How well can Bards solo level with melee?
 

I'm considering making a Bard since I've never played one before, mostly because 95% of the time I play solo and the 40% penalty always turned me off. However now with the hybrid penalties gone, I am considering making one.

One thing I am curious about though, is how well can Bards solo if they are NOT doing the big swarm kites, or the charm killing like Druids/Enchanters?

Is a Bard basically like a Warrior or Ranger when it comes to DPS, assuming they're using the same ratio weapons? Just with the benefit of having songs too for less downtime, haste buffs, speed buffs etc. ?

If I were to just use melee weapons and my buff / debuff songs, would I be able to solo grind quicker and/or easier than most of the other melee classes?

Fear kiting? amazing
Solo dungeon crawling? ganna take awhile. playing slow>self haste>ds>regen can get you a long way with shorter downtime

Untwinked? Not worth it when you have other much better options.

If you are super twinked, it can be very fun and effective to melee up to around level 40, since the downsides of no double attack don't really materialize right away and you have access to spell haste which can make up for a lot of what you are missing with double attack.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't melee a bard to 60, but it really just doesn't make any sense when fear kiting and swarming are a thing.

By fear kiting, do you mean Bards get a song that fears like Necros? So instead of casting fear then dots, as a Bard you would fear then just run behind the mob beating it with melee?

Pretty much, yes, but as a Bard you can still DoT while you melee

I solo melee'd with one of my bards that I twinked out. It was very good, zero downtime...till about level 51 or so, then just stick to charming / kiting

Why would you gimp yourself that way? Bard melee is terrible, for the same experience you could try to level a rogue with only rusty weapons.

bards get low melee skill levels, and they get DW but not double attack. They aren't really a melee class at all. Even if you don't swarm, your ability to kill well works better a lot of other ways, such as dynamic charming, single kiting, fear kiting, etc. Later in the game 3.5x chanting with the endgame chant with an instrument is actually really good DPS, in fact higher then epic rangers people say. Bards *can* do more DPS then most folks assume, but its not via melee.

This is all before your epic though.

There was a late Velious patch where bard melee skills were upgraded and they were moved to the same damage table as the non-monk melees. Verant explained that the goal was to bump bard melee dps up to being half of warrior dps. I think it's roughly in that ballpark. Maybe a little lower. The damage table change isn't applied to green server. I don't know if blue has the same bug.

As someone said before it's probably less of a gap at lower levels, where the other classes get less benefit from their double attack. Bard dots can add some damage while meleeing too.
My gut guess is significantly better than a rogue and significantly worse than a monk.
Bard charm has a significantly different feel to enchanter charm, because bards have a charm break and recharm every few ticks.

good bards dont melee (until epic)

charm a mob, attack another, load up w/ drum dots

when charm breaks, charm the other mob, load old pet up w/ drum dots

do this til both low, finish off mobs w/ drum dots