Are bards fun to raid with?

Are bards much fun to raid with in classic era? When are they their most fun in raids in your opinion?

Do you know how to turn off songs?

Bards are great fun to raid with in all xpacs.

Ghetto mez, pulling trash and working with your group to maximise their effectiveness.
There's plenty to do if you're an active player.

saying that 70% of what you do can be done with a boxed bard, but it's that little bit extra that brings the magic.

They are no where near as fun to play in raids as they are to play in groups. In raids it is a lot about knowing what to melody from your large arsenal of songs rather than quick reactions or clutch plays if you want that play a healer. Also there is a fair bit of arguing about if what you are doing is right because your actions affect your groups performance so everyone is going to throw in their 2 cents. However there is quite a bit of pulling you can do as a bard and if you like pulling then you will probably find it fun.

Bards at raids are like smoking a joint at a concert. Noone needs to smoke a joint, but the concert is way more fun Lol.

Short answer - no, not really.

In groups, they are super fun. Pulling, mezzing, charming, mixing in buffs all the while. Tons to do. Best pullers, hands down (for exp groups).

In a raid, they are quite boring, a lot of times you are just melody-ing and auto attacking. Sometimes, you can't even melee, depending on the mob you are killing and the positioning of your group. Sometimes casters have to be out of range of an AoE, but you need to make sure they still get your songs, so you basically just sit AFK with melody on in between the melee and the casters. Sometimes you are in an all caster group and just sit behind a wall the entire time. A great example is Nagafen. It is incredibly foolish to melee... if you end up getting feared, all of your songs drop, and you group takes an insane amount of damage without your resist songs. You are literally optimized by afk-ing with melody on behind a wall. Functionally equivalent to a boxed bard.

If you want to stay active during raids bard is not the class for you, unless you are helping with pulls, which you *mostly* can't do until fade anyways. If you are your guild's designated bard for the pull team, they become fun again.

They're fun to group with.

But bards aren't fun to raid with.

In a raid no one cares what the bard does as long as the bard is playing their songs.

Your job as a bard on a raid is /melody 1 2 3 4, click quicktime AA on a burn, and go AFK until the raid is over. I'm not even joking.

Most trash is simply rushed, it is much faster and safer in the large majority of raids. I can't remember the last time I did a raid were trash was actually pulled.

If a bard on a raid is interrupting songs to "ghetto mezz" I would probably ask the bard to leave the raid because he's cutting the group's DPS in half being an idiot.

What Candy says is 100% accurate and why you see so many bard box alts on raids. They are purely there for there songs. If your looking for a fun raiding class you will have to pick a strong dps class.

There’s a reason half the bards in raids are boxes. They are horribly boring to play, and can be played at about 90% effectiveness as a box with very little attention paid to them. They are bar far the most useful raid boxes as well (wizard is close for the easy burst dps).

Group content is a lot different. A competent bard is amazing in a group.

Bards are amazing to raid with (if you arent playing it). Boosts your dps to a whole new level. Later on in the game they get a little more in depth to what they can do, and become more than just melody bots. but until like TSS they just sit there and sing.

Great bards in groups on the other hand... omg, best pullers in the game, no contest.

They are not good pullers until PoP, when the get access to the Fading Memories AA ability. Prior to that they are average pullers, and if the group needs their mana regeneration song they're a bad choice for a puller.

Prior to Luclin their crowd control abilities are sub par. This is particularly noticeable if they do not hit level 50 prior to Kunark, because they're not really able to mez most things in OS until level 53. They will not be able to mez the golems in OS until Luclin, when they get songs at level 58 and 60 that are basically on par with enchanters.

tl;dr - Bards will be more fun on Selos than Mangler.

As someone who has mained both a bard and a monk of previous tlp’s, the bard was the more efficient puller in >90% of situations even before PoP, and it wasn’t close. Again, this is for group content. For raids where mobs aren’t able to be paci’d, you obviously need feign.

Bard was my first main on Phinny and I loved it, until group invites just disappeared in the late 40's. Couldn't CC the stuff people wanted to fight, and other classes were always a higher preference for dps/utility. If you're going to roll a bard on a new server, make sure you get in a guild that's willing to make the investment to carry you through that 5-10 level stretch where you're mostly useless.

Lets be a little more honest. Bards are NEVER useless just at times they don't require a whole lot of micro managing on raids.

FD is better than pacification because Bards have no way to deal with pacification failing other than to find a safe spot to die and hope the rezzer can get to them safely (if the group has a rezzer). It's true that FD can fail, but in that case a monk has a chance to try again, where as if a bard fails they're screwed. It does take a monk a little longer to break a camp than a bard, but they have a higher chance of doing so, and once a camp has been broken it's a better "Oh sh**t" button.

Paladins, enchanters, clerics all get pacification. Since enchanters buffs work while they're pulling they're almost always a better choice for a puller. Paladins, until Kunark, are better pullers as well since they take less damage than bards and are less likely to need a heal before aggro has been established. Bards, enchanters, and clerics get better pacification tools when Kunark launches, however. Clerics are a bad choice for a puller because their heals are needed in case of respawns.

So to sum up: Necromancers, Shadowknights, Enchanters, and monks are better pullers than bards. Paladins are sometimes better, sometimes not as good as a bard. Rangers, warriors, wizards, mages, shamans, druids, and rogues are not as good as a bard. One could argue that Bards are above average pullers prior to PoP, but they're far from "the best" or even "great".

After PoP bards are 100% pulling masters, but Before PoP bards are out shined by enchanters. They're better at pulling and crowd control, and have better buffs. Bards are absolutely essential on raids, however, due to their resistance songs. But in groups, everything a bard can do, an enchanter can do better. (At least before Luclin. Bards got some much needed love in that xpac.)

There is a pretty big level gap where they can't really perform their primary group function (crowd control) in many cases. In classic this isn't such a big deal, because they can just stay in lower guk until they hit 50. But once Kunark comes out, levels 50-53 are painful, and even after level 53 they can't crowd control in the best camps, but 53-60 is doable. Once Luclin comes out, they can crowd control basically as well as an enchanter. But between Kunark and Luclin, bards are not able to Crowd Control the content that groups are doing between level 45 and 53. The fact that most people don't know that bards can't CC is the only thing keeping them in groups. (That and mana song.)

In your opinion
My personal experience has taught me otherwise.

"Personal experience" is often more subjective than personal opinions. I've played an enchanter, bard, and wizard in TLPs. I got the best perspective while I was playing my wizard, because I saw the impact that various pullers had on the groups I was in. The experience I got from playing my bard was that the leveling grind between 45 and 53 was much much harder than from 53 to 60. The experience I got from playing my enchanter is that until Luclin comes out, they're just better than bards at everything.

The lack of CC in Kunark-Vellious is rough. As a religious bard player this is often my darkest hour. Only in PoP are we given back our ability to charm and mez as it once was HOWEVER, I think you are grossly underestimating the power a bard brings to a group even without CC, which is understandable because CC is flashy and easy to notice compared to the steroids or other debuffs. THe strengths of a bard is they can cover most roles and fill in gaps in your party. Bard slow/snare is often very underrated, along with their various debuffs that indirectly buff damage along with their buffs that also indirectly increase damage. Often the difference in bringing in a bard into a group can be felt as if you brought in an extra or two pure DPS classes.