Bard - Puretone

[Grey]

Was wondering if anyone even uses this disc and could post some feedback on it.
The other day for the first time I clicked it while testing songs on the dummy and noticed it did nothing. zero improvement.
Just checked the spells file for 2 other servers I play bards on and see that its the exact same as THF so I am not sure why I would see a giant increase on those servers compared to here.
Example I will use is the bard Damage over time songs.
Here I do 248 or 256 (not exact number but its in that range) per tick non crit, Ive yet to purchase the aa to let my bard crit on dots as I never sing them.
So for this example I'll go with my bard on EZ server where if I am singing 4 dots and click puretone my base damage goes up about 200 percent before crits are factored in.
Here I saw zero increase.
As this shares the same reuse timer as Thousand Blades I would rather melee a little harder for a few seconds every hour over doing nothing.

If we brainstorm some ideas is there any chance this disc can be tweaked to do something useful?

[Zilar]

Your instrument mods are already at the cap, therefore puretone cannot help you. Puretone was out back in Luclin, when nobody was anywhere near the instrument cap. As content progressed, and more AA's were added, many bards easily got to the instrument cap, and that is what you are experiencing here as well.

tldr: puretone temporarily adds a +singing mod while active, but since you're capped already it has no effect.

[Grey]

Hey Zilar thanks for responding,
part of my original post included that information and the fact that I viewed puretone from the spell file using 3 spell parser/creator programs for this server and 2 other emus. (modified original post before I submited to follow another train of thought)
While I have no issue with just never using this disc as a bard with decent gear and a couple hundred aa is pretty sweet machine for pulling, tanking, dpsing, crowd control etc etc
I just think its crazy that this class has 2 combat abilities [(5 but 2 are worthless, 2 share the same reuse timer of which one is worthless and one useful)] while the other melee classes have slightly more flavor in terms of disc.
Thousand blades is pretty sweet disc so really I cant complain about anything. Re: someone playing the class can do some amazing stuff or someone thats really good at alt tabing and has songs hotkeyed and qued up. Hello PharaDar fight comes to mind.

I just have zero inhibition about posting questions or comments in regards to any of the content on the server in the hopes that a Dev might see it, might agree with my train of thought or was already considering a change for it. On the same hand I expect to be ignored often and told to bugger off plenty of times and have no issues with that.
Feed back is only useful to the dev team if posted even if its only for the team to laugh at while nom nom on popcorn.

Basic break down here is have these other servers been able to set bard skill cap for singing and instruments to a higher value then used here which in turn actually makes puretone worthwhile on that server? Can we make puretone be the bards big pretty here by tweaking it into something useful? (herro charm enhancement comes to mind and the cruel things I would do with it)

[Zilar]

Basic break down here is have these other servers been able to set bard skill cap for singing and instruments to a higher value then used here which in turn actually makes puretone worthwhile on that server? Can we make puretone be the bards big pretty here by tweaking it into something useful? (herro charm enhancement comes to mind and the cruel things I would do with it)

Actually, it's more likely that they just don't have as high of skill mods, or you didnt have singing mastery AA. On every other emu server, unless Lillu and team submitted their code to the eqemu devs, instrument mod caps are buggy. Once you get past a certain instrument mod, you gain no benefit from any mods at all. This was fixed by Striat a few months back on this server.

[TheBloodmoon]

True and not true. Some of the mods have issues with them and some do not. Percussion for example has issues if you have a large mod to it that exceeds what the server code can handle. This can be seen on other servers where a bard with a huge mod (+250 for example) to percussion plays selo's and actually slows down past run speed 3 instead of running extremely fast. However, much to the contrary, singing mods work [semi]appropriately with an equivalent mod (+250).

I believe Striat and Shin Noir both had attempted many fixes for this problem, though, and were unsuccessful. I believe they arrived at the conclusion that it was probably best to set a hard coded cap in the server code to prevent any mod from causing this "roll-over" effect. My best assumption, though, is they capped all skills to be on the safe side.

Nevertheless, it would be only beneficial to continue to look into this as an issue that needs to be addressed. I disagree that a hard cap should be set, and there should be a fix should someone decide to look hard enough. The bard class is a fantastic class with many useful abilities, but they are under-utilized and would benefit greatly from a true fix regarding the instrument and singing mods.

Furthermore, I see no reason why the puretone disc shouldn't receive a little love via customization if no fix for the instrument mods are in the near future.

[Grey]

I love me a Tankzor for his input here.
I made my bard a long time ago because of Kimiga, one day he tore up Tov with me when I was a total newb and it was amazing.
Didn't get around to actually hitting 70 and putting some gear on it (Bard) until recently and at first a zero aa bard was really sad. I did 129dps on parse *BUT* my groups dps went up a amazing amount.
After I picked up about 200aa it really started to shine.

Regarding other servers and massive skill mod (EZ again) yes some songs just break because of the way gear is itemized there. Maybe if I ask really nice I can get some of the other servers to let me see some code or if I get off my lazy bum and I can throw up a local server and start tweaking.

(Oh cool I was tabbing around and came back and didn't know you can drag words around the post to move them. That is a really cool forum feature!)

[Nexor]

Yes its hard coded http://www.thehiddenforest.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=2450&hilit=instrument

And nope Bards aren't the only class that have no useful/working discs

[Grey]

1) Hard coded for this server. Got it. Already read that thread.
2) I have no issue with other classes and their discs, Rangers are fine with trueshot afk dps goodness, Shadowknights I dont care about so someone else can post there, Paladins are just OP regardless of disc or not, god I love me a Paladin. Who plays beastlords, do they even get discs? Finally I have zero issue with warriors or monks and no experience with rogues outside of KMRA and that means I know nothing about rogues in terms of sane EQ.

p.s. smack ducky for using that cheaterbot in duels.

[striat]

I *think* the issue was that when the instrument cap was exceeded, a zero or negative value was returned. This would mean, it would cause a decrease in the effectiveness of all bard song when the cap is exceeded. I'll need to check to make sure this interpretation is correct as the issue may have been related only to certain beneficial spell types.

Anyways, the info:

1. Titanium clients had a hardcoded limitation that even if the server code permits you to exceed the limit, your client does not.
2. Yes, instrument mods were hardcoded to match this server side.
3. Other clients are probably not as limited by this number
4. It likely is possible to exceed certain caps by exploiting the nature of spells/skills that allow for the client to exceed max caps (like the shaman buff set), but I am unable to provide any information as to if this is true and if it would be something useful to THF.

[TheBloodmoon]

Thanks for the clarification Striat!