Bard instruments/clickes in Velious
 

First time in Velious - what do we have to look forward to? Any Bard toys to get excited about?

Thinking more about Bard toys akin to melodious truncheon or orb of tishan that really add to bard utility, rather than more general melee stat gear

Drum of the Beasts is the #1 must have.

It's primary equipable, best percussion instrument in game. Can run super fast with a resist shield in secondary.

Come late Velious can offhand the epic and primary drum for maximum useful mods on raid fights. Can swap in Lyran's for dat HP Regen if necessary.

Lute of the Howler
Mask of Tinkering
Flayed Barbarian Hide Mask (once illusion added)
Dald has already mentioned the Drums of the Beast
New haste proc daggers...Siren Song and Nature's Melody
Primal Velium weapons (although bards should be way down on the list for those)

IMO Chestplate of Vindication

Ah yes Lute of the Howler is also good cause primary slottable. The Clicky is 40% haste but that's useless for a bard with epic really.

But if you're a VP keyed bard, Lyran's is a better mod and stat lute that is primary slot usable.

Gnome illusion mask should die in a fire, gnomes are the worst.
Barbarian illusion mask is 10 months into Velious and getting AoW down is a feat to say the least.

I think I might like Breastplate of Eradication better: http://wiki.project1999.com/Breastplate_of_Eradication

Also, is Nature's Melody from Tunare actually a clickie rather than a proc? Seems like there is debate on the wiki about what version we will get; I think it was changed to a clickie later. When playing around on a god-mode server, it was a clickie that casted. (FYI you linked incorrectly to it. ;))

When I had it on live it was clickie

Vindi BP was a lot better when resists weren't capped at 255, but its still vastly easier to obtain than Statue BP (8hr or 12hr vs. 7day?). Remember also that Statue BP is arguably BIS for the tank classes, so tons of competition and bards will be way down on the list because of our lesser need for AC and raw hps.

Also, Nature's Melody on wiki is correct, its exact same proc as NTOV dagger until it gets upgraded later in the timeline (Jan/8/2002) to a clicky. See the Nature's Melody discussion page for details. There was never a "debate" on the wiki, Ravhin imported the original item from Allah's, and then I updated it and provided supporting documentation on the discussion(talk) page. If you can find information that's better than mine, I'm all ears.

I didn't even notice the haste, its looking like a badass werewolf that matters.

Honestly... The real value of the lure, beyond being primary usable for non-VP keyed, is that the illusion + faction song make you non-KoS in Velketors given you never get faction hits from Velk or Lord Bob.

Can chain kill spiders and be dubious still. Very useful for a puller or corpse recovery.

How does that interact with corpse dragging? Or does the aggro only apply when dragging near the 3 factions (which are not represented in Velks)?