Bard pulling with no ability to drop agro

Zaroua

Zest Honestly though as I've said repeatedly in this thread I don't think bards even need something as strong as FD, fading memories, or maybe even rogue smoke vial. It can have a cooldown and other dowbsides, but the class needs some answer to the kind of situation you dismiss as fixable by dying or the entire party bugging out. Those kind of "solutions" be necessary just mean the class isn't a serious consideration for the puller position.

Other way around: FD is too strong and too safe. It needs to be brought down a bit so that it isn't as powerful a splitting and safe pulling tool as it currently is. It's basically a question of balance. Lull being able to fail is good a thing as it creates a risk; it is thus balanced. FD carries little to no risk and that's a bad thing: it is thus unbalanced. Another way to look at it is that no puller should be able to flawlessly handle every pull every time with no risk to himself or to his group. Pulling shouldn't be a mini-game where you always succeed in bringing back one mob at a time.

Zest

Zaroua

You're conflating there being some risk with a single random dice roll setting the stage for a group wipe with no tools available in the kit that can be expected to reverse the damage even with perfect play. These two things are not the same.

Some risk of less than ideal pulls is a good thing. But there's a big difference between say a risk of getting an extra mob or two and of pulling the whole room. There's no point in using a puller who randomly does the latter.

That said there are other approaches- better CC would also do the job fine. A 3s cast 18s duration mez isn't really up to the task for more than 5-6 enmies and even then takes too long to reign things in if you're in cramped quarters and can't really kite things whilr getting the situation under control. Honestly I find myself really missing the PBAE fear bards had in EQ. It was risky in cramped confines and had to be used with extreme caution but it's a perfect example of the kind of tool that could give bards a play against crowds too big to mez and buy a bard the 18s they need to cast all the mezzes they can.

Zaroua

Zest You're conflating there being some risk with a single random dice roll setting the stage for a group wipe with no tools available in the kit that can be expected to reverse the damage even with perfect play. These two things are not the same.

Risk is a risk, whether it's a dice roll or something you can't mitigate.

Zest That said there are other approaches

15 minute cooldown "your next offensive song can't resist unless the target is immune". Just something that isn't Feign Death. Too many classes already have that tool.

Fell

Zest An aggro drop or memblur is the simplest way to make this happen, but stronger, faster, or AoE emergency CC would do it too.

Given that any other non-FD class in the game (even an enchanter) is in an even worse position than bard in this case, why do you think bards should have this ability? If you can just blur off aggro whenever you want and try the lull again, then you CAN reliably split camps without risk.

I also don't think a bard should need a pocket enchanter backing them up to take on the role of puller in challenging endgame content.

Flip that statement around. What if the group doesn't have a pocket bard -- who pulls this 8-mob camp and how do they do it?

Challenging content is meant to be challenging. That means the mere presence of one single class in your group does NOT trivialize it. That's what you're asking for. Honestly the real problem here is not bards, but the fact that monks and SKs can so easily FD split -- much faster and more reliably than they could in EQ.

Zest EQ bards had fading memories.

It was added in PoP, by which time most classes had everything. But bards were great pullers long before that. They didn't pull RAID content, but I think you'll have a hard time justifying that they should.

Zest

Zaroua

Risk is risk, but that doesn't mean any all all risk is an appropriate amount. Too much risk and groups just use another less risky class and there are several.

Fell

Enchanters can AoE mez and memblur one by one at their leisure.

Rogues can mitigate the scale of a bad pull from the get go by sappong from the safety of stealth, and if all else fails can drop aggro with smoke vial.

And frankly a vast majority of the others have never been explicitly termed as pullers by the devs.

Realistically the competition is the FD/memblur classes, not everyone else, saying "what non-FD class could salvage this situation" is not a fair set of qualifiers for determining whether bard is serious choice for puller rather than just opting for a monk, shadowknight, or enchanter.

And I can see the perspective that FD splitting is too efficient atm- but the request here isn't really about efficiency splitting and in point of fact doesn't pertain to that: you're not flop splitting with a 5 minute cooldown aggro drop, it makes lull safer, but bard lull is still capped by 18s duration at effectively preventing maybe 4, maybe 5 if you're lucky enemies from joining the pull(any more any and you run the risk lulls start running out before the aggroed enemies are far enough away). Bards are generally not solo pulling from a room with more than 5 enemies regardless.

What this is about is bards compared to other pullers not having a play when they bite off more than they can chew- which in combination with their main camp breaking tool having a random chance to do just that is a fatal flaw for a puller.

Regardless though it wasn't just raids. Until they got fading memories bards were rarely favored pullers for the hardest content, especially if it was in crampedor high density settings(which the hardest stuff generally is). Their biggest advantage over other pullers was speed, which made them great for easy content or regular exp groups, less so for anywhere with too much risk, because like now they simply didnt have the tools to mitigate it reliably.

NarcolepticLTD

Stop me if you've heard of this one before but, don't bards already have access to at LEAST 3 different sure fire deaggro mechanics?

Run to the zoneline - bonus points if you're able to shout your train, popcorn if you don't!
Kill the enemy until they die from it, or your group dies trying (then blame the cleric, or the druid).
stand there and take one for the team, the rogue will drag your corpse back for a rez.

seriously though, if you need a button to make sure you don't die everytime... you might be a little bit too risk averse to be pulling for a group. Sack up, Die more, HAVE FUN - IT'S A GAME!

Candora

Fell It was added in PoP, by which time most classes had everything. But bards were great pullers long before that. They didn't pull RAID content, but I think you'll have a hard time justifying that they should.

I agree that Fading Memory type spell is way too much.
In EQ the lull “critical” resist that agros the mob seemed to happen way less often then it does here from my limited experience. Maybe having high CHA effecting resist rate more would help or maybe they can add what they had in EQ where normal resist doesn’t agro the mob but is still annoying and makes splitting harder/slower and “critical” resist, which happens way less often, agros the mobs.

Fell

Candora n EQ the lull “critical” resist that agreed the mob seemed to happen way less often then it does here from my limited experience. Maybe having high CHA effecting resist rate more would help

CHA is supposed to affect lull already, but even with my +200 CHA, I seemed to get critical resists as often as a druid or cleric with charisma in the 30-40 range. Either its not working as it should, or the devs need to crank up that modifier a lot.

Silly

Fell
According to Xilith, charisma doesn’t do anything for lull resists, only the duration of lull.

I also have heard that the resists of a lull spell is based off the level of the spell not the level of the player. So bard gets a single lull at low level, which contributes to high resist rate at higher levels. I have no evidence that it works this way, just what I’ve heard. But it seems to make sense.

I’m curious, did you always use your highest level lull spell? I know some enchanters used lower level lulls to save mana. Just curious if you happened to notice a difference in resists between the low/high level lulls.

Zest

Fell
And this would certainly be another entirely viable approach to addressing the concerns raised in this thread. If sufficient CHA made lull reliable enough that a crit fail happening in the first lull or two in a pack was exceedingly unlikely no tool to bug out of a 6 pull is really needed.

Candora

Fell CHA is supposed to affect lull already, but even with my +200 CHA, I seemed to get critical resists as often as a druid or cleric with charisma in the 30-40 range. Either its not working as it should, or the devs need to crank up that modifier a lot.

Modifying the resist calculation to make CHA have bigger impact would be great and it could make traits like Charismatic be very useful for those critical split situations and something bards that want to pull could take over other traits.

Silly

Candora

I thought about doing this as well until it was confirmed that CHA does nothing for lull resist rates..which is wild to me.

Zest

Silly

Especially being that if memory serves the patch that made lull significantly less reliable was the same one that added the CHA dependency.

Fidric

NarcolepticLTD the only deaggro mechanic a bard has is mezzing a capped 5 targets over 15 seconds within a clumped range and camping out of the game

Hypno

A Highsun mechanic like in EQ could work in this regard; give it a long cooldown with aggro drop, and only work on one target. This way bards have the ability to (slightly) recover from a bad pull without creeping into full FD territory.

Mesh

Zest
Disagree.

Even if you could reduce Lull's resist chance to whatever the minimum is via CHA, a puller with any chance to die to RNG with no recovery option is poorly designed IMO.

There are times when you can still die to RNG even with recovery tools (FD resist, etc.) but at least you can potentially scramble to recover in those situations which allows for some player skill expression. Being completely unable to drop aggro on a bad pull is guaranteed death.

I'd argue that the whole purpose of any class designated as a "puller" is that they have the necessary tools to pull which includes recovery. Otherwise, the term is meaningless. Any class can pull mobs to their group.

Raybane

Mesh The way I see it so should they at least make the Bard better at pulling then classes that doesn't have the "puller" as a role. This means that Bard should beat out Enchanter or Cleric for pulling.

Zest

Mesh

And I can understand that perspective. Honestly an aggro drop would be the most simple to implement comprehensive solution. But there is some plainly visible opposition to it, so I tend towards the practical position that there are more than one ways to address the most egregious problem for bard pullers(lull crit fails pulling 6+ enemies).

An aggro drop or a memblur with a short lull stapled to it to selectively drop an enemy or two on the way back to camp would definitely be my preferred solution. But I'll gladly settle for a less than ideal solution as long as we keep incrementing in a positive direction.

Korenda

I hope a Dev or two is getting poked with this topic, or our comments are moot. Going into EA without something, being this far evolved already is truly a shame. I don't want to Solo outdoors till 60. I enjoy the dungeons way to much, but i refuse to be that Bard training the zone every other minute due to a failed Lull.

Fell

Korenda I'm unsure why you're all predicating this on "if a bard can't safely solo pullevery camp with zero assistance from anyone else, then they're useless and broken"? Most groups don't have bards, which by definition means most groups are pulling without bards. If a group has an enchanter and bard, then those failed lulls aren't a problem ... and groups that have no enchanter literally DEMAND a bard to keep up with mana requirements.

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