Where and How to Use a Provo Mage

Absolutely, you wont reach the same gp per hour as bloods at Cyclops Valley.

And for @Edward Skye, if you try titans get used to pulling them from offscreen and learn to time it right. Ideally you want 10+ fighting together, Cyclops Valley is quite a big place so if you find only 3 or so nearby run around until you find a bigger group and provoke that instead. By the time the bigger groupings have been cleared there will have been respawns bolstering the smaller groups. Keep your magic reflect up and pre-cast Invis a lot and you'll do fine, if you need help or want me to show you around there let me know on IRC.

I don't think this has been mentioned but Hythloth 4 Daemons/Elder Gazers is okay also, but you're likely to have line of sight issues down there.

I recommend training up the virtue sacrifice so that you can self-rez up to 3 times per week once you knight the virtue.

Here is a link to more detail on the sacrifice virtue:
http://uorforum.com/threads/a-guide-to-virtues-sacrifice.1048/

You will also want to build a character on a 2nd account so you can just recall in and rez yourself.. you are allowed up to three accounts on this server!

Some more advice for a provo mage.. a provo mage is not really useful for much other than PVM, so if you want maximize your PVM ability, I recommend going full bard - in other words, music + provo/discordance/peace. You get a barding bonus for having all the bard skills GM'd which comes in VERY handy while dealing with big game like balrons and bosses. Discordance is a highly underrated skill (wait for the replies) as it drops all skills AND stats of mobs by 25%!! This means your spells, the mobs spells, anything that causes damage causes 25% more damage toa disco'd mob and they cause 25% less damage after disco'd to you. This can really speed things up in areas with more than 2 spawns.. if two spawn like @ balrons, you just wait until they get low on HP, then disco or if one is killing the other faster, you disco the stronger one to even the fight. Disco adds a lot of options to your repertoire, don't let anyone talk you out of it!

My bard's build is all GM:
Music
Provo
Disco
Peace
Mage
Eval
Meditation

You gotta keep MAGIC REFLECT spell up and back off the high end mobs when your reflect is worn off otherwise they will kill you fast with spells.
I've jumped in a few discussions here on tamers making the most gold and I do have a tamer but my bard runs circles around my tamer for gold/hr.
I get told I don't know hot to play a tamer but I believe those people don't know how to play a bard, considering the same people tell me disco is a waste of skill points meaning they're not even playing a full bard.. lol.

I don't necessarily agree on everything @Everlast said, but I will agree that Disco is a great skill.

So question... Do you gain a bonus for barding skills that increases with each one you GM? ...or is the bonus applied once you have ALL of them GMed?

For each one.

@Pirul, do you know exactly what the bonus is? I always forget.. I was thinking it was +5% success chance with ALL of the barding skills combined - is it +5% per GM'd bard skill?
And do you know if that is in addition to the base 5% chance on big game bosses - for example the Purveyor of Darkness?

http://uorforum.com/threads/guide-to-the-bardic-arts.2912/#post-18740

It is only Disco that adds +5% to Provo or Peace. Disco is the studmuffin. Oh, and the +5% is for anything, as far as I know.

From @Ahirman's link (thanks):

• Discordance
  • Modified the success chance of the discord skill to have a bonus to success should you meet the following conditions
    • 100 Discordance
    • 100 Musicianship
    • A target with a barding difficulty of over 100 (calculated after instrument bonus's are applied)
  • Should these conditions be meet, no matter how difficult the monster you will always have at least a 10% chance to succeed.
  • Keep in mind the discordance skill's duration is based on the barding difficulty of the targeted creature. So even if you succeed on a very hard creature, the effects will be short.
• Provoke
  • Modified the success chance of the provoke skill to have a bonus to success should you meet the following conditions
    • 100 Provocation
    • 100 Musicianship
    • A target with a barding difficulty of over 100 (calculated after instrument bonus's are applied)
  • Should these conditions be meet, no matter how difficult the monster you will always have at least a 5% chance to succeed.
  • Should you also have 100 Discordance you will receive an additional 5% bonus to success.
  • Should you only succeed due to the bonus chance you will see a slightly different message indicating you "barely" succeeded in your provocation attempt.
• Peacemaking
  • Modified the success chance of the peacemaking skill to have a bonus to success should you meet the following conditions
    • 100 Peacemaking
    • 100 Musicianship
    • A target with a barding difficulty of over 100 (calculated after instrument bonus's are applied)
  • Should these conditions be meet, no matter how difficult the monster you will always have at least a 5% chance to succeed.
  • Should you also have 100 Discordance you will receive an additional 5% bonus to success.
  • Should you only succeed due to the bonus chance you will see a slightly different message indicating you "barely" succeeded in your peacemaking attempt.

The only exception I take to the above is it mentions the effects of discordance will be short on higher end creatures.
This is not true.. the effect of discordance is based on 3 things, line of site - life of creature - life of bard (you)
The only three things that break discordance is if LoS is lost for 12 seconds straight, OR the creature dies, OR the person who disco'd the creature dies and then disco wears off 12 secs later, unless you rez before it breaks.
I think there is also a distance as sometimes when I gate to bank, when I get back after only 4 or 5 seconds, the monsters will have lost disco and their provo. I have found if I break LoS and then gate in/out to bank, and then get back in LoS within 12 seconds, neither disco nor provo is broken. Odd.

I will say that the 20% success chance bonus indicated from the link seems high.. it takes quite a few tries to disco high end bosses like Azure Drags, PoD's, AW's boss (forget name), etc.. (actually would be +25% - 5% base+10%disco+5%peace+5%provo)
25% is WAY to high.. it takes 10-20 tries on high end bosses!

Or is the bonus for each skill only for the skill and not in addition to the other skills?
For example - the base 5% chance + 10% when attempt disco (assuming all else qualifies)
-OR- +5% base and +5% chance when attempt provo
-OR- +5% base and +5% chance when attempt peace

Or is the OR an AND?

I don't know where you get those numbers. What I gather is that no matter how difficult you always have a 5% chance of success to provoke IF GM music, GM Provo. Ontop of that, if you are also GM Disco you get the +5% to get you to a 10% chance of provo. That's it. That's the highest it gets.

For peace, it's the same. You will always have at least 5% chance of peacing a mob IF GM Music, GM Peace. GM Disco adds 5% to that.

Provo and Peace offer no bonus to Disco.

Man this community is so helpful.

On disco, my original build was Disco in place of Eval. Now I basically have Resist and Hiding in lieu of disco and peace.

I love hiding. Has saved me a few times with PKs and even one elder gazer pop, hiding instantly is great. Would Invis provide that same level of safety?

I'd say no. Invis only lasts 2 minutes. Plus you need to cast it.

That was my thinking as well, and thus why I would be loathe to give up hiding. I would consider dropping resist for disco if that would make the build more useful, but I was doing fine with gazers until making completely unforced errors.

To paraphrase the post detailing barding success chances:
Discordance
Should these conditions be meet, no matter how difficult the monster you will always have at least a 10% chance to succeed
Provoke
Should you also have 100 Discordance you will receive an additional 5% bonus to success.
Peacemaking
Should these conditions be meet, no matter how difficult the monster you will always have at least a 5% chance to succeed.

• Should you also have 100 Discordance you will receive an additional 5% bonus to success

Which now that I broke it down like that, it does seem obvious it is per skill, guess I read the bonus details too fast or too inebriated the first time

If you want to experience the bardic arts, the first thing you need to do is build a full bard.
IF you do that, you will find skills like hiding and resist useless - for a BARD.

But besides that .. I can't think of any reason a pvm bard or mage would want hiding. There are many other ways to 'outsmart' spawn!

I agree on the lack of need for hiding. I prefer resist/eval simply because I'm wreckless and for spawn management. I know when I can combo-kill a thera avenger or ophid matriarch.

Honestly while I agree with you that a bard should not need hiding for spawn management, I can see why/how someone would like hiding purely for its usefulness as a "timeout" for going to the bathroom, etc... But let's not also forget some people build characters not for their 100% usefulness, but also because they "like" certain skills or it fits the image they have for their character. In that sense, a shadowy rogue like bard makes sense.

With that said, I don't have hiding on either of my 3 bards.