OK, I know we're a powerful class, and I've have a lot of fun (and get a
lot of compliments) working in unbalanced groups and pulling them
together. I love groups with lots of casters or lots of melees, it
makes me feel like I'm really accomplishing something.

My problem: I play mostly on the weekends, and since I'm in a pretty
tight guild (and a lot of them are available on the weekend), I play
mostly with my guild. This means that a typical party is: Me,
Enchanter, Cleric, maybe a Shaman, tanks. The tanks always include at
least one ranger/druid (snare) or paladin (root) for stopping MOBs.

It's the Enchanter that's getting me depressed, although the Shaman and
the snarers don't help. All of my party buffs have speed components,
but his are better. I can't use anything that does AE damage due to the
mez. In large group efforts (like the Planes) I'm forbidden from using
DOTs since nobody wants the MOBs to poof. My slowdown songs are no
better than the Enchanter's (and his stick for the duration once cast)
and vastly worse than the Shamans. So: VoV is kind of useless, since
only the STR and weak AC components come into play, Fear is out of the
question (ooq), Chains sucks and is redundant, Nivs is kind of pointless
given that we they try to keep the MOB focused on one or two tanks, and
for the most part, we get through fights with no damage to 3 or 4 party
members (and of course, the damage shield lasts like .001 second on the
tank taking the damage, killing the song). What the heck am I supposed
to be playing? Especially against melee MOBs? I'm feeling like a melee
imposter with a Mana song attached. Sometimes I sing DOT songs (against
my instructions) until the MOBs are down to 1/3rd or so, then switch to
Nivs/Mana, sometimes I just sigh and sing Vov/Mana/Nivs/Mana and feebly
whack away.

Also, we were playing in Karnors on skel tower yesterday. We did not
have to pull anything, the MOBs just kept bum-rushing us. It was kind
of cool (lots of exp) but kind of scary at the same time. Needless to
say, everyone blamed me. Some of them (not all of them) only stopped
when our entire party camped out and relogged. Now, if it was me, then
I would expect to see this happen regularly. I don't. What does
regularly happen, though, is that every time something screwy like this
happens, I get blamed for it. It gets kinda irritating. Have any of
you worked out appropriate responses?

Kenross Cantoforjado, 51 songs, Innoruuk, off to Hate. Wish me luck on
the Bard drops.