Skalds are a versatile support class, Viking base class, but with some helpful magical abilities which help to both supplement their offense and provide utility for their group. Mythic has clearly defined the class as one meant to be in the thick of the battle, rather than operating behind the lines passively. One of the fun aspects of the Skald is that they can work within that defined role in a lot of different ways. From a frontloaded damage dealer assisting tanks to a roamer, interrupting healers, casters and providing secondary CC support.
Races
There is no one best race for a Skald. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. People will try and say that race really doesn't matter in the end after you are level 50 with fully capped out stats. That is incorrect. There are some distinct differences in the way certain skalds perform based on race. Below is a quick rundown on each race.
Kobold
To be perfectly honest here I am of the opinion that this is the only race that doesn't have much going for it in terms of making a Skald. Low strength and constitution make kobolds a less effective choice. That said, there are some advantages to playing a kobold, one being size. If it is important to you to avoid being targeted early in a fight, kobold can be a logical choice. However, some people look for kobolds to target early in the fight because they are typically casters or rogues, thus being softer targets. It can work either way, but usually the former.
Dwarf
Dwarves are a good choice for skalds because of their high starting constitution. One of the major problems with playing a Skald is lack of defense. Basically, if someone takes a swing at you, you will most likely be hit for damage. We will get into this more when we discuss specialization choices, but if you want survivability, Dwarves will give you an edge, albeit a minor one.
Norse
People pick Norsemen for a few reasons. They don't stand out in any particular stat. Very well rounded race choice. Basically, the thought is, you can't go wrong with a Norse character. They won't be the best in any particular area, but will be pretty good in all of them. Some people pick Norse because they want a character with decent strength, but are adverse to playing a troll for whatever reason (and a lot of people are like this, especially females =p) including, but not limited to, the desire to play a race that isn't as large as a troll, better starting dexterity and quickness than a troll, less visible than either a large race or a small race.
Troll
Now, here is the tricky part. I myself believe that trolls are the best race to pick for a Skald IF AND ONLY IF you have a certain play style; otherwise they are no better than any other race. Because of their extremely high starting strength and low starting quickness, trolls are capable of much larger initial styled hits. It is important when I mention the word "initial". I won't go into detail on the subject here in this guide as it is still a subject that is hotly contested, but because of the lower quickness, trolls can dish out more damage in their first 2 hits than the other races can (quickness has an affect on style bonuses attached to base damage). This lends itself to troll skalds being a very good fit for groups in which the melee classes are experienced in assisting each other on the same target. Outside of this group dynamic, trolls don't perform better than any other race. In fact, due to their size, they often are targeted well before they should be (when taking into account "importance to the group").
Creation points
This is not nearly as controversial as the race choices, but there are still a few popular ways to go about this. The most common is 10 Str, 10 Con, 10 Charisma. You can't go wrong there. I myself went with 15 Str, 10 Con. The reason I did this was to pump my Weaponskill as high as possible. I don't regret it. I might miss out on a few points of damage per DD shout, but pumping up my Strength had a two-pronged effect. It has a slight effect on my damage, but more importantly it raises the modifier when a check is made against a defensive skill of my opponent. The higher my weaponskill is, the less chance my opponent has to parry, block, or evade. Again, this was just a decision I made. The 10, 10, 10 is a much safer template. Although some people tend to disagree, I believe that as a Skald, putting points into quickness and dexterity is an utter waste. Don't do it.
Weapons
There is an advantage and a disadvantage inherent in Midgard weapon spec lines. The advantage is that there is no clear cut choice, making all lines viable. The disadvantage is that there is no clear cut choice, making all lines viable. Below is a breakdown of the different weapon lines and why you might, or might not pick them:
Hammer
Hammer has three things going for it. First and foremost, the anytime style, named "Provoke" is simply the best anytime style in the game (of the major 3 in each realm). It has the best damage bonus of any of the Midgard anytime styles (excluding Polar Rift, but we will get into that in the discussion about Swords). In addition, it is classified as a "Low endurance" style so it uses a lot less endurance than the other "anytime" styles in Midgard. Hammer's second big advantage is the style "Conquer." Conquer is a rear positional style with a snare effect. The benefit of this is immeasurable to an experienced player. The ability to snare targets that are trying to run from you in battles and hinder those running after your own groups' casters and healers is very important. The third benefit to Hammers is that your best styles come earlier in the spec line, so a lower weapon spec is an option if you want to put more points into other areas. The drawback to Hammers is the damage type. Crush is not the most favorable damage type given the armor resistance of other realms.
Sword
To be perfectly honest, sword is possibly the worst choice of a weapon as a Skald. That said, I picked sword and am extremely happy with it. Let me explain why. Let me first say that, unless you spec all the way to 50 Sword, it is an inferior line to both Hammer and Axe. The level 50 Style is Ragnarok, which makes the line worthwhile in my personal opinion. Ragnarok is the highest damaging opening style in the game. What I mean by that is that while other styles can do more damage, they are based off of chains (Aurora and Tyr's Fury are great examples of this). It also adds a considerable dehaste effect to your target. In group on group combat, the ability to hit fleeing/kiting casters and healers for a lot of damage is helpful. Draw Out and Polar Rift are your main anytime styles (Assault is also an anytime style, but with the recent changes in 1.65 is fairly useless). Draw Out is a medium damage, medium endurance style with a high "to-hit" bonus. It is nothing special, but an improvement over the old alternative. Polar Rift does quite a bit more damage than Draw Out, but uses a lot of endurance. In fact, using a 2H weapon, you can get off 4 swings with Polar Rift before you run out of end (3 if you have expended ANY end at all from shouts). So, this style is to be used only when you have a shaman in the group supplying you with endurance regen.
Axe
Axe has a lot of great positional styles and chains. The front and rear positional chains have very high damage styles as follow-ups. The advantage of Axe is that it has the potential to do more damage than either of the other lines. The disadvantage is that it is much more difficult to land your high damage styles due to a host of obstacles preventing you from landing two hits in a row (evades, parries, blocks, bladeturn, "target not in view"). A skilled player with an Axe is lethal however.
Specialization options
Well here is the tricky part. The thing is a lot goes into thinking about what Skald spec to use. I am not going to simply advocate one as better than all the rest. There are more than a dozen viable specs. I will go into several of the most popular and describe them:
44 Hammer/Axe, 46 Songs, 17 Parry
Good cookie cutter template. You get most of the best stuff from the Battlesongs line minus a few resists songs, the last DD shout and the last regeneration song. Your weapon spec is high enough to have decent weaponskill and get the respective styles at 44th level. Some people take this template and modify it into something like 47 or 48 Hammer/Axe, 46 or 44 songs and rest into parry. The reasoning behind this is that parry doesn't provide enough appreciable benefit to some skalds (due to their playstyle) so they invest in better weaponskill. Both are valid options depending on the person.
50 Sword/Axe, 43 Songs, 2 Parry
The intention of this spec is to get your weaponskill as high as possible. This spec is recommended for people who always have a solid group behind them. It isn't the best all around spec and is really only optimal when you will be attacking a target along with another people. This spec gives you the potential to do a large amount of damage very quickly. I wouldn't recommend this spec to someone that doesn't have a balanced and experienced group behind them. It is not the best solo spec and possibly not the best group spec UNLESS you know what you are doing beforehand.
50 Battlesongs, 43 Weapons, 2 Parry
This will most likely be the most popular spec following 1.65 when they implement the new level 50 and level 43 shouts in the Battlesongs line. Because of the higher level DD shouts, there will be significantly less outright resists, which has long been the bane of Skalds and the PRIMARY reason people had been shifting to the 50 weapon templates. With the new shouts and with weapon spec at 43, you will have a decent weaponskill and very nice shout damage. So, this spec could fulfill exactly what people with the 50 Weapon/43 song and 44 Weapon/46 Songs are looking for, balance and a ton of frontloaded damage.
What about 39 Weapon specs?
Now, I suppose some people will advocate 39 Weapon, 50 songs and the remainder in parry. All I can say is that for a Skald, 39 weapon is just too low. Not everyone agrees with this, but my own personal experience is that the weapon damage variance is too high and the weaponskill is too low with 39 base points into a weapon. In other words, damage is noticeably lower and weaponskill is lowered to the point that you don't get much of a bonus versus assassin classes (their evade does a check on your weaponskill as part of the calculation it uses to determine the chance the character has to evade) or pure tanks (parry and shield both also use weaponskill as a modifier). One thing to keep in mind is that the difference between 39 and 44 weapon is much greater than the difference between 44 and 50 weapon. The reason for this is simple. At level 50, every Skald should have +11 bonus to their weapon with items. Let's also say that a character is Realm Rank 4. That gives an additional +3 bonus to all skills, including your weapon. So, with a level 39 base weapon spec, my total weaponskill will be based upon a value of 53 in my weapon. With a base of 44 in my weapon, my weaponskill would be based on a value of 58. As stated by Mythic (and tested by myself), points above 50 in any skill have diminishing returns. That means every point above 50 gives less and less benefit. The difference between 58 and 53 is still quite considerable. The difference between 64 (based on a base 50 weapon spec) and 58, while still noticeable, isn't nearly as large. The real comparison that we should be making is the difference between 64 and 53 in terms of benefits. There is a very large discrepancy there.
Why not more Parry?
I will keep this discussion short. The bottom line is that while more parry would be nice, the benefit of having it as a Skald doesn't outweigh what you would miss out on by having your weapon spec lower. You are built to do a lot of damage quickly. If, as a Skald, you are involved in a protracted battle, you are going to be in trouble whether you have 17 base parry or 2 base parry. Skalds have terrible defenses no matter what you do with them. In my humble opinion, you have to accept that fact and move on. Put as many points as you can into Parry without sacrificing your weapon to do so. It is not worth hurting your damage to supplement your terrible defense. Think of it this way, as a Skald you can go from being a mediocre damage dealer with one spec to a very strong damage dealer in another. Defensively the best you can expect is to go from terrible to extremely mediocre, and that is being generous.
Should I use a Shield?
Rarely. Unspecced shield is about as helpful as gunshot wound. Why drop your large damage bonues as a 2H user to switch to gimpy 1H damage and a shield that you MIGHT block with 5% of the time (though I have done some tests that show even less effectiveness)? I do use a 1H/Shield combo on a few occasions, but it Is pretty rare. If I am the only person hitting someone whos group has 6 second PBT (which is rare, I usually don't attack someone with melee unless I am assisting a more powerful tank) I might use a 1H just to bypass the BT. The only other time I can think of is in PvE when I am the only tank. That's about it. I really don't believe it is at all effective for a Skald to use a shield.
Equipment
So, you are level 50 and now you need to get equipped with the best gear possible. Let me reiterate this for you. You NEED to be equipped with the best gear possible. You should not be RvRing with your epic gear. I emphasize this for Skalds more than other classes because you need every advantage you can get out there. You should be fully spellcrafted with every resist capped out before you start RvRing regularly. It will be expensive, so you might need to continue to farm money post-50. The best method for this is to get into diamond groups in DF and sell your seals to crafters (or salvage and hinge material yourself if you are a crafter). I recommend the following quests as a good start to getting a hold of your jewelry on which to base your spellcrafting template:
Ancestral Secrets (Jewel, Neck)
Catla's Downfall (Two Bracers)
Dark Places of the Soul (Ring)
Stoneheart (Cloak)
Hidden Maps (Jewel)
These should get you everything you need except for your belt and one ring. Use DF items here or possibly some items like the Belt of Glacial Might, Noxious Fengundar Belt or Band of Ice.
As for weapons I suggest the slowest 2H weapon you can find. As a Sword user, I use the Agmundr's Foe Slayer. I suggest that if you can't get a hold of a slow 2H weapon from Tuscaren Glacier right away, get a slow player-made weapon and imbue it with the same stats (or as close as possible) as the weapon you hope to get from TG at some future raid.
RvR/PvP
So you are ready to start defending your realm with your newly 50 Skald. Where do you start? What do you do? This really depends on who you are and who you know. The great thing about being a Skald is that even if you don't know anyone on the server yet, you will almost always be able to find groups. So, you can even be selective about the groups you join. Join a good, balanced group where it seems like people know what they are doing. This will help you early on when you are still rather new and might not be able to hold up your end (which is perfectly understandable, you need to get your feet wet in big-boy RvR) If you are an experienced player with a lot of friends and guild-mates already, you already know what to do at this point.
Your main job is pretty obvious from the get-go. Run speed. Yes, no matter how good you are as a Skald, that is the primary reason people will want you. Part of the difficulty of playing a Skald is defining your role in RvR groups. So we have the speed part out of the way. What else are you? Well, this part is trickier and takes some experience on your part. You need to read your group. What kind of players are they? If you are in a group of experienced PvPers, most of whom are tanks, you need to figure out who the MA (Main Assist) is and just do your best to watch him and assist him on the targets he selects. If your group is caster/healer heavy, part of your job is going to be protecting those characters with your snare, mez or just an attempt to "peel." When I say peel, I mean that some players, if they are chasing a healer or caster and you beat on them enough from behind, will turn around and start hitting you. Well, guess what? Mission accomplished. Some Skalds like to play the role of a "roamer" in battles, especially big battles. Sit back slightly, let your healers get down some Mezzes and watch for trouble spots. For example, if you see that naughty elf purge his mez and start nuking your healer, you need to target him and interrupt him. You don't necessarily need to kill him; you just need to keep him occupied long enough for your healer to get out of harms way. As a roamer you are looking for situations like that. Who is hurting your group and what can you do about it?
A major question a lot of skalds have is whether they should run damage add song or run speed song in battles. The answer is not always the same. As a general rule, run damage add if you have at least 2 tanks in the group. Actually, as a general rule, run damage add period. It is necessary to know your group-mates when it comes to this subject because a lot of casters and healers like to keep speed up to allow them to kite (meaning to sprint away from enemies in order to free oneself up to cast more spells) if need be. It might be wise to ask early on in the group what they want from you. If tanks tell you to run damage add and healers ask you to run speed, guess who you listen to. That's right, Healers. The tanks can live without the damage add, the Healer might not live without speed. If your group has two skalds this isn't an issue, however another arises. Most skalds don't seem to realize that they have resist chants in their repertoire. Your best bet when not engaged in battle is to run either body or energy chant as the second Skald depending on which realm enemy you believe you are more likely to encounter. Alb sorcerer mez is energy-based, Hib bard mez is body-based.
The thing to remember in all of this is that your job as a Skald is not one-dimensional; it is multi-dimensional. There will never be one way to play. Unlike savages and other tanks, your job is not as simple as finding a target and killing it (lol, I suppose I will hear it from pure melees about this) Although you are CLEARLY a melee hybrid and NOT a support class, your role is somewhat akin to support in-so-much-as you have the option of filing a variety of different roles on the battlefield. Your primary duty will usually be to assist main tanks, but that can change and a good Skald knows when and where to change.
Go out, experiment, analyze, modify, adjust and most of all, have fun.
Realm Abilities
The last things I will touch on are realm abilities. For the Skald, active realm abilities make or break your RvR experience. Ignore Pain, Purge, Avoid Pain, Armor of Faith Empty Mind are all good active realm abilities to look at. Many people claim Ignore Pain is too expensive and not worth the cost. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this. I like realm points personally. The longer one is alive, the more realm points they will generally receive. I cannot express to you how often using IP has kept me alive in battles where I otherwise would have died despite my group winning the battle. Our poor defense and lower hps (than a tank) despite playing the role of a quasi-tank leaves us open to dying much more easily than a pure tank would. IP helps in those situations where we are targeted by multiple people in a battle we are winning, but for some reason we aren't receiving heals. It is a nice failsafe to have (if it is up). I can see justification in leaving it off, but I don't really think it is wise given my own style of play. Purge is your most important realm ability. Because you get no access to determination, you will generally be mezzed for the full duration of the mez (minus resists). That isn't fun and is very dangerous for your group. Avoid Pain and Armor of Faith are very nice realm abilities that should be reserved for higher realm ranks due to the cost involved. AP increases absorb by 10% per level, AoF raises your AF significantly. A Skald with Avoid Pain 2 and Armor of Faith 2 both active has the equivalence of about 60% absorb. That is a huge decrease in damage taken. And because of the 15 minute timers, they are up almost every battle.
There are some good passive realm abilities worth putting points into. Those are Mastery of Pain 2 or 3, Long Wind 1, Toughness 1 (only 1 because in order to get Avoid Pain and Armor of Faith you need to have a prerequisite of Aug Con 3), Avoidance of Magic 2, Mastery of Parry 1, Aug Acuity 1. A lot of people believe Mastery of Pain is a godsend of some kind and much more important than Avoid Pain, and even IP. They believe this because they haven't put it in perspective. Each level of MoPain gives you an additional 5% chance to critical hit. This is nice, but because it doesn't affect the level of damage inflicted by critical hits also, it is not as powerful as one would suspect. What is boils down to is you have an additional 5% chance to do 25% more damage (You can critical hit up to 50% of your normal damage, but the amount of the crit is totally random, so you have an equal chance to hit for 1% or 50% extra therefore 25% is the average damage on a crit). That comes out to an additional 1.25% improvement on your TOTAL damage output. Not that great when you consider what active realm abilities can give you.
Below is a sample template of my own realm abilities (and some I don't have yet, but plan to get) in the order I got them:
10
Purge
9
First Aid 2 (Prerequisite for IP)
14
Ignore Pain
1
Avoidance of Magic 1
1
Long Wind
10
Aug Con 3
9
Avoid Pain 2
4
Aug Dex 2
4
Mastery of Pain 2
9
Armor of Faith 2
I hope this guide will be helpful to you in making your Skald. This isn't the be-all and end-all of Skald information. It is helpful to seek multiple sources and individuals for good information, but hopefully you can refer back to this as a good starting point. Best of luck!
Sligg
RR6 Skald
Bedevere Server
