I took the original post with all the questions about bards and delivered them directy to Geoffrey Zatkin, the Arch-Mage of Norrath. He was kind enough to reply with a very well thought-out response, which is below in it's entirety.

-Gordon

-----SNIP-----
>>>I've noticed that since retail release the Bard seems to be often forgotten when it comes to testing out patches. Things like the accidental Selo's nerf (caused by the mem hacking), the Consonant Chain debacle (Sow'ed creatures could not be chained), and the most recent levitate bug are very obvious to someone who plays a bard. All of these unintended nerfs could have been avoided with less then 5 mins of play testing these changes on a bard. So the question here is beyond compiling the code what kind of play testing of changes to the magic system takes place?

***GZ SAYS***
We have a solid internal testing department. The problem is, due to the sheer scale of EQ, changes can slip through the cracks. We try to fix the ones we miss as soon as we find/hear about them – but in a dynamic world, strange things can happen.

You should see some of the bugs we catch that never make it live – or even to test.
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>>>Kelin's Lucid Lullaby, I recently tested this song out vs. a level one human warrior. My Bard was level 37 at the time, using the Lute of the Gypsy Princess and I have charisma of 141. Every round I got the 'so and so head nods' message and every nearly every round the test subject was able to attack me (about 1 in 10 rounds he would not).

***GZ SAYS***
As most high level enchanters from Beta+ can tell you, there are two saving throws that happen with an “Enthrall” style effect (such as Kelin’s Lucid Lullaby) hits a creature. The first saving throw is against the target’s Magic Resistance. The second saving throw only happens with high level monsters – they get a secondary save based on their level. The reason for this is that the Enthrall effect is very, very powerful – it allows a single player to remove a creature from combat. This means that a party that could handle two “X” level mobs might be able to take three, or even four of them on if there is somebody around with the Enthrall effect.

Because of this (read game balance) higher level monsters have a harder time being enthralled. At lower levels, a single player can take out a single opponent of equal level. By mid levels this is much harder, and by high levels it is virtually impossible. Allowing a single player to remove one or more creatures from combat at high levels is sick level powerful – to the point that we designed an entire classes specialty around doing it.

The second saving throw does not send a message the environment – and that is something that is on our list of issues to address. There are, however, no bugs with the Song.
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>>>Alenia's Disenchanting Melody, It does now work (9 months after release), but it strips good as well as bad spells from the party, making the song worse then useless. Is this the intended effect?

***GZ SAYS***
Alenia’s Disenchanting Melody works as it was intended to – it follows the design that we had for it from the beginning. It is particularly useful? Depends if your buddy is dying from a nasty DoT. People use Egg Shaped Pumice on themselves all the time on the PvP servers. Is the Disenchanting Melody as generally useful as Cancel Magic? Not really.
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>>>Angstlich's Appalling Screech, When used against very large creatures (Giants, Mammoths, Elephants, etc..) You have to be standing directly under or in some cases IN the NPC Avatar for the song to take effect. Otherwise the creature will glow, but no message or effect will be seen.

***GZ SAYS***
Heh. This is due to how the models are built – each has a “center” point, which is what calculates where our servers think the monster actually is. Really big creatures have center points farther away from you – hidden deep within their polygonal body mass. I will bump the radius of the Screech up a bit on the next spell patch and we can see if it works a bit better. Part of the problem is that when I play my Bard, I know exactly how these things work – and exactly where to stand. Sometimes knowing a bit too much about something works against you.
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>>>Solon's Song of the Sirens, Often times when using this in a group situation the newly charmed pet will agro on a party member. This could cause a nasty way to get around the PvP switch as the pet is immune to PC attack. The pet needs to ignore any player characters or pets on its hate list when charmed. Also sometimes player pets (party & non-party member pets) will attack the Bard charming a NPC if the pet had been attacking the NPC.

***GZ SAYS***
I’ve had the pet agro on party members too – but it is usually because one of my party members did something to the pet that it didn’t like just after I charmed it – whacking it, for example. I usually have my pet commands hotkeyed, and retarget to something I want my new pet to be attacking as soon as I charm it.

Charm can be dangerous because once you take control of a monster, all of its actions reflect on you. If you charm a monster that is fighting your friend’s pet, and the pet hits the monster after you charm it, your charmed monster will attack back. When that little fight gets broken up, there is a possibility that your friend’s pet will come after you – you were, after all, the controller of the thing it was just fighting. Charming around pets can be done – you just need to be a little more careful.
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>>>Crission's Pixie Chase, This song seems to suffer from the same problem that Lullaby does, you get the message that the song has taken effect, but the target completely ignores the fact that it should be mesmerized (similarto the problem with Lucid Lullaby).

***GZ SAYS***
See above.
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>>>Fufil's Curtailing Chant and the other Chant songs, The percussion aspect of these songs is broken. Using a drum produces no additional effect (damage or resistance debuff).

***GZ SAYS***
Hmm – don’t use that one much. I’ll check. If so, we’ll get it fixed right up.
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>>>Psalm of Cooling, The damage shield portion of this song does not seem to stack as logic would lead me to
believe. I can understand that it would weaken fire based damage shields, but why would it weaken thistle based damage shields? I have not had a chance to see if it stacks with the necro damage shield (which I believe is cold based).

***GZ SAYS***
The Psalm’s Damage Shield will stack with the Druid and Ranger personal Damage Shields – but they will not stack with other damage shields – in the same way that no other Damage Shield stacks with another. You can not, for example, stack Shield of Spikes and Shield of Fire.
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>>>Denon's Dissension, The instrument portion of this song seems to be broken. In tests I have run using a horn made no difference in mana drain in PvP combat.

***GZ SAYS***
This was a very tough song to balance. It takes away mana from other casters – the virtual lifeblood of 7 of EverQuest’s 14 classes. The amount taken away is nice, but not great. Using a Horn increases the amount of mana drained. Again, nice, but not great.
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>>>McVaxius Berserker Crescendo, I do not have this song yet, but other bards have informed me using a horn only increases the song's Strength effect, leaving the attack speed unchanged.

***GZ SAYS***
The way our song system works, if an instrument effects a song, it effects the entire song. Without specifically hardcoding it, I couldn’t actually make the Crescendo only effect the AC and STR but not the Attack Speed. As I didn’t hardcode it, the Horn should increase the attack speed along with the Strength and AC.

Speaking of which, unless my memory serves me wrong (which it could), you *must* use a Horn to use this song.

As a completely side note, I saw on a certain website that this song increases attack speed by 15 percent. It actually does considerably more then that. I stand by an earlier comment that I still haven’t seen an exceptional spell analysis program yet.
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>>>Verses of Victory, Many of the higher level bards I have spoken with are very upset by the recent downgrading of the attack speed component, is there any chance this can be restored to previous levels?

***GZ SAYS***
Nothing has changed on Verses of Victory since I put the song in. Somebody is pulling your leg.
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>>>A while back GZ mentioned the meming time for bard songs would be decreased, but it still takes forever to mem songs (due to the lack of a mediate skill). Can this be looked into?

***GZ SAYS***
It is already on our list of things to add in.
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>>>Can a switch be set up (similar to the Fast Destroy option) to give players the choice of 1-Always dropping
items, 2-Confirm to drop, 3-No dropping of items. Bards I know have lost everything from Bladed Thulian Claws to Mistmoore Battledrums due to the "cracks" between hotkeys and swapping instruments/weapons.

***GZ SAYS***
Solid suggestion. See what I can do. No promises, but…
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>>>Every time an answer is given on when the missing bard songs will be added the answer is very soon. Any chance of a better eta?

***GZ SAYS***
We were initially gong to save them all for the expansion pack. I don’t know if I can wait that long to get at least one of them in (I really want to see how people use it), so maybe a bit earlier.
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>>>DoT change a while back lowered the damage of our DoT songs but didn't increase the duration, any chance that this could be balanced in some way?

***GZ SAYS***
Bards are affected by the Kiting changes just like everybody else. Bard’s kiting creatures will get the disadvantage – in all other cases, the songs should work just as before. Minimal combat movement will not lower the damage on a DoT or Bard Song.

Geoffrey Zatkin
Arch-Mage of Norrath
Game Designer @ Verant Interactive

GZ asked me to post a followup for him. I haven't even edited the formatting on this one, enjoy

-Gordon

-------SNIP----------
>>>Abashi thanks again for the reply. Could GZ answer the three questions that weren't answered?

1)Lullaby against a LEVEL 1 CHARACTER resist rate

OK – I went into the game and tried 125 “pulses” of Lullaby vs. a level 1 Snake. Now, I hate to say it, but I think your version of the “it doesn’t work 9 out of 10 times” is just a wee bit off…

Lullaby Trials

Me – level 40 Bard with 117 CHR and a Lute
Snake – level 1 MOB with green scales

Procedure: I turned on my attack and hit the snake once. I then turned off my attack and sat still with the Lullaby on. I did not juggle songs.

*My attack was turned off so that I would not hit the snake again and invalidate the Sleep effect.
*I did not juggle songs as Lullaby has a very short duration, and I could not be assured of putting it back to sleep in time.
*I did not move so that I would not accidentally wander out of the AoE range of Lullaby.

Trial 1
27……..Head nods (and it stays asleep – as it should)
00……..Head nods (and it attacks anyway)
10……..Made save (and it attacks – as it should)

Trial 2
19…….Head nods (and it stays asleep – as it should)
01…….Head nods (and it attacks anyway)
11…….Made save (and it attacks – as it should)

Interrupted by 2nd snake – trial ended

Trial 3
40…….Head nods (and it stays asleep – as it should)
00…….Head nods (and it attacks anyway)
17…….Made save (and it attacks – as it should)

Out of 125 “pulses” of Lullaby, only once did the snake attack after I saw its head nod.

Now, some of the confusion might come from the message:

Your target has resisted your attempt to mesmerize it.
A snake’s head nods.

You get this message when your target makes a resist, just like you get the message that your target “bursts into flames” with a fire spell, even if it saves for partial damage.

Conclusion: Vs. a level one creature, the song worked even better then I remembered it working.

2) Mana drain has no instrument effect

I did two different trials with two different people for this one. In both cases, when I used the Horn I drained the caster to 0 mana in less time then when I did not used a Horn.

Procedure: Dueled a Caster. Drained him to dry once without a Horn, and then once with a Horn.

The one interesting thing that I did note was that while the Horn did increase the mana drained, it did not increase it quite as much as I had thought it would. I will probably do a few more trials, and if the trend continues, have one of our programmers check it again with me in debug.

This notwithstanding, having a Horn did help.

3)all other DoTs had duration incrased, why not bard DoTs?

Sorry – I didn’t answer that part of the question because I thought the answer was pretty obvious. Most Bard songs have a duration of 1 to 2 ticks. Adding an additional tick to each vastly (and disproportionately) increases the power of the Song. Example: Adding a tick to a DoT that has an 8 tick duration increases its power by 12%. Adding a tick to a Bard Song with a 2 tick duration increases its power by 50%. The tiny amount that Bards lost in the DoT changeover in no way justifies a 50% increase in song power.

And no, you can’t add a 1/4th of a tick to the duration of a spell. Ticks are measured in whole numbers.