Bard Melee and Instrument Swapping?
 

Looking for some advice as a newbie bard.

When grouping, should I be melee-ing or just twisting songs with instruments?

It seems kind of weird that you're forced to choose between playing your songs at max effectiveness or melee-ing. With bard melee dps being so low, why would you ever want to melee over instruments? And at that point, should the bard even be considered melee class?

A follow-up question being, what is the most effective way to swap your weapons/instruments on the fly?

What level range are right now? How are you getting exp, group or solo.

Generally it's not worth much to swap mid fight. It's easier to swap with main hand instruments, just hold the item and swap before the song completes. You can get more hp regen mid fight with a lute of the howler, which is somewhat affordable.

Mods help with; hp regen, atk mod, damage shield mod, snare speed, direct damage, resists.

So grouping you might only swap during down time to help with hp regen and just use un modded melee songs. Once you hit 30 you get a pretty good bump in damage from using a drum for chants or if you are safe you can use the aoe songs and mod them for more damage if you don't have mobs mezed near by or otherwise safe from additional agro.

Easiest way I found to swap offhand instruments is to have 4 slots in a 2 column hotbar. Main hand - Offhand
Open bag slot - instrument in a bag slot

Drop the main hand weapon down to the open bag slot, swap the offhand down to the inst, let the song land, put in offhand weap put the inst back, then equip main hand.

You should not melee between the levels of like, 18, and 59. At 60 you should only melee if you have an epic. The damage is just so pathetic, you'll do as much damage with songs as weapons if you really need DPS.

If you really need to swap, you should get a new UI like duxaui, which has the hand slots right above the inventory slots. Then its just three clicks to swap.

Duxa ui does simplify swapping quite a bit. Highly recommended.

I would argue prior to level 20 when other hybrids are gaining double attack bard melee is fine and the vast majority of your damage. 20-30 it’s situational and post 30 when you have a full twist of 4 DoT songs it’s pretty much 95% of the time better to use even store bought instruments over anything short of end game ratio weapons vs low level/high hit rate targets.

A non-classic change I always thought would be balanced was giving bards under the effect of their self-only melee buff haste line “whistling warsong / inspiration” a set chance to double attack and/or increased chance of dual wield checks. It would allow weapons to still be relevant in the second half of your levels. A quality of life also very non-classic feature would be allowing instruments to equipped in your range slot but that might trivialize the “skill” of playing of bard.

This.

At low levels bard melee is meaningful. From 20 on it drops sharply from the ‘decent’ range to terrible. By 60 a buffed shaman pet does more melee damage.

Whether or not to melee depends entirely on your group and your level. Some songs require instruments. Most do not. In general you are best off twisting your lv 6 regen hymn until 55 and then swapping to cantata with lute. Pulse mana bolus song liberally unless your group needs your haste. Nivs regen (strings mod) stacks. It will help your healers and your group kill more and kill faster with less down time than meleeing. If you have tons of healing and the instrument mods don’t add a lot of value, feel free to melee. Just know that my 60 bard does well to hit 20dps (it’s bad) which is below knight dps (it’s really bad). Imo it’s still better to find creative ways to support your group than spend time trying to add pretty piss-poor dps.

Epic changes everything. With epic, melee procs are really good for the group and it mods all songs by 1.8 (not bad).

I did clock an epic bard with ToV weapon and 41% worn haste at 40-45 dps melee dps. That’s not too bad but still half what you might expect from any other comparably geared melee dps.

Bards are armored CASTERS. If dps is what you want from your bard you’d be better off drum dotting it up. If your group just needs dps, though, they’re not going to invite a bard.

Play to your strengths — ie your song book. A well played bard is a huge benefit to most groups. A bard focusing on melee is mediocre at best ... and in general a waste of space.

Properly twinked a Bard is a great Tank until about level 45...then the mitigation becomes a real nightmare and even though you can keep agro you probably shouldn't. I was rocking a Fungi and CoF though.

A big problem is most/all Bard weapon have terrible ratios compared to other melee. I think on Live Bards eventually got a gimp version of Backstab and even Feign Death to help make them a bit less of a stand around character.

Bards actually do make decent tanks even 46-60 if their gear is up to snuff. They suffer from lower hps and lower avoidant defensive skill caps much like rangers, but they do have high skill caps on defense skill and can wear plate. The final melee balancing patch will see some further improvement with higher avoidant defensive skill caps.

+holds aggro very well
+plate armor
+high defense skill cap
+early slows on incoming
-low hps compared to real tanks
-lower end avoidant defensive skill caps

They’re decent overall. Very capable tanks on routine/easy content, but their weaknesses become more obvious on hard group content (ie seb shrooms/juggs, lower velks dog/BM, sirens grotto, deep DN Paebala, Kael arena, etc).

Everyone always lambasts bard DPS without quantifying it, but I find bards do around 50% of what you'd expect a similarly geared warrior might do (feel free to provide proof otherwise).

While grouping, the choice of whether to melee or not comes down to: is an extra 1/2 warrior DPS + an un-modded/singing rotation more valuable than a solely modded song rotation to your group? This of course, always depends on context (e.g. group make up, level, gear, mobs, etc.).

I find this nuance is always lost in these threads, as everyone pushes their own dogma.

Well I can honestly tell you my 60 bard doesn’t put out half the dps of my 60 warrior in comparable gear. He doesn’t even put out half the dps of my comparably geared 60 paladin.

-lower offensive skill caps
-no double attack
-no triple attack for primary hand.

It’s not even close. Bard melee dps is not good, and I’m ok with that.

Always max your weapon skills when you lvl.

But really unless your tanking for your group just sit back and play your songs.