Bard songs @ high level combat = almost useless?

[TimeBomb]

Level 50ish bard/ment here, been lots of fun so far, but I'm worried that the majority of my DPS - song of discord - is starting to become useless and going to become even more useless later on because of how many mobs knock you away.

The song persists through stuns, but it very clunkily gets cancelled and has to be (somewhat slowly) recasted if an enemy knocks you around, which is starting to happen more often in my 50s and I've heard happens a lot more often later on. This is very clunky and makes bard pretty bad, especially for solo play, in such a way that I'd expect various other combat classes to not have this issue.

How much more of an issue does this become late game? Is there anything that can be done right now to help lessen this pain? Any opinions about what, if anything, should be done to make song cancelling/recasting less clunky, or songs as a whole more viable late game?

[ShieldBreaker]

What you could try the following items now to reduce your issue.


Shock Absorbing Belt and Rhino Necklace, to reduce chance of Knockback
Also there are buffs that reduce knockback, Steady Feet which is a Dance buff I think.
Also look for legs with the bard treasure effect Anthem of Avoidance grants all targets immunity to Knockbacks for X seconds

[Niph]

Knockback happens in some places and not in others. It doesn't feel like it's getting worse at higher level to me (I have farmed every zone in game, dungeons included).

[Leodane]

I was having similar thoughts, Time...I'm 50 bard/49 psych right now, and I've geared pretty much completely around song of discord and survival - the only enemy I've really struggled with in the earlier levels were the creepy giant bugs in Eltibule...tor urak? And there, it wasn't much of a struggle. They might knockback 1-2 times per fight. I went to Rahu for the first time last night...hoo boy. Knockbacks a-plenty. Song of Discord went from being my most efficient damage source to my least efficient. I'm a little nervous about all the time I put into finding SoD gear. I'm also hearing about all kinds of fancy numbers other builds are putting out, and I'm less impressed with SoD's damage potential. The monsters are just getting too dangerous for a long-duration, low-damage ability to be useful. The mod which makes it stun is fantastic, though, so I'm still on the fence.

[poulter]

I have been using a Bard /Druid (Discord & Resurgence with 2 Blasts) build at level 70, primarily in Gazluk zone and the caves (solo) and the Keep (in a group) without any unexpected issues i.e. the build works, especially when in a group. I have also used Bard with archery using Songs only (Bravery & Resurgence with no Blasts) and it has proved to be one of the most effective group builds to date.

The Bard /Druid build is designed to survive heavy health & armour spike damage and just wait whilst the Discord AOE whittles away the mobs health. The stun is particularly effective, if somewhat random.

It is not the most exciting of play styles (cast Discord, top up health and armour from any spike damage, cast Blasts, change to Resurgence if taking lots of damage, change back to Discord once healed up), but it does the job.

Knockbacks are annoying but with a 2 second reuse time on Songs, not a game stopper, beside which, as Shieldbreaker has pointed out there are several ways to minimise the impact.

TLDR: The build works at level 70. Knockbacks are not really an issue. Play style is not exciting, but it is effective.
As usual, it is reliant on your gear and the mods you use.

PS: Using Evasion Leather gear and (modded) Anthem of Avoidance makes grinding very much easier /survivable.

PS2: I can confirm that the Bard /Druid build can solo single Gazluk Keep patrols very comfortably. This puts it on par with Ice /x and Archery /x builds.

[Spadar]

Bard is arguably one of the most OP solo skills out there due to their songs.

Take this bard base build for example: jh7vqevn

Load it on http://www.gorgonexplorer.com/build-planner

With this set up you will gain the following every time you're damaged:

14% Bard Base Damage for 15 Seconds
10% Song of Discord Damage for 20 Seconds
+10 Song of Resurgence Healing for 20 Seconds

That's not once when you're damaged, that's every time you're damaged. So, get hit enough times and your puny 250 damage Song of Discord can deal very respectable damage.

Then there's the songs themselves. You don't have to actively stand there with the song active 100% of the time. The 'Timer' between the ticks of the song effects continues to count down whether the song is active or not. This means that you can activate Song of Discord, catch the damage Tick, switch to Song of Resurgence and catch the healing tick, and so on. (Twisting, if you're familar with bards in other MMO's). This also means that you're fully capable of moving while playing songs if you can keep the rhythm, but some degree of finesse is involved because it's pretty easy to miss the song ticks since you only have a small window available before the song buff wears off.

A bard with enough health and armor, and enough sustain to live past the first hectic moments in a fight can solo pretty much anything in the game using that strategy, barring a few exceptions when monsters have Disables, or rage attacks that chunk you too severely to be able to recover in the four seconds between resurgence ticks. It's OP enough that I fully expect bard to get hit with the nerf bat fairly soon.

[Mikhaila]

Run through Rahu and over the plateau.....go to near someone fighting, hear Bard music........get Reknown for killing Pask....vow once again to start working on Bard.