MQ2Bardswap

The advantage of doing this is well below negligible in my opinion, but I will let people decide for themselves.

 

You think the difference between multiplying the base value of bard songs from 1.9 to 2.7 is negligible? The only cost here is lowering the melee dps of the bards by a very small amount and their dps is horrible anyway.

 

There is no such thing as below negligible in EQ. Everything adds up in the end. That is why you'll put augs on your armor.

Bardswap is really simple to set up. There is no excuse for not doing it.

 

I will address the math first.

Bard songs are capped at 420% mod, making 2.4 the maximum effective practical instrument modifier, if things work here as they do on live, so we'll use that as the effective max)

Mod = Base Song (1.0) + AA Mastery (0.8) + Instrument Resonance (1.9 for Epic, 2.4 for Max Instrument)

This adds up to 3.7 for Epic 2.0 and 4.2 for the best instrument. A difference of 3.7 vs. 4.2 is already less impactful than 1.9 vs. 2.7.

One element of consideration is time investment vs. reward. If we're talking about optimal ways to progress a raid, then farming instruments in Txevu is not a high reward activity.

Besides the matter of efficient use of your time, this is NOT a case of "there is no excuse for not doing it." It is NOT a flat improvement - there are tradeoffs. It is not free to use instruments. Swapping instruments sacrifices DPS vs. just wielding an offhand and accepting the 1.9 mod. So, you're weighing the benefits of offhand DPS vs. the additional benefits of the song you've chosen to sing. The benefits of both will be so extremely minor it is not even worth considering one vs. the other, and is ESPECIALLY not worth considering when 99.9% of players have more impactful ways to improve their raid's performance.

However, I will take the time to consider it for the sake of this argument! Let's see what the actual benefits of singing songs with 4.2 vs. 3.7 is and consider their impact on the raid.

I have used my garbage bard with 0 accuracy, no ferocity, and no cleave, with no storm blade, and no shaman proc buffs... wielding Epic 2.0 (34/22) and Mace of Tortured Souls (33/22). A parse returns 114 DPS from crush damage. A small amount... but that's the level of benefit we're dealing with here - very small. Let's compare 114 DPS to bard songs.

Let's look and make a list of bard songs that are good. I'll start from level 70.

L70 Arcane Aria - Wind, but unaffected by it - Casting nukes will cause procs of additional damage. This should definitely be on in caster groups.

L70 Vulka's Chant of Flame - Percussion - Decreases fire resist of the target by base 28 at level 70. 103 with 3.7 mod, 117 with 4.2 mod. One would need to consider whether 14 fire resists increases wizard DPS enough to surpass the offhand DPS, which is most likely not.

L69 Storm Blade - Singing - Grants proc buff to group. Great for melee group DPS. Irrelevant to discussions about modifiers.

L69 Chorus of Life - Stringed - Restores 26 base HP (modified by instrument) and some mana, which is not affected by instrument mod. 96 HP per tick with epic, 109 with instrument. Not impactful at all.

L69 Verse of Vesagran - Wind - 5% damage mitigation for a total of 450. Fits well in some twists, not impacted by instrument mods as far as I know.

L68 War March of Muram - Brass - 52 base attack = 192 with 3.7 mod or 218 with 4.2 mod. This is AT MOST a difference of 26 attack across 5 characters. Does this cause these other characters to do 114 more DPS? Unlikely.

L67 - Vulka's Chant of Frost Percussion - Same story as Vulka's Chant of Flame except you only use cold magic against two relevant targets, and again it unlikely to add up to 114 extra DPS.

L67 Zuriki's Song of Shenanigans - Stringed - Slow portion is not affected by instrument mod as far as I know and the damage is worthless. Good for AE slow, but real slow will be dealt by a shaman.

L65 Ancient: Chaos Chant - Percussion - Similar story to Vulka's, but it stacks. Should definitely be sung as part of regular debuffs. Reduces all resists by a base of 10. That is 37 with mod 3.7 and 42 with mod 4.2. A difference of 5. I wouldn't drop any DPS for that.

L63 Psalm of Veeshan - Singing - This is by far the best bard song. And it is SINGING, so there are no instruments better than epic so therefore no swap.

L60 Fufil's Diminishing Dirge - Percussion - Similar to Vulka's for MR. Base 20 MR debuff, that's 70 with 3.7 or 84 with 4.2 mod. Not as useful as you might think, since this song has no resist adjustment associated with it (constrast Vulkas which have -50 resist adjust). The only relevant fight you use vs. MR is OMM, against whom it is unlikely that this will land at all. Even wizards casting Lightningbane on a fully MR debuffed OMM AND with their epic 2.0 click have difficulty scoring a less than 50% resist rate. So, this song is fairly worthless in the times when you'd really wish it would land, but still it's something if it does land. I would rather my bards be kicking (the garbage bard above parsed 128 crush DPS with his offhand in my last OMM fight).

L58 Niv's Harmonic - Singing - Since this song is singing, there are no instruments better than epic.

L51 Selo's Song of Travel + L49 Selo's Accelerating Chorus - Percussion - Selo's has a speed cap that is met long before any of the upper instruments would take effect. This is certainly speed capped with epic 2.0.

CONCLUSION:

I would have to ask what real benefit you feel you are getting out of instrument swapping? Where is the tangible benefit? My last OMM parse was total 19116 DPS with garbage bard crush damage offhand dealing 128 DPS of that. That's 0.67% percent of the total fight DPS, which is nothing. But on the other hand, what do I gain from swapping instruments instead? What do I trade that 128 DPS for? A few extra points of attack that don't add up to anything? A couple more points of resist mitigation? I just don't see it. The numbers tell me it's better to just put in an offhand. Please share if my math is wrong.

As a result of the discussion here, people are taking notes on and will spend many hours farming and seeking bard instruments. I feel it is very misleading to send people on such a journey when they could be doing something more beneficial. Whatever people want to do, they can do. I don't try to tell people how to play. But, it is wrong to send them on such a journey with the expectation that there will be some significant benefit. The amount of misleading advice I see on this server is a major pet peeve of mine here.

 

This is a bold statement coming from someone who just made a long post about bardswap but apparently does not even know what it does. I say that because of this:

Bardswap does not eliminate your offhand damage. Sure, it may decrease it, but not by much at all. So you are trading much less than 128 dps for all those things. On my last OMM kill one of my bards had 118 dps in their offhand with bardswap on which would make your 128 dps difference actually be 10 dps. Then your question becomes very simple to answer. I would trade 10 dps from my bard to have higher mods on my songs no question. That is ~3 dps per pure melee dps in my dps groups and that is if we are ONLY talking about the dps benefits. As you stated there are other benefits. Does Harmony of Sound not get instrument mods or did you forget it? I'm pretty sure it does. Difference goes from ~28 to 36 which is a nice boost.

Another thing is that you simply picked one bard from one OMM parse and you feel this is an acceptable target? You said you were going to do math, but it appears you simply meant arithmetic.

This is the only point you made that is correct. You seem to be talking about two different things in this post, however; one is bardswap and the other is getting the highest mod instruments. If you already have a good instrument mod then I would not make farming the 27 mod instruments a priority, but I would still use bardswap. If anyone is not at the stage of 2.0 and they don't have great worn bard mods then bardswap is an extremely easy thing to do to make your raid much more powerful. The 2.0 vs. 27 mod instruments is one of the smallest improvements you will get from bardswap and it's still worth it.

There is no one thing that makes bardswap powerful; it is the sum of its parts. I usually don't like to do much math when it comes to EQ because most people just screw it up and don't even set up the problem correctly so that is why I'll just describe my experience. I started using bardswap when I first heard of it when I was progressing through the ikkinz raid trials. When I got it working I noticed a huge improvement to my entire raid. Bots were dieing less, dps was increased, it was the single largest jump in power my army ever got on this server except maybe when I first got into coa and did aug runs which made my tanks much more reliable in Tacvi. The difference here is that getting a bunch of augs took a few weeks and bardswap took less than 20 minutes to set up. Not everyone will have the same experience as me to be sure, but if it was a huge jump in power for me then it will likely be at least significant for others as well. Lets turn it around; what tangible benefit do you feel you are getting from not using it? You lay out many benefits of bardswap, but you only inaccurately concluded one detriment which was losing 128 dps which we have already seen is not 128 but much less.

Your conclusions are founded by your lack of understanding of the subject. You don't even know what bardswap does and you have the audacity to post that misleading information on this server is "a major pet peeve". I also have a pet peeve. It's when people misuse the term "pet peeve". You can't have a "major" pet peeve. That is what the "pet" is for. "Major pet peeve" is horribly redundant.

With your new knowledge of how bardswap works and that it does NOT eliminate offhand dps your first paragraph in your conclusion becomes this:

The real conclusion here is that bardswap is incredibly powerful the newer you are. If the only bard mods you have are on your instruments then bardswap is ridiculous to the point that I was shocked that we are allowed to use it on this server. If all your bards have 2.0 and you have the 27 mod instruments then there are still benefits but they will not be nearly as dramatic as the benefits of a newer group/raid force.

 

Harmony of Sound is a song that I missed, and yes you can squeeze out a few more points of resist mitigation with that too. I dunno if I'd call 6-8 more points of resist mitigation a "nice boost" but it's definitely greater than zero!

My favorite part about your post is that you belittle the math that I've done, and choose not to do any yourself. You tell a little anecdotal story about how you believe that bard swapping massively improved the performance of your raid. I'm asking HOW it improved your raid.

You said:

What songs improved your DPS? Was melee DPS increased? If so, by what songs? Was magic DPS increased? If so, by how much? A few extra points of resist aren't going to be "the single largest jump in power" for your casters. Are you even caster heavy? How much caster DPS do you have that you're calculating a substantial increase off of a few more points of resist?

How were bots dying less? What songs improved their survivability? Is there some song that's improving AC off of some instrument? Does 10 more HP regen make or break your raid? The defensive songs are pretty much all singing, so what instruments can you even swap for them? Again, "the single largest jump in power my army ever got on this server" you're talking about here. So, that represents a pretty substantial boost to survivability. Where does it come from?

You just used an anecdote with no examples of songs, instruments, or numbers whatsoever to declare "the single largest jump in power my army ever got on this server". Am I supposed to accept this at face value? I don't care if you FEEL like you started doing better after you did a certain thing. I want to know WHY it helped. It's not magic. There must be something tangible that increased that helped you, or maybe when you did bardswap you set up your songs differently in a specific way that actually made the difference? It's just useless to me to hear an anecdote with no actual details whatsoever. You don't even give me anything to argue against. Just "I swear this helped me a lot and you're wrong."

I feel like this is just going to turn into a fight, so I'll just leave this here and people can draw their own conclusions.

 

I love the theorycraft. However, I was a data scientist for many years. The second I make my fun space relate to work - it no longer becomes my fun place *. I am fairly fresh-ish 70 my main group is modestly geared (many thanks to those who have bestowed their charitable time on that effort). I do notice when I forget to change my bard songs to my dps rotation. It's not life changing, but certainly noticeable. It is even more noticeable when I /bct MyBards //BardSwap. There is a significant difference in regen between paving the zone with my party's corpses and how efficient my groups are in general. Since I am not doing a lot of boss fights/hq encounters and have not made resists a priority the benefit in that regards appears unchanged.

It has always been my understanding that the benefits of bard songs becomes far more defensive than offensive as your gear and quality of opponents increase. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. At least for me.

Some excellent points have been made and from my perspective bardswap still seems like a logical choice at this point for me. Considering I am still working on my epics for all of my bards, and my bards dps is laughable (which is something that may need to be addresses also) I see no real downside not to - yet.

* I say that but I have very (very) elaborate spreadsheets outlining progression, gear, stats, AA and all things PEQ.

 

So all my groups are level 52 so I haven't set this up at all but does bardswap basically swap in an instrument for the final 0.1s, then go back to weapon, then swap an instrument in for the final 0.1s of the next song?

 

Basically yeah. If the song can't be modified by instruments it will do whatever line you put in the "Weapons=" line. You can set the delay. I believe the "Delay=12" line I posted makes it 1.2 seconds total that the bard swaps to the instrument. You could probably do a shorter delay and still hit the timing.