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Packrat · 02-01-2007, 07:19 PM

by Whysprr from the Dirge forum

As those famous Dirges of Liverpool said: 'Whysprr Words of Wisdom'

Introduction and disclaimer
I got tired of reading the same questions over an' over an' over. This won't help, but it does allow us to be snooty and point people to the FAQ when they ask 'em. This version (2.0) is broken into sections because it got too long to edit easily.
I wrote the original version of this when I was a 57th level dirge, updated it along the way, and finally cracked 70. But this is a big game, and I haven’t done it all, far from it. I’ve shamefully stolen from other posts on these boards. In general, you should assume that errors are mine, and that accurate information comes from someone else. If you spot an inaccuracy, please point it out to me either in this thread or via PM.
Senior dirges, as always, please contribute comments and further questions that belong here.
Edit History: 1/21/07: Updated mount stats, fixed discussion of some God stuff. Thanks, Antryg!

----------------

General Dirgeliness Q. What’s being a dirge all about?
A. Dirges are the best of the scout subclasses; actually, dirges are simply the best thing going. Ask anyone. No, not the troubs, they’re prejudiced.
Like all scouts, dirges have the ability to be sneaky, safe fall, evac, and disarm chests. Used to be we had the best native running speed around; if you were rolling along on your great big expensive warhorse and a short red-haired Ayr-dal went zipping past leaving behind only a cloud of dust, a languorous wave and a sweet, distant memory, that was a dirge. Now, who knows, could be a ranger, could be a fury or someone who knows a fury or whomever. If I seem testy about this it’s because I am.
In combat, you have ranged attacks, positional attacks, stealth attacks. There are debuffs, buffs, snares, a root, even a daze. On a real good day you can do a bit of crowd control with fear + root. You can combat rez, and you can look good doing it. Being a dirge is about always having something to do. Except in raids, but that’s why the Hedgehog Song has seventeen verses.
It’s about not getting any invitations to romantic walks on the beach because you’re in such demand for groups to go kill ferocious beasts. Life as a single dirge in the big city isn’t all roses, let me tell you. Dirges are extraordinarily group-friendly. We don’t have all-out-fierce dps, but we bring buffs and debuffs that make everyone else look good, much like large multicolored drinks at a club late at night. This happened to me once, but I digress.
And some dirges – I’m not naming names here – are too group-friendly, going waay past the ‘friendly’ part into, well, I’m done with this question now.
Q. I’m trying to decide between a dirge and a troubadour. Which is best?
A. You’ve GOT to be kidding. Dirges sing dark, profound songs that remind us that life is short and death comes to us all, and there’re just a whole lot of directions you can go from there; ranging from: 'Live for today because tomorrow we're worm-food' to: 'Life is real, life is earnest, and there's a horrible beast just over yon hill let's kill it' to: 'We all die and I'm depressed but isn't this black eyeshadow and lipstick just coool' to my personal favorite: 'All the good-looking High Elf paladins are taken and tomorrow we may be dead, so let's make fun of the troubs.'.
Troubadours know one song that goes ‘la-la-la-lally / down in the green valley / I met a young shepherdess / and got into her pants’. They claim to know lots of songs but it’s really all just the one. This is fine for the shepherdess but rough on the audience.
What, you meant in combat? Oh, sorry.
We’re both centered on making everyone else look better than us. Both have the only song that the other classes really know about, the one that improves power regeneration. Dirges can steal health, fear the target, rez; troubadors can steal power, can charm and mez, and can sing a health-regen group song. Dirges are oriented to buffing melee, troubadours to buffing casters.
Q. I want to play a dirge, but I don’t want to be evil.
A. Well, then don’t for goodness' sake. Evil is a matter of personal choice, my dear, and if you don’t want to be evil what you have to do is look in the mirror each morning and say: ‘I will NOT be evil today’.
And, totally off the topic, dirges are so wonderful and charismatic that they’re welcome anywhere. Freeport and Qeynos both welcome dirges with open arms. Troubs, too, Heaven knows why.
Q. What’s the best race to be to play a dirge?
A. Whatever race suits your fancy. As the levels increase equipment effects swamp racial attributes, you couldn’t tell a well-equipped ratonga from a well-equipped high elf, unless of course you had a sense of smell and / or a snootiness detector.
Q. I want to run a dirge, and my <husband / wife / significant other / father / mother / son / daughter / brother / sister / cousin / best friend / imaginary friend / live-in dalliance poodle / macro ‘bot running in my second computer> wants to run a <monk / bruiser / paladin / shadowknight / guardian / berserker / inquisitor / templar / fury / warden / defiler / mystic / coercer / illusionist / warlock / wizard / conjuror / necromancer / assassin / ranger / brigand / swashbuckler / troubadour / dirge. Will this work?
A. Of course it will, for goodness’ sake. Dirges make everyone better. With a tank we’re dps, with a cleric we’re tanks, with another scout we bounce the mob back and forth using our backstab / stealth attacks, and with a mage we’re trying frantically to hold aggro so the mob doesn’t paste the mage right out of that skimpy robe.
Dirges are especially good with classes which generate a lot of their dps via disease-based attacks, most particularly defilers, warlocks, and shadowknights. You want to lose aggro in a hurry, try to tank for a warlock while you’re casting Verlien’s and Zander’s on group mobs.
Q. What instrument do I have to play to be a dirge?
A. We don’t have instruments yet <grumble>. You don’t have to play an instrument at all to be a dirge. In fact, Godstalk can’t even carry a tune, she's some sort of battle-poet. And you thought necromancers were scary.
Q. I’m a troubadour, and I’d just like to say I do too know more than the one song you just mentioned. The other one goes ‘One bright morning in May / As I was a walkin’ down by the seashore / I met a young milkmaid / And got into her pants.’ So there!
A. I beg your pardon, dear. My mistake.

-------------
Equipment – The Joy of Gear. Shopping, too. Q. What stats are important for dirges?
A. Bloody near everything. Agility improves power pool and avoidance, strength improves autoattack and combat art damage, intelligence improves power pool and spell damage and keeps you from doing stupid things, stamina improves survivability and the chance of getting a second date, and wisdom improves resistances and keeps you from doing really stupid things, including some of those second dates.
In choosing equipment, people have different approaches. Scout-oriented gear tends to be weighted toward agi, str, and sta, so it can be hard to get good int gear – which many dirges value highly. It also depends on what you do; the best gear for solo isn’t necessarily the best gear for raids.
Q. What equipment should I upgrade first?
A. Whatever’s the ugliest, of course.
Again with the obsession with effectiveness, sheesh. You’d think that was all there was to life. Well, maybe it is all there is to life, considering how hard it is for a single dirge to get a date.
I tend to pick weapons over armor over jewelry because except for soloing, your firepower is your asset, not your defenses. If you solo, I think it's still weapons first, you're not a tank for Heaven's sake. Raiders obsess over resists, so it's whatever gives the best resists for the God-Whomper of Doom.
So, weapons first. This is despite being a modestly-successful jeweler myself. Wait, what am I saying!? IT’S ALL ABOUT THE JEWELRY, OK??
Q. What armor do dirges wear?
A. Whatever looks best, naturally.
Oh, all right. I declare, everyone wants to hunt, nobody cares for style anymore. That’s probably why I don’t get any dates. Dirges, like the rest of the scouts, can wear up to chain-type armor, and most do for the mitigation. There’s little reason any longer to wear leather or less, though in group or raiding situations an isolated piece with helpful stats or a good special power can make sense.
Q. What weapons do dirges use? Should I use a shield?
A. 90% of dirges dual-wield. The STA AA line is quite good, though, and has lured many to sword-and-board, especially in PvP; with enough points in that line damage output approaches that of a dual-wielder, with improved defense and a couple of very nice added abilities. The conventional wisdom, though, is that the increased firepower from dual-wielding plus the advantages of a non-STA AA line outweigh the defense from the shield for all but the most dedicated solo or PvP dirges. Plus, dual-wields are waaay better-looking and dirgeliness isn’t just about buffing and debuffing and dps, it’s about style and pizzazz, too. Any dull dirge has to answer to ol' Whysp, and that's not a good thing, let me tell you.
Technical Discussion from Godstalk / Sorschae:
Should I dual wield or go sword-and-board (use a shield)?
Shields provide a shield bonus to your avoidance. Unless the shield has special statistics related to physical resistances (or magical), it has no mitigation properties of any kind.
Dual wield weapons each do approximately 75% of the damage of an equivalent level and quality one-handed weapon, for a total of 150% target damage… or they did until Live update 16, which increased dual wield weapon output approximately 10% each, to address the fact that they had a larger propensity to lose versus two-handed weapons (which are targeted to be the same raw DPS level, though no scout can use one) since you cannot autoattack while using combat arts.
One handed weapons cannot be combined with dual wield weapons… you either use one or two dual wield weapons (never use one… but you CAN), or a one hander and a shield.
As for which way you wish to go, again, that depends. Some dirges swear by them, most (in the author’s opinion) do not. In almost all scenarios, dual wield output more than compensates for the targeted 8% avoidance difference gained from a round shield (the largest shield a scout may employ). You may pick up a dirge usable fabled 1handed weapon of dirgey-uberness… and fabled one handers easily compete with equal level handcrafted or treasured dual wield weapons for output. A dirge’s primary role is to fill that of the scout archetype, however, and output is a major factor of that. Alternate advancement abilities in the stamina line also compensate for lost DPS related to carrying a shield, making this a strong contender for solo play, pvp, or alternate-tanking.
Q. Do Jboots stack with my Selo’s/Horse/Carpet?
A. You betcha, and a fine thing it is to grin as you sail past people on flying carpets. Actually, we’re only 1% faster than the carpets, but it still gives us gloating rights. Not over most of the rest of Norrath these days, and did I mention this makes me testy?
Technical discussion from Godstalk / Sorschae (slightly updated)
Your movement speed in EverQuest2 is your base speed plus the faster of one of two modifiers. Those two modifiers are runspeed and mountspeed.
Runspeed modifiers work in any zone type and stack in a manner that is very similar to haste stacking: That is, you can have one “spell” modifier, and one “item” modifier. This means you can stack jboots with Selo’s, or any one spirit of the wind item with Spirit of the Wolf. Bards with the top level runspeed ability can move at +34% of base runspeed. Bards with jboots can run at +44% of runspeed, not counting alternate ability enhancements.
Mountspeed modifiers only work in overland or outdoor zones, and have no ability to stack with anything. Top tier horses can move at +50% over base, but those cost upwards of 400,000 status and 14 platinum, and require you to be in a 60th level guild to complete it. The tier below that costs a smaller amount (still measured in platinum, and available at guild level 40) and allows you to move at +48% over base.
If you put on all three items (movement speed, item movement buff, and mount (carpet/horse), then you will move at the faster of those two speeds, run- or mount-.

---------

Tactics and Adventuring Q. Can dirges solo?
A. Absolutely not, dear, all those dirges you see running around the wilderness are just carrying messages and hoping to be picked up for groups.
Dirges are modest-but-competent soloists. Well-equipped dirges can handle many yellow ^ mobs toe-to-toe, though there are some low times, when the blue ^s paste me right out of my J-boots. Some dirges even use kiting techniques (running around with the mob slowed by our excellent snare and slow debuffs, pounding away with ranged autoattack and spells) to handle heroics, though this is more a stunt or a situational thing than a strategy for most of us. It’s also a major PvP tactic for dirges.
We’re not rangers or assassins, OK? You want to blow through yellow ^^^s, don’t play a dirge.
Q. What’s dirge dps like?
A. It’s like, the wrong question. In solo play, we have enough dps to solo effectively – we’ve also got lots of other tools; a root, debuffs, lifetaps, and so on. In groups our dps looks pitiful, but that’s because methods for measuring dps don’t take into account how much we increase party dps and hurt mob dps. A very-well-done parse by Numaru / Ekho in a level 70 group showed that our output overall is right up there where it should be for a scout-class, and you add that to the style and pizzazz factor and why am I not getting invited to groups by the good-looking High Elf paladins?
It couldn't be my personality. Nah.
Q. What do dirges bring to groups?
A. Groups are where we just plain sing [ha-ha]. We bring buffs that can haste the lot, provide a group parry bonus, increase str and agi across the board, increase chance to hit against yellow-orange mobs, give resistance to poison or disease, give a disease proc chance to everyone (this is pretty lame right now), give the tank strength and extra aggo, and give a fab stoneskin to everyone. We can debuff mitigation to melee, slow, and strip away mob str/agi and (at least from L35 to 50) debuff magic,. And we can do decent dps, especially against multimob encounters with two respectable AOE attacks.
Oh, yes, right, also, power regen, which is what you’ll get invited for.
At level 58, we get Cacophony of Blades, which is good solo, very nice in the average group, and vicious indeed in melee-heavy groups. I still don’t get invitations to romantic walks on the beach, though.
Q. What do dirges bring to raids?
A. Dirges tend to be in the main-tank group on raids for power regen, stoneskin, agro, and parry songs. If there are two dirges, the second is best employed in a melee dps group.
A raiding dirge’s primary duty is maintaining the buffs and debuffs. Properly done, this is nearly a full-time job, since the epic-effective debuffs include seven, count ‘em, seven different effects: encounter-wide slow (Daro’s), melee (Clara’s), and agi/str (Discante) debuffs; single-target disease (Verlien’s), melee (Tarven’s), side-attack dps (Stabbity-Stab), and finally stealth-attack wis (Garsin’s) debuffs. The buffs include periodic casting of Cacophony of Blades as well as the maintained buffs.
The raiding dirge’s second priority is spot-resurrecting over-nuking mages and scouts, the silly things. Our rez is fast-casting and refreshes rapidly, and the group version can handle heavy-duty near-wipes. It’s better for dirges (and paladins and such) to handle raid in-combat rez duty, that way the clerics can keep the healing going, hopefully limiting the need for more rezzing.
In whatever time and with whatever power is left over from the duties above, raid dirges also contribute as much dps as they can churn out. Scream of Death is the most power-efficient of our combat arts by a significant margin, followed in a clump by Garsin’s, Stab, Infected Blade, and Luda’s.
In order to maintain all this junk, a dirge’s first raid priority has to be survival. There’s no point in diving into a lethal AOE to get off Scream of Death, your direct output doesn’t match your indirect contributions in buffs and debuffs. This takes discipline and self-restraint, and also a certain boredom tolerance as the battle wears on, but if you can master the mandolin, raiding is cake.
I do recommend memorizing all seventeen verses of the Hedgehog Song to sing on the raid channel. This will make you popular with your guildmates, okay, it’ll drive ‘em nuts, especially the manic uber-raiders, but it’ll build character for them, and that counts as buffing. Despite the bloody tedium and the uber-raiding culture of mind-gnawing arrogance, raiding has a weird fascination. So, all you easily-offended uber-raiders just put a sock in it, OK?

------------

(continued)

02-01-2007, 07:19 PM	#1 (permalink)
Packrat Keeper of cheese, useful things, and lost buttons Posts: 37	Dirge FAQ (part 1/3) by Whysprr from the Dirge forum As those famous Dirges of Liverpool said: 'Whysprr Words of Wisdom' Introduction and disclaimer I got tired of reading the same questions over an' over an' over. This won't help, but it does allow us to be snooty and point people to the FAQ when they ask 'em. This version (2.0) is broken into sections because it got too long to edit easily. I wrote the original version of this when I was a 57th level dirge, updated it along the way, and finally cracked 70. But this is a big game, and I haven’t done it all, far from it. I’ve shamefully stolen from other posts on these boards. In general, you should assume that errors are mine, and that accurate information comes from someone else. If you spot an inaccuracy, please point it out to me either in this thread or via PM. Senior dirges, as always, please contribute comments and further questions that belong here. Edit History: 1/21/07: Updated mount stats, fixed discussion of some God stuff. Thanks, Antryg! ---------------- General Dirgeliness Q. What’s being a dirge all about? A. Dirges are the best of the scout subclasses; actually, dirges are simply the best thing going. Ask anyone. No, not the troubs, they’re prejudiced. Like all scouts, dirges have the ability to be sneaky, safe fall, evac, and disarm chests. Used to be we had the best native running speed around; if you were rolling along on your great big expensive warhorse and a short red-haired Ayr-dal went zipping past leaving behind only a cloud of dust, a languorous wave and a sweet, distant memory, that was a dirge. Now, who knows, could be a ranger, could be a fury or someone who knows a fury or whomever. If I seem testy about this it’s because I am. In combat, you have ranged attacks, positional attacks, stealth attacks. There are debuffs, buffs, snares, a root, even a daze. On a real good day you can do a bit of crowd control with fear + root. You can combat rez, and you can look good doing it. Being a dirge is about always having something to do. Except in raids, but that’s why the Hedgehog Song has seventeen verses. It’s about not getting any invitations to romantic walks on the beach because you’re in such demand for groups to go kill ferocious beasts. Life as a single dirge in the big city isn’t all roses, let me tell you. Dirges are extraordinarily group-friendly. We don’t have all-out-fierce dps, but we bring buffs and debuffs that make everyone else look good, much like large multicolored drinks at a club late at night. This happened to me once, but I digress. And some dirges – I’m not naming names here – are too group-friendly, going waay past the ‘friendly’ part into, well, I’m done with this question now. Q. I’m trying to decide between a dirge and a troubadour. Which is best? A. You’ve GOT to be kidding. Dirges sing dark, profound songs that remind us that life is short and death comes to us all, and there’re just a whole lot of directions you can go from there; ranging from: 'Live for today because tomorrow we're worm-food' to: 'Life is real, life is earnest, and there's a horrible beast just over yon hill let's kill it' to: 'We all die and I'm depressed but isn't this black eyeshadow and lipstick just coool' to my personal favorite: 'All the good-looking High Elf paladins are taken and tomorrow we may be dead, so let's make fun of the troubs.'. Troubadours know one song that goes ‘la-la-la-lally / down in the green valley / I met a young shepherdess / and got into her pants’. They claim to know lots of songs but it’s really all just the one. This is fine for the shepherdess but rough on the audience. What, you meant in combat? Oh, sorry. We’re both centered on making everyone else look better than us. Both have the only song that the other classes really know about, the one that improves power regeneration. Dirges can steal health, fear the target, rez; troubadors can steal power, can charm and mez, and can sing a health-regen group song. Dirges are oriented to buffing melee, troubadours to buffing casters. Q. I want to play a dirge, but I don’t want to be evil. A. Well, then don’t for goodness' sake. Evil is a matter of personal choice, my dear, and if you don’t want to be evil what you have to do is look in the mirror each morning and say: ‘I will *NOT* be evil today’. And, totally off the topic, dirges are so wonderful and charismatic that they’re welcome anywhere. Freeport and Qeynos both welcome dirges with open arms. Troubs, too, Heaven knows why. Q. What’s the best race to be to play a dirge? A. Whatever race suits your fancy. As the levels increase equipment effects swamp racial attributes, you couldn’t tell a well-equipped ratonga from a well-equipped high elf, unless of course you had a sense of smell and / or a snootiness detector. Q. I want to run a dirge, and my <husband / wife / significant other / father / mother / son / daughter / brother / sister / cousin / best friend / imaginary friend / live-in dalliance poodle / macro ‘bot running in my second computer> wants to run a <monk / bruiser / paladin / shadowknight / guardian / berserker / inquisitor / templar / fury / warden / defiler / mystic / coercer / illusionist / warlock / wizard / conjuror / necromancer / assassin / ranger / brigand / swashbuckler / troubadour / dirge. Will this work? A. Of course it will, for goodness’ sake. Dirges make everyone better. With a tank we’re dps, with a cleric we’re tanks, with another scout we bounce the mob back and forth using our backstab / stealth attacks, and with a mage we’re trying frantically to hold aggro so the mob doesn’t paste the mage right out of that skimpy robe. Dirges are especially good with classes which generate a lot of their dps via disease-based attacks, most particularly defilers, warlocks, and shadowknights. You want to lose aggro in a hurry, try to tank for a warlock while you’re casting Verlien’s and Zander’s on group mobs. Q. What instrument do I have to play to be a dirge? A. We don’t have instruments yet <grumble>. You don’t have to play an instrument at all to be a dirge. In fact, Godstalk can’t even carry a tune, she's some sort of battle-poet. And you thought necromancers were scary. Q. I’m a troubadour, and I’d just like to say I do too know more than the one song you just mentioned. The other one goes ‘One bright morning in May / As I was a walkin’ down by the seashore / I met a young milkmaid / And got into her pants.’ So there! A. I beg your pardon, dear. My mistake. ------------- Equipment – The Joy of Gear. Shopping, too. Q. What stats are important for dirges? A. Bloody near everything. Agility improves power pool and avoidance, strength improves autoattack and combat art damage, intelligence improves power pool and spell damage and keeps you from doing stupid things, stamina improves survivability and the chance of getting a second date, and wisdom improves resistances and keeps you from doing really stupid things, including some of those second dates. In choosing equipment, people have different approaches. Scout-oriented gear tends to be weighted toward agi, str, and sta, so it can be hard to get good int gear – which many dirges value highly. It also depends on what you do; the best gear for solo isn’t necessarily the best gear for raids. Q. What equipment should I upgrade first? A. Whatever’s the ugliest, of course. Again with the obsession with effectiveness, sheesh. You’d think that was all there was to life. Well, maybe it is all there is to life, considering how hard it is for a single dirge to get a date. I tend to pick weapons over armor over jewelry because except for soloing, your firepower is your asset, not your defenses. If you solo, I think it's still weapons first, you're not a tank for Heaven's sake. Raiders obsess over resists, so it's whatever gives the best resists for the God-Whomper of Doom. So, weapons first. This is despite being a modestly-successful jeweler myself. Wait, what am I saying!? IT’S ALL ABOUT THE JEWELRY, OK?? Q. What armor do dirges wear? A. Whatever looks best, naturally. Oh, all right. I declare, everyone wants to hunt, nobody cares for style anymore. That’s probably why I don’t get any dates. Dirges, like the rest of the scouts, can wear up to chain-type armor, and most do for the mitigation. There’s little reason any longer to wear leather or less, though in group or raiding situations an isolated piece with helpful stats or a good special power can make sense. Q. What weapons do dirges use? Should I use a shield? A. 90% of dirges dual-wield. The STA AA line is quite good, though, and has lured many to sword-and-board, especially in PvP; with enough points in that line damage output approaches that of a dual-wielder, with improved defense and a couple of very nice added abilities. The conventional wisdom, though, is that the increased firepower from dual-wielding plus the advantages of a non-STA AA line outweigh the defense from the shield for all but the most dedicated solo or PvP dirges. Plus, dual-wields are waaay better-looking and dirgeliness isn’t just about buffing and debuffing and dps, it’s about style and pizzazz, too. Any dull dirge has to answer to ol' Whysp, and that's not a good thing, let me tell you. Technical Discussion from Godstalk / Sorschae: Should I dual wield or go sword-and-board (use a shield)? Shields provide a shield bonus to your avoidance. Unless the shield has special statistics related to physical resistances (or magical), it has no mitigation properties of any kind. Dual wield weapons each do approximately 75% of the damage of an equivalent level and quality one-handed weapon, for a total of 150% target damage… or they did until Live update 16, which increased dual wield weapon output approximately 10% each, to address the fact that they had a larger propensity to lose versus two-handed weapons (which are targeted to be the same raw DPS level, though no scout can use one) since you cannot autoattack while using combat arts. One handed weapons cannot be combined with dual wield weapons… you either use one or two dual wield weapons (never use one… but you CAN), or a one hander and a shield. As for which way you wish to go, again, that depends. Some dirges swear by them, most (in the author’s opinion) do not. In almost all scenarios, dual wield output more than compensates for the targeted 8% avoidance difference gained from a round shield (the largest shield a scout may employ). You may pick up a dirge usable fabled 1handed weapon of dirgey-uberness… and fabled one handers easily compete with equal level handcrafted or treasured dual wield weapons for output. A dirge’s primary role is to fill that of the scout archetype, however, and output is a major factor of that. Alternate advancement abilities in the stamina line also compensate for lost DPS related to carrying a shield, making this a strong contender for solo play, pvp, or alternate-tanking. Q. Do Jboots stack with my Selo’s/Horse/Carpet? A. You betcha, and a fine thing it is to grin as you sail past people on flying carpets. Actually, we’re only 1% faster than the carpets, but it still gives us gloating rights. Not over most of the rest of Norrath these days, and did I mention this makes me testy? Technical discussion from Godstalk / Sorschae (slightly updated) Your movement speed in EverQuest2 is your base speed plus the faster of one of two modifiers. Those two modifiers are runspeed and mountspeed. Runspeed modifiers work in any zone type and stack in a manner that is very similar to haste stacking: That is, you can have one “spell” modifier, and one “item” modifier. This means you can stack jboots with Selo’s, or any one spirit of the wind item with Spirit of the Wolf. Bards with the top level runspeed ability can move at +34% of base runspeed. Bards with jboots can run at +44% of runspeed, not counting alternate ability enhancements. Mountspeed modifiers only work in overland or outdoor zones, and have no ability to stack with anything. Top tier horses can move at +50% over base, but those cost upwards of 400,000 status and 14 platinum, and require you to be in a 60th level guild to complete it. The tier below that costs a smaller amount (still measured in platinum, and available at guild level 40) and allows you to move at +48% over base. If you put on all three items (movement speed, item movement buff, and mount (carpet/horse), then you will move at the faster of those two speeds, run- or mount-. --------- Tactics and Adventuring Q. Can dirges solo? A. Absolutely not, dear, all those dirges you see running around the wilderness are just carrying messages and hoping to be picked up for groups. Dirges are modest-but-competent soloists. Well-equipped dirges can handle many yellow ^ mobs toe-to-toe, though there are some low times, when the blue ^s paste me right out of my J-boots. Some dirges even use kiting techniques (running around with the mob slowed by our excellent snare and slow debuffs, pounding away with ranged autoattack and spells) to handle heroics, though this is more a stunt or a situational thing than a strategy for most of us. It’s also a major PvP tactic for dirges. We’re not rangers or assassins, OK? You want to blow through yellow ^^^s, don’t play a dirge. Q. What’s dirge dps like? A. It’s like, the wrong question. In solo play, we have enough dps to solo effectively – we’ve also got lots of other tools; a root, debuffs, lifetaps, and so on. In groups our dps looks pitiful, but that’s because methods for measuring dps don’t take into account how much we increase party dps and hurt mob dps. A very-well-done parse by Numaru / Ekho in a level 70 group showed that our output overall is right up there where it should be for a scout-class, and you add that to the style and pizzazz factor and why am I not getting invited to groups by the good-looking High Elf paladins? It couldn't be my personality. Nah. Q. What do dirges bring to groups? A. Groups are where we just plain sing [ha-ha]. We bring buffs that can haste the lot, provide a group parry bonus, increase str and agi across the board, increase chance to hit against yellow-orange mobs, give resistance to poison or disease, give a disease proc chance to everyone (this is pretty lame right now), give the tank strength and extra aggo, and give a fab stoneskin to everyone. We can debuff mitigation to melee, slow, and strip away mob str/agi and (at least from L35 to 50) debuff magic,. And we can do decent dps, especially against multimob encounters with two respectable AOE attacks. Oh, yes, right, also, power regen, which is what you’ll get invited for. At level 58, we get Cacophony of Blades, which is good solo, very nice in the average group, and vicious indeed in melee-heavy groups. I still don’t get invitations to romantic walks on the beach, though. Q. What do dirges bring to raids? A. Dirges tend to be in the main-tank group on raids for power regen, stoneskin, agro, and parry songs. If there are two dirges, the second is best employed in a melee dps group. A raiding dirge’s primary duty is maintaining the buffs and debuffs. Properly done, this is nearly a full-time job, since the epic-effective debuffs include seven, count ‘em, seven different effects: encounter-wide slow (Daro’s), melee (Clara’s), and agi/str (Discante) debuffs; single-target disease (Verlien’s), melee (Tarven’s), side-attack dps (Stabbity-Stab), and finally stealth-attack wis (Garsin’s) debuffs. The buffs include periodic casting of Cacophony of Blades as well as the maintained buffs. The raiding dirge’s second priority is spot-resurrecting over-nuking mages and scouts, the silly things. Our rez is fast-casting and refreshes rapidly, and the group version can handle heavy-duty near-wipes. It’s better for dirges (and paladins and such) to handle raid in-combat rez duty, that way the clerics can keep the healing going, hopefully limiting the need for more rezzing. In whatever time and with whatever power is left over from the duties above, raid dirges also contribute as much dps as they can churn out. Scream of Death is the most power-efficient of our combat arts by a significant margin, followed in a clump by Garsin’s, Stab, Infected Blade, and Luda’s. In order to maintain all this junk, a dirge’s first raid priority has to be survival. There’s no point in diving into a lethal AOE to get off Scream of Death, your direct output doesn’t match your indirect contributions in buffs and debuffs. This takes discipline and self-restraint, and also a certain boredom tolerance as the battle wears on, but if you can master the mandolin, raiding is cake. I do recommend memorizing all seventeen verses of the Hedgehog Song to sing on the raid channel. This will make you popular with your guildmates, okay, it’ll drive ‘em nuts, especially the manic uber-raiders, but it’ll build character for them, and that counts as buffing. Despite the bloody tedium and the uber-raiding culture of mind-gnawing arrogance, raiding has a weird fascination. So, all you easily-offended uber-raiders just put a sock in it, OK? ------------ (continued)