As some of you may know, the bard is my second favorite UO character. Though not on level with a tamer, I feel like the bard is pretty powerful and enjoy using mine, but thought it could use some tweaks to make it a better class (and not mostly as a tamer subskill) All ideas are welcome I'm just brainstorming a minute while I take a break from elves, but here are a few ideas: No skill delay after peacemaking (and longer peace duration) this is how I believe it was on prodo, and it would allow you to hide or recall or invis after a peace. Bard skills are Peace, Music, Provo, Disco, that's four skills leaving only 3 (2 let's be honest we need magery) I was thinking a combo of all of the barding skills could equal something like the eval/anat combo but would give the user something like 75/80 default resist and wrestling Less fails (failing to cast an ev or demon 5-10 times in a row, failing a med, failing disco/provo 5 times in a row is not only frustrating and no fun, it's dangerous and makes the game seem monotonous) more slayer drops (why does it seem like no matter what I kill I only get silver instruments?) Somehow increase the drop rate for bards, the evil RNG seems to favor the bard least Runic Instruments through Carp bods?
Nice Thread, Jack. I like the idea of a bonus if gm in all of the barding skills. Seems like a fair idea. I also like the idea of runic instructments for Carp. bod reward. A grand concept to encourage folks to turn in those bods. Be safe Westra
I think that the potency of firehorns should be greatly increased or moderately increased with a reduced sulphurous ash consumption rate. This would be the boon to all Pure Bards (Music/Prov/Peace/Disco) and balance some of the shortcomings of not having other skills in their place. I think providing a reduced re-use delay ONLY for bard skills, when using other bard skills, based on how many you are GM in, might be cool. For starters though, I think they should all have the same default timers: 5 Second re-use on failed attempts 10 Second re-use on successful attempts Bonus timers: 1 Second reduction on re-use after failed attempt, per additional bard skill (max of 2s reduction at Pure Bard level) 2.5 Second reduction on re-use after successful attempts, per additional bard skill (max of 5s reduction at Pure Bard level) Fewer fails is something already handled by the Slayer instrument system. I have not had a problem farming or buying the various slayer types although Dragon and Repond seem to be the most in demand/short supplied (not as many folks farm Terathans or Lich Lords). I think the challenge of failure to bard is a welcome change in comparison to the GM = 100% success on everything with unbreakable newbie instruments (last era). I'd like to see slayer instruments in treasure/dungeon chests as well. Oh, and I can't say this loud enough so I'll increase font for good measure: PLEASE ALLOW THE ABILITY TO PROVOKE MONSTERS ONTO PLAYERS!
I was just coming back to this to add the Player thing. That would help me against pks so much And we do need a general reduction in fails (All of them, from med to spells, to stealing, to almost all of it.) Try the Shadow Wyrms with a slayer just using a bard, I feel like the AW should be for tamers and that SW room should be for bards, but it's not worth trying. And I don't think EVS/Blades count as rng drops for rares, so that would be a big plus
I'm not a big summoner, so I really can't speak to that but they seem ok. Shadow Wyrms is one of the most profitable spawns and should be hard. If you're running a disco/provo in there you should be able to make out pretty well. I'd honestly go with hiding over Resist on a template to attempt it, so I can do a lot of running and hiding to suit. The times I've run SWs with a friend who was provo, we did pretty well. I disco, they provo, but we're both tamers too so the damage is mostly buttered by our dragons. I have been wanting to build the pure bard for a while...maybe I'll get on that this year. Just gotta delete something.
I really enjoy mine (and I have a tamer and can't stand dealing with it) I'm using Resist/Med/Magery/Music/Provo/Disco/Eval Summons to tank, eval for damage, resist to survive (really need wrest too) disco to aid summons and damage (and stop self healing) Even with slayers they fail too much when a spawn is going to kill you in less than 5 seconds. And they need to drop more, thanks to our roving bands of happy pks and the harder spawns and fails, I lost something like 60k in reponds.
I dunno, I have no resist or wrestle on Larry and I can escape/survive pretty well. Granted, I keep reflect up and I'll just hide while provoked mobs duke it out and won't reveal until a new one spawns to kill the survivor (unless I can drop them in a spell or two). I'll play around with the pure bard and see how it fares. I know the only things I find really challenging to provoke are like bosses and things.
Yeah, I just leave, always. You'd be hard pressed to find me casting offensive spells on players. Granted, if I could provoke onto them, I'd likely change my MO a bit there.
i agree with all the ideas mentioned here and especially a big thumbs up for being able to provoke wild animals and monsters on to players.
Instead of buffing every other class and rebalancing game completely just nerf Tamers back down to demigod level instead of super diety.
Fire horns were supposed to be more effective, the more bard points you had, so a 4x GM bard should in theory be doing 90damage on monsters with it, consuming 10 ash and about a 5-10% chance of failure (it blows back and burns th bard instead) while I think player damage was somewhat near half of that... Just recall a 2 gm bard doing very little damage with it and maybe a 50/50 chance of using it properly, while a fully trained bard rarely ever failed with it. As for the provoking monsters on players, lol, no. That'd piss me off more due to the amount of times I get people running around like idiots with no pattern to where they're running (other than AWAY) that end up taking the provoke I'm trying to use to save them. At th moment i'm happy to wait 10secs when that happens as it'll give me time to pull bars up, don't want to see monsters provoking onto the player i'm trying to save. Provoking onto pets now, that's something else. Should turn th bard grey if it isn't their pet, yada yada... But definately, the fire horn needs some love!
The variable damage for number of bard skills does work here, it's just weak still even with all four skills. I'm not sure how you're using a provoke to save people but if they're being idiots about it, that's kinda their problem. Being able to provoke monsters onto players is/was a time-honored tradition that we'd even have a lot of fun with on guild treasure map hunts. Les used to kill me at least once on every high level map, just for lols, which we all enjoyed. Back on UOSA, provoking onto your attackers to potentially distract them while you made an escape, or combo in with a spell to turn the tides, was also a very beneficial feature.
Provoking on other players? Why not Pks get to use all 7 of their gm skills towards killing a player.. as of now if a red aims to kill a pvm character his only defense is just recalling. Provoking onto a red wouldn't be unfair just give him an extra chance at survivability. Keep in mind he's going grey so he just committed himself to actually fight back. Did you turn red for easy player kills or do you actually want to fight?
Actually I don't have a red, wasn't even thinking of them because it's been that long since I've seen one other than ebola at th glow invasion, i retract parts of my previous comment and pull my head out of trammel.
Man this is a great idea…I love my bard/mage but this thread has me thinking about dropping resist in favor of Disco. Im provo/peace/music/mage/evat/resist/med I play this guy more than any other. If changes were made I would go pure bard no question.
Hey, here's a novel idea: What if you could bard monsters onto players? Wouldn't that be cool?!?! Huh?
I agree with everyone here…Bards should be able to provoke monsters on to players.. peace a player attacking them for 5-10 seconds and discord them if you're GM in all 4 bard skills.. Maybe not 20% but at least 10%.
