Bard Dual Wield

[Birile]

Okay, so I've petitioned the Imms about this a couple of times and mmailed Iyachtu on this as well and have met with a bunch of crickets chirping so I figured I'd bring this question to the forums since I'm a little clueless when it comes to the dual wield capabilities of other classes.

I have always, from the time I was a wee Halfling Bard (no comments on halfling bards being wee even as adults, Nuk), used daggers as my weapons while dual wielding. While exp'ing a couple of weeks back and finding myself bored to tears, I decided I may as well notch some of my skills just for the hell of it, and so, began wielding a slasher in my off-hand. The max amount of hits I get per round while Hasted is 5. My dex isn't perfect so I don't know if other halfling bards can get to 6 or not (though I doubt it because I've worn enough +dex eq at times to hit 100+ and still got 5 hits while hasted). Anyway, I noticed that, while hasted, only one of my hits came from my off-hand weapon (the slasher) and four came from my dagger. As I said, I had never noticed this before because the messages I always got pertained to piercing, thus making it impossible to determine which hits were from my primary weapon and which were from the secondary. This seems a little one-sided. I know I'm "just" a bard but damnit, if I can hit a mob four times with my primary weapon while playin' my fiddle in my off-hand you'd think my off-hand would be dextrous enough to get more than one measly hit in when I dual.

So my questions are these:

1) What is the hit distribution for other classes who dual wield (ie. warriors, rangers, dires and ESPECIALLY rogues)? ie. if you have five available hits when hasted, which of those hits comes from your primary weapon and which from your secondary?

2) What are the available hits that other bards get? Not to gripe, but if Halflings are supposed to be the most dextrous race on the Mud I'd like to think even Halfling Bards would get more hits when hasted than, say, a dwarf, human or half-elf bard (no offense, guys!). I'm not sayin' I should hit 7 times per round like I've seen some halfling rogues achieve or anything like that. Bards are rogue-class, but we're not as adept at rogue things as, well, Rogues. But getting two hits from my off-hand doesn't seem unreasonable, as a halfling.

Any thoughts/insights from players and Imms alike would be most appreciated.

[Sylvos]

Rangers attain 3 primary, 2 offhand attacks when hasted.

Grey elven rangers occasionally get an extra primary attack.

[Abbayarra]

The way I believe it works is that dual wield controls if haste will cause you to get second attack with the off hand. So with your racial dex bonus, double attack, and haste you would get 4 attacks primary. Now if your skill is not high enough in dual wield you will not get the secondary attack using the off weapon when hasted.

[Guest]

If your dual wield isn't sufficiently high (I believe only Rangers, Rogues, and Dires can get this high), you won't get a second hasted attack.

Dual wielding isn't really designed to be central to the class, though it is useful for a 2nd bard using accompany (which probably doesn't come up much).

Note that if you're accompanying you can also use circle, but not backstab.

[Birile]

Bah... don't get me started on how low a bard's rogue skills can max out at! Ah well...

As for accompany, the whole picking up the verse after your comrade stops singing thing? It SUCKS, ie. much more dangerous than helpful! Let me elaborate: say Gurns and I are in a group together and I'm singin' sorcery with Gurns accompanying. Things get nasty and the group leader indicates to me through a tell or gsay to sing healing. I stop singing sorcery and Gurns, bein' uber, picks up my song of sorcery and doesn't realize it in the heat of battle. Precious time is lost sending Gurns a tell to stop singing so I can sing healing (okay, granted, bards have a HUGE lag in between singing one song and another so there IS some time to get him to stop singing) and a group could spank in the meantime. I'm not saying bard songs are the end-all be-all savior for groups but I've been thanked enough times by morted people when my measly gheal saves them and they can flee to know accompany's auto-pickup CAN be an issue.

I know there are instances when the auto-pickup can be useful, for instance if I'm singing and am stunned by a mob and the accompanist continues the song in the meantime, but this happens rarely compared to the times I've seen two bards' songs get in each other's way.

But I digress!

Thanks for the replies all. :)

[Dalar]

Bah... don't get me started on how low a bard's rogue skills can max out at! Ah well...

As for accompany, the whole picking up the verse after your comrade stops singing thing? It SUCKS, ie. much more dangerous than helpful! Let me elaborate: say Gurns and I are in a group together and I'm singin' sorcery with Gurns accompanying. Things get nasty and the group leader indicates to me through a tell or gsay to sing healing. I stop singing sorcery and Gurns, bein' uber, picks up my song of sorcery and doesn't realize it in the heat of battle. Precious time is lost sending Gurns a tell to stop singing so I can sing healing (okay, granted, bards have a HUGE lag in between singing one song and another so there IS some time to get him to stop singing) and a group could spank in the meantime. I'm not saying bard songs are the end-all be-all savior for groups but I've been thanked enough times by morted people when my measly gheal saves them and they can flee to know accompany's auto-pickup CAN be an issue.

I know there are instances when the auto-pickup can be useful, for instance if I'm singing and am stunned by a mob and the accompanist continues the song in the meantime, but this happens rarely compared to the times I've seen two bards' songs get in each other's way.

But I digress!

Thanks for the replies all. :)

then tell the accompanying bard to make a trigger to type play when he picks up the verse. when you about, gurns aborts, etc. yugok and i had trigs to deal w/ this. when one of us plays the other accompanies. when theh main bard drops the song the other one drops it. u can turn off the trigs too if you want in some cases like a lich fight.

[Gurns]

As for accompany...

Yeah, I gotta say that the leader with 2 bards better gsay a change of song and bards should pick that up. It's not a bug with accompany, it's a leader skill and a bard-player skill. It's like the leader calling a new target in battle.

I also gotta say "*gasp* You go out with more than one bard in the group???" It's not like I see this as any kind of problem, in practice. You want a real problem, try to figure out how to get folks interested in having a bard in their group (as opposed to having you or me in their group because they know us).

[Birile]

Actually, I DO have a trig to do just that--stop the song when I pick up the verse. I just hate that feeling of seeing t'other bard pick up my song in those gut-wrenching moments. I do know several bards also have the same trig but I'm more the paranoid type who thinks the worst in those situations! I've grouped with too many AFK bards to trust that they're watching the screen as intently as I am if they don't have the trigs in place.