So I was toying around with the idea of using my sonic armor, but I can't seem to figure out how to tell how much elemental damage is absorbed. On normal armor I can just loresing to it and get the exact amount, but my own armor is proving to be more of an enigma, which seems kinda silly to me. Would it be possible to give bards some way to assess their sonic armor?

Does anyone know if song of tonis (1035) gives the same penalty as haste (506) to tiering up with unarmed combat? if yes, then does anyone know how much of a penalty, I've been playing around with UAC and I seem to have to jab 3 to 5 times before getting even a first tier up like level, (202 cmans, and 202 brawling ranks), but i keep tonis running constantly so I don't know what my success rate would be at normal speed. Given that bards can't use the hide/ambush UAC tactic to tier up and don't have access to any UAC masteries, isn't a penalty to using one of our songs overkill?

And while i'm asking about stuff, why is sonic equipment durability even listed in reference to air lore, it has absolutely no benefit,( 0 ranks or 101 the wind in nightmare gorge blows it away every time). It seems to be presented as a feature of sonic equipment but it serves no purpose, can we replace it with a meaningful benefit? maybe air or manipulation lore increases CvA/AvD of the armor (since we can't ensorcel or pad our sonic gear, this doesn't seem too unreasonable a request imho.

Would it be possible to add some scripts to the ez-scripter or maybe a special merchant that could give our sonic weapons and armor a slightly less vanilla combat rp feel? I'm not asking for a martial stance, but maybe some messaging to reflect the familiarity we've developed with our sonic gear, which is probably closer than any warrior, rogue, or square could boast.

Anywho rambling complete, I just hate to see the bard folder so devoid of activity, confirms my fears that nothing is in the works for us.

Archales

>Our sonic weapons are already immune to disarm, like a tier 5 bonded warrior/paladin weapon, and we have special merchants who can alter the appearance of the weapons. I'm not really sure what else you'd like out of it.

The ability to summon two so I can dual wield!

>Does anyone know if song of tonis (1035) gives the same penalty as haste (506) to tiering up with unarmed combat? if yes, then does anyone know how much of a penalty, I've been playing around with UAC and I seem to have to jab 3 to 5 times before getting even a first tier up like level, (202 cmans, and 202 brawling ranks), but i keep tonis running constantly so I don't know what my success rate would be at normal speed.

Assuming nothing has changed since the summer, the haste penalty is pretty small and its not going to turn your jab openings frequency from 75% down to 20-30%. A capped monk with haste is the equivalent of another class without it and completely useless by comparison if both or neither are unhasted. This is the same for 506 and 1035, both make a huge difference to UAC. A monk has to deal with 5 jabs to get an opening taking 15s not 5s.

Possibilities: 1) you are just remembering the times the 25% chance comes up several times running rather than doing a controlled test.
2) You are dealing with temporary hunting grounds, where a critter that seems as if its like-level is actually 10 levels over you.
3) You are trying to tier up on turtled critters (I am not sure exactly how much more difficult this is, but you don't get openings if you miss, and I suspect you have a reduced chance on low endrolls too)

while i'm sure all classes need TD, i don't think other professions are hurting as bad as we are, I can be warded easily by a seer even with spirit spells, its even more painful trying to hunt the rift like that. I agree that the ability to raise TD is powerful, an bards not having the ability to use sonics and have access to this bonus is why i was focused on the td weakness.

I would love to use 1017 but after much testing it seems to hinder my own and other PC spells/songs far more consistently than it does for creatures, sentries and gwe seem to cast through it at will. Its even less reliable in a place that swarms or in warcamps. If it could also be focused on a limited number of target(s) to keep them from casting it would remove my reason for wanting more td.

With the current state of the game, squares and pures are much more powerful classes in overall strength and certainly defense, I think people discount the fact that bards can't 3x armor, shield, or spell ranks those 101 ranks that allow for wearing platemail or higher spell ranks known bonus add up. Can I swing harder than a cleric? sure, can I cast more successfully than a rogue? sure, can I compete with a mage, sorc at warding people? no of course not. Can I ward off spells better than a warrior/rogue? I definitely have my doubts now, because i can't wear plate mail or ensorcell my sonics. which seems wrong to me, so I don't think i'm ignoring the big picture, but maybe my vision of it is myopic.

Archales

So, a couple more things on the TD front. You seem to be making the assumption that because we're bards, that we must wear sonics. We can still utilize Ensorcell on our armor, and just wear physical armors. Hell, a nice set of 7x fusion ASG 15 would likely be a nice upgrade for most Bards. Don't need to deal with the multi-song penalty, stun implications, etc... That means more 1035 or 1030s, more damage, blahblahblah. Physical Armor would also allow ensorcelling for that TD that we need.

While Plate does offer a better CvA versus Aug Chain, again, we need to take a look at everything on a whole. Rogue's Slippery Mind has a chance of negating warding spells. Is 1017 better or worse off than Slippery Mind? What's the tradeoff from running song of noise versus a rogue using CMAN points and dedicating their stance towards slippery mind. (In case I'm selecting the wrong one, I'm assuming slippery mind is the one that adds a flat rate to evade a CS attack). While yes, 1017 hinders our own ability to cast spells, we're also capable of dropping it prior to our song cycles, or tossing in a manual refresh with the RENEW verb.

With the lack of spellsongs that directly add to our TD, I can agree that our TD is on the weaker side of the classes. I'd still argue that all Squares have it worse off than we do. The other semis are definitely ahead of us on TD, and as for the Pures, well, it's dependent on which type of magic they're aligned to. But Bards also have some of the highest potentials as far as classes go for offense side. Except maybe paladins.... Lets change this into a Nerf Paladins thread!



Regarding the link and the stuff that I had done research on... By all means, please continue to add in more information of hits that you've taken yourself, and we can begin to try to draw up a correlation between air lore and armor use. The more data we have, the more we can reach that point of knowledge that you're looking for.

~Whirlin

Archales

From what I've seen from using it the song auto refreshes about every 40 seconds, but only seems capable of blocking about 3 or 4 spell attempts in that window before spells get through the noise. When I noticed this I figured the easy solution was simply to manually renew 1017 like you pointed out in your previous post. This led me to the discovery that attempting to manually renew 1017 makes all your other songs drop, while taking the mana for attempting it, but only 1017 will be going after that. I am pretty sure it was a bug with 1017 but I've reported about it a few times and its still functioning that way last I tried using 1017. Having to stop and start 1017 manually while trying to keep 1035 running by moving and casting before the 1017 effect followed me in, proved too mana intensive for me to use the tactic for long. I'll be hanging on to my normal ensorcelled armor until i can find out more about the elemental damage reduction sonic armor gives.

Song of Noise (1017) refreshes at the same rate of every other spellsong, which is determined by your stats/skills. For example, when I just tested it, I had a 7 minute refresh duration. Everytime you move to a new room, there is up to a maximum of a 5 second delay before the song will renew (different than refresh) where it will then affect the new room. While Song of Noise is active, it requires a skill check for any magic to be cast in the room, including the caster's other spellsongs. It does not have a certain number of uses ("3 or 4"). If you want higher success with the spell, your level (vs the target), number of spellsong ranks, and your Discipline bonus are the modifiers you'll want to try to maximize.

GameMaster Estild

>examples of what I'm talking about on the demonwall

Things which include a level comparison are not going to work well there.

Estild "You stop for a moment to shield your ears from the irritating noise." is just fluff and has no impact on anything.

Is that message really just fluff? It seems to match up timewise with when the Noise effect is moved to the Bard's current room. I've taken advantage of this sometimes for song renewal purposes. I you get a "you concentrate to maintain your sanity" or "you stop for a moment to shield your ears" message, you have a second or two when you can immediately move to a new room and either renew your songs (risky) or cast an attack spell in the window before the Noise Song moves.

---

Fyonn's player

KRAKII

Subject to the check for success based on the parameters you mentioned previously, correct?

Technically, yes, but all the modifiers cancel each other out since it's a skill test against yourself. i.e. your level vs. yourself, your spellsong ranks vs. yourself, your discipline bonus vs. yourself. It's a just a matter of luck for the Bard.

GameMaster Estild

KRAKII

Can you give us a broad stroke of what degree of luck is required to cast through your own Noise? (i.e. "Open roll required, one chance in a hundred, 50/50, somewhere in between...")

You only have a 15% chance to successfully cast a spell through your own Song of Noise (1017).

GameMaster Estild

(No, seriously: thanks! I was expecting the normal range of vagueness that GMs can typically release, so getting the actual number is awesome.)

Archales

Estlid, is there any chance you could give us a rough idea of how much, or how to calculate the amount of elemental damage reduction we have on our sonic armor?

Normally, I'm not for keeping any mechanics a secret, as players deserve to know such details, especially if it can affect their training. However, the formula for the sonic armor's elemental protection is very convoluted. The lore bonus is relatively small compared to the spellsong bonus, and the overall numbers can get quite high.

GameMaster Estild