Allow me to put on my flameproof gear.

So. Bards need smoothing out, as a class.
Glamours needs to be changed, music needs to be improved, tarot and ecology need to be at least viable.

As is, bard combat is terrible.
Not terrible as in 'vastly underpowered', but terrible as in clunky.
Combat should at least involve some semblance of skill and tactic, it shouldn't be 'who's a mugwump titan and a glamourist and has a maestro instrument and enough power to burn per fight?'.

Problem #1: The fat lady never sings.
The killing song is almost completely impossible against anyone who has a brain, despite being the fastest timed kill. If this isn't a sign that bards need their skill synergy looked at, I don't know what is.
Even with a song playing, maelstrom, rainbowpattern, hypnoticpattern and colourburst AND perfect fifth: I couldn't keep Saddim in the room. Now, provided I can't even keep someone in the room when I'm actively trying to do so, how the hell am I supposed to keep them in the room (and undeaf), for 8 seconds while doing nothing? And yes, "hunger and sleep!" you cry incessantly. Allow me to tell you why you're wrong. It's called 'metawake' and 'eat food' (or invoke orange, or any of the various skills that prevent hunger). Also, getting someone passing out from hunger/sleep requires a lot of time, so assuming I fight a warrior for 5 minutes, rejecting the love potion and spamming blanknote (and not dying to the wounds I'll accrue), if Bob Warrior decides to eat food, that's a lot of time and power wasted. If you need a more visceral demonstration of this concept, spar a Cantor and ask yourself why Shadowbeat and Starhymn are better than their counterparts with the 'overpowered' sleep and hunger effects. Verdict: Death song is useless.

Solution #1:
And/or the following suggestions:
(a.) Change truehearing/blanknote/earache somehow, or make the killing note work even against those with earwort. I'm not sure how much the admin would stretch with truehearing changes, though, so I'll leave this open.
(b.) Make Glamours and Music (+ specs) conducive to performing the instakill. Perfectfifth would be a good place to start, since it's largely ineffective a lot of the time (unless maybe you're fighting someone with Recessional).
(c.) Change the killing song, make it a conditional kill (mana, ego, so many afflictions, whatever).

Problem #2: Ooh, that tickles!
Problem the second. Damage. Bard damage is overrated and, quite frankly, sucks as a killing method.
Example. Assuming I fight someone with low health (or severe magic vulnerabilities) I'm gold; damage is fabulous. Assuming I fight someone with warrior type health or magic resistances (hooray for krokani/moondancers?), I'm really not going to do the damage I need to win a fight. Every time earwort is eaten, that's an extra second or two someone has to heal while I blanknote. Same goes for a class with a lot of hinders, every webbing and aeon makes a 'death by damagewhore' more and more unlikely. Discordantchord is largely useless in this regard, also. It does 2500(ish?) damage, requires 4 afflictions (that are impossible to stick without octave) and 8 power. If someone can't be minorsecond whored to death, Discordantchord isn't going to work either, sorry. Songs do help in this regard, with Cantors having the advantage of cure hindering and sip reduction. Titans and Demigods may do a lot of damage, but they are not the norm. I'm not even sure that they still do the overpowered damage now that DMP was changed. I actually think I got more damage kills as a Shadowdancer.

Solution #2:
Fix Problem #1, basically. There's been enough bitching about minorsecond damage already, cutting out the middleman and simply adding another viable kill method prevents this problem altogether. Possibly alter specs to hinder curing more, though it's not really needed if #1 gets fixed.

Problem #3: The amphibian orchestra.
Being a mugwump is required to play a bard effectively. Without the equilibrium bonus, defeating a competent opponent becomes exponentially harder. Piling on afflictions through glamours, refraining, rejecting, blanknote and minorsecond actually take too long for you to overwhelm and kill an opponent. This highlights the main problems with the bard playstyle: clunkiness, lack of synergy, lack of cure hindering. If you aren't able to colourburst and minorsecond fast enough, you cannot win.

Solution #3:
Fixing Problem #1 would also alleviate this, I think. A more synergistic set of song effects and afflictions should open up the margin of error and allow for actual tactics to develop instead of spamming and hoping for enough damage and the correct afflictions to occur. Oh, and a viable kill method is fine too.

Problem #4: An embarrassing fetish.
Glamours is the only way to go for a bard. Forget Ecology and Tarot, without the dazzlingly unreliable affliction spam provided by Glamours, you aren't killing anyone.
Unless you've got Recessional. Maybe then you'll be able to fling aeon, to some effect.

Solution #4:
All classes suffer from this, to some degree. Glamours is to bards as Psionics is to mages.
That being said: FIX PROBLEM #1! A different, viable killing method that's perhaps easier to perform with tarot/ecology, and a music skillset that can hold it's own without affliction spam would probably be the way to get people to switch (making Tarot/Ecology a tactical, surgical choice to dispatch of enemies with, whereas Glamours would be the handy, one-size-hits-all sledgehammer).

Make suggestions, so on, so forth.

So basically, you want bards upgraded?

No. I want them deleted, and I want a million credits, and I want a toilet made out of solid gold.
Thanks.

Seriously?
I want them changed to be more effective and skill reliant, instead of 'colourburst and minorsecond to death' all the time. Not like it even works all that well.

You think waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of recessional. It doesn't make any difference in a fight if 1)aeon isn't used, and 2)the opponent has a half decent system.

Other then that *braces for the storm*

I see all upgrades and no downgrades.

So, basically, yes. You want bards upgraded.

Stupidity? It definately slows down curing a bit, which is what you want.
And I DID mention Recessional in conjunction with aeon.



Call it what you want. It's not an upgrade/downgrade situation.
Or, alternatively, look at it like this: I want to upgrade our low effectiveness and downgrade our ease-of-use.

All changes to classes are upgrade/downgrade situations.



That doesn't make it any less of an upgrade.

What I'd like to see for bards is:

At least 2 of the 3 from:
1)Control of afflictions
2)Better insta
3)A way to slow down curing

as well as:
1)Lower damage
2)Fewer afflictions

Right now I feel like what we have is a boring as hell class that either kills ridiculously fast, or impossibly slow, without much potential for inventive strategy that is more effective then whoring minorsecond, glamours passives and colorburst. I could be wrong, since I'm not an especially inventive fighter, but I haven't seen much from others either.

This, I guess.
Like I said, though, I'm not talking about reducing afflictions and adding damage, Shamarah.
I'm talking about changing certain aspects entirely which will then balance between themselves.

It would be a downgrade, if anything, because without minorsecond/colourburst spam to win, most people will have a harder time fighting. Me included, probably, since what I'm suggesting is to make bards more Guardian-like (and I wasn't all that good as a Nihilist).

Holding you to this, just so there's no more cries of "You don't know a thing about bard combat!" when your damage and/or affliction rate comes up.

I agree on changing the stupid Bard combat reliability to Glamours. I hate that.
I agree on changing the stupid Bard combat reliability to Mugwumps. I hate that.

So far, many of the Bard combatants are Mugwump Glamours Bard. Second is Faeling Glamours Bard.

The Music specs are underpowered; Glamours is slightly OP. Change both, and Bards can be fixed.

Oh, and MinorSecond damage is surreal.

This thread makes me dizzy.

Can't we just copy and paste achaean bards? They seem to do pretty well

When I think bard, I think affliction class. I don't know why, I just do. Rapier in one hand and an instrument in the other, slash/sing while they bounce around. Give bards the choice of eq bards with glamours or balance bards with a rapier. Could be cool.

I suppose that means I'm suggesting a total overhaul.

It's late and I'm sleepy, don't listen to me.

Rather than that, monks and bards do both need (preferably viable) tertiaries. Odds of that in the immediate future are low though.

Fencing! Touche!

No. I like how the bards are different here. Sure they need tweaks, I'm not disagreeing with that, but no on the c/ping I say.

The only reason I fight so hard to keep them as-is is because thats really the only way bards kill. If bards change to have the improvements I listed, lower damage and affliction rates would be ok, but thats just the thing- they can't, because the envoy process doesn't allow such major changes to a class. The result? I fight to keep them viable by protesting damage and affliction rate lowering.

Edit: And you really don't know a thing about bard combat, otherwise you would have never suggested that bards do guardian-level damage without changing anything else about them. Dead give-away.

What is the problem with bard combat again? Does it not kill people that well? this is not sarcastic.. im serious.. see, lacking a viable instakill is all fine if you *really2x* need it.. but does bard need it?

It seems to be like the chasm of the geomancers.. can the chasms be pulled-off 1v1? though i've seen it succeed during raids..

* I've killed people with more than 5000 health a few times.. i wonder what the threshold for the music to not work is..

I rely on glamours of course, but im trying to concentrate using music more.. I read octave is worthless, and really hard to stick.. but all my kills are inside octave... I have had no minorsecond kills yet..

Although keeping someone in the room really is problematic -- I've sparred a.. someone strong and what he did was run away from the room time and again - really surprising, not at all what i expected..

* I like the bard concept.. attacks that is based on an assault on the ears, and an assault on the eyes.. the concept is really elegant.. replacing glamours with swords would make us as just another generic fighter.. worse, a gimic fighter..

actually, it is not consistent with rl.. as a musicians' life is in his hands.. practicing swords will ruin such hands.. the two are incompatible concept-wise..

Now, the tarot bard intrigue me as this would be consistent in rl.. performing on a stage, then drinking hard and gambling after, with cards of course (tarot!!)



I'm enjoying being a bard.. (and composing music, and things like that adds to it)

I feel involved during combat too.. you have to react to the opponents action and watch what he is doing.. its not like, as rumours would have it, monk combat where you just press the kata macro.. or the telepath combat where they just mash buttons a long time..

And actually, what i noticed is that most people of the same class usually go for the same things.. analyzing my logs, there is really not so much variation... the sequence of the attack is diff to be sure, but the pattern is the same.. (People wil ltalk about all this different strategies.. but then if you see their fights, they always do the same things..)

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Other than that.. yes upgrade us please..

Incabulos, I'll say this again.

Just because you lack the personal ability to kill people with your skills does not mean those skills need to be upgraded.

I barely bothered reading this thread with "plz" in the title.

Yeah, bards don't need upgrades, they're still capable of killing, but we'll see how they are after the stupid and unnecessary nerfs go through.