Quote:
Originally Posted by t0lkien
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Perhaps I'm missing something, but technically you cannot twist 4 songs, let alone 5. One will always drop at the end with 4. Twisting 5 means two will be dropping at the end of the loop - and it can go bad fast with missed notes/resists. Why would you ever try to twist 5?
Or does the timing work out differently somehow on p99 (which wouldn't be Classic in any sense then)?
Also, why any mention of FT? FT on items came in with Luclin didn't it, and this server is never going there. Was the reference ironic? I'm confused!
And also, you guys make playing a Bard sound so crazy complicated. It's never been that complicated for me - though I've never majored on pulling due to our inability to dump aggro and other player's patchy ability to grab it. Monks do it much better than us IMO. Didn't really group much in Seb though!
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Twisting four songs is totally possible with the minimum of effect loss. Even looking at the basic timings this is possible - each song takes 3 seconds to cast, generally with a 12 second duration. Once getting your first song of you then twist another 3 within the 9 seconds and then recast the first one in the last 3 second window. You'll have the effect drop for 1 or 2 seconds but IMO this is worth it for a 12 second effect of a fourth song.
What further mitigates this is that some songs, such as regen, have their effect applied on the server tick, which is every 6 seconds. Its difficult to time/know the server tick exactly but more often than not your heal song will drop in between ticks and you will have it back up before it makes the buff check. As long as it is back up before it makes this check its as if the song was never down. If you take into account that a lot of your offensive songs (snare/dots) last for 18 seconds it makes it easy to do a 4 or 5 twist depending on the scenario. The once you can use the Breath of Harmony clicky effect it gets even easier.
Missed notes and resists are just par for the course - you work around it and tank for a few seconds if it happens during cc - you can usually regen yourself up rather than needing a heal. This is why you get to wear plate - you'll be taking hits whether you like it or not as a bard. There isn't much you do as a bard when twisting that the group won't miss for a few seconds while you sort out any resists with the exception of CC, which can sometimes be on a knife edge with 4 or 5 mobs to control.
Agro dumping isn't essential for pulling - what makes bards such skilled pullers is the ability to control the incoming mobs. Between using lull, mez, charm and snare you have much greater control over the number, pace and rate of mobs incoming to the group. I use projectiles or proximity to pull so any agro that you have is usually minimal and any tank can pull it off you easily enough. Sure if you get a critical resist things are going to get hairy pretty quickly but you have a wide variety of tools at your disposal to ensure you aren't dumping 5 mobs on your group all at once.
I'm by no means an expert on monks and have never played on so the following is pretty much just an educated guess on my part. The problem monks have pulling in dungeons is that a caster NPC will usually start to cast as its first action or after taking a couple of steps which can be bad when they FD. As far as I understand it FD doesn't clear agro the way it used to and can take much longer. Beyond FD monks have little ability to split mobs.