Opinions on spellweaving bard?

[Boogieman]

I'm starting up a bard (provo and disco, but probably not peace) and would like some opinions about the usefulness of spellweaving. Mainly I'm curious to try out the skill as I don't have it on any char, but I wonder if a bard is a good choice.

 

[Lynk]

I'm starting up a bard (provo and disco, but probably not peace) and would like some opinions about the usefulness of spellweaving. Mainly I'm curious to try out the skill as I don't have it on any char, but I wonder if a bard is a good choice.

Spellweaving Bard Mages are probably one of the most useful PvM assisting chars out there.

Discord the monster, heal who/whatever is tanking it, and when it gets lower in health word of death. Also gift of renewal for healing the tank.

If you can - you might want to put a little bit of necro (50 or so) for Wraith form. Word of death is a mana hog, and that lets you WoD pretty much nonstop assuming you get decent damage on the cast.

 

[5% Luck]

I realy never liked SW at all. To me its like necro in that it leands to wizzards and warriors quite equaly but, the mana is insane and no self respecting warroir would find it viable. That said when added to a wizzard archtype the only real spell is WoD. Its nice but i cant fathom 120 points for one spell. Much better would be magic resist or adding a mana regen skill as my 1st choices. Then there is other roughts to go with lockpicking or carto as this template leads very well to the treasure hunter side of things. Note I decode my maps the soulstone the carto and replace it with LP. When im done with the maps i fix myself up with resist and hit doom! But for a lady mel or other area where you not going to be targeted much and still find a valuable use for this char the mana regen from focus is awesome!

 

[Dafty]

Playing one now, I like it so far but SW is a HUGE mana drain. You pretty much need 40% LMC and focus or med and max mana to not be constantly out of mana. It also is really slow, wearing 4/6 is also almost a requirement unless you are only using it for WoD and the occasional heal. SDI is needed unless you know enough people to make focii.

Lack of good healing is kind of a pain as the SW heal cooldown is stupid long, once every couple minutes or something. The charm is nice, titans make nice pets, especially against discorded targets. Self res is very nice unless you are like me and forget to refresh it

And discord+arcane empowerment+5 natures fury bug clouds is pretty nasty

 

[uoBuoY]

The problem with SW is getting enough people (with the appropriate skill level) together to make a decent focus. If you can find a SW guild on your shard, you should go for it.

 

[Sarphus]

It could work, but it might be a bit tricky to keep your mana filled.

I'm running a mage/bard with 6x 120
mage
med
eval
prov
music
discord

It's working extremely well (especially on the invasion content). I can prov things together and then nail them with slayer meteor swarm and chain lightning.

I don't think spellweaving has enough flexibility built into it to be a stand alone skill. You will almost definitely need magery for the invis spell and probably the offensive spells. That means we're looking at an extremely tight template, so you have to work your way through what you can sacrifice and what you can't.

You can tweak the prov/disco/mage template to build a SW/mage/bard that's probably pretty powerful, but you'll be really tight on skill points and probably mana. You really only need to get magery up to 92 to be able to cast 6th circle without fizzle (which you really want to be able to do). You definitely want 120 music, discord and provoke. You probably want 120 eval, but also probably can't squeeze that onto your template.

You can cast 7th circle spells like meteor swarm and chain lightning from scrolls. They are extremely powerful spells on a template that has provoke. Basically, you prov 2 things together and then blast them both for flamestrike damage.

The consept behind playing a SW/Mage of any kind is to use the strongest spell in the SW arsenal. Arcane empowerment. If you have a lvl 6 focus, it will give you 60 bonus SDI. The only thing you sacrifice by having 100 SW instead of 120 SW is 1 second of duration.

Another spell in your arsenal that will be particularly relevant is wildfire. You have the ability to tie things up with provoke and then burn them down with wildfire. This spell is extremely powerful if you have a high lvl focus.

You definitely want to build a set of super slayer spellbooks. If you can, get super slayer scrapper's. It takes a long time to build a set of those (I don't know anyone that has one), but that collection is the pinnacle of power for any pvm caster.

I'm kinda thinking this through as I go and I'm thinking of all kinds of problems you'll face. I think you're looking at a template something like this
120 Music
120 Provoke
120 Discord
75 Magery (crystlaine ring takes you to 95)
100 Spellweaving
100 Eval
85 Med

you definitely want to wear crystaline ring and orny. You'll need the SDI and mana economy from crystaline ring. You'll probably need the casting you get from orny. If you can get by without the casting from the orny, consider wearing skill jewlery on your bracelet slot, so you can get more med on the template (or eval to just increase the dmg of your spells).

At 100 Spellweaving, you won't fizzle Wildfire, reaper form, attune weapon or gift of renewal. You'll have a 93% chance to succeed word of death and a 65% chance to succeed arcane empowerment (which will almost definitely annoy you). If you can get to 110 SW without killing your template you will have 85% chance on arcane empowerment and 100% on WoD.

You will absolutely want to have max LMC and as high of MR and SDI as you can reasonably fit on your suit.

If you use reaper form to buff your SDI, you can use teleport to escape some hairy situations. A lot of high end areas disable the teleport spell, though.

Well... that's about all I have for you. You'll be really pushing it to pull this template off unless you have some really hardcore items. Maybe imbuing will make it easier for you

 

[Farsight]

About a year ago, I stopped playing my bard/weaver... not because it wasn't powerful, but because my interests ran elsewhere. The bard/weaver is quite a powerful template in a great many situations, but absurdly weak in others.

My template at the time:
120 music, 120 discord, 120 provoke, 120 magery, 120 meditation, 120 spellweaving
Alternative:
Switch provoke to eval int depending on the situation.

The good:
Between provoke, discord and the two magic skills, Doom is your playground.
With a good focus, you can tear through the lower two levels of any given champion spawn using essence of wind and an (arctic) ogre lord. With the top two levels, provoke and nature's fury then becomes your best friend.
Wildfire is great for getting rid of low level spawn and the damage over time can be quite useful in hit and run tactics.
Reaper form + SDI from items + arcane empowerment + mind blast = a pretty powerful mind blast.
A level 5 focus nature's fury is nearly as powerful as an energy vortex and you can have 5 out at once.
Self res without the monotony of building compassion.

The bad:
You can't have an effective spellweaver (bard or otherwise) without the following: Max LMC, very good MR, meditation, FC4/FCR 4-6. This limits your suit options by a lot if you're strapped for cash.
You're a slave to your focus. Most spellweavers you see have multiple accounts in order to make getting an arcane focus less painful. The rest are parts of large guilds. Without the high level focus, you're limited to casting nature's fury, word of death, dryad allure and gift of life.
Your offensive spells will be limited to cold-based spells (harm/essence of wind/mind blast) or your bard-half will be limited by the tight template.
In most peerless fights, your job will be healer. Don't even think about Travesty unless you hate your friends.
You will constantly be waiting on mana and your skill timer. In many low level spawns, a warrior or mage can kill several enemies by the time you provoke 2 (this was my breaking point and why I changed my template from bard/mage/weaver to necro/mage/weaver and later just necro/mage)

 

[J0KING]

My bard has the following template...

120 Magery
120 Eval
120 Meditation
120 Spellweaving
120 Music
120 Provoke

Have a lot of fun playing him and really hasn't been much that I couldn't hunt... however... most of the time I forget that I have spellweaving. I mainly use magery and provoke to take care of everything. Probably be better off switching SW with Disco... might get more use out of it

Good Luck and Have Fun!!!

 

[5% Luck]

What I did was to mix in some skill bonus items.

110 music......120 10/10 music provok braclet
110 provok.....120
105 discord....120 15 ring
100 mage......120 crystal ring
100 med........100
100 eval........100
95 resist........107 12 resist scrappers(72 protection)

I swap the rings on an as needed basis. i use uo assit dress macro to make this A LOT easier. But i could eaily drop resist for SW but at 95 I wont have the kick i would need for WoD If I could only find a 15/15 music/provok braclet I could have 115 then maybe SW bt I dont know the fail rates for WoD at 115(probly too high)

 

[Taylor]

I'm trying to create a similar tempalte. I'm struggling between two options:

I. Mage/Bard

120 Provo
120 Disco
120 Music
120 Eval
115 Mage
115 Med

I have lots of eval on this temp for damage. I can use magery to assist throughout a provoked fight to ensure the beasts' hp drain concurrently

vs.

II. Bard/Weaver

120 Provo
120 Disco
120 Music
120 Weaving
115 Mage
115 Med

I don't have eval for offensive spells. Instead, magery is mostly used to 1) drop EVs, 2) invis, 3) heal, and 4) dispel. WOD is used to finish the fight. I'm in UWF, which is brimming with weavers, so I can almost always get a str 4 or 5.

My plan now is to allow eval raise to 120 as I train magery, soulstone it, then raise weaving. Then I can switch back and forth. Not a cheap experiment, but it may prove worthwhile.