Hello, I have called this meeting today to discuss Bard dots. I believe that they are under powered and would like to know what others opinions on the matter are. For those who don't know, Bards have 4 song based dots. At Rank I they hit the mob for 2952(x4=11808) and crit for 8856(x4=35424). I enjoy kiting and it disappoints me that these are so low. Even our nukes crit harder than !4! of these dots. If its a balancing issue then maybe add a mana drain to them or something. Heaven knows we barely use mana. While we are at it, the base song does 2 ticks. The Faycite's add another tick and it would be nice if the drum stacked with the Faycite or if the Faycite added to the damage instead of the tick. What are your throughts? *Notes: Based off a level 105 Bard with Rank I songs and 35% Percussion Increase.
Bard dots are incredibly weak to the point that I would question ever using them at all. However, one must ask "were they ever intended to be used in any larger capacity?" They obviously didn't like us swarm kiting back in the day. So I don't know where that leaves us.
Bards aren't really meant to be high DPS, they are heavy utility and because of this, sacrifice their own damage. I've seen bards burn over 110k for more then 80 seconds. You guys have gained a lot of damage from this past melee boost. I highly doubt their going to be adjusting the dot damage. Plus as Viper mentioned I believe bards had some type of kiting nerf due to them being able to kite like 10 mobs at a time and kill them rather fast ( pretty sure I seen a lot of bards doing this during HoT era )
First to the topic, yes they are underpowered. Even the fact that we can sing them while moving doesn't make up for the sheer underwhelming dmg they can do. I'm not even sure if doubling the base dmg would make anyone want to go pure chant kite a mob in tds or even cotf. They do offer a resist debuff also but that doesn't really mean anything in the pure sense of kiting. The change to our aoe's was made way earlier than HOT but without research I cant put a date on it, but basically it was only used by very skilled bards and ones that didn't mind disrupting a zone as you basically ran around and around gathering up mobs and slowly killing them or yourself if you let them get close to you. It would be nice if making the choice of twisting in a dot had any chance of being in a rotation but as it is they could remove them from the next round of spells and I wouldn't notice a bit. Other than having even fewer spells to purchase.
Long ago, bards were able to ae kite using their ae dot songs while running in a tight circle, but two patches around GoD time provided nerfs to that (one for detrimental ae range, one for ae songs not affecting moving targets). What you might have seen bards do in HoT is still possible (just a lack of adequate spots/mobs these days to properly utilize it), and used to be referred to as "swarm kiting" on the bard forums like The Concert Hall and EQ Diva. This simply involves getting a few mobs, charm one, have the others beat it down, break charm with invis, kill it with chants or with another charmed mob, and so on until you need more mobs. Definitely a fast way to gain xp soloing. Nowadays though, I think you'll more commonly see people from the P99/TLP scene or newer bards refer to "ae kiting" as "swarm kiting" and "swarm kiting" as "charm kiting" - slightly confusing for older bards. December 18, 2003: Extended Notes and Sionachie's Cresendo no longer affects harmful area-of-effect spells. September 14, 2004: Bard PBAoE spells will no longer damage targets that are moving, however any other spell effects from the PBAoE spell will still be applied to the targets as usual. They could certainly use a boost imo. Chant of Chaos (instant clicky on HH naggy drum) or maybe a Harmony of Tone is usually more than enough for resist debuffs (and more resists covered than a single chant), especially on top of the other spell debuffs. Others looking in have to consider that bards can only maintain so many songs, and replacing one with another has to be worth the trade-off. Chants are still useful for grabbing a little extra aggro though, so I usually keep one or two up when I might be tanking, so I'd be sad to see them go completely. I think aggro is what most people use them for these days... I'd enjoy seeing some sort of boost to aggro on them if extra damage is out of the question.
It's mana free damage, debuff, damage. As to adding mana costs, lets see how people feel after the Fade changes.
What bards did in HoH is soo not possible anymore, and never should be. Bards were taking 1/3 the mobs in the zone and dotting them all at the same time. Charm kiting is not kiting 50 mobs at once. Bard dots were still weak back then, it took a bard ~10 minutes to kill his kite. But that was still soloing 50+ dark blue mobs/10 min without xp loss of a merc or party members. Plus, it took entire zones away from the rest of the game, and really hit the servers hard.
Main problem is the ADPS your DoT's grant other classes. Are they weak ....sorta but I doubt they will increase your damage from them at the risk of the ADPS getting a bump. Couple example here Its not so much the damage its more likely the debuff it provides as ADPS to others so their DoT's land. Nilsara's Chant of Flame Rk. III 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 714 (L105) to 1480 (L105) per tick 4: 100% Chance to trigger: Chant of Flame Chant of Flame 4: Decrease Fire Resist by 2 (L1) to 31 (L82) Serisaria's Chant of Poison Rk. III 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 714 (L103) to 1480 (L105) per tick 4: 100% Chance to trigger: Chant of Venom Chant of Venom 4: Decrease Poison Resist by 1 (L1) to 30 (L85)
The debuff slot lost to the debuff is worth WAY more than the debuff helps. Putting Chant of Flame/Venom on mobs does *not* help your necros
It's mana free damage, sure, but the real cost to a bard is the slots it takes in their active song lineup. It's almost never worth that slot. It's almost never worth switching in for the damage, unless you're kiting mobs for xp (and for that it's extremely weak... you're going to be there for a while, good luck). It's almost never worth switching in for the debuff. The debuff is never needed on raids (and it takes up a debuff slot that necros can use), nor have I needed it in group content (it's usually all or nothing on resists). The majority of the time I personally use it is solely for the aggro it generates. Now if more than one bard were grouped together, which can't be too often, then sure, I could see switching in chants for some extra (minor) damage simply because there's nothing better to play. As per the mana-free cost, consider the number of dots other dot casting classes can sustain simply because of their mana regen and the mana regen provided to them via buffs. If they were to boost the value of the chants and add a mana cost for it, the mana cost would still need to be low to almost nothing like Aria simply because of the bard's abysmal mana regen. Playing all 4 chants at 105 is like 4-6k DPS tops, and bear in mind, that's at the cost of your normal group songs (tell me... does that really sound reasonable in today's game?). It takes almost our whole lineup to play an entire set of 4 worthless dots. I don't think any class gets as bad of deal as us in this regard lol. We don't even get the level of dot focus other classes get. Honestly, bard chants are currently just a joke.
Aye, when boxing, that's the main thing to it, so I know I'm second on the list after the merc tank. Works well enough for that. As to it taking our whole line up to play 4 dots, that's inefficient with the extra tick from the faycites, you want 'groupsong1, groupsong2, dot1, dot2, groupsong1, groupsong2, dot3, dot4'. At least if boxing, so I get the full benefit from the dots and group songs for the mercs. It's not the best dps, but for the way I play, it's the safest (as I'm terrible at boxing) and don't mind taking time to do stuff if it means I save a wipe.
Hence why I said "almost our whole lineup". Also, if your tank merc is dying, you'd probably be better off running Spiteful Lyric, Reckless Renewal, and Pulse to help survivability instead of only 2 group songs. All 3 would help if you end up tanking as well. And you can always save Cacophony for additional aggro for the times when your tank merc dies (especially on content where Dissonant Chord doesn't work). But really, if you're devoting 4 out of 6 songs to staying second aggro and some insignificant damage, as chants are now, that's not very beneficial to your group (unless, of course, the merc happens to die). I know that's you boxing, but even still, that just says "waste of a bard" to me. I think we should try for better.
There shouldn't be any risk to changing the level of ADPS benefits. As you listed, they are even separate effects (separated long ago for dot stacking purposes)... even if they were still one effect, they'd still have separate bases, maxes, calcs, etc. entries for the different effects. It's simply a question of how much personal benefit they want to see the bard receive from them.
