Explain Fixskills Please? :)

[Luxelle]

I'd prioritize getting 60 ranks of Armor use and unlocking both 1020 and 430 before worrying about Mana Controls, MIU, AS, or other tertiary skills..

Every time someone uses numbers for spells, I have to look them up. I don't know how you folks do it!

What do you mean unlocking those two spells? I know 1020, the travelling song, but did not know there was anything to unlock. Heck, mostly that song just gets me badly injured and lost. I *never* use it willingly. It's flat out the scariest thing I have ever cast by mistake. It'll be a while before 430.

I don't really know whether to study more bard circle spells or minor elemental ones on any given promotion. It's one or the other for me.

25 Telepathy, 1 Manipulation. That hits a major breakpoint for Telepathy bonus and 1007, whereas the 1 manipulation rank is the highest reduction to 1002 threshold you can get with manipulation training. In a physical build, I wouldn't dedicate anymore towards mental lore. Way too much diminishing returns on 1007 growth.

Are you saying manipulation training doesn't help with all those other things?! And I gather that the unravelling song is just not useful to me yet then? That might simplify things.

MUCH higher priority on air lore if you use a shield. Air Lore is BADASS as hell for shield bards. -1 Shield size for evade consideration is amazing. You need to hit at least 20 ranks in Air Lore to get -1 Shield size. Given that you should also have a goal of 60 ranks of Armor use and more spell research, I wouldn't go beyond this for the short term.

I use a shield, but not a sonic one. I tried the sonic shield for a while, but it requires so much mana that it makes it difficult to keep my defensive songs going and use a Lullabye on my opponents. So Air Lore does not come into play until I can use a sonic shield, right? And what do you mean -1 shield size? Why would it make my shield smaller? And why would I want a smaller shield?

Thank you Whirlin

(is everyone laughing yet??)

~L.

[Jeril]

Every time someone uses numbers for spells, I have to look them up. I don't know how you folks do it!

What do you mean unlocking those two spells? I know 1020, the travelling song, but did not know there was anything to unlock. Heck, mostly that song just gets me badly injured and lost. I *never* use it willingly. It's flat out the scariest thing I have ever cast by mistake. It'll be a while before 430.

I don't really know whether to study more bard circle spells or minor elemental ones on any given promotion. It's one or the other for me.



Are you saying manipulation training doesn't help with all those other things?! And I gather that the unravelling song is just not useful to me yet then? That might simplify things.



I use a shield, but not a sonic one. I tried the sonic shield for a while, but it requires so much mana that it makes it difficult to keep my defensive songs going and use a Lullabye on my opponents. So Air Lore does not come into play until I can use a sonic shield, right? And what do you mean -1 shield size? Why would it make my shield smaller? And why would I want a smaller shield?

Thank you Whirlin

(is everyone laughing yet??)

~L.

What he means by unlocking is just getting those spells, nothing crazy just worded a little different.

[Whirlin]

I use a shield, but not a sonic one. I tried the sonic shield for a while, but it requires so much mana that it makes it difficult to keep my defensive songs going and use a Lullabye on my opponents. So Air Lore does not come into play until I can use a sonic shield, right? And what do you mean -1 shield size? Why would it make my shield smaller? And why would I want a smaller shield?

Thank you Whirlin

(is everyone laughing yet??)

~L.

There's no point to use a sonic shield until you have 20 ranks of air lore.

Using shield inhibits dodge greatly (a penalty of 22% dodge when using a buckler, 30% for medium, 38% for Large, 46% for Tower). Since we bards so dodgey, that hurts, lots. 20 ranks in air lore offsets that penalty by 1 rank, basically returning 8% of your dodge, at the cost of 0 of your blocking potency. At cap, you can use a tower shield, with only having it reduce your dodge by 22% instead of the 46%. On the block side, you get more shield DS from bigger shields (at the tradeoff of the dodge penalty). However, 1 rank of dodge generates more DS than 1 rank of shield use, so we want to inhibit evade less than we want to promote shield use. For Bards, the smallest shield you can use generates the best DS when factoring in both Evade and Block. With the implications of air lore, this means the biggest shield you can use where air lore reduces the evade encumbrance down to a buckler... So with 20 ranks of air lore, you can sing a medium shield, and it will only reduce your dodge by 22%, while giving you the block of a medium.

60 ranks of armor is when you can settle into ASG15 Augmented chain... This is the best stopping point for armor, and it grants you some reprieve from trying to manage which sonic armor you're singing, and lets you invest in some good augmented chain if you're buying physical armor.

Powering up spell research up to 430 grants you an amazing AS buff with 425, and it's an incredibly potent DS/TD raiser, and ends up being more worth the TP than any other training.