Economist_X wrote:

Ramsees wrote: Unless it is a glitch, I'm pretty sure the cast speed from two maces stack.   No mace One mace Dual mace You see that little +10% over on the right side of the %? That's the bonus from equipping a mace. Your cspd went up likely because the second mace you equipped had +cspd points on it to begin with.

Edited: nvm I found out where I was wrong and switched through my others gears showing me what you was talking about.
This thing right here right?



When you posted the same type of screenshot you got me confused. When they said boosts I thought they were referring to the cast speed points that each mace gave.

So now, we can close the topic by saying that Bards ARE healers, their heals are not as good as cleric's but they can give give very good buffs even for a short time and they sure can keep a 3-man-group alive.

shogungari wrote:

nitronick wrote: shogungari wrote: nitronick wrote: 2. Except Cure Light is an instant cast, and Music of Life is a 1 second cast. And you are severely underestimating the power of wisdom, did you not read that having the wisdom buff on both the tank and cleric caused an 800 heal increse? From 1000. That's an 80% increse, almost double what a bard will usually heal, and ignoring that Cloth armor usually gives higher General Healing, or the Clerics bonus to cast speed while using a mace.   Factor speed casting into this. Even with only 430 in speed cast my spells take 3/4ths the time it's suppose to to cast. I can usually get music of life off in half a second. that's 1.5 seconds to cast, for all 5 members in the party, for three stacks that can heal over 300 damage a second. How long does it take to stack ONE person with a full stack of cure light?   Shogun, you should probably stop talking about anything mathmatical. 3/4th the time it take means it's 75% the original cast time. 75% of 1 second is .75 seconds. so that's 2.25 seconds to get full stacks, assuming everyone is in range to be effected by the spell. Heal light can be fully stacked in about 1.5 seconds, and doesn't matter how fast you cast.   Considering how you can't even spell mathematical I think you should get off that little soap box of yours. my music of life takes .75 seconds to load up, so 2.25 seconds to fully cast on everyone. 1.5 seconds to stack one life cure you say? so multiply that by 5. 7.5 seconds. Even at a full 1 second on my music of life- ****, I'll give you the benefit and say 2 full seconds- I only need 6 seconds to stack all five people with an equally good buff. In between stacking that I can use burning metal, illusion, war cry, then go back to music life. Exactly what do you do when you're in a party? Tell me your basic casting procedure. Edit: You know, thinking about my past experiences with dungeons, I'm going to withdraw my statement about how bards aren't healers, since I seem to do just find in threeman parties without a cleric. We've even gone through some dungeons without tanks and come out just fine. In small parties and the fields, we're healers. In large parties, we're supporters. But we're never DPS.

...You said it took you .5 seconds to load up with 3/4th cast time and 1.5 seconds to stack, not .75 seconds to cast with 2.25 seconds to stack it with 3/4ths time, that was my math, don't try to plagiarize it then throw it in my face. And your forgeting that most of the time enemies are trying to pound the groups face in, if you go into combat with full MoL stacks on the party, the enemies will bum rush you before the tank can get aggro, so you'll have to cast it in battle, that's 2.25 seconds, and you won't be able to buff, maybe burning metal, but not buff, because that's seconds you won't be healing when you need too, you'll be stuck Heal spaming with occasional MoL until either one of four things happen.
1. The boss gets rid of all buffs, this means you need to put on all stacks again, and while your scrambeling to keep the now buffless tank alive, you can't keep up heals, and MoL while the boss keeps dispeling them, Tank dies, Party wipes.
2. The boss uses a DoT that can't be dispeled, this means your MoL quickly becomes little more then something that keeps the DoT's damage in check, before being over taken by the stacking DoT, the Tank is now taking 1.5k damage a second from the Bosses attacks and the DoT, while your only healing 750 a second because of Heal's cast time and MoL being canceled out by the DoT. Tank dies, Party wipes.
3. The boss reduces the tanks defence to 0, meaning the tank is now taking 1.3k damage a second, your 1000 heal a second from Heal and MoL grant the tank a slow death. Tank dies, Party wipes.
4. Whatever your fighting dies.
You can totally main heal through the pathetic trash mobs, but the moment a boss who has any of those above spells (Atleast 50% do) is fought, the party might as well climb into their graves, because it's not possible for the bard to heal through it alone.

And Why does everyone need Heal light, how many Close range fighters do you have? At the very least the cleric can easily stand out of the range of most boss AoE's, or just throw out his AoE Heal.

Lightmgl wrote:

Ummm coming from a lvl 41 bard.... Bards can main heal and off heal just fine. We stack cast speed as opposed to g-heal. I'm sitting around 26% cast speed at the moment and it is definitely possible to hit 30% or 35% with real gear. That gives us plenty of throughput with Cure to main heal. Alot of people making statements about bards not being able to main heal are either undergeared or with tanks who are undergeared. A well geared tank should have a solid 35%+ mitigation and 50% combined evasion + block. When that happens I not only am able to main heal but I am usually able to keep up the HoT and a buff or two. Dispelling is also important, and it is a little harder as a bard so keep that in mind in fights where dispelling is a must. Sometimes you do get reduced to just cure, hot, dispel even with well geared players. To this point I have main healed every single instance up to Baltaroi core and have solo healed Ulta and Malice when the tanks were not in low level green gear. We are certainly at our best when we are offhealing though. In a group where I am offhealing I am usually only needed to heal the DPS (with our group hot) and maybe occasionally throw a cure at the tank unless he is really undergeared. This usually lets me keep up War Rhyme, Illusions, Spirited Melody, and Burning Metal while tossing in nukes to try and knock the mob down, plus the acc debuff just means even less tank dmg. Unfortunately the Magic Dmg song is just not worth using most of the time, the dmg boost is too small to warrant it. I am sure our offhealing role will get supplemented even further at 50 with the G-Heal P-Heal buff song. If you think we are DPS, thats funny. Our DPS is absolutely terrible in almost all regards. Burning Metal is "ok", its biggest advantage is not DPS but the huge triple stack defense reduction. Its even worth keeping it up on single target bosses just for that if you have the chance. Our dmg is terrible though, I can throw out 800-1500 point nukes while DPS classes are throwing out 2000-6000 point attacks. I'm sure that can get turned up a little bit if you stack the M-Crit leather but yeah..... If you really want to understand how bad our DPS is, play a real DPS class and compare. Yeah the buffs make up for some of it, but not enough to qualify us as worth having for a DPS slot when a group already has a healer + offhealer. At least our AoE is tolerable, our single target is awful. A good mage or thief puts our aoe to shame though. I would imagine Blade Dancers will also make our AoE look pathetic. Gear is a major factor. Get your hands on some agi/cast speed leather and you turn into a monster. Theres some agi/cast speed/gheal leather from bosses out there too that would probably make us incredible healers, maybe even better then clerics on raw throughput. Dunno how I can prove any of this though, I would simply assume that you aren't using bard stat leather if you are having trouble healing as a bard, or your tank has no clue what hes doing.

I look through what you said so far, and it looks like you know what your talking about, but then I really look at the numbers and see, wow, either your seriously exagerating, or playing with hackers.

I have stacked cast speed to as high as I can get it, and I only have 16% cast reduction, 25% if my Cast speed trinket activates. And a well geared tank at any level will have 25% defence, and 30% combined Block and Evasion, because stats scale with level, higher level means you need more to get the same effect as before. And if your reduced to Heal, HoT and Dispel, you just stoped being a bard and became a weaker cleric.

Off healing doesn't make you a healer, anyone with a heal spell can off heal, it's a general term for "Classes and players who aren't good enough to be the main healer". And why are you ignoring the Cleric buffs, they do give just a big a difference in how much they do for the team, and they last for 15 minutes each.

Your severely underestimating how good our DPS actually is, it seems incredibly low because your either spaming attack spells with a Cast speed/General Healing build, or smacking something with the guitar, which has pathetic damage with a Cast Speed/General Healing build. Triple Stack Burning Metal and Music of Life, throw up Spirited Melody and War Rhyme, Switch to a Great sword, you just started hitting as hard as any other Melee DPS, while at the same time made the rest of your physical attacking teammates hit harder, all of which counts as your own DPS because you caused all that bonus damage. Changing weapons is instant with no global cool down, and you don't need to use a guitar for anything besides casting, and with no duration buffs for any of those spells, you'll still get about 6 seconds to slash enemies with your sword before needing to switch back to the guitar and rebuff, why else would one of our buffs be "2% chance to double hit", if we weren't meant to use melee physically attack, bards were designed be versatile, with the right gear set up, they can go caster DPS, or Physical DPS, or Buffing, but they will never be able to compare to Clerics when it comes to healing.

Maybe a mage would, but theives only have 1 AoE attack, we have two, and thanks to the AoE cool down, Burning metal + Tornado will out damage a Thief AoEing, and a Blade Dancer uses our Physical DPS buffs and Burning Metal to make himself stronger.

Gear isn't everything, if you give a Cleric a similar Cloth armor Agi/Cast speed gear setup, they still heal faster then bards, and still for more, and Cloth armor usually comes with more cast speed anways, and with Grace of Wisdom on both the Cleric and tank means the cleric starts healing about twice as much as the bard will, and with a mace, easily faster, even Music of Life isn't neccisary if your cleric starts charging Healing Radiance as soon as the boss starts charging his AoE attack and everyone has Grace of wisdom, which they should, because it lasts for 15 minutes.

Funny, I've yet to have any trouble main healing fresh level dungeons as a now level 45 bard. Sure, clerics can push out higher healing numbers, but the 'healing' role isn't purely who can refill a bar the best. As a bard healer, you'll be making the fights shorter (Burning Metal/War Rhyme), reducing incoming damage (Song of Illusion, Prevention, sooner or later Musical Encouragement), and all the while blanketing the group with health regen and the occasional Cure. All of this can be done without any talents spent either, so increase those song durations or cast speed and you can fit in as much as your mp bar will let you.

Why is this question so popular?

Bards are like Martial Artists. MAs are off tanks. They aren't as squishy as some dps. Bards are off healers, off dps, main support.

Bards AoE HoT allows them to keep all party members with about a 300-400 HP regen. Thier dps, well Burning Metal is their only useful dps (really because it is a DoT with set damage and can stack) and main support for their obvious mass support skills?

A bard can do just as good as a main healer as a cleric can. It's just clerics can do it easier.

Just like clerics can keep their HoT on all party members just like bards can. Just bards do it A LOT easider xD

Also take into consideration. That Bard, Cleric, Shaman all share the SAME base cure skill. So all should heal at least that amount. It will change with G-healing, etc.

nitronick wrote:

shogungari wrote: nitronick wrote: 2. Except Cure Light is an instant cast, and Music of Life is a 1 second cast. And you are severely underestimating the power of wisdom, did you not read that having the wisdom buff on both the tank and cleric caused an 800 heal increse? From 1000. That's an 80% increse, almost double what a bard will usually heal, and ignoring that Cloth armor usually gives higher General Healing, or the Clerics bonus to cast speed while using a mace.   Factor speed casting into this. Even with only 430 in speed cast my spells take 3/4ths the time it's suppose to to cast. I can usually get music of life off in half a second. that's 1.5 seconds to cast, for all 5 members in the party, for three stacks that can heal over 300 damage a second. How long does it take to stack ONE person with a full stack of cure light?   Shogun, you should probably stop talking about anything mathmatical. 3/4th the time it take means it's 75% the original cast time. 75% of 1 second is .75 seconds. so that's 2.25 seconds to get full stacks, assuming everyone is in range to be effected by the spell. Heal light can be fully stacked in about 1.5 seconds, and doesn't matter how fast you cast.

I was reading along taking into consideration everything that was said...but you lost me here. You're basically screaming down anyone who disagrees with you. Get over yourself, and just go play the game the way you want to play it. It shouldn't matter what other people think of your strategies, as long as you enjoy playing the game, so why talk down to anyone who bothers to disagree?

Prinny.Kaboom wrote:

nitronick wrote: shogungari wrote: nitronick wrote: 2. Except Cure Light is an instant cast, and Music of Life is a 1 second cast. And you are severely underestimating the power of wisdom, did you not read that having the wisdom buff on both the tank and cleric caused an 800 heal increse? From 1000. That's an 80% increse, almost double what a bard will usually heal, and ignoring that Cloth armor usually gives higher General Healing, or the Clerics bonus to cast speed while using a mace.   Factor speed casting into this. Even with only 430 in speed cast my spells take 3/4ths the time it's suppose to to cast. I can usually get music of life off in half a second. that's 1.5 seconds to cast, for all 5 members in the party, for three stacks that can heal over 300 damage a second. How long does it take to stack ONE person with a full stack of cure light?   Shogun, you should probably stop talking about anything mathmatical. 3/4th the time it take means it's 75% the original cast time. 75% of 1 second is .75 seconds. so that's 2.25 seconds to get full stacks, assuming everyone is in range to be effected by the spell. Heal light can be fully stacked in about 1.5 seconds, and doesn't matter how fast you cast.   I was reading along taking into consideration everything that was said...but you lost me here. You're basically screaming down anyone who disagrees with you. Get over yourself, and just go play the game the way you want to play it. It shouldn't matter what other people think of your strategies, as long as you enjoy playing the game, so why talk down to anyone who bothers to disagree?

I don't talk down to people because they disagree with me, I talk down to people because their trying to debate my statistical arguement with opinions and ****. As soon as they bring some real statistics or evidence to support their claims, i'll totally back down, but they haven't, all it's been is, "Your wrong, because I can totally do X just as good as a Cleric" with 0 proof what so ever, besides the occasional **** numbers like "My Spells hit for maybe 800-1600 a spell, but the Real DPS is 2000-6000 a hit". And finally, it's my topic, if they want to post on it, that's their choice, I don't go around to every topic telling everyone their playing bard wrong, but if they come into this topic attacking my statistics, i'm going to talk down to them until they can support their claims.

So nitronick, what's the level of your bard/cleric? What are their builds?


Well you're making a bold statement, saying that " bards are not healers ".
Many players will disagree with that statement, as you can already see.
What did you use in-game to base this statement on?

It's a lot like presenting a new scientific theory to the public. You must have more than just research notes to support your theory. You have to provide at least the basic information on the tools you used to develop your theory (for example: your class levels and builds). That information is relevant.

You requested that others who disagree with your theory provide proof to support their claims. However, you also need to provide proof that your theory and experience is credible to begin with. Show how it is possible that you reached a different conclusion that they did not.


Presenting a theory should never be " this is what I know...try to prove me wrong ".
The proper way is " This is my idea and this is what I have to back it up, let me show you what I did ".

I hate to get involved here, but I played a Bard up to 45. In the three-man dungeons, I was usually always the main healer, and was quite capable of keeping everyone alive with cure and Music of Life. Song of Illusion was also very helpful as the defense boost for the tank cut damage quite a bit.

However, most 5-person dungeons usually include a Cleric, Bard, 2 DPS, and a Tank. Bard is usually your back up heals with MoL, and support. I personally try to keep MoL and Song of Illusion up at all times, as those help the party out the most. However, when the cleric dies, I can still keep up my heals fine. at Lv45 bard, I heal about 2k health on average, a few lows and highs in there. It takes maybe .3 seconds more to cast heal, but the MoL is kept on everyone, and that's still a 400 hp/sec heal.

So I believe the main point this topic had at first was stating Bards weren't able to be main healers, yet in most 3-man dungeons, they can main heal quite well as the damage isn't too bad.

Also, keep in mind Life Cure is 5-stack, and MoL is 3-stack. Due to the speeds, both can fully stack in same amount of time, MoL is better off because you stack everyone. This really helps out when the bosses start having the insane aoes that hit everyone for damage, so the MoL can work on covering that instead of having the party die to the DoT from the AOE, whether it be 3 or 5 man. however, a thing to note is MoL has less range than Life Cure, so the Bard has to get in a bit closer to heal while the Cleric can stand back.

In all honesty, it really comes down to how well each person plays their role, and what dungeon you are doing. The higher 5-mans usually need that bard in there, and bosses have a DoT AoE that dishes out high damage (around 150) per second.

Also, in 5-man dungeons, you usually have a Cleric/Shaman as a member anyway, which kinda defeats the purpose of the arguement. There shouldn't be a main healer, as both jobs have to heal to keep the party alive in the first place. And if cleric is your main healer, I guess a bard would become pointless to use anyway, and you should go tackle those 5-man dungeons with one healer, one tank, and 3 DPS, because all you really need to do is heal the tank and let the DPS's die, because while tank is taking 1.3k per second, and everyone else gets hit with the AoE that does like 2k to all, you need to focus on the tank and not heal the rest. Each class has a role to fulfil, and Bard can heal just as well in a 3-man as a Cleric. Sometimes I'd rather have a bard in a 3-man, because Song of Illusion cuts the damage quite nicely. Lv45 Song of Illusion is a 2.3k Def buff. That's taking off a little less than 10% damage.

I've overstayed my welcome. Please look over all possibilities, and do some parties with a bard in 3-man dungeons. It's just as good as having a cleric, if not better because of bard's support role as well, boosting damage, crit rate, def, eva, and decreasing the mobs def as well as putting a DoT on there. I was main healer in all my 3-man dungeons, and the tank never complained. And my bard is mainly support built too. So lastly, the main point of this post was to say bards can't be healers, while they can perfectly be main healers in the right places, namely the 3-man dungeons. My point stands, bards are indeed healers.