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This is for all your bards out there Or people who have knowledge of barding, provoking and whatnot.

I'm pondering about changing my template. Now it is: prim: Provocation/Magery/Musicianship
sec: Eval. Int./Meditation/Magic Resistance
trade: Cartography

What happens if you swith eval. int. to prim. and put Provo into a secondary slot? The reason i'm asking this is because of the fact how provocation will work if the musicianship skill is at 100% and provocation at 80% (without any buffs). Is it then still possible to have a high succesrate of provocating creatures to each other? Or is it just the best to let both skills reach a 100% to never fail provocation (if such a thing is possible). The reason i want to swith is because a high eval. int. really works for cranking up my armor and the strenght of casting other spells. To bad the bonus when casting protection is gone.

Hope you guys have some usefull tips!

Regards,
kwoth

Well, i use 90 provo and 60 music on few of my chars. Works somewhat fine, without wasting slots...it might be good if barding would be made harder, so there's a slot needed for music too

When I had a bard I had Music as a second and I did fine.

Well, I can honestly tell you that I used to have provocation and music in both primary slots... then I moved them to secondary... and finally, they are both now only at 60%. I noticed almost no difference from 100% to 80% skill when I moved them from primary to secondary, but when I moved them out of secondary, I did notice a significant drop in success- however, the other abilities I could then spec FAR outweighed the success rate of provoke. I still provoke quite successfully, although I sometimes fail repeatedly on the tougher critters. If you really want provocation to be your primary weapon, I would recommend putting provoke in secondary, and just get music to 60%- you should succeed often enough with that, plus you can spec Invoke, etc to make you a more powerful mage. If, however, you rely more on your spells to do the killing of your MOBs, you might want to keep both provoke and music at 60% since you will succeed well enough to survive out there. Personally, with my provoker, Dalia, I have no trouble dazzling even great dragons with only 60% skill. Sure, they blow flames at me sometimes, but because I have those extra slots in which to spec resist, etc, I can survive those failed attempts quite well. Also, bear in mind that even with 100% skill in both music and provoke, you can still fail- certainly far less often as with 60% skill, but, like I said, with those extra slots to spec other more useful skills, you should have no trouble.

Cel

Well Celeste has got the barding right there, except that if you plan to keep provoking your main weapon i would place it as primary.

I didnt check the monsters from the WoD files, but i was under impression that you cannot provoke everything with 80 (90) skill.

I wont say that having provocation as backup for mage, is a bad idea, but i wouldnt call it the primary weapon then.

With 60 music skill you will need to learn how to dodge =), you fail often. Learning how to avoid the monsters and provoking while running are key elements. =)

so in short:

Provocation at 100
Music at 60.

Losing 1 primary slot leaves you PLENTY of options with the character.


-Daalia-

My bard (Tommy):

Primes: Provocation, Magery, Invocation
Seconds: Musicianship, Meditation, Magic Resist

I still fail a lot because of that whole random failure thing, but I would imagine that it would be worse if I had lower musicianship. My template is what you would call a Bard/Mage, (obviously.) Even though it looks like I am more mage than bard, I use Provoke as my primary weapon and magery to finish them off. I even carry a shield and mace as a last resort but I am rarely ever in war mode.