Templates and play styles

[DreadLord Lestat]

I am hoping to stimulate some template ideas and play style discussions. What is your bard template, how do you play it, and where do you take it/what do you fight?

 

[Omnicron]

Im thinking of some sort of dexxer bard. Not sure yet...just ideas im trying.

120 music
120 disco
120 fencing
120 tactics
120 bushido
120 chiv

Was my idea....just not sure of the survival ability without necro for the vamp form. Basically something like this Honor/disco swing away. Adding enemy of one and consecrate wep and spamming devine fury? Using masteries as well. lol MANA intensive.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

I had a peacer/fencer like that long ago. I made him before bushido came out. He was fun to play. I think disco and bushido would be more interesting.

 

[Logrus]

If you get mana leech on that guy, you should be able to deal some extra damage using the disco mastery abilities. (Not only that they'll also lower the damage you take while they are active.

 

[Omnicron]

Yea I was playing around with it today. I was doing ok with him. Just need to update my suit. Which I am waiting for pub 81. I have a dagger that has 40 mana leech, 30 ssi, 50 di and 37 life leech...i was able to run disco mastery with EoO, and CW while honoring mah victim. Drops em quick. I have a tons of mana regen which helps...

I just need to tweak it to maximize the damage output..

 

[Imperium]

Hey!

I have actually been pouring over a special template designed for low/mid level shame to get those special imbuable jewels and splintering weapons! Thought id share:

110 Animal Taming
115 Animal Lore
95 Veterinary
120 Music
120 Discord
120 Fencing
20 Bushido (+30 on jewels)=50 Bushido

I have been able to obtain over 2k luck just on items, specially crafted 190 pieces specializing in stamina and dex mixed with the classic named items such as conjurer's with luck and mempo of fortune. All in all, it comes to over 2k luck.

So my basic strategy is to honor the target, send the pet in, disco it, and then try to get max perfection (+1k luck on top of the 2k) before the greater dragon kills it. I personally use a dagger or kryss for more swings.

Theres a few flaws, i know, but this build actually produces a great deal of sweet uncursed loot. Like i said, its primarily build for level 1-3 shame, anything higher would be kinda dangerous. This is a walk in the park for this though.


Anyways, thought id share, thanks!

 

[kRUXCg7]

(Template etc)

How do you heal yourself?

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

I was wondering that myself. Pet tanking and pots is the only thing that I can see. I think I would go with something else over fencing since there is no way to heal, no tactics, no tactics or anat for damage. If nothing else, I would go archery to keep myself at range unless vetting.

 

[kRUXCg7]

I was wondering that myself. Pet tanking and pots is the only thing that I can see. I think I would go with something else over fencing since there is no way to heal, no tactics, no tactics or anat for damage. If nothing else, I would go archery to keep myself at range unless vetting.

Those were my first thoughts, too, but then I realized Mrs Imperium is having fun with her template, which means she is succesful.

 

[Voodoo Bad Mojo]

Hey!

I have actually been pouring over a special template designed for low/mid level shame to get those special imbuable jewels and splintering weapons! Thought id share:

110 Animal Taming
115 Animal Lore
95 Veterinary
120 Music
120 Discord
120 Fencing
20 Bushido (+30 on jewels)=50 Bushido

I have been able to obtain over 2k luck just on items, specially crafted 190 pieces specializing in stamina and dex mixed with the classic named items such as conjurer's with luck and mempo of fortune. All in all, it comes to over 2k luck.

So my basic strategy is to honor the target, send the pet in, disco it, and then try to get max perfection (+1k luck on top of the 2k) before the greater dragon kills it. I personally use a dagger or kryss for more swings.

Theres a few flaws, i know, but this build actually produces a great deal of sweet uncursed loot. Like i said, its primarily build for level 1-3 shame, anything higher would be kinda dangerous. This is a walk in the park for this though.


Anyways, thought id share, thanks!

I dont think this is going to work for you as you have it set out.
in order to get the Perfection Bonus with Bushido you have to 'build' perfection by hitting the monster without missing until you achieve perfection.
if im not mistaken that is usually 10 hits in a row?

with you not having tactics i doubt you will land more then 2 in a row without wiffing and loosing all prefection.

infact i went and looked this up for you and with your 50 skill in bushido you would need to hit 20 times in order to achive perfection.

Perfection has a system known as Steps of Perfection that are also based on the samurai’s skill in Bushido. At 50 skill a samurai is at his least understanding of his goal of perfection and thus has to work harder to attain his perfection. In this case, the samurai has to gain 20 steps in perfection to Achieve Perfection. A samurai at 100 skill, however, understands perfection better, and thus only needs to gain 10 steps to Achieve Perfection. A Kengo samurai, is at the height of his understanding of perfection and will only need 9 steps to Achieve Perfection.

so you would have to hit 20 times in a row.

and this...

However, perfection isn’t easy to attain, or maintain. To gain perfection one must strike his opponent. To keep perfection, one must not miss. Basically this is how it works. Each time you strike your foe, you gain a step of perfection, just one step. For any miss, whether it’s natural miss or parried attack, you will lose three steps of perfection. This means that if you struck your opponent 5 times, but missed once, you would be back on step 2 of perfection. If you miss again, you will be back at step 0, and a message will state you have lost all perfection.

just thought id pass this along for ya.

 

[Grace of Minoc]

"with you not having tactics i doubt you will land more then 2 in a row without wiffing and loosing all prefection."

Just have to point out that tactics have nothing to do with chance to hit, only damage increase and capability to do special moves.

 

[RazicGL]

Hi there,

I am new to the bar skills but thought I would trow in my template

120 music
120 disco
120 Throwing
120 tactics
85 anat
85 healing
70 chiv.

I have only just fuinished up my training my fighting skills and I am stil using jewels to hit 120 music disco but once finished I will run the following (all there except jewels atm).
My suit has maxed out resists with 30 MR - 25 hit point inc, 58 mana inc, 48 stam inc 45 HCI/DCI and added str / dex and 6/2 FCR/FC. Total stats are as follows. 150 str / 65 dex (with items the use potions to bump up) 85 int (with items) 150 HP / 123 stam / 148 mana.

I have not had much time to "play" him as I have been giving focus on training. I tired Nav and was doing very good damage but once webbed I got chewed up. I have since found out there are gargish stone shoes so will try agin after i get some.

Tactics are basically going to make him a support plyer but I want to be able to run solo too. For champ spawns, Only other thing I have tried what I have been doing is having high hit area damage on wep and getting a big group together. Then pummel and I disco any paragons. For the champs themselves I have only done barracoon and worked spawn start to finish (something I can do a lot quicer on my sampire though lol)

I had a cyclone with mana leech, hit fire area and hit fireball as well as SSI.

I was getting a group together and blasting groups with the area damage (using a vermin slayer talisman) He did the job well up till mages then I was kiting / bandage healing as I went and if thing got hairy dropped a close wounds and targeting the mages as priority then once they were dead just healing as normal and finishing off the hounds. When next level popped I worked to alter killing as I went then drew off the serp and then killed off the archers in he same way. Barracoon was a cake walk, discord with repond slayer flute (once in rat form) then popped both spell songs and spammed AI, i left 3 seconds between the AI's to keep the mana cost down and was able to maintain spells with mana leech and the decent MR on my suit.

My thoughts so far are this.... Doscord is fantastic. I have little trouble with barracoon on my sampire anyway but it was very easy with my discombobulator. think I need to "step outside the box" a I am traditionally a dex monkey or use a necro/mystic/mage/weaver so learning this playstyle is taking some getting used to. I get the feeling that this will be a very powerful character though and I am going to be doing some tests against other high end monsters over the next few nights. I will post some stuff once I get it down

 

[Gb8719]

Mystic Bard
120 Music
120 Provo
120 Disco
120 Magery
120 Focus
120 Mystic

Somewhat of a pure bard [minus peacemaking] but able to rely on using a Rising Colossus for damage rather than EV's. High magery as a quality of life improvement to not fail at casting spells. 120 Focus and LMC/MR on suit and jewelry to help with mana mitigation.

Since I'm basically casting only one RC instead of 2 EV's, mana has never been an issue for me. Pretty shocking since I don't exactly have a very high LMC score since my suit is designed for luck [~1600 before buffs]. 120 Focus seems to be plenty for now. Also, although I haven't done it yet, I'll be able to look into running heavier pieces of armor that aren't "Mage Armor" and qualify for the LMC bonus they offer.

I've never tried this character for champ spawns, but Mini-Champ spawns in SA are absurdly easy for me. I typically stick with Mud Eles on level 2 Shame but I can handle most any level there without tremendous issues.

Great support character for group hunting as well due to RC, Discord, and Bard Masteries.

 

[RazicGL]

although I haven't done it yet, I'll be able to look into running heavier pieces of armor that aren't "Mage Armor" and qualify for the LMC bonus they offer.

The "medable" only relates to active meditation, the difference in mana regeneration between medable/non medable pieces is negligible for passive mana regain , since you are using battlefocus and MR then your whole suit could be non med if you so desire, also, if you are human you can use JoAT to go into necro wraith form and get back a little mana from your offensie spells. With a slayer spellbook you will still do a little extra damage even withouth eval

 

[Gb8719]

I am human but I've never considered going Wraith Form. I guess it might not be a bad idea to attempt Wraith form while running Discord masteries on a target. That's a pretty good idea I might have to attempt to try out. Wonder if it would be worth dropping Magery to maybe 90 or 100 and then bumping Necro up a bit higher since I think the fail rate for Wraith for with JoAT is pretty high.

Isn't it worthwhile to try and make a suit of armor made out of something like ringmail, for example, in order to get the passive LMC that the heavier armor has now after the most recent patch? I'm still trying to interpret this most recent patch and figure out what would be my best suit options for this character.

 

[RazicGL]

Mystic Bard
120 Music
120 Provo
120 Disco
120 Magery
120 Focus
120 Mystic

Somewhat of a pure bard [minus peacemaking] but able to rely on using a Rising Colossus for damage rather than EV's. High magery as a quality of life improvement to not fail at casting spells. 120 Focus and LMC/MR on suit and jewelry to help with mana mitigation.

Since I'm basically casting only one RC instead of 2 EV's, mana has never been an issue for me. Pretty shocking since I don't exactly have a very high LMC score since my suit is designed for luck [~1600 before buffs]. 120 Focus seems to be plenty for now. Also, although I haven't done it yet, I'll be able to look into running heavier pieces of armor that aren't "Mage Armor" and qualify for the LMC bonus they offer.

I've never tried this character for champ spawns, but Mini-Champ spawns in SA are absurdly easy for me. I typically stick with Mud Eles on level 2 Shame but I can handle most any level there without tremendous issues.

Great support character for group hunting as well due to RC, Discord, and Bard Masteries.

Firstly I was a little off on my calculations regarding the passive mana regain, it’s a little more than I though but still not a game breaker to me. With regards to the ringmail stuff I would say give it a go, from what I read on the warrior forum there are a lot of sampires switching over to ringmail/chain/plate and can get up to 50%LMC! While the regain rate is a little lower with wraith form and a slayer spell book you could keep mana up. With regards to bumping up necro, sadly the JoAT bonus doesn’t stack with real skill, so anything under 20 points in necro will make no difference. You could, however, use wraith form scrolls as I understand this makes casting easier… I know this is the case with magery scrolls. I personally will be making a test suit over the next few days so I will post my findings for you… One other thing to consider is that non medable suits can have refinements and allow you to take DCI all the way to 70%, this has no effect on imbuing weight or anything like that and can be done before or after imbuing/reforging. Depends on whether you get hit though lol. I personally would be exploring things like mana vampire (don’t know how well it works without eval though and is situational as monster needs a big mana pool)
Use the following figures to work out your regain rate and see if the added LMC will be better than the medable armour…

Based on 100 int and your current skills and 20 MR on your suit your mana regain rate would be:
Non-Mediable Armour: 1.8163 Mana/Sec
Mediable Armor: 2.2163 Mana/Sec
Active meditation: 2.6163 Mana/Sec
This is worked out using the following formula posted by Phoenix (developer)

1> Base Mana Regen Rate is 0.2 mana per second
2> Focus Bonus is Focus / 200 mana per second
3A> Let Meditation Bonus be 0.0075 * Meditation Skill + 0.0025 * Intelligence Attribute
3B> If your Meditation Skill is GM or above, multiple Meditation Bonus by 1.1
3C> If you are actively meditating, multiply Meditation Bonus by 2
4A> Let Base Item Bonus be (Meditation Skill / 2 + Focus Skill / 4) / 90
4B> Multiply Base Item Bonus by 0.65, then add 2.35
4C> Let Intensity Bonus be the square root of the sum of your Mana Regen intensities, capped at 5.5 (30 total intensity).
4D> Let Final Item Bonus be ((Base Item Bonus * Intensity Bonus) - (Base Item Bonus - 1)) / 10. This is mana per second.
5> Add the Base Mana Regen Rate, Focus Bonus, and Item Bonus. Add your Meditation Bonus only if you're not wearing non-meddable armor. The result is your total mana regeneration per second.

Here is an example:

120 Med, 100 Focus, 110 Int, +25 Mana Regen from Items, wearing meddable armor.

Base is 0.2
Focus Bonus is 0.5
Med Bonus is 0.9 from Skill + 0.275 from Int, multiplied by 1.1 from > GM Med = 1.2925 (or 2.585 if actively meditating)
Base Item Bonus is 2.35 + 0.65 * (85 / 90) = 2.964
Intensity Bonus is the square root of 25 = 5
Item Bonus is ((5 * 2.964) - (2.964 - 1)) / 10 = 1.2856

So my total regen rates are:
1> Med armor, not meditating: 0.2 + 0.5 + 1.2925 + 1.2856 = 3.2781 per second
2> Med armor, meditating: 0.2 + 0.5 + 2.585 + 1.2856 = 4.5706
3> Non-meddable armor: 0.2 + 0.5 + 1.2856 = 1.9856

 

[Fraise]

Dusted off my "pure" Bard and not at all sure which bard mastery to use or if I should just put Eval.Intel back on her.
Music 120
Peace 120
Provo 120
Discord 120
Med 120
Magery 115
Eval 115 (stoned)

I have been reading the forums for a few days trying to glean information and am reading conflicting information.
Primary use of the character is for ilshenar champ spawns and support for other bosses. I want to explore just how far I can take the template as a solo player and treasure maps are out of the question. I get lost in my own back yard with a compass and a map.
Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

[CorwinXX]

so you would have to hit 20 times in a row.

You needn't. If you have 90% chance to hit then for each hit you get at average (90*5 - 10*15)/100 = 3%. So you usually get perfection in 33 shots (even less since you can't go to negative values).

 

[Traumatized]

Ive decided to venture into the realm of the bards finally after years of play. Ive got 120 Archery rotting on a stone currently, so I thought I would make one around that. Ill mainly be using this char for shame, and T hunting eventually.
Temp im looking at:
120 Archery
120 Music
120 Peace
120 Disco.
120 Tactics
120 Chiv

If anyone has any input on this temp it would be appreciated. Ive been debating whether or not to exchange peace with provo. Not even remotely sure if this temp is efficient or not, Been gone awhile, and ive been pretty much pure pvp until now... since there's no players left to fight lol.

 

[Merus]

Ive decided to venture into the realm of the bards finally after years of play. Ive got 120 Archery rotting on a stone currently, so I thought I would make one around that. Ill mainly be using this char for shame, and T hunting eventually.
Temp im looking at:
120 Archery
120 Music
120 Peace
120 Disco.
120 Tactics
120 Chiv

If anyone has any input on this temp it would be appreciated. Ive been debating whether or not to exchange peace with provo. Not even remotely sure if this temp is efficient or not, Been gone awhile, and ive been pretty much pure pvp until now... since there's no players left to fight lol.

Provoke or Bushido would be a couple of other options to consider besides peace. Unless you are using peace for running the bardsong, I am not sure how functional it will be in combat against a target you are agro on.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

Ive decided to venture into the realm of the bards finally after years of play. Ive got 120 Archery rotting on a stone currently, so I thought I would make one around that. Ill mainly be using this char for shame, and T hunting eventually.
Temp im looking at:
120 Archery
120 Music
120 Peace
120 Disco.
120 Tactics
120 Chiv

If anyone has any input on this temp it would be appreciated. Ive been debating whether or not to exchange peace with provo. Not even remotely sure if this temp is efficient or not, Been gone awhile, and ive been pretty much pure pvp until now... since there's no players left to fight lol.

My template is similiar though I have been thinking of dropping Peace for Bushido. The peace has come in handy at times though.

 

[Logrus]

I tend to run the peace songs for when my bard will be in active combat. The damage reduction is very welcome. I have yet to try a Chiv/Archer Bard but I think with Tribulation it may be pretty awesome.

 

[dupapa]

i run a bard tamer, the skills are as follows:

100 Magery
110 Animal Taming
110 Animal Lore
100 Music (120 with ring)
100 Disco (120 with ring)
100 Provo (120 with ring)
100 Vet

mana regen is a bit of a pain, i mostly rely on MR and LMC built into my suit when im against monsters that i cannot stand next to my pet and VET.

when hunting moster that you can vet your drag i drop my MR/LMC suit for my luck suit, i just have to be carefull.

designed for Pvm,

 

[CorwinXX]

What could you say about my template:
120 Archery
120 Tactics
120 Anatomy
80 Bushido
120 Chivalry
120 Disco
120 Music
JOAT Spellweaving

Bushido is for honor and occasional Confidence.
Chivalry - I use all spells. I have EOO, DF and CW active the most of time.
Spellweaving is for GoR.

Disco - to reduce targets resistances (I use Yumi and I'm able to chain Double Shot).
It seems that masteries doesn't effective on this template. Although I have only 100 music and 90 disco at the moment so I can't be sure.

I could replace Anatomy with peacemaking (and loose 15% damage).

Disco is going up very very slow. I don't know what to do:
1. Imbue 30 disco on jewels and forget about masteries
2. Add 120 peace to make masteries more effective

 

[Logrus]

Your Mastery skill is minimal at this point so the 90/100 Disco/music will only give you 4 +6 = 10 Damage base (15 vs Mobs, 30 with Slayer) when using Despair Mastery Ability

If you have tooltips on, and use the Buff bar, mouse over the despair icon to show your damage. Tribulation will also show the damage and proc chance.

 

[Logrus]

Discord is always helpful in fights. However if you kill stuff really quickly, then you may not need to bother discording every mob you fight.
So when doing something like a champ spawn, the lower levels don't benefit as much since you are killing the mobs faster than you can discord them.
In your template I would stay away from the Despair mastery ability. Your Damage to mana cost make it way too expensive. Tribulation will also be expensive, but if you have hit mana leech, the extra damage on a good proc could be significant.


The Peace masteries would increase your survivability, though I doubt they'd do much for your damage output directly.

Provo masteries would bump your damage output slightly through either the increased stats, or the additional damage effects, but giving up anatomy would lower your base damage, thus lowering the damage on your EOO/Honor etc which multiply your base.

With this template I'd probably just get the 120 Disco/Music, and a high mana leech weapon when fighting tougher mobs. Then throw on tribulation alone. In the case of spawns or other quicker kill scenarios you probably won't find the barding that useful.

Also You only require 50 Bushido for Perfection, though 80 is more forgiving and quicker to achieve perfection.
Really you only need the perfection for any mob that you don't have a slayer o super slayer for, because your 120 chiv will get you 82% Damage Bonus from EoO and 15 from Consecrate (97 total).