Well, I can say for certain that as of last night, no change had been made
to our Chords of Dissonance. I used it to kite a few groups of beetles
(from 4 to 6 at a time) in North Karana, and it worked just like always: run
by the group, pulse Chords, run away and heal while their health drops
steadily.

Therefore, either Verant has not yet implemented the DoT "advancing monster"
nonsense on the production servers, or they are not including bards (or at
least Chords of Dissonance) in this restriction (oh please oh please). I'd
put my money on the former.

I don't know about you folks, but I have always thought that running into a
group of nasties, pulsing Chords, and then running away playing a medley of
Hymn and Selo's was a very useful and viable tactic despite the danger (you
WILL take damage when you go in to use Chords with most MOBs). Now
apparently Verant is deciding it's an exploit. Oh, I get it... it's a bug
that the monsters aren't as fast as us? If they had better AI and tried to
run away instead of chasing us as we killed them, that would solve the
problem nicely... at least we'd have a much harder time kiting groups, if
they split up. On the other hand, it would be easier to kite those single
MOBs, as they'd be running away giving us plenty of time to improve our
melee skills and sing them to death. I see this an another excellent
example of Verant trying to limit the way we play the game without thinking
through all the repercussions. They want us to group, so every viable
soloing strategy will slowly be whittled away, regardless of the effects
these changes have on 1) the internal consistency (i.e. believability) of
the world, or 2) other perfectly "legal" actions.

May your feet ever be fleet,
And your voices ever be sweet.

Aloro (E'ci)