low end bard itemization help please

[Nalir]

P.S. Don't only swarm kite. Do some grouping and some soloing other than swarming(fear-kiting, charm-killing etc.) so that you know how to play your class in different situations. Good luck young grasshopper

Bards have always been a wibbly-wobbly class, completely broken, useless, overpowered, unnoticed, amazing and just a mana battery. However, we can be all of that at the same time, while running and looking good doing so!

Grouping is more fun for a bard from my experience than amazing soloing. To be honest, when I played I really sucked at AOE kiting (and didn't learn about it till halfway through career, and abhorred it even when it worked) and swarm-kiting was utilizing charm to force a group of social enemies to attack your pet, break charm just before it died, and finishing it off at a few % health with chants. This worked well in Velious and later PoP because of the large health pools of enemies, don't think this works well in Kunark.

But in groups bards can do so much more, but you need to get familiar with some other techniques, like tab-buffering your pet, using the toggle last two targets option all the time, timing charm as good as possible so you land your recharm on your pet right after charm breaks. This just takes practice. From My PVE experience a good understanding and execution of these techniques saved many hectic situations, preventing wipes, leading to group members saying things like, "wtf, stop dropping mana song, you suck", "why do you talk so weird, no need to hit enter after each 3 words, idiot", sometimes even "Nice healing, thought we were dead there".

Nowadays it should be even easier since you can have multiple hotbars instead of 1, or rather less stressful.

I just speak from past experience though, last time I played a bard since this week was 2001 or 2002...