[Next Message in Time] | [Previous Message in Time] | [Next Message in Topic] | [Previous Message in Topic]

Message ID: 20043
Date: Tue Jun 27 19:32:12 BST 2000
Author: jhenders@bogon.com
Subject: Re: [eqbards] grouping thread on the Everquest boards


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kimes, Dean W. [mailto:dean_kimes@...]
> Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 12:07 PM
> To: 'eqbards@egroups.com'
> Subject: [eqbards] grouping thread on the Everquest boards
>
>
> Has anyone else been sent this thread or looked at it?
>
> http://boards.station.sony.com/everquest/Forum4/HTML/056356.html
>
> I read the thread and was appalled to see that bards, supposedly the best
> group class according to "The Vision" were seldom listed as being desirable.
>

Weird, I just read the thread and it seemed to me bards were mentioned
by about 1/4-1/3 the posters. As I usually find the number of ppl in
game with a clue to be more around 10% I thought that was rather
encouraging.

> This quote left me especially tanked off.
>
> "A *good* Bard, i.e. one that puts away the stupid weapons and uses their
> DoTs with instruments, managing mob agro properly, can add the the group.
> But most Bards are clueless schmucks, so it isn't worth trying to educate
> them as they flail away with their Yaks and no Double Attack."
>

Why would this bother you so much? It's true from what I can see. In any
situation where you can get all 3 chants sticking consistantly the
damage _is_ higher than you're going to manage with weapons. Bards are
screwed in melee in 2 ways. First, they don't get double attack, and
second, and most damaging, they don't get the minumum hit bonus that
pure melee chars now get. L50 meleers don't hit for 1 ever. This was
with my old L49 bard who's weapons maybe aren't the best, but I have the
opportunity to try this out with a bard in our guild with evensong and
one of the other hate weapons. I plan to try this out and I expect it
will still be the same.

> Maybe tanked wasn't the right word to use there ;-)
>
> I have been emailed this thread by 6 people now! A couple of them even
> suggested it made sense and that since an enchanter was so much more vital
> to a good group and basically rendered the bard obsolete, I should retire my
> bard and work on getting one of my more viable classes leveled up. It was
> suggested, though never directly stated, that an enchanter made having a
> bard more or less a waste of time unless you really needed manasong.
>

Hmm. Who saves the enchanter when they hit a bad string of rolls. I know
when I grouped with an enchanter last week, it was me charming the
frenzied drolvarg off her that saved her life. No tank was going to
taunt it off that fast.

We had a group last week that was 2 bards, an enchanter, monk, wizard
and cleric. We held a tower deeper in Karnors pulling the hand room for
several hours and everyone in the group was quite impressed with how
efficiently we were dealing with stuff. There was almost no downtime,
mobs died fast and everyone got lots of exp. Of course it helped that
the other bard and I were on speaker phones with each other and could
coordinate what we did really easily, but even that could have been done
without.

Also, my friend the other bard above, after I showed him the
effectiveness of the chant songs, went back the next day, bought some
sow potions and proceeded to go to burning woods and kill wurms. Said he
got a bubble of L52 in a couple of hours doing it, and that with one
death.

--
Artificial Intelligence stands no chance against Natural Stupidity.
GAT d- -p+(--) c++++ l++ u++ t- m--- W--- !v
b+++ e* s-/+ n-(?) h++ f+g+ w+++ y*