New Bard Guide

[brecon]

Hey all,

I wrote a new Bard guide on the wiki. I found the other guides a bit wanting. This is a first draft, so feedback welcome!

http://wiki.project1999.com/Thrasos%27_Bard_Guide

[serjordanmormont]

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

Hey all,

I wrote a new Bard guide on the wiki. I found the other guides a bit wanting. This is a first draft, so feedback welcome!

http://wiki.project1999.com/Thrasos%27_Bard_Guide

Thanks man.

I have a bunch of nice gear for a bard collecting dust so I was thinking of rolling one to put it to use.

Gonna follow this for sure.

[Jence]

Near the bottom of the guide you posted epic being 1.6 modifier. Needs corrections as it is 1.8, just friendly heads up.

[Nixtar]

Nice work! Very nice to see a bard guide which isn't focused solely on swarm kiting.

[Eugee]

In the description of pulling/aggro you put "if you pulled x2 you would get x1 and x2" when you meant to say "x1 and x3". Nice read so far.

[Eugee]

Note on fear kiting: setting aside 3.5 seconds per song, you can squeeze 5 songs into 18 seconds if you don't fizzle any, allowing you to play snare-fear-dot-dot-dot. But any missed notes means you skip the last dot.

BUT our dot actually hits FOUR times. So you can play snare-fear-dot1-dot2, snare-fear-dot3-dot1, snare-fear-dot2-dot3, and keep three dots rolling as well as have a cushion to keep the fear kite going. Worst case, one dot will drop for a single tick.

[Cochonou]

Does the flute really enhance faction song? I barely noticed any change in faction gain with or without flute

[brecon]

Thanks for the comments, I've updated to correct the epic modifier and the pulling typo.

Re: Fear kiting. I just find it unsafe to twist 5x songs and really avoid damage....especially when I start fear kiting mobs that bash. With casters its okay. One or two fizzles and suddenly you're taking a hit. My 'normal' twist is:
(1) mez the mob
(2) snare and fear
(3) equip tash orb, just keep snare, fear and MR dot up until tash lands
(4) switch to drum, twist MR and FR dot, snare and fear. If I am low hp, I will only do one dot and twist in hp regen
For this reason I prefer to wear a fungi when barding, so I can passively regen while I fear kite / pull / etc.

Re: Faction modifier on flutes: I'm not certain. It should, but there are some bug reports that indicate that it does not. I have never bothered to get anything but a vendor flute. I must have done 30 sky raids and never got the stupid primary flute to drop for me from the giant parrot.

[Eugee]

I'm 54 and can safely fear kite a geonid with all three dots on it, so I disagree. Ordinarily I charm-kite them obviously (as they have so many HP) but when doing a shaman and geonid, you don't play games to keep their health even--you just keep that shaman charmed and attacking (instead of casting on you).

Once one of them is down the other frequently has 40% health, and with 3 dots you'll only knock off 2-3% per tick, meaning you'll be there awhile, even with fear.

1. Mez.
2. snare/fear
3. Play dot 1 & dot 2
4. Snare/fear
5. Play dot 3 & dot 1
6. Snare/Fear
7. Play dot 2 & dot 3

See what I mean? You're only twisting 4 songs for the fear kite, but you rotate through your dots. Most of the time (like 95% of the time) you'll see three dot ticks.

Note that this is if you are worried about the 5th song dropping.

I just play snare/fear/dot/dot/dot usually. If there is *any* trouble in the twist, then I just skip the last dot, picking up that dot first on the next cycle.

On my hotkeys it's 1-MR DOT, 2-FR DOT, 3-CR DOT, 4-AE Fear, 5-Snare/Slow. (6 is ALWAYS speed/or lull indoors, 7 is ALWAYS charm, 8 is ALWAYS mez) I have 6 7 8 mapped to W R T respectively as well, and Shift R & T are charm/mez with chat announcements.

So from me, my keypresses go 5... 4... 3... 2..*fizzle* 2... 5... 4... 1... 3... 2... 5... 4.. *fizzle* 4... 3... 2... 5... 4... you get the idea. Note that even with a dropped song you have a 50/50 chance that it will be snare or fear. If snare drops, you have 6 seconds till the next tick when fear will drop. Just keep playing and you're fine. If you know you're behind on the twist and snare *doesn't* drop, then just move outside of melee range as you reapply fear just in case it drops early.

I've been 5-twisting fear kites since I hit 46 and got my third dot, and I play with 100-150ms pings, up to 200 at worst. It's quite doable, and at my level it's the difference between 128/tic and 171/tic. That's a big difference when killing a geonid! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I like the guide, lot of good information, thanks for writing it.

[Eugee]

Oh! That reminds me, you mentioned you'll get an intuition for when charm is going to break. While I agree with you, there's a much better timer than your gut.

3 song pulses.

So I'm charming a pair of wyverns in CS... I charm one, send it on the other, play speed song, and back up to sit down (2 mana/tic instead of one, and charm that works on them uses mana). Then just count the "you feel faster" messages. After three, charm is typically breaking on the next tick.

Anyway, if you're twisting between charms, just remember you'll typically get 4 songs played between charms.

Normally when I'm charm kiting, I always charm the pet that's winning, hitting it with a dot or two before recharming, so that it's losing some extra HP. Ideally when the charm fighting stops, both are under 20%, so I snare one, and when they get apart they both start fleeing. Now chant them down at your leisure.

But sometimes I've got a pet that's just a beast, and a target rich environment (like a bulthark, with mega hp and dmg, who chews up the wyverns). So I snare a wyvern 3-4 times before I charm the bulthork and send him in.

Then I play speed/snare/speed/snare... now toggle back to the bulthork who's charm is about to break--start precasting--break/charm/sic--speed/snare/speed/snare, repeat. When the wyvern is almost dead, mez or snare the bulthork, dot up the wyvern (3 dots will kill it from 19%), then go get another one.

Did I mention how much I love bard charm?