i feel like keeping a designated pet as a bard is a waste in groups

you should be pulling and using charm temporarily on big pulls for added dps / cc

If the pet sucks yeah it can be.

But charming a baby golem in ST, or a rat in DN is verrrry good DPS.

You charm, pet attack, pulse mana/whatever for group and repeat. Then mez pet in between fights

I'll be quoting this in my guild application.

I stayed at the giant fort until 38, when some started greening out and it became harder to find similar-level duos and trios. I kept an eye on Kaesora, but there wasn't a single person leveling in there (on green) at any point while I've been playing. I went to Mistmoore CE for 38 and most of 39 in full groups. One group was pretty rough at first, as the ranger was pulling pretty heavy and I was the only CC, but eventually I got the hang of keeping three mobs mezzed in a loop. Someone else in the group also played bard, and it was nice when they recognized stuff I was doing like using the DD song to interrupt spellcasters. I also at some point here got to try out pulling, and got pretty good at pulling singles from the musician room. One time, on my very first pull for a group, I missed the bridge, plunged straight off the cliff, and promptly died to all the mobs in the pit below, which was pretty hilarious.

Then I went to CoM, where I was underleveled in a moat group with a bunch of high 40s. It was kinda boring to lay back and twist manasongs, but I couldn't land anything offensively and it was also nice to take it a little easy after tryharding most of the previous recent groups I'd been in. After a couple more groups at stables and arena I headed back to the old continent, and now I'm halfway through 42 in the Rathe Mountains, duoing and trioing hill giants with mages.

Mage was a nice duo partner. I could twist snare/dot/dot and mostly keep aggro on myself, with the fire pet chasing after. The trio with two mages was lots of fun, fastpaced chaos as we tried to compete for hill giants against two 60s soloing. It feels like bard really shines the most in duo/trios. Solo is fun, but my tankiness is starting to drop and my DPS isn't keeping up, even with two drum dots. Full groups are fine too, but the jack-of-all-trades aspect of barding becomes less important.

I think I'm going to stay with hill giants in Rathe a little longer, until I get enough plat and fine steel weapons that I need to go bank, then hit up Vivitron's suggestions of geos in Crystal Caverns, SolB, and Droga. Vivitron, how should I run through SolA to SolB? Fight my way through or just train it? IIRC a lot of them see through invis, and every time I've tried to fight my way through on my 51 druid I've gotten bogged down and eventually have to gate out.

Probably also a good time for a gear check. Anything I should be on the lookout for? I can't afford any of the good SS items yet. Getting some 5/55 or 6/65 rings seems like an obvious upgrade, but I'm not sure what earrings or neck I should look for. Arms and feet also seem due for an upgrade. I've got 2-3kpp right now. https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_Green:Prosody

Aggro kiting using a fire pet
That's a yikes

It's the easy path through sol a, just a couple right turns and you're there -- you only have to pass a couple mobs. The correct zone line is marked C on the map. In sol b you clear in from that zone line. Stick with the greater kobolds and greater kobold shaman, there should be plenty of them.

You asked about finishing the charms indoors -- it can be messy. Consider ccing the uncharmed target before the last charm break when it makes sense. Sometimes a snare+fear on a shaman is the right thing to do. IMO don't worry about the occasional half xp kill when getting the full xp kill looks like it will be costly.

Ah, I've been trying to get to D. C looks a lot easier, thanks.

bards are kings in com because outdoors

id stay there, plenty of times you'll have less than full groups...gonna be your best xp to 48 or so

also your drum dots will improve a bit when you get chant of frost at 46

get the 65 hp rings asap, singing steel helm for pulling (basically BiS for leveling bard), cloak of the maelstrom is good, mystic koada for cheap fashion, queen's carapace

may be time to farm some plat if you want to be better geared for the long haul of 50-60...crystal caverns / sol A may be good idk i havent farmed for plat on a non 60 in a decade