Worked Dragonskin Mask  

 

When Charm songs start costing mana, Cha becomes extremely important to a bard that charms. The duration on the charm songs that use mana is random. The higher your cha, the longer the charms will last on average. At 190ish cha, a high 40's bard can keep Frost Giant Elites in Great Divide charmed for the maximum duration of a charm almost every time. At lvl 50/51 small rats and flies near the entrance of PoD were the same. This is based on my experiences of about 6 months ago when I leveled Brasso Blowhard on the Firiona Vie server from lvl 35ish to 51 in about a week, starting with mass kiting and charming tactics with Ulthorks, moving to Giants in GD, a couple ventures to WW for Velium Hounds, and ending with kiting little flies and rats in PoD. I ended up deleting the bard though. I like to group, but I got about 1/4th the experience in a good group than I could get solo, which ended up irritating me. The never-ending repetitive keypresses to twist four songs at all times also got extremely old eventually, considering that I have 9 fingers, 8 of which work correctly.

For the person who wants to solo, a high charisma bard with just one Flowing Thought I item (I had an Earring of Solstice) will be able to churn out massive exp, and earn Very Good money. Beware however, if you do not have a FT item before you get mana-using charms, downtime will be very extensive - NO mana regen effects that I know of, other than Flowing Thought items, will work on bards, and your mana regen rate is horribly pathetic. The downtime was so long that I discovered that I could kill myself to get my mana back and still make exp at a high rate - even with no rez. The Frost Giant Captain in Eastern Wastes is a GodSend for Bard exp when he starts to con dark blue to you, he can beat down quite a few creatures as your pet before he becomes seriously damaged. One more thing... Go invisible before your charmed pets kill something, or die themselves, then kill ex-pet and/or target with DoTs for full exp.

Wasn't meaning this to be this long, ah well, too late.

Oh, Bard mezzes also seem to be significantly more likely to stick with high cha, and there is absolutely no better way to prevent caster mobs from casting long spells than to mez them every few seconds :) They move a bit when you mez them, so on raids you MUST be careful about what way you push them with the mez, but mezzing a mob - always - breaks it's casting, and at least up to lvl 51, bard mezzes cost no mana.