New Bard Wiki Page: Essential AAs (Feedback Needed)

[anaskesia]

I have crafted a new page for the Bard WIKI that I'm hoping people will offer feedback on.

The page is: http://samanna.net/wiki/index.php/Essential_AAs

I'm mostly looking for information such as AAs that I left out but others feel should be there, feedback on whether the content is good/useful, and feedback on the presentation. There are some other pages I'd like to create, but before I do I want to make sure I've done a good job on this one. I'm pretty happy with the illusion page, but that was pretty trivial. This one is quite a bit more in-depth content-wise.

[Brohg]

That page would be much more awesome if you included numbers. % benefits for the passive combat AA, instrument modifiers for the song AA, etc.

[anaskesia]

I was thinking about that -- some of the numbers are easier to collect than others. I don't really have any idea how much benefit Ayonae's Tutelage and the other song effectiveness things grant because the information isn't in lucy. For things like Fierce Eye, Quick Time, and other stuff like that though I could add numbers with a reasonable degree of certainty. I'll see what I can do.

[Brohg]

For those effects in particular, both the numbers associated with that effect and (especially) effects used by other classes that they don't stack optimally with should be listed.

[Kilgaroz]

I'm a bit confused about your AA classification, Personal DPS AAs (Group). None of these effect group dps, only the bard's, with the possible exception of the proc on Dance of Blades.

Figured I'd hunt down the Lucy data and compile it in one place for you to reference on a number of the other AAs, so here goes. AA sections start bolded and underlined, Lucy data being directly quoted is shown in bold. I'm leaving out any Unknown values, as they serve no purpose to an info site.

Shield of Notes

Lucy lists the spell data for rank one as:

Slot 1: Mitigate Melee Damage by 25%, 4000 total
Slot 2: Mitigate Spell Damage by 25%, 4000 total
Duration: 00:01:00 (10 ticks)

The pattern for more advanced ranks doesn't change, just the amount and % mitigated. Below are the percents and amounts by rank.

1: 25%, 4000
2: 27%, 6000
3: 29%, 8000
4: 31%, 8500
5: 33%, 9000
6: 35%, 9500
7: 37%, 10650
8: 39%, 11250
9: 41%, 11875

There are four entries on Lucy that have 41% as a value but each has a different total; this leads me to beileve that Sony intends to cap the mitigation percent at 41%, but allow the total mitigated to increase beyond the 11875 max we currently have.

Boastful Bellow

21 ranks of this ability, currently, Lucy info below is for rk.21 (I believe):
Slot 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 10 to 165
Slot 2: Stun(1.00 sec/80)
Range: 250
Casting Time: 0
Recast Time: 18 sec
Resist: Magic
Resist Adjust: -10

The resist adjustment doesn't appear until rk.17 and the damage max varies by level, from 50 max at rank 1 to 165 at 21.

EDIT: Small note, unlike thrown items, you don't need to be facing your target to hit it with BB. It's got as much range as most thrown items, and you never have to resummon it, so it's a briliant tool for tagging. In xp content, I've never knocked a mob into summoning hp with BB.

Dance of Blades
There are six ranks of this ability, the common Lucy data among them is:

Slot 1: Increase Dual Wield by 100%
Slot 2: Increase Double Attack by 500%
Slot 3: Add Proc: Bladwhirl rate mod x00
Duration: 5 ticks

where the x in the third line is replaced by a value of one to six. The increasing value of the rate mod simply indicates a greater chance to proc, the proc itself doesn't change.

Starting with rk.4, a slot 4 is added to the data:

Slot 4: Increase Chance to Hit by x% with all Skills.
The x value is 5% for rk.4, 8% for rk.5 and 10% at rk.6.

The proc, Whirlblade, is as follows

Slot 5: Decrease HP when cast by 50 (L1) to 70 (80)
Slot 6: Decrease AC by 7 (Raw spell data: -25.00)
Slot 7: Decrease Fire Resist by 10
Slot 8: Decrease Cold Resist by 10
Slot 9: Decrease Magic Resist by 10
Resist: Chromatic [Lowest]
Resist Adjust: -20

Percussion mod is used on these values, so a maxed drum mod (4.3 iirc) would render -31 AC, -43 FR, CR and MR. The duration listed on Lucy is 6 ticks, but when I just landed it on my shaman, it had a duration of 42 seconds.

Song of Stone

There are 6 ranks in this AA, rk.1 summons 3 pets, one is added for each additional rank the bard purchaces for a maximum of 8 gargoyles. Their max hit is around 125 and they last for 5 ticks. The pets appear to dual wield as I got both hits and bashes from them when I dueled my shm.


Cacophony

There are 9 ranks of Cacophony, a dot which has a chance for disrupting spell casting each time damage is done. "Ranks two and three also increase the chance for spells to be disrupted," according to the AA window in EQ. The Lucy pattern is below:

Slot 1: Decrease Hitpoints by xxx per tick
Resist: Magic
Resist Adjust: -150
Duration: 1 min
Range: 200
Casting Time: 0

xxx values for each rank are:
1: 100
2: 200
3: 300
4: 400
5: 500
6: 600
7: 700
8: 800
9: 900

While the duration is lited as one minute on Lucy, Cacophony 7 (all my bard has atm) landed for 42 seconds on the shm.


Fierce Eye Effect

This is the actual buff that will appear in your song window:

Slot 2: Critical DoT(10)
Slot 3 Critical HP Regen(10)
Slot 4: Critical Heal(10)
Slot 5: Increase Critical Hit Chance by 10% and Increase Critical Hit Damage by 10% for Direct Damage Spells
Slot 8: Increasee All Skills Damage Modifier by 10%
Slot 9: Increase Proc Modifier by 300%
Slot 11: Increase Critical Hits Damage modifier for All Skills by 0.10
AE Range: 200
Casting Time: 0.00 sec
Duration: 1 min

There's a mana cost of 415 listed when you look up Fierce Eye, but it costs only one mana point in the game. Also, while the casting time is listed as 6, it is in fact an insta-cast spell. I've seen from personal experience that you can get some remarkably high heals and DoT crits, I don't know if the slot 3 value increases the amount a HoT heals or just the chance for it to crit. The skills damage modifier is in a different slot than that of Champion, but I don't know if they stack or not, kinda hard to parse without the Katta Castelum bankers around anymore.


Quick Time

Slot 5: Hundred Hands Effect(-2)
Slot 6: Increase ATK by 150
Slot 9: Increase Chance to Hit by 10pct with All Skills
AE Range: 100
Duration: 2.0 mins

Way I'm reading this, it should stack nicely with Fierce Eye and the bard and shaman epic effects. Don't play alot of other classes, so I can't say for certain, and you never know exactly how Sony's stacking logic's going to work. /shrug.


Funeral Dirge

This AA has six ranks and is a debuff with a DD recourse. Lucy data:

Slot 2: Improved Spell Effect(Shrieking Death)
Slot 5: Skill Damage Taken from All Skills by X%
Resist: Magic
Resist Adjust: -150
Duration: 1 ticks @L1 to 7 ticks @L12
Range: 200

where x starts at one with rank one and increases by one with each successive rank. You can look up Shrieking Death on Lucy, though the debuff that appears in the buff window is Funeral Dirge, and you find six separate entries:

Slot 1: Decrease Hitpoints by xxxx
Resist: Unresistable
Resist Adjust -1000

The values for xxxx in order of AA rank are:
1: 1000
2: 2000
3: 3000
4: 3300
5: 3600
6: 4100

Duration is listed as 7 ticks at L12 , but it only landed for 36 seconds on Kilg, and the description in the AA window says 30 seconds.

Thousand Blades

This isn't an AA, it's a disc, but it's impressive how much your dps increases while the disc is active. Thought I'd throw it in here.

Slot 1: Increase Chance to Hit with All Skills by 100%
Slot 2: Increase Critical Hits Damage modifier for All Skills by 2.00
Slot 3: Chance to Critical Hit by 5% with All Skills
Endurance Upkeep: 60 / sec
Cast Time: 0.00 sec
Recast Time: 00:33:45
Duration: 00:01:00 (10 ticks)
Timer: 2

[Tordail]

I am happy to see such a list ... the bard I made for my best friend is nearing the age when he can work on AAs and I really had no idea what to tell him to get. Aside from Fading Memories, what are the AA's that a bard should stop leveling to get?

[Kilgaroz]

51 to get Boastful Bellow. Other than Fading Memories, I think there's no AA I use more. At 55, get Aura of Insight, 15% overhaste aura. Stop at every level to get a higher innate run speed, speed = life. 61 for FM. At some point, grind out every mana regen AA you can since that's all you're going to get for refilling your mana pool. Nothing else works for a bard, other than Divine Rez and Expedient Recovery. Not Staunch Recovery, mod rods or any kind of mana regen buff. Your mana pool is going to disappear in a hurry if you're fading alot, at max FT (47), it takes nearly 2 minutes to recover the mana you spent on ONE fade, assuming you're not in ooc regen. When you get to working your Run Speed abilities, don't confuse Fleet of Foot with Selo's Enduring Cadence, the former increases your speed with Selo's, the latter is RS 6-8.

[Tordail]

Sweet, thanks. I'm going to print that out for him, he'll be thrilled!

[anaskesia]

[Brohg]

http://www.antonius-bayle.org/kumbaja/s ... l_view.php has far fewer "unknown db strings" than Lucy does. It also has things like the actual strength of the Hundred Hands Effect, which is pretty key to the power of Quick Time.

[anaskesia]

I've added charts for AA's with multiple levels, and numbers for AA's without multiple levels where appropriate.

For linking, I typically link to lucy because its fast but I could probably be persuaded to change the links to Kumbaja's if enough people care.

If I missed anything on the wiki page, please let me know. Otherwise I'm going to move on to the next page that I wanted to do.

PS: I wish there was a way to rename pages. "Bard Illusion" should really be "Bard Illusions". I can't figure out a way to change the name though.

[Samanna]

[Kilgaroz]

[anaskesia]