So what do we want from our might be, possibly, Soon(tm) revamp?

instruments that occupy weapon slots = buffbot.

=(

My point (which I've stated before BTW) is that Hyran's basically does the same thing that Alin's does, except Hyrans Benefits the entire raid force. Lets imagine for a minute that we're in a single group. The dirge puts Hyran's up on the tank. That tank now holds agro 40% better (and for now, gets a STR buff) thus all the DPS in the group can now do 40% more DPS without pulling agro. Now the dirge gets a hot date and has to leave, but there's a troubador LFG, so the group decides to grab the Troubador. Troubador puts up Alin's and now every non-tank in the group has 40% less agro generation. Now the tank holds agro 40% better and the DPS can do 40% more DPS without pulling agro. Notice any similaritys? Notice how basically they're EXACTLY THE SAME?
Now we're in a raid, with no dirge and just the one Troubador in one of the DPS groups. Said troub puts up the standard raiding buffs, including Alin's. Now the troub's group has 40% less agro and can do 40% more DPS without pulling. But the other 2 DPS groups dont have Alins and have to watch their agro. Now it's the Troub's turn to get a hot date and off he goes. And coincidently just as he leaves our Dirge logs back in after his date didn't show up. So we swap groups around a little bit and the dirge is in the MT group. Hyran's goes up on the tank and all the usual group bufffs. So now the tank has 40% more agro generation and EVERY PERSON ON THE RAID can do 40% more DPS/Healing/Bad singing without pulling agro.
Troub agro song benefits 5 people (6 if you include the troub for some strange reason)
Dirge agro song benefits 24 people.
In a raid, Hyran's is 400% more effective than Alin's.
I'm not saying that Alin's is gimped, it is still a very useful song, but why should you get your conc slot removed from Hyrans when it benefits as many poeple as you have, when troub's agro song only affects a max of 5 other people? Like it or not, Hyran's may be single target, but at the end of the day, IT IS A GROUP BUFF.
EDIT: Also, imagine our group has 3 monks in it. Alin's does absolutely NOTHING for those monks. Hyrans however would still help them.
WTT Alin's for Hyrans. PST
SuicideAttack wrote:
Currently we have the Daze ability ... it would be more helpful if we can either get a Stiffle ability or switch out Daze for Stiffle ability
If you want a stiffle, play a troubador.
Message Edited by Mildavyn on 12-19-2006 04:15 PM

I'm not going to involve myself in this further, excpet for one teensy thing:

You can always pretend. And why not involve yourself in this any further? It's fun arguing about things that really we have no control over.

I am totally against instruments with buffs/procs that should/could be on bard specific armor. If instruments ever get in the game I think it can ONLY be as charm slot.
Please remember that fellow bards:smileywink:


The following are ideas that can be put in the form of songs, procs on items, AA's etc.
Increase duration of melee debuffs. (wisdom/dps/defense)
Fix zanders
Increase effectiveness of any buff thats not situational. (on our fabled set the + 10 to boon will hardly have use in MT group)
Add a proc that procs a temporary buff to the group. haste/DPS/Stats/proc on cast/hit.
Add a decrease to recast of bladedance
Change the shared bard debuff from Str/Agi to STR/INT
Add a chance to get extra str/int without conc slots. Maybe for the group?
Runspeed upgrade of Selo's.
Is our NOX buff on par with other classes resist buffs?

Message Edited by firza on 12-20-2006 05:28 AM

but I think you missed the following line Whysp, "our Dirge logs back in after his date didn't show up." so maybe its realistic after all
maybe they just told everyone they had a hot date so the raid members wouldnt think they were a looser
To Mildavyn: My only point was that it does have a benefit. Is the overall effect on the raid as good as that gained by Harls? maybe not, but then again its also a very situational buff. Not everyone raids. Either way, I dont really care. Take it off, leave it on, its all the same.
As to Alins and Brias being the only reason to have a Troub on a raid, I disagree. We never raid without ours and I dont think Id want to. One true utility class is nice, 2 is unsurpasable especially if they chose the right AA lines

Yes it has a benefit, and its an awesome song, i use it to cover up for craptastic tanks, and also whenever a warlock is in group. Raiding too. I just wanted to point out that the dirge agro song benefits as many people as are in the group/raid, whereas the troub one only benefits non-fighters in the troubador's group.
As for part 2 of your post, i agree 100% with the entire paragraph in blue. However if you go read the Troubador forum, you'll notice that they're almost universally depressed and think that their class sucks. While i disagree, i dont think im ever going to be able to convince them. (just as a rejoinder to the coming question from the font of depression that is the troubs msg board, YES, i did play a troubador when LU13 hit. i HAVE seen all the nerfs, and i STILL enjoy playing my class)

Having recently betrayed (at lvl 70) I went from ****** out troub to a working on ******* him out dirge. While this was done solely for guild raid / need reasons, I feel I can speak to both classes pretty well, so here goes my list (most of which are above) of whats desired.

I am not by any means suggesting all these improvements be made, but I think any of these are welcome additions if they were added:

Bard in General
- Increase run speeds (this is highly sought after by all)
- Slight increase in dps - i am talking slight here - not major or semi-serious - talking SLIGHT - like 5%
- Add a charm/instruments slot to ALL CHARACTERS IN THE GAME.... bards would be allowed to add instrucments - others would be allowed to add a 3rd charm - I dont think in many cases a 3rd charm slot would hurt anyone or make all players that much more uber. Maybe even limit it to a hex doll (+14 stat - forget how much) or an instrument - both of which can also be player crafted
- Greater debuffs. I would like to see some of our debuffs increased - maybe not as much to that of a brig or swashy - but some of them compared to other classes are relatively equivalent, and lets face it, if our dps is below theirs, I think our debuffing should at least be more powerful. In raid situations thats the first thing I am casting after a pull - not a dmg spell (or a dmg spell with a debuff)
- Better ranged attacks - god do we get bored on ranged fights or what. Granted some of the spells have a nice range on them, but I am limited to auto-attack and 3 icons on some fights after my debuffs are applied - then I jsut run around and rez people - yawn!!!
- Make all of the buffs (allegro and the inrease in in-combat run speed - forget its name) as well as some spells that dont allow us to currently, be cast on the run. Not all of them need to be - but increase the # of them - this is one of our primary advantages as bards
- Allow poisons or LIMITED poison use. If an instrument is added somehow maybe even make it a mind poison of sorts from the music that can be played
- Increase the concentration slots available to 6, add an AA that allows us to go to 6, or modify our spells slightly so some do not include a concentration that now have one (Death Bearer perhaps on dirge and Daerils (spelling) on Troub) - this will only enhance our buffing ability and make us somewhat more desired
- One fun, fun spell
- Fix AND PROVIDE SOME UPGRADE TO Zhanders! (this would be nice to have a quest for all classes to get their upgrade for their lvl 35 spell somewhere in EOF - maybe mistmoore castle or a Somborn quest!!)
- sure we would all love to find a way to move bump into our regular spell line and not an aa line so we can all use it
- Change the discante debuff on either troub or dirge so its something slightly different and we both dont have it - I would like to see something different on this from dirge to troub


Troubador/Troubadour
- Increase the length of charm - its really pointless for anything other than the 10 seconds of fun those people have with it in PvP (probably 6 seconds when its actually landed and they retarget someone and click attack or something)
- Eli's needs faster cast timer
- Consistent spelling and i dont care which - just choose
- Change refelction of requiem somehow - not sure how - but i never found it useful in a raid situation. It seems like this is a troub attempt at stoneskin which I understand why its there, but maybe just have it cast on ONE party member or something so a troub can cast it out of group on the MT or something

Dirge
- Lengthen (just by a bit) Cacophony of Blades - the aa is fine but give me 5 seconds more and then increase the reuse timer to offset the length
- Change stoneskin so it doesnt break your invis when it hits someone else in the group
- Increase trigger rate for the extra DPS hit on tomb's calm - troubs is much higher on Aria of Acclamation and I would think they should be more equal
- Still learning about dirge so maybe some more here that others comment on



Anyway, once again not asking for anywhere near all of this stuff - but some combination thereof would be good in my opinion
Message Edited by MirageEIG on 12-20-2006 10:58 AM

Also i should point out that in a single group, the troub's agro song is actually alot better than the Dirge one. The troub one has an added detaunt everytime you damage a mob. If i just use auto-attack i can easily have negative hate.

I'm still against removing conc requirements from ANY bard spell. It's all about situational buffs. If you can have em all up at once, why would you bother changing em? just put em all up and go kill stuff, no changing necessary.

Well for some reason brigands get a group snare. Why isnt a bards debuff snare encounter based? If anyone needs an encounter based snare/debuff its bards. Esspecially dirges. During pvp when im casting debuffs 3 out of 6 if not more will resist them. We need an encounter based debuff.

and no zanders does not make the cut.

And resists. The dirges GROUP DD clearly states in the examination that it is HARD TO RESIST. Do you know how many times in pvp this spell gets resisted? If it says hard to resist, it should be hard to resist. Sometimes i wonder if the devs acually did any work on our class. Its like they just wrote what the abilities were suposed to do in the description but never acually made that so in game. Our stealth buff is anotehr fine example. It states were suposed to be able to move at an increased rate while stealthed. Yet nothing happens and we run just the same.

Did the devs acually put any work and thought when they made bards? Looks like a half [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] job to be honest.
Message Edited by Lordviperscorpian on 12-20-2006 08:19 AM

"The dirges GROUP DD clearly states in the examination that it is HARD TO RESIST. Do you know how many times in pvp this spell gets resisted? If it says hard to resist, it should be hard to resist. "
- The description mentions that it is hard to resist (which I assume was a trade-off for the low damage), but if you look at the actual resist modifier it is actually one of our easier spells to resist.

Instruments?

If its a gameplay enhancement, enables a new ability or is used to correct a community recognized deficiency (runspeed, proc rates, inadequately scaling buffs, extended fear/charm, ) then fine.

If its like, imo, some AA's and we are nerfed more in order to compensate for the gain from instruments, please don't waste my time. That is my prediction, btw.

realistically the only one Id really really like to see removed is the one from our self buff (death bearer). I dont care for having to **** myself in order to help the group, I do it, but I dont care for it
Even better give us an AA or something (a set item ability?) that adds another concentration slot (or 2). I was on my 70 warlock the other day and I kept looking at the conc slots and wondering what I hadnt cast as Im just not used to seeing empty slots...
Even removing the conc requirement from 1 skill still leaves at least 4-5 others that would remain mostly unused. As to changing them? Not much chance of that..the only real buff switch I make is from Rhianas to Brias depending on power consumption. The rest of them are considered too mission critical to even consider dropping (Str/Agi buff, Parry Buff, PoS, Hate Buff). So in reality for me at least, dropping the conc requirement from the hate buff would just mean Id have an extra slot open to use my self buff, but then again just dropping the conc req from our selfbuff would let me do the same, Im not picky

I do that all the time when I play my 60ish wizard.

My fae illusionist recently got her power regen -group- spell. I pondered which other group buff I would need to drop in order to have it up with the 3 concentration personae. Oh. None. The power regen, the -group- power regen doesn't require concentration for an illusionist. *sigh*

I agree that the dirge and troubie -self- buff should be no concentration. Having others be no concentration, too, would be nice. I'd even settle for bard/dirge/troube only items removing a concentration requirement from a specific song while equipped. THAT would be a really great effect in my mind (and a super effect for an instrument).

Heck... unless it's changed from beta (really should look at them again), the illusionists have one of the concentration points removed from the personae line as part of an end point for and achievement line. So, there is precedent and the -could- do it.

But... I'm realistic. I don't like it's likely at all that dirges will have the concentration removed from any song. I do think it's likely we'll have our concepts of the roles for bards changed to what -they- think bards should be doing. I'm not wholely possitive it's what I'll want to play.

He's exactly right, which is why we should be rallying for new abilities which are highly situational and/or have penalties associated with their use. The devs clearly have certain caps in mind, and the tradeoff for augmenting buffs has proven to be ability nerfs pre-implementation. We're entitled to, and have been promised that scaling will be addressed, I don't see why we would abandon that entitlement and create a bone for us to be thrown in the way of instruments which augment existing buffs and really accomplish the same thing. The removal of the concentration slot for our self buff and a new function for Garsin's are red herrings. Both are situational and have penalties or tradeoffs associated with their use, exactly in keeping with the situationality of the class. Buff scaling, runspeed, a new and useful way to incorporate instruments are what we should be forcing the devs to look at.
Aengdoo, Trauma, Guk.
Message Edited by zboim on 12-22-2006 08:08 AM

WTS Hax Hate Generator PST...

My personal order of priority:
1. Fix broken abilities like Zanders, stoneskin kicking us out of invis, adjust Scream of Death behind restriction. Adjust armor sets to include Intelligence.
2. Instruments
3. Change Oration of Sacrifice to power tap the mob and give power to a targetted group/raid friend
4. Runspeed increase in some manner or another, either through gear upgrades or selos itself
5. Death Bearer series concentration removed
6. Bring back offensive songs, we already have debuffs that tick away at our power, add the same for a disease/poison dot or a disease/poison debuff with a dot. Something like this would bring our dps up to par with the troubador.
7. Do something with Melancholy Melody and Lyssa's perpetual motion
Message Edited by Kurizokun on 01-04-2007 06:39 AM

Maybe good for raids, but no, no, no for us groupie-types!! OoS just adds tons of value in emergencies and near-wipes.
Whysp

I completely agree. with Whysp. I cant tell you how many times I have saved a group members life with this. From the tank taking to much damage to someone else getting agro, or in PVP. One of our best spells IMO. Not the best but I know exactly where it is without looking

As a heal, it can even be helpful in raids, for that last ditched effort to give the healers time enough to get a heal off. I, too, wouldn't want to see it changed to a power-related thing.