> -----Original Message-----
> From: kim@... [mailto:kim@...]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2000 3:17 PM
> To: eqbards@onelist.com
> Subject: Re: [eqbards] Little SolB Story
>
>
> From: <kim@...>
>
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Robin Wise 3 wrote:
> >
> > I was in a pickup group of warrior, warrior, shadowknight,
> mage, enchanter
> > (all 40-44) and me, a charming, debonair, devil-may-care
> woodelf bard with
> > 37 songs. Obviously I was the only healer (ack!) but
> thankfully the group
> > was pretty high-powered and the tanks knew their jobs. We
> were in the pool
> > room fighting swarms of GKs, which the enchanter thankfully
> kept enthralled.
> >
> > The night wore on, and I decided to test a different
> tactic: chains,
> > celerity, hymn, wielding a mandolin the whole fight. I
> reasoned that I was
> > not doing much of the damage, and perhaps the fights would
> go the same
> > either way... the results exceeded my expectations by quite
> a bit. Where
> > before one or both fighters and sometimes the mage would be
> down a bubble or
> > two after each round of a few GKs, now nobody lost even a
> half bubble of
> > health. I still waded into melee and did *some* damage
> with my fists, but
>
> Melee-heavy groups are a lot of fun if everyone is competent.
> Basically, you have everyone's readiness status up in front of
> you all the time (their health bars). So you can play around
> with healing and pulling to settle on a rate where the action
> is pretty much non-stop without having to ask "mana?" all the
> time. (Casters can join in on the nonstop fun too if they're
> good about conserving their mana. :)
>
> Mind you, playing Hymn with a lute instead of using weapons
> meant each fight was taking a little bit longer. But if you
> were waiting to heal up after each fight anyway, then your
> kill rate would be better if you can keep everyone almost
> topped (since waiting to heal time = not-doing-any-damage
> time).
>
> A lot of people complain about excessive downtime in this
> game. The one thing no other class can touch a bard at is
> reducing or eliminating downtime.
This matches up with my experience very well. My experience in Mistmoore is
about level 25-26 around the lake/graveyard. I've had the chance to fight
with many different groups.
The tank only group I fought in had almost no downtime with a warrior going
out and pulling at the end of each fight -- what's with these guys anyway,
always fetching with only 75% health? I had to sometimes follow the warrior
just to get him healed? :-) Pretty much continuous action. I sang Anthem,
Hymn and swapped between Elemental Rhythms or Chains, depending on what we
were fighting. At this time not a lot of people in the zone, so we had lots
to hunt.
Mixed group of hybrids and casters where the bards are the tanks. For some
reason, I always had another bard to fight alongside with in these battles.
:-) Us bards were able to take turns absorbing the damage while wizards and
druids/shaman blasted the thing to smitherines. A lot of downtime waiting
for the casters to med up. A bard is a definitely a Shaman's best friend as
they drain their life for mana (necros fall into this category as well, but
never grouped with one in Mistmoore). But with the crowdedness of Mistmoore
at the time, this really wasn't much of a problem as they had plenty of time
until we could pull something to fight.
Magicians - I was in a group of 2 magicians and boy are these guys fun to
play with! I have an 18th level magician myself, and while I always figure
Wizards to be the blasters extraordinaire, the fights seemed to be over a
lot faster with these guys. Pet control is a little iffy but Mistmoore was
so camped at the time there was little danger of the pet running out and
pulling something real bad. ***I am kind of curious as to how well Magicians
do in some of the other dungeons. I've read lots of warnings about pets in
dungeons, but without a pet, Magicians become slow casters that don't quite
do as much damage. Also their "bolt" line of spells seem best for soloing as
no group members get in their LOS.
Balanced group - Cleric, enchanter, tanks and me. Good action in the
graveyard (I was the youngest in the group) but each battle was followed by
a good medding session, which worked out okay due to spawn rate. Got a good
amount of exp until a caitliff (sp?) walked by and blasted me to
smithereens. I was just playing my healing song, but that seems to be a
"famous last bardic words" phrase as she aggro'd on me from across the
graveyard.
I guess I'm not up to the level where an enchanter becomes a "must" like in
the higher level groups. But the times I have grouped with them, I've found
the best enchanters are the ones who pretty much direct everything. Pretty
logical since they are controlling the environment that everyone else fights
in. Also, a lot of the enchanters are women, and who doesn't like a
strong-willed woman telling you what to do?
"Kill the dark one and the giant, but leave the third for questioning." (Ok,
so this quote wasn't said by a woman.)
---Windleaf