I think you make some valid points, but I'm afraid I don't agree where Bards are
concerned. Here's why:
>Time is money. Time is experience. If I am bound 5 seconds away from my
>current position, I can fight a lot more riskier and gain a lot more xp than
>if I am bound 10 minutes away.
This is only true if you don't die, as exp loss from a single death will wipe
out many kills. I usually lose 1/2 hour to an hour's worth of exp from a death.
If you don't die, then you didn't need the bind anyway, so you could have killed
the same amount of stuff with, or without it. If you DO die, then saving that
10 minutes isn't going to let you get back that lost exp.
What Bind will get you, is letting you play for that 10 minutes, rather than
run. But the exp loss will be the same. The amount of exp you can get in 10
minutes is a tiny, tiny fraction of what you lose by dying.
>Our songs do not FORCE us to attract attention. Bellow all the way. Save
>the healing song for downtime reduction. It can be done if your current
>group is not adequate to protect you from harm.
You are correct that you can play without singing AOE songs. However, since
that limits you to 5 percent of our songlist, it stops you from being a Bard.
To limit yourself to Bellow and Warsong in a group makes you a dual wielding
enchanter/cleric/shaman who has decided to 'tank'. Very unproductive. Doing
that, you've stopped being a Bard. I don't think a good solution is to say,
just don't play songs... I doubt that a mob with 5K worth of hps cares much
about my 15 points of bellow.
Also, no group can protect you if you are doing your job, buffing and healing
and whatnot. The tanks can get the attention of the target mob, but all others
will be on you. The only protection you can get is to have your enchanter AOE
Mez all of the time, and that still prevents you from DoT'ing, Lullabye'ing,
etc. I don't think a good solution for this is to stop using the songs that
define our class.
I don't mind the dying, I mind not playing as much because I run back so much
more often than anyone else.
>When a warrior dies, he has no sow, he has no invisibility, he has no summon
>corpse spell.
This is true. But, to compensate he dies much less often than a Bard does. If
you recall my original post, I say that adding Parry would move us from the
Caster class to a true Hybrid class. That would mean that we should not get
bind, as we have the defensive powers of a melee class. There's a reason that
the casters get bind and a warrior doesn't. We're just on the wrong side of
that classification.
>Bards aren't that bad off, at all. Bards are the best non-binder at getting
>to the corpse and returning to a safe point.
That's very true, in both cases. We are a fine class, and I think not
underpowered at all. We are also great at safely returning. However, none of
us can return to our bodies instantly. We lose time no matter what, during that
run. Since we die the most often, we lose the most time. Make us die less with
added defensive skills, or reduce our running time with Bind. But one or the
other needs to be done to make our downtime the same as the other 13 classes in
the game.
Lastly, I've heard some say that using a 29th or higher cleric to res you is the
answer. But really, if that were true, nobody at all should get bind.
Golias' Mantra!
No power increases, no gate. No reduction of deaths, which result in more exp
loss than others. Just bind to let us play the same amount of time.
Golias, Sol Ro