Question - So what's up next? Are you doing XYZ class?

[Woola]

Yesterday, I was rolling with my melee group and took a quick AFK to grab a drink. When I got back I noticed the War, Zerker, Monk, Bst and even the Cleric were bullying the bard. They were making comments such as “your DPS is so bad you will need to add up a months worth of log data to break 100k” and “your DPS is so weak that you can’t even spell DPS”. Heck, the cleric even pointed out a couple parses where he beat the bard in DPS due to Battlemode and MeleeOn with MQ2Cleric.

Of course I am posting this in jest and realized that this entire group, absent the bard, is using MQ2(insert class). I am loving the plugins and hope, not only for the bards sake, that MQ2Bard will come out soon. In the meantime I will review his .ini to see if there are any tweaks I can make but would love to get him at or close to 100k dps. Until then he may just have to sing his songs and be a sad lonely bard.

 

[Sic]

every time someone asks it is a current_timeframe + 10 weeks

 

[jande]

every time someone asks it is a current_timeframe + 10 weeks

today ?

 

[timmy]

sing aria and 4 dots. grats. you're dps.

 

[giogibyeie]

sing aria and 4 dots. grats. you're dps.

it's right, you will get 200K dps average.

 

[Mikey02]

Well good thing current_timeframe isn’t being updated with iteration.

Hoping its soon. Would love to have a pull routine for bard, ka is just a tad unresponsive.

 

[ChatWithThisName]

The issue with bards is they are vastly different than all others when it comes to a lot of things.

For example:

Bards can cast and move.
Bards songs have no global cooldown on gems.

These two things alone will make it more complicated to code as I have started adding logic in to handle spell casting, but in doing so there has been no consideration made for bards while doing so. I will have to go back and adjust all movement and all spell casting logic to include specialized consideration for bards.

I do not currently have any mez logic.
Pulling does not take into consideration any pacy pulling.
Specialized bard abilities such as sonic displacement/disturbance for pulling are not considered in pull routines.
There is currently no logic in my library for handling charm routines.

Bards are "Always" casting essentially. So knowing when they should stop their twist/cast in favor of something else, or allow an opportunity to memorize things, or how to handle updating the spell bar once new abilities have been learned etc are going to be their own development path.

Keep in mind that plugins are no coded the same way macros are coded, a lot of things that macros check are coded directly into their data types and no functions exists to return those values. So 95% of the functions used in my plugins needed to be created either by taking what was coded in for a macro return and altering it to be it's own function, or created from scratch entirely.

For now I will focus on the caster classes and it's entirely a possibility that bards will be last. I can say that Enchanters will be a task I tackle next personally. However, Sic may end up deciding to try to tackle the Bard himself when the time comes since he himself runs a bard.

I will say that if things are in preparation for, or are being made, they will be announced and everyone will know when it happens. Promise

 

[minniemmee24]

Will gladly sacrifice my bard for testing purposes with this when the time comes, i play mine manual since none of the macros act the way i want.

 

[dealings]

sing aria and 4 dots. grats. you're dps.

in melee grp (aria aura) and war song for me

I use MQ2Medley and even mezzs somewhat (ae mez)
MQ2Melee used for bard AAs and win

 

[surfdog21]

I dont get bards. Never have. Truly the stepchild of the game imo. I do love bard speed...

I have a bard. Max aa. More of a token bard mind you because someone else here on my server said he loved bard speed.

I find the bard in my group doesn't do alot really. I prefer my enchanters to be honest.

Trolling a bit, curious. What's the benny of having a bard in group opposed to an enchanter?

 

[Tom from MySpace]

overhaste fierce eye dps bonus to the team

 

[Mikey02]

Not to mention great tank buffs. With passive e tended song now, you can keep the whole spell gem list on rotation.

 

[num1pkfutura]

+1 for bard

 

[Jgil316]

I run a raid bard - LOVE her....... And as said above, with certain song rotations, Bards can be top 10 DPS on a raid mob, easy.

I think of my Bard in terms the old BASF commercials.....

We don't make the DPS - we just make it better.

 

[william12]

just curious what dps songs do you use for bard ?

 

[Many_Whelps]

just curious what dps songs do you use for bard ?

for personal DPS, I use Jonathan's (self only haste/atk better than war march), Amplification (boosts selos kick, 1 min duration), Insults (every 3rd song) and then alternate Boastful Bellow and Vainglorious shout as they share a cooldown but their debuff matures separately. Other than that I just sing the typical ADPS songs: Aria, War March, Arcane, Crescendo, Song of Suffering, Chorus, etc. Also, use the disc Puretone whenever you can as it boosts selos kick dmg. I regularily clock in at 250-300k dps for an entire event.

 

[Allurex]

I dont get bards. Never have. Truly the stepchild of the game imo. I do love bard speed...

I have a bard. Max aa. More of a token bard mind you because someone else here on my server said he loved bard speed.

I find the bard in my group doesn't do alot really. I prefer my enchanters to be honest.

Trolling a bit, curious. What's the benny of having a bard in group opposed to an enchanter?

I use my bard on kiss. With assist never have him pull hes better at cc then pulling

 

[Knightly]

I was considering a bard versus an enchanter for the new TLP, but the limit on the level of their mezzes (specifically for a TLP) was something I was concerned about.

 

[dealings]

if you are in a good dps grp loading 4 dots on a bard is a waste, youll be lucky to start 1, even luckier to get more than 1 tick off
aria aura
song 1 march
song 2 DD (to trigger focus)
song 3 and 4 procs (may or may not even go off..)
Song 5 optional 1 dot (in case u get a mob that lasts more than a few seconds
Song 5 and 6 options ac songs
use medley and keep horizons,dissident crescendo up
I like using mq2melee to activate bard offensive AAs
for tlp dont know what to say for folks that want to start over, probably play whatever, low lvl or low aa toons dont need a ton of attn (not sure how good a lvl 1+ a bard is over a chanter

 

[Saffron]

Been over 10 weeks. Where is MQ2Bard?

 

[ChatWithThisName]

Sub Main
    /timed 40 /mac kissassist assist ${Group.MainAssist}
/return

 

[Evilmiker]

Any chance a mq2druid is in the works. So far have been using mq2rogue, eskay and bst and love them. Would love to see a version for druids.

 

[Sic]

Any chance a mq2druid is in the works. So far have been using mq2rogue, eskay and bst and love them. Would love to see a version for druids.

When there is something that we're looking to announce, or early-release, we will annouce and/or early-release it.

 

[wymranar]

In a group set up, what is the point of a Druid?

can they main heal? Can they Dps?

Seems like a waste of a spot, but I’ve never played one and would like to hear other opinions

 

[Mythas]

They are ADPS that lean towards casters.

 

[Sum1]

In groups stuff doesn't last long enough for the druid to shine, but on raids a well-played druid is a top 5 parser 99% of the time. We have a lot of raids where our top 5 was: Necro, Necro, Zerker, Zerker, Druid.

 

[njk70]

You callin' me a waste of space? That hurts. Druid is my main, I think he is fun and thats what counts. I have a wierd group DRU/WAR/SHM but they do pretty well but I just got back after a 2 year break so I don't know about the last two expansions so much.

 

[ChatWithThisName]

Druid is actually the only class I don't have a template plugin for. I've never played a druid to any capacity personally. Though when I do get around to working on the class I'll of course do my due diligence and conduct the same research and work to achieve the best possible results. However, I can say that druid is not high on the priority list of classes to make just based on how unpopular they are. We will do all classes eventually. But it will take time.

 

[william12]

lets get mq2bard first druid is useful in a caster group but have huge mana issues.

 

[hellfyre]

I'd vote for Mq2paladin next to complete the tanks

 

[njk70]

Sad about Druid, but makes sense. I'm willing to help when the time comes if I am still playing.

 

[Saffron]

I mained a druid at first. They became horribly unpopular back in pop. It was like you had a disease. You couldn't really heal all that well, your dps sucked, you basically took up space. They have been greatly improved since then but it seems they put the real effort in for the raiders. Typical.

 

[arander]

I mained a druid at first. They became horribly unpopular back in pop. It was like you had a disease. You couldn't really heal all that well, your dps sucked, you basically took up space. They have been greatly improved since then but it seems they put the real effort in for the raiders. Typical.

thats funny, back in POP era my raid guilds second best healer was a druid, she was always right behind the MT MH(cleric) on heal parses. Could solo heal a group doing just about anything


but i echo the comment earlier, hoping for MQ2Paladin next. Never really got into SK, and i LOVE my paladin, but i really enjoy CWTN plugins, and use them for almost my entire group

 

[Slade the Magician]

Druid is actually the only class I don't have a template plugin for. I've never played a druid to any capacity personally. Though when I do get around to working on the class I'll of course do my due diligence and conduct the same research and work to achieve the best possible results. However, I can say that druid is not high on the priority list of classes to make just based on how unpopular they are. We will do all classes eventually. But it will take time.

Druids thematically are so cool, and useful. It really is a shame the state they are in in EQ. This made me think about the real disconnect between how I perceive them and how they really are, sadly.

 

[njk70]

Druids started a comeback in EoK but mana usage got nerfed hard. When grinding its real boring limiting play to what you can maintain your mana at.

 

[Slade the Magician]

I only really go off my experience with Druids at lower levels on TLPs and what I experienced of them in LoY/PoP/LDoN

 

[Tortilla]

Classic druids were fun atleast

 

[InvisigothMT]

I main a bard and my girlfriend mains a druid. With bard mana songs and buffs she can do some outrageous DPS and she's not bad at healing either. It was a lot better bad before they nerfed Bard dichotomic though

 

[Wink-]

Classic druids were fun atleast

Root and Rot was a blast! Took 7 minutes to kill a mob and you anxiously sat there waiting for root to break!

 

[Slade the Magician]

Root and Rot was a blast! Took 7 minutes to kill a mob and you anxiously sat there waiting for root to break!

I don't know when it became prevalent, but quad kiting was so awesome feeling. Snare up 4 monsters, drag them around on top of each other, and let them have it with targeted AoE spells.