Best duo with bard in dungeons

[Varren]

Hi all, I am getting my RL pal to try out r99. He wants to be a bard, since it fits with his RP and play style. I'm wondering what a good class to partner with him would be. We are not interested in doing big ae kites or anything like that, and will probably be mostly hunting in dungeons.

I have considered necro and chanter. Perhaps sk? Shaman seems like it might be lacking dps?

Thanks for your opinions.

[Bristlebard]

Imo basically any class that would do well solo in a dungeon. So yeah, enchanter, necro are top picks. Maybe shaman, paladin, mage as less-powerful choices but you could make it work.

[cor3nth]

necro/enc

[indiscriminate_hater]

bard/monk would be pretty sweet if you're thinking melee. you wouldn't be able to take down any big targets, but you'd be able to level to 60 together pretty easily, and camp cool shit along the way

[maskedmelon]

bard/monk would be pretty sweet if you're thinking melee. you wouldn't be able to take down any big targets, but you'd be able to level to 60 together pretty easily, and camp cool shit along the way

This was my first thought, but then I saw he was looking to roll red and I know nothing of that so decided to leave it to the pros ^^

[Flexin]

Bard/Necro or Bard/Shaman are both really good. Have the shaman or necro root 9-10 mobs at once, pixie them into a nice little circle, and aoe on down. Either of these combos can do relatively higher level duo's as well, pretty much anything the game has to offer grouping wise excluding Fungi king.

[iruinedyourday]

Bard/Necro or Bard/Shaman are both really good. Have the shaman or necro root 9-10 mobs at once, pixie them into a nice little circle, and aoe on down. Either of these combos can do relatively higher level duo's as well, pretty much anything the game has to offer grouping wise excluding Fungi king.

When root rotting as a shaman I always wanted to move the mobs around.. This strat sounds really fun!!

[Erica]

When duoing with a shaman, you can use positioning to make sure a bunch of them are in range to beat up each other as well. So you charm the one with the most hp, then he gets taken out really fast (sometimes too fast). So one charm almost kills a mob. Then you can still dot them down.

This is probably more overall damage than trying to AE dot/position them all and then you can keep pulling new mobs to the crowd of ones almost dead and charm the newly pulled one once to get beat up.

[Rrasis]

I've had a lot of fun as a Bard Monk combo, it's a super efficient combo for doing blues but the recovery time for doing evens or harder gets really long. we found for outdoors you can do harder mobs by having the bard kite and the monk just run behind beating on them.

between bandages, mend, and the heal song you don't have a lot of downtime with the duo at lower levels

once your 35+ it's probably going to become more efficient to have a healer with you, we just hit 32 and it's becoming more and more common at the end the fight with both of us sub 30% so we're having a lot more downtime than we did before.

Keeping agro off the bard has gotten extremely hard as a monk too, between slows, and snaring the mob so they don't run they generate a ton of agro. If they have to charm something It's rare that I'm able to get it off them. It may be slower leveling with a shaman/druid but you'll end up making up for it at higher levels imo.

Edit: wanted to add, as a bard/monk combo I would think it would be pretty easy to get groups, you have an excellent puller, CC, Slows, Haste, misc buffs, and good dmg.

[Tenlaar]

Bard/shaman is a great combo. What a shaman lacks in a dungeon is the ability to easily break a spawn and solid non-root crowd control, both of which the bard brings.

[justinedwardperry]

I played a really fun duo with a RL friend, Bard/Pally. It seems like such an odd duo, and people will say you won't have much dps... which is true for sure. But the duo's ability to survive any fight is insane... you have buffs, root, cc, selos, rez later on, blind, heals, 2 plate classes that can take a lot of dmg.

It's a very fun duo also, good for dungeons and outside.

They are right though, bard can duo with just about anything efficiently. I wouldn't worry too much about DPS, you will want to group as much as possible anyways, the exp is so much better. But you guys have the core to any group, tank, cc, heals already. FUN FUN FUN!

[DrKvothe]

Bard/shaman is a great combo. What a shaman lacks in a dungeon is the ability to easily break a spawn and solid non-root crowd control, both of which the bard brings.

Very good points, imo.

Also, bards adding dots onto shaman's is pretty brilliant imo.

[Clark]

Shaman hands down.

By a longshot.

[Tenlaar]

Very good points, imo.

Also, bards adding dots onto shaman's is pretty brilliant imo.

I was going to add that myself but didn't for some reason. Bard single target DoTs will help speed up root rotting a lot, and with no initial DD component they don't break root.

Throw in the occasional charm to help speed kills up and it's a really great duo.

[Varren]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Still torn between necro and shaman. I love both of the classes...

[iruinedyourday]

When duoing with a shaman, you can use positioning to make sure a bunch of them are in range to beat up each other as well. So you charm the one with the most hp, then he gets taken out really fast (sometimes too fast). So one charm almost kills a mob. Then you can still dot them down.

This is probably more overall damage than trying to AE dot/position them all and then you can keep pulling new mobs to the crowd of ones almost dead and charm the newly pulled one once to get beat up.

dude all of this sounds so fun, I would definitely say best is a shaman!! I mean just pushign the mobs around and then dotting sounds fun, throwin some charms, and mana regen.. ugh dude this duo sounds tits!!!

[maskedmelon]

I played a really fun duo with a RL friend, Bard/Pally. It seems like such an odd duo, and people will say you won't have much dps... which is true for sure. But the duo's ability to survive any fight is insane... you have buffs, root, cc, selos, rez later on, blind, heals, 2 plate classes that can take a lot of dmg.

It's a very fun duo also, good for dungeons and outside.



I've done this duo before and enjoyed it very much as a Paladin. It was surprisingly much more effective than I had thought it would be ^^

[Erydan Ouragan]

Yep, Bard/Shaman is amazing.

They complement each other very well. The bard can chain-mez a mob between dot ticks, which will give time to the shaman to re-root, because sometimes root keeps breaking.

Once bard gets 46, he can 3-chant dot with drums, works wonder for root-rotting single targets. For multiple targets root-rots, it's possible to carefully position mobs and stand just outside melee range and twist PBAE dot songs with instrument switch. That's how i duoed in OT with my druid friend.

Bard/Necro is extremely powerful as well, but necros are already borderline OP when you take into consideration their killing power and overall efficiency. Add in all the tools and utility at their disposal, PLUS a bard, it would be pretty ridiculous.

Both get the benefits of bard songs, mainly hp/mana regen, which both stack with canni/lich. I've always wanted to see the regen ticks of a 60 troll/iksar shaman with a fungi + regrowth + niv's + psalm of mystic shielding + cantata.

In conclusion, both are equally good. I just get the feeling that shaman would benefit from the bard a little bit more.

[Grizzled]

Bard/wizard was a good one on live. Bard pulls singles, and mezz. Mez recast 6 secs wizard big nuke 6 seconds. With proper timing creatures get to walk 1/8 of a step after they get nuked.

[Varren]

We rolled bard and shaman last night and got to level 5. He gets a little annoyed sometimes at how much more work eq is than other mmos, but he sees the goodness and is getting into it. We'll do a weekly session. Having fun so far!

Thanks for all the thoughts and suggestions.

[Paleman]

Shaman, or pally. Pally has root heal stun and rez, which makes for a pretty efficient duo. Also great pvp duo.