a restless tarantula in Velk's drops a bard flute, a drum, a horn, and a lute. I stopped using instruments in favor of dual wield about 50 levels ago. Does anyone actually equip these items? Drums of the Warlord Flute of the Siren Horn of the Stormcaller Lute of the Wanderer
Swap in wind instrument for Woodwind Finesse when casting DA songs to add an extra tick (DA clicky on the instrument benefits as well). Although rarely needed, it's also useful in bandoliers for no damage (equip with a shield) or offhand weapon only (for damage shield targets) setups. The Instrumental Combat effect isn't worth the exchange of a weapon though.
I was thinking about this while at work this morning.. It would be great if they made these into type 20 augs, with the clicky effects still available.. I'd love to go into combat with a giant horn and mandolin
Unfortunately, adding a click effect to an augment is not supported by the game engine. I think Ngreth or Absor confirmed this recently.
I still think instruments should return to having value for bards. Amplifying their important songs in each type. It would be pretty easy for a main bard to manage with bandolier hotkeys and melody already in place. It would provide more incentive to play a main bard over a boxed bard too.
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ack-insturment-by-coding-them-as-bows.272815/ Here was my idea on what to do with instruments. Tell me what you think.
Bards having instruments "coded as Bows" removes the idea of trading one form of power for another & instead grants the Bard just flat out more power. Personally I would rather keep the Bard's offhand damage until such time as the instrument grants enough of a improvement to the group so as to be better overall group DPS to use an instrument and fact is in the vast majority of situations they aren't - but the idea of trading offhand damage for instrument boosts is still valid as a concept for Bards. A lot of that was driven by the "oh that's just great, another god-damned Bard instrument on the loot table eating up a slot for something useful" whines because only that one class could use the item from that loot-table slot. If mob loot tables had been built to have 6 slots for non-instruments & a random 7th slot for instruments people would have been far more happy about instruments as after a certain point in your gear farming they are basically unwanted anyway - though once guild tribute is a thing they'd end up as that most of the time.
With my idea you would be trading melee damage for short term buffs that could be highly beneficial and the gameplay would be a kind of in and out where you melee for a time then bounce out to "play your instrument" aka: shoot your notes. As for the worn effects I think i understand what you are saying in that it would just be adding power but I feel that could be compensated with just simple number tweaks.
Frankly, if instruments were to be used, they should be used in a ranged only stance for bards in the first place. We shouldn't be able to melee at all when using an instrument. However, because of the way songs work, we'd end up playing bandolier quest, and who really wants to return to that? Unless we get some sort of ranged vs. melee stance, sort of like rangers do, instruments of any sort make no sense other than for instant-cast clickies. Even with a ranged type of stance for us, having to swap instruments in and out constantly is just bad design, and was on day one when EQ went live. I'd much rather see instruments BE our ranged weapon, and have it fire blasts of sound at enemies with the damage type determined by the instrument. This would make way more sense than using it in melee and give us a viable ranged attack at the same time, complete with ranged procs. The only part I really differ from Shak's idea, is that I don't see a need for ammo. It's an instrument, you don't feed it fuel, you just play it. We also wouldn't need a new skill, tie it to the song skills as you would expect, or if it needs simplified, tie it to throwing, no need for adding archery to us.
Prefer this ranged stance idea using throwing skill for a ranged-slot instrument, at least that way you would be visibly using the instrument also, and that shouldn't be usable within melee range either.
Ranged combat for casters also needs this sort of treatment. There's no reason they don't have wands for ranged combat by now. Thrown weapons in general are garbage, and need a revamp. This sort of update could be made to benefit all of the non-archery classes as well as the ones that get both thrown and archery.
As I recall this was something they tried in EQ2, wasn't very good though, at least it wasn't when I played EQ2. And I would not expect any big boost to throwing damage (or wands) for any class, decent ranged damage that requires no resource is limited to Bards and they get that as their mana regen is absolutely awful.
This is a fair assessment the main reason I suggested it like this was it was the easiest way I could think to implement the system without adding new mechanics. I suppose they could make it like rangers where you just need 1 ammo but as of right now I think every ranged attack requires some sort of ammo.