What next for midlevel bard?

[bcbrown]

Thanks for the details on WL geos, I'm going to have to go check that out.

[Amhran Ogma]

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

I went with a dex/cha build (something like 170/130 with cheap EC gear) and a venomous axe of the velium brood, and although now I think going dex may have been a little suboptimal, the number of procs has made melee a lot of fun up until now.

If by some odd chance you see this, OP bcbrown, I'm about to roll a bard, but it's my first toon starting on p99 (gave away 56 rogue acct 20+ years ago), so I'll be lucky if I see a hand-me-down or two. I want to make sure I don't misspend/allocate a single starting stat.

I'm rolling Wood Elf no matter what. I planned on putting 10 to Dex (to start at 100), 10 STR (still low at 80), and the rest (5) in CHA (90)

Is there something I should know regarding your hindsight about "going dex being suboptimal"? Thanks

[WarpathEQ]

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

If by some odd chance you see this, OP bcbrown, I'm about to roll a bard, but it's my first toon starting on p99 (gave away 56 rogue acct 20+ years ago), so I'll be lucky if I see a hand-me-down or two. I want to make sure I don't misspend/allocate a single starting stat.

I'm rolling Wood Elf no matter what. I planned on putting 10 to Dex (to start at 100), 10 STR (still low at 80), and the rest (5) in CHA (90)

Is there something I should know regarding your hindsight about "going dex being suboptimal"? Thanks

I rolled 2 bards, first went STR heavy, second went DEX heavy (with the final points going into the other). I would concur that I had a much better QoL on the STR build. The Dex build had issues with encumbrance all the way up to 60 and only overcame it once I was raid geared. Even in that case playing for the ultimate late game meta build in hindsight I would say STA would be the stat for virtually all melee classes as the other stats are easy to buff up STA/WIS/INT are the stats that have the least buffs.

[bcbrown]

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

I'm rolling Wood Elf no matter what. I planned on putting 10 to Dex (to start at 100), 10 STR (still low at 80), and the rest (5) in CHA (90)

Is there something I should know regarding your hindsight about "going dex being suboptimal"? Thanks

Man, I don't know. I recently rolled a second bard and went strength. The first dex/cha bard is only like 20-30 stone away from encumbrance and is constantly overweight after a couple hours worth of loot. The second bard has a lot more carrying capacity, but I'm getting more missed notes and noticeably fewer procs (at level 19 now). Obviously the lack of procs won't matter as much from 30-onwards as you stop meleeing so much, and probably the missed notes won't be as big a deal as my musical skills get closer to the cap.

I think 10/10/5 seems like a decent split. WarpathEQ and Busted both make good points. The first bard was 15 dex/10 cha. I guess I'd start by thinking about what your goal is for the bard. If you plan to swarm to 60 and raid heavily, sta/dex might be a good idea. If you just want to fuck around through the lower levels, dex/str might be the way to go. If you're starting from scratch without any twinking, you probably won't be able to afford a good proc weapon before melee starts to become less relevant, which imo makes dex less useful.

I guess I'd recommend 15str/10dex or 20str/5dex. Strength is especially useful on a first toon on a server since you'll want to be able to carry as much loot as possible to buy gear. I found it pretty easy to get a good set of cha gear: opalline earrings, gypsy medallion, mask of deception combine for +32cha. I've got 148cha right now and that's probably overkill. I've only noticed charm breaking early once, and that's not a big deal anyway since you're gonna get a lot of experience swapping charm between the two mobs. Lull, sure, but if you're pulling for a group a crit fail shouldn't be too big a deal since you can mez-lock three mobs with a bit of practice.

Are you planning on swarming your way to 60 as quickly as possible in order to raid, or are you going to level kinda slowly and explore as much of the world as possible without worrying about raid gear?

[busted]

Go dex build. Str items are easy to come by and getting 100% WR bags are pretty easy.

Dex is the most underrated stat in the game IMO. Proc city with high dex and supposedly fewer missed notes.

Bard with https://wiki.project1999.com/Essence_Mace + https://wiki.project1999.com/Silver_Whip_of_Rage + high dex becomes pretty beastly. Highly recommend this setup

[WarpathEQ]

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

Go dex build. Str items are easy to come by and getting 100% WR bags are pretty easy.

Dex is the most underrated stat in the game IMO. Proc city with high dex and supposedly fewer missed notes.

Bard with https://wiki.project1999.com/Essence_Mace + https://wiki.project1999.com/Silver_Whip_of_Rage + high dex becomes pretty beastly. Highly recommend this setup

Seems like a waste to me, by the time you have that type of gear you should be able to max out dex pretty easily without using starting stats on it. If you're looking at ultimate meta game min/max seems like STA would have been the choice at that level of gearing.

[WarpathEQ]

Definitely wouldn't worry about CHA. I've never added starting starts or focused on +CHA gear and its extremely rare that anything relevant to CHA works at less than 100% success for a bard.

[busted]

You need several Vulak items to max un-avatared DEX. This is very hard to do

https://wiki.project1999.com/Silver_Disk is also key for mega dex

STA is over-indexed IMO. 80hp lifetap + 150 rune proccing several times in a fight will net you more survivability than 100hp (25 base sta * 4 hp per sta)

Here's the setup:

- High dex (or avatar wep *but proccing with low base dex sucks)
- https://wiki.project1999.com/Essence_Mace
- https://wiki.project1999.com/Silver_Whip_of_Rage
- Primary lute twisting in https://wiki.project1999.com/Niv%27s...f_Preservation + https://wiki.project1999.com/Hymn_of_Restoration
- Ring 10 regen
- Fungi (or 8 regen from 4x aura of battle items)
- Then HP / STA items to boost base hp

These things + 60 bard slow make you a beefy boy.

Bonus:
- Chardok ring for 25 extra DS
- Sky shoulders fury clicky for an extra 10hp regen

I call this the "battle bard" setup

[WarpathEQ]

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

You need several Vulak items to max un-avatared DEX. This is very hard to do

Agreed. At the same time I would also state that people that have the type of gear you're referring to (such as the essence mace and silver whip of rage) also likely have several vulak items.

I would consider Vulak BIS gear, I would consider those as beyond BIS gear as most bards are going to focus DKP spend on epic/primary instruments for their hands and focus on gearing their other slots before going for min/max solo-quest funsies type of items that have more niche use cases.

[Keebz]

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

You need several Vulak items to max un-avatared DEX.

Just proc avatar then? If we're talking about essence mace and vulak items then you have a primal.