Being a bard on this server rocks now.
The way twisting works is great. It's better than it was for a long time on live, Haynar actually managed to fix the "song fades as it lands" bug which took forever and a day on live. The dude is just awesome!
Instruments affect the power of songs, and even if you switch out the instrument the song retains its modifier. So instrument twisting is a great and viable tool now.
The things that are not working are mostly server-wide, and not bard specific. Mob runspeed and large hit boxes does hinder AE kiting and fear kiting. Mobs not being social also screws with the swarm version of charm kiting (regular charm or reverse charm kiting still works).
Manasong is on its way to being returned to its classic form, and then there will only be one thing left to fix (that I can think of);
Bard Aggro. On live, I've always struggled as a bard for aggro, I always wanted to be a tank but as soon as someone else in the group sneezed I would lose aggro. After many acquisitions (Blade of Carnage, Hooked Shan'kor or whatever the veksar weapon was called, and later the DoN camp weapons with enraging blow augs), I was finally able to hold a little bit of aggro. This is because in the bard code, there is a massive modifier reducing any kind of hate a bard can produce. The only hate a bard was allowed to create was with damage, and pure hate procs. All other indirect hate (debuffs, slows, snare, haste, heals, stuns) did absolutely nothing. There were and probably still are many threads on the live forums or the concert hall on how best to acquire aggro as a bard, and they all involve a lot of work.
On this server, the bard code does not seem to have this modifier. One mez, one slow or one proc from a weapon and I steal aggro. It's not just from warriors, but from everyone. If I instrument twist 2 AE dots and slow/snare and heal song, no one can take aggro from me for more than a couple seconds (they steal it, and then the server ticks and my dots take effect and I get it back).
I am not complaining. I love holding aggro, but in all honesty, it's not classic. And that should supersede any other arguments about what to do. It is also a double-edge sword, when kunark comes out with the AE resist songs, bards are going to die very fast unless this modifier comes in.
I probably got a bit carried away with this thread but I was inspired.
cheers!
Astucexx Subterfuge
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