Bards can't slow. It's far more productive for a bard not to slow and play their ADPS songs than it is to ever interrupt ADPS for slow. Not to mention that a bard slow requires HOS before Requiem will land. By then your mob is halfway dead. You might as well get a rogue to slow, their slow will land faster and they won't lose 100% of their usefulness doing it. Yes, a bard can slow, a useless bard slows.
A mage is horrible addition to that group. Who the hell still cares about COTH when you can put campfires all over Norrath with lvl 1 fellowship characters.
Bards can slow...especially if they are pulling. When I pull Requiem of time is on the mob before it gets to camp and its dead before it wears off. With the new aa's its not resisted nearly as often as it used to be when Harmony of Sound was required to get it to land.
That means you have gaps in between your pulls and are doing it wrong. A good bard has a mob in camp at all times, and that means the group needs ADPS hitting them, not ADPS being wasted in favor of a slow. If you instead pulled with bellow, you woulnd't have an ADPS gap. I would kick a bard who would interrupt ADPS for Requiem on every pull. Again, a useless bard slows.
Yeah...if what you are pulling is within 5 feet of your camp sure...personally I haven't found any camps so small that I don't have to go out of song range to continue pulling to keep the camp full. The requiem is cast when the bard is out of range of the group to cast ADPS songs...
bard song rage is huge now, I don't know of any camps where you can't actually hit your group with songs, unless you're missing that activated AA and extension AA you can almost hit someone from the small bank in pok to the main bank with bard songs
It's a boxed group, he isn't going to stop dpsing to start pulling before the previous mob is dead like you would do in a full group of 6 players. Also, if you think a bard gives adps to a caster group in anything but the most minimal amounts, then you are, and I quote, "doing it wrong."
I box a bard and I do exactly that, I never have gaps in my pulls. Bards have such an arsenal of tools in their toolbox that making mistakes on a pull is almost impossible nowadays. Again, the only bards slowing are the useless ones. The amount of DPS being lost during those song interruptions is massive. Not to mention that it's not just HOS + Requiem loss, you miss the melody cadence, you won't pick up where you left off, which means easily 20 seconds or more of ADPS loss.
With some of the songs and not all. For casters in particular virtually all of the ADPS comes from ONE song...which they conveniently gave an aura version of that can be planted by the group so it never leaves even when you do. Leave when the song lands to get more mobs, put it at top of melody and restart it when you get back in range. Below in and of itself is terrible to use when pulling from large groups too. I know they severely gimped the need for any strategy whatsoever with single pulling due to lowering the reaction radius of mobs to virtually nothing...but it does occasionally come into play that splitting techniques that would break your melody anyways would be required. I often forgo slowing mobs (mainly because it just isn't required since PoP more or less)...but not because it will severely lessen the impact of my groups dps to do so.
Further...assuming you don't have another slower in your group... If mob x is slowed you can beat it. If mob x is NOT slowed you cannot beat it. Slowing mob x requires you to interrupt ADPS songs while pulling temporarily. Is it still dumb to slow the mob? Or is it smarter to die to it...as long as your ADPS isn't interrupted? Bard slow is a tool...not the best tool we have, but one we can use when appropriate...
Thanks for the great discussion. We're still deciding about leveling plans for different mentioned classes, on which accounts, and at what levels that we already have partially leveled. The two things still unclear class-wise are why knight over war and which knight? Thanks again! Looking forward to further replies.
Sorry, much of the advise you got isn't valid as we didn't realize you're boxing rather than discussing real players. Among real players, knights have the advantage for groups these days because they hold aggro more easily over a long series of fights, and they have sufficient mitigation even if it's a bit less than a warrior. That's not really important as you want a box. I imagine you'd want whichever tank was easiest to set and forget, but I don't box, so I don't know which that is.
Having been invited to groups on occasion specifically because I can AE slow/snare for whatever reason the rest of the group thought that necessary I take exception to the generalization the only bad bards slow. Especially from someone who only boxes a bard
In the current group game, knights are a much better choice. Mitigation-wise, they're only a little bit behind warriors, but the utility that they bring (pally heals, not to mention additional mitigation from stun and such, buffs. SK's bring unparallelled agro generation, more DPS than paladins (except against undead), back up pulling, etc). As far as which knight, personally, I'd go paladin for the additional spot healing, and chain stunning trash mobs, and buffing capability, but you wouldn't be going wrong with either choice. Hell, a warrior is still a decent choice (you don't have to be the absolute best, personally, I still love warriors, but its mostly for nostalgia reasons). A solid tank can trivialize even the most challenging content. Combine a properly geared tank with a competent player and you have a group that can just plow through everything. However, with any tank class, you have a ton of AA requirements and a ton of gear requirements. Figure a T5 Journeyman merc is in the expansion equivalent of t2-t3 gear (Or t1-t2 for RoF), with about 30-40% of all the AA's, focused for doing their primary job (defensive AA's probably maxed and the majority of their DPS AA's done). If I remember right, in VoA a t5 tank merc was t2-t3 geared, and around 3k AA's. Until your tank is better than that, it's better to use a tank merc. The other thing, the AI for tank mercs is actually pretty good compared to a real player, as long as you're not doing some wonky events with multiple boss type mobs (tank merc will try and grab agro on everything and die, when you're trying to offtank). However, in the end, you really do want to have a real tank, so personally, I'd say go level one up =). Honestly, I prefer using a healer or tank merc over taking an unknown player most of the time, because too many times, I've gotten a player that was dumber and/or inferiorly geared / AA'ed than the merc. I'm not out there to make friends (I have enough); I'm usually out there trying to get xp. If a tank is missing peels on a mob at the rate I'm pulling, and my DPS characters are getting damaged and dying, it slows the xp progress overall. If a tank doesn't have the gear to handle the content and is dying every other pull, he's slowing my xp progress. If a person is exceptionally cool, then of course I'll take the time and help them improve in playing their character, but that's charity, not my job. As far as pet tanking goes, few things to keep in mind. All fights, the pet and mob must stay out of melee rank, as if any PC is capable of being hit, they'll be hit. Make sure you've got the best pet focus you can get, and get all the pet AA's you can. Mages do provide a good amount of utility to the party, and in a perfect setting, pet tanking is viable. However, I personally prefer to have a real tank in the group for those less than perfect sessions. My current box group is like this: SHM, MAG, WAR, WIZ, BRD, Cleric Merc. There's not many encounters I can't handle, but I'm also prepared to react to any less-than-perfect situation that may come up, which is the most important part.
