Last night I was in Cazic camping the 4C area. It was late at night and we had
the entire place to ourselves. The party consisted of a 35 enchanter, 34
ranger, 34 paladin, 32 cleric, 27 bard and 30 bard(me). Initially we were
camping along the outside wall. The ranger pulled, the enchanter had crowd
control duties, and the other bard and I were able to keep six different songs
up all the time. The ranger was a very good puller and never got more than two
mobs at a time. Every combat was very efficient and no one ever lost more than
one bub of health. We were there for over an hour and decided that based on our
success, we would move up to the top of the pyramid where the Archon spawns.
Everyone got fully buffed (I had 10 buff icons showing), full mana and we headed
up to the Archon invisible.

We got to the top safely and gathered at one of the corners near to the steps
leading into the pyramid. There was a full spawn waiting for us at the steps,
plus whatever was inside the pyramid. I told everyone to hold tight. Sent a
private /tell to the enchanter (Rakadar). Rakadar and I have grouped together
on numerous occasions since we were both 5th level. He is far and away the best
enchanter I have ever grouped with, a master at controlling a battle with his
crowd control spells. I told him that with the number of mobs in front of us,
he would likely die if he tried an AE mez spell. My reasoning was that there
was no way for the party to kill enough mobs before the AE mez wore off. Once
the spell wore off and everything started attacking him, he most likely would
have trouble getting another AE mez off. He agreed with my assessment. He then
told me that if I tried putting them all to sleep with lullaby, then I would
likely die. I agreed with his assessment. Here is where the other bard (a
guildmate of mine) comes into play. I informed the other bard that during the
fight, I would continually be singing Lullaby. I told him to weave anthem and
lullaby continuously and mix in Hymn ever few rounds. The enchanter would charm
one of the casting lizards and then focus on stunning the mob we were facing. I
informed everyone of the plan and reminded the cleric to watch out for the two
bards health since we would be singing Lullaby. Time to kick some lizard butt.

We all /assisted the ranger and started the fight. I started up Lullaby and was
horrified when I saw that I had put 10 lizards to sleep. A couple of people
stated something to the effect of "Oh crap. We got 10 freaking lizards now. We
should have stayed by the wall". I assumed I would be the first to die. Here
is where I received a pleasant surprise. Out of the 10 lizards we were facing,
the only one attacking back was the one the tanks were meleeing. For the most
part, nothing was attacking me at all. Everyone once in a while I would get
attacked but I eventually put the mob back to sleep. On a couple of occasions
when I did get attacked, I got stunned and stop singing Lullaby. When this
happened and mobs woke up, instead of attacking me the mobs attacked the lower
level bard, who was weaving in Lullaby/Hymn as well. Throughout the coarse of
the battle, he was the only player who was took any serious damage. The cleric
took care of that though. As soon as I was able to get Lullaby back up, the
situation was back in control.

Slowly but surely, we killed off the intial 10 mobs. However, this took us so
long that as we got down to the last few mobs, new ones spawned along the steps.
I just kept singing Lullaby the entire fight. Eventually we killed off all the
mobs. All told, I think we were fighting lizards continuously for over 15
minutes. We all stood around in disbelief at what we had just accomplished.
Final tally was Us:15 Lizards:0. Everyone started hooting and hollering and
patting each other on the back. Everyone was out of mana but no one was below
60% health. Everyone agreed that the reason for our success were me and the
other bard keeping all the mobs out of the fight. To say the least I was
ecstatic.

In hindsight, I wished I would have turned on the log file function prior to the
fight so I could have collected some test data for the ongoing Lullaby issue.
Like so many of us, I was convinced the song was broken. It may be that two
bards singing Lullaby (one continuously and the other weaving it in) negated the
problem of mobs still attacking after the initial resist. Even if a mob
resisted my song the first time, he still had to resist the other bards song.
I think it also helped that my charisma was 149 and the other bards was 145
(with sympathetic aura buff). All I can say is that last night was the most fun
I've had playing EQ in a long time and that I'm further convinced that a bard
and enchanter in the same group make a lethal combination.

Galtin of E'ci
30 bard