Bard One-on-One solo?
 

Just a out-of-curiosity question about one the classes I understand the least in EQ;

I obviously know that bard are King's of soloing with their kiting abilities. I also understand what a bard does in a group, but I never played one.

My question is so-forth: can they go one-on-one versus a white and just solo the mob in a relatively fast (read: faster than running in circles) way?

I'm not asking if it's a good way to xp or anything. Just curious how they would do it.

Charm another mob and make them duel?
Slow mob, haste self and melee is enough?

Say you're level 45 or so, waiting outside City of Mist when you get jumped by a blue gorilla; do you just selo/dot kite it? Do you zone? Or can you whack it down one-on-one relatively easily? (Let's cheat and say you'd have the perfect songs to do so memmed up :))

Once again, just because I don't know and I'm curious; nothing to do with the viability of such a strategy :)

Thanks bards if you can answer!

Fear dot / melee = easy, single charm kite = easy (just keep charming mobs in alternate till both like 10%), if geared can slow / melee buff / dot, but why would you sit and tank it when you could just fear it and take 0 dmg

Thank you both for your answers!
That makes sense. Crazy how easy it sounds hehe. Damn bards I might have to finally play one at some point :)

If you go the charm solo route, speed it up exponentially by dotting up the uncharmed mob. Once charm breaks, charm the dotted mob, rinse and repeat. It speeds up charm killing/efficiency quite a bit.

Charm vs dots are your options.

Dots with instruments will do a lot more damage than trying to melee. Dots + snare + fear up to high 50s if you can't charm. At 60 you have enough dots (plus a 1 minute dot + slow) that I generally would just face tank while twisting dots. At 60 you can load up around 70dps in dots.

The problem with leveling via swarmkiting as a bard is you miss learning how to group properly and use your songs depending on the situation.

Sure, you kill 25 mobs at once, and level extremely fast, but you also skip out on learning your class.

Unless you are an experienced bard player, and don't need to become familiar with your vast array of songs, you shouldn't focus only on swarmkiting for XP.

I actually regret spending so much time swarming. I took breaks along the way to stop and smell the roses but even back when there was a 40% bard penalty the leveling was so fast that I missed out on a lot.

Now that the bard is xp capped 60? I barely ever play him.

The fun with p99 for most people is in the experiences up until level 60. Being level 60 is not inherently fun.

I have my velious armor (8 pieces). The only weapon I've dreamed of is my epic which requires a 200k (now a very low estimate) scale or selling my soul to a raid guild (unlikely but not impossible) which will probably never happen. I farm really well. Trivial content I can pull 12+ mobs and simultaneously do 30-40dps to them all (>300 dps easily). Solo I can manage most anything given enough time -- including Seb minor named. As a bard, I do my best work in a group or raid. I've done all the realistic content possible on p99 without selling my soul to the fucked up raid scene we have here.

My solution? Play alts.

For most people the road to 60 IS the fun. Level 60 forces you to either join one of the big guilds, throttle back your efforts, or downgrade your playtime to chasing small upgrades here/there while saving cash for the gear or epic pieces you'll never see because of p99's raiding community.

Don't rush to 60.

This paints a somber picture.

I kited way more than 25 at a time in OT. More like 50, and yes this is post nerf. Your songs only hit 25 at a time, but as they die it hits new ones in the swarm, so your kill takes longer but most of the work is in the pulling. I would make huge pulls and just grind them down.