Bard Things

[rylan]

Couple oddities and things I've noticed that would be really nice to tweak for bards...

INSTRUMENTS:
!ID-
Can sombody review these and get rid of the whatever !ID flags remain, notably the Rosewood Mandolin is still !ID. From what I remember all instruments were supposed to be made idable, but this one got overlooked.

Stutter stat-
From talking to itchy a while back, he confirmed that a higher stutter value is better, unless this was changed over the past several months. Almost all instruments have 0 stutter, or a very small stutter number. I assume the makers thought that low stuter was better, so this would explain why most are 0 and a couple are in the single digit range for stutter. For example, the newbie lyre has the best (highest) stutter value of any lyre type instrument in the game. Can somebody review the stutter stat on instruments and adjust (up) properly?

MISC
Commands-
Can you add a 'song' command that lists the songs you are able to sing, similar to how 'skill' works.

Mana Regen-
Please review the rate at which song of renewal regenerates mana. Its still pretty slow (10-15 every verse) even at higher levels.

Skill Reversal?-
As I've gotten higher skill in healing, it seems like I am healing less hps per verse than when I was lower level with lower skill.

Spellcast Skills-
Considering how we have a very limited amount of spells to cast per day, can you increase the learn rate for the 'spellcast xxxx' skills? Its basically impossible for bards to sit around and cast for a while to practice like other classes can. I've gotten 0 spellcast notches.

Song of Renewal-
The increased medidate portion of this song seems to be buggy. I don't see my medidate skill number increase while I'm praying, but some mages see it jump to over 100. It seems to only increase medidate on certain classes from talking to people.

Song of Sorcery-
Are you supposed to see your specialization and quick chant skills increase or is this a hidden effect? As a cleric I don't see any skills change when someone sings this.

Double Attack & Dual Wield-
Are these just extremely hard to notch? My double attack has notched 1 time in 42 levels.

[Eilorn]

How about making bard spellcasting no fail, no matter the circle? When we can only cast them every 24 hours, nofailing wouldn't be overwhelming.

Eilorn.

[moritheil]

Couple oddities and things I've noticed that would be really nice to tweak for bards...

Song of Sorcery-
Are you supposed to see your specialization and quick chant skills increase or is this a hidden effect? As a cleric I don't see any skills change when someone sings this.

This is also known as the "Invokers' Friend." It reduces cast times in combat by * or **.

[Birile]

I think the problem isn't that the Stutter stat on instruments is too low out of some confusion on the Immortals' part, but that they made the newbie lyre far too overpowered in the Stutter department.

A songs list would definitely be beneficial.

I don't think it takes all that long to renew mana with song of renewal, even at lower levels. Bards don't use that much mana (and if you use the newbie lyre you use hardly any mana at all at level 50 so long as you don't sing your song too long), one verse of song of renewal can net more mana recovered than one stutter, I think that's fair.

Spells are not a bard's main focus, I don't think the spellcast skills are all that important to use. The problem here is more the fact that we don't get to cast at the same frequency as other hybrid caster/melee classes. If anything, that should be looked at and modified.

Awhile back it was claimed that a bard's rogue skills had been bugged, making them more difficult to notch than should have been the case. It was also claimed this was fixed. I don't think it was, though.

As far as skill reversal goes, while it was never stated to my knowledge, I believe that things were tweaked downwards a bit when harmonious blessing was introduced. If I have harmonious blessing up, I hit near the maximum heal with song of healing most of the time. Without it, I commonly get 45-60 as often as the maximum (91hp). This wasn't the case before, I'm sure of it.

[zezi]

- bards song of heal heals too much at low level - very little difference with maxed out skills verses mid levls

- bards exp tables should be tougher than rogues given the skill mix, currently they level way to easy (match cleric/shaman)

- multiple bards singing in the room issue is strange. 50 bard with maxed out skills and instrument can be drowned out by a lower lvl bard w/o skills or instrument. Personally I'd vote for feedback system, damaging both bards (assuming they in same group - not sure what you can do about other scenarios)

- generally speaking most bard songs get maximum effectiveness way to early. forgot when i started hitting 10/10 offense all the time but it was too lowe level

- accompany is awesome, 2 bards in group rocks

- rogue skill maxable just so low your better off moving fast and crossing your fingers. I would sacrifice a friendly rogue to be able to get double backstab at maxed skills

- i like the spells, i use them all all the time rarely a period that I havent maxed out my spell use. Failure as is works great. Would be nice to get more spells but current mix rocks. Although I agree with one of Birile's earlier comments...Chainlightning is an odd token area spell...

[Disoputlip]

All songs are in the help files now. That means players can actually read what songs they can play (unlike before where some was totally impossible to know of)

[Gurns]

Almost all instruments have 0 stutter, or a very small stutter number. I assume the makers thought that low stuter was better, so this would explain why most are 0 and a couple are in the single digit range for stutter. For example, the newbie lyre has the best (highest) stutter value of any lyre type instrument in the game. Can somebody review the stutter stat on instruments and adjust (up) properly?

I think the problem isn't that the Stutter stat on instruments is too low out of some confusion on the Immortals' part, but that they made the newbie lyre far too overpowered in the Stutter department.

I believe the newbie lyre with the huge Stutter stat only loads on newbie elves (or perhaps only loads on newbies with Leuth as a hometown)? I figured it was designed that way to compensate for being a newbie isolated and alone on EM. With the introduction of Scardale, this might not be needed.

The 0 stutter stat on high level instruments might be a mistake or it might be deliberate. As things are, even with a Stutter 0 instrument, how often does a high-level bard stutter? Not often enough to matter, if you're paying any attention to what you're doing. So maybe they all have max Stutter to help prevent the old "sing heal, go afk" method of playing a bard.

[Birile]

I believe the newbie lyre with the huge Stutter stat only loads on newbie elves (or perhaps only loads on newbies with Leuth as a hometown)? I figured it was designed that way to compensate for being a newbie isolated and alone on EM. With the introduction of Scardale, this might not be needed.

I was referring to the second-hand yarting that has an insane 75 stutter stat. As far as I know, all goodrace bards start with this same instrument.

[Shevarash]

As to the stutter stat on various items, I'm guessing that there may have been some confusion about how that stat worked on items....I'll remind Cyric to review it.

[Gurns]

I was referring to the second-hand yarting that has an insane 75 stutter stat. As far as I know, all goodrace bards start with this same instrument.

I knew the instrument, wasn't aware that all goodrace bards started with it. I can still see it as being a reasonable instrument (though battlechanters should have an equivalent), since under the current system, stutter is probably too harsh before you get renewal. And higher level bards would prefer a better quality instrument over one that doesn't stutter. So, not unbalancing (if battlechanters started with an equivalent).

There's some other bard oddities I think I've noticed, so maybe bards should be looked at again. Despite the two major re-workings in the last two or three years, the class seems quite beta-ish: the structure is clear but some of the details aren't right.