So I recently took the somewhat masochistic route of turning Kaervas into a bard, which I've actually been enjoying quite a bit from an RP sense and it's always fun trying out new skills. I've done some half decent testing with bard combat abilities to see if I can actually get anywhere but so far I'm finding combat completely lacking.

I was looking through announce posts earlier and came across this:



Extremely useful supporting another class: we can speed up fae slightly, wyrdsong gives a shield every 10 seconds, slight addition to mana regen and faster writhing for allies. While those things are nice I wouldn't say they're anywhere near as useful as a demesne would be, or choke, or even just fae.

Supporting themselves: Pretty nice defense for bards. Dodging is sweet, though acrobatics has 3 skills which basically do the same thing (handspring, barrelroll, somersault) and there are only 2 skills between 50% virt and trans, including the trans skill.

Flexibility in combat: This is the thing I disagree with most, currently we can go for pure damage, egovice/manabarbs with the mana/ego drain skill or dirge and its equivalents in other spec skills (Soulless too for city bards). Dirge is utterly impossible against anyone with simple triggers to eat earwort, most people can quite easily keep up with horehound curing and keep forcing us to whore blanknote to get anywhere at all. Passive songs are an annoying hinderance at best and our most basic attacks are all stopped by truehearing. Compare this to demesnes which are far more powerful, only 3-4 effects are stopped by protection scroll and they still have access to staffcast and their other guild skills. Acrobatics has 2 offensive skills, jumpkick does about 40 damage and prones/stuns, and forwardflip which prones and has a slight chance of breaking a limb. Basically to sum up bard combat involves pressing the same few aliases over and over again in some sort of order and hoping that you get anywhere.

I'll probably be becoming Harbinger envoy soon so I'm looking to hear people's thoughts on bards generally, and ideas for how they could become a viable archetype in comparison to the other classes. Hopefully this won't become a flame fest and we'll get some constructive ideas out of it.

Edit: And just in case anyone decides to try and be a smartass, I'm not doing this to cry over my underpowered bard skills. I knew exactly what to expect when I became a bard and one reason I did so was to try and help the class become more viable.

Mmm, true. Most bards really have to rely on others in order to be effective. Here are some of the strengths I see in each bard.

Cantors: 25% Anorexia (be very lucky if you can get them to eat something for 10 tries, deadly with Aeon up)
Spiritsingers: Sleep whoring by using fetishes and their sleep song, problem will be that metawake nulls their technique.
Cacophony: Hunger, very very deadly. From what I've seen their the only ones that can make a permanent effect, don't bring food, expect to collapse and die soon.
Harbinger: From what I heard, their only strength is through massive bleeding, good for low mana users as it requires clotting which takes mana.



Mmm, I think me and Valarien manage to come up with an idea for acrobatics, trying to upgrade Handstand itself... Capoeira everyone? That's how I see Acrobatics when performed.

Our bleeding song does about 300 bleeding if I remember right. I know that bards are considered a support class but 1) The support really isn't anything special and 2) Being a support class shouldn't make them hardly viable in solo combat. There's a reason that the four bard guilds are consistently at the bottom of topguilds which really needs to be looked into.

I think the biggest issue (and the most difficult to iron out) is deafness. The admin have made it clear that deafness will always defend against bard songs (and rightfully so, since realism would take a major hit otherwise). The problem is that bard fights can only go one of two major ways: 1. the target doesn't use deafness and dies a horrible death, or 2. the target uses deafness and renders the bard largely useless. It seems like a problem that one defense should be the major deciding factor in the outcome of a fight.

I agree with the admin that deafness should protect against bard songs. Perhaps there could be some sort of middle-ground, though, which allows songs to be partially effective through deafness. Certain passive songs might go through deafness completely, especially beneficial songs. This could make sense IC-ly if they stress vibrations rather than the sound itself (perhaps using something like a drum, instead of a lute). Other songs might be greatly reduced but still do something through deafness (cause a nosebleed from the vibrations, as can happen even to deaf people).

I don't think that bards necessarily need a ton of new abilities, though their passive songs might be beefed up for those that need it (not all of the specs do). The real problem is that they're neutered by an herb, when they should just be weakened a bit by it. It should still be very difficult to fight a bard without deafness, it should be easier with deafness, but it should still be a fight (like fighting a warrior with/without parry).

Maybe Trans bards can sing in sign language

I think other than just focusing on the songs, why not Acrobatics? Why won't we not make it add it more offensive abilites rather than defensive? That way the victim will have two things to worry about, a furry of blows from the bard or his song.

To be honest even if someone wasn't deaf for the entirety of a fight it still wouldn't really get anywhere. I've fought people who didn't have earwort for some reason and never really got anywhere in the fight. There won't be any horrible death at all, we can't really keep someone in the room for dirge, most people won't die to damage or the egovice/manabarbs thing I mentioned earlier. I wouldn't mind if bards were half decent in combat if their target wasn't deaf at all but it really is lacking quite badly against anyone who can cure semi-decently.



I think that would be a step in the right direction. Now that I think about it I'd say acrobatics is the most lacking skillset and I think some sort of boost to it would be beneficial to bards.

Agreed

I think the problem with this would be that it places too much power in one skillset. Acrobatics right now is awesome at what it does, and while it could use a few more skills at the top, it doesn't need to be buffed really. If acrobatics is made to be effective offensively and retains its effectiveness defensively, it will become an overpowered skillset. That doesn't make a big difference at the moment, since bards themselves would not be overpowered, but it means that the admin always have to downplay any specs that go along with acrobatics.

I actually think acrobatics is alright, I'd rather see the song skillsets buffed to match.



This might be true for a Harbinger in one-on-one. Some other bardic specs (Cantors, for example) seem to do quite well, if they can get around deafness. Also, while bards shouldn't suck quite as badly as they do now one-on-one, they are supposed to be focused on group combat. If a group of three people come up against you and two other people, and they don't have deafness up, they are likely to have trouble - that's more what I was implying, rather than one-on-one.

The biggest problem in balancing bards is that it's a shift of philosophy. Always before, the idea has been that even though group fights are more popular in Lusternia, the best way to balance group combat was to balance solo combat. That's not quite true with bards, though. They can be above average in a group, but from my understanding they are not likely to ever be balanced solo. So, I think some effort should be put into boosting their effectiveness in a group, rather than necessarily looking at how well they will do solo.

Aetolia has werewolves which are based around working in groups, yet they are quite capable of fighting alone. The supposed benefits of bards in groups are minimal at best, I know if I got to pick a group of three people as a Blacktalon I wouldn't even be considering a bard compared to the other classes available. We don't have any kind of flexibility in combat, we have one/two options to choose from, neither of which are particularly good.

I think the main problem is that the skills have no particular synergy with each other, ecology and tarot just seem to have been tacked on and acrobatics is purely defense. Illusions is hardly even worth mentioning as part of bard combat.

Random question: Most bards seem to have willpower / ego / mana drain skills.. but how do you die to that -at all-? To my knowlege no bard guild has an insta that you can pull at x% mana, ego or willpower. If mana or ego falls to zero it's probably not going to hurt me much and I can just sip to get a minimum again for using my spells - willpower.. not sure but that's usually a looong time until that happens.

So basically, what use are those drains skills actually?

Given that Illusions specs may be months away, a little quick fix for Illusionist bards would be nice in the meantime, like enabling them to illusion immediately before using Music skills.

As for the ego drain skills, some of us were kicking around an idea for a more nuanced ego-instakill-type skill for Harbingers at one point...

An ego-based instakill would be nice, though I doubt it'd ever happen. It would be nice if bards had spec races as well.

Kaervas.

Now, I would definitely love more offensive skills in Acrobatics, high-end skills between Vir and Trans.

Also, I think the whole passive song thing needs to be looked at and the boosts definitely need a major buff.

Deafness could be turned into "hard of hearing". Then a Music skill could be Vigor or somesuch, allowing an individual to play loud enough for even the hard of hearing to hear. Realistically, it takes a very loud noise to become fully deaf. Not just a seagull cawing in your ear.

Deafness is not the problem. True Hearing is the problem. It's rather ridiculous that one herb nullifies a whole offense without any drawbacks. No other class has that, yet Bards are supposed to be able to support them.

Then why can't Truehearing just be removed?

Kaervas already pointed out to me deafness isn't the bulk of the problem. I already suggested something similar to him. I think we should collectively look at what makes the bards of other IRE games (ESPECIALLY Achaea's) good.

Doing that, I already see what makes Achaea bards good compared to Lusternia's: They are a mixture of music and other offence, in this case a rapier. The main problem with Lusternia's bards is that their music is their only way to attack.

Rebounding. Time your attacks well and the warrior won't hit ya, unless they raze or cleave.

The problem with bards is that even against a non-deaf opponent, the songs still suck. (Except for Perfectfifth)