Fires of Heaven Guild Message Board - View Single Post - Bard Charm

Benren · 01-09-2003, 06:17 AM

There are classes out there that do one thing, and because they only do one thing, they excel at the one thing - wizards and rogues with damage, clerics with healing, etc. However, there are people that do a lot of things and don't excel at any one of them, although with some classes they can be pretty good here or there. That latter would be the bard. One of our staple abilities for a long, long time has been charm.

These days, there are a lot of enchanters scrambling to learn the basics of charming, because they never did it. Same with druids. But if you could say one thing about nearly every single high level bard, or even mid-level bard, it's that we know how to use charm. Our most obvious use is swarm kiting, but there are quite a few of us that used it for crowd control and DPS bonuses more often than we did for kiting. Until now, that is.

When you can do a lot of things, people tend to point towards that big list of things as proof positive that you shouldn't be seeing any net increases in your power. For example, a wizard might say, "Druids shouldn't be able to nuke as well as I can because they can heal as well. Get rid of your healing and I won't mind you having better nukes." A cleric might say, "A druid shouldn't be able to heal as well as I can because they can nuke, too." (Not to pick on druids or anything.)

The point I'm coming to is this. Our charm is ridiculously underpowered in PoP. The standard level 39 charm charms to level 56. That means our charm works on tsetsian flies in Disease, ravenous nightstalkers in Nightmare, some random robots near the ZI in Innovation, and nothing else. Our 64 charm upgrade raises the charm ceiling by... two levels. We can now charm rats in Disease, yard trash and hobgoblins in Nightmare, and the ZI mobs in Innovation. However, even with the upgrade, there are places in Tier 1 where bard charm does not work due to the low ceiling. It does not work at all save on Dire Charm mobs in Tier 2 or higher.

If the dev team has no intention of improving our charm and allowing it to be used in 95% of PoP, then our charm needs to be removed in favor of either giving us a new line or improving an existing line. We have not received any new lines or proportional improvements -to our power curve- to warrant our charm being gimped in this fashion.

If swarm kiting in PoP is a concern, simply reduce the range on this song to make it next to impossible to used for bard swarm kiting. I would like to have my charm for crowd control and DPS uses; this is always what I used it for. If I cannot have my charm to aid me, I would like to see some of the bard concerns looked into, such as our high fizzle rates, our high resist rates, or some of our weaker song lines.

I guess I posted this here with the same intent that anyone who posts a class opinion piece here has, that someone who has the power to see to these complaints will do so.

01-09-2003, 06:17 AM	#1 (permalink)
Benren Registered User Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 74 -1 Internets	Bard Charm - Tune It or Delete It There are classes out there that do one thing, and because they only do one thing, they excel at the one thing - wizards and rogues with damage, clerics with healing, etc. However, there are people that do a lot of things and don't excel at any one of them, although with some classes they can be pretty good here or there. That latter would be the bard. One of our staple abilities for a long, long time has been charm. These days, there are a lot of enchanters scrambling to learn the basics of charming, because they never did it. Same with druids. But if you could say one thing about nearly every single high level bard, or even mid-level bard, it's that we know how to use charm. Our most obvious use is swarm kiting, but there are quite a few of us that used it for crowd control and DPS bonuses more often than we did for kiting. Until now, that is. When you can do a lot of things, people tend to point towards that big list of things as proof positive that you shouldn't be seeing any net increases in your power. For example, a wizard might say, "Druids shouldn't be able to nuke as well as I can because they can heal as well. Get rid of your healing and I won't mind you having better nukes." A cleric might say, "A druid shouldn't be able to heal as well as I can because they can nuke, too." (Not to pick on druids or anything.) The point I'm coming to is this. Our charm is ridiculously underpowered in PoP. The standard level 39 charm charms to level 56. That means our charm works on tsetsian flies in Disease, ravenous nightstalkers in Nightmare, some random robots near the ZI in Innovation, and nothing else. Our 64 charm upgrade raises the charm ceiling by... two levels. We can now charm rats in Disease, yard trash and hobgoblins in Nightmare, and the ZI mobs in Innovation. However, even with the upgrade, there are places in Tier 1 where bard charm does not work due to the low ceiling. It does not work at all save on Dire Charm mobs in Tier 2 or higher. If the dev team has no intention of improving our charm and allowing it to be used in 95% of PoP, then our charm needs to be removed in favor of either giving us a new line or improving an existing line. We have not received any new lines or proportional improvements -to our power curve- to warrant our charm being gimped in this fashion. If swarm kiting in PoP is a concern, simply reduce the range on this song to make it next to impossible to used for bard swarm kiting. I would like to have my charm for crowd control and DPS uses; this is always what I used it for. If I cannot have my charm to aid me, I would like to see some of the bard concerns looked into, such as our high fizzle rates, our high resist rates, or some of our weaker song lines. I guess I posted this here with the same intent that anyone who posts a class opinion piece here has, that someone who has the power to see to these complaints will do so. Last edited by Benren : 01-09-2003 at 06:19 AM.