I agree entirely that Glamours should be nerfed, its affliction rate reduced, as a package deal along with changes in CaptiveAudience or deafness that would allow ally support songs to be usable. I'm not really sure who's against this, I just know it never makes it through envoy in any form at all.

From my own experience, "holding the target in place while they die" is the absolutely first thing and usually last thing anyone asks a bard to do in group combat. And I don't just mean perfectfifth. But I'll concede that the role of the current bard isn't 100% precisely identical to the role of the wiccan/guardian. However, it's a lot more similar than different, and it's at least as similar as monk and warrior are, which is all I meant. If my allies could ever afford to be undeaf and thus let me use my six ally-support skills, that'd give us a new possibility that'd be unique and interesting.

I wish I had a similar idea for how monks could find a unique new combat niche, let alone one that would require very few changes, but I really don't know monk combat even as an outsider yet.

good points, though when you consider other bards in general, they get to use their buffs. I personally only stay def because shadowdancers have a passive room paralyse that does stack with all their barghests. And i can negate it with deafness. But if there's no SD's then I usually go undeaf because I'd rather deal with the bad and good song effects than the stun from blankchord.

Believe me, I have noticed that Spiritsingers have it worse than the others when it comes to the ally support songs because of barghests, and I'm still hoping the envoy process will someday address that. However, I've also heard that the stun is being considered for removal, which means everyone will be right back to being deaf all the time again, not just my allies, so things look likely to move towards worse, not better, as regards the support class idea.

I feel bad about hijacking too much here. Even if I'd love to see bards fixed after most of a year, I'd also like to see monks be spared the mistakes made with bards. I just don't have anything to suggest about how to give monks a more unique role, either in combat or in anything else.

You mean the stun from blanknote? I would be against seeing it removed, though seeing it decreased slightly wouldn't be horrible. I personally am with Krellan - I only use deafness for fighting SDs. I don't use it against bards solely because of the stun issue. As a monk, being stunned that often absolutely destroys my offense, so it's better for me to deal with the bard afflictions (especially if there is a bard with buffing songs on my side).

I suppose none of that is quite on topic, though, just interesting discussion.

Yes, the stun from blanknote is what I heard is being considered for removal, and I don't understand the reasons for it, so maybe there are good reasons, I'm not saying otherwise. But I can't see how it can get us to anywhere but back to a Basin of deaf people. What you said about it being better to deal with the afflictions, especially with an ally nearby, is precisely what I want to see: truehearing should be a tradeoff that's worth it only some of the time, so I hate to see us head back to where it's always always better to have up.

The one thing that always got me with the Bard Report is that some 75% of the way through, Glamours came in. We didn't get to experience it enough as we do now before that report had gone in, too.

Lendren- in the previous report, Zia did envoy for barghest to be targetted at one person to put it on the same scope as the other fae. Captiveaudience will still be fairly useful. (But, damn, barghest was so ANNOYING as a SS. Lolsupport.)

oh I have a question about captivate. I know other bards can break it with blanknote/chord. Does that stun when it's broken?

Who's considering the stun for removal? I haven't seen it in the envoy report.

This bard stuff isn't really what I was getting at. I put that note in the original post just so people wouldn't hijack the topic. :(

Fission Mailed.

It was just being talked about in general to help lower their complete insanity of an offense.

(IE, Bellators. )

I think it would be cool if Monks had more of a weathering/blocking support function, in assisting to prevent spike damage and maybe reducing the ability of a hostile group from targetting the one person.

How to achieve that is beyond me, unfortunately.