Bards, Poke' Hunting, Provoke

[Zaradon]

The current system makes Bard what it's suppose to be.

Not really, whilst having a built of mostly supportive skills/abilities, i see no reason why should Provo work as one of the greatest tools in PvM.

However, i do agree with Kat since Bard's have completely sad healing abilities.
I'd rather see the Provo way easier to train and work only on low/medium mobs and being able to provoke them on big critters.

It would be handy in groups, it would make the Bard kickass due to the reason of small mobs basically owning the big junk off the way to a certain point, where the Bard has to finish off the big stuff or figure another plan if there's no small critters around to provoke onto the big things.

Im not sure how fun is it to use Provocation, but that most certainly is an unique ability and i personally never see Bards using the skill much in group hunts due to the reason of failing/not being able to provo too many things or even too long cooldown timer? Not sure..

Just improvising.

[Kat Asherstone]

Bard has already been fixed. You just gotta learn to play the new Bard.

16-18 tiles, demolition, rinse repeat

it hasn't changed except provoke which I never used for hunting until I was doing Giants/Dragons

I'll give ya +5 though for the attempt at continuing the subversion of the thread

Yes we get your badass attitude already. But Provo has been fixed. It was way to good before. The current system makes Bard what it's suppose to be.

see there goes that whole language barrier again.
Provo wasn't fix'd it was overshot in an attempt to fix it it solved the problem but also created an extra one.
In fact I can point out 4 other issues at hand with the bard currently that are "changes" that were made at some point that did things that were unintended to the bard class... and a few of them gave us some boosts, albeit in very odd ways. That's the big problem with balancing when you develop a game or do any coding/scripting for one, sometimes you over shoot the goal, it happens all the time.

It's a very interesting statement to make, the current system makes the bard what it's supposed to be... that's a complete tautological statement, well played, but still an incorrect and illogical assumption.

Maybe Boris should come out and simply state once and for all what each class is supposed to be able to do, and what they shouldn't be able to do, that would solve the issue of balancing the class system out.

I've already stated if the idea is to put Bards into a support role then do it, I'd actually have a better time making groups going around just healing and buffing and doing all that, it's fun as hell, probably more fun than just running a few tiles hitting F2 waiting 7 seconds and doing that over and over ad nauseum till loots. I mean hell, once the warrior taunt thing goes into effect doing that will be the most efficient form of killing mobs in game if the warrior and you have your spacing down. Why poke hunt with a dragon with bad AI when you can poke hunt with a warrior.

[Kat Asherstone]

The current system makes Bard what it's suppose to be.

Not really, whilst having a built of mostly supportive skills/abilities, i see no reason why should Provo work as one of the greatest tools in PvM.

However, i do agree with Kat since Bard's have completely sad healing abilities.
I'd rather see the Provo way easier to train and work only on low/medium mobs and being able to provoke them on big critters.

It would be handy in groups, it would make the Bard kickass due to the reason of small mobs basically owning the big junk off the way to a certain point, where the Bard has to finish off the big stuff or figure another plan if there's no small critters around to provoke onto the big things.

Im not sure how fun is it to use Provocation, but that most certainly is an unique ability and i personally never see Bards using the skill much in group hunts due to the reason of failing/not being able to provo too many things or even too long cooldown timer? Not sure..

Just improvising.

I wouldn't say make it way easier, the gains are about on par for what it should be able to do, unfortunately as I understand it the problem is with the required skills on the larger mobs, I have it on very good authority from some of the top end bards on the server currently that the higher end mobs were too easy to provoke which was the cause for the need to scale back bards.

There should be a line where you just can't even try and provoke the mob, I mean I always thought it was kinda laughable that a bard could provoke great dragons and storm giants and fire giants and such... I mean honestly, laughable, that was the ONE thing that I questioned Reppy's sanity about... I think in hindsight that was something overlooked because Giants weren't implemented from the very start.

[Cruxis Bane]

If it boosts bards then NO. Bards are great as is.

[Glarundis]

what the hell...but no one wants to even talk about archers/necros...whenever there are classes better than others, the weaker classes deserve a boost, even if they're not the weakest class

[Biggs]

I read through this topic, much of it I have brought up since the change and it always has people who have no experience in provocation thinking its op compared to hunting with a bow or poke hunting, but it really isn't it went from no1 to no5 in pvm methods.

1. Poke
2. Elemental
3. Archery
4. Music / Melee mix
5. Provo
6. Melee

* note this is my personal opinion want too argue this do it on icq with me not on this topic.

- Dragon hunting is pretty much impossible 4 times I have been since the "fix" not worth the time put in to attempt to provoke great upwards. you might aswell grab your maul and run up and down the screen and hope your gheal + wand heals you fast enough between breath and hits.

- Old style provocation would eliminate some of the risk. This method being: provoke then lure to the target mob. Currently 2 mobs you wish to provoke if it para's or hurts alot you die due too costly and time limited healing ability.

- Giant provocation still requires a very special and rarely known method to it.

- Some small mobs such as energy vortex are ridiculously hard to provoke onto its summoner, deathwings are hard to provoke compared to its bigger brother the exodus, some mobs such as granite elemental are not provocable (literally you get a message.) while really hard hitting mobs such as ravenger are with decent ability at 110. [note all these are with 110 provo and many years experience.]

What is needed atm is a fresh set of eyes to take every monster and look at its provocation level and change accordingly to mobs difficulty, and the change from;

target a/target b/play
too
target a/play/lure/target b

[Maximilian Lhoth]

I don't see bard as a really good PvM char, like druid or tamer is, but its strength is in the following:

- maul, 100 mace, 100 tacs (PvM and PvP)
- high strenght (PvM and PvP)
- ability to mark and recall unlike other strong maul users (PvM and PvP)
- ability to get high boosts to both AR and STATS (PvM, PvP, teamwork)
- ability to mass transport people to a safe spot (mostly useful PvP)

So solohunt; recall to non-caster mobs that are hard to pokehunt, ones that hit hard like exodus minion lords, impalers, abyssmal horrors and keep mauling. Also may consider using song of lightheadness against casters, dunno how good it is tho. You can also dispel and you can use magery cloth (even massive works nicely for casting c6 spells). With scrolls you can even cast circle 8 I heard!

When I had a almost heightened bard I found it crappy for hunting and when I switched to druid and started to pokehunt, I was like, "ohh how easy it is now". I was a gazillionaire soon. Boring it was though, rather first become rich as a pokehunter and then go bard. As a druid you cannot hit anything with a metal weapon, which is kinda boring too for some but I like it.

Many ways to play one successfully, haven't figured out them all since I was a noob when I played the bard. Figured out all it takes is GHEALS to be able to beat a titan...

[Monad]

What is needed atm is a fresh set of eyes to take every monster and look at its provocation level and change accordingly to mobs difficulty

Wrong. What is needed, and what we have asked 20 times from you is list of monsters what needs to be fixed and reason for that. End of story.

You're still not listening.

What monsters are too hard to provo against? What should be the % chance to provo against these monsters?

It's as simple as that. You give us numbers and we compare them to our numbers.

- Boris

If you can't answer to that simple question then we can't fix what you claim to be broken. Open a new thread to ideas for pangaea with nothing but:

• 1. the monsters which you consider broken and why
  2. how they need to be fixed and why

This ain't going anywhere otherwise.