Cacophony Combat

Yarou

@Malarious, @Tremula and anyone else who was a badass bard.

How does Cacophony combat work.

Silvanus

Blankchord room. Breathe contagion. Enjoy! (Don't try to kill 1v1, any smart combatant can shut down a bard).

Twytch

At the most basic level, all bard combat revolves around sticking the 4 auric afflictions (manabarbs, egovice, powerspikes, achromaticaura?), then going in with massive damage from DischordantChord. In order to prevent the 4 aurics from being cured, a bard uses Octave in the room.

In order to prevent the target from simply walking out, you have to play PerfectFifth at your target. Plus, you have to juggle in deafness by periodically playing a BlankNote, or else none of the above would even work.

Yarith

Aurics aren't really exactly reliable to build against people with decent curing or passive cures. They're more of an opportunistic thing. If you try and build aurics against someone with a passive cure, especially the types which aren't telegraphed, you're just wasting balances 1v1. In groups they're great though, especially with manakillers and for pressuring that steam balance. 


Edit: If you are going to build aurics, octave is your best friend. It's extremely worth the 3p investment. Only problem is then you're just asking to be gusted and then you're set back to square one. If they see you drop octave and they know what they're doing, they won't let you get away with it. You can play around with setup and icewalls but even then you just end up spending your balances fighting over ignite and reraise.

Edit *2: Also, discordant chord isn't as strong as you think it is. It'll kill squishies but there's no way you're pulling down a warrior unless you know for a fact they have sensitivity and no vitality or are already very chunked. Problem is that if you're chunking you're not keeping aurics up. Ask Shango. I 4 chorded, refreshed 4chorded and he still recovered just fine, even with my 9 magic buff.

For pretty much every single bard excepting Minstrel, perhaps Cantor and Harbinger, you're going to be wanting to look to your tert to getting the most out of your balances. 

Marcella

Why would you refresh 4chord when 4chord consumes the aurics as far as I know

Yarith

It does not when you hold the octave. As long as they have mana and ego pools your minorsixth will always outpace your bashing chord for damage. 
You want to 4chord -> minorsixth under the stun until they die. Problem is if they already have ego/mana pools low enough that they won't die from minorsixth, you can't put the damage in.  It's the major problem I ran into as a Harbinger. You can drain people to 0 mana but you can't punish them for it, you have to wait for bleeds to build or spam crowcaw. 

Lavinya

Keep your song alive and your enemies hearing it, most important.

Also discordant chord is not bad when your team is damaging someone, I would always beast spit ibululu right before (to give sensitivity)  for maximum effect. It's not going to be a death sentence but it will help. My strategy really was blankchord when I saw people eating earwort, fugue any other bards to drop their song (90% of bards will sit on stanza 9 and you will instantly remove their song), and go for aurics. Oh and perfect 5th on the target initially and octave. I got most of my Cacophony kills through people passively dying to my song. Keep it up and blankchord and you will be a huge, huge help to your team.

Other very useful skills are scissorflip to split the group, and if you use tarot aeon and hangedman and lust are extremely helpful.

Note my advice is coming from someone who joined combat with the intention of being the best helper of my team as I could, rather than the killer of the most people. If you want more specific tips for being a cacophony killing machine yourself, speak to @Silvanus, @Lothringen, @Akyaevin, @Llandros.

Lavinya

(This makes me realise how much I miss barding)

Enyalida

PerfectFifth is an absolute and unmatched boon to group combat, especially if you also take tarot and can use it to pull those who escape your perfect fifth back into the room via empress tarot. Similarly, applying manabarbs at the right time in group combat can utterly wreck your target. 

Silvanus

I personally rarely had the power to upkeep Pfifthing as often as I liked as a Cacophony, I was too often using it for other things.

The must haves in your song:

BlackDeath, SickeningPlague, CarillonKnell, WrathfulCanticle, VileBlood

I also used: EngineWords, TaintedLove, TortureSong, DespairWeb

I would occasionally switch out TaintedLove for DarkMaster. I never used QueensLament or Threnody.

Also I almost never put up Dyscrasia. Rarely do people bring along food with them, especially in group combats, and they will end up passing out from hunger around the 3 minute mark. That is huge. That one extra plague affliction does not have a bigger impact than Hunger, however...

The most important way to have an impact on Combat as a Cacophony is through plague afflictions. That is how you do damage, I rarely used Octave (though I used manabarbs and powerspikes often, even without Octave). Plague afflictions is how WrathfulCanticle does better afflictions, its how CarillonKnell determines damage, and BlackDeath makes them harder to cure. That's how your allies (especially Nihilists) will be able to an impact on your combat ability.

Whenever Magnagora has the Ironmachine construct up, make sure you have the Tainted Spike. You can point the spike at anyone for extra plague afflictions. Cacophony have no ACTIVE way to give plague afflictions, they can only give plague affs through SickeningPlague and contagion, which can give up to 3 Plague affs every 10 seconds (and beast spit contagion through Vernaldom, so awesome). <editted to add.

For Tarotist, I find hangedman/aeon as nearly as effective as P5 while having far less cost, especially being a Magnagoran. Pfifth is a ganking move, it is something you do when you want to make sure you and your group kill one person. Between ectoplasm/crucifix, the P5 is more often wasted than not, in my experience.

For Glamours: between maelstrom, blankchording and contagion, you won't have the power to do much else.

For Solo Combat: Have fun, play with DarkMaster, you probably won't kill someone until they are passing out from hunger, but you can always get them drunk if you are having trouble. Any halfway decent fighter will gust when you P5 or gust when you set up octave, or just walk out. Or they'll leave when you are setting up icewalls. Or they will use love potion and deafness, and you just can't have a big enough impact quick enough until they pass out.

Unfortunately, as sad it is to say this, if you just survive and blanknote, in solo combat, you will eventually win.

Alik

Yeah, the main thing I focus on right now is keeping my song up and two aurics on.

Tarot is great for hindering.

What Silvanus said about P5 and octave is right. It's hard to stick octave into a room with someone that knows what they're doing. For the heavy bleeding of Harbingers, I usually watch for my song to afflict, then hit with manabarbs so they're getting stupidity at the same time. Two things to cure and stupidity has priority over manabarbs. Whenever you have most of your afflictions up, stick manabarbs and egovice, then use minorsixth to put pressure on the health, mana, and ego. Eventually, you'll outpace curing.

Silvanus knows significantly more than me but we do have two different styles, I believe.

Tremula

Remember that Octave has been changed to allow you a few seconds to get back into the room and keep your octave set up (if it already has been). I don't know the exact grace period, but getting back in within 1/2 seconds has seen me keeping it up much to their disappointment.

Silvanus

That and there was a QueensLament change (report 1325) that came after I left Cacophony.

Also the whole combat overhaul happened after I left as well.

So take everything I said with a grain of salt

Akyaevin

Silvanus's post was pretty good, although I wouldn't discount dyscrasia completely. I have no experience with it post report 1325, but in situations where fights are very brief the hunger can never have time to actually take effect.

QueensLament is useful, but only as a supporting tactic and when you have power to burn. The same applies in reverse for threnody - you rely on your allies to pin them down while you deathsong them. As with most group timed instas, when it works it can plow through people really fast, but if the enemy is on the ball then you're just wasting power and balance. 

One small trick - you can change the imbue on a stanza, refrain it, then change it back (so long as you keep track of what it was before). This allows you to queenslament, for example, without interrupting blackdeath.

DarkMaster is a personal effect: you have it up, and on the tick you get the ability to give a command. This means that you walk into a fight being able to throw it out immediately if you had it up, unlike a pooka. Sometimes useful.

When facing other bards, make great use of fugue in music to end their songs.

Cyndarin

General barding tip: Get comfortable with earache timing. It's slightly random but you can get a feel for it. This is the best way to keep pfifth up is to know they are going to eat earache in the next second or two and you wait rather than attacking. This allows you to immediately reapply blanknote. Most classes chase balance, you spam so you can get the most attacks out in X amount of time. As a bard, this is not always true, you have to sometimes not attack when you are on balance/eq. 

Yarou

Instead of Tarot or Glamours, I took Dramaturgy for its influencing buff. Some people've told me it's basically useless in combat -- any merit to this?

Synkarin

It's not as useful for Caco, but it's not useless in combat. Targetted lust is great anyway you shape it, scenes with subtexts are good for stacking affs. Climax can be really strong is done right. Catharsis is also a nifty effect that works with barbs/vice for damage.

Yarou

are there any mushclient scripts for bard things? song timers and so forth?

Sylvanas

Yarou said:

are there any mushclient scripts for bard things? song timers and so forth?

I will send you more stuff. If you find anything for Mudlet I may be able to convert it over, too.