Bard and?

[Krustydog]

I love the aoe heal that you can play while fighting. What I dont like is not being able to have a weapon skill to go with it. Is there a non weapon skill that goes with bard to make killing stuff a little easier?

[ShieldBreaker]

With Mentalism you get psychic and electrical damage with possible additional heals.

Psychology you get mainly psychic damage but you epic attack is trauma. If you are mentally stronger than your enemy, you can pull off all kinds of crowd control moves on your enemies. And those tricks can make killing stuff easier.

Unarmed, you would be limited to Bodyslam, Headbutt and kicks, if your not willing to put down one of your instruments.

And I guess there is Animal Handling, but I never actually tried out Bard/AH together. Might make killing easier depending on your pet, they might do some of the work for you.

So my pick would be Mentalism, but the others are workable also. Try them out and maybe see what you like playing best.

[Tagamogi]

If you want to use both hands for instruments, there's also necromancy if you can find a necromancy gem in a non-weapon item (shirt, hat, etc.).

If you are willing to sacrifice the horn in your off-hand, you can also go for off-hand skills like archery or shield, although shield wouldn't exactly add any dps to your build.

I've been playing bard/psychology on an alt recently. I'm up to around level 25 now, so I don't exactly have any meaningful insights, but it's been fun so far...