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  #1  
Old 01-10-2017, 10:54 AM
Tetsuo Tetsuo is offline
Kobold


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Default Bard Group: When to hangup the sword and pick up the lute?

Considering how horrid bard damage is, I was wondering what level would it be more beneficial for the group to just drop the stat stick and just jam out ?
  #2  
Old 01-10-2017, 11:05 AM
gildor gildor is offline
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I would say 34ish..you get your first cantana, can twist that with various other tools depending on group make up..

You can twist haste, mana chant, psalm, catanan and throw a dot here and there if your groups DPS is solid etc..

The thing about bard is play it to the situation. Probably the most versatile class in everquest.
  #3  
Old 01-31-2017, 03:41 PM
Darguth Darguth is offline
Kobold


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Quote:
Originally Posted by gildor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
I would say 34ish..you get your first cantana, can twist that with various other tools depending on group make up..

You can twist haste, mana chant, psalm, catanan and throw a dot here and there if your groups DPS is solid etc..

The thing about bard is play it to the situation. Probably the most versatile class in everquest.
Fairly n00b question but does Chant of Clarity's mana regen stack with Cantana's?
  #4  
Old 02-09-2017, 05:12 AM
Sadiki Sadiki is offline
Sarnak


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Oh boy, this thread actually has a full page worth of discussion suggesting playing nothing but DoTs in groups.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darguth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Fairly n00b question but does Chant of Clarity's mana regen stack with Cantana's?
If you mean Chorus of Clarity, yes. It has no buff icon and merely gives a burst of mana whenever it hits. This makes it ideal to twist Cantana-Chorus-Chorus-Chorus in downtime if your healer is low on mana. However, the range on Chorus is rather small, and so it is usually fairly useless in combat unless you're fighting on top of your casters.. which is a wonderful way to get them hit every time they sit down between casts.
  #5  
Old 02-09-2017, 10:53 AM
Darguth Darguth is offline
Kobold


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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sadiki [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
If you mean Chorus of Clarity, yes. It has no buff icon and merely gives a burst of mana whenever it hits. This makes it ideal to twist Cantana-Chorus-Chorus-Chorus in downtime if your healer is low on mana. However, the range on Chorus is rather small, and so it is usually fairly useless in combat unless you're fighting on top of your casters.. which is a wonderful way to get them hit every time they sit down between casts.
Thanks for the clarification, I didn't know how Chorus of Clarity worked (my bard is only 18 and never played one on Live).
  #6  
Old 01-10-2017, 12:00 PM
darkreap darkreap is offline
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When I would twist songs at low levels I would use melee weapons and right before cantana went off I would equip my lute. Kinda a PITA but I think people who don't know how to bard get pissy when you don't melee sometimes.
  #7  
Old 01-11-2017, 05:36 AM
Pyrion Pyrion is offline
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at 46 you can do more than 130/tick with just the 3 ranged dots while equipping a drum. Your weapons probably can't keep up with that. That damage is quite reliable too, other than the sporadic nature of weapon damage.

Generally i would say i switched more and more to instruments starting in the late 30ties.
  #8  
Old 01-11-2017, 02:58 PM
Aaramis Aaramis is offline
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I suppose it all depends on your weapons and instruments.

In the example above, 130dmg between 3 songs means each song is doing what, about 43dmg?
Depending on your instrument modifier, switching to melee could mean each song dropping to about 30d'ish mg - so 90dmg with weapons out vs 130 without.

So as long as your weapons do 40dmg per tick then you're pulling even, and with a haste item, haste song, and decent weapons, you should be hitting that.

I dunno, maybe I did Bard completely wrong, but I found that the vast majority of times it was worth meleeing.
  #9  
Old 01-12-2017, 06:02 AM
Pyrion Pyrion is offline
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Equipping an instrument applies the instrument modifier to the dot damage. if your isntrument has strength 21 (mistmoore battle drums, easy to get) than your damage increases by a factor of 2.1. So the 130 will be a bit more than 60 without instruments. Hard to do more than 60 damage a tick reliably with weapons as a 46 bard. Still, it's a possibility. You will have to be close to the mob though which is another inconvenience if you want to fear kite for example.

If you really *like* to swing your weapons you won't gimp yourself by doing so and applying dots at the same time, but the effort is really not needed.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaramis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
I suppose it all depends on your weapons and instruments.

In the example above, 130dmg between 3 songs means each song is doing what, about 43dmg?
Depending on your instrument modifier, switching to melee could mean each song dropping to about 30d'ish mg - so 90dmg with weapons out vs 130 without.

So as long as your weapons do 40dmg per tick then you're pulling even, and with a haste item, haste song, and decent weapons, you should be hitting that.

I dunno, maybe I did Bard completely wrong, but I found that the vast majority of times it was worth meleeing.
  #10  
Old 01-12-2017, 08:57 AM
Aaramis Aaramis is offline
Sarnak


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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyrion [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Equipping an instrument applies the instrument modifier to the dot damage. if your isntrument has strength 21 (mistmoore battle drums, easy to get) than your damage increases by a factor of 2.1. So the 130 will be a bit more than 60 without instruments. Hard to do more than 60 damage a tick reliably with weapons as a 46 bard. Still, it's a possibility. You will have to be close to the mob though which is another inconvenience if you want to fear kite for example.

If you really *like* to swing your weapons you won't gimp yourself by doing so and applying dots at the same time, but the effort is really not needed.
Yeah, MM drums are one of the higher ratios - I was using an example of about a 1.6 modifier which is probably the base stuff, which is why I said it depends on your gear. If you have awesome instruments, then yeah, you're probably better off just using instruments. If you're an A/A twink with a Siren Song dagger, then melee is probably your better option.

All told, though, the damage is probably not going to be a huge difference between melee + base songs vs. no melee + instrument-modified songs. Probably equates to less than a 5 or 10% variable, although that's a number I'm just guessing at.

Obviously, for swarm kiting melee is out. And dragons / raid targets, I'd probably avoid melee too unless you have Siren Song / Epic and want to proc.
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