The values on the instruments is a mod to increase the value of your songs. The higher the value the better some parts of a song will be. Haste and slow never increase with instruments.

If you were to sing Psalm of Warmth with a drum you would have more AC and more resists (you can try this yourself and checking your resist/AC values).

The real power of a bard is being able to maximize each song by swapping out instruments to match the song that is about to land. If your a really experience bard you could melee for 2 seconds, swap to a drum just before the psalm song hits, swap back to a melee weapon, swap back to a brass horn for the next song, then melee, then a lute for regen song and then back to melee etc. Then you can try to do it for four songs.

You can also setup macros for each song gem:

/stopsong
/pause 1
/cast X (where X is 1 - 8 for the song gems)

This will half the amount of keystrokes needed to play a bard in one swoop.

How can this be true, if Psalm of Warmth is a singing-song?

If memory serves, (and if this server functions like the live servers did) an instrument mod of 10 would be equivalent to having no instrument equiped at all (100% of a song's effectiveness, or +0% over the base effectiveness). An instrument mod of 20 would be equivalent to 200% of a song's effectiveness, or +100% over the base effectiveness. Basic formula is: ([Instrument Mod] - 10) * 10 = X% modifier.

Example: MM Lute is Stringed: 21. ([21] - 10) * 10 = +110% modifier.
Example: This suggests that if you found an instrument with a modifier less than 10 (let's say 8) that your modifier would be: ([8] -10) * 10 = -20%. A penalty of 20%. Since I've never heard of such an instrument this begs the question of why the devs didn't start the scale at 0 instead of 10.

If, for instance, a Stringed song's base effect was to heal your party by 10 hit points per tick, then with the MM lute equiped the same song would instead heal for 21 hit points per tick (keep in mind that the instrument only needs to be equiped at the instant you finish casting the song; once the song buff is up you may remove the instrument and keep the bonus until you sing the song again).



So to answer your question, the difference between 20 and 21 is +10%.

As someone already pointed out, not all songs can be modified. Some songs have certain parts that will be modified and some parts that are constant (haste songs are a good example; haste is NEVER changed). Some songs cannot be modified at all. Some songs (like selo's) have a hard cap on how far they can be modified. I can't remember but I want to say Selo's caps at 26 or 28. It's been too many years and too many beers ago, sorry.

This is largely not true for most songs. From my experience Bard DOT's will do the same amount of damage whether you have a lute or a gypsy lute equipped. Why is this?

i just heard of this server recently, but im planning on playing a bard, now i just gotta wait for the fios guy to install my internet.

I think this is due to rounding error. At least right now (at level 26) Chords of Dissonance does 8 damage base, 16 damage with a lute, and 16 with a lute of the Gypsy Princess. I think the formula will automatically round down the damage, so with the LoGP I am really doing 8 * 2.1 = 16.8 damage, but the server just rounds off the fractional part.

I will post again when CoD starts doing 10 damage base (should happen sometime in the mid 30's) and report if it does indeed do 21 damage with the LoGP.

Cool, I use MM drums/Gypsy lute anyway and I haven't exactly compared to the other instruments recently, so it would be interesting to know your findings.

Indeed, as of level 32 the base damage of CoD is 10 and it hits for 21 with LoGP. I see the same rounding effects with the level 30 chant and using hand/MM drums.

Can someone post a leveling guide about bard-friendly places to kite? Staples such as SK and others are often too crowded to really take advantage of AE Kiting's efficiency, but finding viable alternatives can be equally hard. Most guides just list group locations, but when one kite pull can give 7-10% of a levels XP that seems like an unattractive option with this server's ridiculously slow XP.

I would just like to thank you all for your input on this thread.
Next time I go to play EQ I'll update my key layout as Tork recommended as well as setting up some macros. I still haven't figured out how to hotswap weapons/instruments, so if someone could help out there, it would be much appreciated :)