On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Ken Bachman wrote:
>
> Verant has specifically made our songs weaker than the corresponding
> spells cast by other classes (Lullaby is a prime example) because: a)
> they are the other classes' specialties, b) our songs affect an entire
> group, and hence our songs are "more powerful" than individual spells,
> and c) our songs do not require mana and hence can be cast indefinitely.
Yeah, I think (c) is where Verant really screwed up. Yes our
songs don't require mana. No that doesn't make them
infinitely powerful. You can do a straight no-mana to mana
comparison pretty easily. We can keep up 3 songs best
practical case. Grouped with 6 party memebers, that's 18
buffs full time. After the early levels, pretty much any
caster's mana regeneration rate is high enough that they can
easily keep up 18 buffs. When I ground out the numbers in a
reply to Abashi, a L40ish shaman could easily keep up better
buffs than we could using only half his mana regen. Toss in a
clarity or two and casters are vastly more powerful than any
bard.
As a counter to this power, we get dual wield. Great. Yes we
can switch "buffs" on a dime, but doing so means depriving the
group of the other "buffs" we were giving them - no mixing and
matching to the class for us.
Anyways, Verant sees this no-mana "advantage" we have and sets
our song effects to where they're vastly inferior to
equivalent level spells (with two exceptions). Net result is
a class who can't buff as much, whose buffs are much weaker,
and whose roughly 40% extra melee damage compared to a shaman
is supposed to make up for it. It's flawed reasoning,
precipitated I think by the lack of anyone at Verant who
really advocates the bard class.
The only advantage I see bards having is that we have a
certain combination of songs that no other class has. Speed,
healing, charm, fear, mes, attack speedups, target debuffs.
No other class has that combo, and it to a certain extent
justifies us being weaker at buffing or fighting. But that's
why it *really* worries me to see charm become useless, mes
(Lullaby, Pixie) bugged, and our speedups and debuffs capped
low at the higher levels. If you look at what's left over,
it's pretty obvious most other classes offer much more to a
group than we do. Our only saving grace is (as most people
have figured out) Clarity.
> Further, even at level 42, I find my song selection to be severely
> constrained because many of our best songs are incompatable with spells
> that other classes are casting. And their's are better.
The problem I see is not that our songs are necessarily
incompatible, but that our songs are multi-effect and if just
one element is incompatible, we can't use it. If a ranger is
snaring, I'd like to Chain for the speed debuff but I can't.
If the shaman is casting Torgors, I'd like to Chain to stop
runners but I can't. I don't think the spell system was
designed very well. Rather than a spell just not taking hold,
the most powerful effect component should override all the
time.
--
John H. Kim
kim@...