Most important stats?

[RandomPixie]

What are the most important stats for a bard? I was in-game earlier when a debate broke out about whether bards should pick VIT or WIS as one of their stats.

[Ysharros]

Last summer, when I was playing a bard (though I never did get her past about 12 or 13), the argument was between STR and DEX. There have been quite a few changes made since then, though, and I've no idea what Bards primarily use. I'm not sure how much I'd put into WIS, since in theory lots of the songs can be balanced out with proper rests and I don't know how many direct mana-using spells they get. As for VIT, I've been wondering myself if that might not be an overlooked stat in the long term.

I guess we'll have to see as we go along, or hope someone with a higher level bard late in beta will stop by and enlighten us.

[RandomPixie]

the thing is, I only have two slots to compose a song with, and only one rest. so basically I have two other embellishments, so I can't use a rest at the moment. So two combinations will use up energy. I think that's where WIS or VIT comes in. I'd be interested to know which is the better one to use, WIS or VIT.

[Ysharros]

You *can* use the rest if you don't use both embellishments. That sort of choice will always be there, since rests use up slots that could be used by other things. (We get more effective rests later on, too, though of course there's never enough rest-power to suck up all the spell-power we'd like to use.)

In terms of having ticking songs going down, the question is interesting though. I had a quick look at VIT earlier but with newbie stats it's kind of hard to tell what it's doing and what has more of an effect. An effect from not a lot compared to a bit more than not a lot is... not a lot.

Personally I'd rather have the regen rate over the flat mana, at least with a bard - but now that fights are longer, that might be a bad strategy. I did notice that my baby shaman was OOM all the time earlier today when I grouped - I hadn't played one in a while, and they changed costs & things recently... and suddenly mana (sorry, energy?) management was a real issue. Much more interesting in the long run, though.

So... still no answer for you, but it's going to be fun finding out.

[RandomPixie]

Hmmm, sounds like there's going to have to be a balance between flat mana and mana regen... rather than choosing one over the other.

[Beerninja]

I would say Vit definatly.

At lvl 26 my energy regen is 7per sec, and you can balance most songs to use 7 or less and never use any energy.

And you can use your big bang songs for those dire need moments.

This is better cause if you go the wis route then you will having to average your songs at 4 and 5 energy per sec which is really hard as you start moving up, and those songs just don't carry the punch that 7 per sec do.

but that is just my opinion I would rather have a smaller pool of energy and raise it faster then a loarg pool and raise it slower. At least this is sound advice for a PvP bard as far as PvE goes I couldn't say.