Bard

[Old Man Turtle Hermit]

Whats everyone think of the bard? I love the fact that the developer made a class thats built around whats considered the dump stat. I always loved playing a General like char and this really hits the mark.

[wiz999]

Its pretty easy if you go full charisma and then get the healing song and that skill that lets you copy your hirelings.... at least its been easy so far...

[Siight]

Yeah it's pretty nice. I have a save of my fighter 3str/2int/3char with 67 free skill points, to test things out, and tried it with the bard. A band of bandits I had a bit of trouble with, was pretty easy after I spent all skills in the music tree and just ran into them and killed them all almost instantly. Bet it would be even stronger with just a 3int/4char.

My only concern is early game, looks like only one real attack spell. Could always do mage until have enough points to spend...may try it out on new playthrough.

[YEAARRGGGHH!!!]

Going Cha/Int. Seems powerful so far. Full companions. Decent damage on Oppression and Magical Chord. Hymn is great for harder encounters. Almost a little too powerful but I'm enjoying it.

[D. K.]

Buff run out too fast

[Desperado]

I'm enjoying it a lot. It pairs well with elemental magic on my 4cha 3int character. I made a 4int 3cha necromancer to try bard at low levels, but putting skill points into dark magic is more important early on to deal consistent damage.

There's some weird issues with using it. Duration of serenades can either last a few minutes without playing that song, or if you've been playing a serenade for ten minutes straight and stop playing it for five seconds that buff disappears. Maybe the way it's supposed to work is the duration starts when you first start playing, then when that initial duration runs out but you're still playing it adds a few seconds every time the buff would stack, so if you stop playing you only have a few seconds because the buff was supposed to expire a while ago.

On my elemental mage that was already at level cap when the update released the damage seems good but not overpowered. An elemental mage that optimizes lightning with focus the element will probably do about 50% more damage, but the bard never has to stand still to attack and buffs companions so you don't have to cast healing as often to keep them alive.

[Siight]

So yeah, I've been trying it out, and found early game is pretty easy going straight bard. The chord that regen health, and with 4 char, by level 3 you just let your companions kill everything while you heal them non-stop.

As for the chords, I found later on that you can play multiple chords at the same time, 2 I think, because where I'm at, trying to play all 3, I find one always falls off, but the other 2 stay up.

[Desperado]

Is anyone trying a hybrid bard that isn't a mage? A warrior bard? An archer bard? Pure bard could use agility to sprint around more, but at that point you may as well use serenade of speed and be a mage as well.

[Old Man Turtle Hermit]

Ive done a dual wielding bard, both maces and daggers. Daggers i just loop around and backstab. Dual maces or mace and shield i just sorta tank while the bolstered army kills much like i would as a death knight.

[Snark555]

In my experience (level 30 after about a day of playing), 3 int, 4 cha bard is insanely powerful even without direct offensive magic.
Got all music abilities (incl masteries), and only have the elemental bolt for direct attacking...and I don't yet have elements unlocked.
What it looks like is a piece of diplomat armor to up it to 4 allies, buffing them to 20/20/20, and running straight to the final area of the game at only level 24.
Whether it's a bug on my end or what, the healing on allies scales to something like 70% of their max health, multiple times per second. And because they stand up instantly when you heal them if they're downed...even endgame enemies can't keep up. I literally didn't have a primary weapon equipped for any of the madness because lute is the best weapon.
As for early game...worth noting that a 3-charisma character can leave the starting town at level 1 with two allies.

[Desperado]

Originally posted by Snark555:

Whether it's a bug on my end or what, the healing on allies scales to something like 70% of their max health, multiple times per second.

The healing serenade has to be using a wrong value. The status effect says it only heals around 45hp/2second? when you have 4cha and the whole bard skillset maxed out? I've been avoiding using it so I don't remember.

[Snark555]

Originally posted by Desperado:

Originally posted by Snark555:

Whether it's a bug on my end or what, the healing on allies scales to something like 70% of their max health, multiple times per second.

The healing serenade has to be using a wrong value. The status effect says it only heals around 45hp/2second? when you have 4cha and the whole bard skillset maxed out? I've been avoiding using it so I don't remember.

After a bit more use...I think the bug is that it's applying the status effect repeatedly. If I save/quit, the regen behaves a lot more like expected. But if I continually play the song...they just get stacks on stacks of healing.

[Keene]

Bard + Regroup from the speech tree is insane, I cleared the game easily.

[And it started to rain]

Originally posted by Snark555:

In my experience (level 30 after about a day of playing), 3 int, 4 cha bard is insanely powerful even without direct offensive magic.
Got all music abilities (incl masteries), and only have the elemental bolt for direct attacking...and I don't yet have elements unlocked.
What it looks like is a piece of diplomat armor to up it to 4 allies, buffing them to 20/20/20, and running straight to the final area of the game at only level 24.

Agreed, bard is stupid strong, I've never defeated the dragon and gotten the flying mount this early in the game (level 27). I did this with only the diplomat set (I typically do it around 40). I can't wait to see what happens when I throw some runes on this bad boy. Running 4 charisma, 2 magic, 1 dexterity (I forgot to move the dexterity and would regret it but it doesn't seem to matter).

Edit: Just beat the Befouled Treant at 29. Bard is crazy. Still Diplomat gear, haven't even seen the new bard kit yet.