Continue shaman or play bard?

[NegaStoat]

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

Bard is easily best class in the game, and twisting is a LOT less annoying than keeping track of everyone's buffs as a shaman. The limited UI is maybe a dealbreaker though, unless playing with inventory open is something you can put up wiith. Bards have a lot of buttons to press and if 4 of your 6 hotkey spaces are taken up by inventory/weapon slots you're pretty limited. How you gonna track and forage and assist and spam your /group roleplay macros??

Anyway you should play a bard in spite of these limitations. Bard class best class. Make sure you pick a good deity though. An agnostic bard is an rpg sin :O

Bards can pick Rallos Zek. The Imbued cultural armor has all the str / sta in dropable gear that a wimpy wood elf (or other bard race) could ever want. Cha comes from swappable jewelry anyway. Plus you get the perk of role playing a Skald and having Barbarians everywhere think you're pretty cool.

[Jimjam]

RZ is a decent neutral race, makes sense for velious where you start to get really involved in actual wars.

Personally I went for Mith Marr as I think this is the kind of deity that will have followers songing hymns of praise. Just looking at the cultural items they seem pretty decent (if incredibly difficult/rare/expensive to source the gems)!

[pink grapefruit]

Rallos Zek, Erollisi Marr, Quellious, Rodcet Nife, Tunare, and Veeshan are the deities I would consider. You can't really go wrong though, so long as you avoid agnostic and Brell the Bitch.

My OG bard was Tunare, as half elves on VZ could not worship any other deity lol. ELF TEAM!!! xD

[Cyrillious]

Bards are an under appreciated class. They can make all the melees swing faster/harder, casters save on mana from not having to heal as much. If you spend enough time in a group, you can directly see the number of pulls and kills increase gradually as the pullers/tanks/DPS realize they are now a bit more...better?

Solo, they're tons of fun. Can fear kite. Charm kite. DoT kite. Travel is a breeze...nobody is faster.

Add in a little more utility with corpse location/selos/levi/invis...and lots of folks just want to be around you [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And last but not least...they can be some pretty interesting pranksters too...(Melanie's Mellifluous Motion anyone?).

Yes, you need to be a bit more engaged with what you are doing...but that's part of the fun...I get bored sitting waiting for mana... [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Bazia]

most bards just play regen and do dogshit melee dps, theres a reason they arent that coveted and its not the class its the way most people play it

[pink grapefruit]

MMM the main reason I didn't go bard on green. 100% sure that if I had, the GMs would be hassling me lol.

[Cyrillious]

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

MMM the main reason I didn't go bard on green. 100% sure that if I had, the GMs would be hassling me lol.

A long time ago that happened...I told the Guide that eventually came along that the party referred to me as a mana bot...and I wanted to show them something new... [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

...I was told to rock on with my bad self...

[Aaramis]

I absolutely, absolutely love Bards.
But after you've played one on live with /melody, it's hard to go back to song twisting - especially with only 6 hotkeys.

I'm not sure whether P99 Bards get my eternal respect, or sympathy.
Maybe a bit of both.

[kaluppo]

I had a bard join our orc hill group the other day and it was a godsend. The monk could not keep aggro and I was going 00m all the time because the monk, wizard and rogue were all taking damage on every pull. Then the Bard joins and becomes the "tank" and to my surprise was able to hold aggro so I only had one person to heal. Plus they played a regen song to help heal up a bit during pulls.

But that said I would think Shaman would be an easier life as time goes on. People want shamans for main healer when no clerics are available or slower/buffer even when a cleric is in the group. It's rough for either class during classic but you can look ahead to kunark and velious to see which class will be more fun for you to play down the road.

[Khorza]

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

what a dreadfully misinformed thing to say and pass off as truth.

Wow way to substantiate on your claim with any sort of information whatsoever.

Shamans are sub-par in vanilla. I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings somehow but I'm sure that anyone who understands classic EQ would agree.

They're kind of like a hybrid. The toolkit is nice, but they don't excel at anything. Their primary role becomes healing, but the best heal spell they get is Greater Heal. Greater Heal is not good. It's the same heal that Paladins have. And Shamans can potentially push out a bit more healing than a Druid or a Paladin through cannibalize, but you don't have the endless reservoir of mana without Torpor. Enchanter slow is even a bit better than Shamans' until Kunark.

Like I said in my last post, Shamans are incredible once Kunark is out. But they're mediocre in vanilla. There's just too much of a gap between Clerics and the other Priest classes.