Basic Song Composition:

Source

Introduction

Let's first look at the various components of a Bard Song. Depending on your level you will have between 1-7 Song Component types titled Melody, Embellishment, Lyric, Chorus, Verse, Bridge and Coda. Each of these song component types will have between 1-3 slots available for a single component.. All together, at Level 50, you will be able to mix and match up to 16 separate components each having an cost of between 2 – 9 energy per second. The more components you use, the more energy your song will cost per second. It is important to note that the majority of our song components WILL STACK with each other. In other words, you can put 3 Mellarien's Harmony of War in a song for a "triple effect". It is better in most situations to focus your song in such a way (using multiple same components) as opposed to mixxing and matching individual components. In some cases, components do not stack (or stack for a lessened effect) and those will be addressed individually in a later section.

Song components pulse once every four seconds. Many song components are persistent so they do not have an effect that fades. Harmony of War for instance will add 12-20 pts of damage for the entire duration of the song without any 4 second pulse effects. However, Bard Regen Songs will only give a benefit of Health / energy regen once every 4 seconds while having no effect in between. In addition, some songs have effects that will be refreshed every 4 seconds such as our Irion’s Psalm of Shields, which gives a Rune component; if you take damage and the rune fades, it will refresh again on the next 4-second pulse of the song.

Each song component has an energy cost that is paid every second. Mellarien’s Anthem of War, for instance, costs 2 energy every second in order to play. There are two ways that a bard can offset this tax; the first is in the form of natural energy regen.

Your natural energy regen (NER) is based on your vitality score. As you increase your vitality you will gain a greater NER. NER ticks every second just like our song “tax”. If you hover your mouse over the word Vitality on your char sheet you will be able to view your NER. This is a constant number both in and out of combat and does not change. However, out of combat, you will receive additional bonuses to the your regeneration which are unrelated to NER..

The second method is that of using Rests. In your song composer, you will find a button that reads “Rests”. By Level 50 you will have accumulated a total of 7 rests ranging in value from 2-12. (2,4,5,7,8,10,12). There is an 8th Rest obtainable at L50 from a mob drop worth 11. By using a rest in your song you will reduce the total cost of the song by the value of the rest. So if you add an 8-pt rest to a song which costs 20 to play, the song will now only cost 12. Rests can be placed into any Song Component Slot with the exception of those of the Melody type (See Below). You can only use a rest one time in a song.

Putting it all together (Basic Version):

At Level 1, you will receive Mellairien's Anthem of War (a combat Melody) and a 4 pt Rest. All songs MUST have a component in the Melody slot to be saved or played. Put MAoW in your Melody Slot, put the 4 pt rest in the Lyric slot, give it a name and save it and you will have just created your very first song. Because the cost of MAoW is 2 energy / sec and the rest has a value of 4 points, you will not have a song cost as the rest completely offsets the cost of the melody.

Let’s discusss song cost in more detail now. As you add more components to the song the song cost tax will also increase. You will be using a combination of your NER (Natural Energy Regen) and Rests to offset this. At L1, a bard begins with a NER of approximately 5 energy / sec. This is significant because it means you can offset up to 5 pts of a song’s cost without using rests. In other words, you don’t actually need that rest at L1 4-pt rest as your NER will cover the cost for you. The important factor however, is that many of our other “non-song” abilities such as mez, charm, shouts, etc… also cost energy.

A common mistake as you gain more components is to make a song where the total amount of Song Cost is equal to the value of the rests…ie…if your song has a cost of 10, you add 10 pts of rest for a total song cost of 0. By creating songs with a cost of 0, you are completely forgoing your NER and wasting any benefits you may be gaining from Vitality. Therefore, except in cases where energy is extremely precious (lot’s of mobs to Crowd Control for instance), your songs should have a cost that at least equals your vitality’s NER. In addition, it’s ok to exceed your NER as well to create even stronger songs by sacrificing your energy at a higher rate.

As an example:

Melody
Embellishments
Lyrics
Anthem of War
Harmony of War
Hazoc's Hasty Lyric
Total Cost:
2 energy / sec
4 energy / sec x3 = 12 energy / sec
3 energy / sec
17 energy / sec


Let’s assume our NER is 8, that leaves us with a song costing 9 energy / sec. With an energy pool of 600, we can play our song for approximately 67 seconds before we run out of energy. If we add a 5 pt rest to an empty lyric slot, reducing the cost to 4 energy / sec, we can now maintain the song for 150 seconds before draining our pool. The important thing to remember when composing songs is that at any given time you may need your energy for Crowd Control and emergency situations. Never let yourself run so dry that you can’t take charge of adds.

An interesting thing happens when we replace an existing component in a song with a rest. If, for instance, when adding the 5 pt rest to the song, we replace Hazoc’s Hasty lyric we are actually gaining 8 pts (5 from the rest and then we gain 3 for removing the cost of Hazoc’s). This will be a very important consideration when building your songs.

By exceeding your NER and total rest value, you are increasing the potency and effects of your song. Many bards, myself included, have two variations of every song type. One variation has a cost that is equal to or less than our NER. This variation is used when energy conservation is necessary for situations such as crowd control or using shouts. The second variation exceeds the NER by 2-15 pts depending on what I want out of the song. By building a combat song without rests, you boost your parties DPS greatly but for a much shorter amount of time. This is the bard’s version of “burst” damage; pushing out the strongest song possible and burning through all your energy to pay for the effect. A good strategy for this type of song building is to play the high cost song at the beginning of a fight and then as your energy approaches 30% or so, switch back over the low cost song in order to regen.

Energy Regeneration

In the previous section we spoke extensively of NER (Natural Energy Regen). I want to discuss briefly the ways to increase NER without discussing our energy regen song components. Three things will factor into your Energy Regen: Vitality, +energy regen items and buffs.

Vitality

A complete list of the returns on Vitality can be found here: Vitality Returns .

The effects of Vitality DIRECTLY increases your NER. Basically, your NER is completely based off of your Vitality score. Later in the guide I will refer to Energy regen "increasing your NER". It is meant only in a loosely relative term and it must be noted that you aren't literally increasing the NER, only simulating the effect.

Of the three methods to increase your NER, that of increasing Vitality is one of the weakest. Regardless, to some bards every bit helps. It is quite possible to increase you're NER to 15 through the correct race, stat point allotment and gear combination. (Most bards run around with a NER of 9-12). It is still undecided as to how important Vitality is to the bard but it is the author's opinion that most bard builds should increase vitality enough to obtain a NER of at least 11 points.

Energy Regen Items

Many items will be found which contain +energy regen effects:

Energy Regen is on a 6-second return. So in the picture above, one item will give us 7 energy / 6 seconds and the other 6 energy / 6 seconds. However, it is not awarded as a "chunk" of energy and is instead divvied out over the 6 seconds. In other words, the +6 energy regen item will give you 1 energy every second. The +7 energy regen item will give it out 1..1..1..2..1..1. So for every 6 points of energy regen an item yields, you effectively gain 1 NER.

Buffs

We will discuss our energy regen song components later in the guide. This portion will instead be devoted to discussing the effect's an energy regen buff (such as from a psionicist). Buff energy regen is awarded every 6 seconds just as item energy regen. The biggest difference is that buff energy regen is awarded in a single chunk every 6 seconds. Regardless, that 6-second chunk can still be assigned a NER value. You will need to be able to calculate the returns from the addition. A level 50 Psi can buff your energy regeneration by as much as 174+ energy / 6 seconds. In the L50 example, 174 energy / 6 seconds yields the effects of an additional 29 NER. Although you only get the energy in 6-second chunks, you will still offset 29 pts worth of song. You'll watch your energy bar drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, jump back to full, repeat.

So at L50, an average bard will have vitality based NER of approximately 9-14 pts and can offset that amount of energy in a song before a drain affects the energy pool. Add a L50 Psi to the group and that bard now has the effective NER of 38-43. That's the equivalent to a three rest song (12, 11, 10 pt rests). We will go much further in depth with energy regen when we tackle that particular portion of song composition.


Instruments and Instrument Mods

For a pseudo-complete list of instruments: Bard Instrument List and Bard Gear Mod List.

There are five instrument mods currently used: Percussion, String, Wind, Brass and Voice. Each has it's own place in the scheme of things and are generally specialized to certain types of song components. However, in many cases, a mod will affect more than one type of song. Instrument mod effects will primarily be found on 2H Instruments that take the place of your melee weapons. In rare cases, you will be able to gain armor or parrying daggers that will have an an instrument mod on it as well. ALL Voice mods discovered have been on armor and there are currently no instrument based voice mods. First we'll look at how instrument mods work and then we'll take a look at the different types and what they are generally used for.

Tip: Basic versions (approx. 1.8-2.0 mod) of Brass, Wind, Drum and String can be purchased at Bard Trainers. As you gain Tynen's Run Speed Melody and your Regen melody, you will also want to purchase the appropriate instrument (Drum and String respectively).

How Instruments Work:

Instruments are the defining factor of a bard. Without an instrument, many of our song components are simply too weak to bother with using when compared to their cost. When adding the appropriate instrument mod however, the component begins to blossom into a very powerful song. The majority of our song components are actually balanced using a 3.0 instrument mod effect (more on this shortly). As such, anytime you are not using an instrument, you can not expect the song component to be nearly as strong as it would be if you had the mod. By using an instrument and the right combination of components, your songs will be stronger than any classes buffs combined with only a few exceptions.

Most instruments are two-handed items and require that you remove weapons in order to use them. This means that you will not be capable of engaging in melee combat. However, when using a two-handed instrument you are still able to use your ranged attack. Yes, it doesn't seem physically possible to play a guitar and shoot a crossbow at the same time, but that's how it works in Vanguard. Through the usage of macros, specifically the /remove and /wear macros, you can quickly and easily switch between instruments and weapons as needed in order to optimize your effects. Keep in mind, the instant you remove your instrument, the song will revert to a lesser version. Likewise, when adding an instrument, the effect is also instant in all but a few circumstances. One exception to the 2H rule is Voice Mods. Voice Mods are the primary mod on which the majority of our combat song components are based upon and, since they are all on armor, it allows you to engage in melee combat while increasing your melee based song.

With an upcoming patch we will see the introduction of one-handed instruments. I have personally tested the effects of 1H String and I am very excited at the potential of these new instruments. This section will later be revised to reflect those changes.

Instrument Mod Explanation

The above is an example of a typical two-handed instrument. Every instrument will have a line describing the type of instrument as well as the amount of the instrument modifier. In the above example the Drum is a 2.36 Percussion Mod. Most song components are affected by an instrument and are labeled as such in the tool tip for the component. When a component says that it is percussion based, whatever effect the component gives will be multiplied by the affect of the instrument mod. In example, Tynen's Melody of Acceleration delivers a whopping 29% bonus to your run speed. By equipping the drum above, the same component will now yield 29% x 2.36 = 68.44% Run Speed bonus. In the case of Cirel's Rhythm of Renewal, the component will regen 68 pts of health at L50. Using a 2.71 String mod we will increase the 68 health regen to 184 regen / 4 seconds.

Many song components are simply not designed to be used without an instrument and will otherwise be nearly useless. These will all be discussed later but it is important to note that we are based around instruments and instruments are a heavy part of the bard. If you have delusions of being a bard and never holding an instrument then please save your group the trouble and play a ranger or rogue.

Voice Mods

A separate section will be given to voice mods. Voice Mods are by far the "most used" instrument by a bard. We are an offensive fighter and our primary purpose is to provide better offensive capabilities to a group. We do so by a variety of methods the strongest of which is our +damage. We are capable of adding direct +damage (ie +16 damage) as well as a % of damagel (+15%). Let's take a look at two examples.

Anthem of War
Harmony of War +15% Damage, +30 Strength
+12-20 Damage

Both songs are based on a voice instrument. In the case of Anthem of War a voice mod will directly increase the %. With Vee's Visage for instance, a 1.40 voice mod, Anthem of War will give +21% damage instead of +15%. Harmony of War will give 28 instead of 20.

Voice Mods are rare and difficult to come by but are well worth the effort of obtaining them. For a complete list see the links above.

Instrument Facts
1. Like instrument mods do NOT stack. IE...You can't use a drum and a breastplate with a 1.15 percussion mod on it and get both effects. Whichever effect is higher will take precedence. The same is true for Voice mods.
2. Different instrument mods DO stack. You can stack 1 of each type. So you can have a 1.40 voice mod and a 2.8 Brass Mod and they will both work.
3. One-Handed instruments are secondary slot only and are weaker than two-handed instruments.
4. Parry Daggers are another form of one-handed instrument that also gives a great defensive boost. These are particularly effective when soloing. The best is a L40 1.25 voice mod parry dagger that is relatively common.

The Composer

This will be a brief tutorial on the usage of Vanguards Bard Composer. First let's take a look at it.



Above you can see a typical example of a complete song in the composer. As you progress and gain levels and components, you will be able to broaden and strengthen the effects of your songs. You begin your bard career with a single pre-made song in your composer entitled "Mellarien's Anthem of War". It will contain...you guessed it...Anthem of War and will contain melody and embellishment slot. You receive your final song slot at L48 when you get your second Bridge. We will discuss the song composer briefly and then move on to the different component categories.

The left half of the composer is your play list. By clicking on the "Compose" button, you will show and hide the right portion of the composer, "The Composition Screen". In the Play List example above you will note that I have 15 different songs pre-composed and ready to go. You can quickly "shuffle" between songs by using the Song List to adapt to any situation. (Hopefully one day a better UI will be available for this task). You can also set up a macro to play the song and using the /playsong line, or simply type out the /playsong command. Using the song in the example I would want to type out exactly: /playsong "DPS" (The song title must be in quotation marks). The /playsong command is case sensitive.

To view a list of available components for a given category, simply click on the category name (melody, embellishment, lyric, and etc..) and a small scrolling window will pop up. You then must drag and drop the components into the song composition window to the appropriate slot. To add a rest click on the button in the bottom right labeled "Rests" and a window containing the available rests will pop up as well.

Once you have filled in all your available slots, you will need to type in a name and then click save at which point the song will appear at the bottom of your song list. By highlighting a song and using the +/- buttons at the bottom of the song list you can adjust the position of a song up or down in the list.

You may also type in a personalized "Song Description" in the appropriate block of the Song composer. When you are playing your song anyone gaining its effect will be able to see your personalized description by hovering over the bard song icon and reading the tool tip. You can be as descriptive or as nonsensical as you wish with this portion. Some bards break down each component and list them accordingly (I would think that often the description wouldn't match the song as personally, I am constantly swapping in and out components). Others add a well-written "fantasy" description. "The hum of war surrounds your muscles and increases the durability of your armor". You may be as statistical or as creative as you like.

Below the Song Description block you will note a bar entitled "Song Cost". It reads "Song Cost: 57-37=20 Energy / sec. This is the freebie calculator. The first number (57) is the total cost of the song components. The second number (37) is the total energy reduced by Rests. The third number (20) is the final cost of the song.

Note this is my personal DPS song. You'll see that the cost of the song is 20 energy / sec. My NER is 12.47 energy / sec. Therefore, each second I am draining my energy pool of 7.5 energy. This is directly related to the above topics on energy regeneration and NER.

As a final note, you can change components in the song composer, hit play and the components you added will be a part of the new song. Until you hit save the changes will not be permanent. This is of particular value when you need a situational effect but don't want to create an entire new song and hotkey for it.


« Last Edit: August 28, 2007, 03:33:29 PM by Cennyan »