What next for midlevel bard?

[Vivitron]

These are some fun ideas, thanks. I always forget about those giants, and that ice burrower technique hadn't occurred to me.

I did 46 and 47 fear kiting bloodgills and then 48-50 charm solo / duo at CoM arena. Both were solid (although that's coming from the perspective of a twinked bard.) Alas no bloodgill marauder while I was there.

I did some HS solo on my first bard. I like to pull with a charmed mob to bleed the harm touches, and there can be casters to deal with, so I think I'd find that crit pull a little too spicy.

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by Vivitron [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Did you find anything particularly fun 50-55? I'm slowly leveling a second bard and am unsure what I'm going to do in this range.

Not especially. I've put the bard on the back burner for the time being. I'm halfway through 54 and almost all my xp in that range has been in KC. I had a good time duoing with a pally just outside the entrance, and now that I have aoe snare I've been learning how to cc a big pull by kiting them around camp until they're all rooted/mezzed. I've been meaning to check out Burning Woods, either charming giants or swarming hornets. My gear still isn't great (no fungi), so that limits my options a bit.

I did a little Cobalt Scar 49-51, either dot-kiting or charming. The problem with charming is making sure you avoid getting an add, especially any of the cobalt drakes with their aoe dd/dispel. But if you can pull two wyverns down to the othmir it'd be pretty good. I root rotted on my druid up until 53, when it finally completely greened out. Getting non-KOS with dragons is definitely recommended.

Originally Posted by plzrelax [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I had a vision of taking advantage of this as a bard in order to do a huge pull and kite it around the wing. Someday I’ll try it. Not exactly a mid level strategy but cool to think about

It's not quite the same but check out https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1155754690 to see a bard soloing in HS.

Originally Posted by Crede [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bard solo falls off hard 50+. Your new charm costs mana and only lasts for 3 ticks instead of 4. Also your melee dps can no longer really keep up with mob hp. I’d probably just try to swarm, maybe td raptors?

I agree bard solo falls off, but charming still seems viable. I never ran into a problem with the mana cost while charming. By the time my mana gets low I'm ready for a break anyway. The one huge annoyance is how long it takes mana to regen after getting a rez.

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I did a little Cobalt Scar 49-51, either dot-kiting or charming. The problem with charming is making sure you avoid getting an add, especially any of the cobalt drakes with their aoe dd/dispel. But if you can pull two wyverns down to the othmir it'd be pretty good. I root rotted on my druid up until 53, when it finally completely greened out. Getting non-KOS with dragons is definitely recommended.

There's a big rock on the main ridge close to skyshrine which is safe from pathers, they wander like 50-75yards from the rock and turn away. I always pulled to that area but they come in pairs so you might have to lull one first.

If you charm from the tower and pull to land, you have to go down the staircase waiting for your charmed mob or it will fall on the rocks below and aggro a bunch of bulthars, which is bad news.

The beach is safe but if you cast any offensive AE you have to make sure to stay out of othmir range. They're sowed and hasted which means a very quick death.

[WarpathEQ]

My favorite for 50+ on the bard is charm kiting geonids in WL. Incredible exp, very efficient, and great coin from all the vendor gems plus you can stock up on jewelcrafting and velious armor gems or sell them for plat too.

[Crede]

Originally Posted by WarpathEQ [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

My favorite for 50+ on the bard is charm kiting geonids in WL. Incredible exp, very efficient, and great coin from all the vendor gems plus you can stock up on jewelcrafting and velious armor gems or sell them for plat too.

How long would you typically go before going oom? And would you say bard is the one class worth going prayer shawl for?

[WarpathEQ]

I was doing a rotation of 6 geos (3x2), with a short med break before repops, and would go at least 3 hours on a full mana bar before going OOM, could be extended to 4-5 hours if you really min-max the crap out of sitting in between each song twist (I put sit on a hotkey and twisted it in to stretch mana bar or when I was running low at times to get through the end of the cycle). Took about 1 hour to med back to full so great for taking a food break, ect. Alternatively you could easily do 8 or more geos before repops if you wanted to burn your bar faster and condense your timetable.

I was using a 6 song twist with selo's drum equipped.

1. Charm (switch target)
2. Fufils
3. Chant of Flame
4. Chant of Frost
5. Fulfils
6. Chant of Flame
1. Charm/repeat

If you keep your twist semi tight you will start over at 1 and charm will break just slightly before you land a new one, charming the mob that you were previously DoTing (if you twist close to perfect you can actually complete the twist and land the charm before it breaks so sometimes I had to recast my charm on the repeat so it didn't land too early).

You can do this without ever taking any hits from the geos with a little bit of practice. I prefer the middle of the back 3 caves as there is a perfect round of 6, pullable in 2s with a ton of room to move around and not run into others).

I decided not to pursue a prayer shawl (hoping for CT brains some day) for a few reasons:
1) The exp I got using this method is the best exp I've ever experienced both grouping and solo'ing accross multiple classes (a high skilled enchanter is probably the only class capable of exp'ing faster)
2) Because I was gaining so fast I determined the amount of time it would take to obtain a prayer shawl would not be recouped by the time I would hit 60 doing this without one.
3) Outside of this specific use case FT1 isn't really that useful to a bard.

The only way I could see prayer shawl really paying off here is if you wanted to use this strat to power level others and therefore would be spending much more time here than just leveling 50-60. Based on my efforts to min-max sitting at times I suspect you could go non-stop killing atleast 8 geos before repops with little or no sit time and an effectively infinite mana pool. I intend to go back someday when I have drums of the beast and CT brains to test that expectation.

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by busted [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I call this the "battle bard" setup

Gearing up to be a battle bard looks fun as hell, but I'm still a ways away from that.

Originally Posted by WarpathEQ [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You can do this without ever taking any hits from the geos with a little bit of practice. I prefer the middle of the back 3 caves as there is a perfect round of 6, pullable in 2s with a ton of room to move around and not run into others).

I checkout out the geos on my druid, was able to find them easily enough, but it was a little confusing to navigate and I'm not sure what you meant by "middle of the back 3 caves".

[WarpathEQ]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I checkout out the geos on my druid, was able to find them easily enough, but it was a little confusing to navigate and I'm not sure what you meant by "middle of the back 3 caves".

The 2 main entrances people use are the North and East Entrance. Inside the caves there are 5 rooms with a hallway that runs in a big circle that leads to each of them. The furthest North room is the largest and includes a named mob (Phenocryst (sp?)), there is a small room to the east just off the hallway.

On the south end of the cave there are 3 seperate rooms each with 6-9 mobs in them. I was referring to the middle of these 3 rooms which is the most spread out, it has a group of 3 mobs you can see from the opening into the room and then 6 mobs along the back wall as you follow it around. Including a safe spot in the very back where no mobs spawn within line of sight, often a place where people camp out or med.

[bcbrown]

Thanks for the details on WL geos, I'm going to have to go check that out.

[Amhran Ogma]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I went with a dex/cha build (something like 170/130 with cheap EC gear) and a venomous axe of the velium brood, and although now I think going dex may have been a little suboptimal, the number of procs has made melee a lot of fun up until now.

If by some odd chance you see this, OP bcbrown, I'm about to roll a bard, but it's my first toon starting on p99 (gave away 56 rogue acct 20+ years ago), so I'll be lucky if I see a hand-me-down or two. I want to make sure I don't misspend/allocate a single starting stat.

I'm rolling Wood Elf no matter what. I planned on putting 10 to Dex (to start at 100), 10 STR (still low at 80), and the rest (5) in CHA (90)

Is there something I should know regarding your hindsight about "going dex being suboptimal"? Thanks