Umm, define Early Beta? Bard songs affected Group Only in Beta 2 and 3,
during late Beta 3/early 3.5 bard songs got messed up and affected everyone
around them (actually a lot of us liked this, made us far more powerful).
This was a bug, not a design. Later in 3.5 it was fixed just before we went
to Beta 4 last February.
However, the reasoning is still the same. Mobs aggro on us because we are
buffing everyone in the group. In addition, every time your song 'pulses'
you are "Casting". Mobs HATE casters. Thus they hate bards, who are
casters that cast every 3 seconds (when singing a medley) or every 6 seconds
(maintaining 1 song) and who's 'spells' affect everyone in their group.
Hope this helps!
Lyrnia
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan Honeyman" <honeyman@...>
To: <eqbards@onelist.com>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: [eqbards] Is selos in a group a megataunt?
> From: Ryan Honeyman <honeyman@...>
>
> > something it headed right for me even if they started wacking it before
it
> > arrived to begin pummeling me. Assuming it wasn't my breath, does anyone
> > else notice this?
>
> Manasong has the same effect.
>
> If the NPC heading your way has not been engaged or taunted sufficiently
> any song you play will act as a taunt. The happens a lot to me in the
> Plane of Sky. Monk pulls a mob, mob comes home and sees me up front
> and whacks me once, and then forgets about me the rest of the battle
> after it's taunted and damaged heavier by tanks.
>
> This is something that ties to basic design of the Bard class itself.
>
> In early beta, the Bard sang his/her song to everyone around them.
>
> If a Bard blew by 6 people medding with selo's and a selo's pulse
> caught them, they all would stand up and get the 'Your feet move
> faster' message. Needless to say, /all/ casters hated bards for
> that. Bard song use to reach everyone in the radius. Of course
> this is not desired. Thus instead of Verant recoding their engine
> to send song signals to just party members, it now sends out a pulse
> to everyone and everything in your radius, and then does a check on
> the object to see if it's in your party. If it is, the effect is
> applied, if not the effect is not applied, but it's not ignored.
> It's considered a huge taunt.
>
> If I stood in the middle of 40 people and played any song, I'm
> 'helping' 40 people, and I become an increased value target.
> I've had things B-line for me out of the blue because of this.
> This is also the reason why Bards die so much, or are hated by
> NPCs so much - A coding failure on Verant's part. Instead of
> remedying the base problem, they just patched it. Usually
> taunting and constant attack keeps NPCs off me, but that shift
> doesn't occur until after L25 when tank skills (taunt/offense)
> become high enough to overpower my hate rating on the NPC hatelist.
>
> Still, I'll always get tagged right off the bat before any mob is
> engaged if I'm playing songs and close enough. It gets better
> as you gain levels however.
>
> Harmonic.
>
>
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