Goodness. That's why i was reponding to you directly. Bard dps is not rubbish. It can beat any other melee dps on group content.

Bard melee falls off hard in the 50s. If you can manage to get epic though I’d be curious what numbers a bard could put up with a good primary while using all 3 chant dots and their final lvl 60 dot

I love it when people talk to me like I don’t know how to play a bard. You quoted me out of context … where I was saying a blade of carnage vs swiftblade of Zek would be a waste of money on a bard … because our melee dps is rubbish.

My bards in game name is Troxx lol. I am well aware of what kind of dps is possible between charms, dots and all the other tricks. I would strongly disagree that “it’s better than any other melee dps in group content”.

I'll parse out some fights later. I would guess at equivalent gear levels, other melee would only start to win at the really high end ie. tuna and high tier tov weapons.

Friends don't let friends bard melee.

Here you go on swarming, I'm a newb and I can do it lol.

https://youtu.be/E76wrLoNclU

Well i like to keep friends of all play-styles and ethnicities. To each their own.

Now I'm curious on Bard DPS strategies ya'll have used.

ArbiterBlixen and Troxx what are your favorite strats for max DPS?

Thanks!

I’m not sure what’s fair game in this argument. I’d like to count all dps that would be added regardless of group comp all the way down to a solo melee (on blue mobs).

So if i was solo melee peak dps would probably be a pet, while running mcvax, a DS psalm, and a dot.

If no pets allowed mcvax, DS psalm, and 2 dots

^Skipping long duration dot (slow component) in both in favor of DS damage.

If DS damage doesn’t count, long duration dot and 4 twisted dots.

If going for absolute max personal dps? DoT stacking while punching with instruments : 1 minute level 60 brass dot, drum chants and aoe stings dot always worked out better than any combo with our pathetic melee. It’s a lot of instrument swapping and a PITA but it always worked out better. It’s really not possible to parse this anymore as dot dmg isn’t visible but you can run the math. 5 fully loaded dots with only one needing to be refreshed once a minute. Max dot damage can be calculated with instrument mod known and you can pretty well keep all 5 dots up most of the time. It’s decent dps but won’t beat out a true dps class at 60 (level needed for long dot). It is certainly less dps than my 60 paladin with NToV spear. Doing this in a group would be silly though because then you can’t do all the other important stuff you should be doing and the aoe dot (strong strings) will break mez on any cc’d mobs.

Solo with charm? Charm one against the other. Load 3 chants on the non pet. Charm the target you were just loading up with dots and sick it on old pet and load up dots … rinse and repeat. Dps solo this way effectively gives you the dps of whatever you’re fighting x2 plus your 3 chants. Depending on the content, this is actually very strong dps for as long as your mana holds out but you won’t be doing this in a group.

Granted I never got epic. Epic with its instrument mod with a NToV weapon and twisting the same dots while meleeing probably best but most bards on this server will never see their epic.

And no … in this particular discussion you can’t claim added group dps. Otherwise the healer is doing the most dps because without them you wouldn’t be killing anything.

Melee bard before epic is bad bard the overwhelming majority of the time. I can easily imagine a group setup where melee could be preferable but it is the exception, not the norm. After epic, between the universal instrument mod and the sweet proc … yeah I’d recommend having weapons out.

Melee dps contribution is minimal. Bards need to recognize what they are: mobile armor plated utility casters. Just because you CAN swing weapons doesn’t mean you should be.