troub aas

[Rirda]

ok this is to give people ideas were to put aas for a troubie.

[patience298]

Thank you!

Cathy

[Aetites]

I just want to elaborate a bit on some of the choices you made. I will restrict myself to the scout/general choices in the Shadows tree as I don't have enough experience on my Dirge to be giving advice.

Your choices for AA's basically come down to, do you raid or not? Raiding asks you to min max and generally determines your choices with a relatively cookie cutter setup and little choice (though there is room for some preference). It should also be noted raid setups will usually be the most efficient for combat, priortizing that over everything else and as such will of course help with solo/group content. To be honest, even if you raid seldom, as long as you do raid you should at least keep a close to ideal setup in your aa mirror, anything else and your not pulling your weight. If you don't raid you have a little more choice to suit your playstyle.

Shadows Tree, General Line:

Pet of the Gods allows you to maximise your stats/agility and hence your dps. At 5 ranks your pet should give you roughly 57 agi, assuming you are running Bristlebanes pet. This is one of the standard raid choices. I would argue however agility is less important to Bards as they have a lot more uses than simple dps, but it is nice and a Bard can parse quite well on the less intensive fights. On harder/specific fights however Bards usually have other responsibilities meaning dps takes a back seat.

Bountiful Feast extends the duration of food and drink. I would consider this one of the weakest choices and will ultimately only save you money (whether you buy or make your own). If your in T7+ zones the spare change it saves you probably won't be worth bending down to pick up. Then again, you seen the price of food and drink lately? >_>

Ample Harvest is of course only of use if you do a decent amount of harvesting. It will save you time, but little else. If you are not already using your aa mirror you could of course make a tradeskill spec that includes this selection.

Heart Constitution simply increases your health by 2.5% at rank 5. All the better to survive any attack. This is the second of the raid choices though is obviously of benefit for any combat. I would consider it a must have for Tanks, and allthough very ideal for Scouts, it isn't as important.

Swift Journey increases your mount speed. It is nice while your levelling up doing a lot of quests but outside of that I wouldn't really reccomend it.

Enhanced Mind, 2.5% power at 5 ranks. Scouts tend to have very few power problems. I think Bards use a little more power than Predators and Rogues but they also have power songs. Either way this is one of the weaker choices for Scouts (brilliant if your a caster or an SK!). Soulsteal and other power proc items are fairly common, along with power regen buffs in a raid most scouts will be fine except in the most extreme consecutive pulling. This also applies to group content.

Swift Strides is very nice, I love running fast and I ran it up until very recently, only switching to pour the points into Pet of the Gods, priotizing agility and my dps over the nice runspeed (on my Brigand). I should also note, totems of the Sabertooth give you more run speed than any other single source, if you really must run fast use these. I used to be at 77.5% runspeed unmounted and I kept my mount more for the buffs than the run speed. The totems will lessen the impact if you have to priortize something over Swift Strides. Again it is of more use while questing but is still nice regardless.

Swift Creation, increases your tradeskill progress by upto 10%. I would only take this if you do a lot of tradeskilling, more than you do adventuring. Even then there are probably better choices, I do a decent amount of tradeskilling and especially with all the nice tradeskill gear around these days, it is very easy to tradeskill fast without Swift Creation.

To recap, the normal raid choices for a Scout would be Pet of the Gods and Heart Constitution. That is the ideal raid choices but as I said before, you do have a little room for personal preference and neither choice is must have (unlike some aa abilities). It won't be ideal, but it won't really hurt to follow Rirda's choices or your own.

I will elaborate on the Scout line later.

[Aetites]

Shadows Tree, Scout Line

Focus: Cheap Shot It is an ok choice decent if you do a lot of soloing. It allows you to stun the mob, get behind and then backstab it. It is also handy to reduce damage for a few seconds and because of that can mean the difference between life and death if it is a close fight, whether you are tanking or not. Cheap Shot only lasts it's full duration on solo mobs, it has a reduced duration against heroic mobs, and does not work against raid mobs at all, as such it has 0 raid application. I would only recommend this option if you do a lot of soloing, even then there are probably better choices as this merely reduces your recast time.

Strengthened Links For a Predator or Rogue I would not suggest this ability at all. For a Bard however it affects defensive songs. It will at 5 ranks offer slightly under 900 physical mitigation. Good for mage groups, not bad for scout groups. I have heard for most well geared tanks this ability is less useful as they should already be approaching if not at the cap which is 14000 mit against a level 90. Against higher level mobs your tank wants something close to 17k and you can help them get there. I am inclined to believe that Stengthened Links is very useful at least until your tank is geared in multiple T3/T4 pieces. This would be a raid slection and a good choice in and out of raid.

Enhance: Quick Strike This is probably the next choice for a Bard but mainly because the rest of the choices are worse. It increases the damage of your Quick Strike by 7.5% at 5 ranks. This would probably be the second most recomended choice, whether you raid or not.

Enhance: Sinister Strike This ability is ok. For raiding on trash mobs you will probably only get one Sinister Strike off, even with this aa maxed in ranks. On named however it may let you get in couple extra high damage attacks. It will allow you get off multiple extra attacks in a solo or group setting. All of this is of course, only works if Sinister Strike applies to the current mob. It is probably 3rd in priority for a Bard but only if you have the points to burn, there are many, many better choices between the three trees.

Offensive Prowess This increases the offensive melee skill bonus of Songster's Luck (crushing, piercing, slashing and ranged). Even moderatly equipped raid toons should be well over 450 at level 90 and shouldn't be missing very much. Offensive prowess is only usefull if your melee group mates are missing a lot. The buff itself is pretty decent, but the mod from this aa is not.

Shadow Walker It increases your stealth or invisible speed by 12.5% at rank 5. In a raid setting you will only be dropping into stealth to make your next attack (assuming a stealth requirement for said attack), so the extra speed does nothing for you as you ideally wont be moving. I have never had to move more than 20 or so metres while stealthed in a raid and even then it was only because of mob positioning and or knockbacks. All raid mobs and many heroic mobs see through so there is very little use outside of solo content. The only usefull application would be sneaking around contested zones, and even then, it would only really be handy if everyone else in your group was equally fast. This is pretty useless choice.

Evasive Manuevers This is a wonderful positional deagro. Amazing for classes like Brigands and Rangers who don't have the threat transfer of Swashies and Assasins. It is slightly less usefull to a Bard as they shouldn't be generating as much hate unless doing a lot of dps but most well geared competent tanks shouldn't have an issue with Bards pulling, especially with hate songs. Evasive Manuevers is still good as it is a Bards only positional deagro and it is an extra attack with a nice range and damage.

If no one else cares to do it, I can research the Bard and Troub lines and include my analysis here, but it might be better for an experienced Troub to do that.

[Rirda]

689688OK here is the post of the most currect aas687