Let's talk about the evangelist dip

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

So, I have been dwelling on making this post for at least a week now, because I'm not really sure if it's an issue or not. I'm sure almost everyone knows this by now, but just in case someone is confused by the conversation, you can go full 30 bard song with 5 loremaster levels...by dipping into cleric for three levels and taking evangelist thanks to divine favor giving the evangelist +6 to bard song without any cleric level restrictions. You can even use scrolls, meaning you don't need wisdom at all.

So...is this a good thing? A bad thing. Something to be indifferent about? It's not breaking pvp or anything. You could build a super tanky version that tosses about scrolls of mords and wofs all day with 70ish ac if you went with divine shield, but im not sure thats better than a edr con bard even though they have 9 or ten less ac. Thanks to loremaster having access to disable trap and open lock, you could probably build a solo qber, but I don't know the ins and outs of that to say for certain.

And it does have some benefits. More summoners on a ship is always a good thing, and the most common use is probably as a ship bard (at least to this point). But it also does kinda feel like its encroaching on the bard's thing there in a way that nothing else can.

Thoughts?

[Sandrow]

You are losing caster levels by doing so, which makes you more volunable to mods. If you are talking about pvp, that's a bad idea, even if you tried to save cl by spending two extra feats, that's expensive and painful for sailing builds, if you even add diving shield(requires power attack) on top of it, well, that's a nightmare and I sincerely not recommand that.

Edit: I forget bards have +3 level against dispel. Which makes this build more viable.

[Dreams]

A 6bard/3evang is a better bard than a 11bard.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

You know, I woke up with an epiphany. If I skip loremaster and just do 4 levels of cleric for evangelist, I suddenly am a 30 song con bard with edr and divine shield. That is so far and beyond what a 30 bard can do that I am now thinking I have to remake the character I am currently playing to do that.

We could really use some clarity on what the devs are thinking about this soonish. I don't want to waste the greater award I used on a guld start and the 500k gold or so I've gotten so far by remaking only to have it nerfed a month from now.

[Cnaym]

There is a gentle balance involved with selfish solo only triggering its bonus for assassins or 28+ bards,
missing out an entire APR if you go for a dip.

Bard gets +3 dispel CL at 21 though, so if you want to mix and match it works quite well in PVP

[Kythana]

Evang is fine. It enables cool bard multiclass options.

Healing domain has been nerfed.

It already has a built in trade-off of ruining your CL versus dispel for dipping into it.

Don't see an issue with it.

[Xerah]

It’s pretty ridiculous for it to get 11 bard song levels for a 3 level dip. I’ve got two of them.

But devs have said they don’t know what to do without ruining a lot of builds so it’s probably fine in the short term.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

It’s pretty ridiculous for it to get 11 bard song levels for a 3 level dip. I’ve got two of them.

But devs have said they don’t know what to do without ruining a lot of builds so it’s probably fine in the short term.

The problem with this is that it's only going to get worse. It should have been addressed as soon as it became a thing, and I think that if they want to fix it now is the time to just rip the band aid off and take the lumps.

And I get the point about the cl made in a post above yours, but my ac is still going to be in the high fifties even if you get all my spells thanks to bard song and divine shield if its built right. And I still have edr 3. That means it's just another step in your first step of killing the annoyingly hard to kill bard that happens to be boosting the people beating on you while you all try to beat on me. It's really not a tenable situation once you get into group pvp, and as soon as it moves from the casual sail crowd to the pvp crowd as a regular thing (If it hasn't already) it's going to be on the chopping block.

I don't know if I am going to remake 100% at this point, I have a lot of time on the pgcc in front of me apparently. But that's why this conversation is important. It's one thing to get nerfed out of the blue, stuff happens. To point out an issue only to be told "It's fine" and then have it nerfed down the line when it hits even harder? Yeah, that's not going to give me the warm and fuzzies, for lack of a better way of putting it.

[Kythana]

It's really not a tenable situation once you get into group pvp, and as soon as it moves from the casual sail crowd to the pvp crowd as a regular thing (If it hasn't already) it's going to be on the chopping block.

It already has. Evangelist has been known about for a long time now.

Like I said, it's fine. Not everything that reads on paper as 'incredibly strong' actually is.

By far the thing that makes Bards way more sturdy comes from Hide/MS, and this plays very awkwardly with divine shield in the current meta.

[Ork]

Evang is fine. Just enjoy the game. No need to make every build equal to every other.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

By far the thing that makes Bards way more sturdy comes from Hide/MS, and this plays very awkwardly with divine shield in the current meta.

This...yeah. Forgive me, but I'm going to wait for the dev team to say they are cool with this. The best bards are damage resistant and tough to hit. They have to be, because the other guys are going to focus on him first. While the con bard is always the best, at least with dex bards you had a little more ac. Now if I can con bard with 9 or 10 extra ac from divine shield, there is no longer a tradeoff, you can have it all.

And while I can definitely see an abundance of situations where a corner stealthing barb is good enough, those are fights your side was going to win anyways. If the other side has anyone prepared to deal with a corner stealther, it only takes them to deal with you because you will likely fold like a wet noodle, leaving the other team free to focus on everyone else which is a huge boon for them. And it's certainly no wizard or rogue when it comes to the power of the corner when you are alone.

Finally, if I am somehow wrong about the power of a corner stealthing bard, you could literally just slap an extra 9 or 10 ac on that to make it even better. The required strength would make it a lot tighter than the con bard, but I'm sure you could make it work.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Evang is fine. Just enjoy the game. No need to make every build equal to every other.

I'm with you that not all things need to be (or can be really) equal, but this feels like a design mistake more than anything. Which is why I brought it up.

[Kythana]

And while I can definitely see an abundance of situations where a corner stealthing barb is good enough, those are fights your side was going to win anyways. If the other side has anyone prepared to deal with a corner stealther, it only takes them to deal with you because you will likely fold like a wet noodle

This is very wrong.

One person that can deal with stealthers does not mean the bard is just going to fall over.

Bard already has good AC without divine shield, and corner sneaking only makes it better. If you think that they are going to 'fold like a wet noodle' that is 100% a skill issue.

Divine shield makes it awkward, as you have to come out of stealth to reapply it. That's generally why you don't see them combined, not to mention the attribute and feat tax.

The best bards that I have seen in actual pvp are always cornersneakers who know how to be really elusive.

Evang is one of those things that looks super busted on paper, but many of the builds involving it have very clear tradeoffs and weaknesses. I suggest actually participating in group PvP to see how it functions.

Speculating about numbers, theorycrafting builds and PGCC pvp is not indicative of how a class performs in reality. Nor should balance be dictated by it.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

This is very wrong.

I can't tell if this was part of the response or a precursor. Either way, it seems you disagree with my assessment and that is totally your right. I made this post here so people could respond as opposed to just suggesting divine favor should require a majority of cleric levels, which if the evangelist dip is as bad as you seem to think it is you should have no issue with.

I will say this though, if you want to change minds it's never going to happen by telling folks their opinions don't matter. It's an excellent technique for coming across as a jerk though, so if that was the goal then let me quote the great Charlie Sheen and just say "Winning!"

[find me in the future]

I will say this though, if you want to change minds it's never going to happen by telling folks their opinions don't matter. It's an excellent technique for coming across as a jerk though, so if that was the goal then let me quote the great Charlie Sheen and just say "Winning!"

You made an opinionated statement. Somebody else provided an opinion contrary to yours and shared their own personal experience. They provided the evidence that they possess associated with their opinion. You somehow took offense to this and called them a jerk.








Yeah, evangelist is a strong option. I'm glad somebody else brought up the awkwardness of having to toggle divine shield. I explicitly chose to take a different feat on my last one because breaking my stealth every minute to apply Divine Shield rather than making other choices doesn't fit in my playstyle's action economy. It doesn't mean the ability to take Divine Shield isn't strong in its niche; it just wasn't for me. I'm happy that healing domain got nerfed for dips. I still enjoyed being able to have access to a dip with a little extra flavor and tools, since I used mine for different domains.

[But Will It Blend]

This sounds more like an issue with divine shield than Evangelist. Evangelist allows you to be a bard loremaster, or a bard dirge, while getting the full benefits of the bard song class with some extra cookies. This is at the cost of any other class you might be interested in investing in. A lot of times you're not going super deep for the spells to be of use, so you're looking at maybe a couple cookies from your domain.

Does it allow more versitile/interesting builds? Yeah.

Know what the solution is? Fixing Div Shield. Not removing the synergy.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

You made an opinionated statement. Somebody else provided an opinion contrary to yours and shared their own personal experience. They provided the evidence that they possess associated with their opinion. You somehow took offense to this and called them a jerk.

I suggest actually participating in group PvP to see how it functions.

Speculating about numbers, theorycrafting builds and PGCC pvp is not indicative of how a class performs in reality. Nor should balance be dictated by it.

These are the lines I took offense too, not the differing opinion. I even took the time to try and come up with an intention behind them beyond the obvious "shut up noob, you don't know what you are talking about" because intention does matter, but I came up with goose eggs. If you can give me a differing reasoning behind them adding those lines, I'm certainly open to be proven wrong.

I do get the animosity though, for most of you the dust on this has settled and its dips for bards with level 30 songs for days, and here I come stirring it all back up again because I haven't been playing a lot this past year. It just didn't (and still doesn't) make any sense to me. Clearly its more powerful than a pure 30 bard, or it wouldn't be all over the place like it apparently is. So, this is a dramatic shift from the initial intention of making it so only 30 bards could get max song. If that shift is the result in a change of philosophy, well, that's good information to know. It's actually what I wanted to find out in this thread. But if it's just an oopsie that got left to its own devices, well, that's surprisingly sloppy for Arelith and before writing this thread I had to assume that if it was option 2 a large number of the devs (especially the decision makers) just didn't know it was a thing. Another good reason to start this thread.

But look, at its core this thread is trying to figure out if this is here to stay. I clearly think it's a bad thing, and that's probably seeping through in what I am saying, but I'm all set to try and figure out just what's possible in this new world I found. 4 attacks per round without selfish solo? Sounds groovy to me, I'll probably start there.

[find me in the future]

These are the lines I took offense too, not the differing opinion. I even took the time to try and come up with an intention behind them beyond the obvious "shut up noob, you don't know what you are talking about" because intention does matter, but I came up with goose eggs.

I did not read that as being "shut up noob" at all.

If you can give me a differing reasoning behind them adding those lines, I'm certainly open to be proven wrong.

Sure, I'll bite.

I suggest actually participating in group PvP to see how it functions.

They suggested participating in group PVP to see how the mechanic functions. This is true, and good advice. People should engage themselves directly in a number of PVE and PVP experiences with something to see how it works, as well as to help rule out skill issues.

To use a different example on the other side of the coin, invoker was frequently misused and then called underperforming/weak. It wasn't until people who knew how to push the skill ceiling started showcasing and teaching about the classes that such image shifted. Only gaining opinions and experience from one testbed/group will lead to skewed opinions, and on paper is different from in play.

Speculating about numbers, theorycrafting builds and PGCC pvp is not indicative of how a class performs in reality. Nor should balance be dictated by it.

This is also true. Speculation, guesstimates, theorycrafting and PGCC PVP is not indicative of live performance. It can help to educate and work towards testing it on live, but it should not be considered a driving factor for balance changes. It is the same as how the bottom of the barrel players of a class should not be considered as sound reasoning for buffing a class, and the people hitting the skill ceiling of a class should not be considered as driving reasoning for nerfing a class.

I do get the animosity though, for most of you the dust on this has settled and its dips for bards with level 30 songs for days, and here I come stirring it all back up again because I haven't been playing a lot this past year.

Nobody else is upset here.

[Sandrow]

Divine shield is a thing. I have a feeling that almost all Cha based classes are cursed simply because its existence (like Sorcerer). But there are already so many Cha based classes and takes a lot of efforts to reblance them.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Spun enough verbal gymnastics to show up a crowd of drunk people playing twister.

Ok, bro, I'll take your explanations with a nod and a wink for the sake of moving on. No one was trying to be demeaning, no one is angry. Can we get back to the conversation now?

[find me in the future]

Asks for explanation, makes a demeaning comment as the quote-back when given the requested explanation. I'm sorry that I unconstructively reacted "yikes". I was a little surprised by the crass dismissiveness of the response.

I've played three evangelists: evangelist bard, evangelist dirge, and evangelist DC caster.

I enjoyed the dirge the most because it enabled me to do more with my kit than I otherwise felt was possible. When I got no-line attacked in 30 seconds with a cornugon tyrant and its pet blackguard, I almost died once. Speedily reacting with Dirge of Harvest and having the additional benefit of a full bard song buff to push my AC outside of their AB range for the second half of the flurry helped while a party member rescued me from the suddenness of it.

The evangelist DC caster was okay. I didn't enjoy it as much as other cleric options. We're talking about dips, not full, so this point is moot.

The evangelist bard was also okay. It didn't really match my desired playstyle, and I didn't like Divine Shield so I threw it out for a different option instead. The build didn't outshine any other bards, and I enjoyed my other bard builds more overall.

Watching real, invested bard players 1vAnyone in live play has been a very good learning experience. I enjoy the evangelist dip, but it doesn't feel like a "MUST MAKE THIS CHOICE OR ELSE" decision.

I would be interested in hearing more live feedback.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Asks for explanation, makes a demeaning comment as the quote-back when given the requested explanation. I'm sorry that I unconstructively reacted "yikes". I was a little surprised by the crass dismissiveness of the response.

I appreciate you taking the time to write that, I really do. But here's where you lost me for future reference. You immediately identified the "you" in my post followed by good advice as targeted, but then completely changed to make the "you" followed by good advice in their post to be generic advice with no targeting at all. That means one of two things, you aren't capable of objective thought (you clearly are) or you are arguing in bad faith. Either way, the credibility level plummeted. But rather than say that, especially since whether or not a con bard or a corner sneaking bard is better is irrelevant to the point of this thread, I chose to move on.

I thought I was going the nice guy route personally.

[Cnaym]

Watching real, invested bard players 1vAnyone in live play has been a very good learning experience. I enjoy the evangelist dip, but it doesn't feel like a "MUST MAKE THIS CHOICE OR ELSE" decision.

I would be interested in hearing more live feedback.

Base Bard caster, song of heart corner sneaker and funnily a 25b/5mHarper player here.

The basic caster is funky for team fights, you got to get rather creative in duells though. Bards strongest aspect is speed and debuffs here, spaming oil all over the arena is silly but works suprisingly often. AC isn't really a consideration, you get hit you fold like tissue but that's a speedy caster probably supposed to do.

Song of the Heart is a really expensive feat, it eats almost all your epics for littel benefit and I'd not recommend it. If you can corner sneak while having 3 shadows pummel your oponent it becomes really hilarious though. Dancing around the enemy for 10+ minutes isn't my definition of fun though - You will however be invited to every sail ever ^_^

The mHarper is weirdly OP for bard, it frees up some epic feat slots and comes with free ESF lore which bards tend to like for obvious reasons. Enables some funky social interactions and disguise memes - I find performance to be usually one of the lesser useful disguise options out there.

As for the clearly bonkers and broken bard version, it has to be the INT bard. Your combat is scroll based anyway, your song level will hit full 30 and you get the bank account to steamroll most poor souls in PVP.
My current and so far most liked bard version, you can use CON as a dump stat if feeling extra brave

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

As for the clearly bonkers and broken bard version, it has to be the INT bard. Your combat is scroll based anyway, your song level will hit full 30 and you get the bank account to steamroll most poor souls in PVP.
My current and so far most liked bard version, you can use CON as a dump stat if feeling extra brave

Just for clarification, when you say INT bard do you mean 30 bard or the evangelist loremaster dip? the way you worded it hitting full thirty bard song makes me think the later, but I just want to be certain.

[find me in the future]

The basic caster is funky for team fights, you got to get rather creative in duells though. Bards strongest aspect is speed and debuffs here, spaming oil all over the arena is silly but works suprisingly often. AC isn't really a consideration, you get hit you fold like tissue but that's a speedy caster probably supposed to do.

I played a caster bard too. She did well as a support but the lack of options made playing her get very repetitive. The comment on AC confuses me, as she still had 58 AC and 500s hp. For the class, 58 AC is without Improved Expertise, as casting cancels IE. What is meant by it not being a consideration, so that I can understand what's being described?

Song of the Heart is a really expensive feat, it eats almost all your epics for littel benefit and I'd not recommend it. If you can corner sneak while having 3 shadows pummel your oponent it becomes really hilarious though. Dancing around the enemy for 10+ minutes isn't my definition of fun though - You will however be invited to every sail ever ^_^

Yeah, I didn't like my Song of the Heart bard for the investment required. I didn't use shadows, though. I used Elemental Swarm and Gate. As a feat choice addict, I ended up making a new version of her build without Song of the Heart (and with evangelist instead!) and enjoyed it more.

The mHarper is weirdly OP for bard, it frees up some epic feat slots and comes with free ESF lore which bards tend to like for obvious reasons. Enables some funky social interactions and disguise memes - I find performance to be usually one of the lesser useful disguise options out there.

Haven't played it, can't weigh in. Do know somebody who did though, and watching them tear up the rug in arena PVP and live PVP was always great.

As for the clearly bonkers and broken bard version, it has to be the INT bard. Your combat is scroll based anyway, your song level will hit full 30 and you get the bank account to steamroll most poor souls in PVP.

I echo the other guy: "INT bard" doesn't define the build itself. Is this a 30 bard? LM bard? What makes it superior to doing a corner-sneaking CON-maxed LM/bard scroll warrior?

And while asking about builds--

And I get the point about the cl made in a post above yours, but my ac is still going to be in the high fifties even if you get all my spells thanks to bard song and divine shield if its built right.

Is this with everything, or was Improved Expertise toggled off?

But rather than say that, especially since whether or not a con bard or a corner sneaking bard is better is irrelevant to the point of this thread, I chose to move on.

CON bards take stealth.