Bard swarming pre 54 and post 54
 

I know swarming is a huge part of the Bards toolkit and often how many of them solo. I never really fell into this playstyle when leveling, I usually had a duo partner or grouped with friends. If I soloed on bard I wouldn't ever really be in the mood to swarm kite for a while, so it is a part of the bard I never really developed. At 54 bards get that awesome AOE snare - is it safe to assume post 54 when a bard refers to "swarming" that they use this method instead of the circle and strafe get the dot to tic when the mobs are in lower corner etc? What are the specific mechanics when using the snare song. Just keep walking backwards making sure you are in range of songs? Still do the circle trick, just easier with snare etc? High end newb question, I know.......

Thanks

Swarming never referred to ae kites. Swarming was gathering a bunch of mobs, charming one, then using social aggro to reduce your charmed mob to like 10% hp in 5 seconds (then quickly invising to remove charm and kill mob). Like a swarm of bees.

The AE snare use in AE kiting is really only for indoors say Velks, as it lowers your max possible damage output since you now have to commit one of your twist songs to snare instead of damage, slowing your overall kite down.

Safety is still the name of the game though and honestly the snare method is still kind of dangerous at 54. I'd wait until 58 cause one resist that you don't notice = you dead.

Thank you for the clarification. I hear a lot of terms that all seem interchangeable but, clearly, are not.

Lvl 54 snare song trivializes swarm kiting, but as a previous poster said it hurts your DPS and it’s not because you couldn’t twist another dot(it’s very easy to twist snare + 3 dots), the issue lies in the fact that the lvl 48 dot cessation does not stack with the level 54 AoE snare. This dot is 50% or more of your total DPS output until lvl 59 when swarm kiting lvls 48-59

AoE snare makes duoing with an AOE nuker extremely viable though or if you are patient it still allows you to do 60damage per tic to 25 mobs at once practically risk free which equates to 1250 damage per tic mana free until the mobs are dead.

PS. strafe kiting Is just a preference, sow pots work great to for kiting without using strafe, a well rounded bard learns both methods.