Well if set up properly, those skills can be highly deadly when used in combination with other skills, especially in group combat because the opponent probably won't notice. The ego vice can hurt a lot. Problem is that Bards often die too fast before they can pull anything off

And ironically one of the main reasons I joined bards was to play support and not participate actively in combat, though I've found I've done more of the latter since leaving the Aquas (still not a lot of combat, but more active than before). But it's fun

Right now, I honestly think the biggest problem is that the Harbingers songs aren't very conducive to solo combat at all. Cacophony is still extremely powerful, actually I think they are more powerful than the Cantors because of hunger. You may say that hunger is easily countered with food, but no one carries around stacks of food at all times. They may have a few, but given that top bard combat fights can last a long time, it's easy to become hungry again after eating.

Spiritsingers also have the sleep attacks, however metawake is the big problem with that. A fix would be to find a way for spiritsingers to force relax metawake in their opponents, but other than that, they sound pretty viable 1v1.

Cantors have recessional, which is very good, but like Lysandus said, it's not terribly overpowering as some people think.

The harbinger songs simply aren't that useful. The one song that I thought would be nice, nightshade blues, which doubles mana damage against your targets, doesn't even work with minor sixth. That would make the damage kill more viable. The only possibility I could think of was simply using octave, the double herb balance song, and fetishing the nil out of your opponent till they are extremely afflicted, then proceed with minor sixth killing. Even then, it's not very reliable. They simply have nothing that would slow the truehearing defense enough to get dirge off. Cantors have recessional/aeon, spiritsingers have sleep, cacophony have hunger/aeon. Harbingers don't have anything.

However, again the problem is simply that truehearing negates so much of a bards offense and it takes balance to strip truehearing, unlike the Mage dissolve against protection scrolls. However, removing this balance loss requirement would make bards overpowered, given that one could simply blanknote, attract, wait for your target to put truehearing up again, then blanknote/deathsong all in one motion. The blanknote effect will prevent eating earwort again for such a time period that it's almost an unavoidable instant kill. So, a possible fix would be to lessen the length of the blank note effect and remove the balance loss requirement. Even then, I think it'd be pretty powerful considering all the other effects.

Some other fixes I'd like to propose, namely concerning octave. As you know, octave prevents horehound cures in the room. However, octave is easily avoided or canceled simply by forcing the bard to move (gust, tackle, etc) or using truehearing and you can cure right through octave. Because of this, I do not feel that octave is worth the 10p cost. It's similar to choke in that it affects the user as well, is not nearly as crippling, but costs so much more. As well, it doesn't linger if the bard moves out and then returns. Therefore, I think it should only cost 4p if it is to remain as it is.

Another alternative would be to make the octave effect follow the bard around like a defense, similar to hexaura, which I actually like. Again, truehearing in the presence of octave completely negates it's effects. The problem is that in group combat, this would be extremely dangerous, since it prevents horehound cures (recklessness - can be cured with focus mind though).

Lastly, the thought of an insta kill concerning your target having less than half mana/ego etc is hard to balance. Minor sixth drains mana and ego faster than most people can keep up with, thus it'd be fairly easy simply to whore it out until they are below the required threshold. Instead, I think you'd have to make the kill only work if your target is below half health and half ego. This way, the bard has to work to get egospikes and manabarbs to stick before proceeding to kill. It'd still be difficult, but not impossible.

There are several big differences with rebounding. For one, it is a delayed defense. You smoke, a few seconds later the rebounding aura comes up. As well, any offensive action drops rebounding. Earwort is an instant defense that is only delayed after a blank note. Also, offensive actions do not drop truehearing.

Make Truehearing work like a stance. The target may ignore a Bard effect(to a point where it is worth keeping up) but from time to time the song might pass through. I mean, deaf can still feel the vibrations, so we can use that. I would think this be like attacking while parrying or stancing for a warrior. There's the high possibility of dodging/parrying but there's still a minor possibility the hit my slip through

In case you've somehow manage to skip over it, my post was in response to:



So it doesn't work exactly the same way, but it's still an herb that nullifies a warrior's offense, and can make their offense hit them. The drawbacks are rather minor compared to the reward(s), in my opinion.

Then again, my opinion doesn't count for much. :P

I didn't skip over the previous posts, I know what you were responding to and I countered that the comparison is not valid.

Rebounding hardly, hardly nullifies a warrior's offense. Warriors can use power attacks to bypass rebounding, one handers can raze then attack, two handers can cleave past. And, like I said, any offensive action breaks the rebounding defense. Bards -have- to blanknote before any attack.

There is only one defense that's more ridiculous than the truehearing defense against bards, and that's the sixthsense defense against dazzle. With sixthsense correctly working, you can never be dazzled without using niricol to mess with their blindness curing that way. Even then, it's tough.

In my IRE experience, rebounding has never been as big a problem for warriors/knights as deafness has been for bards, mostly because Raze is very good, and most of them have had two weapons to swing with. I'm not sure how two-handers fare.

Cantors only do well because systems aren't updated. Cantors will fall to being the least viable guild once systems catch up.

Edit: Reading through this thread, I see a lot of things covering ground that's already been well-pummeled by myself and the other envoys.

The deaf will NEVER EVER EVER EVER be susceptible to any Music skill except blanknote and blankchord. This is straight from Estarra. Period. No vibrations, no partial defence, nothing.

Never.

Cacophony hunger is not that great, most of the game has or can have innate hunger nullification. Constitution (all warriors, all of Celest). Orange (all forestals). Realistically the only people I can hunger out are Geomancers and Cacophony and Ur'guard trackers (since necro has feed)

I think the point of that one (major sixth, isn't it?) is to combine with egovice and manabarbs, though as a support class it could be helpful when paired with someone else with a mana or ego instakill.

I really like the capoeara idea for Acrobatics. Somewhere between Virt and Trans.

I think an octave upgrade alone would get the bards a lot farther. Make it a standing room effect, like carcer or choke, make it cancel earwort, and give bards an ability to push octave into an adjoining room with 6 sec. eq and 4 sec. delay.

What if this Capoeira ability allowed bards to combine acrobatic moves? Like Scissorflipping and then Highjumping with a shorter delay than normal in between?

I was thinking the same thing, but still I would like some high offensive moves. For Example:

Corkscrew
CORKSCREW
Perform a spectacular spinning attack in midair that breaks some limbs on your oppenent and knock them down, also with a chance of dislodging whatever they hold in their hands.

or

Dropkick
DROPKICK
Suspended only by air, strike your opponent in the chest with both your feet, causing chest complications. Naturally, you yourself shall fall to the ground.

Recently read this, so... The Spiritsinger's combat lineup:

Palebeauty- Ego regeneration.
Pixiedust- Increase tiredness when an enemy is hit with a poison (any poison, any method).
LunaMelody- Faster herb balance.
SeleneLullaby- Strips dreamweaver control, and adds tiredness to a target. Once sufficiently tired, they fall asleep (insomnia, I believe, does play block this). If they're not put to sleep by it, they become more tired.
FaeDitty- Equilibrium disruption, and forces the target to sing whatever line it's imbued on. (Useless, but fun)
HartDream- Gives hypersomnia.
AlbionAria- Gives coldness. If you're asleep and get hit with it, your coldness will hit faster.
EternalTree- Sip speed/amount bonus in Seren (or Sylvan, I think) forest.
Bardoon- Instakill.

Main issues: Metawake. I talked to the envoys, and the first thing I got when I asked if it could be strippable was 'overpowered when combined with waning/choke', or something to that effect.

With metawake the way it is, the only way to stop it is to drain their mana. Impossible to do, since we don't damage you health or anything else, so you just have to focus on sipping mana. Yes, I can whore morphite, double or otherwise, but that doesn't stop metawake, nor does most other afflictions.

Earwort balance recovers faster than Bardoon and other bard instakill's timers, so we have to get them to stay asleep for it to work. Which...we can't do very well against metawake. I can hold a target still fairly fine, but I can't keep them asleep.

Metawake's mana drain is not negligible, and you have a mana draining skill.

I dunno. In my experience, it drains about 120 every 5-6 ish seconds (someone telling me, since I don't have it. Logs would be nice). The only mana draining skill we have is minorsixth, which does about 600, but has no damage source. You can override most of that with a sip and sparkleberry, or much less depending on your class.

And, even then, they'll have kafe/insomnia up for when you -do- drain their mana to strip it. It doesn't cost anything to set back up, just requires equilibrium. And sipping hypersomnia's cure (can't remember) and fire one after the other is fairly easy (purgative balance, I think) in the 10-ish second timespan between song hits.

You have a fetish. Or, if you don't, shame. Metawake's mana drain is horrid. I never, ever use it. You get them to where they're passing out, get the cold affs going, shiver, freeze, sing. Use the ego vice/manabarbs combo (yes, it wakes them up, but who cares?), use your timed instakill, do whatever. You're a bard. It's not like people can plow through you with dodging.

So as Kaervas I recently went bard. I do not regret it, but after testing solo combat is just a no. There is no way you can pull off your intstakills nor can you really make an offensive. This is just my experience as per the cacophony. And plus if you can not kill them in 90 seconds in my case your have to redo the song which will more then likely give them time to a) Kill you or run and cure. Bashing is alright. Nothing super great but not that bad. I just think the whole class needs to be looked at and just overhauled but thats just my input.

Metawake definitely has a much bigger manadrain than that. Just stick manabarbs and minorsixth in there, and they're feeling the pain before not long at all.