I thought I would contribute a little to this thread, I have been in lurk
mode for some time since I read this list at work and rarely have the time
these days to post any significant messages.

I am level 48 now and have been spending the past couple weeks powerleveling
in Dreadlands around Karanor's castle trying to make the mad rush to 50. I
spent about 2 months in level 45 and decided to just buckle down and tear
through the last five levels, especially when I found out how great the xp
was in the Dreadlands.

Here is what happened last night:

Generally I am now an advocate of the support bard position, singing with
instruments and punching with fists if I get involved in the melee at all. I
was in a pretty well balanced group for most of the night and made about 1/2
a bubble of level 48 xp in 4 hours, not great but not terrible either. Due
to the domino affect, one person went to bed and 2 others followed so I
began to recruit and our entire group balance suddenly changed to the
following:

1 level 48 Paladin
1 level 37 Cleric
1 level 45 Cleric
1 level 50 Druid
1 level 45 Enchanter
Me (level 48 bard)

Since we had such an odd mix of classes and only 1 melee type with no one
who could snare, I switched to weapons and loaded chains/fear. With the
enchanter's clarity, the shaman's buffs, and my clarity we were a veritable
meat grinder. We had non-stop pulls, no "OOM" and I got as much xp in 1
hour that had just taken 4 hours to get, 1/2 a bubble at 48 in one hour!

Not only that, everyone in the group was happy, playing their role well and
constantly saying how much fun they were having. The only complaint was
from the shaman who finally said he was going to give up DOT'ing since the
mobs were dying before he even had a chance to get the spell off most of the
time.

In this group my role was clarity in downtime and chains/fear during battle
with a curtailing chant and/or chant of fire thrown in when possible. I had
to concentrate on making sure chains/fear would stick so I had to almost
exclusively sing those two songs, which is why I stuck my weapons in hand
and contributed a little extra melee damage. YES chains was resisted a lot
more than I would have liked and occasionally broke a lot sooner than I
would have liked, but overall it was a very effective strategy in this group
composition.

Just wanted to reinforce the point that we are an extremely versatile class
and even though our contributions are often not readily visible we ARE (as
someone recently mentioned) kind of the "glue" that sticks a group together
at times. By chain/fearing I was able to keep the overall group damage down
to a minimum and allow the casters to just carelessly shoot off their big
nukes with little concern of retaliation.

Oh, and the and enchanter and I got along just grand ;-)

-Faras
E'ci