Blam Stick on Bard

[Troxx]

Originally Posted by busted [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Now I'm curious on Bard DPS strategies ya'll have used.





ArbiterBlixen and Troxx what are your favorite strats for max DPS?

Thanks!

If going for absolute max personal dps? DoT stacking while punching with instruments : 1 minute level 60 brass dot, drum chants and aoe stings dot always worked out better than any combo with our pathetic melee. It’s a lot of instrument swapping and a PITA but it always worked out better. It’s really not possible to parse this anymore as dot dmg isn’t visible but you can run the math. 5 fully loaded dots with only one needing to be refreshed once a minute. Max dot damage can be calculated with instrument mod known and you can pretty well keep all 5 dots up most of the time. It’s decent dps but won’t beat out a true dps class at 60 (level needed for long dot). It is certainly less dps than my 60 paladin with NToV spear. Doing this in a group would be silly though because then you can’t do all the other important stuff you should be doing and the aoe dot (strong strings) will break mez on any cc’d mobs.

Solo with charm? Charm one against the other. Load 3 chants on the non pet. Charm the target you were just loading up with dots and sick it on old pet and load up dots … rinse and repeat. Dps solo this way effectively gives you the dps of whatever you’re fighting x2 plus your 3 chants. Depending on the content, this is actually very strong dps for as long as your mana holds out but you won’t be doing this in a group.

Granted I never got epic. Epic with its instrument mod with a NToV weapon and twisting the same dots while meleeing probably best but most bards on this server will never see their epic.

And no … in this particular discussion you can’t claim added group dps. Otherwise the healer is doing the most dps because without them you wouldn’t be killing anything.

Melee bard before epic is bad bard the overwhelming majority of the time. I can easily imagine a group setup where melee could be preferable but it is the exception, not the norm. After epic, between the universal instrument mod and the sweet proc … yeah I’d recommend having weapons out.

Melee dps contribution is minimal. Bards need to recognize what they are: mobile armor plated utility casters. Just because you CAN swing weapons doesn’t mean you should be.