Bard starting stat points
 

I keep hearing and reading different things about where to put points in as a bard during character creation. I don't intend to raid with this toon but mostly just solo and/or group for xp/loot camps.

I don't buy the idea of stamina being worth the points, I don't see how having those last 80 hp at level 60 would be a huge game-changer.

Can someone who has played a bard extensively comment on the pros and cons of putting all my points in dex vs. charisma?

dex helps with missing notes and procs, cha for lull. i know ya said ya dont plan to raid or anything but even still resists>HP>rest doesnt matter. pretty much how ya gear a bard, sta still wonderful at 60.

I went cha, probably in large part because I had been playing an Enchanter. Cha reduces crit lull failures. That's usefull if you like to dungeon solo or duo. Not very important in 6-man xp groups in my experience, though -- an xp group can handle some adds.

If you end up hitting 59 there's a +45 cha buff song, if you get the epic it boosts that to 81, and the epic has +20 cha on it directly. So if a crit lull fail would be a real pain I can use that song, and in that case I'm solidly over 200 cha and I think the starting points have little impact.

Supposedly cha helps mez and maybe charm resists some, but I think crit lulls are the only place it's likely to be notable for a bard.

Dex supposedly reduces bard-fizzles. I don't have a good sense of how much -- I always just recast the fizzles and don't worry too much about it. I wouldn't hate having more dex to proc quicker.

I think sta is a good default recommendation. If I rerolled I would probably be most tempted by sta or cha.

hi.

i mained a bard on live, and remember all the fun math that was posted on the concert hall forum back in the day. they wanted to figure out how cha worked and it was a mystery for a long time. it was discovered that cha has no effect on mez.

cha decreases chance of critical resist on lull, and increases average charm duration. it was also thought that some combination of dex and cha together determined how often missed notes would occur. dex decreases rate of missed notes and determines rate of weapon proc ofc.

now, my argument: charm duration is not unimportant, but remember that no amount of cha will push this duration beyond the 18 second maximum. bard gear also has a ton of cha on it, and it's not difficult to raise this stat up to a decent level even with normal midlevel gear on. critical lull resist is much more important, but again keep in mind that there is already a lot of cha on bard gear to begin with. at level 59 you get a song that will increase cha like that other poster said, and if you get epic that 1.8 singing mod will increase 45 to some ridiculous number. i do not recommend putting points into cha.

missed notes are like spell fizzles, except not nearly as detrimental. fizzles for other classes have a mana cost to them which makes them worse than missed notes. missed notes also happen at the start of a song, so it's not like you're waiting x seconds and have a huge amount of lost song upkeep time due to missing notes. it's something you generally notice immediately and can rectify right away, making missed notes more of a nuisance than anything else. dex increases rate of weapon proc which is amazing, particularly when you have your epic and other raid weapons with top-tier procs on them. but similar to cha, bard gear always seems to have a ton of dex on it. dex might be a worthwhile place to put ponts into with raid gear in mind. one of the best songs we got in luclin was the dex song, and it sucks we'll never get it here lol.

we get 25 points at character creation, and at 60 each point of stamina gives 4hp. that's 100hp, not 80. this is on par with an amazing piece of raid gear. and if you are gearing to prioritize resists over hp, you'll have like ~1.4k hp with like 1-3 good raid items. that's what i remember running around with anyway, with my resist jewelry and epic back in velious on live. 100hp is a decent chunk of your total hp. i absolutely recommend putting all points here, even over dex. because as we all know, sta gear is never an easy find- unlike dex and cha.

so i think you should put the points into sta.

Personally I'd go STA. A little extra dex/cha isn't a huge deal and I recommend dex/cha on a lot of classes. On my bard survivability was the biggest thing, never felt like I had enough HP since as long as you can survive your utility kinda takes over from there.

Exactly , that’s why said resists>hp>rest. All that matters is surviving

Adding a *much* more casual voice. The only stat I’ve been frustrated with while leveling is Strength. Wood Elves start out with a measly 70 STR, which after some plate armor and some coin loot, you’ll quickly hit encumbrance which is a drag.

Yes Selo’s is still fast, yes you have spells that can raise STR, etc - but it sucks when even with weight reduction bags you’re always teetering on the edge of being slow.

Obviously if you have actual good gear (I do not, mostly self-looted stuff), or play in groups where someone can toss you a long lasting strength buff, it’s not so much a problem. But honestly it’s the only stat that I saw a concrete quality of life difference in.

How much benefit does a Bard get from STA though?

10 points at creation = 10 HP at level 60?

Read above - someone already said it. 25 STA at creation is 100 HP at 60. That's not insignificant for a class that basically just needs to survive since their charms/dots/aoes do all of the work.

Charisma is the best choice in my opinion. Lowering the chance of having a critical resist when you are trying to lull non trivial things when you are under duress is going to be more beneficial than dex/sta/str. Sure there are times where you can swap out for a bunch of cha gear and play cha song to max but more often than not, you are not afforded this time.

If you play your bard at a serious clip, missed notes and to a lesser extent the cast bar bug is annoying but you will recover from them so quickly, its not a noticeable part of your gameplay.