EQDiva

Hi guys, I recently rolled my first bard and have a couple of questions.  For non damage spells like charm and mez does your instrument effect your resist rate or something else or nothing at all? 

Also Im playing in a guild that is looking to progress through each expansion individualy similar to the combine.  Right now Im level 31 and limited to strictly original release eq,  Are there any instruments that I could quest/camp/find in those zones that are upgrades to the simple store bought stuff? 

We have over 50 people and are going to start raiding in a little bit.  Any can't-miss / must-have items I should keep an eye out for in the first few expansions?

Edit: Also sorry if some of these questions have been asked before ( I am sure they have ) but I was having problems using search for some reason.

Some, but not all, of the charms and mezes have a magic resist debuff built into them, making it easier to mez after they land or to reduce the chances of charm breaking early. The debuff is enhanced with an instrument. I believe they are all wind, but I guess I'd have to check. Better yet, go through the song list and look for A) debuff component B) instrument used. Again, this is true of some but not all of them, and maybe I was just imagining it on charm, but I think it's there. Don't forget about keeping up your charisma for it too!

Hmm I could have sworn I had seen archives or a link to the old site before, it has a perfect instrument list for you to use. Oh well, can't find it. I'll see if I can find it later or dig through some old notes maybe.

Hurrah! http://archives.eqdiva.com/eq/items/instruments.aspx

Also, http://archives.eqdiva.com/eq/songlist.aspx looks like 15 mez, no debuff - 27 charm, wind debuff - 28 mez wind debuff - 39 charm wind debuff - 40 mez wind debuff. In other words, wind will lower their magic resistance on all your mezes and charms except for the first mez at level 15.

Also, when Kunark comes out, some singing steel would be pretty nice to get. The boots, helm, and possibly the bp are items you'll keep using.  I still keep the boots and helm on me at all times.

Cool, thanks allot.   

FreedymFry:

Some, but not all, of the charms and mezes have a magic resist debuff built into them, making it easier to mez after they land or to reduce the chances of charm breaking early. The debuff is enhanced with an instrument. I believe they are all wind, but I guess I'd have to check. Better yet, go through the song list and look for A) debuff component B) instrument used.

 This is close to being right, but not quite.  The debuff you speak of on mez and charm is fixed and is not affected by the instrument mod.  It neither affects the resist check adjust (present on the 70+ mez and charm songs) nor any debuff when the resist check passes.

 I don't know if anyone has ever parsed mez and charm vs. instrument, but I've personally never noticed a difference in resist rate when using my best wind instrument vs. nothing.  However, there is a huge difference when twisting in a song like HoS (or OoS).

 It is true, though, that some song's debuffs are affected by instrument mods.  Particularly the single target DoT and some of the AE slow/damage songs are affected by the drum or string instrument modifiers.

 Check the spell spread sheet (I think the latest version is posted on The Concert Hall if not EQ Diva) that's available for all the gory details.

I never parsed anything.  But I always believed that swapping in my flute made my charms and mezzes stick better (on the ones that had the MR debuff).  But then, I almost always looked for a reason to swap my instruments around because I thought it was cool.