There have been many changes that will make you scratch your head. It might have been one thing bad they not let them be in game that way for years and years.
Well if we went with bard rather than enchanter - would make sense to add a 6th melee. Warrior Cleric Bard Magician Berserker + Berserker LOL Not sure if the berserker in the party would want to play a second berserker though - but it would make sense to have them play both. I read somewhere there are new skills that rely on there being another of your class there? DO they have something like this for berserkers? That group seems like it would have pretty bad DPS in the group game - especially with the berserkers using raid weapons.
Bard fade is still extremely good in the group game. Don't let the round of fade nerfs that happened awhile back turn you off to a bard.
Honestly, I think you'd be better off using a chanter and skipping the bard completely. Bards no longer are the 30-40% boost they used to represent...not even close. On top of that, our personal DPS hasn't increased in quite a while and our cast times are still 3 seconds, which is more than enough time for a mob in the last few expansions to kill you before you even finish casting that mez or whatever. Not to mention you have to drop buffs to use click abilities that have cast times, create absurdly long melodies to add in 45 second or 60 second reuse songs, the later of which isn't even useful in the group game in its current state and both of them should be combat abilities instead. If you use epic clicks every 3 minutes, this will become extremely frustrating and that's when you start to really pay attention to the game and realize our boosts aren't what they used to be and aren't really useful in the group game in the past few years. I've played a bard from day 1, so I continue with it because I have a lot invested in that character over the years, but in the group game, frankly ADPS shouldn't even be a concern. The fights typically do not last long enough for you to realize the benefits of having it. On top of that, bard solo is extremely tedious and boring...and even though you're making it based on a group right now, you will eventually do things without that group...all of your other choices are far more viable in those situations. Not that bard can't do it, its just annoying to do it with a bard. Again, assuming you're not talking a box character. Even I play my chanter now far more than my bard, whom I use for raids only these days. Just something to think about. I think chanter in their current state brings much more to a mixed group than a bard does these days and in the group game utility trumps adps since fights are mostly trivial if you have aa/gear. The 3 second cast time for bards in the modern game severely hampers their utility comparatively speaking.
I'd recommend the bard for selos/track. If you're making a group to do all of EQ content with, don't over-optimize for difficult fights or raw kill speed. Once your warrior is geared and your berserker/cleric is squared away you'll faceroll most of the content in the game. A lot of your time is going to be spent moving around, finding mobs, questing etc. One thing that makes that a lot easier is having track, selos speed and call of the hero. If you decide on a bard I don't know what added contribution your enchanter will make. One thing about a bard is that they make great pullers, but if you're chain pulling a large area your songs won't be hitting your group as much as you'd want. You can mitigate that by shortening your melody to the more important songs (ex: just aria + haste song), but the less uptime you can keep on your group the more attractive an enchanter looks.
if dropping the enchanter is on the table, you should consider taking a beastlord or ranger (imo beastlord)
Don't underestimate the beauty of fading through a zone at innate selo's speed (this should still be relatively possible) dragging your mage corpse behind you, popping a cleric merc to rez in the mage and COHing/Campfiring the rest of the party in to a deep camp spot.
Yep. This is especially true when trying to get to gear that's rotting in chardog/droga/lab. My mage always gets one chance to sneak through, they get IVU/invis and two timed fade abilities, so with selos they usually can get through to anywhere in the game. But the bard dragging their corpse after a failure is good backup.
Say what? Fade was never free. When we first got fade it used over half my mana. We needed to use it as sparingly as possible.
Correct, it had a mana cost when first implemented. But that quickly decreased to not mattering after a couple expansion. Plus the addition ooc regen meant it was basically free
