I did the same thing on live and woke up to find myself pvp dead a couple times :P

But a bard friend I made on SZ swore up and down that instrument skills didn't do anything beyond 1 point. We did some (admittedly limited) testing and logged ourselves each doing x number of casts of Cantata of Replenishment; me with my maxed skills and him with his skills that were never purposefully increased. The results were enough to convince me that he was right. This was live though, and like PoP era or a bit later maybe.

The way bard songs were impacted in strange ways every other patch on live leads me to believe that much of this isn't as simple as we'd hope. Honestly I'm really impressed that the P99 staff got the bard class working so well here, but I'm willing to bet that much of the bard mechanics here are not classic.

To be clear, I don't play a bard here. I was a somewhat geeky numbers bard on live. Do your own research for P99 imo :)

BTW I found old EZboard TCH:

http://pub5.ezboard.com/btheconcerthall.html

EDIT: It probably wasn't Cantata of Replenishment, but the PoP level one. Whatever that was called.

This, 100%

@Kek - This is why I said it after Faerie, saying if its true it doesnt effect anything I wasted my time.

Until we see proof in either column, all I can really say is I've had stuff just plain not work because of constant missed notes when my skill was down.

Bards are an odd class, and were broken on live constantly. I remember the running joke with every patch was that they did something to break bards.

I was Sk -> Beastlord on live, so all my bard experience is P99 based...so it's jumbled info from others and personal experience.

BTW for stats I would go:

HP/MR > STA/AC > DEX/CHA/other resists > STR/AGI > waaaaay down here INT

Or sometimes other resists would be higher.

More or less agree with this, but given the oddity that is bards - get whatever keeps you alive/makes you useful.

Also one little point with a mixture of gear a bard can get minus 84 cha, which is good for pulling from out of LOS with failed lulls. rare to use but worth considering having a anti cha set too

If Bard songs work the same as enchanter spells, CHA doesn't affect mez resist or duration - it's all level and MR based.

CHA affects lull hugely though (mostly chance of critical resist), and is the 3rd check for charm after level gap and MR. It also seems to have really bad returns after 200 CHA.

I was given temporary access to a couple bards (thanks guys!) and plan to test a bunch of things. Just been super busy with RL stuff.

Will get back to you guys :)

Yeah I made the change recently from CHA/DEX to HP/AC/Sta.
-Didnt notice a huge difference in singing.
-Didnt notice a huge difference in mezzing.
-I will however say that I notice more Crit Lull failures (mobs attack on lull resistance) and since our charm was always random as fuck being it only lasts 18 seconds or so i cant say anything about it. was better off mezzing.
And going from 1150hp~/650ac~ to 1700hp~/900ac~ is really.. really fucking noticeable. Even tanked for a few hours in Karnors with Largo's Absonant Binding. To all you aspiring bards out there, go human and slap everything into Sta

I have been playing str/dex/cha glass cannon style bard in low level grouping. My initial reaction so far is dex is only marginally helpful on reducing missed note, and I may end up dropping some of my heavy dex items (cloak of shadows) in the future because I just don't feel its very effective. Charisma and to a lesser extent strength just feel to be more useful to a grouping bard then dex.

High level bards should carry 3 sets of gear.

Charisma gear for pulling / CC'ing.

HP/AC gear for tanking.

Resist gear for raids.

Why settle on one?

Astuce