Some issues I've been running into with the bard:

First few levels are insanely hard. I play on hardcore and I had to remake about four or five times before I figured out to grind as much exp on the first few orcs as I could. I then had to run away from any level 3 I found while grinding on just level 2 orcs to get out of the area. I think I only survived as long as I have because of money transferred over in the bank.

Charm is nearly useless. I've charmed bosses pets against them, but that so far seems to be the extent of it. Maybe when I get higher.

Boastful Bellow doesn't place an icon on the enemy, so I can't see it fading.

Effects on enemies should blink a fade animation so I know it is time to start casting the debuff again, keep those DOTS rolling.

I'll keep posting what I feel about bards as I continue playing.

Thanks!

Boastful bellow should be a DD attack, not a DoT. It should be useful when you need to spike DPS or when you have nothing better to do. I think I'd like to hear other bard players chime in on this. I think charm is super powerful. Takes 50-60% of hits for you... maybe I need to do a Bard Let's Play lol.

Bellow is definitely not operating like a DD, I watch ticks of 80-100 hitting on top of my Chords. Further, if it's function is to spike DPS and interrupt spells (like in the description) it needs to have a shorter cast time. The spell description leads one to believe that it is a DOT, however: "Boastful bellow strikes your target for X to Y magic damage every 3 verses every 5 seconds".

Bards need some explanation as well. A tutorial or brief description of how verses work in conjunction with DOT timers would be great. I have no idea what a verse is in relation to combat timers.

I'll have to revisit them and see what's going on with them when I have a moment. Any other bards care to chip in?

I think it used to be a DD and it was changed for some reason. The interrupt effect was added later, too.

Edit: It was changed into a short duration, single-target DoT so that bards didn't just spam this skill repeatedly on top of their other two DoT songs. That way they'd have a reason to use other songs.

I will say that Bard is definitely the least user friendly class. They're completely different from everyone else, they use charm, and the whole song mechanic is completely different from everyone else.

As a side note I recently made the first 20 levels a little easier. You shouldn't see champions during quest finales, you shouldn't see champions at all until you're at least level 20, and ambushes won't happen until level 20. This should give the player plenty of time to get comfortable with their class and unlock a good assortment of skills.

I find the song twisting fine, it was honestly what I expected here. The problem is the vague wording of the skill descriptions with "Verses" of songs over seconds. Is that how often it hits per few seconds? How many applications of the damage or effect there are going to be?

Honestly if there was a brief description even in the starting screen of how that worked it would clear up a lot of questions. Or a "total damage" or "total healing" section in the tooltip that would show how much I am getting.

Accelerando is a bit confusing as well because of this same thing. Does it cause an extension of verses on songs that are cast after I cast accelerando? Or does it apply its effect to all currently running songs?

The damage output of a bard sub level 5 is abysmal. It could honestly be because I chose female over male, but I shouldn't have to reroll 4 times with only two skills to survive in hardcore past the first few encounters. It wasn't for a lack of using skills, it was simply that I could not do the damage and would have to run away from creatures any other class would walk through. I tried most the other classes and they were able to handle the first few levels easily. Bard just has it rough.

Since bellow is a DOT now it could use an icon forgot to say that

Did some more testing since my original posting (and a few levels later). Since the charm is less mana intensive now I'm finding it more useful. When you first get it, however, it is more effective to keep chaining using your basic damage spells rather than risk additional targets with the high cost charm. Safer on Hardcore i guess

Oh, ya. Good idea.

I haven't played a bard in a while, but when I did it rocked. Charm became very useful later when the mana wasn't such a drain, as you pointed out. Their damage was nuts with two dots going, hasted attacks, pet attacks, and the heal bomb every now and then. Only way to kill my bard was to stun lock it.

I don't remember exactly how hard it was at the beginning levels, but it did seem more difficult than any of the other classes I've played.