Well, not sure when most of this stuff changed. I was away from EQ1 for a lot of years so they had plenty of time to change up Bards, but I must say some of the changes are amazing compared to PoP-era Bards.

/melody now offers a set macro'ed casting list that, unless interrupted by stun, will repeat forever. No more twisting...

Armour pieces now have instrument modifiers on them so that unless you're the type to want to min/max your songs or get that extra oomph out of an instrument swap, you don't need to macro instrument swaps all that often anymore.
And if you do, there's the bandolier for insta-weapon bank swaps.

Granted, some changes suck (i.e. DoT songs no longer do damage if the target is moving. So swarm kiting is dead), but overall this has made the class 100 times more enjoyable.
Bards can now actually converse with friends/groupmates, and not have to worry about carpal tunnel syndrome! Woowoo~

plus bards have that lovely ability to right click while running still, you bastages!

I see a lot of bards now these days. lol its funny no leolan though ;/

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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I sometimes regret not selling him when I could have actually made something worthwhile, but no... he's sound asleep in my account.

God I loved bards so much. =O

Shame there will never be another experience like that in an MMO.

I miss my selos..

Unfortunately MMO's are marketing to a whole new generation of gamers that are not like us. From what I have noticed they are very immature and impatient. This is why a new game will never capture that feeling. Unless you were to turn back time and have everyone present, it wouldn't matter.

It's sad to see some gaming mechanics go because "that's the way we use to do it." However, it's not geared to us and they are attempting to make money fom a entirely new group of gamers.

Funny thing the normal groups that i get are bar, shaman, Paladin and myself... thats just PuG too. heh

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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Three groups stand out the most in all of my playing days-

1. Group with Solanthious and others when I dinged 60 in Sebilis, only cause that last blue pixel took about 2 hours to finally ding over.

2. Group I was on my monk, and Evesong was on her enchanter, in Dreadlands (many years ago). For about 2 1/2 hours, it was the most fast paced and frenetic paced I can ever recall. Damn she keep at least 2 mezzed that entire time and never ran out of mana. I kept on throwing everything at the group and we were insanely successful.

3. All magician group in ... that zone before Beza and Zeka. Guardian Fortress or something? 6 air pets, mobs were perma stunned, I think at one point we ran out of mobs or something lol. The power of the magician!

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did the air pet stun work on mobs 55 and over? Just wondering

yes they do now.

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Unless some serious changes have occured in the past few months, Bards have been getting the shaft for quite a while now.

The standard reply from the devs has been "Bard code is fubared" so they seem to leave us out on about anything new or cool. When they introduced the faction augs they left one class completely out...you can guess which one that is. Their reasoning...we don't know where Bards fit in to things.

All that being said, bard is and always will be my favorite class. Hopefully someday they will actually fix bards so that new songs scale with IMs.

^^ Yeah, I've noticed that too.
But still, overall it's quite a fun class.

If you want a frustrating bard experience, try EQ2.

Sorry for the bump, but I have a few Bardic questions.

1) was there a Lanys Bards-only chat channel (similar to the Warders channel for Rangers). The generic "Bard" channel ingame seems to have a half-dozen people in it, if that, and most of them wouldn't know their arse from a hole in the ground.

2) what Bard websites are out there these days? I noticed EQDiva seems to have been pulled. The Concert Hall still exists, but there isn't the wealth of information on AA paths, places to hunt, song breakdowns, upgrades, etc. that Diva used to have.
The Warriors still have their Steel Warrior website, and the Rogues have Safehouse. I even noticed the Magician's Tower is still going strong. Just curious if I've missed out on a good Bardic website.

Thanks guys.

Would you stop playing this game? huh?

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Bards run slower since the last 225 patches.

The last bard site I remember got bought out by IGE, as did Monkey Buisness and the druid grove one. Safehouse is a shadow of it's former glory as well. Mage Tower is pretty bumping if you are looking for current EQ news and goings on.

You're going to be hard pressed to find current info about AA choices and whatnot. It was pretty much guesswork during the time we went back and played. There was like zero info out there for Enchanters and rogues.

Bards are a rarity nowadays. I actually plan on boxing a bard on a second account just for single pulls. Hard for the mage to handle 3 mobs that hit for 4k+ heh.

I plan on just asking other bards on the server, and I know of several magicians that box bards that can give advice. But like someone earlier said, most of the bard websites are no longer operational. However, some of the forums still have posts and threads. May not get the answers you want from the site, but the forum might help...

Mage boards are still very active, and the community is still very strong.

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Bards. The first and last truly different class in mmo's. /mourn

Whaddya need to know? Fundamentally they havent changed much since their massive rework about 2 years ago... Theyre excellent pullers and overall swiss army knives still

feel free to hit me up on AIM if you please, i dont check these boards often =\

ivvantavr4 is the name(yes its 2 v's)

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My sig got eated by the bit bucket...
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Formerly known as:
Dashkast Justifyer
75 Gnomish Puppy kicker

I count 3.

There was a Lanys bards channel, back in the day.

I can't tell you anything about what's happened with the game the last few years though.

This thread makes me want to level my baby bard, it was always fun to play.

hmmm... what's a good duo with a bard?

A mercenary.

Bard Wizzy

Bard Magician, since mage pet can tank the content. Wizzy cannot tank anything in a dungeon, and you cannot kite named that summon...

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Shaman are good duos for bard... Dunno if theres necessarily a better one, but Necros definately benefit from having a bard around, i can testify that one personally.

the best duo for bard is bard.

Yeah, I had a feeling there was Leo. I just never knew the channel name and/or password, so I'm curious if it still exists or not :/
The Bards general channel has absolutely 0 conversation in it these days, unless you count "can someone link me the epic 2.0 please?" or "can someone link me the fabled bard wpn please?" as conversation.

As for sites, that's a shame too. I can pretty much figure out my AA path anyways, and I've a good sense of bard songs and what to use with what groups, so that's not an issue at all. I just like to read up on modern tips / tactics / strategies and the like to try to self-improve. Ahh well. C'est la vie.

As for duo partners, so far I've found I work best with a Ranger. There's not much that those 2 classes can't do together (although SK would work well here too). Add in mercs (either healer/healer, or tank/healer, whichever you prefer) and you can tackle a lot of stuff.
With a Magician, I find it tends to work better as a Bard bot, unfortunately. Pet aggro is tricky, even when it has taunt proc weapons. Most times duoing with a mage friend so far I find myself sitting there singing DoTs / debuffs , and spell haste/dmg songs and drinking a beer. Not overly exciting.