My skills are still low (up to shadowrave and sparkles), but I want to make sure I understand the ones I have well before learning more. Some questions...

1. What things contribute to minor second's damage? From Chelune's post in the bard bashing thread, I gathered that intelligence and charisma stats play a part. How big a part is that, and what else is a factor? Is this damage calculated differently against players and mobs?

2. Do stanzas have to be targetted, or will they work against all enemies in the room? Will targetting a stanza power that is untargetale (eg, something like spiderlegs) make it not work?

3. Once a stanza is played, does it passively cycle until the song is done?

4. Is stars just...spam?

5. How often are illusions used in combat here? Are systems built to track them?

6. Is there any combat value to adding color to illusions?

7. Does invisibility help mitigate damage taken, or is it just a skill to be sneaky and annoy people I'm bashing with? Same for shroud.

Thank you all in advance for any answers and advice.

I can answer a few of these:

1.) Intelligence plays a part, as does your skill in Music I believe. I'm fairly sure that they use a different way of calculating damage against players and mobs.

2.) Unless a Stanza specifically says otherwise, it targets all enemies.

3.) The effects of it, if it's a passive one, should tick every 10 seconds

4.) Yes. Spam. Mmm. Spam.

5.) Illusions are useful, though require some creativeness. You could probably screw up a vast majority of Lusternia's systems with illusions.

6.) No.

7.) It helps to be sneaky and move around and flee without being seen.

8.) I like cake.

1. Charune has put up the exact formula that INT and CHA affects minorsecond up within the thread you've mentioned, so you can poke that to figure out how much exactly your current levels are affecting your damage output. Your instrument level/Music level also play parts in minorsecond damage as well as your minorsecond speed, so getting your instrument up to maestro as soon as you can is really a good thing to aim for.

2. Most imbued powers in a song are not needed to be targetted specifically to get their effects to work, but those which do (mostly the power skills) do require you to specifically target a person when you either refrain the song or play the song.

3. Yes, once you have played a song to a specific stanze, the powers imbued up to that stanza are in effect. However, if you've only played up to the sixth stanza of your possible nine, only the powers imbued up to the sixth are in motion unless you proceed further in the song.

4. Yes, stars is just spam. Colourful spam, but spam nonetheless.

5. Illusions are handy if you know how to use them. As for the second question, it depends on the coder and if they took the time to implement an illusion-checker into their system or not.

6. Not really. Colours are wonderful for the RP/fun factor of illusions. I liked making stories with my coloured illusions when I had them.

7. Invisibility and shroud are the same thing. They're just meant to make most of your actions cloaked, but not things like attacks or anything. Faeriefire could get rid of your invisibility.

Regarding int and charisma, how much of the attack are we talking being influenced just by stats (versus music ability (if that matters at all, ie adept vs trans?) and bonded instrument)? 50%? 90%?

As for illusions, how often are they used (and subsequently watched for)?

And no difference between invis and shroud? Ie, same def, or just the same in general?

Thank you both - very helpful, and I'm really enjoying the profession and the game so far.

Invisibility is a skill, shroud is just what happends when you are Invisible or under Yesod. So yes, same thing more or less.

Depends on what illusion you are going to do, Dysolis whores sap illusions.. which is fairly annoying to anyone with auto-sap rub trigger.

Dysolis is also a psionicist, IIRC. You can use illusions off psi-balance. They're rather more useful to psionicists for this reason, but they can still be used by bards. Your specialization has semi-passives in it, though, which are highly useful.

What (who?) is Dysolis? What is psi-balance?

Psi-balance is something for psionic skill users but has absolutely nothing to do with bards. Dysolis is the Aquamancer guild champion.

Here's one I've found - illusions can be cast behind shield. The last spar I fought, the (rather larger) opponent ranted because I was sitting shielded (bear in mind, each attack did over 1/2 my health), setting up a variety of delayed illusions. Is this poor form? I don't want to be a rude fighter.

Sorry, I just don't like fights which take forever

I have a macro to refrain and one to play through my song. Both include targets in case i have a targeted stanza in the song. It doesn't mess up non targeted stanzas to include the target so I just do it for all of them.

Keep in mind that you you have two kinds of passives. Some of them are an active effect that ticks every 10 seconds like bloodycaps and some are more like standing debuffs like nightshadeblues. They will hit all your enemies if they are not deaf or don't have truehearing and aren't captivated by another bard. Captivation wears off on it's own if the bard that did it leaves the room or dies. Always use captivate before you use blank chord or you run the risk of just stripping an opposing captivation instead of their deafness. I'm pretty sure blank note takes down an opposing captivation and deafness at the same time.

For glamours, if somone isn't blind they get two afflictions from colour burst and colour spray, otherwise it's just one. Colour Maelstrom just seems to always give one affliction regardless, I'm not sure if rainbow pattern is the same way or not.

My favorite illusion is conceal in glamours. There's no real stategic use but I like being able to throw a cookie on the ground and turn it into a statue or potted plant. It really spruces up my manse, for a little while at least.

No, the only poor form illusions IMO, are ones that illusion prompt, logging in, and other various OOC-player end kind of things, getting kicked out of the arena/dying illusions are fine though; it makes more sense in my head, I swear. I know Imperian has an option when doing their illusions to add a prompt as well, but hey this is Lusternia, not Imperian.

Shieldwhore if you must, just don't feel bad if people get angry at you, do what it takes to live and all that.