The truth is that Bards aren't weak, they're pretty powerful, but...
Here's the tradeoff when using a Bard:
1. The Bard's offense sucks. He adds less offense than anything other than, perhaps, a Cleric. This
makes fights last longer, sucks up more healing mana, and increases the risk level of the encounter (e.g.,
it increases the risks of adds).
2. During combat, the Bard can sing offensively oriented songs which add to the capabilities of the melee
members of his party, or counter the abilities of the MOB, which dereases mana and decreases risk.
3. During downtime, the Bard can sing downtime-reducing songs. This decreases downtime risk and
decreases downtime itself. This allows the party to pull stuff faster.
The value of #2 or #3 is dependent on the party makeup, and the value of #3 is dependent on the
availability of MOBs to fight. (Reduced downtime is not an advantage if you don't have enough stuff
around to take advantage of it.)
I would argue that adding a Bard is equivalent to adding from 1/2 to 3 other players depending on the
situation.
The problem is "the situation". There are 7 things that high-level Kunark parties need: 1) crowd
control, 2) primary healer, 3) a tank, 4) a puller, 5) a group gater (sometimes), 6) a lockpicker
(sometimes), 7) secondary healer (sometimes). The bard can't do any of these things other than limited
crowd control, or pulling (which doesn't allow him to play the downtime reducing role), which means that
he doesn't satisfy any of the core requirements.
This means that any party which is going to attempt anything interesting or challenging has (depending on
characters available), already filled from 4 to 6 slots before they can consider the luxury of taking a
Bard.
And, sadly, the standard group of: Enchanter, Cleric, secondary healer, gater/nuker, tank/puller is one
group that, I would argue, least benefits from having a Bard added to it. So we're often relegated to
doing the boring, peripheral stuff.
This happens in my guild a lot:
Four players log on:
Enchanter LFG, he gets six /gu messages and gets a group immediately.
Cleric LFG, he gets a few /gu messages and gets a group pretty quickly.
Bard LFG, he gets a message if something opens up and nobody else is available.
Paladin LFG, he sits for 6 hours and gives up.
Has nothing to do with the ability of people to play their character, it has to do with character balance.
Kenross Cantorforjado, 54 songs, Innoruuk
Thank the gods I'm not a Paladin
James Schuldes wrote:
> My main points were not about "who" posted the stuff - but more what was
> posted:
>
> 1) Worried that bards will be LFG because of being "weak".
>
> * This I think happened and was just recently addressed in ways to help
> bards solo and get groups assuming they can realistically mez 2 or 3 mobs
> long enough for their group to kill the mobs.
>
> 2) VI seems to have the right intentions (ie wants bards to be wanted in
> groups) but does not have the practical experience on how to make this
> happen in the game - at least not until players spend a lot of time telling
> them that stuff is wrong.
>
> Sylly