THe reason I started a bard (as a secondary char) was because of how
much the bard I regularly group with helps our party... Not to
mentioned it looked fun to do all the stuff he was doing... Seriously
even at relativly low levels, the enhancments he made to our group
(which is a bit fighter heavy) are amazing. We almost double our
killing rate when he is around (he has a weak connection, so I really
get to see the with bard and without bard power of our group).

Between his pulling (no SOW in the group), crowd control (no enchater
either), fighting enhancment and healing enhancment, our downtime is a
fraction of its former self when he's there. I especially appreciate
him as I'm the cleric of our group, and its such a relief not having to
waste mana at the start of a fight to heal the puller then go work a
little crowd control... I actually get to stand up and smash the
monsters for a little bit! (well if you count miss, miss, hit for 2,
miss, hit for 1, miss as smashing)

Bards are a pretty cool class, I wouldn't say they are the most
powerful, but being able to do all that we (I got my first 5 levels this
weekend so I'm offically a bard now, thank my hockey team for missing
the playoffs) can is a lot of fun. Other than some pointless (most
casters have that wasted ID spell too), broken? songs I think Vernat did
a pretty good job with bards (I have plenty of Verant complaints, but
they're game has moved up to my #3 all time in terms of total play time,
Diablo and Civilization are starting to sweat). We seem to adequatly
fill in for almost any role in the party if the "master" of that role
isn't there. I kind of thought that was our role. Now if only we got a
bind song...

--
We now return to the non-stop rock.

Matt DeBarger