Torsten Zugschwerdt’s Skald 103

Role:

Skalds make excellent solo fighters and are useful in groups as buffers and “utility” fighters but lack the true tanking ability of a warrior. The Skald is the worst tank class of the 5 fighter classes in Midgard but a major addition to the tanking ability of a group.

Skalds work well against casters and defending their own casters. Skalds can use their DD (direct damage) shouts (instant casting short range spells) to interrupt spell casters and their CC (crowd control) shout to hold them in place while the Skald approaches.

My personal favorite classes to group with are Shaman followed by Spiritmasters and then Runemasters. Of course everyone likes grouping with Healers. The Shaman's endurance buff is essential for all fighters to reduce downtime. Spiritmasters can debuff, heal, and nuke. Runemasters have the ranged damage the Skald lacks while the Skalds ability to rapidly increase agro with their weapon and shouts makes them a good fit.

Like healer types skalds can benefit groups well above their level with their buffs even when they can’t hit mobs. The speed chant makes level 43 Skald essential for RvR groups and of course the damage add is always nice.

Important Attributes:

Strength and Constitution for fighting, Charisma for spell power and mana are the three main attributes affecting the Skald. Slightly less important, Dexterity affects the evade and parrying abilities, and Quickness is also useful in getting off a quick shot to pull agro from your healer, or taking out an enemy healer before a “real” heavy tank stops you. Race and personal play style should be used to determine where you spend points at creation.

Charisma is your prime attribute and since there are no charisma buffing spells I would urge you to take the time to put 10 points into this at creation. When creating my Skald I did not put points into charisma, figuring it would be added rapidly as I leveled. I believed this was a good choice since all spells are on timers and I’ve never managed to run out of power in a fight and many spells use endurance making the points I spent on constitution worth while. However high charisma will noticeably increase the damage of your DD shouts and would definitely consider putting more points into this if I were to start over with another Skald. The changes proposed in 1.65 mean you’ll be casting faster and using more mana per shout making points spent on Charisma at creation that much more useful.

Strength is probably the second most important attribute in Midgard determining probability to hit, weapon damage (for all weapon types available to a Skald) and encumbrance. I would suggest that all players put 10 points into strength.

Constitution is very useful to a Skald because all of your shouts will use endurance as well as mana.

Dexterity is the most maligned attribute in Midgard. Its effects are generally considered negligible unless you are using a ranged weapon. Unless you’re playing a Troll Skald I wouldn’t be to worried about putting points into dexterity. Also the realm ability “augment dexterity” is a keystone ability that you will need to take in order to get some other very useful realm abilities, meaning that you will likely get 6-12 additional points in dexterity shortly after starting RVR.

Racial Selection:

Being a “mixed class” of buffer/mage/fighter the Skald has advantages for a more balanced race than a straight fighter or mage.

Trolls are awesome tanks but lack dexterity and quickness, which can be useful to a Skald. A very good choice for a stronger tanking type of Skald especially at lower levels, be sure to put some points in quickness at creation as you won’t get any more later. Trolls are very visible in RVR and can attract enemies

Kobolds are lacking both strength and constitution, when you level 20 and start wearing chain armor you won’t be able to carry very much loot. Kobolds make poor tanks at lower levels. Although a Skald will rarely be the main tank of a group they are still back up tanks.

Dwarves are better rounded than Trolls and have more constitution meaning they can take more damage, but have less strength limiting their ability to deal damage with their weapon. A good choice for a Skald as their additional ability to use styles and spells can make up for reduced damage do to lack of strength.

A Norseman was my personal choice, dealing more damage without styles than dwarves but lacking constitution they can’t take as much damage. Skalds are not usually the primary tank and as such shouldn’t be taking the majority of the damage.

Skills:

A Skald has 3 of 5 skills to develop with his 1.5 points per level. Battlesongs is your signature skill and you will be expected to keep it at you level by most other players until you get to the highest levels of the game. I suggest keeping Battlesongs within one level of your current, weapon at ½ to 2/3 of your level and putting remaining points into parry.

Weapon – there are 3 choices here: axe, hammer and sword. The hammer was the best overall RvR weapon due to its better damage versus heavily armored opponents until Mythic revised armor resistances. Whatever you decide pick one and stick with it. By using styles regularly you can go through mobs quickly and endurance will regenerate much quicker than health or mana.

A bigger question than which weapon to use is whether to use a one or two handed weapon. With a one handed weapon you can use a shield but as a Skald you can’t spec in shield so you will only have limited use of it. However you will have more places to put buffs with a shield so you can still use it to some effect. 2 handed weapons on the other hand double your chance of parrying which you can spec in and get more use out of.

I find that I come out of most solo fights better with my 2 handed sword than when I use sword and shield. I would recommend finding some blue mobs and attacking them with whatever new weapons you get in order to compare which work better.

Parry – adds to your defense. It’s very difficult to truly see how much this can benefit you. I see the Skald as a more offensive character and put fewer points into this than Battlesongs or weapon. You should review the styles for the weapon you choose to use and the necessity of getting a parry as an opening style. For the RvR endgame parry seems to lack in comparison to its usefulness in PvE. Many players recommend putting everything you can into BS and weapon in order to maximize damage output.

Battlesongs – This is what makes the Skald a true standout on the battlefield. I suggest taking this ability up to level 46 to get the best damage add chant. Level 50 will give you the fastest speed buff in the game (and 2 additional resist chants of ambiguous worth) but that will cost you almost 200 skill points would can help you a lot more elsewhere.

Battle chant – is the third best of the four damage adds available in Midgard. Dark specced Runemasters have the best damage add, Thanes next but it is self castable only and Shaman have the weakest damage add in Midgard. Mythic recently revised the way these damage adds work together to make stacking 2 of them useful.

Song of rest – aids healing for the group. Use this between fights to reduce downtime. Try to remind the healers in your group that you have this spell so they don’t use all of their power healing the tanks after every battle.

Song of travel – fastest speed buff in the game. Will not work in battle and takes a while to get used to in town or dungeons. This ability will ruin you for playing other classes. Very useful in RVR for running down opponents before a fight and keeping up with the zerg but this chant will disengage whenever anyone in your group enters combat, is attacked or casts a damage type spell.

Resist chants – Mythic added some useful resist chants to fill up the skalds Battlesongs spell list, if you know what kind of damage enemy casters will be hitting you with and if you have more than 1 Skald in a group.

There are also a mez, a snare and 2 DD shouts, all cast instantly but are on timers.

Use your snare for pulling as it has the most range and also just before a mob pulled by someone else gets to the group to slow its initial attack. Great for pulling mobs if you are not sure if they will BAF (Bring A Friend, having a second mob come when you pull one). This shout has the longest range of all of the Skalds abilities.

Save mez for adds (additional monsters that come when you pull one monster or wandering monsters that sneak up on you when you are already in combat). When in a group it might make sense to let the healer or other casters stun/mez as they have better and longer range crowd control (CC) abilities than the Skald has. Discuss your CC options with the healer when joining a group. Watch for lag, sometimes mesmerized creatures won’t immediately appear stunned and attacking them will break the mez.

When soloing hit the mob with your DD spells ASAP so they can reload (they are on 20 second timers) while your fighting. You might need second and third shouts versus tough mobs. In a group be more careful in your usage. You want the main tanks to get and maintain the agro and it is useful to have them available in case you need to pull the agro from the healer or other casters.

RVR:

Your speed chant is you number one most wanted ability in RVR. It can save you tons of time running around the frontier as well as helping you keep up with your own zerg or while you run down enemy stragglers who can’t keep up with their army.

If there is no zerg having the Skalds speed can make a small group effective as it scours the frontier hunting other small groups and avoiding the enemy zerg.

I would urge you to take a defensive role in RVR. Stay back with your casters as the enemies first salvo will likely be an AoE (area of affect) mez into the first line of attackers. You don’t have the offensive skills to rush in and destroy your enemies or the hit points to survive a major beating. Rather seek out those from the enemy’s first wave who manage to resist your forces initial CC abilities and hit them with your mez before seeking out their damage dealing casters and healers.

Mez the first guy to break through as he has probably used his purge to avoid being stunned or rooted and unleash your damage shouts onto the next attacker as you whip your weapon out.

Realm abilities:

Purge is always useful.

MCL (Mystic Crystal Lore) will be even more useful after 1.65 goes live.

First Aid – and Ignore Pain are also well worth the points

As mentioned above Augmented Dexterity is a “cornerstone” ability which will allow you to select additional abilities (Mastery of Pain, Parry and Arms).

Masteries of Pain and Parry are passive abilities that will benefit you all the time and are well worth purchasing as soon as you can and then later respeccing out of when you have enough realm points to get Purge and Ignore Pain.

Augmented Acuity is a great place to spend realm points. It increases shout damage as well as opening up Serenity which will help you get by until MCL comes up again.

Avoid – Mastery of blocking (unless you use a shield), Mastery of the Arcane (adding 3% to a chant that does 3-10% is only adding .09-.3% to your ability), Mastery of water (not particularly useful outside of the BG’s), Second wind (its easy to find a Shaman and endurance recovers quickly on its own for 10 realm points its just not worth it)

The damage adds (rain of Ice, Fire, annihilation and Fury of the gods) have long timers which seriously limits their usefulness. I would hold off on getting these until you reach 50 at any rate as they are more useful for RvR battles which occur at long intervals.

Additional info:

The three “bardic” classes are very different between the 3 realms but buffing and battle songs remain similar to all three.

The Skald is the best straight up fighter of the three and unlike the other 2 doesn’t require an instrument for his songs so he can cast while fighting. In Albion the minstrel has stealth, and a pet ability while still being a good fighter. The bard in Hibernia is more of a healer with a rez ability the others lack.

The paladin in Albion is probably more like the Skald than a Thane with his group buffs. The paladin like the bard also has the ability to resurrect dead players, which the Skald lacks.

A great page on the minstrel can be found at http://www.kungfugeek.com/~powersong/

There is a lot of in depth information that can benefit a Skald as well as a minstrel while giving you some insight as to your chief competition.

Do’s and Don’ts

Do ask for rezzes when you die. I’ve seen etiquette posts about not doing this but everyone does. Just say thank you when to whomever rezzes you and ask if they’d like to group with you. You may want to hang on to the plus piety items you find as they are of no use to you and will benefit a healer.

Don’t ask for buffs (unless noted above). It can take a lot of concentration for other classes to buff an entire group and you will annoy your buffer.

Don’t assume you’re the puller just because there is a mob near you or our in a group with tanks and you’re the only guy with a ranged attack. Always discuss pulling when you enter a group. An experienced player without a ranged attack makes a better puller than a new guy with a ranged attack.

Always make sure an ADD is not stunned and is attacking before attacking it.

Do attack the first mob pulled even if a second mob attacks you. You’ll finish the first quicker.

Do immediately switch if the new mob goes for the healer. Discuss this with the group between fights as someone could stick with the first mob while someone else pulls the mob off the healer.

Don’t run around if a high level mob starts attacking you. If you are soloing run straight away and use sprint. If you are in a group stand still and use /g to tell the group your under attack, if you move the other tanks can’t select the mob to draw the agro from you.

Don’t attack a mob already under attack (by someone not in your group) unless requested. Be careful in dungeons where you have tight spaces and other player may try to crowd the area where your group is.

The healer is always right. Always.

You can’t move siege equipment after you build it, even if it appears to have wheels.

Torsten Zugschwerdt, level 47 Skald on Pellinor