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Originally Posted by Mankong
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Hi! As a person who has never even reached cap, much less touched a bard how would I go about playing a bard?
Any helpful low level quests? I plan on going Human. Any gear I should go for? How would I go about making macros and the like?
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Think of yourself as a mage more than a fighter, even though you can melee, most of the time you can often deal more damage using instrments while also being able to heal yourself and the group at the same time.
Be versatile and adapt your songs to the group you're in; If you don't need to heal and you have someone else doing crowd control you can whip out your weapons and stick to singing but if you lack a healer and get adds you might as well use your lute and do AoE damage, Healing and group haste for example, you'll get aggro from the add but your healing compensates for it long enough for the tank to take over once the main target is dead and by then you will have worn down its health a bit.
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The songs you typically twist changes with your levels but keep in mind that all songs increase in power with your skills and only a few (Charm and mez) are ever outgrown. By lvl 50 even your lvl 1 song will be super powerful.
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There are many ways to play a bard so the best thing to do is to learn what the songs do and change them according to what is needed for the moment and how you prefer to play, you can be a ranged or close range DPS guy if you want or a backline buffer/pocket healer, it's all up to you. You will mostly be the one who decides what the group really needs from you so it's good to know what other classes do and spot what they need help doing (Because many people don't play their class like a pro).
Almost all songs can be sung without instruments but by playing their associated instrument (if they have one) they will become twice as powerful.
While you will have many soloing options, what bards really do best is boosting the power of any group.
I've never used macros, i have five songs hotslotted for twisting and an assist button in the sixth slot. You typically twist three songs but you will need to change a song sometimes so the other two are to change to an alternatice sequence; You might for example need to mez an add suddenly or stop doing AoE damage if you have an enchanter mezzing, this way you can easily do that without interrupting the other songs.
You don't really need any special gear except protective gear since bards get slapped around a lot but the stats you want to increase are CHA and DEX, up toa point in the early game you will also want to build STR to be able to wear heavy armor.
When it comes to weapons you will never deal much melee damage so personally i primarily use weapons with debuff procs, keep in mind though that your songs are already generating tons of aggro so you have to learn to manage it unlesss you have a good tank.
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Something worth to remember is since you are mostly actively buffing the whole group, if anyone gets attacked you automatically end up on the mob's hatelist. So if a sand giant hits your mage you will be next so get selo's up and zone it, preferably take the mage with you.
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