Also keep in mind our DS has a fire resist component to it. Top ones provide a 25 point FR bump.

Not quite accurate. An optimally played Bard (has an epic) should be able to produce 22 mana a tick for the party, and the damage shield amount should be 65 if a max brass instrument is swapped in over the epic for 1 of those damage shields (otherwise the damage shield amount should be 60).

Going by the initial numbers given in the thread, a 65 damage shield vs an unslowed quadding level 61 NPC would be 85 DPS. That might be a bit lower than vs the hardest raid targets, since they are higher level and will miss a bit less, but in a raid the tank will be a Warrior using Evasive discipline for half of the fight, so let's say this number is 75 DPS. 75 DPS is not 3 Rogues. That said, one of those Bard damage shields also gives +ATK, which is a variable amount of extra DPS being generated, and the Bard can also twist in an AC song, giving the tank a bit more safety.

There's also the Puretone discipline to consider though. I think the damage shield amount increases to 94 with that, while the mana-pump should be able to give 31 mana per tick (the discpline lasts 4 minutes). If the tank uses the defensive discipline rather than evasive while the bard has Puretone up, then for those 3 minutes the Bard could be doing 123 DPS with damage shields.

So, against unslowable raid targets that are also hard to hit in melee, the Bard could definitely be more useful for DPS than as a mana-pump for the Clerics. I think you'd really have to calculate it further based on the exact DPS vs Cleric composition at the raid, and how long the fight is expected to go. Are people really going to do that? Probably not. What I would say though, is that if you have an extra Bard who isn't with a full group of 5 Clerics, then vs unslowable targets it might be an easy bet that they are better off doing damage shield.

One other note: mana-pumping a group of 5 Wizards for 8 minutes when they can use the Dragonbane nuke would result in the Bard adding 100 DPS to the raid, whereas the damage shield amount in that span of time would average to about 95 DPS. Maybe the extra bit of +ATK from one of those damage shield songs would bring that Bard up to 100 DPS contribution as well.

Yea my numbers are relative to how many hits I received in that specific parse, its very anecdotal. I had a number of Kromzek Captain/Scout tanking examples and they varied a bit. I haven’t tanked many unslowable quad hitters besides that one Brother Zephyl and a flurry drake pickup out of desperation. But I’m a mid 5k 1250 AC paladin with raid buffs at 60.

Some of these MT warriors can check their own parses for how many hits/second they were taking on say an Vyemm, Tunare, AoW and so-on. I speculate they are seeing more than 1.3hits a second (averaged) due to the level gap and sometimes using defensive instead of evasive. Really just guessing though.

Ok a bit groggy here, sorry lol.

I read unhasted NPC’s melee at 30 delay (3sec) from an enchanter guide. If true it backs up the wiki note on BroZ doing consistent quad attacks with an occasional kick. 1.3x3 = 3.9 attacks per round.

So evasive disc and some weird edge cases aside, 1.3/second seems a fair estimate for such a npc.

Bard should be able to stack lava diamond with mage DS in classic

When I get home I'll find some logs from aow / kt / vindi etc..

Why only bards?

/GU The Avatar of War in 217s, 779k @3590dps --- Naethyn 46k @216dps --- A Drakkel Dire Wolf 45k @221dps --- Behan 20k @100dps --- Vatrubat 20k @94dps --- Mattis 18k @91dps --- Kakao 18k @102dps --- Eviscerare 18k @90dps --- Luddo 17k @81dps --- Spags + pets 17k @81dps --- Katera 17k @86dps

From the last aow (I died after 40%~) and I only had 101 ds. Maximum is 123 from what I've seen in game. Consider another 20% damage for reference. If I try harder I can find a vyemm that shows it. I will correct my last statement by saying it needs to be an unslowable flurry for maximum effect.

The thing to consider is the amount of time the encounter is reduced (bard ds) vs how much longer the clerics can heal for (bard mana). I think it is obviously clear that unslowable flurry mobs the ds will end up reducing time far more than a full group of clerics being able to keep the fight going longer.

Correction. The maximum I've parsed is 127.

https://imgur.com/nm1uDrU.jpg

Really cool data, thanks for this :) .

I know I’ve gotten lazy with the ranger but this has firmly parked Shield of Spikes back on the spell bar.