LifeAlert is such a guild. I'm an officer, so if you see one of my characters online, I can invite you; otherwise, you can do a /who all LifeAlert and send tells to people asking if any officers are online. We're well-populated and have a lot of low-to-mid level players.

As for the original question, both bards and rogues are highly sought-after for groups, but bards are a lot less monotonous to play. However, they're also a pain in the ass to play, as you constantly have to be twisting songs. If you want to play a bard, though, you should have little trouble finding groups (and unlike a rogue, if no groups are available, you can solo).

So maybe this comes from my viewpoint as an enchanter, but I really just don't see how bards stack up at higher levels.

I guess enchanters and bards are pretty comparable for mana regen and crowd control. But enchanters get 65-70% haste compared to 45% bard haste - that's 15% faster killing right there, not to mention a charmed pet (even a post-nerf LB one) doing 40-50 dps, and 65-70% attack slow for tough mobs (very useful with no shaman) and stuns to interrupt casters. Plus your party has a much bigger chance living when the puller fucks up and brings 5+ mobs with an enchanter (although its probalby not great with either). And the cherry on the cake is we don't bring a 40% XP penalty.

Don't get me wrong, I love playing my twink bard. And bards are without doubt faster levelers with AE kiting and much more useful on raids with twisting mana regen and resist buffing songs. And I'm sure the bard epic will make things much more competitive.

Thanks so much guys for the insight... i'm going to keep my Bard and just go with it. I'm looking so forward to playing a game where so many things actually "matter"...

I miss that so much about games. The way armor is obtained, the dependency on others, camaraderie, etc.

If you ever need anything the name is Muligan, though I am no longer a cleric and probably not as "needed" in more emergency situations, but I have and am always happy to help.

Muligan
Bard of P99
Form Dark Elf Cleric of Lanys

just a disclaimer, in a full group, a bard should be a 5% exp penalty for each person in the group, if I understand it correctly.

err like 6.7%, i can't do maths on saturday.

Not exactly. The bard experience penalty does not transfer to other group members directly. when the game divides up experience when a mob is killed, the only thing the game cares about is how much pure total experience each member of the group has.

Group member A has 5000 total experience
Group member B has 5500 total experience
Group member C has 6000 total experience
and Group member D has total 5500 experience

The game will award the largest portion of experience to group member C because that member has the most experience. Group members B and D will receive the same amount of experience (the second largest portion) and group member A will receive the least amount of experience.

Group member A could be a level 32 warrior or a level 28 bard, or a level 30 cleric.

The moral of the story is (stolen from the wiki) group with people who have similar exp totals.

*shrug* don't bard song hastes stack with regular spell hastes? Bring em both or bring a Shm (who can give 50% haste as well) and then you get a double shot of haste :O.

Be a rogue like me.

Normal bard haste does NOT stack with enchanter haste. In Velious, two new bard songs, Melody of Ervaj(lvl 51 5% haste) and Composition of Ervaj(level 60 10% haste), are added which will stack with any form of haste but will not not break the haste cap. However, currently there are only 2 flavors of haste, Item haste and Spell haste(all bard songs fall under this category for now).

No. But all stat buffs and damage shields on haste songs stack with everything.

Bards 51 snare slow is 35/65% @ L60 but its also a huge AGI and AC debuff that stacks with cripple but gets bumped off as long as a larger slow or snare is on the mob.