On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, JasonF wrote:
>
> Last night I was camping the Preacher room in Permafrost with a 23rd Wizard, a
> 22nd Wizard, a 22nd Cleric, and a 19th bard. I'm pretty damn young to be
> there, as those are hard-hitting Ice Goblins and heavy casters that we're
> fighting. We held our own there for about five hours - with me mostly using
> instruments and not weapons - in fact we were TANKLESS. We got a tell at
> about the four hour mark from two Warriors wanting to join our group - and we
> declined! I routinely pulled Gobs from the surrounding area when mana
> permitted as well.
From a pure experience/time perspective, it is always better
to have more people in your group. This is especially true as
a bard since your party songs multiply every person's
effectiveness. The only time I turn down adding more people
to a group is if they are known jerks, or if the spawn in the
area will not support the extra people (i.e. there is nothing
else nearby and we are already handling what's there with
ease).
If this was not the case, then I can only assume you felt the
group's increased effectiveness with two tanks would not
offset the decrease in experience. I'd suggest you improve
your mixed tank/caster strategies then - the only remaining
factor is poor tactics.
> If heavy casters were in the pull (and they throw Force
> Shock and the like) I would switch to button bank 2 (my
> "caster" bank) and play Anthem, Guardian and Elemental
> while holding a drum. Anthem was played because my cleric
I thought Anthem no longer stacked with Guardian Rhythms? Or
maybe it was Chant of Battle that didn't stack with GR...
> was melee'ing fairly often as was one of the Wizards, so
> it's better than nothing. Our magic resists with the drum
> equipped were in the low 70s, and 40ish for heat and cold.
> Not shabby, but can I do better at my level without a MM
> drum? Any stacking advice would be welcome.
It's tough to appraise the effectiveness of MR against casting
mobs because you don't get a message saying how much damage
their spells did. The strategy I found worked best when I was
in Permafrost was just to play Lullaby over and over (stop and
restart it each time it pulses to minimize the interval).
That interrupted almost every spell, and the goblins went down
usually getting only 0 or 1 spell off, sometimes 2. I dunno
how viable this strategy is at level 19 though.
> I didn't play
> Hymn much fighting the casters 'cause .. what's the point?
> They're either gonna burn you for 150 points or not, and
> Hymn isn't going to help much since my drum is equipped.
Set up a hotkey bank with four songs, your instrument melee
slot, and an instrument inventory slot. Put the drum in the
melee slot and pick up the lute with your mouse cursor. Play
ER, then GR. When you switch to Hymn, click on the drum to
equip the lute and place the drum on the mouse cursor. When
you switch back to ER, click on the lute to equip the drum
again. (The instrument inventory slot isn't really necessary,
but I found it handy in case I needed to drop my rather
valuable Mistmoore drum to pick up something else. :-)
This also works with Hymn (lute), CoD (lute), and DDD (horn).
Each song gets enhanced by its respective instrument, and it's
not that much more difficult to do. It's still a hassle
though and I only set it up occasionally.
> Besides, we had a Cleric in the group (she saved my bacon
> when down to 30HPs on about three different occassions).
Clerics are a bard's best friend. Don't grow too dependent on
them though. Once you get into your low- to mid-20s, you are
no longer the enormous mob magnet you used to be, and with
careful damage management, you can do pretty well grouped
without a cleric. It requires different songs, good taunt
coordination with the other group members, everyone has to
know what the others are and are not capable of, and you
really have to stay on your toes. But it's a lot of fun, and
what you learn while doing it will kick in automatically when
you *are* grouped with a cleric and he announces "OOM" in the
middle of a nasty fight.
> If there were no casters involved I would switch to button
> bank 1 (my "melee" bank) and play Warsong, Anthem and Hymn
> of Restoration.
If you were doing most of the tanking, then Warsong probably
was appropriate. If the others are taking damage though, I'd
consider using GR instead of Warsong. It has a slight AC buff
(bigger than ER or PR) which is mostly negligible, but can
make a difference in marginal situations.
> In appropriate situations I can also use
> Bellow or Denon's Distruptive Discord on this bank, but
> Bellow is pretty pathetic when you're fighting multiple
> mobs and DDD can really get you in trouble in a dungeon
> where you can't even use Selo's.
When you are the lowest level member of a group, you should
concentrate more on party buff songs (which can't be resisted)
rather than offensive songs (which can be resisted).
> Lullaby was also used a fair amount and the Gobs didn't
> resist TOO much. I would equip my mandolin and just stand
> there playing Lullable while the casters burned the gobs
> or beat on them with sticks. Usually during this type of
> cheezy caster melee combat I was typing "Fight one",
> "Fight one" over and over. It takes some people a long
> time to realize what's going on.
Yeah, it's amazing how little people think when they aren't
the ones taking all the damage. :-)
I'm curious if you found any basis for the claim that Lullaby
nixes the hate list. Whenever I'm grouped with overzealous
nukers, I haven't been able to use Lullaby to pull a mob off
them. It goes to sleep, but when it wakes up it just resumes
chasing the nuker. Finally after about 5 or 6 pulses of
Lullaby it starts to attack me, but then the caster nukes
again and the whole thing starts all over.
> For reference, when in melee my weapons are Dragoon Dirk or Barbed Leather
> Whip in the offhand with Thulian Bladed Claws in my primary hand. This
> character is *not* twinked believe it or not...
Bleh - a non-twinked L20 bard has better weapons than I do.
I need to get better weapons. Doesn't help that my friends
and I aren't into camping...
--
John H. Kim
kim@...