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Discussion - learn to play - bard! (1 Viewer)

Joined
Jun 7, 2020
RedCents
1,486¢
Hello!

Background
To set the scene, never played a bard but aware they are useful.
With my "alt-tab" boxing team, a bard was soon added.
Why? songs for travel and songs for combat.
Yet, VV/MQ2 is to take it a step further, but how?


Bard - the backing singer / musician

The bard is in the group, and will do nothing more than play a song or twist a melody. There has been no sword swinging, no mezzing, etc. Just auto follow the group, and do whatever song set is activated from the hotkeys. Alt tab, start it, alt tab to other characters and focus on those.

With "defiant" gear, the requirement to switch instruments, indeed carry instruments like drums, flutes and trumpets seems to have been negated. By wearing some plate, EQ has automagically removed the need for an instrument. One less thing to micromanage and save bag space!

travel
Low level, start off with Selo's Accelerando. Basic movement speed increase. Later this was replaced by Shauri's Sonorous Clouding, for the invis nature allowing the group to be guided through hostile zones that dont "see invis". Then arrive at Selo's Song of Travel , which covers the travel speed and the invis, plus adds in levitate as well!


combat
I dont recall all the changes i made as level, sorry. But there is a simple three song twist that is used.
War March of Muram, turbo charges the melee with attack, strength and some damage shield. Warsong of the Vah Shir, for haste. Lastly, Cantata of Life, regen some mana and health per ticks.


Bard - the rock n roller of VV

The first obvious candidate here. The bard doesnt have instruments to worry about wearing defiant, and instead can wield sword n board, or two weapons for dual wield. Therefore under the govern of VV, the bard can come out of the shadows and do melee!

The KA ini file has a Mez section. Great! Can put such as, Sionachie's Dreams, Dreams of Thule and Creeping Dreams in those. So far bard gets single target but later it looks like can do a few. The idea of crowd control for a musician sounds like a good one.

This is where now start to run into trouble, as there are so many songs out there and the decision over what can be, or should be used.

For example, ive read about Aura of Insight and Aura of the Muse that have some persistent effect. Guessing they could be loaded as a buff on me.
At early levels, i tried playing with Psalm of Warmth as it mentioned gains to Armor Class and Damage Shields. Leading to Psalm of Veeshan, that does AC/DS and all the resists.
Then there is Storm Blade, some kind of weapon proc. It sounds interesting too.


To look more at KA and its setup.


There appears to be 3 twisting options. A general twist "TwistWhat", the group is on a med break "TwistMed" and the group is fighting "MeleeTwistWhat"
Mentioned above, the potential to "Buff" an Aura.
DPS? Beyond swinging the swords, slow the mob with Selo's Consonant Chain and Requiem of Time ? Then actual damage,from such as Tuyen's Chant of Flame or Vulka's Chant of Flame. They read as doing a dot, and also have some extra of lowering fire resist?

Something Im not too clear about is if a melody, a twist is playing how do the DPS actions fit in?


Discussion invite


This is where I would like to open the floor for discussion.

On the one hand, to help give a priority over what kind of songs should be on the spell bar, what would look to use in the twists and dps etc.
Then the other hand, to get more understanding of the mechanics over how KA will do things between Twist and DPS. To try and understand how songs are maintained as "up" for the benefit of the bard and group during a combat situation.


Thanks and Regards
 
This is for KA bard, but you can also check out IHC's "auto" bard macro. KA12 beta has a bunch of upgrades to the bard code. It has very good reviews in the beta thread for bard usage. I think core and modbot can run bards too, but I have no experience with those yet.

DPS during songs - Bards can fire AA/clicks while singing. So you'd be running your combat twist and still firing them. If you use something like debuffall to do a slow in DPS, KA will turn off the twist and fire the slow(s), then restart the twist. If you wanted to one-off a nuke song, you could try it in DPS though I'm not sure it always works. Most people put the DPS songs in their combat twist.

Mez during songs - Handled like a "Debuffall" above. Bard will stop combat twist and mez all mobs. If the camp is very full of mobs, bard may spend most of their time on mez and not re-engage right away. I run the AE mez for 3+ mobs in camp, single otherwise. KA automates it all very well. Bard are a little weaker than ench on mez in general, but can handle all content. If you can get rank II mezzes, those are harder for mob to resist by -5 or so.

Auras vs Echos - These are persistent so do them via the Buffs section. Aura follows the bard, Echo drops the buff in camp like a beacon. Echo is useful if the bard is puller to a single camp. I'm not sure if its still a bug, but KA used to require the aura to be in a permanent slot in your spell bar. Mem/Sing/Un-mem used to have a timing error where the Aura's cast time messed up KA from getting it cast.

I think you can have like 4 songs buffs running that haven't worn off in early game. As you get AA you can get that up around 7. So your twists can get longer.

Song bar choices - In order of most useful:
  1. Mez - Have at least the single target one. I also run the AE version,so two slots.
  2. Melee buffs - Overhaste and +spell damage is biggest boost. Even if you run the matching aura, you want to twist this one at the start of combat because its a little better. Besides that you want regular haste/atk (WarSong/March) plus some melee procs.
  3. Tank buffs - You can stack up to three tanky AC songs. These help a lot if you're doing new content, but on older content you'll often be at/above the AC cap for those mobs. I run the AC/Aggro proc one and then add the AC/resist and AC/DS one if needed.
  4. Utility - Selos, if you don't have the AA yet. Group invis or lev though you can swap this in as needed or wait until you have the AA.
  5. Regen - So you can stack up to 3 regens (aura/group pulse/raid song) + Dicho/Cresendo regen via Buffs if needed. I usually run Pulse in downtime twist and sometimes in combat twist for +healing mod.
  6. Resists - Useful in older content, but not so much in new stuff.
  7. Nuke buffs - Pretty weak compared to melee buffs, but if some work for you group you can add them.
  8. Direct nukes - Mainly not useful, but if you need to the bard to put out more DPS you can try them. The Insult line does add nice melee procs to group once you get to EoK era.
  9. Dots - Can be very good dmg once you get the 400%+ mods via AA, but again hard to argue about giving up the group buff song slot for them.
Bard's biggest boost to group is Quicktime AA which will reduce weapon delay for all melee (hastev4)

These are from awhile back but some more bard info: 110 song selection post and these bard ini tips.
 
Discussion - learn to play - bard!

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