New Class - Bard

I like the idea of having Bard's as a new class. I think they would fit in perfectly with the storyline and in-game atmosphere.

Here's a list of possible attributes:

Musical Ability (Primary) - Similar to divine favor for the monk, in that it will help enhance other bard skills. Might have a handful of skills associated with it. Also could act as a requirement for bardic weapons (Heavy Flute of Sundering anyone? )

Performance - A whole list of song-type skillset that would act similar to warrior shouts. That is, AOE, but would last a lot longer, similar to ranger spirits. This would be the most fun skillset IMO.

Agility - Overall agility score could help with AC... but that might be too powerful. The skillset would include some dance type skills, that either add extra melee damage or help evade attacks.

Bardic Knowlege - These skills would stem from the bard's knowlege of old and forgotten ways, and just little things that could help every adventurer.
They could include some identification skills... where you might be able to see current mana/hp levels of enemies, or the exact enchants/conditions/hexes each foe is suffering from. I'm also seeing this as a type of protections skillset. Maybe a few condition/hex's could fit in as well. Knowlege is power!

I love playing bard classes, and just think of all the new dance parties in town with actual musical instruments! lol

That might work, but how would they fight? Plus, the female bards should strip dance. lol

Good idea

Well I was thinking bards could have some melee and some ranged stuff....
Maybe like short swords, rapiers, daggers for melee and slings or something as ranged.

Maybe add a 5th attribute called Battle Insight or General Weaponry. This could let bards use swords, axes, hammers, bows and existing weapons now but with a minor penalty. Lets say that they have a 10 in this attribute. They would be able to use axes with a 10 req, but only do 3/4 of the damage that a warrior would.
A skill could be something like Axe Focus that would do a little extra damage. It would sort of act like conjure fire on an axe with a flaming axe haft.

I know in Ragnarok Online they had bards as a division of the archer class. Made them a veritile character, because with musical instuments you could do enchantments for an area, or use the instrument as a melee type weapon. Then you could swap to a bow and have a ranged attack. They even went as far as to make the female charcters dancer instead of bards, then you could combine skills between the 2 of them. Not saying guild wars should copy this, but it was a system that worked, and would be worth looking into.

I think it would be a good idea

That'd be pretty cool. Es[ecially to see like a travelling W/Mo with a Bard at his side singin his tale.

"OH this is the tale if I AM A GOD TANK!!!"

And the abilities you came up with were good too, I'd be a Bard!

I have a lot of experience with bards being that I am a bard on FFXI (Level 75 ).
The first two attributes sound great but wouldn't it be better to have it divided into categories just like spells?

Maybe have like the Performance/Musical ability as the primary attribute. It will increase the length of songs by a certain number of seconds or percentage, maybe decrease the cast time, or improve the AOE (from my experience the aoe improvement makes it harder to seperate different groups such as casters and fighters.)

Then split into three different song categories: Attack bonuses, defense bonuses, and debuff songs (of course have better names.)

Attack bonuses include accuracy up, haste, attack up, attributes up, etc. Of course you'd have to limit the amount of songs one person can have. Maybe make it 2, just like FFXI?

Defense bonuses would include health regeneration, mana regeneration, defense up, etc.

And finally debuff songs would include health degeneration, mana degeneration, defense down, accuracy down, etc.

And then another support class would be added, this game needs more than just monk
If this was added as a new class, I would so better enjoy this game.

Take out Bardic Knowlage put it in General Weaponry

I think they could fight similar to how a Mes fights.

Rather than give them new weapons, let the Bardic Knowledge act as a fake skill base.
I.e. If they wanted to use a Tower shield that req 10 tactics and a sword that required 10 swordmanship, they need 10 in Bardic Knowledge to use them effectively.
They would only be able to do this with weapons /shields / offhand items though.
There are armour class should be based somewhere between a caster and a ranger, similar to Necro would be good.
Also bear in mind, they would not have the skills to go with the weapons, but it would make for a very versitile charater class. With a good mix or abilities with a reasonable base damage output.

I like that idea Shadow, use the Bardic Knowlege to be able to use existing weapons... makes more sense that way. They wouldn't be too powerful, because they wouldn't be able to use those skills associated with them.

I was thinking there could be a couple different 'steal skill' or 'copy skill' skills. Where the bard could immitate a skill/spell (non-elite) that was just used on them. Mesmers have somthing like this now.

The Bard armor could be really cool, very colorful.

Head: Hats or Face Paint
Chest: Big,colorful,puffy shirts, i'm thinking something gyspy-like
Legs: Again gypsy like
Hands: Rings & Bracelets
Feet: Boots/Shoes

The offhands should definitely be musical instruments: flutes, mandolins, harps, lyres, reed pipes, etc...

Can you imagine a W/B wandering the landscape, in full plate mail.... carrying a mandolin......

I think a bard would be more or like a mesmer changing the battlefield. But more in a monk kind of way. Giving you party advatages. In non pvp you could conjure creatures and take them to your side.

Now just some thoughts of course, I think A bard would be fun, but it should be thought out real well.

I am also an expierienced FFXI Bard, and we already have a very similiar job class.

Necromancer.

Their support comes in both Buffs and Debuffs

Attack Bonus -
BUFFS; Order of Pain, Order of the Vampire, Dark Fury
DEBUFFS Barbs, Weaken Armor, Rigor Mortis, Mark of Pain

There is no need for accuracy bonus because everyone has 100% accuracy. That is, unless you consider the stances and spells that give them a chance to block/evade, in which case Rigor Mortis is an Accuracy up bonus for your teamates, but is a debuff. I think adding a "haste" type spell to Necroes would be good, but not really required since Rangers and Warriors already have decent skills to increase their attack rate. No need for attribute ups because we don't go by the standard stat system (STR, INT, MND, LCK, DEX, etc, etc).

Defence Bonus -
BUFFS Well of Power (Energy and Health), Well of Blood (Health), Blood is Power (Energy), Blood Ritual (Energy), Order of the Vampire (Health), Tainted Flesh.
DEBUFFS Faintheartedness, Enfeeble, Enfeebling Blood, Shadow of Fear, Price of Failure

The only thing that is missing here is an Armor Up buff, but I guess you can't have everything?

Debuffs -

...

Holy crap, there are too many. No way I'm listing all of them.



Anyways, my point is that Necromancer makes one hell of a support class if you use it right. Ashame they get so underated.

I like the Necromancer's Debuff system better than the FFXI Bard's. Sure, a lot of the spells are situational, requiring either a corpse or a health sacrifice, but that's what makes it so fun. The Bards in FFXI were Overpowered and BORING! I say that A.Net just adds a few more buff spells to Necromancer instead of creating another profession that will only take the Necromancer's place.

HA!

I do not agree- this would give them a GIGANTIC equipment advantage over the other classes. Can you imagine a charecter with the ability to carry AND USE any of; 10req eternal bow w/ 15-28, a 10req sword w/ 15-22 and a +30 life Shield in the offhand, AND a 19-35 hammer; switching amongst them as needed?

I believe the only way to do this would be a new set of weapons

I personally feel that comming from playing EQ 1 many years ago, and playing a bard to max at the time of lvl 50, and then 60, and then i stopped, that the bard from eq was quite a good way of setting up how songs worked.
To use them requires finess and the ability to pick the correct ones. It also ment that at any time you could change what was helping your team, and hurting the other team just by choosing a different song.

I think that rather then having them last a longer time, make it really short, but take NO mana but to have more then 1 going you would need to "twist" them. Now adays the bard in EQ is quite different with a twisting macro and stuff. I feel that using the old ways where more songs took more experience of the person playing would be exactly what Anet was shooting for because it would mean that you HAVE to know what you are doing to be a 1/2 decient bard, and if you dont, it would show REALLY fast.

That's true dog, but you have to remember that they would have NONE of the associated skills. So no hammer knockdowns, no final thrust or bleeding, no oath shot, etc...

So yes, they would do the base damage, but with none of the skills it wouldn't be overpowered.

i would like this, just to hear wonderful music as i fight, and know its actually doing something.

A Bard class is a good idea. It's really similar to how Mesmers, and to a lesser extent, Necromancers play. If Anet decided to make a good Bard class, similar to what Ragnarok Online has, it'd pretty much be the Mesmer, done right.

Speaking of Mesmers, it wouldn't take much tweaking to turn them into Bards, themselves. Give them lutes or fiddles as foci/weapons, and just tweak some of the skills to tie in to the instruments. I.E.: Imagined Burden. Instead of just slowing down the enemy, give a percent chance to actually make the enemy start dancing, rendering them incapable of attacking unless they take damage. This skill could even have an area of effect. For that matter, why the hell is a skill like Pacifism under the Monk's list?

Now that I think of it, though, how could anyone justify letting a Snow Ettin, for example, drop a perfectly useable harp? It could get kinda silly. They'd need to put special merchants (like there aren't enough already) in cities who can make instruments from raw materials.

pacifism is for a monk in case theyre being pounded mercilessly by a w/mo.

anyway, its nice to see a class that takes some imagination.

p.s. and i think its perfectly reasonable for a griffon which has no oposable thumbs to drop a perfectly useable sword.

oh yeah!!! The women of Lineage 2 are hot coz of their skimpy armors, so this game must have too

oh oh, this is 13 and up game, right?... oh well nevermind

/signed

I would LOVE to see a Bard class... takes me back to the good old days of "A Bard's Tale"