Are there any good deaggro (Reassuring Strike) weapons for bards for Live? I'm a bit lazy on pressing Fade and turned off by the deaggro song procing for the tanking character or pet. Melodious Truncheon seems to be more of a mem blur/stun but it helps somewhat. I know of the Chipped Shard of Appeasement aug which offers minimal deaggro. Thanks in advance.
Don't know what level your bard is, but one proc to look for is "calming strike". Here are some weapons with Calming Strike III: https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=23932
Legitimate question here. Why would you want to use a de-aggro weapon on a bard? If you are really that lazy to click fade and you are using a full round of dots + melee using a pet tank, then just drop a dot or 2 OR stop using melee altogether. Also, make sure the pet has taunt turned on and has an aggro weapon. Although I have never tested it, I doubt a de-aggro proc would make much of a difference anyways unless you were using flurry of notes. If your tank is an actual player, then nicely tell the player to learn how to tank. A bard should never be taking aggro from a tank making a 50% effort to keep aggro. Another option is you could try playing the AC/Aggro proc song and then blocking that from yourself to help the pet / tank while leaving you immune from the extra aggro.
What I have done with my box bard is sing the melee DD/de aggro proc song and block that on the pet. This way bard is doing some extra damage, but more importantly is lowering some hate. With max DOT AA, bard sometimes still pulls aggro even with pet taunt on. I have found giving pet two aggro swords works wonders, but then DPS from pet weapon procs is reduced. Using a fire weapon and aggro sword tends to have pet hold aggro the entire battle on 90% of encounters, with bard pulling it for a couple seconds until taunt/de aggro song proc fires.
I was doubting on this thread but today it seems like my bard is constantly having to fade off. This is against a 120 mage pet (raid level pet ear). Its a water pet not earth, but still. That used to be plenty of agro with taunt on. Im wondering if something changed. I may need to switch his weapon. I hate to do it cause hes going to lose dps, but Im probably losing more tabbing over to fade all the time.
I would prefer they just reduce the agro for bards but I'm a boxer of a bard. My opinion doesn't count as much. Now I have to becareful on my tank and spend more time agroing the mob. I pull with bard, grab with tank, start my slows/adps/dots with shammy, dps on melee. Now I look over and my bard is dead. He's grabbing agro with the same 5 dots way more frequently unfortunately. Something changed and I'm unsure what it was. This started happening prior to the new expansion but couldn't pinpoint when.
Chant dot damage increased by 295% in ToV and another 115% in ToL. So their hate has gone up that much too. ps: make sure your combat subtlety AA is enabled. Probably new ranks of this AA should be added (@Devs). pps: try weaving in the level 53 Song of Dawn for a steady hate reduction on your chant target.
Melodious Truncheon is great for interrupting casters but it resets aggro so your Bard can be back at the top again in short order
Use the air pet. They proc a stun, which does more aggro than the other pet types. I have virtually quit using earth pets at all since ToL came out... air pets give you almost as much tank ability and quite a bit more aggro. I typically don't have to fade more than once per mob on the bard while running all 4 dots + insults + melee. And strangely, these last few days, the pet has been keeping surprisingly good aggro and I have only had to fade when slow to send in the pet after a pull. Another little tip that you can use if you don't mind burning some plat / time is equipping your pet with a mask that has aggro enhancement. I quit doing this myself since gearing up my pet is always a precursor to a stupid death within the hour... but it does work.
