Hello everyone, I've recently started on TAKP, and I have my trio up to level 43. (Bard, Druid, Necro). So far I've been tanking with the Bard slowing and hasting, healing and dotting with the Druid, summoning pet and dotting with the Necro. Now that mobs are starting to get a bit tougher, I'm wondering if I should switch tatics. This is my first time ever playing a bard, and I've avoided learning how to swam kite since all the swaming guides I've found rely on using the strafe key. Can bards swarm on Takp? Gear wise, my bard has a few items from the bazaar, AC is just over 800, 1300 Hps unbuffed. Using Cebilite Croaking Dirk and Orb of Tishan for weapons. The Druid and Necro are in newbie gear. So basically I'm asking for advice on how I can use this trio in a better way for just general leveling and fun playing the game. I've started doing some root rotting (root with druid, casting dots with all three characters) and it seems to be ok but I'm not certain if that's best or not. Should I be swarm kiting? Fear kiting? Should I be in only outdoor zones or can I do dungeon crawls with these characters? So if you guys and gals have any suggestions on what you would do, I'd very much apprecaite any advice you could offer. Thank you.
I've never been able to get AE dotting of swarms to work here. I always have some sort of glitch or hiccup and the mobs get within melee range. Charm swarming is probably the most efficient way to kill with a bard. Gather a group of social mobs, charm one to make it your pet, send it at the swarm and invis right before it dies so you can finish it off with dots and get xp. Rinse and repeat until you run out of mobs. Keep the swarm size manageable so your pet doesn't die so fast you can't invis reliably. It essentially leaves the druid and necro out though. Fear kiting is viable, for sure, since you have snare on all three toons, and then you're not taking damage. Root rotting is also definitely a good option. You could easily have multiple mobs dying at once with two rooters and 3 dotters. I think the problem you're going to run into with this trio with a bard tank is the unreliability of bard slow while you're getting hit and possibly interrupted. That and bard slow isn't that good. Having another toon that can slow is essentially the only way I've been able to continue tanking with my trio of bard/druid/enchanter. I'm not sure how much longer it's going to hold up, but my druid is one level away from the druid CH, so we'll see. If you fight undead mobs, the necro could be your slower. And you've got the bard for pacify, mez, charm. The necro can fd, and in undead zones also mez and charm, all 3 can snare and you've got the druid for evacs, so dungeons are always on the table for you. Worst case scenario, summon corpses.
Tough with a bard in a trio as your main tank (my main is also a bard). One option you might have at low levels is letting the necro pet tank, heal it with the druid, and use your chant spells on the bard to do additional damage out of melee range. That said, your bard will always have trouble holding agro in melee - Even if you pick up something like a Blade of Carnage.
Yeah, with that trio the 'nonlinear' exp path is charm swarming. The fastest 'linear' path is probably aggro kiting or fear kiting on the necro with the druid DPS'ing and the bard rolling mana song, a braindead one-hit wonder. I guess you could also quad on the druid with the bard rolling mana and the necro twitching; that might actually be faster.
If you REALLY wanna have your bard tank swap the high aggro necro for a lower aggro mage. You still get the benefits of a pet but w/o the high APM/aggro of a necro comparatively. Then you can spam druid CH's on the bard - run DS (and not slow) - and let the pet do some work for you.
I use a very similar setup when I play, but I use a magician instead of a necro. My bard tanks fine, and the magician pet is reliable aggro control. I transitioned from another setup to the bard tanking around 54-55 when I subbed out my enchanter for a druid. I can describe how that went. Mid 50's to 60 were spent in seb. I did bugs and disco until the bard was about 57 and all three characters had their run-speed AAs. He was able to tank all of this content pretty easily, and extra dps from a charmed pet was usually helping. I found the illis wizards to be my favorite pets. At 57, I was wearing a full suit of Moktor armor (you'll unfortunately miss out on the rotting Moktor armor now that PoP is out). My only really nice pieces were a loyalist shield of honor in my back slot and my epic. I made it down to juggs and was able to take them one at a time. The exp was better than disco and bugs, but if I got more than one, I was usually toast. I couldn't even mez them until I was level 58. The mage epic pet needed to offtank and supply all the dps while I slowed both mobs with the bard. I rode this to 60 and a few AAs. The kills got much faster with level 60 and the AAs. At 60, I was able to tank the arena in Kael pretty effectively, and I started farming gear. I wore the loyalist shield of honor as a shield for tanking Gkrean, his 2 cleric buddies, and the 3 Protectors of Zek (might be mis-remembering those mob names) that are in the path to him. I have much better gear now than when I was in the Arena. Most of the gear was purchased. I made a decent bit of plat by farming SG at 60. People must hate the zone because the gear from there feels overpriced for the effort required. I killed Fellspine enough to farm a baker's dozen haste belts, and I farmed 4 drums of the beast. Getting dire charm on the druid wasn't recommended, but I went that route anyway. There are servant manatees that can be dire charmed, and they could out-dps the rest of my group at times. These days, I can comfortably tank mobs in PoP. I killed quite a few level 63 spiders in nightmare looking for EPs. I was able to barely take these with my 62 bard using a shield in my secondary for the AC bonus. Faults' comment above about DS over slow probably works for him, and it worked well in SG. I doubt my unguilded bard could tank PoP without slow. I was very happy to get Melody of Mischief as my second EP turn-in, and I bought Requiem of Time as soon as I saw it for sale in the Baz. I'm looking forward to gaining access to more zones and seeing what is possible to tank as a bard. I may level up that chanter and an SK for mobs that need more dps and tanking than a mage/bard combo can supply, but I enjoy it for now. You can probably find groups with your versatile setup as well. I should mention that I did this all with the safety net of an epic cleric and KEI enchanter for wipes. There were a lot of wipes while I was learning the camps, and I would have been very frustrated without access to those characters. It will be nice for you to have a necro for rezzes and summons depending on the zone.
Thanks to everyone that responded with their ideas and advice. It is truely apprecaited. I'm now trying to decide if I should stick with this Bard, Druid, Necro trio or switch it up to a more traditional set up like SK, Shaman, and Necro. Thanks again and have a great day.
I forgot to add that if I had PoP available, I probably would have skipped seb in my mid-fifties. I imagine, you could easily clear out the nightstalker camp in PoN with your level 39 charm. It would be insane exp for a full group at that level, and you'd just be concentrating on one box. You'd preferably have boots of the mosquito, drums of the beast, and a main hand flute or your epic. The low level bugs in Shadeweaver's drop an ivory horn that can be used in the main hand.
With the bard main tanking what sort of a song setup are you all using? And are you trying to single pull most of the time or pulling a few at a time and charming/mezzing? It sounds like with the mage using a DS and CH going out then slow isn't really needed?
I was using slow, mystic shielding, and chant of flame, pulling single mobs. If I get 2 mobs, I charmed one to help kill his friend first. I'm sure other more experience players will have a different setup. Would be interesting to hear about the different setups.
With mobs that don't hit that hard, I run a DS song + amp and chants, no slow. If they're slowed, I just do 5 chants. I usually keep Selos in slot 6, pac/mez in slot 7, and charm in slot 8. Keep in mind I have a druid for snare and enchanter for haste. Amped DS song + druid/mage DS is no joke.
