• You've discovered RedGuides 📕 an EverQuest multi-boxing community 🛡️🧙🗡️. We want you to play several EQ characters at once, come join us and say hello! 👋
  • IS THIS SITE UGLY? Change the look. To dismiss this notice, click the X --->

Funny - A word about Bard adps (1 Viewer)

Faust

Active member
Joined
Oct 9, 2020
RedCents
822¢
I have a pocket enchanter that I don't really use much - 115 but pretty gimpily geared in ToV t3 group stuff, has the Auto-grant AAs, but that's about it. My guild would like me to get this character raid ready, so w/e. I'm grinding with this character now in place of my fully AA'd bard in the group.
The rest of the toons on my grind team are the same - SK, SHM, CLR, BER, BER. These characters are fully AA'd and in general, I swap out a berserker to PL whatever other character I'm trying to get AAs for. But in the case of the enchanter, I pulled the bard for obvious reasons.
Anyway, kph dropped by something very close to 40% when I swapped the bard out for the enchanter. The bard isn't really raid geared, but has decent gear.
However, the bard basically always comes up 4th in DPS in the group behind the tank and berserkers. In other words, the bard is not hacking and slashing for 40% of the dps that my group puts out. And of course, the bard is cc, so sometimes has to stop playing and singing in order to mez adds - there are some losses in adps there that I've noticed some folks give some pause about with regards to the bard vs. enc.

The enchanter has charm on, so will sometimes pick up a charm pet. And while not raid ready by any means, this is not a dps class. I don't expect that I'll be getting a huge amount of dps out of this class even fully AA'd and geared up. That's not really what enchanters are about.

I will at some point get this enchanter geared up and AA'd. But I doubt I would make up even 10% of the losses I have from switching them out.

Anyway, not a question or any kind of advice-trolling here... I guess I really didn't realize that a bard was capable of this kind of adjacent output. The difference without one is enormous.
 
Interesting. In raids, you might see group compositions of SHM, BST, BRD + 3 melee for the adps.

For grouping and if toon/account availability let you drop the Cleric and keep the Bard, the added dps will probably compensate for faster kills with lesser healing power. I usually run with only 1 healer when tanking with an SK.
 
Usually when my group is melees, healer is the sham, and when my group is casters, healer is druid or cleric.
Shaman for melees add ADPS too with the epic and procs.
 
It's been a while since I actively played my chanter, but I believe they're down to basically two dots and a nuke or two for dps. I want to say I read something about the upgrade to Night's Endless Terror being a bone thrown to them after the mindwrack/drown nerf a few years ago, but I doubt it made up for much.

Having said that, I think you're comparing apples to oranges at least a tiny bit. The synergy your group will have with a bard is great with their flat 35% boost aura, twisting 4 dots, melee, etc. I don't think a chanter is going to add much to that group other than making your sk and shm hit a little harder and your cleric and shm heal a little better. Someone who mains or plays a chanter can correct me, but I think your main dpsers (the zerkers) are only really benefitting from scarecrow buff (if you use it) and chanter haste +double attack (if that's still a thing that isn't maxed already?).

This isn't to say a bard wouldn't still be a bigger boost in an all caster group; it likely would still be bard > enc instead of bard >>> enc. Just that expecting solid adps from a chanter in a melee group isn't realistic imo.
 
Probably not conventional....My SK is my beefy boy that I invest almost all of my effort into. When I bring another tank into an instance, I'll bring my chanter and have them spam rune on boss pulls. It, more or less, acts as a 2nd healer and CC for the group. Keeps them alive without issue. Alternatively, same group build, I'll tank with my mage on bosses and do the same chanter rune spam.

The DOT and DD chanters carry isn't worth the casting cost.
 
Enc did get nerfed about a year or so ago. They were better dps than the wizards and could out tank the warriors with their runes upon runes upon runes.
I think an enc played correctly will still be up therein the dps rankings.
 
Interesting. In raids, you might see group compositions of SHM, BST, BRD + 3 melee for the adps.

For grouping and if toon/account availability let you drop the Cleric and keep the Bard, the added dps will probably compensate for faster kills with lesser healing power. I usually run with only 1 healer when tanking with an SK.
I did this. Replaced the cleric with the bard, so I'm running SK, BRD, SHM, BER, BER, ENC and dps is once again where it should be. I had started running the cleric in the group early, before my Shaman had been properly geared and gotten his AAs and was having trouble keeping up on heals. I guess I had just gotten into the habit of running this as my group.
Once my enchanter is properly up to speed on AAs, I'll sub out a BST or Mage. Probably a BST but I have one of each, so maybe I'll sometimes run the mage just to see how it goes.
 
I’ve found that with a well geared, gold acct SK the shaman healing is more than enough. SKs are so OP right now in group content and even most raid content (any event with lots of adds that need cc/offtanked) that it’s almost comical.
 
Last edited:
I’ve found that with a well geared, good acct SK the shaman healing is more than enough. SKs are so OP right now in group content and even most raid content (any event with lots of adds that need cc/offtanked) that it’s almost comical.
Yep. I was just getting started and my whole crew was under-geared and under-AA'd. With those issues resolved, my SK is basically The Tick now.
1636564213464.png
 
Funny - A word about Bard adps

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top