I've been quite lucky in that I played a bard on Phinny all the way through to ROF and enjoyed the varied toolbox you had to enhance different types of groups. Every Song had a place and was useful. I picked up barding again on live at the tail end of TOL and all that lovely variety bards had is gone. your typical raiding bard sings 4 chants, 1 insult, aria of Pli, war march and maybe pulse/chorus for mana regen. All other songs are pointless are they're so underpowered in todays game. e.g. Dirge of Onokiwan rnk 3... rune for 18506 melee, 20723 spell. When you're getting hit for 180k that's almost pointless. Arcane Harmony rnk 3 =-- adds 2150 spell damage and 998 melee damage 4 times. Game breaking i think not. Ok mez/charm/paci still useful, but in a real group hardly needed these days. Have bards just become dot melody bots as all flavour seems to have been sucked out of them.
I think all classes have spells that are considered useless. And to the point that bards only use the same songs over and over - other classes do the same except they have all their spells assigned to the same keybind. The key to this issue is that people tend to find the best songs/spells/abilities and use those all the time. Except tanks I guess probably have more active choices. That said, I have 6 song saves: group, raid, 2box, me tank?, moldstool solo, and No DMG. The last mostly for 2 boxing door mission with mage. Also remember that there is more to barding than just songs. Clicks, aa's, etc's
All my accounts have a max level bard. The class is simply too useful and too versatile to forgo in all my group lineups. Let's see: 4 chants for dps, Aria, aura, warmarch. Health regen, Insult, Constance aria, DS/rune song, Calm, Slow/Snare, Mezz and mezz... And I've ran out of spell gems to mem. Now I need to shuffle songs like Aria of Absolution (still doing that pesky Shei Vinitras and trigger Spirit Fades mission steps), Dicho, Composite Psalm, Song of Highsun. Add several useful and must-have AA's like Fierce Eye, Selo, Clouding, Prankster etc. and soon enough you run out of hot-buttons. Bards can be easily boxed with just 1 hotbutton to press to do 70-80 % of possible contribution, or bards can be very busy class to play at the fullest efficiency. Perhaps you can consider not playing in "real group" lead by a raid-geared SK healed by raid-geared shaman, and then you'll discover a whole new world of entertaining group-level play with such an "odd-ball" roster as beastlord-bard-Zerker-Zerker-mage-merc healer. And then you'll see that the bard is playing very critical and important role in the success of such group.
yep. this. Players do all kinds of nonsense when they don't know what's good. A meta condensing around best play isn't about a class degrading.
I guess I don't understand why people think a spell like Arcane Harmony is bad. The caster doesn't do a 2k DD proc, that number is focused up by stuff. I know personally as a magician, my bard sings that reduce aggro song (blocked on pet) for the effect. But while I don't know exactly what the spell damage listing in game says, I remember seeing 80k melee procs with it. If you sing Arcane Harmony in a group of five casters who are all casting DD spells, and if Arcane Harmony can crit for 80k (as an example) on a spell cast, and all five casters use 4 procs at 80k each... that is 1.5 million damage. Correct me if I am wrong, but that is more than a non TC lucky crit DOT from a bard song. The point is, songs have a place. They may not be for everyone, but they may be for some. Maybe your tank is struggling and singing the AC song helps it to live. Or the heal song helps your healer heal said tank. Again if raid geared you don't use the song, but not everyone is raid geared.
People don't think a spell like Arcane Harmony is bad. People think Arcane Harmony is bad, because they've checked up on the total output of it. "It gives the party a DD proc" is a fine thing to do, if the proc is large enough and prolific enough, but Arcane Harmony's isn't. Shojralen's Song of Suffering's isn't. Von Deek's Spiteful Lyric's isn't. In your own arithmetic, you came up with a (somewhat rosy, but whatever) total of 1.6M damage. That is more than a non-TC lucky crit *tick of a* DOT from a bard song. But not more than a whole dot. To keep matching all the ticks of a dot, you'd have to re-sing Arcane every time the hit counter gets used up.
Im guessing that was on your bard. The non bards in your group dont get the benefit of bard song focus. Testing on a wizard Im seeing 2k-9k and occasional critting up to 16k. On a 110 rogue even under 2k.
no, she's talking there about Shojralen's Song of Suffering, 14.5k base damage. 80k caster crits won't be super rare.
I think OP is right in saying bard is much less interesting that it once used to be. In its inception bards were probably objectively less powerful but they were more interesting and their power came in less direct ways. They did not have huge multipliers for DPS but rather a wide arsenal of niche but useful utility abilities. This was compounded by the fact that early on utility abilities were much less common and effective. As time went on bards gained power but lost versatility. Bard abilities on live are mostly just "do more damage" in some form or another and because of that there is a lot of useless songs because you can only sing so many and if almost all your songs are "do more damage" there will be some just not worth using A big area bards lost in was what I would call "party protection" early era bards were not really sought out for their ADPS as they were for their huge survivability bonus. Bards enabled their party's by allowing them to mitigate or even ignore certain mechanics or increase their sustainability. As the game aged and certain systems broke down or changed these protective abilities were not adapted well and kinda of just left the only option of giving bard more damage.
The vision for bards has always been pretty weak imo. "Jack of all trades" on its own doesnt pan out well in a game where most scenarios are typically not very complex. That trademark phrase in reality just becomes synonymous with "kinda bad at everything". Its much more efficient to grab classes that specialize in dps, healing, tanking, cc... Bards should have instead been made with the sole focus of group augmentation. They should have been the only class with the ability to buff other PC's, albeit short-term. Other classes should have been limited to self buffs.
This did work in there inception. Mainly because bards did not have stacking issues with other classes and could always in some way synergize with other classes. For instance a druid and cleric in the same group have a lot of overlap in their capabilities and then you realize a true DPS is probably better for the group the the druid but bards on the other hand were not like that and always at some point you realized how much better the group would be if there was a bard in it.
Ok to piggy back on this, since i am returning to the game some and just getting my bard up to speed again. with that information, what is the opitmal melody then for raid or even group content? For example, i have a bard, warrior, zerk, mage, sham group line up Is it something like, insult, aria, war march, insult, dot, dot, insult, dot, dot, repeat then?
Aria, Insult, dot1, dot2, War March, Insult, Dot3, Dot4. And you will run out of mana soon enough, even though you are shaving points on the third Insult. Aria, Insult, Dot1, Dot2, Insult, War March, Dot3, Insult, Dot4 will result in the higher dps with much faster mana drain. If you get more than 1 caster in the group the melody will need to be adjusted. Also, it depends on the speed of moster killing, if dots tick less than 3 ticks (i.e. mobs die faster than 30 seconds) you may reconsider dots use.
Sorry for bringing up an old topic but was browsing through the forums. I recently added a bard to my box and curious why arcane song procs adding 1.6m dmg is deemed not worth singing but dirge which costs mana is. By my calculation synergy, which from my understanding is the only reason to sing dirge, will also add only 1.6m total damage. Is there a reason the arcane is deemed not worth it but dirge which drains mana super fast, is? Thanks
Insults, you mean? I'm'a presume you mean Insults because you say Synergy. Insults are great because Synergy is super duper reliable and near instant in its impact, allowing Insults to be re-sung on demand for even more output. Even if Arcane were reliably that much damage (it's not, which is pretty important. that estimate was quite rosy.), it can't be repeated quickly for even more damage and for fulminating brd alliances.
sorry yes i meant insults. Can the 270k dmg from bard synergy crit or be increased by anything else or is the 270k static? i just dont get how that is worth draining a mana bar if it cant. I get on raids, im talking specifically about the group game
+270k per character & main pet, plain damage add. Draining mana over time can be a concern. If you manage to outpace your Rallying Solo and never have breaks to med up to full, then you'd change up your melody to not run it for a little bit, is all. You're not locked in forever to Insulting once/tick until the game sunsets, it's just a good way to use your mana when you have it.
