Another Troub v Dirge question. I'll be almost entirely grouping, mostly DOV heroic instances. My regular group is: Guardian Inquisitor Necro Wizard Assassin Should I go Dirge or Troub?
Either one would work, however I think the troubador would be better over all. First and most obvious reason is the fact that there are 2 mages. Upbeat Tempo would benefit the Necro quite a bit. Second the Troubador has Alin's Serenade which gives -33 hate mod to all non fighters when mastered. This will make it easier for the gaurd to hold aggro. Third Jester's Cap can be cast on all members of the group and will benefit them. The dirge grants mostly melee buffs which your assassin would love and hate gain for the tank. I play a troubador as my main and my experience has been you're never lfg for long however I will warn you that often your personal dps is low where as a dirge tends to be higher so if you want to do more damage then the dirge might be better for you.
So the boost the Troub gives to the necro and wizzy would more than make up for the lower dps compared to a dirge?
Upbeat Tempo can be placed on anyone and it helps anyone where as Battle cry only helps dps (from what I understand) The buffs the troubador provides would be very beneficial to the necro and Wizzy yes. As for making up for dps that to me is a relative question. We troubdors do not parse very high but I've heard it said that we do increase the dps of our group tremedously. So yes in that way it will.
This is a tough one. Troubador would buff the two casters this is true. The casters would benefit from this quite a bit. However a Dirge will also buff the Guardian and Assassin, plus their buffs help themselves as well. Inquisitors buff melee damage quite a bit, if I'm not mistaken. IMO the Dirge would be a better choice because. More DPS for the Guardian make his job of keeping aggro easier. More DPS for the Assassin allows him to transfer more hate to the Guardian. The group has 3 pure melee classes (Guardian, Assassin and Dirge) with a healer that buffs melee also, a dirge compliments this well. In combat Rezzes.
That group makes it tough to call. I'm not going to tell you which to pick but I will lay out some of what other people have posted and more to give you the lowdown. Trouby Benefits: UT for the Necro or Wizard (Necro has more DoTs but the Wizard will be putting more DPS out from himself while the Necro is split between himself and his pet) JCap for all (Reuse, Casting and Recovery speed with AAs) INT, WIS buff for healer and mages Casting skill, focus and agression for mages, healer, and tank (agression only for tank) Threat reduction to all non-fighters PotM for casters Dirge Benefits: BC for melee calss (the Dirge, Guardian, and Assassin can all benefit from having BC) Gravitas for healer Combat rez @ 100 health and power (with AAs) Hate gain/Agression buff for tank STR, AGI buff for melee classes Melee skill buff DPS buff Parry buff Nox damage proc on melee hit Stone skin proc for group CoB for melee Both: DEBUFFS (both classes have debuffs that benefit melee and mage) AA buffs (MA, Casting/recover, Crit chance, Crit Bonus, and more) To be completely honest, both classes can help melee and mage classes, its just a matter of spec and timing. Dirges do help melee more overall and Troubies help mage more overall. Try both out for a bit and get a feel for how they play, then stick with one. Also remember that both bard have melee and spells so they both help themselves too.
Thanks for the advice everyone, some good info to think about. Looks like I might be doing some back and forth betrayals and trying out both options, and it seems like a pretty marginal call
Since it's such a close call look beyond DoV groups. Which class is more desirable overall? Dirge. PS Dirge also does a little bit more DPS but that might change soon
There is WAY more to the bards than just whos dps you buff and what dps you put out, however this is a yet again a glaring example of the problems with the mindset of the game atm. Skip to the bottom if you want the summary and don't care about the why. _________________________________ Troubadors provide decreased hate gain, provide casting buffs, spell based bonuses, procs off of spell based abilities, their dktm gets crit chance boost from shadows tree, harmonization makes over time abilities tick faster and all other abilities last longer, UT improves an extra tick for any and all dot/hot/tot based abilities in addition to reduced recovery time (25%), reuse time (10%), and casting time (15%), and their troubador tree provides a 5 meter increase to all spells, 5% reuse reduction, and 20% lower power cost if speced, in addition to jcap's potential 10% crit bonus, 50% reuse reduction, 15% casting time reduction, and 15% recovery reduction. In terms of their debuffs, the troubador debuffs the mobs stats and non-physical resists severely, and there is an aa that gives a 5% chance for enemy abilities to miss per troub debuff applied. The also have the aa that grants a chance to proc elemental and arcane based cures on the entire raid. Dirges give a stone skin proc maintained buff which greatly increases survivability for alot of fighters and makes the healers job easier, gravitas is a huge temporary boost to healers (silimar casting/immunity nature to jcap but provides 32% increase to heals which is not a cap-able bonus versus casting haste that is a relatively easy to hard cap stat), their dps is better which makes their VC procs typically higher on equally geared and played bards, their CoB gives attack speed, they have dps mod debuffs against mobs and a dps mod buff for group members which means that the auto attacks which have an obnoxious habit of sometimes hitting really hard wont hit as hard, they reduce the mobs physical resistances and skills greately, they have a raid wide noxious buff similar to the troubador's elemental and arcane that just like troubadors can be aa speced to provide a ward however cannot be aa speced to also proc cures, they have a health transfer and 2 incombat rez abilities that can be boosted to 100% hp and power by aa, can aa spec to be able to wipe almost any detrimental including rez sickness and pretty much any CC effects, their shadows tree has an aa that boosts double attack provided by fortissimo, and battle cry gives 5% flurry and 15% double attack. Other considerations: 1. Guardian's improved moderate and the troub's hate song WILL be above the hard cap on hate reduction for the group. at that point, you are losing about 1/2 of the effectiveness of improved moderate from the guardian, and the troubador provides absolutely 0 other hate benefits for the tank and in addition to does not provide any other debuffs or buffs that specifically help the tank land hits better or harder where as you're pretty much striping the mob of any protection against the heavy hitting finger twiddlers that are getting significantly boosted. (The tank will not thank you for this when the squishies start blowing their heavy hitting nuke load at the start of fights, so tell the squishies to keep their agro in their pants.) 2. You have an inquisitor as your healer and some hp transfers from the necro. The necro WILL lifeburn at some point which will tax the inquisitor's heals or it will result in a dead necro (see the part about burning necros dying below at the paragraph break for more info about this potential problem). The troubador will provide the inquisitor with increased durations on their temp buffs, reuse timer reductions from their buffs in addition to occasional JCaps which will always be welcomed by any healer (just ask my druid, cleric, or shaman). The troub also could use UT on the cleric for an extra heal tick and the troubador will severely decrease the stats and skills of caster mobs, plus can get up to 25% increased chance for enemy combat arts to miss from their debuff aa line. The troubador also can give the inquisitor a fill of power every 3 minutes for long fights, however if the necro and inquisitor both die, you just wiped. If the necro burns then gets hit by even a small aoe or even reposte damage at the wrong time your healer is now spending time rezing and I've seen a number of times where that has ended poorly and includes a walk of shame along with the group waiting for revive sickness. A dirge provides stoneskins which helps the guard and others take hits, can interupt better than the troub can, can rez very well which frees up the inquisitor from rez duty unless the dirge needs a spatula, and the dirge can gravitas to help the inquisitor's spot heals which is whats used to heal life burns. The dirge can also wipe control effects on the inquisitor should the healer get charmed or mezed where as troubs cannot. 3. A wizard gains very little from the troub's buffs outside of the increased damage from their mythical buff, the debuffs the troub casts on the mobs, and as the wizard gears up the reuse and casting speed boosts gets trivialized very quickly. You'll be looking down a tunnel of diminishing returns very quickly as the wizard gears up. The necro will gain a lot from the troub across the board in terms of buffs. The assassin will gain basically nothing at all. 4. The assassin and guard will gain a lot from the dirge, and these 2 are key to your hate control. The assassin will be transfering to the guard, and with improved moderate it will help against the nukers, plus if they don't have the squishy boost foo from the troubador it will keep their dps throttled which makes it easier for the assassin and guard to maintain hate. It will however still leave a gap of 25% hate gain reduction which can still leave room for problems but can be slightly offset by adornments on the squishies. 5. Bards are absolutely by 0 stretch of the imagination known for their power management, and anyone that says otherwise is outright wrong. The troubador will help with this to a degree. Mastered and with a decent chunk % boost from aa (had to get to the next part of the line :/ ), both my troub and dirge only provide about 80 power per tick of incombat regen which you have to keep in mind the power cost of each spell, plus the power pool of players at level 90 with any form of decent gear. While in combat, you recieve 10 power per tick which imo is BS with power pools well over 30k. This gimptastic power song also costs a very precious concentration slot that could be much better used, and will in no manner hold a candle to power trickle proc items/adorns. The troub does have energizing balad which completely fills 1 persons power every few minutes. Considering there is no chanter in group, power will definately be a problem on a number of fights, so you should be focusing on melting the mob before it can melt you or your power pools via mana drains. Because of this, I would focus on the fact that inquisitor provides better melee boosts, the guardian and assassin are your main hate generation and control, and the dirge would help in improving this part of your dps in addition to holding better hate which allows for more dps and less holding back which translates into less chance to be mana drained. _________________________________ Summary: If your melee players are better, I'd go with the dirge purely due to the fact that your strategy needed on the fights that require a chanter for power will require higher dps to kill the mob before it completely drains you of all power. The dirge will provide better versatility to deal with "oh crap"s when someone squishes that is key to your group (such as the healer) and also has a temp buff for when you're about to need more heals. The dirge will also provide better survivability in general against more mobs and the numerous trauma based aoes than the troub will. Otherwise, the troub would provide better power management which is absolutely critical if you do not have high dps, however the troub's power regen is still anemic at best, and energizing balad will only mitigate the problem; not solve it. The troub will provide better support against non-trauma based mobs and help with the potential problems clerics face cure wise (sometimes the aoe det will only land on 2-3 players in stead of all 6, in which case it can be single target cured rather than burning the inq's only group cure or their mythical clickie cure). The troub will improve everyone's reuse and recovery which is far harder to cap than casting speed, but the troub will not help with recovering from "oh crap"s, and will not help your hate management as much as it could and should be.
Let me add. That most of the comments here are to maximize the group. Playing either a Troubador or Dirge will benefit the group and allow them to do any of the group content. So in the long run I guess it depends on what type you want to play.
It's a tough call, but with that group I'd probably go with Dirge. There are some situations, as Prestissimo explained, where the Troub would be better, but overall I think Dirge would be the way to go. Now, if the tank were a SK/Pally, I'd probably go with the Troub instead; or, if the Assassin were replaced by another Mage.
Well tough one troub have lower hate on none fighter while dirge have a hate buff for the guardian. Troub buff both necro and wizzy while the Dirge can buff guardian and sin DPS (as well as himself). Dirge should be ble to out damage a troub in that set-up as well as having a comba rez + healz (realy minor benefit for a group IMO). Both bard would do good int hat set-up and claiming troub or dirge withotu a doubt mean you are clueless. Personaly I,d pick up a dirge bcuz I enjoy them but as a troub you might end having a tiny bether group DPS. Both class would just be amazing so you can't go wrong and betraying to test it yourself is easy to do.
