I'm building a pure bard with the 4 bard skills + magery/meditation. I started with a full LRC suit, and I'm trying to increase spell damage and resists as I collect loot. Is this the right choice? I quit UO around the time it became item-centric, and am a tad bit overwhelmed by the options when building a suit.
Also, and this is probably a different topic, but I'm a little bored with magery and considering something else. I've never used Bushido, spellweaving, or mysticism. Would any of those make good companion skills for my Bard?
Hi.
In short, no, to both questions.
Spell Damage Increase (SDI) the item property has
no effect on
any of the spells/spellsongs you have on this template. However, that's not to say that a pure Bard plus Mage/Med doesn't work, it does, in fact it's my main 6x120 and it works very well.
The reason you want Magery/Med is because it's really the only viable option for melee defense with the points you have remaining. Read my post in this thread for an explanation of melee defense:
weapon defense
On a suit for this template your aiming for a minimum of all 70's resists, 100 LRC, 40 LMC, 10 MR, 45 DCI, 2/6 casting, with a Mage Weapon. Ideally you would have 30 MR, 4/6 casting, 25 HP Increase, and Str increase is also nice. You want Str as your highest stat followed by Int. You need no Dex.
In no particular order here is a list of pros to this template:
-120 Magery provides you with; melee defense (for your Mage Weapon go with something slow with a high base damage with a ton of regens on it - I personally use a Heavy Crossbow and even with 0 in all combat related attributes can hit an extra 30+ damage on Discorded targets), summons for different situations (basically 2 Energy Vortex's are your staple go to summon, if you're fighting something that dispels frequently/easily then you use 2 Earth Elementals which have a better chance of resisting the Dispel attempt, if you're fighting something that hits hard and/or target switches then you can use 2 Air Elementals these guys basically play keep away while dumping spells on the target, if something is particularly weak to fire damage then there's the Fire Elemental, I rarely if ever use Water Elementals or the Demon), Mindblast cold damage (is not based on Eval or SDI), Poison, Poison Field, Energy Field, Teleport, Invis (very useful because of Provoke attempt faillures), the ability to Dispel your summons/fields, Gate/Recall/Ressurection, Heal/Greater Heal/Cure/Arch Cure/cross healing. For 120 skill points that is a ton of goodies.
-Bard masteries; these are really why you play a 4x120 Bard, and having all Bard skills at 120 real skill boosts all their effects. You can switch between them every 10 minutes by using the context menu on the mastery book (single click it), you also use the same menu to set Discord's damage type. The main mastery people use on this template is the Discord one, it's very powerful when used right. Firstly have a set of slayer instruments (it doesn't matter if they're super slayers or singles) it's pretty easy to cover, just get Gwenno's Harp, Iolo's Lute, the Arachnid/Elemental Flute Of Renewals', the Fey one from Brit cleanup, and also carry an Exceptional. The damage you do with Despair is set by the context menu on the mastery book. It should be fairly obvious but for example if you're fighting a cold monster like a White Wyrm or Arctic Ogre Lord you set the book to fire for most damage and use the slayer type, on most of these things at 4x120 it's a 2 hit kill. Sometimes 1 if you put Tribulation p first and it procs. The mana upkeep for the spellsongs is why you want Med and as much MR as possible 30 is the max.
-Epic number scroll one man gank *see pic below*. One of the best things to do with such a template is get the big monster Discorded, Provoke everything else on to it, while having Tribulation/Despair running (as above with the right slayer/damage type set), plus damage from your summons, plus Mage Weapon if you can.
-Fire Horns. Stockpile some sulphorous ash and you'll find you can destroy most level 1-2 spawns. Handy for things like gorillas on the Dragon Turtle champ spawn as it one hit kills them there's no counter damage.
-On a rare occasion Discord's masteries are redundant (the Devs HATE Bards and have done for years, there are many things in the game that for no good reason can't be Provoked, or have weakened Discord effects, and some now prevent masteries too) if you're in such a situation and it looks like it's going to be a relatively long fight (and one where you're not likely to need Despair/Tribulation before the 10 minute switch timer is up) then change to the Prov or Peace masteries, you can easily keep both running. I would tend to only use the Peace one for situations where you need to reduce incoming damage or Cure a lot. I otherwise wouldn't use the Peace skill at all. To the extent that it's a perfectly viable option to swap it out for Spellweaving. (Giving you Word Of Death/Essence Of Wind and lots more healing/defense options.)
-If you're still feeling it's a little light offensively, acquire and bond a pair of Vollems and train them up, they are basically the same as Nightmares. Two of them on a Discorded/Tribulation/Despair'd target... need I say more.
-If for whatever reason you don't know what resist a monster is weakest to, then trial and error it by toggling Despair on/off and changing through them all until you find the best one, it's not always obvious but can be a big difference in the time it takes to kill whatever it is. For example Demons weakest to poison, Balrons weakest to energy. For example it's a pretty easy way to farm the Blackthorn dungeon Balron, energy/Demon slayer instrument 2 EV's (partly for distraction), Discord it as soon as it spawns follow up immediately with Despair and if there's time Tribulation (though it's usually dead by then anyway).
