Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

For

0 (0%)

Serious

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 0

Voting closed: January 14, 2012, 06:17:21 pm

[Lordinquisitor]

Ofc i know that this is a game made for teams, not for solo working. I still hoped that my lvl 19 bard would be strong enough to do at least 2 dungeons solo.

Anyway, if one needs my fighting powers or my songs i would be more than happy to join some group action. I`m living in germany and i don`t have time the whole day, so coordinating something might be a bit problematic- But we`ll see.

/Lullaby seems really awesome, and i have tried it a few times already, but one can`t really utilize it without a team.

[Skyrunner]

:-0
I shall guide you to the light!

Bard guide. What skills are good, and which aren't.
Mabinogi's recent updated added the Battle Maestro / Battle Bard ability. A number of buff skills were added (Vivace,Lullaby,Dischord,Harvest Song, Enduring Melody, Battlefield Overture, March), and musical instruments don't have the warning that "bare hands would be more effective". Modifying paths ("upgrades") for instruments also have been added, and the Lyre is available.

First, stats. You want Strength for attacking with Dischord. You want lots of combat skills for using Lullaby effectively. Finally, you don't really need Dexterity, because I do not think any of the buff skills are affected by it.

Now, the skills. There are the original bard skills:
Playing Instrument: It gives a small increase in the power of your buff skills. You can either go to the 3 person shadow mission with a ring of Barrier spikes and hit the spikes until your weapon breaks, or you could rank Musical Knowledge along with Playing Instrument and with Compose make a sheet music with "r64" as the entire song, and with the "autoplay" option checked. Either way is similar in upgrade speed. Also, by rank 5 and above, playing songs to your Homestead crops is the best way to rank this skill; you want Silent Song ("r64") to spam attempts until it succeeds. This skill requires 87 AP to rank to 1.

Musical Knowledge: This skill requires books for all levels. Up to a certain rank, you can get the books from regular shops; some you need to open up secret shops, and above 9 you have to do various annoying things like "Drop from Karu Dungeon" or "Collect Corcoule Relics III". Go to the Mabinogi wiki for more information. This skill increases the chance of you playing a marvelous or haunting song, and increasing your buff's effect. You want at least 1 rank in this skill to have the ability to even play marvelous or haunting songs. Easy to rank to at least 8. Only 42 AP needed to rank this all the way to r1.

Compose: This skill is mostly for being able to create longer songs. 76 AP is needed to rank this to 1, and like Musical Knowledge the books are everywhere. Again, easy to rank to 8, then it becomes harder. This skill is not needed at all for bards, but being able to write longer songs is a nice ability to have.

There also is the Luring Ballad skill you get during one of the G...12 missions, I think, that's mostly useless.

The new skills!
Dischord: It looks good, but think twice before committing yourself. Dischord has a very long cool time, and it is functionally equal to Smash, except it also debuffs the enemy by stunning them, lowering their movement speed and dealing "poison" damage. Sounds good, but you need 120 AP to rank it, it only does 500% damage with your very weak instrument, and the poison damage is only half at rank 1, twice. I highly recommend skipping this skill.

Lullaby: Another trap, which could be good in some cases but usually isn't. Why? Let us see: at rank one, you (1) have a 75% chance of putting to sleep monsters that when you press ALT have nothing beside their name—there could be WEAKEST, or WEAK, STRONG, AWFUL, BOSS—for 9 seconds. (2) Deal 300 extra damage upon hit. (3) Can lull to sleep 15 enemies. It sounds good. The catch is that (a) Once fallen asleep, the enemy cannot be lulled again, and (b) sleeping enemies wake after being hit. The verdict? After spending all those precious points, you might be able to make enemies sleep, so your party can go hit them once for 300 extra damage. If you have all 15 asleep (doubtful in that tiny range) your friends might miss a few. This skill is neither here nor there, trash for solo and doubtful usage for party playing. The meager 75% chance of making equal enemies sleep will taper off rapidly for STRONG or AWFUL enemies, which are the ones who are probably going to be wanting for 300 extra damage.

Battlefield Overture: Awesome. At rank one, your allies get 20% increase in all-around melee damage, and 11% extra of that tasty critical rate. Also, if you have a decent Play Instrument rank, and have an instrument that's upgraded for +10 musical buff effects, and finally you get a Haunting performance, you can end up with +40% damage. And that's really great. Overture is useful in all situations. Costs 130 AP to r1.

Enduring Melody: Hrrm... Not bad, but not terrifically good either. This skill increases your friends' Defense (meh) and Protection (capital!); it also increases the restoration rate of mana and stamina. By rank 1, you increase Defense by 11, Protection by 5, and Mana/Stamina by 410%. Again, with Haunted/Play Instrument/upgraded instrument, you can potentially get more Mana/Stamina rate. Consider that Meditation increases mana rate by 450% at rank F, and Rest does Stamina by 150% at F. The extra stamina is useful for quick regen in-combat and between rooms for those stamina blackholes, fighters, and the mana for mages and for gathering pets. On the other hand, the protection and defense will never increase whatever you do to your instrument or other skills, so you would decrease incoming damage by 5% and then 11 (value, not percent) more. This is all good, BUT you cannot use two or more buffs at one time. Therefore, you have to pick between Overture and Melody, and in Mabinogi offense is defense. So ... it's your pick, but I think it is worth at least a 9.

I think I said this, but I'll note it again: useful when your party is resting! That's the chief usage I've put this to, to restore Stamina of my drained party members quickly.

Vivace: Trash. Utter trash. By rank 1, you get a 11% speed increase for magic and alchemy, and attack speed. But the thing is, 11% is nothing at all. Take Icebolt, the skill everyone and their dog (literally) seems to know. At rank 9, it has a charge speed of .5 seconds. With the 11% Vivace buff, it becomes .... 0.45 seconds. That much of a difference has no effect, thanks to human reaction time and server latency. Even for the longest skill charging time in Mabinogi, Fireball*5, which is 20 seconds: 18 seconds is pretty much identical to 20 seconds in that case. Lightning Bolt, with 1.0 second prep time, becomes 0.9 seconds. All-around unnoticeable to human eyes. With upgrades to the max, maybe you could get 18% decrease, which still isn't noticeable. Don't raise this skill unless they change the speed increase amount.

Harvest Song: Another tricky one. At rank 1, you

• have the effect last for 120 seconds
• increase success rate of both you and your party members by 5%
• decrease time needed by 25%
• decrease time needed by an additional 3% per party member that is being buffed
• have an additional time decrease cap of 10%.

It also gives luck, that lovable stat which gives you critical. With Raincasting, party members, and this skill, a 99% success rate on certain items is perfectly possible. Still, don't raise this skill until you have lots of AP to burn.

March: Another "meh" skill. By r1, you get 12% faster movement for players, and 9% faster movement for mounts. This buff only applies to the pack and the handcart for Trading. 155 AP needed. With items set to max out this, you could get 18% faster movement speed. Not bad, not great. Same as Harvest Song, invest in this if you have no better place to use your AP.


Aaaaand that's it.

TL;DR?
— DO NOT rank Vivace EVER. Utter trash. Trash trash trash trash trash. No, even then.
— Dischord and Lullaby aren't recommended.
— Battlefield Overture is awesome.
— Enduring Melody is useful.
— Harvest Song and March are somewhere between useless and useful; pick as you choose.

[Lordinquisitor]

Nice summary, i thank you! Already knew that lulaby probably isn`t really worth it, but dischcord surprised me. I have already leveled it a few times and at the moment it`s my main attack skill. Combined with battlefield overture i can one-hit most enemies, and those that survive get to know the joys of counterattack + windmill. Probably will leave it at it`s current level, though. Seems like i will have some AP to spend in the future, at the moment they are pretty sparse.

(Dischcord also deals some small AOE damage, which is handy!)

[Skyrunner]

Glad to be of help. :3

Dischord does look pretty, and sounds nice too, but ain't worth it Dx Sadly.
The AOE is neat for sweeping rooms full of rats easier... though this is again superseded by Windmill. I suggest Smash instead of Dischord.

[Aklyon]

Well, that certainly hurt.
Anyone mind helping me with G1? I got to the part with the brown fomor pass in barri dungeon and rather quickly was punched out by a flying sword. Got the pass back now.

[Girlinhat]

I would argue, of course.

Vivance gives an increase to attack speed - that is, how quickly you swing your weapon - and that can matter a great deal when used right.  Specifically, something like a human with dark knight transformation and final hit with dual upgraded daggers/broadsword, this can turn a fast series of hits into a devastating barrage, especially for anything that has Heavy Stander at level 1 or 0 - with dual daggers and final hit, Heavy Stander 1 doesn't matter, because the attacks are so fast.  If going for pure crit pwn, which you are with dual daggers, then Vivance would let you get in a lot more criticals.

Lullaby is... odd.  On paper it looks nice, but the after thinking it sounds bad, but then in game it's actually pretty great.  It has a large enough affect to cover a whole dungeon room, and as far as I can tell, the extra damage is unmitigated, so it works well against enemies with heavy armor or protection.  It sounds like it's lame, but when used it actually does a lot of good, as it can disperse aggro in unusual ways and break up the cycle in the player's favor.  I can particularly think of a mage loving it, because chaincasting firebolt can deal massive damage to one enemy under lullaby, or chaincasted lightning bolt can deal the lullaby extra damage to several enemies at once.  Plus, 9 seconds is a very long time.  If absolutely nothing else, then that's breathing room.

Harvest Song is fantastic for one simple reason.  Crafting can be a bitch.  Especially for certain items, you really want to max out your chances, no matter how you're doing it.  Raincasting with a party on monday, WITH harvest song, would be very helpful.  Anything worth crafting will be using rare materials, like finest leather straps, silver ingots, finest firewood, radiant string (only dropped from Advanced Hard Mode dungeons), or things like frost silk and Romeo and Juliet Script (Rosemary Gloves, possibly the rarest item that can be produced).  When your materials cost a small fortune to obtain, then any little buff is worth it, especially if it takes your chances from 30% to 38%, that will help quite a bit.

March?  Yeah, I'll agree.  12% movement speed is... sort of nice I guess?  But you can't play it while marching, so the effect is a little lost since you have to stop and keep re-playing.  Not to mention that parties are always mixed with humans, elves, and giants, and that speed difference is just going to muddle things further.  Not really worth dealing with.

[Skyrunner]

Of course I should argue too xD

First off, the basic assumption is that while all skills have niche uses, I am saying they are not worth it in most situations.

Vivace's 11% cannot be felt at all whatever it seems like on paper. Say, a swing of a knife takes 0.3 seconds. Taking 11% on that makes it 0.27 seconds. Even with Final Hit, is that 0.03 second quicker swing going to be registered by the server? Also, in this case you'd attack ten times for one more hit fit in. Again, is it worth spending 160 or so AP for a single extra hit out of ten, and whose hits are already assured because of Final Hit? I'm sure with decent Final Hit, whoever you choose to attack will be dead either way, with infinite stun and constant dps. I feel like Mabinogi isn't one of those games where every .1 second counts for whatever o.O I do suppose it could be minorly useful somehow in PVP where each fraction of a second does count.

Lullaby: Remember that even at rank 1, you only get a 75% chance against monsters of your level. Now in stronger dungeons, some monsters just don't come down from that higher stage. No proof, but I think the success chance decreases rapidly with challenge level. 160 AP for a chance to maybe freeze some of your enemies, and a 300 damage bonus that you probably didn't need anyways because they were your level or lower ...

Harvest Song is good. Just not worth it when you're starting out xD I suppose if you're at the level to be spending four hundred AP on a single skill, you could spare the ap for Harvest, but under 250 you really should be putting points in core ability instead of bells and whistles.

And March, we are agreed xD


Short version, in case I didn't articulate well enough:
Vivace is horrid.
Lullaby is overkill.
Harvest Song is good, but not for newbies.

The talk of horrid niche skills reminds me of Natural Magic/Lightning/Ice/Fire Shields, the well-intended useless skills added with Cor ...xD

[Girlinhat]

Harvest is good, but it's a massive AP sink and it's not adding to combat, so bards should only look into it... probably around cumulative level 300+ because hopefully they've got many of their core skills down at that point.

In defense of Vivance: When you're counting hits, then it effectively increases the length of Final Hit by 11%.  10 seconds becomes 11, effectively, because you're getting 11 seconds' worth of hits in only 10 seconds.  r1 Final Hit is 40 seconds, and there are many bosses who will survive 40 seconds of final hit strikes, but with Vivance it's effectively 44.4 seconds, while not a massive increase, it is several more hits that would not have been dealt without it.

Although I'll concede on one thing: Vivance's value is outdone by Battlefield Overture.  11% speed compared to 20% damage, well...  No matter what way you slice that, Overture is pretty much always twice as good, and it's a skill you get sooner, AND it gives critical rate.

So, yeah, I think Vivance has its niche, but that niche is kind of done better by Overture anyways.  It may be useful in rafting, when you want to spam out intermediate magic as quickly as possible.

[Lordinquisitor]

First dungeon completed with a group, feeling like a boss. (Altough i`ll have to work on my combat style.)

Ibit practically soloed the boss, though. A bit anticlimatic but quite welcome. 

[Aoi]

Well, I'm at Lullaby 8 anyhow. Might as well keep throwing points at it in a desperate hope. Too bad my CP is absolutely miserable. (Alby Int. 4 anybody? That +1000CP longbow would come in handy for this. =P)

[Seriyu]

Well, that certainly hurt.
Anyone mind helping me with G1? I got to the part with the brown fomor pass in barri dungeon and rather quickly was punched out by a flying sword. Got the pass back now.

I'd be happy to help if you're still lookin for it when I get on later today. Although if you'd like to try again, the trick to flying swords is to rush them, and use N+windmill, if you're a melee guy. So basically attack them, leave out the last hit of the normal combo and replace it with windmill. Windmill has the neat effect of resetting AI, and the beginning of Flying Sword's AI script is Lightning Bolt, so you can just run in again and attack them again before it goes off.

This doesn't work so well against the boss, but they're all casters there too, so you should be playing offensively (remain close to the enemy, be ready to attack them if they cast, because if the actual boss gets off his firebolt you will get one shotted no problem. ), remember that you can use N+Smash (Same thing as N+mill but replace the last hit with smash) to squeeze out some extra damage, which is important. Again, a melee tactic, so if you're a mage you'll naturally be using it less then a warrior.

I say this as someone that, back in the day, played defensively and as such got curb stomped constantly by anything with magic.

[Aklyon]

I've been shooting everything with either icebolt or counter, with a backup sword that usually does nothing but get spiders to stop smacking me with thier feet. Feel like mage was not a great first pick.

[Seriyu]

Mage lacks a little early on, certainly, but once you get chain casting upgrades on that wand, and advanced magic, you'll be cookin. Inparticular for mages it's important to get bolt skills up to the rank where load time decreases (rank 9 for ice and fire, rank 5 for lightning, rank 5 for firebolt again), as that helps a ton with "outgunning" a lot of ranged enemies.

With that said, don't be afraid to melee if your early bolts are a little lackluster (because they are, at least on the damage side. Icebolt inparticular, are mostly used to lock down enemies, although the damage isn't horrid if you attack an enemy with all five. Be sure not to fire off the fourth immediately after the third, that'll make the enemy get back up, wait until he gets back up from being knocked down, then toss the fourth.). There's no such thing as a pure anything, a warrior will use bolts to knock ranged enemies out of stuff, a mage will use counter to knock enemies off him (at least), a ranger will... also use counter to knock enemies away, and deal with enemies that manage to get in close.

Now that I've said all that, I remember flying swords have an ability called mana drain that causes them to be fully healed when they're hit with magic (or maybe it was knocked down? I forget.), so probably time to get acquainted with melee. Luckily not many monsters have this ability, but it's a thing to keep in mind.

[SirAaronIII]

I think it's a random chance. There have been times that a flying sword instantly grew after just one shot, and there have been times where I hit one with 5 charges and the only change to its HP was it died.

[Aklyon]

How do you get the chaincasting started anyway? And does it work with the beginner ice wand?