Bard Dots Stacking
 

60 with epic, if I want to keep lute of howler on so String with Epic, what Dots are best to use that stack? Thinking I could keep those in a rotation if fear kiting and while meleing? Also any quick tip to say what stacks or does not (any website that has this listed)? Like do all single target stack but not PBAOE and Single?

I believe all the dots stack with each other.

The only stacking concern I know of here is the 48 dot doesn't stack with the 54 snare, so use a single target snare for the fear kite.

You can fit 3x dots + snare + fear. Would do 59/48 and then for the third I think an epic modded Tuyens will be better than a lute modded chords of dissonance.

Every few cycles skip the third dot and use the 60 slow+dot instead.

I am curious how good the dps would be in a group from a bard quad dotting + melee

Probably bad but it'd be fun

its not bad w/ epic and some charming dmg, especially if the charmed mob is taking dmg from other mobs

i think a well played bard and necro would make for a sick duo...obviously not enchanter level but still very capable

I think roughly knight tier is the ballpark for just dpsing a single target. Here's a parse of my single target damage on a low blue; https://www.project1999.com/forums/s....php?p=3572137. Unfortunately you lose some dps on stuff that dies too fast or on higher level stuff (once stuff is 54+ or so you get resisted a significant amount with dots).

Arguably the bard is likely to be further from that potential for more of its lifespan -- no 41% haste for the bard from isle 5 in sky, I think the bard has a bigger gap between a cheapo tov weapon and a top weapon (e.g. https://wiki.project1999.com/Katana_of_Pain vs https://wiki.project1999.com/Nature%27s_Melody), prime hand drum and epic are expensive. At least the prime hand lute is more affordable, but of the two strong lute dots one doesn't stack with shaman/enchanter slow and the other is a level 59 song. The 60 bard dot is basically a 5-10 dps bump for being level 60.

I've only done a little bard+necro, would probably be fun making that work in various situations. We did a little bit of rooting a room of mobs in melee range of eachother, charm one, use ae dots, break the pet to kill once its low.

Well charming is charming so not really all that interesting
I was speaking more specifically to like , shaman + bard root rotting or something or even just regular xp groups using the bard for dps.
Since their dots are mana free and short they probably aren't as troll as necros who cast Pyro on mobs that die in 20 seconds

That's what I linked the parse of, just self melee+dot dps on a single mob. Although it was a longer fight than you'd typically see in a group.

But shaman+bard rot I think would work similar to that necro strat; root a few on top of eachother, shaman epic, bard ae dot, once it's all rooted if the bard has mana they mix in charm on whichever rooted mob has the highest hp.

Not sure why you would want to equip a lute if you're planning on Dotting, most of the dots are drum. It was mentioned prime hand drum is expensive, but you can put the epic in primary hand and use a secondary drum (selo's drum or walrus drum much more attainable and almost as good as DoTB).

Equip drum use Fufils and the chants of flame and frost for top dot dps. If you're good at twisting (better be if you're a 60 epic bard) then you can twist all 3 dots plus fear and snare (5 twist) without anything falling off.

With that said it would have to be a fairly unique encounter to employ this strategy. Not many things that you would want to fear kite at lvl 60 with an epic bard.

The offhand instruments are 2 handers but the prime hand is single hand. The p99 client wont let you put anything prime hand with an offhand drum. So with a prime hand instrument you can melee with two weapons and tap the instrument in right before the song lands. With an offhand instrument you give up melee altogether. The top two string dots are roughly equal to the two tuyens; 30 and 32 base damage on the strings vs 31 base damage on either tuyens according to the wiki.

I'm also a little curious what OP is fearing. I've done Yeldema and Gafala some on my bard, mostly for dragon head quests (https://wiki.project1999.com/Dragon_Heads and https://wiki.project1999.com/Living_Dragons). I didn't find them high enough value to seek them out, but did find them high enough value to kill if I happened to be there with a little time to burn when I was already farming stuff with my bard that needed transferred to my trader.

You are correct with traditional weapons but the bard epic is the one exception to this you can dual wield bard epic in main hand with instrument in off hand and toggle out an off hand weapon as you described.