10 minutes into bard

I'm glad to see the bard skill in game. Here are my disorganized thoughts after 10 minutes of play.

* Unlocking went smoothly. Citan might want to increase the spawn of pickled fish for the first couple of weeks. It took half an hour for me to get one, probably due to other players wanting the skill too.
* I'm relieved to see that I have combat bar powers. I'd thought I'd read on the forums that all the bard skills would be in the side bar. Maybe that's a different skill.
* I'm not sure how happy I am that the skills are split between two weapons (meaning in order to use all your starting bard skills you can only use a weapon-less skill in the second combat bar).
* I've misplaced my reading glasses for the millionth time so I can't quite read what all the skills do. I know I have a basic attack, a mezz, and some other slightly blurry buttons ;).
* I hit 6th level in 5 minutes (give or take). XP table seems fine for now.
* I have no gear for it but I expect that'll come with time or crafting.

L59.9 Bard now. Combined with L60 Druid. Working on the councils to unlock both and a slew of other skills.

The progression was mostly pretty easy. I started a fresh character for it.
You really have two paths that are mutually exclusive. Solo DPS, and party support. Both very powerful, but so far I have had a problem gearing the Support side.

The royal Pain in the Ass section was unlocking Bard 51+. Nowhere even close to enough affordable Poetry Starter books. Guildies helped and I eventually got Poetry 5 after 3 weeks trying. The Vocabulary and Instrument requirements were trivial in comparison. Dreading the 61+ unlock requirements.

On the good side...
Song of Discord with a good mod selection is embarrassingly powerful. (35% chance of +60% dmg, 5% chance of stun on hit, stacking painful reprisal, Rage reduction, minor heal per pulse of SoD)
+AOE Rotskin which adds to targets damage taken
+Heartthorn which reduces target damage dealt
+Brambleskin for damage on hit

It is mostly just stand there and wait a bit until everything dies against any non-Boss. A few Horn blasts and many Bosses fall as well.

On the support side, only tried it in a Manticore group, it seemed to work very well with my limited support gear. Pulled aggro like you wouldn't believe so good armor is mandatory.

The only hard part about bard 60+ is flower arrangements. Poetry comes easiest with corpse talking if you have that skill. FA feels hard but you can realistically work towards it. They split the Bard trainer into a new NPC, so I need to just work on his favor. The NPC to unlock it wonders in Rahu, who I just catch while outside the holistic-quest house.

Originally I paired bard with mentalism, and enjoyed it until I was blocked at 50. I abandoned Bard +Mentand leveled Knife fighting until I got my poetry up and now do bard+knife. The idea behind that combination is, I buff myself and have a massive backstab. Song of Discord is really nice and I feel like I'm missing out some by not using it, but I'm really more of a secondary bard.

Bard+druid is great because you can have a strong DPS setup and a strong support setup with the two skills and two sets of gear.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mbaums

The only hard part about bard 60+ is flower arrangements. Poetry comes easiest with corpse talking if you have that skill. FA feels hard but you can realistically work towards it. They split the Bard trainer into a new NPC, so I need to just work on his favor. The NPC to unlock it wonders in Rahu, who I just catch while outside the holistic-quest house.

Bard+druid is great because you can have a strong DPS setup and a strong support setup with the two skills and two sets of gear.

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Exactly why I am doing Bard/Druid.

As to 60+ Vocabulary 15 (easy), Poetry 10 (need to get Corpse talk or farm up 7 Gruzarks chapbooks), Flower Arrangemnt (unknown level)
Favor with Percussa shouldn't be too bad, the gems are fairly common on blue surveys and Bard gear, just hit the goblin dungeon for a couple hours.

Regretting getting Rappanel to Soul Mate now...

I'm running Bard with Animal Handling. While it is fun, it could be even better if the pet was more stable and would survive better.