Bard teams are pretty damn nifty

[Ughmahedhurtz]

So I'm running 4x bards to play with a couple of buddies and so far, I must say I like them a lot. Healing by default while DPSing with extra group heals when needed and buffs out the wazoo do make for an extremely hard to kill group. Being able to "solo" major rifts and the elite invasions/bosses is nifty.

[Alge]

I've played 1 warrior + 4 bards to 50 and am now playing a mixed team. There are a couple of important shortcomings you may run into:

1) no cure/cleanse (unless I completely missed it somehow)
2) bards don't qualify as healers in the LFG system, so no randoms

[cichard]

yup and actually at higher lvls bards are not as good as chloro/archon. archon brings the same buffs to the table as the bards anthem. But the archon can have all the anthems up at one time instead of just one. So 1 mage can do the buffs of 4 bards. They only lack the run speed anthem.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I've played 1 warrior + 4 bards to 50 and am now playing a mixed team. There are a couple of important shortcomings you may run into:

1) no cure/cleanse (unless I completely missed it somehow)
2) bards don't qualify as healers in the LFG system, so no randoms

Understood. I'm more interested in playing through the 1-50 game at the moment to see how things scale and get a bit of experience in the game's mechanics. I'm sure if I like the bards at 50, I'll probably roll another team to explore some other mechanics. Bards alone definitely already have trouble with instances at level. +5 or so I'm OK but my ranger pets tend to get eaten alive at-level.

[Lyonheart]

Bards can rez now too 8)

[Alge]

Understood. I'm more interested in playing through the 1-50 game at the moment to see how things scale and get a bit of experience in the game's mechanics. I'm sure if I like the bards at 50, I'll probably roll another team to explore some other mechanics. Bards alone definitely already have trouble with instances at level. +5 or so I'm OK but my ranger pets tend to get eaten alive at-level.

Bards are great for doing that.

[Norrin]

Well I think I am going to try out 4 bards + something else.
I finally got a full team running, but having 4 of the same thing, that can heal while dpsing, sounds good.
I only want to experience pve content, not even really interested in running instances right away.

Now if I could figure out how to make the video stream thingy in ISBoxer work for me that would be great.

[Alge]

Now if I could figure out how to make the video stream thingy in ISBoxer work for me that would be great.

You must be on Vista or later, have Aero desktop enabled and be using only a single PC or it can't work.

[Norrin]

Thanks Alge.
I meant more about how to put them to good use, than the technical requirements.
For example how you used them to ease npc interaction like quest givers.

I would love to find a way to get mouse over healing to work them.
There are times when I don't run my full team; where my wife and maybe my son jump in. In those cases healing with macros is difficult. I usually just end up controlling a healer as the main.

[Alge]

I don't think video feeds (aka video FX) are the solution to healing in RIFT. I guess you could create an interactive feed of your healer's party frames but I think the very slight lag you get with video FX might be off-putting. I'd love for someone to prove me wrong.

Alternatively, if you can guarantee the raid frames are always available to you then this method (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=33614) might work. I haven't tried it yet for RIFT but plan to in the near future; I'm currently using a click bar + macro healing system that relies on knowing the names of all party members in advance. You can't do the method described in the above guide with the normal party frames because the order is not consistent across all characters, but it is for raid frames. Despite what the game says, there appears to be no xp or gold penalty for making your 5-man party into a raid.