From what I remember bards telling me .back.in.the.day. Bard songs genned no agro else bards would just die since they'd would be ticking agro every 3 seconds. One of my bard friends wanted a blade of carnage in case she had to tank. But not 100% sure if that is true.
Bard aggro was severely nerfed during Luclin. This is because of AE songs. Even procs like slow/stun/snare on weapons do not generate much aggro on bards. The only way for bards to hold aggro is with damage (chant dots) and pure hate procs (BoC proc enraging blow). Astuce
Back in the day on live, used chants and a BoC to tank with on bard main. But my combo ended up being BST-Bard-Cleric-MAG with BST tanking in POP BST fully time geared was the bomb.
Resurrecting this thread to give my 2 cp. Yes I tank in my trio without issue. When I am tanking I am not there to buff the group, I twist mana song along with Occlusion of Sound and Angstlich's Assonance. I continue to slow the mob with Angstlich's Assonance even if the slow hasn't dropped yet. If you are grouping with me and we do not have a tank then do not compete with me for aggro or I will lose and you will keep aggro for the entire fight. Snare song doesn't seem to add any aggro as far as I can tell. It has to be Angstlich's Assonance or aggro will be all over the place. I know bards aren't tanks but they are good battle bards for a trio of necro / bard / cleric. A few days ago I trio'd the "A Kromzek Captain" in Western Wastes unslowed because he is too resistant but the slow song still seemed to keep aggro well as long as I feigned from time to time with my necro. Weapon procs do not seem to do anything. I have tried using stun proc weapons and other random "aggro" weapons without much luck. The trick with weapons on a bard is keep a really fast weapon in the main hand and you will get more aggro than a proc weapon. Also after a bard gets close to 1200 AC it seems to be much easier to take hits. I believe this was Jazper's outlook on Al'kabor as well. He and I once discussed AC being king for bards no matter what you are doing. Pulling / tanking / charming AC helps for it all.
what about mez for aggro? would double-benefit as a caster interrupt. only downside is needing a wind instrument, but epic takes care of that, right? I'm like the biggest AK era bard novice of all time (didn't have one on live until TSS+) so just theorycrafting. Also with luclin, what about toetwister? should it not be generating crazy aggro?
Shield of songs, Screech, Bereavement only generate like 40 threat. Fufils does like 30 initial and then 65 each consequent tick and I think that's the highest. Mallets and Puppet strings also generate 0 threat. It's not realistic that a bard could maintain agro vs any melee dps class.
This. Angstlich's Assonance generates 25 threat to start, and 45 threat per tick. The threat it's generating after the song lands is just from the damage itself. It seems silly to me that Bards, from a softcap/returns perspective, are #3 tanks in EQ below Warriors and Knights, but yet they have possibly the lowest threat generation in the game right now.
So you want the class that can swarm kite, pump mana, boost resists, group DA, Selo's, debuff resists, slow, charm, mez, pacify, haste, group lev/invis/runspeed/, eye of zomm, locate corpse, highsun, bind sight, and are the best pullers in PoP... you want that class to also be a top tier tank and hate generator? Why not also give them ports, top tier melee and nukes, and CH and just get rid of all the other classes? SMH
That was kinda overly dramatic. The low threat generation works in a bards favor, imo. There's zero consequence to a bard spamming any spell they want. Strings, Mallets, etc, etc generate zero threat for the bard. Procs only generate the threat from the damage itself. SoD for example generates zero threat from the stun portion of the spell. Even Shield of Songs generates 40 threat per group member that passes the witness check. The bards softcap/returns aren't really a great indication of how they tank either, just merely interesting that they have the 3rd highest, but it's almost wasted due to the inability to generate anywhere close to a respectable amount of threat. You also forgot group Feign Death.
I don't think anyone was asking for changes sir. This was only a discussion to help out the original poster for his trio with a bard. P.S. - You may bow to the master class and all around BAMF's of Norrath.
Ah yes, Thott. I always enjoyed reading his rants and thoughts. Tho I never actually played a bard seriously until AK. I was happy being a newb rogue I do recall that on my old live server (Bristlebane) Vabtoo, a Arch Overseers monk tanked Fennin Ro in-era (a ranger also did it later on, in-era) , so I imagine it was possible for a bard to tank Fennin Ro It's probably just a matter of fine tuning the CH rot and giving the "untank" enough of an agro lead time.
Seems bards can generate normal threat from stuff like Bladestopper and Prayers of life. I bet that would get expensive fast =p
If Bards generate normal threat from song damage, why not just twist chants? 4 chants with an offhand Drum of the Beast would be 200-300 damage per tick I guess. That's 40-50 hate per second, which isn't bad at all . . .
That is a bug then. We tested this on AK after Torven posted his AE Kite video, specifically with the Mosquito boots, and it generated basically 0 hate compared to a an SK kiter using them.
It looks like 293 threat a tick if you can land and reliably keep all 4 of them up. Drums would be main only, so you'd be limited to dual wield for melee, and that wouldn't be a whole lot of threat. I feel like it would be doable in group situations if you're not boxing. Still gonna be slow to build a decent threat buffer though.
I notice my group heal/clarity songs generate some inital aggro - probably because they are hitting my necro puller. On that note, would a Rune proc, like that of a PGT generate hate for the bard? Or maybe a lifetap proc?
Chiming in as someone who played a bard on live, had a bard on EQMac and as a bard on Takp (not that I've played much) - keep in mind that bards tank ok until you get bashed and your song is interrupted... And start it up again, and get kicked and your song is interrupted... Start it up again, and get tripled or quadded and your song is interrupted... I've gotten killed so many times, because I couldn't get a song off, or struggled to pull aggro back no matter how hard I tried, without mezz or charm, because someone had to chain heal me as I was stunned. Bards CAN tank ok. But you've gotta be ready for them to go down like a piece of paper or you'll get caught unawares. Focus on dots for damage and snare/slow and you'll do ok for aggro (except for well twinked melee or overzealous nukers). Have mezz and charm ready for emergencies/snap aggro control. When used to their full potential you can keep more than one mob on the go all the time (using charm pets as part of killing), or little to no down time doing straight melee.
It's been far too long since this thread got necro'd. Question: Does an instrument mod change the aggro from bard dots? I'd assume the answer is "no" based on Torven's aggro novella, but there is always the "because bards" wild-card. Instrument mods are not specifically mentioned, and I believe that they do work differently than focus items by giving a fixed damage amount rather than a variable amount. The reason I ask is because people were assuming ~300 per tick with 4 songs, but the base damage of our top 4 dots is only 42/tick. That would give base and possibly total 168 hate/tick by twisting 4 61+ dots. Honestly, keeping up 4 dots while tanking and boxing is a pretty unreasonable expectation to begin with.
Currently in our eqemu the instrument mod does change the hate amount. I don't know if it's correct to use the modded damage for hate or if it should use the normal amount. I had changed this a long time ago for focus effects so that DoT casters aren't generating more hate with focus effects, same as nukes don't make more hate for getting a focus boost or a crit. This probably should be the same way but I don't know.
Torven tells me that increased damage from instruments does increase hate for bards so this appears to be correctly implemented already.