If you're grouped with a ranger/druid and enchanter, I'm
finding Binding to be more useful than Chain (in areas where
AE songs are safe). Chain interferes with snare so you lose
its attack speed slowdown if you let the druid/ranger snare
early in a fight. Binding does not interfere with snare, so
you can Bind away to your heart's content. The AE also means
if you get a big pull, you'll be slowing down all their
attacks, which gives the enchanter more time and a better
chance to mesmerize the extras (neither Chain nor Binding
break mesmerize), since most enchanters are afraid to use area
effect mesmerize in cramped dungeons for fear of mesmerizing
themselves. Thanks Sylly for getting me to try this song
again.
The enchanter also has better attack speed debuffs, but the
one I group with uses it only if we're in a close fight
because of the mana cost (mana better spent mesmerizing so the
attack speed of the extras is zero). Binding on the other
hand is free, so I can use it all the time (well, watch out
for other people pulling through the area you're fighting).
I've also been using Chant of Battle instead of Anthem since I
haven't found the enchanter and Anthem speedups to stack.
Our enchanter usually keeps augmentation on everyone (+15%,
better than Anthem's +10%), subverting it with alacrity or
celerity if things get hairy. So Anthem then becomes merely a
str buff, and Chant of Battle without a drum ends up being
marginally better since it raises stats by the same amount and
also raises AC. I'll have to reassess this when I get
Celerity at L36 of course.
I still keep Pixie Strike memorized, for dealing with casting
mobs - I'm still not sure which is better: raising everyone's
resists or Striking continuously to interrupt casters. The
only disadvatage to Striking I've found is that it tends to
push the mob quite a ways in one direction in a long fight.
Raising resists seems to be effective, but there's something
immensely satisfying about seeing "A Solusek mage00's casting
is interrupted" twenty times in a fight. :-) Striking will
also stop priests and shamen from healing themselves,
something raising resists will not do.
Strike is also handy for those rare occasions when the
enchanter goes OOM and we still have a couple mobs left to
deal with. This fits in well with the bard's ability to take
over just about any job as needed (tank, heal, buff, crowd
control).
I've taken to dropping charm though since the enchanter can
usually mesmerize anything on the healers faster than I could
charm them to pull them off. (I think I need to have a
word or two with our clerics about timing their initial heals
until after the enchanter has mesmerized at least one mob -
makes no difference in terms of time to mesmerize, but the
tanks tend to break off to defend the cleric which winds up
breaking mesmerize if the enchanter succeeds.)
--
John H. Kim
kim@...