I've been playing around, really trying to find out the extent of the changes. Hypnoticpattern and rainbowpattern have both been dramatically reduced in effectiveness. Hypnotic pattern ticks 3 or 4 times before disappearing. The eq loss, I'm unsure of, I'm mugwump so I can't judge accurately. Rainbowpattern, for 2 power lasts a minute and ticks at most, 4 times for one affliction each tick. Maelstrom, for 5 power, hits every 10 seconds in that room. Solution? Move out of the room. The 2 skills that bards need to keep you in their room are fascinate for 2 power, and perfectfifth for 3 power. Afterimage is another 2 power, at minimum two tries for it to stick and lasts only 20 seconds. Blanknote is cured after 8 seconds. (discalimer: all these number could be off by a second or so but are fairly accurate)

So here is the problem with bard offense:

2 power for afterimage.
2 power for rainbowpattern.
5 power for Maelstrom
0 power for blanknote
0 power for hypnoticpattern

Afterimage must be set up again after 20 seconds. Rainbow pattern must be used again after a minute along with hypnoticpattern. Song needs a refrain every 110 seconds. Blanknote, for constant song effects, must be used every 8 seconds. Transfix for 2 power.

Now another arguement is that Bards have huge damage potential and afflictions to make it even worse. 2 power each for egovice, manabards, and powerspikes. 3 power to drop octave. You'll need transfix or perfectfifth to actually keep them IN octave. Dishordantchord takes 2 power per affliction (egovice/manabards/powerspikes/aura). If you want to try to use your music skills like queenslament, that is another 3 power, and 3 power for threnody (the insta death song). If you do use these, you can't refrain without using another 3 power again.

Bard combat is insanely power heavy. It's possible to not use power, but your target needs ow health and bad glamours curing. A large part of the arguement is that maelstrom and octave give bards a huge advantage, but both of these are easily avoided by moving/tackling/beckoning so on and so forth. Bard combat is so full of short term abilities that long term combat involves alot of waiting and stalling until you have the power to try again. Against people like warriors and monks, you are usually dead unless you ran away.

To sum it up: Bards have potential for the first minute or so before they are out of power and out of options. If you can cure glamours, which has become even easier, and have the health to handle minorsecond spam, bard combat hits a wall.

edit: I forgot to mention bard damage. A large reason bards don't get upgrades is their damage is insane compared to other classes. I'd be willing to take a hit to damage for better options in combat.

No. Bianca's already posted more exact figures, but the point is that you need to whore power skills as a bard to actually kill anything, and once they're up, they don't last all that long.
Without them, people usually don't take enough damage to die.

Celina's figures also include phantom power costs on things like egovice and such. I don't know what to believe in that post of hers or not to.

Whoops. Not sure what I was thinking. Powerspikes is the only afflictions that takes 2 power. Egovice and manabards are free, though require deafness.

Thank you Hyrtakos.

You people need to stop adding the 'deafness' factor into it. Blanknote already gives stun, which I think already makes up for this.

It's being removed, according to the envoys.

Thought they said they envoyed it but it got ignored by the Admin?

The stun is pretty irrelevant anyway.
The DMP change made it much shorter.

If the stun was removed, bard combat will be exponentially harder..

from a demesne users pov, i would not like it at all if all someone has to do to remove all my demesne effect is to eat some herb.. and the only way to remove that defense, would involve me losing equilibrium.. that would hardly be fair..

the stun is fine as it is..

And those who say that rainbowpattern is fine cause it can be combined with other powers.. -- well, power is still power.. no matter how you slice it, speding two power to give at most 4 easily identified affliction is really hard to swallow..

Anyway, i hope you guys get some other boosts in other areas to compensate for the recent changes..

See: Love Potion, Reject (person)?

He has a point.

There are two ways to protect against demesne.. scroll and lovepotion..

I was referring more along the lines of replacing the scroll of protection with say.. eat fealef?

Nezha, are you aware that there's a (sizeable, could maybe stand to be a couple seconds longer) delay between when you get blanknoted and when you're able to eat earwort again?

I am aware.. but that is only 6-10sec..

and also about the love potion -- the love potion exists to counter the song too.. on top of the earwort
the only problem i find with it is when the stun lasts until the next attack.. if it does not, it is perfectly fine imo

however, of course i am not a bard and has not faced a bard in some time.. this is all just in my head and has no basis in fact..

around 8 seconds.

Wouldn't really call that "sizeable"

Especially when bards are constantly puttin up the things that fade. Song, afterimage, etc.

Good thing their crazy OP glamours afflictioning totally make up for everything. /sarcasm

I'm surprised no one has posted this yet.

You could shield up too... or move outside the demesne room (but that goes for everything).

Upon testing my attacks and conferring with a few other warriors that have tested their attacks, the new DMP changes seem to have increased the wounding of warrior normal attacks to near power attack levels. Example, a Two-Hander using a normal swing now, seems to do the near the same wounding as he did when he used an Assault before this last stat Impact change. So far, it seems only a few warriors have mentioned anything about the change, and a few non-warriors have complained about the change.

In my opinion the change is too much of a boost to wounding. The impact on cloth wearers will make it impossible for them to keep up.

Wounding has been so wonky lately. I'm having a heck of a time keeping up with warriors who know what they are doing. Artied or demi warriors? I don't even have a chance with major wounds afflictions on every other attack...if not every attack.

Unfortunately they keep mucking around with DMP, so it's hard to say what the problem is or to what extent. I have a sneaking suspicion there is a scaling issues with Warriors and wounding. The extreme high strength warriors with arties with maxed out stats tear through cloth wearers in their sleep, while every day average joe warrior is weak. I think the extremes need a look.

Actually, they scaled down the effect of the extravagantly higher stats, Celina. Testing earlier, I did a total of 33 more damage moving from 20 strength to 21 strength with a 380 damage claymore.