This is a continuation of a single point from another thread.
Here’s how I propose to scale bard songs with charisma, with gods of war as an example:
10 charisma: gods of war is 8 damage, 0 ppl bonus
12 charisma: gods of war is 9 damage, 0 ppl bonus
14 charisma: gods of war is 10 damage, 1 ppl bonus
16 charisma: gods of war is 11 damage, 1 ppl bonus
18 charisma: gods of war is 12 damage, 2 ppl bonus
20 charisma: gods of war is 13 damage, 2 ppl bonus (current cap at 1x40)
22 charisma: gods of war is 14 damage, 3 ppl bonus
24 charisma: gods of war is 15 damage, 3 ppl bonus (bard cap at 5x40)
26 charisma: gods of war is 16 damage, 4 ppl bonus
28 charisma: gods of war is 17 damage, 4 ppl bonus (supposed 9x40 cap)
30 charisma: gods of war is 18 damage, 5 ppl bonus
32 charisma: gods of war is 19 damage, 5 ppl bonus
32 charisma: gods of war is 20 damage, +6 ppl bonus
34 charisma: gods of war is 21 damage, +6 ppl bonus (33charisma= all ingame charisma eq, runes and +3char robe)
36 charisma: gods of war is 22 damage, +7 ppl bonus (+3 bonus charisma)
You can only hit overcap charisma you can only get with +bonus charisma drachma eq.
Also do remember that bards may want to use any other charisma to replace low ac items, such as the lillies wreath or jovian armplates or a held low +charisma item, with high ac or other items (damage/healbonus).
I’ll write here my bards buffing suggestions.
I’ll start from stating the fact that a bard is the weakest prime class. My 3x40 cleric(which is not strongest class either) easily does two times more xp solo than my 5x40 bard. Therefore even serious bard’s buff wont break the balance.
One of such buff had been proposed in the previous post.
I’d go from other side and suggest introducing a prime bard weapon, which will also make weapon fighting more useful for bards.
I dont think buffing it with only with charisma/song target/song length would be make it useful, unless Taron’s suggestions will got approved and the charisma will become useful again.
So I’ll again suggest to buff it with 50% parry. I know the suggestion to deprime the parry skill had been declined. But maybe it’ll work only for the prime bards.
Another approach would be to add 50% parry to the effect of ‘knights prayer’ song(prime only avatar 6th bard song), which will make that song useful.
Also a smaller buff suggestion is to make counterattack work against ether when song of the mist is on. It would make sense after latest change that allow warriors to parry ether with spiritual hammers.
Thanks again, Teker, for hearing us. And sorry for swarming you so much with posts.
Seems out of place to worry about Bard solo xp when it’s a class explicitly designed to complement a group by affecting others. I could think of many ways to improve the bard class, none of which would be related to achieving solo xp.
Their solo ability comes from the other classes. For example sochi can do basic grip/blast, or can sing at necropets, or can shapeshift. I’m not saying solo xp is a great strategy, but then if you want to do awesome solo xp, why not make a thief, monk, or mage?
Well, I’ve made a cleric. And found out that despite being group class too it is not bad at solo xp(about two times better than bard).
You think lategame cleric solo’s better unshifted than using makara, mymecoleon, phoenix, etc…?
Get Kid a couple more 40’s and your druid forms’ solo power will outshine what a cleric can do.
Yes, I think so. Cleric’s main solo xp power is aerial. Which works great when doing magestyle xp. So I think clerics will keep being superior, because blast power rises with avatar levels.
Dark mace is also very helpful in magestyle xp as many of such mobs are ether and/or undead. And dark mace power also rises with levels.
Not mentioning special cleric mobs that are damaged by healing.
Finally cl/drs (and druid second is very popular choice among clerics) have access to makara too.
Certainly druid forms are powerful. However bard prime skills can’t offer much to empower it even more. Also not all bards have druid close in the class order. There are multiple ba/wa. And I wanted to suggest something that all prime bards will benefit from.
If we expressing all our code wishes at this time then I’d go on about how much I hate no-fly tunnels or rather the inability to simply stop flying at will. And I’d beg for selective dispel as a mage skill. But if wishes were horses, we’d all be eating steak.
Hey, I’ve ideased the custom dispel ages ago. It shouldn’t be too hard to code, I’d imagine (we already have dispel web and fly).
I also have to side with Sochi here: bard is an exclusively group character, so I’d look for more ways he could enhance the group, and so high-level bards would be more powerful after leveling their 40s - which is what this thread is about.
As it turns out, their blasting powers increase. Can bards affect more people, if they level their 40s without changing their instrument?
How many people can you affect at the moment? Pretty sure a 1x40bard can affect 11 nat.
Ok, well back to the original point of the thread, I think that chart of damage for gods is pretty much a non-starter, as it’s insane damage.
Regarding songs, I do notice that the success rate is hugely dependent on charisma. At low charisma the chance of actually reigning in a fight seems like zero. Same with reprieve, sanc for soul/body, luck gods, etc…
With regard to Bard being the weakest prime class, I’d have to disagree. Sidhe charms are quite amazing and cool, and enhance available mana quite a bit. Cry of the avatar is quite impressive. Dance with the dead, while not reliable, is very nice when it fires. The armor available to Bard lets them run in front row while still maintaining max charisma, meaning they can stop any fight immediately and then reprieve the mob. Bard primes have high natural hit points and decent mana. Song of the mist is very impressive, giving bards the ability to use strike and even pets to solo ether mobs. And Dance of the seven luck gods is enough to make any other prime jealous.
So if by weak, you mean lowest coliseum score, yes. But by any other measure, it’s a great prime class and any changes really need to be around the edges such as the ambiguity about success/failure in many of the songs and in the weirdness about some actions/events automatically crashing your song, and in the innacuracy of the who you are singing to messages.
Making high charisma add bonus listeners would be an interesting idea. Altho I think I’d prefer to expand on instruments a bit and have instruments with bigger listener bonuses and limited/zero other bonuses.
Altho…I could see using the damage numbers suggested in his chart above, but make gods damage not multiply in stab or grip function. Then…either make ogham’s give damage and hit bonus into stab/grip, or have a new song targetted at stabber/gripper. That would definitely give bards more pride in having high charisma.
- The damage chart is great, but so is damage of 9x40 mage avatars or any 9x40 pumped up avatar. Yet all bards get from 9x40 is their powered up cry of the avatars.
I know that some songs, such as sanc for body and reign, are already affected by charisma, but not others. Basically, anything that’s not affected by charisma is removed from the “perks” list or is heavily diminished.
Let’s try to test these assumptions of mine:
Charisma helps cry, sanc for body, reign, oghams, reprieve, luck gods, hymn of an artisan, haunted dirge, eye of the beholder.
Bards rarely use blast spells in groups (even if the mob is alone in the room).
Bards rarely use songs that require charisma in groups: sanc for body and reign are situational - still helpful, ofc. I have seen dirge used maybe 3 times, 1 myself. I don’t see bards playing oghams either.
15-20 charisma is enough to make the bard save against most mobs, you don’t need 35 charisma to do it.
So what does it leave us with? Bards rarely use their charisma in groups, yet it’s their primary stat. Imagine thieves rarely using stab dam or circle damage in groups.
This brings us to songs that should be also affected by charisma:
gods of war, 3d most used song (tho if we sum up gods and lions, they come up first)
song of the mist
knight’s blessing/prayer
brothers in arms/valor, the 2nd most used song
lion chorus - 4th most popular
dreams of the castle
rina cruinne
march of the heroes, the most used song ever
fare thee well, #5th most popular
For the last 5, you don’t even have to be a bard to sing those - that’s why anyone sings rina or march, and doesn’t even ask the only bard in the group to do it.
Cry is the 6th most popular song.
Song statistics:
http://www.slothmud.org/wp/live-info/song-statistics
Essentially, find a way to boost those songs with scaling charisma.
- Regarding gods of war and stab.
You could create the same sliding scale for stab bonus (as far as I know, it gives about 3-4 damage before multiplier atm). You could grant 1 dam that helps stab every 5 charisma or something, nothing to kill for, but it’ll give bards a reason to wear charisma eq instead of -saves for blasting with wind in stab groups.
Though, I’ll welcome any song that helps the stab as much as gods and arms do, and is cheaper.
- I didn’t say bard was weak, so maybe you are talking to Yang.
Bard does, however, lack a single-target damage move that’d make it more useful in solo, but bard isn’t a monk or a thief, so there can’t be any physical skill. Maybe a 15 avatar skill that’d allow the bard to focus an area song at a single target?
Such as:
- a skill that forms a parametric array that allows sending the waves precisely. Expert singers can do it and not damage everyone in the room:
You can name it a resonant frequency or resonant focus.
- a complex bard instrument, an acoustic lense:
Scientific American wrote: Instead of using glass and mirrors, the researchers designed an acoustic lens made of 21 rows of stainless-steel spheres, with each row having 21 spheres.
a 5x40 forge, +1 charisma, -15% mana cost, -3 person affected, single-target.
I wonder, if you could set the number of ppl affected to 1 with an instrument, that’d achieve the goal.
- a held low item a parabolic reflector, basically a deep dish
6x40 & 40ba to use, +5ma, single target.
More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon
“Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. "
My concern is that if it’s only an instrument, it won’t be known to new players, who would like to know, how is it to play a bard from the help files.
Regarding the original idea, no, thanks. The songs have worked in their present
manner from the earliest days of the bard class. It’s not a bug. Find the
optimal strategy and play that way. It’s unsportmanlike to lobby for game
changes that would make your preferred strategy become the optimal one.
Hi Oboe,
The original concern of Taron(please, T, correct me if I am wrong) is charisma being quite useless for bard. Because songs depending on it are used rarely. I completely agree with that concern. If I could go back, I wont invest drachma in the cloak of forgotten tales and in the book of the old forgotten tales.
Oboe, what original idea are you talking about?
If it’s about -saves, then I’ve already conceded on that one (and also post in that thread, not here :p). I agree that I need to change my coliseum strategy, though the original stimulus was that it felt weird that -saves vs spells don’t affect channelling songs. (help saves) It affecting a coliseum strategy would’ve been a consequence, not the desired result, especially that it wouldn’t have been coded that -saves would have only added to the bard -saves.
If it’s about the idea that some songs should scale with charisma, which this thread is about and is why I separated them, what strategies should I change? This is about nothing else, but making bard primes more useful in groups and slightly more powerful in solo. What is it here that you don’t like?
P.S. This thread is precisely why I’m not buying the book of tales with +3charisma (but also because I can cap w/o it). A quest robe with a socketed Citrine is enough, though I’m considering switching that rune to an Eye Agate (-saves).
Teron wrote: Oboe, what original idea are you talking about?
The one given in the original post of this thread, namely:
Teron wrote: If it’s about the idea that some songs should scale with charisma, which this thread is about and is why I separated them, what strategies should I change?
You should wear +cha eq if and only if it already brings commensurate benefits for the songs you will use.
Teron wrote: This is about nothing else, but making bard primes more useful in groups and slightly more powerful in solo. What is it here that you don’t like?
The part about making bard primes more powerful, anywhere.
Why?
If someone thinks bards are powerful enough already then I dont mind of doing rebalancing instead of pure empowering.
I.e. I dont mind parting with the whole stash of prime bard skills: knight’s blessing, knight’s prayer and 7luck. In exchange for something really useful like original Taron’s suggestion.
Another way to look at it is,
You’re right. Really high charisma is not essential most of the time. The big perks in my opinion is for the success rates on reign of chaos, sacred reprieve, luck gods. Especially reign, you really want it to be reliable, which means running in the 20’s at least in groups.
You’re right. Charisma gear is fairly well flushed out and it’s not that hard to achieve a decent charisma on a limited number of slots.
But where you see this as a flawed design, I see that I’m able to play around with my eq and use a variety of equipment. I don’t have to focus explicitly on charisma, and wear that 1 same max charisma set that eveyrone else uses. I can be quirky and wear handdam in groups or work on getting my ac and being a 2.tank, or wear a combination of charisma and healbonus or spellbonus/saves in group. No one cares whether my charisma is 30 or 20 and I kinda like it this way.
It seems like what you’re mostly interested in is combat damage / coliseum scores. So play Yang instead of Kid?
Yes, we do need reign occasionally, and it means that bards still need to put on near-max charisma on runs, when they don’t need reign or they need to:
learn rapid shift for 50 drachma total
make an alias to tree, switch to max charisma, and reign.
This could be viable, but like I said, why shouldn’t bards wear charisma in their group runs? Sounds completely pointless to be a bard then, other than to sing for forges or 7 luck.
You are right that bards can be versatile by using high-charisma items to wear more ac, heal or regen - and I like it. In the context of my suggestion it only means that the numbers, where the next-level bonuses kick in, need to be lower.
It doesn’t mean that rina from a player with 2 charisma should be the same strength as with 20 charisma, nor that rina from a 2x40 bard should be the same strength from the 9x40 bard.
If I didn’t understand you, please clarify.
Because to me 20 is not close to max charisma. I can get like 28 or 30 (I’m not 100% sure about charisma cap, but I can make score2 say 30). So for example in dino group I can wear saves gear and still have enough charisma to reign/reprieve reliably. Or if front row is light, I can put on AC and still have enough charisma. Or if healo is light, I can put on regen gear and still have enough charisma. I don’t run in groups in max charisma much, and would rather not have to. If gods damage was based on charisma for example, everyone in the group would be concerned about whether or not I was running in max charisma because they like seeing that damage bonus. It would be annoying/not as fun.
Oh and regarding Rina, yes I don’t care that charisma doesn’t affect the success of the raise. Why should I? It’s fine the way it is. I’m more annoyed that the raisers don’t just rina for themselves instead of waiting for the bard to do it, because it costs me mana to break my current song and resing it, whereas they could just rina for themselves. They have better mana regen anyway. Let them sing for their raise xp.
I am not interesting in coliseum score, but in the xp solo. And to excel in that activity a character needs to have either strong offensive skill(like a monk’s focus) or strong defensive skill(like cleric’s aerial). First one helps to kill the xp mob fast. Second prevents spending half of mana on heals after receving round of beating.
The problem is a bard is the only one of 8 classes who lacks any of those.
Of course, no one expects a bard to be strong like monk. However, again, I think it is wrong that it is weaker than even a cleric. So I am proposing giving bard’s something either offensive or defensive. And I am even ready to part with 3 previously mentioned prime songs in exchange.
**p.s. **Recently I’ve found that gods of war seems to not empower grip. Kid’s grip empowered by lion chorus does more damage than empowered by gods of war. I am pretty sure stab is not affected by gods as well.
So gods is a song only for groups. Therefore I am now against original Taron’s suggestion. As it’ll keep bards being purely group class and will prevent them receiving any useful solo skill in the observable future.
Isn’t helping the group kinda the whole point of the bard class tho? No class can have it all. For example, necro’s are virtually useless in group (refer to debuff thread for reasons), but get to have strong solo skills.
Who cares if bard prime isn’t great at solo xp, there are 7 other classes to draw skills from. The logical thing to me seems to be for bards to take Druid 2nd, then they can solo using forms. I’m using myrmecoleon currently, and I can’t imagine what bard skills you could possibly offer me that would make my unshifted combat superior to shifted. Also there’s nothing stopping someone from being a bard that grip/blasts. So while I agree that lower level bard primes are crap at solo xp, I don’t see a problem with that.
If I had one complaint about the bard class it’s that songs get broken in some circumstances where they should not and intel should have a greater influence over the frequency of song breakage. Sometimes singing can feel quite futile and irritating. Also, is it me or does the ‘you are singing to’ list seem to get messed up often, including everytime the group moves rooms.
Mostly I can’t understand why you favor bard at all? You’re more focused on changing this class to be more like monk or warrior, instead of just playing monk or warrior. To me, the bard is the guy passing out charms in xp group, singing boons at xp group, saving the group from eminent death, and soloing eq and autoquests. Giving bard some individualized attack is a non-starter because that was the whole initial concept of the class, that it would be weak in that regard.
And regarding gods damage not multiplying into stab/grip damage, I can confirm It’s contribution to stab or grip is underwhelming. It is apparently intentionally so, not a bug. Might be a good thing to mention in the wiki or something.
JB, if the group is large enough, we can afford you to move to back row and switch to max charisma.
If the group is small and you need to go to front row and blast/heal, then no one will object to you wearing less charisma.
It’s the same with druids/clerics atm, who can move to front row to soak some damage, but when the group gets enough melee fighters, they move to the back row.
As for players not singing rina, I thought you complained about the opposite: that players didn’t wait for you to sing rina.
If one day you get to sing a more powerful rina, why not swap songs? You are the bard, after all, so take a break from singing gods and cast something else, just like healers raise after the fight.
This charisma disbalance can be shown that people can choose to get the following eq sets:
-saves
- heal
ac
+damage
+weapon damage
-sys shock
but not charisma.
That’s because charisma is not useful to non-bards.
Yang, I’ve already suggested a skill (resonant focus)/instrument (an accoustic lense)/held low item that allows a bard to concentrate their blast on a single mob in the room:
I don’t see how making charisma more useful will affect the skill above, because:
the skill is used for soloing
the charisma suggestions above are used for groups
ideas to make bard more viable by making charisma useful and by adding the single-target skill aren’t mutually exclusive.
juggleblood wrote: And regarding gods damage not multiplying into stab/grip damage, I can confirm It’s contribution to stab or grip is underwhelming. It is apparently intentionally so, not a bug. Might be a good thing to mention in the wiki or something.
Still, isn’t gods’ bonus larger, than the bonus from the lion chorus?
Doesn’t it affect the chance to do an excruciating blow?
Thanks.
JB, it seems to me that when I write “weaker than cleric”, you read it as “not as strong as monk or warrior”. Forget about monks and warriors and thieves. Let’s compare cl/dr with ba/dr. Both are supposed to be group support classes. Both are good at it, doing different jobs though.
Both have access to same broad range of druid forms.
However there’s one significant difference. A cleric can cast aerial, wield dark mace, switch to blast eqset and quickly scoop pretty good magestyle xp. Then switch to heal set and scoop sheol village xp as well.
And a bard will spend at least two times more efforts doing same run.
Again and again, I am not asking to make bard strong as monk, but to make it at least good as cleric.
Also there’s another issue with charisma being useless.
I think both issues(bard being weakest solo xp class and charisma being useless) could be addressed by one fix. I.e. by adding some real usefulness to knight’s blessing and knight’s prayer songs.
Also I like Taron’s suggestion about resonant focus. However I have some doubts there’ll be a coder having slightlest desire to implement it. :)
After further discussion with Taron in our chat it was revealed that I read his original post inattentively. I thought he wanted to scale only gods of war. In fact he meant more songs. Including lion chorus.
So I wanted to take back words “I am now against original Taron’s suggestion”. As now I am that suggestion supporter. If it’ll give a few more dam points to Kid’s lion chorus(where all damage empowers grip or stab), then I support it.
I doubt all lion damage goes into the stab, maybe 1 or 2 at most, and I’ve already suggested scaling it as well. As in, if you get +3 dam to the chorus, you get maybe 1 dam towards stab (though gods of war might get 2-3 dam bonus to stab at max capacity).
If you want all 4 chorus damage go towards stab/grip (and maybe 10 from gods?), create a separate thread for it.
If I made a list of everything I cared about, for the coders to take on, bard melee skills would not even make the list, and my main is a bard.
…and aerial is OP. Just sayin.