theubercuber

I just finished the wisdom tree on my bard and looking to continue into the intelligence tree. I"m wondering if there is a guide somewhere that actually says what Minstrel's Aria and Minstrel's Melody are capable of.

what does 'casting technique' cover? Is critical strike a 'combat skill'? does the channeled hate gain spell get buffed by Minstrel's Aria? Can AA Auras be affected by AAs, since they don't take up concentration?


If anyone knows exactly what auras are affected by what AA's (including AA auras), or some place that actually details these (eq2 wikia doesnt even have the %'s listed past the first rank), I'd appreciate the help.

kyros

combat skills: slashing, piercing, crushing (supposed to help your melee hit rate)

minstrel's melody will increase the +DPS value of your group damage per second song. (increases damage done by melee auto attacks)

i guess their value is up to you to determine for yourself... endgame players often favor the fortissimo buff from the skald line and the poison concoction ability from the wayfarer line over spending a lot of points in those buffs, since other sources of +dps and +skill are readily available.

Kall

Don't forget ranged, too!

kyros

good call!

Borias

I actually switched from agi to int recently, more for VP than anything. I definitely noticed a pretty decent improvement in my groups DPS. Certainly more worth than I was getting solo out of the poison buff. Seems like an ok trade off for me.

Yggdrasil

Casting ability from Minstrel's Aria does not affect anything for dirges. It affects melee skills of our Boon line, incresing the number of skill points it buffs. For troubadours, it affects the casting skills of the Dove Song line which affects spell casting, being the sister ability to a dirge's Boon buff.

As for the difference between INT and AGI, I am a BIG believer in the INT line. Our primary job is NOT personal DPS, but rather buffing and debuffing. The AGI line is centered ENTIRELY around personal DPS. However, being that most all of our buffs are group buffs, the INT line effectively increases 2 group buffs, gives us another attack which boosts our skills, and generally buffs the group as a whole. Overall, I am willing to bet that a raid benefits more overall from the INT line than the AGI line in a melee group.

Further reinforcing the point about even personal DPS, that poison proc (which is a terrible DoT and is really bad for CC classes since it's a long, slow DoT) only goes off if you actually hit the mob. If your melee skills are too low to hit the mob, then you have now not only buffed your group less, but you aren't even doing more DPS yourself.

Kall

Increasing melee skills does very little past 450 for whatever reason, especially on high oranges. This is probably a reason why no bards give a shit anymore about acquiring an offensive stance. The poison DoT is actually really good, especially with a choker (It's usually around 5% of my ZW and #3 or #4 on my parses).

The increase to DPS mod isn't really good at all. The average person gets 31 dps mod from STR Ring, another 35 from Riana's, 24 from adornments so that leaves them at 90 DPS mod. On top of that, there's a bunch of gear with DPS mod (Doomblade, Dragonhawk, Vo'ldrath, Gi of the Swifttail, Fleshridder? Satchel, etc) so raid geared, most people are at 100 or over 100 without the enhanced Riana's.

Additionally you get bump, which you can easily live without but why should you? If you sacrifice and sacrifice the game gets kind of dull and Dirge utility is already overpowered. By getting poison you're not really sacrficing much and the DPS you gain is about equal to the DPS your group loses.

Ttor

But the 31 DPS from the STR ring isn't on 100% of the time, so during the "off" period of the proc you do gain advantage from the INT line increase.
I have found that 8pts in the poison proc of the AGI line provides between 75-100 personal DPS. I believe that this amount of DPS can EASILY be made up by the Dirge's group with additional melee skills and DPS mod.
It is hard to get concrete parse numbers on what group DPS benefit you get -- setting up the test case is very difficult. However, all-in-all 100 DPS isnt that much, and the all melee group members of the dirge get benefit from DPS mod EVEN when they get past 100. ANd if you have a meleeing Mystic or Inquisitor in your group they are going to get ALOT of advantage from this additional melee-skill and DPS-mod increase.

kyros

as a dirge, once the STR ring procs, it will almost never be down (luck of the dirge).
even as a troubador, i rarely find myself without that dps bonus (harmonization helps).
it will overwrite itself and "restore" the duration.

most decently geared raiders (especially your other melee dpsers) will have plenty of +dps gear. it's relatively common in this expansion.

so i guess it just depends on what kind of gear your raid force has access to.

nhdjoseywales

is there a magic number where +dps is no longer useful? I would think with the epic proc we would want all the +dps we could get since it affects base weapon damage