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  #21  
Old 07-05-2013, 08:44 AM
t0lkien t0lkien is offline
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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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  #22  
Old 07-05-2013, 11:25 AM
Dalven Dalven is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
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!
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.
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Last edited by Dalven; 07-05-2013 at 11:29 AM..
  #23  
Old 07-05-2013, 06:42 PM
t0lkien t0lkien is offline
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My point about a song dropping though - some songs are useless unless they are up all the time. If a mob aoe lands on the tick the resist song was down because I was trying to get a bit more AC/Haste/Regen onto my group, there was no point in having it up at all. It's risky and inelegant to twist songs that are dropping continually IMO. The effect you point out about server ticks just makes it all the more inexact. We never really know when this is until it ticks - despite the tools that help us guess. Mix in lag with this - both yours and others' - (I'm on a constant 250ms which is not bad compared to the 500ms+ I had on live) and it's a total crap shoot.

My experience has been it's better in the long run to have 3 songs up permanently and surely, than to be guessing with four. My UI says the song icon is up, but the server says otherwise when that AOE lands = trouble. Actually, I've wiped to those exact situations more than once enough times to resolve to keep a solid three songs up (not including BoH clicky). Not criticizing others to go for the four or five, but it's risky, and that needs to be understood by other classes who get the idea 4 songs is the minimum a "good" bard should be singing. I had this conversation constantly on live:

"So and so had four songs up all the time".
"No, he didn't actually, one was dropping at the end of the loop continually. You just didn't notice or it didn't show on your UI. On the server it was dropping. It's simple math - 12/(3+time between keypresses) < 4, and that doesn't account for resists or missed notes and lag. With those you can be stretching to keep even three up without something dropping when RNG goes bad."
"Good bards can do four."
"*sigh*".

Re. aggro dumping, with high damaging mobs I've found it counter-productive to be the puller if I have a tank who can't grab aggro. Body pulling can be terribly inexact (I've run over mobs and stood on top of them and still not gained aggro on p99, while the mob 5m away immediately aggros - something is definitely different to live), so it's usually necessary to land a Bellows or something. I've also been hammered into paste multiple times because my group couldn't regain aggro no matter what they did after I've done that. In the end it was more efficient for the tank to pull. The caveat is that this usually hasn't happened with SKs and Paladins.

Not to dispute your comments on pulling, because as I said, I've never majored on it and only once or twice done it in raids, and always outdoors. I would however say that FD is *the* premium tool for splitting mobs. The proof of that was that in Velious, every single raid I went on had a monk puller. Past Luclin I never once saw a Bard pull for a raid either (though my raiding diminished a lot before I quit). Actually the proof for that was Thott's constant whining [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
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Last edited by t0lkien; 07-05-2013 at 09:03 PM..
  #24  
Old 07-05-2013, 07:57 PM
astuce999 astuce999 is offline
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On a raid with lag it's better to sing 3 if on resist duty (2 rythms with drums + another).

On a raid when not on resist duty, you can still manage 4 songs no problem.

Only when in groups or soloing should the 5 song twist become relevant, I've posted about it on p99 multiple times. It has to do with what Dalven was talking about.

About your math, songs aren't 12 second duration. Songs are 12.1 to 17.9 second duration, depending on the server tick. This important difference gives plenty of room for a stable 4 song twist.

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  #25  
Old 07-05-2013, 08:33 PM
t0lkien t0lkien is offline
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I'm sorry, but years of playing on live show this not to be true for me. I can never keep four songs up reliably and have never seen another Bard do it either. This is easy to show if you stand somewhere and just twist four songs that have icons. One will inevitably start dropping (they'll rotate naturally). If it's different on p99... well it's different. On live that's how it was. I'll test this on p99 now for confirmation. Hang tight.
  • Yep confirmed as the same on p99 for me. A four song twist has icons dropping. You guys are either theory crafting and not observing it ingame, or my ping is making the difference (though I can't see how that's true as it's consistent), or there is some other factor at work that I'm not aware of. I don't know what to else to say...

    Here's a challenge though - keep up a four song twist reliably over a minute or two and post the fraps video.
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  #26  
Old 07-05-2013, 09:18 PM
Robdukes Robdukes is offline
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You probably already know this seeing as your a high level bard but for those who don't yet. The song will take effect if you turn it off and start the next when the cast bar is at the final 5-8% (rough estimate). When I'm doing the 4 song twist I never let the cast bar go all the way to the end before clicking off. If you do then you get the dropped song often. Only time I get a dropped song is when either the cast bar vanishes or I get a missed note. Also If my hand starts cramping up after many hours.

It might even be as high as 10% left on the cast bar. I just have a sense for it now so I can't say for sure.
  #27  
Old 07-05-2013, 09:41 PM
t0lkien t0lkien is offline
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Fraps or it didn't happen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Seriously, I don't believe you guys. Thott didn't either by the way (http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/powercurves.php):

Quote:
The reason that bards can do decent damage around level 50 even with the flat curve is that the songs themselves limit a bard prior to level 46. Before 46 a bard doesn't have 3 decent damage songs to sing, so damage is limited to just 2/3 of what it could be based on the curve. So the curve increases in max possible damage output with a more normal shape due to when the songs become available. Yet a bard is surely singing three songs, a decent bard is at least, prior to 46, so switching from 2 to 3 damage songs isn't an increase in damage, it's trading something else the bard was singing for damage. It increases the speed, not the efficiency, of damage the bard can do. And thus the graphed curve is accurate, and it's flat.
I.E. Three songs is the standard full twist. And as I said, that is proveable just by standing there and twisting 4 icon songs. Show me the video of a solid four song twist over a few minutes, or honestly, it's all theorycrafting.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robdukes [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
You probably already know this seeing as your a high level bard but for those who don't yet. The song will take effect if you turn it off and start the next when the cast bar is at the final 5-8% (rough estimate). When I'm doing the 4 song twist I never let the cast bar go all the way to the end before clicking off. If you do then you get the dropped song often. Only time I get a dropped song is when either the cast bar vanishes or I get a missed note. Also If my hand starts cramping up after many hours.

It might even be as high as 10% left on the cast bar. I just have a sense for it now so I can't say for sure.
P.S. This is not true either. Kiting Bards already know this, but for me, I have to wait a bit after the cast bar has gone to full and disappeared to be certain that the song has hit - in the case of kiting, Selos particularly. I have died several times because the cast bar finished (it's client side) but the song had not hit ingame, and I started the twist on my AoE song. Selos timed out, I lost runspeed, and died a horrible though rapid death. The only way to get around this is to wait until the particle effect shows in game (effects are triggered server-side) to be certain a song has hit.

That's great design by the way, as it forces you to watch the onscreen action and not play the UI.
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Last edited by t0lkien; 07-05-2013 at 09:58 PM..
  #28  
Old 07-05-2013, 10:04 PM
Robdukes Robdukes is offline
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It may not be true when your kiting a bunch of mobs around and have lag issues but I do it all the time. I'll log on now and investigate.
  #29  
Old 07-05-2013, 10:15 PM
Robdukes Robdukes is offline
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After some investigation I suppose It's not true. I guess I'm just good at clicking it off at the exact end of the bar. The split second that a song drops when you miss the exact end of the bar is only a big deal if the 4th song is a vital one..like guardian rhythms. When I fear kite with chain..fear...drum dot 1....drum dot 2. When I get back to chain its not dropped. So a 4 song twist is really reliant upon which songs your playing.
Last edited by Robdukes; 07-05-2013 at 10:19 PM..
  #30  
Old 07-05-2013, 11:14 PM
Goseals6 Goseals6 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
I'm sorry, but years of playing on live show this not to be true for me. I can never keep four songs up reliably and have never seen another Bard do it either. This is easy to show if you stand somewhere and just twist four songs that have icons. One will inevitably start dropping (they'll rotate naturally). If it's different on p99... well it's different. On live that's how it was. I'll test this on p99 now for confirmation. Hang tight.
  • Yep confirmed as the same on p99 for me. A four song twist has icons dropping. You guys are either theory crafting and not observing it ingame, or my ping is making the difference (though I can't see how that's true as it's consistent), or there is some other factor at work that I'm not aware of. I don't know what to else to say...

    Here's a challenge though - keep up a four song twist reliably over a minute or two and post the fraps video.
I wouldn't suggest using fraps to video anything especially a monster kite. Xsplit then stream it if you can handle the bandwidth.

Also, it's possible you can twist four songs if you set up the stop cast macro and only push two buttons instead of four. However, taking latency into consideration, it's possible that even with using that method, your songs will fall off with a fraction of a second difference.

In my opinion, twisting more than 3 really puts yourself at risk if selo's drops. You're pretty much hosed if it happens, or unless you keep a stack of sow potions.(wait are those on the p99 server?)
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