Bard vs Enchanter

Ihuarraquax

I want to play a hard-support class heavily leaning towards enchanter. From what I see on the wiki they both look similar enough. From what I see on the forum it looks like enchanter received some pretty hard nerfs to charm. Is there any reason now to play enchanter over bard or am I gimping myself by picking it? Is charm the only utility over bard? Sorry for the noob question I didn't play the beta just been waiting for EA.

rabbi

If you play bard you'll be expected to pull in groups. Enchanters pull sometimes, but it's bard's most common role. I like constantly chain pulling and being the pipeline for my group's XP, but some people would rather do more chilling. That's the biggest difference really. Both will be desirable in groups for different reasons.

tuesday

enchanter buffs only last 35 minutes, and now bard can buff without twisting. think this alone will mean there are more bards than enchanters, at least among the people who aren't looking to solo to 60.

Mesh

Enchanters are a better support class than Bards. There's no real debate.

Enchanter is almost mandatory in any full group. It's probably the strongest class in the game overall despite all the complaining about charm.

The only niche I can see Bards carving out for themselves is if NWC decides to give Bard an aggro drop, allowing them to also pull for groups that lack a Monk.

Ophrikk

Alot of us are a bit older so I think I have come up with the perfect example between the difference of the two. Bards are the Benny Hill song montages and enchanters are the neo one handed karate in the matrix. If you want to always be running around and when there are 4 adds be chain mezzing trying to control things, the while the chanter AE mezz, send in pet, /yawn. Here's the best indicator, do you like to chat with the group and tell jokes and go back and forth? Play a chanter, Do you never want to chat, play Bard.
And yes Bard's can pull and do it nicely, but with a chanter anyone can pull a train and it doesn't matter.

Fell

Mesh he only niche I can see Bards carving out for themselves is if NWC decides to give Bard an aggro drop, allowing them to also pull for groups that lack a Monk.

Eh? SKs can split camps as good as a monk: even better in some situations. Necros can as well, as long as they have a little more room to work. Even without FD, a full group is going to have multiple people with lull, root, sap, stun, and snare.

Also, as many others here have pointed out, as long as a bard has a little room, they can CC large pulls single-handedly -- without even calling upon the support of the rest of the group.

Ihuarraquax

Thank you guys I will go enchanter. Never played EQ so my only exp with hard supports is FFXI. Is the jury still out on cha vs Int for character creation. Im seeing a lot of people say different things.

Tyr

On paper bard is looking a lot better than enchanter to me. Higher skill potential as well but comes with much more actions per minute if that’s your thing. Probably better damage now too.

I think the amount of people (including me) that had really thorough experience with the changes so far is really small. Most high levels leveled before their reworks and there wasn’t a ton of time before the end of beta to really have more accurate answers for you. Many people kind of ignored bard completely before both of these reworks.

Currently I don’t put as high of value on enchanter CC or CC in general though for single classes. For pulling lull is good but can fail, once camp is broken (if needed) I think having the tank pull is best in most situations

Noble

Ihuarraquax
It's hard to say whether you should focus on one stat over the other since everything has the potential to change in this early access. You could try and minmax but I'm not sure anyone even knows the facts on what each stat actually affects at this stage. I just maxed cha and dumped the rest into int on a delf.

Lockdown

Ihuarraquax I think there is zero debate about which is better CC. The amount of time a bard can mez for just puts a cap on how many they can hold down that just doesn't compare to what a chanter can manage. I can juggle 6 without using the AoE mez and double that with it, zero chance any bard could ever do that.

That being said, with the 35 min buff situation, I can't be bothered putting up with rebuffing that often. I was already on the verge of hanging up the chanters cap when they were an hour. It seems like a small thing if you have never done it but there is a lot more thought and effort than it sounds and the more buffs you are managing it becomes exponentially more of a pain in the ass to juggle more than half a dozen while simultaneously doing your usual CC/debuffing role. The combining of a few buffs recently helps not nearly enough to offset the doubling of the process.