Or you know, maybe commune bards dont get a huge bonus? Maybe +1 to one stat for faelings, who knows?

But could you imagine the amount of whining we would see on the forums if something like that did happen?

One thing I would see plausible for a Viscanti bard spec would be a Masquerade Viscanti, since I believe in some file somewhere it's mentioned that the older Viscanti have to wear masks when they go out in public.

2800 and you get one shotted? By what?

Not counting racial specs, faeling are tankier than elfen, merian, furrikin, and mugwump, off the top of my head. Probably Trill and pre-evolved humans as well, unless you're facing absolutely massive burst damage.

I disagree. I could handle more as a mugwump, since I could shield and run more quickly. Elfen health is much higher, so they can tank more, but the sip bonus might make enough of a difference, so long as you're not facing high damage in a single burst. Furrikin resistances help a lot, I'd say they're tankier than faeling as well.

All of this is without forcefield, of course...even with forcefield and 5k ego, Krellan (elfen with drawdown) can usually handle more damage than I can as a faeling with forcefield/ironwill/psiarmour.

My base health as a level 80 Merian is 3020. It is so difficult for me to bash anything (for reasonable exp) without having to get out of the room and heal briefly. In pvp vs a warrior, it only takes a few hits...

I've been elfen and faeling and furrikin. Faeling are the tankiest of the three.

Yes, but unspecced and high elfen are also pretty worthless. Furrikin at least have a strength against magic damage, but if you can afford to learn to tumble, I don't see why you'd pick that race either. Mugwumps can shield/reflect more quickly; I hear this makes a lot of difference.

Let's put the tanky faeling myth to rest. Calculated max health, sip and sparkle for a few races, assuming lvl 84 (http://homepage.mac.com/evmaker/lusternia/Calculators.html):

Faeling - 9 Con - Max Health: 2904 - Sip range: 557-836, avg 697, sparkle 290
Unspecced/high elfen & Furrikin - 11 Con - Max Health: 3408 - Sip range: 489-733, avg 611, sparkle 341
Merian & mugwump - 10 Con - Max Health: 3156 - Sip range: 459-688, avg 574, sparkle 316
A human at this level sips for a lot more.

The faeling has 500 health less than the elfen and furrikin, but sips on average for 86 more. That means that the faeling will recoup the health difference in 6 sips. That's not taking into account that sip bonuses don't apply to other percentage-based healing, including scrolls, sparkleberry, Mercy, and pretty much every active healing skill; if you count those, the faeling may actually heal less in the long run, but I'm too lazy to work it out. That sip bonus also doesn't help if you're: applying healing for wounds, anorexic, throatlocked, aeoned, sapped.

As far as I can see, faelings have the lowest health in the game and thoroughly minimal advantage in healing, and are badly in need of a bard spec. If I'm wrong, please show me why. I've had an unspecced elfen char; it certainly didn't feel less tanky.

Can someone point out to me where it says Bards are meant to be tanky? I think I may have missed something there, I thought we are meant to be a support class, your music spec is meant to be a walking demesne, correct me if I'm wrong, but bards aint meant to be tanky, we're meant to rely on dodging and Acrobatics to stay alive, and dodging which is based on dex might I add, which happens to be high for both Elfen and Faeling.

Since this has been brought up, why do we need racial specs for bards, is there a need for more bard races, is there any lack of them? I dont really think so, Aslaran, Human, Faeling, Elfen, Furrikin, Orclach to an extent are all plausible bard races, they all work fine.

The purpose of specialized races is not to have a good race for the archtype, its to help encourage a racial majority within each org.

Merian was not on the list, so I would assume merians most defintly need a specilization.

It's supposed to encourage a racial majority -by- having a good race for the archetype.

The existence of a good race for an archetype does not negate the need for a specialized race.

The argument I was responded to stated that since good races exist, we don't need specialized ones.

Ah, my bad. Carry on!

That faeling sips for, on average, 24% of his max health.
Elfen and furrikin sip for about 18% of their max health.
Merian and mugwump sip for a tiny fraction more, but it rounds to 18% as well.

A lot of skills do damage based on your max health. The faeling is healing more of each hit, so the damage stacks up more slowly, or not at all. They sip for more and get for less.

Granted, I haven't done the math past that. I pick races I like, not races that are the "best". Maybe if you metagame like that something else comes out ahead. For casual bashing, questing, influencing, and a bit of pk, I'd pick faeling over almost any other race, even unspecced. Especially since you get free flight.

That logic applied in Achaea, but I was under the impression that far fewer skills did damage heavily based on max health here, and certainly mobs don't often. And I'm not metagaming: the math was there to demonstrate that faelings are not as tanky as people claim they are.

I stuck with faeling for RP reasons, despite the fact that I think it's a poor racial choice. I wish it weren't such a poor racial choice. I wish that Nirrti, when she became the Song of the Wyrd and invented the Shadowbeat, didn't lose her racial regen in her home territory and lose the things that marked her as a creature of Glomdoring, in defiance of logic. I also would like not to be stuck with a bad racial choice because I didn't put on a new race like it was a new pair of shoes.

Most damage skills have base damage + max% damage, as I understand it. If the base damage is high and the % is low, it's easier to quickly kill... and with very low max health, the base damage is more percentage-wise and will squish you rapidly.

By the way, given someone asking me, I decided to do a bit of "numbers". Let's say an attack does 500 base damage, +10%. (Now, this is probably high... base damage might be lower than 500, with a higher %, but still, we'll just go with this to show a point).

Faeling with 3000 health, versus, say, a human with 5000.

Faeling takes 800 damage, human takes 1000.

Now, 800/3000 is greater than 1000/5000. The sip bonus counters some of this difference, yes, but it certainly doesn't go far beyond that...

At least faeling are omgwtfbbq influencing machines. I was sipping bromides for, like, 1000+ and with 4143 ego at about level 60-ish. I could tank Quettle in the 50's. But fighting - faeling are a strange kind of squishy/tanky.

I think a big point that may have been missed is that the Moondancer class has some of the best protection/healing abilities. The reduced spike damage plus small passive regen means that the sip bonus perhaps counts for more than it would otherwise.

As a Hartstone, for me it seemed much safer to bash as an Elfen than as a Faeling, the major thing I missed being flight.

Faelings aren't bad, and the earlier con increases were not necessary in the slightest, but I don't think they're quite as uber as is sometimes made out. The normal faelings, that is... not the imps.

Actually, now that I think of it, I was Moondancer the entire time I was faeling. That might be it.

Agreed!!

Sorry, been living in Magnagora for too long ^^
Burn the fishehs!