Bard + ?

[Wattser]

So I have been playing P99 for a bit and have a few mid ranger characters. A friend of mine started up and dabbled with a few classes but loves the bard. Ideally we want to play together, but I can't think of a good partner for bard. He is really enjoying swarm kiting, and due to RL we will rarely be able to sit for hours on end in groups. Any suggestions?

[Tenlaar]

A bard can work as a partner for every class. One that I like a lot is shaman. Bard DoTs don't have an initial damage component so don't break root, which lets the bard + shaman combo stack a lot of DoT damage while root rotting. The bard regen + mana songs let a shaman keep truly ridiculous rates of mana regen going. The bard has the tools that a shaman is really missing- the ability to break camps (lull), really effectively CC (charm and mez), and snare. Really fun duo for dungeon camps.

Bard + enchanter is good. Crazy mana regen for the enchanter, double charmed pets, all the CC in the world.

Bard + a melee class isn't quite as fun to me but can also be done effectively with fear kiting and has practically no down time unless something goes real bad. Twisting snare, fear, haste, and a DoT that can be dropped to add in regen when needed will keep the xp flowing steady.

Bard + druid/wiz, they quad like normal but with the bard mana regen and after they drop a few nukes on the pack move in and use the AE DoTs to speed up kills. Druid/wiz meds while the bard pulls, good steady xp.

The versatility of a bard can make any duo workable.

[Rrasis]

A friend and I recently started playing and are doing a Monk/Bard combo, it's been pretty efficient so far into our 30's, probably not as efficient as Monk/Shaman but we don't have much downtime.

On harder mobs the monk will tank until he's around 30% and then FD it onto the bard, once the bard drops below 50% he'll start kiting it while the monk just runs behind beating on it, if the monk gets agro he just feigns it off and the bard keeps kiting. makes beating reds fairly easy especially when he's able to land a snare on it.

The biggest problem we found with it is if the bard has to mesmerize mobs it's almost impossible to pull the mob off him unless he just sits there not attacking. between slows, haste, constant regen, and a plethora of other song options we do quite a bit of dps together and when we have to pause it's only for a minute or two.

We did FoB 1 - 11, Kurns tower 11-20, tried Unrest for a while but it was always too crowded we probably spent more time there for the 3 levels then we did in SK for the 7, did South Karana from 23-30, bouncing around kunark at 30+ plowing through blues with ease. we'll probably have to start finding a healer or a group to join if we want to hit any kind of dungeons though.

I agree with Tenlaar, just about any class can be paired with a bard a lot of it depends on your play style. If you want to be constantly doing something I would pick a melee, if you want to have short 5-10 breaks every little bit then go with a caster.

Wizard might work out well with swarm kiting, big blasts of aoe dmg and you can sit and med while he rounds up another group.