Bards & the role(s) they play

[zanderklocke]

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

please enlighten me - the level of the summoned eye is 1?? how can you pull with it effectively?

The eye of zomm more or less aggros anything in range of it.

Be careful where you use it because you can create some huge trains by aggroing shit through walls.

My favorite place in the game to use the Eye of Zomm is the bar/chef area of Sebilis. I do one regular clear of the area by pulling without the eye. Then when mobs are repopping, I send out the eye to aggro mobs while I stay in camp and play songs. It's a ton of fun.

[astuce999]

Great thread!

Very informative. A couple of things to add because as a bard that's what I do!

DPS: People are told bards have crappy dps. It is a false generalization. Bards have incredibly low melee dps. My level 20 warrior does more melee dps than my 60 epic'ed bard. However, if bards are asked to play a dps role, they can.

The chant dots with a drum (as well as bereavement and assonance at higher levels) can have a bard do 60+ dps consistently. If you double pull and charm on inc as well it is extra damage that adds up very fast.

Tanking : If a bard wants to keep aggro, no one can stop him. Altough bard defensive is not as high as other classes, equipping lots of HP/AC gear, including a shield will help a lot. One thing bards can do is not even turn attack on, reducing ripostes from the mobs. At 60 I tank Guardian Wurms routinely singing lvl 23 chains x3 and mana song x1 without attacking.

cheers!

Astuce

[Tenlaar]

Tanking with my bard is where I have the most fun in EQ, period. I am geared for HP first, resists second, and AC as an afterthought basically. I started tanking in seb and the hole at level 54. A bardtank, cleric, shaman, and 3x DPS is a meatgrinder of a group. I'm not quite 60 yet and with both sets of buffs I am well over 3k hp, varying by the levels of cleric and shaman of course. If one of those DPS is an enchanter you are REALLY in business.

A bard might take a little more healing than a warrior/knight, but you are also bringing the best mana regen in the game (which stacks with clarity) so I feel like it balances out pretty well. And you are bringing a toolset that no other tank can match in pulling utility, CC, and even DPS using charm.

[Cherry23]

Bards can not mezz or charm high end content, their haste and slow is not as good as a shaman or enchanter which almost evey high end group has one of... You can't use run speed indoors...

They have pulling ability and mana regen. Not much else. They are as bad as rangers at high end but fun when levelling

[Taminy]

Originally Posted by Cherry23 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bards can not mezz or charm high end content, their haste and slow is not as good as a shaman or enchanter which almost evey high end group has one of... You can't use run speed indoors...

They have pulling ability and mana regen. Not much else. They are as bad as rangers at high end but fun when levelling

Relatively useful to have a lot of bards at a raid though - which you can't really say for certain classes especially enchanters, druids, shamans, or knights (need 1 of each, maybe 2).

[falkun]

Originally Posted by Cherry23 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bards can not mezz or charm high end content, their haste and slow is not as good as a shaman or enchanter which almost evey high end group has one of... You can't use run speed indoors...

They have pulling ability and mana regen. Not much else. They are as bad as rangers at high end but fun when levelling

With Ervaj's line, non-epic bards now have better haste than shaman (55 vs 50%). Also, epic'd bards have had better haste than shaman since Kunark (60%, 70% with ervaj). You could also argue their pulling ability is not as good as a monk's yet that's not strictly true either. And as Astuce pointed out, bard song DPS is respectable. Bard slow is also the single best snare in the game.

We also have unparalleled resist buffs, an unresistable debuff, group-wide DA, we've had eyeball pulling since Kunark (lol @ holgresh camp), among many other tools in our toolbox. Bards are still quite valuable in almost every raid composition: DS/epic proc for tank+spank, resists for resist fights, melee buffs for burn fights, mana batteries for endurance fights, etc.

If you think bard's are one-trick ponies, you do not understand the class.