Bard

[SpiralRazor]

Why would anyone choose to group with bard vs enchanter?

As far as i can tell playing both to 60, enchanter fills the support role better then a bard. No amount of auto attack speed haste is better then augmention+superior augmentation. Enchanters mitigate party damage by stopping the damage before it occurs...the bard has to mitigate after the fact.

Some talents need reworked for this class to be desired, numbers are low for passives as well as missing double attack. Would it really hurt anything to give it double attack??? I mean, youre already blocked off from 2handed of any type.

A big help would be to change duration of songs to 60, superior mana song to spell casting speed. No one cares about +4 mana, +4 spirit leech....if youre really burning those resources out, youve already stocked potions for harder content that fully refills your bar.

[AH-1 Cobra]

It's not like the game is so active that you have to choose between inviting a bard or enchanter in this group you can instantly put together with a peak of 39 players in the last week.

The talent trees have helped solo options for several classes considerably, and that's great. That's what actually matters in an online game with low player counts, how well does it solo? Does Enchanter beat Bard in solo play too? I don't play those classes, so I wouldn't know. But I'd argue balanced if one of the classes is better at solo play, while the other is better at team play. But if Enchanter just totally beats Bard any way you look at it, then maybe some buffs are needed.

[SpiralRazor]

both of them are meant for party play; neither of them can solo all that well in hell. Enchanter has the edge in dps, bard in tankness...but both of them need lots of gear taliored to soloing + half your inventory in healing pots to do floor bosses. Bard/Chanter are also the least played classes. Ive seen many crusaders, templars, wizards, and shadowknights. Bards/Chanter almost non-existant lol.

[Ironman_Isomer]

Bard in my opinion isn't fun to play or group with. You need to constantly cast songs with no way to increase duration or refresh with some QoL. It's too spammy. And when you group with a bard, often times you need to wait for them to cast all there songs before a boss.

NG1 from what I recall had an ability to refresh there songs. I was hoping when masteries came out there was a mastery or way to refresh existing songs so you don't need to keep casting them or make them all instant cast with no global cooldown.

EDIT: I just tested wearing 4 pieces of elite gear with faster cast rate. I have 25% cast haste from it. It still feels slow to cast all your songs. Unless there is a way to achieve 50+ % cast haste, I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel for bard.

I tried 2 specs so far: Bellow and battery. Im not 88 yet so I cant try a mixed build yet. So the gameplay is like this:

Cast song 1
Cast song 2
Cast song 3
Cast song 4
Cast song 5
Use bellow
Use 1 other ability
Fight is over
Run to next room/monster pack and songs are already blinking.
Cast song 1
Cast song 2
Cast song 3
Cast song 4
Cast song 5
rinse and repeat

Unfortunately, it's simply not fun and the buffs aren't necessarily game changing either. I see two solutions.

1.) Buff song duration or add a way to refresh songs or reduce the cast time to 1-second so having a bit of cast haste feels like you can nearly instant cast songs.

2.) Buff the song buffs so they are game changing. Something like "Stun Immunity", "Rampage Immunity" (lol)....

I like choice #1. Reducing the base cast speed of all 5 songs to 1 second as well as a way to refresh them. Maybe have "Crashing Cords" refresh active song durations. So players not specced into maestro can still have access to the refresh but being a maestro you get the QoL of refreshing with auto attacks.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by SpiralRazor:

both of them are meant for party play; neither of them can solo all that well in hell. Enchanter has the edge in dps, bard in tankness...but both of them need lots of gear taliored to soloing + half your inventory in healing pots to do floor bosses. Bard/Chanter are also the least played classes. Ive seen many crusaders, templars, wizards, and shadowknights. Bards/Chanter almost non-existant lol.

I don't see that many monks either. I know monk is king in solo-offline play. I'm guessing ranger/rogue/wizard dps beats monk in team play. Monk's added survivability doesn't mean much if you got a tank. Back when people actually played the game and you could find teams, I could gear my monk as a glass cannon, and stack str/+damage/crit while ignoring stamina and mostly ignoring resists, but even then, ranger and rogue would usually beat my damage.

[SpiralRazor]

The Dazzler mastery is ...lol..... +Mana? Who cares about mana pool at this point in the game?

The way i see it, both clarity and battle song need SIGNIFICANT buffs and or reworks to be game changing. Dudes right..i spend most of my time maintaining songs. I still see zero reason not to give them double attack and riposte. it would turn their 500dps into 750dps lol.

As an enchanter, i throw out my 8 to 12 minute buffs....and then can purely concentrate on mez and debuffing the entire encounter with massive slows in less time then it takes to cast ONE chords for -20%. No global CD is much better than +20 auto attack haste.

[koolbreeze321]

I only play bard, about 100 hours so far (lvl 95). I like the buffs, but I can see why someone doesnt like it. The songs fall off very fast, to where you dont get many opportunities to cast your other 5 skills. I personally am fine with how it is.
BUT
If it were to change, what I would suggest is some sort of bonus for chaining the songs together (not letting them ever fall off). A good musician knows not to let the beat drop. Maybe something like, If all songs are active, next 10 songs add a stack, at 10 stacks all songs have no cast time. Any song falls off, all stacks removed.

[SpiralRazor]

Ive played possibly thousands of hours on EQ as bard. I really didnt think a modern game would have such a horrible implementation.

Pillars of Eternity had a much, much better system for their singers....you composed the order of the songs pre-battle and when battle started, they just auto played leaving you free to move around and fight.

[Black Kalev]

Bard is better with some casters then enchanter such as wizard as they can give +10% cast speed, but if you want that buff you can also get a longer and better one from Templar.

They also give a basic attack speed buff which synergies good with Warlock or other auto attack heavy classes like druid.

[SpiralRazor]

You are indeed correct....but thats your only contribution in 94+ hell. Your weapon skills are awful, so no dps there, and even if you have auto bellow, its going to be a twentieth of what another class is going to put out....with the added benefit of its 350% taunt modifier..which means that on occasion you will indeed catch agro and be tripple critted to death. Now if you want to go full time into keeping all your songs up, welll....thats some tremendous effort on your part and i commend anyone that wants to do it over and over and over again.

[strathadan]

I want to love bard, and I enjoy a chill playstyle, but they do need a buff badly. The song buffs should have a much higher duration at minimum.

[SpiralRazor]

You really cant do anything else unless your only using 3 songs.

Btw, to reiterate, EQ Bard, 9th or 10th rubicite BP(replaced by fungal tunic eventually) on the server, duel wield ykeshas and later on singing ss. 2ndaries were necromancer and shaman, and much later beastlord(which i wound up playing over the bard 9/10.)

Im still surprised my carpal tunnel isnt much worse then it is.

[SLAIN]

If only they knew... lol

[SpiralRazor]

Originally posted by SLAIN:

If only they knew... lol

Only knew what?