The Bard

I like the idea of buffing the firehorn (giggity) but maybe 10 SA and 3-4 tile range max.

I'm of the opinion that all three should have the same failure timer, 5s like Provocation (not sure exactly on peace) and 10s re-use on success timer.

Maybe a bonus to Discordance for having the other three could be an ability to mass discord in a 3-4 tile range with decreased success chance?

All told though, I'd really still just like to see the ability to provoke onto players and disrupting or negating held spells with peacemaking would be good too.

Walisan I respectfully disagree and, as a player that only plays as a pure bard and utilizes all four skills, I hope there are not drastic changes made that would remove the small degree of difficulty this shard actually has in PvM that other shards sorely lack.

Walisin, I'm sorry to say, but I also agree with Huz on this. Disco is a GREAT skill as it is. Further buffing bards would be making them OP. They're quite OP as they are, IMO.

I actually think that the template I use is by far the most OP for PvM:

Taming
Lore
Vet
Music
Provo
Disco
Magery

Mine is resist and hiding instead of disco/vet and taming is yet to be GMd lol

Not as powerful but def safer and lazier

No Meditation or Vet?

+1 that Discordance is a great skill. I guess changing the failure cooldown to 5 seconds like Provocation wouldn't be absurd. I think the Peacemaking and Provocation changes Blaise suggests would be overpowered though.

I think the one thing that would both buff the bard, and be a nice addition to the game overall, is to make Fire Horns more effective. First, I'd increase their range significantly, and lower the break chance. From there, I'd probably change the damage formula so that it's based on your total bard skills squared. So like:

Code:

100 = 1x
200 = 4x
300 = 9x
400 = 16x

"x" in this case might be 2, or something around there. Point being, you want 4xGM bards using it much more than you want Pirul's uber-tamer using it. Although I guess if it harms friendlies as well, there's not much risk of a tamer abusing it.

One final cool tweak to make might be to have it do full damage to all creatures in the splash range. It might do this already, I don't know. But it would be a unique feature to give it, which would have some nice PvM implications.

I don't think we're talking drastic changes here and I imagine most everyone will agree that provo and peace don't need to be touched.

This is the nail on the head right here.
In the vast majority of situations disco only becomes useful once you already have your targets dancing. And then only if/when one mob is taking the lead and may not die near the same time as the other. Peace is arguably just as good for this purpose as well.

The only time I ever use disco to lower difficulty is when I fight a boss mob just so I can have a chance at peace/provo landing. In every other situation its much easier/safer just to use peace.

To balance any changes to disco I imagine you could implement a 400 skill requirement so those dirty un-pures couldn't get a taste.
I don't use the firehorn simply because 15 ash is a lot per use when I can use exp/eb to the same affect.

http://www.uorenaissance.com/?page=m_player&id=17120

This was my first char on ren and i read long ago for second age that tamer bards are very powerful pvm so thats what i went for in beta and early live but never got to finishing taming lol.

My idea here is that the resist will save my ass an extra time here and there when mobs decide to dump chain fs on me randomly. Hiding is both safe and lazy in a pvm context because i can just run away and hide, get myself some food or hit the can.

Since this is a 'defensive' bard that mostly relies on the provo skill for damage, I use magery only for the odd cure/heal/invis/recall but mostly sit hidden while the mobs take care of each other.

While this may not be the most efficient pvm bard it suits my playstyle which is very casual. I don't stress over x amount of gold per hour I just play to have fun kill time at work. All the serious gaming happens at home when im not swammped with school :mrgreen:

My template disagrees. I use disco on single mobs all the time, and is actually my go to skill when the initial spawn is dwindled. If I go hunt Balrons I won't always have both up at the same time, so I disco one and that helps my dragons kill it fast enough so that it dies before the 2nd spawns. Of course, those odd times when both spawn at the same time, having provo is a god send!

I also think your suggestion to limit disco to only pure bards is as preposterous as limiting magery only to chars with GM med, eval and resist.

Bards are not OP. They are simple money makers that is all. They are also terrible in combat and thus susceptible to getting shitstomped way faster than the guy standing there with two dragons at his heel.

Allowing bards to provoke mobs on other players is an old school function and I cannot think of a single negative implication to it. Yeah, you might see some PK bards out there provoking mobs onto player in dungeons, but what of it? Learn to run and hide like you do from normal PKs, or just kill them after you paralyze the mob.

People need to get over their whole assumption that there should be a class system of income potential here. Tamers are really not any harder to train than any other pain in the butt skill to train. Any committed player can be out farming with dragons in a week, same with any other class. Is 2-3 days difference ANYTHING in a game that lasts for YEARS?

I think not.

This argument is not really constructed very well.

If you have Provocation and Discordance to choose from, then obviously Discordance is your first choice for single mobs. It's also your only choice.
I went ahead and bolded the most important part, too, which is dragons. If you have pets soaking damage to begin with, it's obvious that skill delay timers are a secondary concern. That doesn't make Discordance (in its current iteration) as useful as the other bardic skills, or a viable standalone option, or even a good supplement to Peacemaking/Provocation.
All you demonstrated is that dragons are good at killing things - and they kill things even better if those things are discorded. Yes. That fact was never called into question. Now, if you remove dragons from the equation, where would that leave you? And would you perhaps be much happier using another skill on those Balrons first?

If you read that again carefully, he did not suggest to limit Discordance to pure bards, but rather any changes to Discordance (namely the proposed skill delay adjustments, or the area effect Blaise brought up) - which you think are not necessary in the first place, because your dragons are doing okay.
So, as far as I can tell, there's really no point of contestation there.

I happen to disagree with this notion because it would leave non-tamer templates with only 300 points in barding at a disadvantage, and those would be the ones most in need of a Discordance improvement.

I just assumed this was possible. The only complication I could think of are murder counts, that might be difficult to code.

It didn't seem to be a problem on the previous shard I played on. If you provoke a mob onto someone, you are attacking them. It's already in the code that the actions of your provoked targets adds to your kill log/damage rolls in events, etc.

Many of you probably already knew this, but just thought I'd toss this into the discussion:

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2912&p=18740&hilit=discord#p18740

Basically, there is also a passive bonus to having Discord - it doubles your chance to provoke/pacify 'impossible' monsters.

Walisin, there are many types of bards. Hell, I have 3 different types of characters with GM musicianship (not including my crafter). The fact that one of mine also has taming has nothing to do with the usefulness of disco.

Well, you also have peace (to use your "purist" template) and magery.

Well yes, certainly Disco is not a viable stand alone skill in the same sense the spell "Curse" is not a viable stand alone spell in a fight. I imagine it was never intended to be so.

It really depends on the situation, but yes, I would likely use hiding to wait for another to spawn because Disco is not a skill designed to inflict damage.

Glad we agree on not limiting the changes to disco to only cookie-cutter templates.

I agree, and have actually posted about it previously.

I disagree on this point. The template a skill is used in determines how useful it can be. You've helped prove this point because you've said disco synergizes extremely well with taming. Although, from the POV of a "pure" bard the usefulness dwindles. One would think (or hope) that investing 400 points into the bardic arts, as opposed to 300, would result in a more powerful bard. Currently that extra 100 points gives me an extra 5% chance to succeed and a niche utility skill that doesn't get used all that often.

Discordance does two things. One, it does the first 20% of the damage a bard needs to kill something. For something that costs 0 mana, getting those first 20% of HP knocked off is very nice.

And, in effect, actually more than 20%, since it lowers their Magic Resist and Wrestling, so whether you use spells or summons for the other 80%, it will happen faster thanks to the discordance.

And two, that "extra 5%" is actually DOUBLING your chance to provoke the higher level monsters.

I do not follow this logic. You have 700 skill points, and there is no requirement that someone with 300 points in barding skills needs to invest the last 100 in bard skills as well.

For a mage-type character, we know that investing the last 200 skill points in skills outside the realm of magery can make for something more powerful than simply using them for the 6th and 7th best mage-themed skills. For a fighter, investing in the skill of magery (or peacemaking, or poisoning) is generally better than something like parrying.

I don't think there's a rule that says characters who stay true to one theme should grow in power in proportion to how thematically pure they are. I rather like the fact that this shard promotes hybrid characters. My "pure tamer" is great for certain monster farming. A disco-tamer would be better for some boss monsters, and a provo-tamer would be better for things like the Ancient MIBs and level 6 cheats. Likewise, a "pure bard" will have some areas of the game it is well suited for, and there will be other areas which reward mixing character classes.

I think Dlavar makes my point better than I could myself.

The only thing I'd clarify is that a "pure bard" can excel in almost any situation depending on your awareness, skill, and most importantly common sense. I would say it is one of the most versatile characters in the game. Of course the usefulness you see for disco will depend greatly on what you're hunting, and how you're hunting it. The usefulness of disco is much more important when dealing with high end mobs as opposed to lower-mid tier mobs, and not only because of the doubling of your chance to provo, but also because the 20% impact on stats and skills is obviously greater in an absolute value, which means that monsters wil be weaker and die faster.

Personally, I'd favor disco over peace for PvM on a bard with magery any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

It just so happens that every argument you were trying to make in support of Discordance being useful was connected to it working well on your tamer/bard hybrid, up to the point of this statement. I am addressing the contents of your posts, and the rest of the reply was written with the template you provided in mind, because that is the context you gave for Discordance working well.

It was, however, intended to work on a 1 second delay timer, and did on production shards ever since the skill was changed (with publish 16?).
As you allude to in a later post, the skill becomes less useful the later in a fight it is being used. Because at that point some (or all) of the first 20%HP have been removed by conventional means, and in order to help with barding difficulty checks (past the custom passive bonus), it has to be used before Provocation/Peacemaking.

And in this context it is extremely important that the character template you were using as an example for "working as intended" has taming, because he does not rely on barding difficulty checks as heavily and has pets soaking damage, making delay timers much less important.

As am I, even though this circumstance is rather confusing me. You entered this discussion with the following statement..

So your stance is: Don't give Discordance lower skill delay timers, it would make my tamer/bard too OP. In this post you stated it works well on other templates, too.
But IF this change gets implemented, you also want it on the tamer/bard..

And that's where you lost me, as far as logic and consistency goes.

I could argue the validity of the assumptions leading to this statement now, but the deciding factor is actually: Due to this shard's custom mechanics, there isn't really a choice involved here. If bards (no matter the template) want to have a semi-realistic chance for their other skills affecting certain monsters, they must have Discordance.
So if the skill is more or less mandatory, then I'd really like it to have the full, era-accurate usability.

I'm not sure what you mean by era-accurate usability. The only thing I could find in any publish as high as 22, was the following from Publish 17, in regards to Discordance:
"Discordance no longer affects a creature’s primary and derived stats. Instead, it applies negative modifiers to some of the new Stat types and Resistances, for the duration of the effect."

I never used Enticement in prior eras but I could not find a single thing indicating a 1s delay timer.

Honestly I don't see how making all barding skills have a 5s delay on failure for re-use would make them overpowered. They already stand around taking no damage and as it stands, you can fail provocation and re-use in 5s, but if you MISS your target when clicking...it's 10s.
I would like to see consistency across all three with 5s on failure, miss target or cancel, 10s on success.



Also, for what it's worth, UOGuide shows the fire horn only consuming 4 Sulfurous Ash and also states in can be used while hidden.....

It's actually in the thread I linked on the last page, even though the change was implemented sooner than I thought. The 1s delay timer was kept with the Enticement->Discordance changes.
I ran a Discord bard on production shards for a while, so I can confirm there was basically no delay whatsoever. It wasn't as useful as I'd hoped, in a Powerscroll environment.. but yeah, delay times are a huge factor in how the skill can be applied and its effectiveness (due to the reasons mentioned in my previous posts).