EQDiva

Hey Everyone Well, I'm 24 now and will be 25 in a couple of blues. bah, anyway.... I do a lot of lurking and occassionally post questions, or answers when I think I know them. So, in lurking I've seen LOTS of posts concerning bards that can't do crowd control in the upper levels. Now, I'd like to get started on this. But It's not working out so well. RESISTS! ACK! Everything I try to slow or mez resists until it's only got a bubble or 2 of health left and by that time, what's the point, just kill it. I seem to have the same problem with everything resisting, bellows, chords, denons, Largos :( ...Lament is about the only one I can really count on assuming the mobs are far enough apart to begin with, but that's not cc that's pulling. Now assuming that my songs are charisma based, which all the information I have seems to point to, I'm under the impression that I should be doing ok, cha is at least 110 if I remember correctly. So, what do I need to do? Better cha gear? Just do buffs, heals and mana :o unless I'm soloing blues? And if I'm messing with blue mobs then why bother doing anything other than killing it? Anyway, maybe I'm just looking foward to being a grown up bard :p , but if VI wants us grouping and fighting harder mobs then I think our stuff should work on them at least some of the time.(I try not to take shots at Verant but I'm befuzzled here, don't want this turning into a VI flame thread.) What I'm interested in is boosting my music's power. I know levelling will do it but in addition to that. If my strength is in my music then my music needs to be better. Thanks for the help. Darch ---------------------------------------------------- "Well, how do you expect me to find a group without shouting? Besides that, all the mobs around here are named! As a matter of fact you shouldn't be walking around alone...This place is Dangerous!! Wanna team up and help me kill some stuff? You can loot the corpses, I just want the experience and the splits. What class are you anyway?" A police officer scowls at you ready to attack. ----------------------------------------------------

From what I've experienced the mez at that level just plain stinks. Gotta wait a few levels before you get better mez. 53 mez works good and I usually don't have a problem mezzing 4 at a time and even twist in some haste sometimes.

Yeah, I have a cha of about 100 most of the time, unless you get your cha way up there, it doesn't seem to change much, I still get resists part of the time even when I got it up to 170. It is just based on lvl mainly I believe, but having decent cha does help. Having 110 or 120 is very nice, and should be good enough. Once you get to 40, head over to kelethin and buy the sionche's dreams, I'm not sure on spelling, but IMO it worked a lot better than the AE mez, that got constantly resisted for me, and it is targettable, which is fun, but I always charm a mob, and use it as a pet in group if we get adds, then you need to just survive the beating he gives you once charm breaks and the MT can get it off of you. But that is just what I always do, just seems to work better than to constantly have mez on a mob, unless there are a 3 pull and MT has one you charm another, then mez the last one, that would work nicely, but in a good group, you shouldn't have to worry about that. Etc. it all depends, but yeah, just wait a couple lvls, and don';t try to lay a mez or char or anything higher con than you until later on, even then, only if the mob has lower resists to stuff like that. I have noticed our chants(I'm 48) and slows seem to stick on even yellow and red gorangas in ME to me. so I dunno, just practice and try to figure out what works for you near a zone line on different mobs, that is the best advice I can give. GL to you.

I'm level 20 and my cha is 81 or maybe 83. For slow i use largo's melodic binding and for mez kelin's lucid lullaby, at bandit camp 2 in paludal, largo's was resisted more then kelin's, mez usually had no resist at all, maybe i was just plain lucky :) Can't say largo's was resisted that much either, the few times i used chords of dissonance it was not resisted either, didn't have denon's disruptive memmed at the moment so not shure about that one.

With the new resists this might be easier now.

From my experience, mez did not work very well at lower levels. Even once I hit 40-45 fighting in Dreadlands, my mez didn't land very often (got resisted a lot). I did notice at level 46 my mez started working much better, but still had about 1 in 5 resist. I have to say the new level 40 song Sionache's Dreams is awesome. Can mez almost anything (including yellows, haven't tried it on red cons yet) with no or very minimal resists. First day I got it (level 47) went to Siren's Grotto (to where Mistress spawns) and got only 1 resist there (used it a lot, and almost had a wipeout except for the chanter and 2 bards (myself included) that mezzed everything that was moving and saved the day-12 mobs mezzed at one time (3 per bard and 6 for the chanter)). Fighting in Fungus Grove at level 50, I could chain-mez the small mushrooms (lvl 48-49 mobs) without a resist, and the Shadel Bandits (lvl 51-52 mobs) with 1 in 5 or 6 pulses resisting. Learn crowd control as it can come in handy, but it's hard to do until you get the level 40 song, IMO anyways :). I really didn't get to start practicing until low-mid 40's in Dreadlands cause everything seemed to resist way too much (and even then it was rough with the lvl 28 song). At higher levels, crowd control is a great ability to have, as if a group doesn't have a chanter along, they will take a bard, especially if the bard has good crowd control abilities (at lvl 46 I was grouping with 50-53 and now at lvl 50 I group regularly in 53-55+ groups because of this). Also, the new resist tables they have recently patched may actually be having an effect and thus why it's easier for me now - I dunno. Just my 2cp Seldana Mistsong Weaver of the 50th Song Brell Serilis server

I'm still pretty new to the bard thing, but I have found that in the 20's the best crowd control method is charm. I can charm red giants in Frontier Mtns with no problem. I just concentrate on the mob I am charming and keep it on until the group can get around to killing it. Of course this is after he has beat up another giant and got himself knocked down quite a bit too. :)

Hello again... I know that im only 18 but I stil read all the posts. I spent 15-17 in High Hold Pass doing the orcs at the zone line usually in a duo with a SK. As someof you may know these guys spawn like crazy and all at once so get 5 orcs at once was a common thing and most conned yellow a few blues and a few reds. I was mezzing 3 at a time and occasionally twisting in a heal or haste song as was needed and had very little resists. I think they musta fixed the charm/mez songs. of Course agro from that was such that even SK couldnt pull them off me when it was time to break mez so I would just use my instrument the whole time with att off and keep it mezzed even while he was fighting it or I went down pretty quick. maybe not the most efficient way to do it but it worked most of the time :)

Rendar, there was a change to the level 15 mez recently, it went from AoE to targeted, so this has probably had a big effect on how much it's resisted. As far efficient use of songs go, you just do what works till you find a better way, as long as you keep experimenting you soon figure out the best way of doing things :) I do remember trying to use the 15 song when it was AoE at the temple in Oasis, it worked, but not reliably, and the agro afterwards was intense, When I tested it out on the orc camps in EC I found that although they were all green I was getting a 90% resist rate with the 15 song :( Put me off using mez for quite a while after that. Anyway that was over a year ago, looks like they finally fixed this piece of junk that passed for a song then :D

Quick touch up on mez. lvl 17 (think thats right) is not longer area effect, it was changed during the new ui patch to target as well was the charm upgrade song to use more mana but effect lasts longer. If you want to learn about mez read about checks on mez from chanter boards. It is guessed that cha still effects mez, but i myself believe the popular guesses that it is MR checked and level checked primarily. This has not stopped me from keeping cha at 150 or better all time though. Lower level mezzes will resists horribly until your recieve sionachies dreams. Then you will be a very effective crowd controller until your upgrade at 53. Just be careful where you CC until then, many things in places like KC, chardok and seb cannot be mezzed until you get your 53 upgrade. For better results, USE YOUR WIND INSTRUMENT. If i am ever unsure believe that will have my piccolo in hand before i shoot off my mez.

If CHA is your problem, there is a good post in the general bard discussion on CHA gear for charming which would apply to mezzing / crowd control as well. At 17 though, I didn't mez much except to give me time to escape. I was in Paudal Caverns at the time and that added few steps could mean making it to zone or not making it to the bandit camp. Sinfonian