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| Need Some Help With A Good Bard Build; Building | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 2 2013, 09:03 PM (774 Views) | |
| Kersus | Sep 4 2013, 09:19 PM Post #31 |
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Cutter
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Trixie is a full bard with the much hated 2 levels of shadow dancer everyone glares at you for taking because you felt a need to not die when the "target all squishies" Ai makes a beeline for you all the time. Anyway you wanna see broken? Song of requiem does NOT break stealth. have fun being a walking PBAoe bomb. While it's on cool down curse song, chorus of heroism and that bard song that makes everyone's AB as high as the tanks will suit you fine while you keep the +5 hit and damage aura on. Which is basically giving everyone a +10 str buff that stacks. Edit: the song I was thinking of was legionnaires March. Use that and everyone will want to buy you a beer. Especially the party rogues who now hit as much as your berserker fighters and kama monks. |
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| Mr_Otyugh | Sep 4 2013, 10:38 PM Post #32 |
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Bard is the class of supreme physical defense. With druid they have the highest AC potential of all classes (especially if dipped to the divine shield). However as has been suggested in this thread already, bard is highly versatile as a class. You can either go heavy armor with still spell, light armor or even medium armor (although arguably not worth it in most cases, you're already in great need of feats) Critical spells: - Mirror image - Displacement - Heroism/Greater Heroism Good to have spells: - Invisibility/Greater invis (mind you, they're subject to invis purge so it's inferior to displacement on terms of concealment) - Warcry - Freedom of Movement - Ethereal Visage (Greatly under appreciated protective spell, it IS very good. 1 round per level 25% concealment and negate 20 physical damage from almost everything? And it doesn't wear out like stoneskin either. Yes please.) - Energy Immunity - Haste - Amplify & Clairvoyance/Clairaudience (only if you train listen) - Joyful Noise (bards only weakness - silence... become immune to it = good. :P) - Bladeweave (for a melee bard, another 5% chance to screw your enemies, sure. Why not?) Critical feats: - Curse Song (the single best feat a bard can get.) - Song & Hymn of Requiem Good to have feats: - Lingering Song (not critical, you already have the songs. This just makes it less necessary to spam them. Choice of convenience, not of power.) - Extend Spell (not critical since it just increases duration, at high levels they last long enough to go through a fight anyway. Choice of convenience, not of power.) - Still Spell (If going for a heavy armor fighting style with shield, improves AC by a lot and you can still keep casting. - has additional benefit of being able to use spells from different spell levels to multiply some spell types quantity indirectly) - Chorus of Heroism (This is just a group support feat, the normal one works good enough if you intend to just concentrate on character itself.) - Combat Expertise & Improved Combat Expertise (The whole point of being best at defense is to have all the AC feats in general.) - Luck of Heroes (goes without saying... it's good for everyone.) - Power Attack & improved power attack (depending on build, power attacks can add to the damage potential quite a bit.) As for damage potential: - Divine might/epic divine might both obviously can add to the damage potential a lot. (despite the temptation to min/max for all out divine might... divine might is usually already enough and doesn't cripple your build all together.) - Power attacks. - Buffs; though not as potent as some other classes, they make them good enough. You won't ever be main damage dealer, but you'll outlive most of them. What I usually do with a bard is have a medium weapon. That way I can use either shield or use it with two hands as such switch between defense and offense. Add in power attack and combat expertise and you'll have even more versatility in combat. Next add inspirations and now you have even further. With divine might and shield you can add fourth layer of mix & match of offense and defense... that's the real strength of a bard, that you can choose best combination or go all out one way or another. |
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| Krayt | Sep 5 2013, 11:27 PM Post #33 |
Factotum
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Thanks for all your help guys. Really appreciate it. A tough choice here. Tossing in a few cleric levels for AC or going unrestricted for the insperations. DD for EMD, AA for some ranged sweetness. Had some thoughts about dual-wielding. Seemed good as it insperation bnous affect both weapons, lot of feats there but what about just taking two of them or so and switch to a shield when you have to? |
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| Mr_Otyugh | Sep 6 2013, 05:23 PM Post #34 |
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Arcane Archer generally is a bit overrated as a ranged class. It's far from essential since the benefits aren't that impressive compared to many other class benefits you could be taking... it's a class to pick to get AB, but not damage. If you want damage to an archer, then go for sneak attacks, favored enemy or spell/ability based damage sources. As for dual-wielding: Well, it's not generally advised to go that route, but I think it might be a nice characteristic quirk. By far it's not going to be optimal, since bards don't get that much damage dealt per hit anyway... while it's true you can compensate that with number of attacks, it's generally better to instead take improved power attack and wield a medium weapon with two hands to deal the damage in that case. It's not impossible to make that worthwhile on a dual-wielder either to be fair, it depends on the overall build. Say going for a.. hmm... bard 26/SB 3/whatever 1 (SD/cleric/fighter...). That way you can use light weapons or rapier for dual-wielding and get both the benefit of int and str to damage, in any case do not make the usual mistake of double int benefit through combat insight, you're a bard... it's better to just have say... 13-15 str and int and with items go for 18-20 both for nice +8-10 to damage without too costly investment statwise... it can also help quite a bit toward the end. |
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| Agony_Aunt | Sep 6 2013, 07:23 PM Post #35 |
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Get a Life
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Dunno, a Bard, once you have Hymn of Requiem can really do what he wants for the final levels. Why not throw in AA to get the high AB and a little better ranged damage? If you are going to cheese it anyway, and not planning on using offensive spells, multiclass with Cleric, wield a sling and shield and take Divine Might. Keep it ranged, and nasty, with decent AC. A lesser bard build, since people are throwing around excess cheese anyway, is Cleric 17/Bard 13 (or something thereabouts). Take auto-still thanks to your level 9 casting and cast Bard spells in full plate! To add a nice topping of Motzerella on top of the existing Stilton, drop 10 of those Cleric levels for Stormlord.
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| Stepped down as admin, but still lurking. | |
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| Mr_Otyugh | Sep 6 2013, 07:26 PM Post #36 |
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Hymn and Song of Requiem are good only against small number of enemies. Against masses they become suboptimal, both in healing groups and dealing damage to groups. So you shouldn't rely on that alone, not to mention it'd be a pain to get to epic levels if that was only thing you relied on. Archer quite literally needs real damage sources to be decent, that distance between you and the enemy is a lot shorter than it might seem especially if you can't kill a single foe during that distance... since they rarely are alone anyway. |
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![]](http://b2.ifrm.com/10754/109/0/f7002139/pipend.png)
have fun being a walking PBAoe bomb.




12:29 AM Jul 11