Bard or Monk
 

Hello all,

Just started playing on Friday.

I am trying to determine if I should main a bard or monk. I want to end up pulling and I think both these fall into that space.

Thoughts on which is more fun overall, bigger effect on group when played well, and for someone brand new which is potentially better to make money to be able to upgrade gear etc.

Thanks.

Do you want to have a high skill cap class w/ lots of actions per minute (a very busy class to play at high level)? Go bard.

You might wind up w/ carpal tunnel but it'll be a far more interesting experience than monk.

They’re both a ton of fun.

That having been said, monks weight limit can be kind of backbreaking as a first character. Monks take a hit to their AC for carrying over 15lbs. And like, a backpack weighs 3.

There’s ways around it. Medicine Bags are good. But as soon as you pick up a weapon to take back to town and sell, you’ll be suffering a penalty to combat. In groups, it will matter less because someone else might be tanking. But while soloing, it does kind of matter. Monk was my first character in vanilla, I made it up to 45. So it’s definitely not impossible. It’s not even hard. But...it’s a thing you will be thinking about. You will start complaining about people having autosplit turned on, and throwing out thousands of copper and maybe even silver because it’s fucking up your ability to solo. In addition to using medicine bags to carry loot, you can focus on fighting monsters that drop lightweight valuable stuff. Drakes that drop gems. Bone chips in a month when people are buying again. Silk to work on tailoring your own cured silk. It’s specifically humanoids, with their weapons and armor that you can’t really afford to always fight for 4 hours, filling up 8 bags.
On the plus side, with bandages and mend a monk can pop back up to 75% hp while soloing every 6 minutes. So you don’t spend nearly as much time seated as an untwinked warrior or rogue. Feign helps you solo too, by splitting camps.

Bard, more group friendly. But does more to exaggerate carpal tunnel.

Like to pull and tank for groups? Monk

Like to AFK and just play mana song? Bard

Iksar monk has my vote. They don't get the whole bag of tricks a bard does but are very good at what they do. Pulls, Tags, DPS, Soloing & Grouping.

For anyone out of the loop, Bard melee dps is abysmal until level 60, end of velious when it barely begins to feel useful. Aslo bard has hybrid exp penalty till velious.

Shadowknight, monk, bards can pull indoors & outdoors.
Druids can pull outdoors with harmony.

My 2 cents - for a first character, play a caster that can solo. Use that character to build up significant plats to pay for your equipment dependent twinks like shadowknight or monks.

Bard melee dps isn’t really that bad anymore. Since they got added to a new melee table their high ratio weapons plus huge self haste puts out respectable numbers. Monk probably pulls away 50+ Due to epic haste but bards way better than people give credit for these days. Also werewolf form at 40 is extremely nice too and paired with some charmed pets you’ll out level any melee without even needing to swarm.

When talking group I like having both to the same degree. Bard being more supportive/adaptive and monk more straight forward.

Bards are kinda rare in dungeons....I'd like to see more. With Iksar and Kunark now on green, we got a fresh infusion of monks.

You don't need anything to level as a monk. Spend some time in the newbie zone killing skeletons until you have a full set of cloth armor. Use cracked staffs until you can buy a staff from the merchant but really you don't even need a weapon and that's from a vanilla classic perspective. In Kunark things change. Kunark is a monk's paradise with insane new weapons that become cheap on the market pretty quickly and you can now choose Iksar. The monk class is one of the truly great and even overpowered classes. Top end melee damage and tanking, block fires off a lot, mend every 6 minutes, Iksar regen and Feign Death. You're not going to be as powerful as a caster but you can live in dungeons and the class costs nothing unless you want to save up for weight reducing bags.

On the other hand, the bard class is possibly the most unique class ever created in any MMO and if you haven't tried it I'd recommend it just for the experience. I played a bard in classic and I thought I was a melee class at first and it was tough sledding with bad equipment. Kunark adds some easy to come by cheap but good weapons but you are going to want to either play a support role in a group or really embrace play as a weak caster who doesn't ever have to stop to cast magic. It's a super group class with haste, regen, mana regen, DS and crowd control and excellent roleplay possibilities. When I soloed I used charm, single dot kiting and fear/snare melee. I tended to stay away from area dot kiting as a patch message came out limiting the amount of critters that could be affected and it was worded in a way that I thought Verant frowned on the idea of mass kiting so I stayed away it. On P99 it's now the common way to play bard and you could play a bard nearly naked with just instruments and do the mass kiting for fast experience. Not my cup of tea but it's there. If carpal tunnel is a worry stick with the monk. I won't play a bard again unless the melody command is introduced.

Praise Amun!

Bard is the best class in the game by a long shot and most broken when correctly exploited. You gotta hit a buncha buttons in the correct order a lot of times forever, though.

It's also the only class where half elf isn't a terrible race choice. Still not super duper great but they were obviously meant to be the bards of norrath. Some people like half elfs so that could be a benefit to you.

It's a special kind of hard mode.