Correct. This is true for the warrior push/pull abilities too. If I'm tanking a mob and want to shift it laterally, I can face to my right or left, hit press the attack and they'll shift accordingly. It's really useful for me when I don't want to move from the six mobs that are damage and can summon, or when tanking for a raid and you don't want the mob to sperg out. Another related tip: When you move forward/backward, the game attempts to smooth your movement by extrapolating it. Any EQer knows what that looks like, everytime someone stops they teleport backward a bit. The game doesn't attempt to do that when you strafe. So if you strafe around mobs they will cleanly follow your actual movement and not the extrapolated one the server provides. This is also really useful when boxing with /follow
Oh and as far as bard pulling, bards have so many excellent abilities to pull that deciding which to use is like having a nail and five hammers. There's probably one that's safest/fastest in a given situation, but really you can use just about anything. There are few things in EQ more rewarding on an individual level than pulling a single named through multiple groups of mobs through usage of assist vs direct aggro. https://web.archive.org/web/20140228032903/http://samanna.net/wiki/index.php/Pulling_Guide
Rallying Solo and the five minute bard taunt are my biggest complaints about the class right now. I really hate dying as a bard, because when I am rezzed I have no endurance or mana, then when I am using Rally I can't use offensive actions which basically feels like I am taking an afk break when everyone else is working. And if that is down, I am totally dependant on immediately taking a chunk of damage from a mod rod and going without endurance. If I have no mana, that means no fade, which means I will die again shortly. Absolute worst case scenario I end up in a no mana death cycle and bards tend to get rez priority for manasong. When mobs don't get picked up, they tend to rush bards, and often in packs. 5 minutes is way too long for taunt. I already have to think twice and three times about using it, and even then there are countless times I am standing around hoping to get aggro back wishing taunt was up, or really any ability to regain aggro before someone else dies. Both of these situations just lead to a helpless feeling that totally makes me wish I wasn't there at all and that I was instead on the beach in South Ro.
Bards could use a reduction in cast time on songs, debuff songs especially. While many classes have seen their spell cast times drop down into the 0-1.5s cast time range, bards have retained the 3s timers on their songs with some minor, overall reductions via metronome AA and the activated quick time AA. There's also been some specific reductions to the Requiem of Time song via AA. Lowering the cast time of resist debuff songs such as the Harmony of Tone line, lulls, dispels, mezzes, etc. would help a lot. Currently if a bard wants to single target mez something, it will take 3 seconds and an additional 3 seconds every time the target resists. If they want to use Harmony of Tone to debuff the resists first, that's an additional 3 seconds until it's mezzed. It adds up quick, especially when more targets are involved. While I definitely wouldn't mind seeing additional AE mez options since there is only the one on a 30-second reuse timer (a targeted AE and/or an AA version of the AE mez similar to Dirge of the Sleepwalker in concept would be nice to see), I think cast time reductions would be a step in the right direction. I use AE mez considerably, and the increased resists are definitely noticeable, and that's with rank 3. It's obviously still manageable, but it does make the bard cast time issue more evident.
It would be nice if our debuffs lasted as long as our buffs. If I add a debuff to an 8 song buff melody its not going to last through the whole cycle. Not a major complaint but just something I just remembered.
Some conveniences could be added here and there, but overall I don't have anything stopping me from getting the job done. There are better ways to start a productive conversation.
I have a thread in the Hybrid forum called "Bard: Quick and Easy Changes and Fixes" that is on the second page. In it I attempt to focus on commonly agreed upon issues and offer some realistic goals that are pulled from other bards I talk with. By "realistic" I simply mean that the solutions seems to match the developers' concept of the EverQuest bard and the direction of changes the developers are working on for other classes. For example, the developers have reworked several AAs to cast the highest available version of a known spell. So a suggestion might be that bards get an AA that casts the highest known version of Occlusion of Sound (Harmony of Tone for > 97 bards that have memorized the spell). Of course, this brings up a bunch of other issues: since it cannot be weaved, should it be insta-cast? Should it last longer? Make sure it is modified by instrument modifiers, etc. I also avoid what I consider to be "novel" suggestions. So I would never have put down "make Boastful Bellow into a strong DD with a huge recourse and then make a new AA that somewhat replaces the old ability" because there was no indication that this was a viable option. This has nothing to do with whether it is a good idea or not. There just isn't much indication that it would be on some developer's mind. Of course, this change did happen and it's clearly the work of a developer's concept and nothing to do with suggestions from the bard community (beyond a general "increase bard DPS"). I'm planning to update it at some point, so please offer your input on "quick and easy changes and fixes" you'd like to see whether they are responses to the original post or things I've missed.
Like Dhurgan said a little defensive disc or offensive disc here or there might be good. but I ghave mained ab ard for almost 8 years now and I have no problem dpsing. it just comes down to how u play/gear ur character. Bards are the red headed step child I agree since we cant tank (molo anything) or solo anything without discing once every 12 minutes lol. Bards are a good class
