Is it possible for a Aslaran or Furrikin Bard to wear an opponent down in endurance/willpower purely in acrobatics, resilience, and stances? Possibly sticking manabarbs also?

The object is never getting killed. Not killing the opponent.

What skills would you use to wear down their willpower and endurance?

Um. As in they miss you alot?
Avoid, handstand, ect.

Handstand is death. You can't cure yourself or clot bleeding while using it. Avoid/Dodge.... well, isn't that kinda... It just seems less useful than actually DOING something

If you want to wear people down for RP purposes, go Mage/Telepathy and use PsychicVampirism until they are outta willpower...then stick Parlayse and tease them.

Anyone who actually uses willpower/endurance draining as their primary combat tactic deserves nothing short of castration. It's just one of the cheapest "strategies" there is.

Ouch...
Well, what are some good bard strategies?

Due to serious design flaws, bards are completely worthless at PvP, and that's very unlikely to change. Sorry. If you tell me what your bard spec is though, I can tell you how they are supposed to work, even though they don't.

Yeah, bards suck. Potential exception: Cantors, but even they're a sub-par class.

Also, willpower/endurance draining isn't a viable tactic anyway unless you have either a skill that directly drains them (ie. psychicvampirism) or that forces them to do something that drains them (ie. bleeding forcing them to clot). Just sitting around while they attack you isn't going to do anything.

The best bard strategy I saw involved creative use of octave, majorsecond, manabarbs, and egovice, complemented very sparingly with spec buffs and the 3p multiaffliction song. Said bard still died, but at least she showed up for the fight. Most don't make it far.

Necroscream has Torturesong that causes your opponent to lose willpower everytime they are hit with physical damage, Carillonknell that drains the enemy's mana and willpower, and Sickeningplague that will slowly increase their hunger as well.

If you're actually patient enough to try the attrition method, an ecologist Spiritsinger or a Cacophonist can pull it off, but there's no underestimating the amount of patience required to pull it off. On the plus side, acrobatics provides you with a lot of defensive options. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, psionics drain willpower faster than Cacophonists, and dreamweavers are better with sleep attrition than Spiritsingers.

This strategy is completely defeated by a gust enchantment.


All four bard archetypes of a theoretical way to hinder someone while going for their trans instakill. None of them work. Here are the intended strategies:

Spiritsinger: Exhaust someone with PixieDust and SeleneLullaby and poisons, and then freeze them solid with AlbionAria/Mactans, and then instakill.

Cacaphone: Drain their willpower or starve them, then stack writhe cures and then instakill. Use Soulless instead of the music one, since the music one is such crap.

Harbinger: Stack herb balances and herb afflicts and kill with damage.

Cantor: Charge your soulless, then aeon stack after you sing the 25% drink/eat failure song, using hyperactive, comboing it with hangedman, and then soulless flinging. At least, I think that's right, someone else can correct me on that

The Cantor setup is actually a bit easier.

+Charge Soulless
+Aeon (with fool/enigma up)
+Princessfarewell (that leads into Concessional, the 25% drink/eat failure song)
+Perfect Fifth
+Soulless

If you aeon before Princess Farewell, you can count on it hitting for stun, aeon, and blackout. Under blacklout, you stick perfect fifth. You then fling Soulless. Concessional will be up if you arrange your stanzas correctly directly after Princess Farewell, which throws in a 25% hinderance curing both aeon and perfect fifth (putting up deafness).

Icewalls, sticking the bard lure which you can't cure for a few moments because the bard prevents you from going deaf, quicksand and instakill seems to have a nice chance for success if you get a bit lucky, can't leave the room for a while until the anti deaf effect wears off and your still being put to sleep/frozen/equi disrupted anyway, then with a few afflictions from the fettish as well as sleeping and trying to freeze them maby. And the bards seem pretty tanky against warriors with the extra dodging throwing off balance.