ratio in the group or resists if it's a caster rich mob area. Raids, honestly, is mostly stacking mana in downtime, then maxing a single resist or two during the fight and some regen/rune if everyone hasn't maxed their buff slots by then. Soloing, that can go a whole bunch of different ways depending on what you want to do.

10) Assuming that you are grouped with an enchanter/shaman and don't have to sing haste, is the Epic really that much better than the Breath of Harmony for xp groups? Its 80% on the stats that arguably are the least important (no mana regen, no attack/movement slow, no haste) and you lose an entire song in the Niv's click. 10/18 probably isn't that much worse than 16/26 for melee damage, although of course you are losing out on a ton of stats.

Unless the bard has no chance to melee at all every couple minutes for some reason, an epic bard will replace shamans on haste duty as well :cool:

Anyways.

The real deal breaker for me with Niv's was that it didn't stack with Psalm of Mystic Shielding. Pre-epic that song is ok, but becomes much more appealing when you have that singing mod available on the epic and becomes worth playing on it's own in the twist rotation and simply makes up for the unmoddable Niv's click and a whole lot more, enough to justify it that it'd get played for a lot of general exp group situations and any raid that called for MR. Otherwise ultimately you could just swap the BoH in for the old switch'n'click and have it all. Well, when it isn't busy not stacking with Shield of Song, either. So, yeah, I sold it a couple weeks after I got the epic.

11) I seem to be missing notes ALL the time. Like if I had to guess I miss notes a solid 25% of time on Solons Song of the Sirens at 27.

I haven't done any parsing, but my gut doesn't feel like DEX contributes enough to justify the loss of stats you'd have to give up to gain a significant decrease in missed notes. Even if I did I don't have anything to compare it to from Live to see if it's right or wrong, but it'd still be nice to know just how much that DEX buff helps, or rather confirm my suspicion it doesn't help a lot.

12) I charm solo a lot on my enchanter so of course I experimented a bit with it on the bard. I have no problem with charming in groups (usually with 1 add i just charm instead of Kelins) but solo it utterly sucks without root. If i snare thing two to make recharming easier, it comes for me and doesn't attack the other. Even 1 add just utterly screws me, although I suppose it gets better with Crissions at 28. I even though well, I can just run away while recharming but it seems the hitboxes here are so fucking big that doesn't work well. I'm curious if anyone has really gotten this to work.

I am terrible at charm soloing. Charm is awesome for me as a pulling and CC tool, but soloing with it the way people describe is just not my thing at all.

[SirAlvarex]

Charm doesn't clear all aggro. Maybe most if it, but not all of it.

For reference, do swarm kiting. If you have, say, 10 mobs in a swarm, if you charm mob A, he'll get beat on by the rest. If you then charm mob B, all the other mobs will attack mob B, but A will be coming for your lunch money unless you sent mob B on mob A.

If you have 2 mobs, it'll still take time for mob B to get aggro on mob A if mob A was previously charmed. While if you keep charming the same mob, it'll only take 1 hit to regain aggro.

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As you can see from the songs lists, each bard has their own favorite setup. I, for example, prefer to stay in camp and play CC/Regen, while Deejay mentions he prefers to chain pull. So our setups are both fairly different.

I've also found the shield song not worth it if I'm twisting 4+ songs IMO. That extra 20 damage is minuscule to the extra resists I can stack on, or the extra regen from the second clarity song. Especially since on raids almost everyone in my group has maxxed out their buff slots.

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Also, I didn't mention it, but the 3 drum single target DOTS are hellavu lot better DPS than melee'ing, atleast pre-epic. With Selo's drum, I pull off 182 damage every ticket, which equates to sustained 30DPS. I haven't tried the other dots on top of it yet, as usually my other two songs in a solo twist are fear/snare, but if those stack too you can get up to a sustained 40DPS. Which for a soloing bard, isn't too shabby.

This of course only works for a single bard on a mob, as the dots don't stack with themselves.

[Splorf22]

Alright, thanks for the answers guys! I think I have a pretty good idea of how I *should* be playing my bard at least :D