What makes a great bard?Follow

Hi everyone. I'm still a rookie at posting, but I'll give it my best shot. What is it that makes a bard really desirable to a group. I know that bards can fill in many roles, and even a fairly well played bard is an asset to any group. My question is what makes the difference between an Ok bard and a top of the line performer?

Also let me introduce myself. I just came back to EQ about 3-4 weeks ago. I've started over on Morden Rasp, which is now Povar and love it. I have a bard leveled up to 23 now and having a ball playing from scratch. The challenge is back. It feels better, in my mind, to have to work a little harder and earn the reward sometimes.

Here's another question on bards. I was in an LDON the other day in everfrost. Things went pretty well. We had a pally pulling. It seemed that when I mezzed the adds we occasionally had, that the pally would have a tough time getting agro back. After I am mezzing, when our tank taunts and wakes the mob, should I stop twisting everything for a bit to keep agro a little lower. Or should I just take a few hits? What is the best thing to do in this situation?

Thanks everyone.

It's actually pretty easy. Attention span and song knowledge. Attention span is something that gets lost on a lot of people. With a bard, you HAVE to be paying attention all of the time while grouped. Because you have so many abilities, what you do can very often save the group, or cause it to wipe horribly. I'm not trying to be vain about my chosen main class here, but it's the truth.

Once you reach the higher levels, you'll typically be playing the same 4 or 5 songs in your twist in every group. That leaves you with 3-5 gems that you have to decide to fill with the right songs though. If you make the wrong choices, or don't know when to change a song out for another song, or which song to change from and to, you become a liability. If you don't understand how your songs work, ALL of them, you lose some of the uniqueness the class has. I've saved a group a few times just by realizing "Now would be a good time to highsun that bastage so we can run away". Knowing what certain songs do, how mobs react to them and what effect they have on your group members is also very important. It'll help you with your group play as well as pulling. Sometimes a pull isn't as simple as "lull, pull". Some can be quite tricky.



One thing to understand is the aggro we generate while playing our songs. Bards are a nightmare for SOE, at least coding-wise. One of those coding nigthmares is aggro generation.

When we play a song, it usually hits at least 6 people. If we're playing AE mana+AE Resists, we're hitting 60+ people with a buff every 3 seconds. Normal aggro rules tells you that that would be instant death for the bard. So, they've coded our songs to generate very little aggro. Aggro is still a problem in the lower levels though when 6 simultanous low-aggro buffs still generate more aggro then a low level tank can generate. If it's a problem, do as you said and stop twisting until the tank has aggro. Since you're low level though, you may want to just take the hits to work your defense. This is actually an habit you want to establish, since you'll be doing it throughout your career. I NEVER have a song playing on incoming if someone else is pulling. You can cause assist aggro if they get in range and FD/fade, or you can ***** up the MT's aggro, or you can ***** up the rampage list.

Now, we DO have what we consider "low aggro songs", meaning songs that generate even less aggro then normal songs. These are songs like our dispell and our unresistable resist debuffs (occlusion and harmony of sound). Once you get to higher levels, you can even hit a mob with 3 songs before getting it to group and the tank SHOULD be able to still pull aggro off of you with just an arrow (even if he misses).

On a somewhat unrelated note, but since we mentioned it earlier, we're also a coding nightmare because we can run and cast at the same time. Because of this, we can do some special things other classes can't do, like use clickies with more then a .1 second cast while running (think gate potion!). We can also do things like invis on the fly (tiny cloak of darkest night!). Illusion on the run (DE mask gives ultravision, woohoo!)... some other things. We can get a raid into PoFear unscathed (kiting a bunch of mobs in the SE corner while the raid zones in and runs to NW corner, then run towards them and fade). We can get a group or guild to the bottom of the hole in relatively short time with group DA. Much of this is going back to knowing your songs, but you get the idea... enough rambling from me.

Ahhh, I love the smell of a resisted chanter in the morning!

Thanks for the informative responses guys. Especially you, jrmayii ;) This class sounds very complicated. Let's hope I don't let too many people down during the learning phase. I've been searching for good threads on bards. Allakhazams bard forum seems like nothing more than "which race is best, how do I twink with 50k, which race is best" etc. The eqdiva boards have some great threads though. I am eager to learn this class as best I can. Please feel free to bleed off any other knowledge you can spare to me. Teach me, wise ones.

Good Bard's (or any other class) ask how to get better and listen. Good players take 10 min out of their busy leveling to teach the inexperienced ones how to be better players instead of complaining about that playing style.

one on the verge of carpal tunnel? :) 1,2,4,3,1,2,4,3,1,2,4,3 in rapid succession hurts after awhile, lol.

Obviously my main is a Shadowknight. I just started playing a Bard because I thought it might teach me something about playing a different role in a group and I met some GREAT Bards. I pride myself as a SK in being able to pull aggro from anyone, and being able to pull singles out of tough congested areas. Alot of pulling is mechanical technique, I know this will help me as a Bard, course I will miss that FD "Feign Death" to escape eminent peril. I have discovered there is a time to twist 2,3 at my level (16). I sometimes prefer not to twist to develop Defense skills and offense. Especially , if you are grouped with higher level toons or you are by your self.