Bard

The music-loving, fast-running bard is one of the most difficult-to-categorize classes in the game, due to its wide range of abilities and unique coding. The premise is simple enough: bards are a hybrid class who sing Songs to help allies or hinder foes, while also (usually) fighting in melee. The sheer variety of the available songs, coupled with the bard's ability to twist up to four songs at once, make the class one of the most situationally customizable in the game.

Unlike the other hybrid classes, the parent classes of the bard are not clear-cut. The bard combines many of the core abilities, skills, and equipment from the Warrior, Rogue, and Enchanter classes, and also shares at least some utility roles with virtually every other class in the game. In high-level play, the bard's roles are often the most similar to a cross between a rogue and an enchanter, since the bard's numerous pulling, buffing, and crowd control abilities become emphasized more and more as the game goes on. However, at all levels of play, the bard has a variety of options for accomplishing his or her goals and can fill in, to one degree or another, for the role of any other class.

Almost any group of five characters can be greatly enhanced by adding a bard to it, regardless of what the group's existing classes are. The one exception would be a high-level group with no healer that intends to take on at-level content without kiting or root rotting. Such a group tends to need a real healer, since the bard's regen songs and other tricks usually won't suffice for that.

In-Game Description[]

Bards are jack-of-all-trades adventurers who use music to create a wide variety of magical effects. Though they often use melee weapons, bards are primarily a magic-using class, with the ability to wear plate armor and wield many different types of weapons and instruments.

Bards can do a little bit of everything. Their songs can regenerate health and mana, increase attack speed and accuracy, momentarily charm angry enemies, help friends resist many types of damage and even directly damage enemies. Bards are perhaps best known, however, for their ability to greatly increase the foot speed of their group.

Bards have the unique ability to create multiple abilities at once. By weaving different songs together, a bard can customize effects to any situation. This makes nimble fingers and quick thinking a must for those who want to play a bard.

Bards do well both alone and in groups. With the right combination of songs, they can adapt to many challenges. The bard is a great class for players who enjoy a wide variety of play options but are quick to adapt to a changing situation.

How it Plays[]

The Singing[]

All bard songs have a three-second cast time, and most have no recast timer, which means that most can be freely used and woven together as the situation dictates, as long as they are memorized. The duration of most bard songs is twelve seconds, which means that maintaining four songs (or, on a laggy connection, three) is usually all that a bard can manage at one time. Maintaining more than one song at once is commonly referred to as "twisting," "weaving," or putting songs "in the melody." It can be done manually (by activating and stopping each song in turn, usually by use of a hotkey for each) or semi-automatically (by using the /melody command, followed by the spell gem numbers of the songs to be twisted--see melody for more information).

The short duration of songs is one of the major balancing factors of the class, since bard songs that last longer than twelve seconds are very rare and are usually not combat-related group buffs. By the same token, this means that although most bard songs could be said to provide some benefit to almost any group the bard could join, bards do not have the time available to maintain them all. In other words, to paraphrase Rappapart of The Concert Hall, any songs a bard is singing must be worth one fourth of that bard's spellcasting potential at the time he is singing it. This is one reason why, although there are numerous bard songs, most bards stick to using only a limited number of them--the ones best suited to their (or their party's) current situation and class composition.

The very first bard song, Chant of Battle at level 1, provides a modest increase to the Strength, Dexterity, and AC stats of the bard's group. As the bard grows in levels, new songs become available.

Thanks to songs (and related abilities) the buffing capabilities of the bard are numerous. Their combat song options include such effects as melee haste, melee overhaste, attack rating boosts, AC boosts, stackable damage shield effects, modest runes and partial runes, hp and mana regeneration buffs, contact innates, and more.

Some bard AA abilities also have song-like effects, but may usually be activated instantly.

The Fighting[]

Bards use autoattack as their primary mode of dealing melee damage, and do not receive many combat abilities over the course of the game. However, the effectiveness of a bard's autoattack is still a respectable contribution to a group's DPS, and is intended as being comparable to a beastlord's personal damage (not including what is dealt by the warder pet): about 65% of a tanking warrior's. This will of course vary depending on equipment and the current state of game balance. When fighting together with other players, bards are usually expected to melee while singing unless the nature of the fight in question prohibits it.

Like the other melee and hybrid classes, bards gain access to a number of disciplines as they level up. Most of these come into play at levels 51 and above. Some of the most notable are the level 55 Deftdance Discipline, which allows the bard to automatically dodge incoming attacks for a brief period, and the level 69 Thousand Blades discipline, which greatly enhances the bard's melee accuracy and critical hit damage multiplier (but not the odds of one happening) for one minute.

Bards can attack at range using throwing weapons but cannot use bows and have no special abilities related to ranged combat. Since bards can sing songs while moving do not use throwing weapons when singing.

The Auras[]

The bard class is among those who receive aura abilities at level 55 and above. Bards currently receive two lines of auras but can have only one of them active at a time:

The Aura of Insight line of auras, which begins at level 55 and continuously provides overhaste and spell damage focus for nearby allies. Such auras do not functionally stack with the similar song lines bards have available: both icons will appear in the buff windows, but for each effect (haste or spell focus) only the highest value will be used in the game's calculations.
The Aura of Rodcet line, which currently includes only the level 82 Aura of Rodcet, provides a pulsed HP and mana heal on all nearby allies every six seconds and stacks fully with the bard's health and mana regeneration songs, making it valuable for maintaining the party's mana during long battles and other situations where using out of combat regeneration is not feasible. The gradual healing it provides is also of value to bards while kiting.

Bard auras are particularly useful because they are long-lasting, persistent effects that will always be active even when the bard situationally would have to be singing something else, unlike most songs which require constant refreshing to be kept active.

Turning on either of these auras costs no mana and often frees up a slot in the bard's combat twist by filling in a buff role that would normally require singing a song. The downside to relying on auras in this way is that their range is very limited, often too small to cover the casters and healers they are intended to benefit. Also, when the aura buff does eventually end, it may take the bard a little while to notice that the icon has disappeared, depending on what he or she is paying attention to at the time. This can potentially lead to the group going for a long time without the benefits of the buff in question.

Hard-Coded Differences from Other Classes[]

Some of the gameplay differences between bards and other character types are deeply ingrained in EverQuest's programming, and have been for a long time. These differences include the following:

Mana differences[]

Bard mana regeneration can only increase or decrease as a result of two possible factors:
- worn mana regen and
- Out of combat regeneration
As a consequence of the above, bards are unaffected by the mana-influencing components of all buffs, debuffs, and other spells and abilities that regenerate or drain mana. Any other effects of the ability in question will still apply to the bard.
- For example, if a debuff reduces hit points by 800 per tick and mana by 400 per tick, the bard will suffer the 800 points of damage each tick but not lose any mana.
- This also means that bard mana regeneration is not increased by the bard's own songs that assist with mana regeneration. These songs are intended to benefit other, non-bard party members. However, if such a song also has an HP regen component to it, the bard will benefit from that part of it.

Spellcasting differences[]

Bards can sing songs and use clicky effects while running. For all other classes, this is basically impossible due to motion-based spell interruption unless they are using a spell or clicky with an instant cast time.
Bards can continue swinging their weapons freely while the casting time of a song is counting down. Other classes cannot do this while in the process of casting spells.
Bard songs are not affected by any of the conventional spellcaster focus effects. Instead, bard songs use their own unique form of focusing in the form of resonance.
Currently, no effects exist in the game that can increase or decrease the casting time of a bard's song. This is highly beneficial for bards when facing raid bosses who use debuffs that increase how long it takes to cast a spell.

Hate Differences[]

The maximum amount of hate that a bard can generate per action is capped at a very low number. A side effect of this is that, under normal circumstances, bards have one of the hardest times holding aggro out of all of the classes, even when the bard wishes to do so. The bard's chant DoTs are an exception to this rule, and deliver an amount of hate comparable to other DoT spells. Because of this, chants are commonly used in the twist of a bard who intends to tank.
Historical note: when EverQuest was originally released, the aforementioned hate cap did not exist. As a result, bards originally had a hard time avoiding holding aggro in many situations, due to their songs affecting all nearby party members at once and generating a correspondingly large amount of hate.

Equipment Options[]

Weaponry[]

In terms of weaponry, bards ...
- can use most one-handed martial weapons, including the commonly available slashing, piercing, and blunt weapons.
- have access to a few dropped bard-only weapons from previous expansions, such as the Blade of Fiery Lamentations, Sionachie's Partisan, Breath of Harmony, Songblade of the Eternal, and Rapier of Sombre Notes, along with the Bard Epic Weapons.
- Can wield a few weapons that are otherwise only usable by intelligence casters, such as the original and updated versions of the Staff of Writhing and Orb of Tishan.
- Notably cannot wield most of the high-damage one-hand weapons, such as the fist weapons and knight weapons.
- Cannot wield most of the high-level warrior aggro weapons, but can use some of the mid-level ones, such as the Blade of Carnage.
- Can wield a very small number of two-handers from early in the game's history, such as the Goranga Spear, but otherwise has no meaningful access to two-handed weapons.

Defenses and Accessories[]

The bard ...
- Uses plate armor in most high-level loot distribution systems. Also has access to some low- and mid-level chain and leather armor, including the Fungi Tunic.
- Can use most shields, although this prevents dual-wielding.
- Is counted as a hybrid class for charms and other equipment that are available based on class archetypes.

Instruments[]

Bards are the only class in the game that can wield held instruments, a type of equipment whose main reason for existing is to increase instrument resonance modifiers.
Although many classes can wear some equipment that has instrument resonances included among its modifiers, only bards can take advantage of the instrument resonance effect.

Should I Play a Bard?[]

Strengths[]

Casting while running is a huge advantage in numerous situations, particularly for pulling, kiting, and crowd control.
Along with enchanters, bards are one of only two classes who can consistently mesmerize foes of comparable level.
At level 63 and beyond, bards gain access to the Fading Memories AA ability, which tremendously increases a bard's pulling and content skipping options.
The Selo's Accelerando line of songs make bards the best short-term outdoor runspeed buffers in the game, although the necessity of this has decreased somewhat in recent years with the advent of LoN mounts.
Bards are the only class that can continuously provide overhaste to their party members. Currently, groups with a bard are the only ones who can continuously reach the 125% hard cap on melee haste.
Likewise, they have some of the strongest damage shield buffs in the game, and stack with all all other forms of it.
They can usually solo effectively, being among the most powerful kiters in the middle levels and remaining quite respectable in that capacity throughout the game. See chant kiting and swarm kiting for examples of bard kiting strategies.
They're an important class for maximizing raid DPS when setting up groups for an event.
The patch-added Melody command allows bards to twist songs automatically, making the class much more accessible than it originally was for newbies, boxers, and people who are used to playing other classes.

Weaknesses[]

Bards can fill almost any role in a group, but not every role at the same time. The twelve second duration of most bard songs means that the party can expect to have, at most, four of them running at once under normal circumstances. As a result, bards must learn when to focus on what, in order to be effective. When bards get it wrong, or when their party messes up their efforts, the result can be very messy.
The short duration of most songs can be particularly troublesome when crowd control is suddenly needed. When multiple foes are attacking, the bard typically must stop twisting some of his or her regular songs (usually a buff) in order to use mesmerization or charm songs instead. This can create awkward situations in which a group whose damage output was very high (due to buff songs) suddenly experiences a massive drop in its offensive abilities when the bard needs to mesmerize several foes at once. Any problems with this are made even worse if respawn occurs during the fight because the party is now taking too long to make kills, or if the healer runs out of mana due to the fight lasting a long time and the bard's mana regeneration songs suddenly ceasing to be maintained.
- Because of this weakness, most bards work hard to keep pulls single, or at least thoroughly under the party's control, such as through chain pulling or domino pulling.
There are times when the three-second casting time of a crowd-control song feels just a bit too long.
- However, at very high levels, this is eased by the Dirge of the Sleepwalker AA.
Relatively speaking, the normal melee damage output of a bard is not very high. Much of this discrepancy results from the limited double attack and triple attack capabilities of bards compared to other melee classes who use the same weapon types.
- Certain disciplines, AA abilities, and clickies can greatly help with this at higher levels.
Although the Fading Memories ability is an extraordinarily powerful pulling tool, there are times when a regular feign death ability would be much more practical, or even necessary in order to survive. Bards do not have such an ability.

Bugs and Nuisances[]

Due to the way /melody works, using an item's clicky effect while /melody is active will often cause the bard's song gems to lock-up temporarily. If they lock up, the fastest way to fix them is typically to type /stopsong and resume using one's /melody hotkey again. This is most often only a problem in the high level game--for instance, when using the clicky on the bard's Epic 1.5 or Epic 2.0 weapons.
- This glitch does not seem to be a problem with clickies that have an instant casting time.

Trivia[]

Among the classes with mana, bards use their mana for the smallest number of ability lines.
Bards get the Meditate skill (originally granted them for the purpose of helping them memorize songs a little faster), but since it is capped at a skill of 1, it has no appreciable effect on the bard's mana regeneration.

Combat Skills[]

LEVEL	TRAINED	SKILL	PRE-50 CAP	POST-50 CAP
1	No	1 Hand Blunt	200	270
1	No	1 Hand Slashing	200	270
1	No	Bind Wound	150	200
1	No	Defense	200	270
1	No	Hand to Hand	100	110
1	No	Offense	200	270
1	No	Piercing	200	270
1	No	Throwing	113	120
10	Yes	Dodge	125	180
17	Yes	Dual Wield	210	260
26	Yes	Instill Doubt	100	100
53	Yes	Parry	75	195
58	Yes	Riposte	75	80

Musical Skills[]

LEVEL	TRAINED	SKILL	PRE-50 CAP	POST-50 CAP
1	No	Singing	235	235
5	Yes	Percussion	235	235
8	Yes	String	235	215
10	Yes	Meditate	1	1
11	Yes	Brass	235	235
14	Yes	Wind	235	235

Tradeskills[]

LEVEL	TRAINED	SKILL	PRE-50 CAP	POST-50 CAP
1	No	Baking	250	300
1	No	Brewing	250	300
1	Yes	Fletching	250	300
1	No	Jewel Crafting	250	300
1	No	Pottery	250	300
1	No	Smithing	250	300
1	No	Tailoring	250	300

Language Skills[]

LEVEL	TRAINED	SKILL	PRE-50 CAP	POST-50 CAP
1	Yes	Barbarian	100	100
1	Yes	Combine	100	100
1	No	Common Tongue	100	100
1	Yes	Dark Speech	100	100
1	Yes	Dark Tongue	100	100
1	Yes	Dwarven	100	100
1	Yes	Elder Dragon	100	100
1	Yes	Elder Erudian	100	100
1	Yes	Elder Tier'Dal	100	100
1	Yes	Elven	100	100
1	Yes	Erudian	100	100
1	Yes	Faerie	100	100
1	Yes	Froglok	100	100
1	Yes	Giant	100	100
1	Yes	Gnoll	100	100
1	Yes	Gnomish	100	100
1	Yes	Goblin	100	100
1	Yes	Halfling	100	100
1	Yes	High Elf	100	100
1	Yes	Kobold	100	100
1	Yes	Lizardman	100	100
1	Yes	Ogre	100	100
1	Yes	Orcish	100	100
1	Yes	Thieves Cant	100	100
1	Yes	Tier'Dal	100	100
1	Yes	Troll	100	100

Other Skills[]

LEVEL	TRAINED	SKILL	PRE-50 CAP	POST-50 CAP
1	No	Alcohol Tolerance	270	200
1	No	Beg	200	200
1	No	Fishing	200	200
1	No	Sense Heading	200	200
1	No	Swimming	200	200
12	Yes	Forage	55	55
17	Yes	Sneak	75	75
20	Yes	Sense traps	75	120
24	Yes	Safe Fall	40	40
25	Yes	Hide	50	50
30	Yes	Disarm Traps	100	100
35	Yes	Track	100	100
40	Yes	Pick Lock	100	125