4 mages and a bard

[Kinsen]

Long time lurker first time poster here.

For a long time I always wanted to try 4 mages and a bard and I've finally gotten around to it. I play 3 mages and the bard and my fiancée plays the 4th Mage. I've gotten them up to 91 and mostly VOA T1 gear so far. I've stopped to get some AA for now but I was wondering if anyone had any tips for doing VOA T3 and up with this group.

Kinsen

[Piemastaj]

Can probably lose 1 mage and still dominate.

However, the Bard is easy with /melody, you can park him at the group and be perfectly fine. Just make sure to use his Aura and keep it up it helps our Garg pets. Requiem of time (bard song) will be very useful for named to slow them, on trash you should not need slows. Quick time, Second Spire, Bard epic are important things to get for the bard. Getting a Symphony of Battle click will also help the Mage pets a bit with the attack portion.

As for the Mages, use an Earth pet for the maximum tanking potential. The other 3 'should' be using water, however Water is an aggro whore and will probably jump aggro. It is probably best to go with Air pets, the loss in DPS will not be a giant decrease. On trash you can start with a Garg pet (altho it is really not necessary) then go spear>spear>Bolt as a weave. On named go Garg>Strike>Spear>Spear. On named make sure you alternate your Host of the Elements so you have 15+ pets on the mob 24/7.

It will be pretty simple really. The only issue you might encounter is the Mage's HP values with some of the AEs/DoTs the named have in T3+ zones. It might cause you to gear up in the earlier zones to bridge the gap. You should have 0 issues from a tanking aspect and healing (buy 2 heal mercs put 1 on balanced the other on reactive).

[Summerfrost]

I run just a bard / mage with water pet tank always, 2 healer mercs and its pretty ruthless. At em 15 I don't run across much in t4 I can't beat. I use my pet healing aa's and aegis regularly if my pet takes too much dmg. Combined with pet DA you can keep him without dmg for a good portion of your burn. Mercs have grp heals now too if I'm correct and it helps with those named ae's. Silent casting helps. The bard will be a huge dps increase with all those pets.

PJ's advice for bard aa's and clicks is spot on. Also make sure you have a few diff melodys set up, I pull with the bard and melody on then do work on the mage. He should have 1 melody for reg, 1 with the slow for named and 1 with mez so you can still benefit from him mostly being afk and still getting all your songs. There's also a bard aa that gives your songs more range, I don't remember the name offhand. But its worth getting. Some of my melodys look like
/melody 1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4. this gives the #5 time to refresh like slow or the crescendo line for mana regen.

Also there are push/grapple aa's on the bard that are worth it, can help you keep mobs away from camp (you will always take dmg if your next to the mob with pets tanking) if they wander in. Using those and your bards AA insta-mez can really be useful instead of trying to move all those chars around. If you use the grapple (toss mob up in air towards you) and hit the push aa while its in the air throws the mob very very far away. The push/pull aa's will break mez just fyi.

There are a ton of tricks for the bard, he is your grps most valuable asset, if you have any questions you can always in game tell me at tunare.summerfrost

[deadman1204]

Your making some bad assumptions here on pets types and focuses.
The original poster is obviously in group gear, and your assuming he has one of the best raid pet focuses. He probably only has em8 or maybe 9.

[Piemastaj]

I find it funny when people use Water pet to tank. Considering the DPS gain vs the tanking loss is ridiculously hurting yourself. Not to mention Water pets DPS is already lowered by the fact that it is getting hit and stunned because it is tanking. The first 2 options mentioned should be Earth pet as yourmain option and then Air pet, the tanking is quite a bit better then a Water pet. Not to mention the only goal of our main pet in a solo/tank role is to keep aggro off the group.

Plain and simple using a water pet to be your main tank will end up in a wipe when you actually have a less then optimal setup. Anyone can tank with slows and 2 main healers.

[Kinsen]

Right now I only have EM 8 and I had to buy all of those since I had no luck with drops from Breath of Ryken. I've started trying to camp Primal Mage Mollens but no luck so far but I will get him eventually.

I've gotten most of those AA's for the bard so far and I'm almost done with his Epic 1.5. I will have to find a symphony of battle item. If a mob gets too close I will usually just punt him past the pets and he will usually Agro one of the after that. I just got his instant mez but haven't gotten in the habit of using it yet. I always use aria aura and my main melody is aria, devaen's(fire nuke damage) hycast song of suffering and the one adds a proc to melee and spells can't recall the name.

I've tried using two Earth pets and two water pets but the earth pet doesn't hold Agro well enough even with agro swords. Does it get better with the level 93 weapons? They have a deagro that I could give to the water pets. Also I've read some on the higher ranks of summon companion there's a fade portion to it could I reliably use that to keep agro off the water pets?

Chaotic blessing. I don't see it go off much and don't notice it helping much does it get a lot better with the healing AA? And it's supposed to heal all pets right? When I first got it I thought it would be almost game changing like the necro version that's not limited to pets.

[deadman1204]

Could a bard song be conflicting with Chaotic Blessing? I pair myself with a chanter, and have noticed the mana recursion line blocks Chaotic blessing

[Kinsen]

That's a good point. If its any song it would be arcane address. I'll have to test it out tonight when I can play

[Fleiss]

I am not a big fan of water in a tanking role as PJ mentioned.

I realise you dont have the lvl 95 RS so you may not be able to pull this off yet. But is your first cast on each mage (slightly staggered) is RS they will grab aggro over the other pets and heals really aren't a factor. With 4 mages you will likely have them burnt down before whatever type of norm pet get aggro. Mobs will just eat ramp pets. That is only for trash though, named fights will be longer and some normal pet will take over aggro. Overall I would pick an earth pet to tank though. Make sure you have the spell casting off or it will root some mobs and screw up the aggro. PJ's set up sounds the best overall though. You should be burning down mobs faster than most and make heal less of a factor.

[Kinsen]

Right now I'm using 4 91 air pets for trash but switch them all to the 89 earth pets for named. I'm still not great on T2 named so I'm thinking of pushing from 91 all the way to 95 after a few more AA so I can get access to the higher pets and spells. All my pet defensives are maxed for my level except Aegis and the divine aura one.

I only control 3 of the mages and I'm still getting used to boxing them all. If Arcane Address is blocking chaotic blessing once I stop using that T2 named might be a lot easier.