Here is a time worn manual, of worn leather,with a ratgona pawprint embedded in the center of the cover, the pages seem to hum queitly when turned. I promised a how to play a troubador post, so here it is. all my secrets. - Savoir Fairin Avatar of the Sky =(^.-.^)= If you are NOT new to being a bard skip down... If you are new to being a Bard(Troubador flavor), Welcome to the Underdog(rat?) class. Today we'll go through the Mentality you need to succeed, as a Leveling bard times are tough on you, you probably seem weak compared to some others, but thats your only downpoint. you require others because thats when your at your best. Truth is no one expects much other than Buffs from a bard and this gets watered down to people "not caring" about their personal parse and say things like "its my job to buff, not dps". the Actual Truth is, Troubs are quite easilly a contender for top dps in the raid. if not the absolute most dps in the raid by far, it just does not show on ACT. so learn this early please. your always gonna be the underdog. just know that warlock doing 500k only does 180k without you. the raid without your PoTM easilly looses one of the top damaging abilities on bosses. granted these are skyshrine raiding numbers, they're far less at lower levels... just keep with it and when you start doing far more than other troubs that haven't read these. or worse bloody troll me for my view point on how to play a troub, people will suddenly realize , hey this troub knows what hes doing. then you couldnt beat people away with a stick that want you to group with them. especally when the assassin finds out you give them FAR more dps than a dirge ever will >: ) Chapter One, Spec's for all Occasions i was asked to include a Variety of Spec Choices and give discriptions of them so here they are! http://beetny.com/eq2aa/#GU63;kt010...41t1050@350@555 - Your first 50 points! welcome to being a Troub, here your first goal is to get Dont kill the Messanger in the Wisdom Tree!, it provides you , and your Leveling group with 7.5% crit, the closer you get to 100 the more awesome your group becomes. from here you can experiment and modify getting more aa as you level, but you shouldnt have much trouble with this as a guideline, things to aim for in the future, getting your poisons (agi tree) and opening the shadows tree at lv 50, getting the mit on your def song is a deffinate must for all levels of gameplay. also in the shadows tree the intoxicateing notes. is a wonderfull proc on all your stuff. aim for this while getting closer to upbeat tempo (shadows endline), by the time you get to there you should max out (100 points) in the bard tree for Ro/VC learn to love this abiltiy http://beetny.com/eq2aa/#GU63;kt250...t300a@30a080@31 heres my personal Spec for 92/320, to make this a Ranged spec and go "bow" simply switch Cadence for Deadly Dance, and use the Ranged macro below. unless you can find casters willing to get within 5 meters of you while you melee for Deadly Dances 20% increased damage buff. It is by no means "you must spec this or you suck" go ahead change it, make it your own, if you dont know how, or dont want to bother with abhorrent verse. Take the "wasted points" out of the Troubador tree for more in the SF line, it doesnt matter. i love the ability far too much to care about a tiny bit of critbonus on tap essence... as for the shadows tree, the skill increases from offense and defensive songs is 15. not even 1 greater adorn's worth, 2/5 makes it 6 skills less than 5/5. Heroic tree, HP keeps me alive, Abilitymod doesnt really seem to do much, agi would have been my dps choice but Survivability is my personal choice over 100ish agi. also Wisdom Tree, you only need 1/8 in allegro no one (hopefully not even you) needs the pitiful ammount of cast speed just take 1 point in it so you can activate Swift voices (seems a real painfull choice for 32% recovery, least its groupwide) Song of shielding vs anythingelse: i cant relate to how many times my song of shielding has saved my warlock friend, or if we have an SK in group. their survivability goes up drastically. while i will miss the accuracy and resistability from rythmblade i can make up for it with gear. Chapter Two. Macros! yes Macros! Certianly i can pritty much say no one knows how to use them. heck not even i realized how to bring them to full potential untill recently with my wizard... Macro 1, Melee Troub *the long one* /autoattack 1 Cadence of Destruction Breathtaking Bellow Dodge and Cover Lucky Break Painfull lamentaitons Perfect Shrill Tap Essence Rythm Blade Sinister Strike Ceremonial Blade Dancing Blade Sandra's Deafening Strike Jester's Cap Targetbox = G1 Rythm Blade tap Essence Perfect Shrill Painfull lamentations Macro 2, Ranged only Troub (yes it works!) - there is a small "lull" in the macro where you cant do anything for a brief 1.5 seconds, use that time to reapply debuffs. you can remove the "melee" attacks if they annoy you /autoattack 2 Breathtaking Bellow Dodge and Cover Lucky Break Painfull Lamentations Perfect Shrill Tap Essence Rythm Blade (just in case they do get in melee range however briefly, the bonus for this landing is rahter nice for you) Sinister Strike (just incase your in melee range at one point, it hits hard enough to warrent this spot) Jesters Cap (target box = G1) g1= you g2 = person F2 selects in party ect Tap Essence Perfect Shrill Painfull Lamentations my other spells are solo, example, Thunderous Overture is. (i dont reccomend macroing TO to an aoe macro -anymore- seeing how the new pristege line makes PL reset) /autoattack 1 Thunderous Overture i know very well, and you should know as well you can set your autoattack to default melee or ranged only with /setauto 0 1 2 (in that order) however the command /autoattack 1 turns your auto attack on at that moment you hit the button regardless of setting and before your spell lands.
Chapter three, Gear obviously leveling gear is subjective and changes far too much (im nearly positive dev's dont have a character over level 50 and none of them are bards) so just pick what you can out of the rubbish that you can find (dungeon maker gear is expensive yet theres tons and the lv 92 stuff is just as strong as hardmode skyshrine heroics atm, for charm and head slot) as for skyshrine gear, you obviously want the scout armors, but when it comes to jewlery you want the ones with Flurry on it, - let me re-iterate- ALL SCOUT JEWLERY has flurry on it, if it doesnt have it. keep the good ole quest one you found in WL, biggest offenders here are the redicliously high haste rings with 4% mit on them, they're tank rings. stop taking from your friends, and make sure they know not to take from you.... no tank gear has flurry on it. let them take it for a DPS set, AFTER you are done, and you can take the TANK gear for a TANK set when they are done.. its only Fair.. right? also Scout weapons do not have strikethrough on them, stay far.. far away from strikethrough weapons. 4.0 vs 6.0 vs ranged 9.0, the arguments here are invalid, playstyle is key, because interrupting your auto attack for 1.25 seconds on a painfull lamentations hurts, missing an entire autoattack attempt while dual weilding 4.0's cause of the same kills your parse. simply pick the weapon speed that you can deal with the swing timer and not be overwhelmed, (i choose 6.0 but i dont have the weapons yet) Chapter Four, the Gear Numbers! (yay math!!) not gonna touch adorns here, i'll give you the Base numbers and you work with your own gear from there. We're optimizeing for lv 92 - heroic / raid quality gear the list is Haste 250 DPS 200 Accuracy 33% (33 is soft cap removes all misses in normal except off dozekar) Ability reuse + Spell reuse (obviously reforged for spell reuse) needs to = 100% (with jcap) Crit chance needs to be 285 for skyshrine raids, 350 for hardmode skyshrine raids, 250 for hardmode skyshrine heroics Spell Cast needs to equal your Spell Recovery, or 32% at least. after all these are met, its AoE atk ftw (untested in gu 64 as of this post, but strikethrough was 100% broken and worthless in gu63) Have fun at the Reforger! Chapter 5, Adorns! yay! http://tools.eq2wire.com/adorns/ind...mp;d=d&bv=1 if you didnt know about it, now you do =(^.-.^)= Adorns are seemingly getting streamlined and cut in usefullness so i'll just do them in short white - weapon skills where you can (chest boots gloves wrists neck), Crit if you need it (forearm cloak, if you need more get better gear) Casting Speed (less to reforge too) fits on legs / forearm / cloak Spell Reuse (fits on charms and waist slots, for 1.5 per slot. less to reforge is always nice) Health - head / ears , you could also do agi for head, either way. Shoulders - ability mod or agi, i'll prolly switch to agi when i get new shoulders... Rings- this is an arguementive one, i went Parry, cause it gave me a rediclious ammount of avoidance. theres no "wrong" choice for this slot they all suck. weapons - Crit bonus, theres no other choice anymore =( make soe give me my mending adorns back... yellow/red adorns, Crit bonus, shoulders = spell double cast *or* if you want for ranged spec, ammo conservation, 4 red 4 yellow adorns (15 and 10% respectively) will make you never use up an arrow, save your pocket book, or sanity from crafting 6400 arrows every 2 hours cause you shoot 10 per auto attack... sure you loose out on 20% crit bonus.. but its your sanity we're talking about... (you CAN make up for other stats useing red/yellow slots(i.e. ability reuse, spellcasting speed) , but overall the critbonus is better) TL/DR version of adornments http://tools.eq2wire.com/adorns/ind...mp;d=d&bv=1
oh yeah.. DERP, Character focuses, pick them all , you can skip the Alin's Serene Serenade for more crit bonus however. PS about the macros, they are subject to the "ability que" where you "que up" another spell while the first one casts, on a Macro this will que up the top and bottom of the macro and the Bottom spell on the macro will be "que'd after the first one casts. however if they are both the same spell then it will not que in "seemingly random" order but the actual order you desire. just be aware it likes to que an the ability again while its on cooldown . so if your targeting something and it comes up. it will cast it pulling the boss/mobs/trash/loldeath upon you / your group / your raid making you look like a nub, =) also reserved space... totally missing things but cant bloody sleep tired out of my mind, i'll finish this later tonight probably. but do ask questions and remind me of things i might have missed in the haze of no sleep
This guide is messed up in so many ways. Not even going to go into the full details of it. If you want actual useful information that is generally correct, use Flames. Or Just use the following Guide (Without using stupidly long macros that cause server lag) Troubadour Cast Order: Pre-Pull: Jcap (Scout dps #1) PoTM Deadly Dance Zanders Disheartening Demoralizing Vexing Depressing Jcap (Scout dps #2) Dancing Blade RO Painful Lamentations (If Encounter mob) Perfect Shrill Thunderous Tap Essence Painful (If encounter) Bump Nightstrike Ceremonial Sandras Perfect Shrill (RO Ends) Chaos Anthemn Follow the above order, maintaining debuffs, keeping Jcap rotation on scout dps #1 and #2. Cast PoTM when ever its up. Adjust order slightly for AE/Single Target fights. Reforging/Stat Priority 600 MA 50% Reuse (Combination of Spell AND Ability) [Enough to max Jcap reuse to 15s without having it on yourself] 650 -Weapon Stats (Slash/Crush/Ranged/Pierce) 100 Cast Speed (Considering group buffs) 200 Dps 200 Haste 100 AE Auto 100 Reuse (Spell + Abil) 500 Haste Adornments Head: Agil Shoulders: Abil Mod Chest: DPS mod Forearms: MA/Cast Speed Gloves: Weaponry Legs: MA/Cast Speed Boots: Spell Reuse Weapons/Ranged: CB Charms: Spell Reuse Cloak: MA/Cast Speed Ears/Rings: Abil Mod Wrists: Weaponry Belt/Neck: DPS mod Red Adorns: Pure CB if a selfish parse obsessed Troub Pot/CB Combination if a selfless raid winning troub. War Runes: Winds Dains Pure Visciousness Unleashed AA Spec Troub Spec Focus Effects: [To be added when I bother to log my troub in] Buffs to Run: Rejuevanating Celebration Allegretto Raxxyls Requim Aria Graceful Hate song General Tips Have two Jcap macros, on a hotbar, next to each other. One for Scout #1, one for Scout #2 (Or Tanks if they NEED Jcap) Never, ever, ever Jcap a priest or a mage. Both are capped on Reuse/Cast. Maintain Debuffs Save RO/VC for Swam adds if possible Use Countersong for big AE's, make sure to cast it BEFORE the mob starts casting, or its pointless. Useful for if a mob memwipes into raid etc.
