I'm sorry, but I'm a little offended. While you may spend 90% of your time on a raid twisting group buffs and you may be able to kite stuff to "solo" the class still has several roles to play that benefit from gear. If you are doing crowd control, you will get resists and you will draw aggro and you will get hit so you do need AC and HPs. We have bards who have timed solo kills at many levels and until endgame they almost always go faster with weapons and melee songs than they do with instrument enhanced songs, even if you count the HP regen downtime. I've played many roles in leveling groups, including enchanter, healer, nuker (DoTer) and even main tank using high aggro songs when I'm a little higher level than the rest of the group. If you have a melee heavy group and are using melee songs, you are best off adding your [arguably pathetic] melee to the mix. You also can't kite everything, so there are times where you must rely on your melee skills to quest or pharm and having good weapons, maybe a haste item, helps a lot!
Bards are about versatility. We can kite and do some crazy things without getting in close, but there are times where you just have to go in swinging and be able to survive a few hits.
|