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User:Juff
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This user is testing the Dalayan Dark style. |
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The Bard is the most hybridized Class in all of Shards of Dalaya. While a Bard does not excel at any one particular task, they have a vast toolbox of abilities allowing them to be useful in any situation. This guide will attempt to give an in-depth description of the bard class, their unique song and skill set; as well as information on how to appropriately gear and augment a bard. It will also include a leveling guide, as well as a general overview of the bard play style.
Stats The Bard is unique in that it has a use in all but one stat, that stat being wisdom. Ideally you will gear for most of them; ignoring any one stat would leave you at a disadvantage. However, statistics alone are not the only thing one must look at one gearing any character, especially a bard. You must also adequately gear for Attack, and Saves, as well as hit points and to a lesser extent mana. Now for a small overview of each stat and it's uses. All the basic stats cap at 280. The hidden power aa increases that cap by 25, raising it to 305. The hidden strength AA gives you a hard cap that goes past 305; however, each stat point past 305 is much less effective. Hidden strength only applies to Strength, Stamina Dexterity, Agility, and Charisma.
Strength – Strength directly increases the bards attack leading to an increase in physical damage dealt. It also increases the bards carrying capacity. Strength over the cap still increases attack, just at one third the rate.
Stamina – Increases your hit points; the amount gained per point is based on level. Over cap stamina increases your damage mitigation.
Dexterity – Increases the chance of striking a foe in melee combat as well as reducing the chance of a missed note. Over the cap dexterity increases your chance to hit, at one third the rate.
Agility – Reduces the chance of a being struck in combat. Also having agility under 75 reduces your movement speed. Over cap agility increases your avoidance at one third the rate of under cap
Intellect – Increases your Mana pool. 12 mana per intellect up to 200, 6 for 201 to your intellect cap, at level 65.
Charisma – Reduces the chance of your detrimental songs being resisted. Very important for landing dots and bellows. Over cap reduces the chance of songs being resisted, just at one third the rate.
Wisdom – No use!
Attack – Increases your melee damage. Rare on low level gear, caps at 150 worn attack.
Armor Class – AC directly translates into a % of potential damage reduction on hits. For example, 1500 AC is ~80% potential reduction. Then, a fourth of that is turned into certain reduction (meaning at 1500 AC you always reduce hits by at least 20%) and the rest is randomized for the true reduction number for a single hit (so reduction is anywhere from 20-80%, and on average 50%, at 1500 AC)1.
Resists – Resists are ones chance to resist a spell cast by an opponent. There are five Resists, Fire, Cold, Magic, Poison, Disease. Each has a cap of 500. However over cap resists have a use; spells get a resists check, that is, a spell can check against your resists at a rate lower then your current resists. Thus having over 500 of one resist is often very useful.
Haste – Increases the rate at which you attack. More is always better for a bard, a direct increase to your melee dps.
Flowing Thought – One mana regen per tick. While not required it will help with down time and save you from medding which is awesome because bard mana regeneration is not very fast even with max meditate.
Recovery – Health regeneration. Not particularly useful, while helpful in attempting to regenerate to full it takes far too long to be recommended.
Starting Stats Selecting Starting stats is always rather hard, especially for a bard. Being that nearly every stat has a use, you could go many ways.
If your bard is your first character, your best option is going to be dumping as many of your 25 starting points into charisma and the rest into dexterity or stamina. Charisma will allow you to get less resists while kiting or duoing and that will greatly increase your ability to kill. The extra dexterity means less missed notes. Stamina for taking the hits.
If the bard is an alt and you have access to high end gear your best bet is probably intellect, most of the other stats are easier to come by, and bard mana pools are not very large; extra mana means less downtime from bellows and a prettier fomelo.
Augments
Augmenting gear is something of an opinion. However there are three options at the high end and each has it's pro's and cons. Leveling is another story however; if you actually augment gear your best bet is probably charisma, but it's probably not an adequate use of money for your first characters.
At the high end there are three options. Hp, Resists, and AC.
Hp augging is king as long as you have the resists from gear to support it. Once you can get 200-250 all resists without resist augs, and have appropriate gear you can swap for added resists, it is best to aug HP. Hp unlike the other two options, is always useful. Be it soloing, duoing, grouping raiding, hp is never a bad choice.
The second option is resists. This will save you from spells and aoe's while raiding and grouping. The most important resists tend to be Fire and magic. However some zones require other resists -- Disease in Towers of Agony, Plane of Entropy, and Grobb Undercity; Cold in Caverns of the Deep one and Azmaen, Heart of frost. At the extreme high end poison becomes useful – and they should never be ignored totally. Generally you will want to mostly augment for magic and fire, and if you are frequently raiding something that requires other resists consider bagging gear augmented for that zone. The down side is, in duoing and soloing and to a lesser extent grouping resists are not always useful, and you have essentially wasted an augment slot.
AC is definitely the least useful of the three options. It only reduces the melee damage you take, and as a bard, you only really eat phantom strikes and whirlwinds while raiding as well as occasional ripostes and rampage. More useful if you only plan on solo/duoing, but in general hp is a much better choice.
Buffs Buffs on a bard are an arduous task. You only get 16 buff slots, and need to keep 1-2 for debuffs. Being that you want almost every stat, it's hard to fit what you want into 14-15 slots. Generally however there are buffs one should never skip.
-Aegolism -Focus. The extra charisma is always better then the small amount of ac and mana regen over Protection of the glades/ Ward of Nature -SSS or SV based on buff slots, availability of Call to battle. -Haste. Empower for solo/duoing/tanking, Glory of Enthann for DPSing -Shaman stat buffs. Preferably Panther/mammoth or EOTW/EOT. This will save many buff slots by having these rather then the lower level versions. -Kodiac's Endless Intellect/Jayla's boon or other equivalent. 14 or 18 extra mana a tick is huge on cutting down on bard down time. A must have. -Damage shield. The use of a damage shield while soloing or duoing cannot be over stated. Mage damage shield also gives a fire resist buff and lasts much longer then druid. -Stamina regeneration buffs. Always useful for making stances last longer. Generally will only have room for Ancient Sihala's Gift, but you can sometimes fit in acumen. -Resist Buffs. Shiritri's ward, Shroud of Seasons, Talisman of the Niklothar, take whichever is needed for the situation. -Clickies! There are a multitude of useful clickies. A few example, Melwin's idol of joy for a lifetap proc and froglok illusion, Token of Living Lava for a damage shield clickie, Combine Legs and BP for hp and resist buffs -Potions Extra hp and saves always helps, sometimes you should keep buff slots for them, other times they are not necessary.
Gear Selection Your goal as a bard is mostly to not die. When dead your raid loses all songs losing all benefit they had of you being in the raid, thus negating your raid spot in the first place. So the most important thing is survival. Hp, and resists are king. However, you also need to push out as much dps as you can, to help the raid; while you are nearly guaranteed a raid spot because of Psalm of the four as well as other buffs, any extra dps you can eek out is a net gain to your raid. Thus, attack cap, and as much charisma as possible are both very important.
Specializations Specialization points are gained each level. You gain 10 every level that can be spent with the command /cm specialize. Each specialization has a different use, and caps at 250. You also gain 2 specialization points for each. You will cap all your specializations at 300 aa's thus a small mistake in specialization in the long run is not that big of a deal. A short overview of the specializations.
Blade/Strike Specialization - Improves your skill and damage with 1hs, 1hp, and h2h. Blunt/Agility Specialization - Improves your skill and damage with 1hb as well as your combat avoidance. Sight/Warding Specialization - Improves your skill and damage with archery and throwing, as well as your ability to resist spells. Energy/Defense Specialization - Improves the damage of your damage spells and your mitigation. Focus/Mind Specialization - Improves your ability to bypass the resists of enemies
Specialization Choice
You have several choices as your first specialization as a bard, mostly based on how you choose to level (more on this later) Energy/defense, Focus/mind, Blade/strike, and Blunt/Agility. If leveling while boxing I would recommend blade/strike first as most of your leveling will be melee mode followed by focus/mind and energy defense. If you are just going to kite and solo I'd recommend Focus/mind followed by energy defense then blade/strike.
Skills
Bards have access to more skills than any other class. They get access to a mix of melee, and utility skills as well as instrument skills. Ideally you train your skills as you obtain them and level them while you level; it will make life far less painful then leveling a new weapon from 1 to 235 at level 65.
Weapon Skills Bards get access to three weapon types as well as hand to hand. One handed Blunt, One hand slashing, and piercing all of which cap at 235. Hand to hand caps at 200. They also get throwing which caps at 250. A high skill level means more attack with that weapon type as well as higher chance to hit. Skill mods directly increase your skill, up to a cap of +25.
Combat Skills Bards also gain access to Dodge, Dual Wield, Parry, Riposte and Intimidation.
Dodge increases your chance to avoid melee damage.
Parry gives you a chance to parry an opponents attack taking no damage.
When you attack from the front you have a chance to riposte, negating the damage and counter attacking.
Intimidation is a skill that attempts to intimidate your opponent causing any number of outcomes. It can cause a 40% slow, 25% slow, a 50 point dexterity reduction, a 50 point dexterity reduction coupled with a 50 agility buff, a chance for the opponent to miss their next attack, a failure doing nothing, or a critical failure causing one round of melee directed at you.
Dual wield gives you a chance to attack with your off hand. How dual wield works on SOD is as such; every time your weapons chance to attack comes up (delay modified by haste) there is a check made against your dual wield skill, if it succeeds your offhand attacks, if not it does not attack. This skill is nullified by the ambidexterity AA, which guarantees success on every off hand swing.
Non-Combat Skills Bindwound, Meditate, Forage, Sense Traps, Sneak, Safe Fall, Hide, Disarm Traps, Tracking, Pick lock.
Bindwound is a small heal. Requires bandages.
Meditate is the ability to regenerate mana; bard meditate is capped considerably lower then other classes making bard meditating very slow.
Forage allows you to search for food and water in an outdoor zone.
Sense Traps allows you to sense traps for use with disarm traps.
Disarm traps allows you to disarm traps.
Sneak allows you to sneak, allowing you to be invisible behind certain mobs that see through invisibility.
Safe fall reduce damage from falling. Hide allows you to hide in plain sight. Cannot be used while moving for a bard.
Tracking allows you to track npcs in whatever zone you are currently located in. While bard track is shorter than druid or ranger, it also has it's uses in that it avoids some of the clutter in giant zones by having a shorter range.
Pick Lock allows you to open locked doors and chests. Bard pick lock caps at 150. It can be used to open up to Moderate Treasure Map treasure chests as well as a multitude of doors.
Instrument Skills Instruments are unique to a bard. They increase the effect of many songs. Instrument bonuses can also be found in the form of instrument modifiers; they can be found on gear other then just instruments. There are also items that increase all instrument mods rather then just a single instrument. There are five instrument types. Singing, Percussion, Stringed, Brass and Wind. The instrument skill itself reduces your chance for missed notes, and songs ending. +skill mods decrease those even further. Instrument mods directly multiply the effect of the song itself (provided it is actually effected by an instrument mod)
Singing increases the effect of songs using ones voice. Most songs based on singing are not effected by their instrument mods. However, some of the most powerful songs, specifically resist sings, and more specifically Psalm of the Four are, making singing one of the most important instrument modifiers. Singing can only be found on gear there is no strictly instrumental items that increase your singing modifier
Percussion instruments increase the effect of songs using the drum. Most bard chants as well as movement speed songs are effected by percussion instruments. Percussion mods can be found in the form of drums and item mods
Stringed instruments increase the effect of songs using the string type. Most stringed base songs do not get an increase from an instrument mod, making it mostly useless. Can be found in the forms of instruments and item mods.
Brass mods effect items using the brass mods. They only thing really effected by brass mod is the Denon's line, but that is one of the most useful of all bard detrimental lines. Can be found in the form of instruments or instrument mods.
Wind instrument mods effect songs using the wind mod. Both Bellows and Song of Dawn (bard jolt) are effected by wind, making it one of the most important mods.
Skill Mods No specific skill mod is that immensely useful to a bard, +slashing/blunt would be useful, but it's not class breaking.
Styles Bards have access to 7 styles. The three Basic, and four special styles. Each has it's uses.
Basic /s 1 Normal – No bonus or penalty
/s 2 Aggressive A five percent bonus to Haste and a five percent mitigation penalty
/s 3 Defensive a five percent bonus to mitigation and a five percent haste penalty
/s 4 Focused Blade Increases your damage and accuracy drains stamina. This is your dps stance. If you pop it at the start of a boss it will most likely last till the end.
/s 5 Focused Mind Stops pulsing songs from being interrupted. Drains stamina. Useful on anything that interrupts constantly/
/s 6 Nimble Blade 100% Dodge until while stamina lasts. Causes exhaustion. This is your oh-shit button.
/s 7 Will of the Maestro Immunity to Fear, Mez, Stun, Charm. Also increases all resists. Drains Stamina. This is really useful for low tier raiding due to the number of mobs that fear. Also useful in other situations.
Songs
Songs are the bread and butter of the bard class. A good bard knows what song to use for any occasion; That is what makes the difference between a good bard and bad, an intimate knowledge of your song arsenal.
The first and most important part of this is knowing how to read a spell parse. While many of the parses can be found on the wiki, not all are up to date so the parser is your best bet. Even with a parser you need to know how to read what it is telling you. So I have provided some information on some of the more common parser outputs to help you on your way.
Decrease Reduce Healing Effectiveness: This is really a spell shield. Spells like Relic: Melody of the shield reduce the amount of damage you take from spells by a flat percentage, MOTS itself is a 30% spell reduction
Decrease Hitpoints by 200 per tick: Essentially a dot. This is the base effect, increased by aa's, instrument mods and specializations
Decrease Magic Resist by 50: This debuffs the opponents magic resist by 50. Resist debuffs like this can be found on all of the chants, coinciding with the type of debuff the chant is. Magic having a magic resist debuff, cold a cold, and so forth.
Increase Mana by 0 per tick: a mana regen buff. Many of these read 0 rather then their appropriate amount, but most of the appropriate amounts can be found on the wiki.
Beneficial Songs Bards get a wide variety of beneficial songs. You have songs to accommodate most anything, mana regeneration, damage shield, haste, overhaste, spell focus, spellshield, resists. A large part of playing your bard is knowing which songs to play at a proper time.
You Can play two beneficial times at any given time. No twisting necessary, they are added to the melody and play without any babysitting. Adding a third song removes the first, another removes the second, so on and so forth.
Generally while leveling you will be playing mana regen and haste or damage shield.
At the high end it is not that simple. You will switch between many songs based on the situation at hand. Relic: Melody of the Shield, Relic Lcea's Lament, Psalm of the Four, Niv's Harmonic, Relic: Warcry of Tarhyl.. General use will be Psalm of the four and Relic: Warcry of Tarhyl. However if you don't need the resists you can use Lcea's in place of Psalm of the four. You just need to know which song to use at the right time, and to use what augments your group best.
Detrimental Songs Detrimental songs are a whole different story. You can play two detrimental songs, but they most be twisted. Twisting consists of starting one song, then starting another. After 18 seconds since it's casting the first will fall off. The goal is to keep both songs playing without either falling off.
Generally while leveling your most used songs while be your chants or denon's while soloing or duoing, and mez and slow while grouping.
At high end you will be using whatever your best dot is + denon's agonizing discord for the most part while grouping. Denon's agonizing discord however, is an aoe, so if something is being mezzed it's probably not a good idea to use it and it should be supplemented with something else. Be it slow a second chant, or even Occlusion of sound. The trick is learning what your songs do, and when to use them!
Bellows Bellows are like no other bard song. They are dd spells with a cooldown that cost mana. They are a large portion of a bards dps. The first four bellows share a cooldown; however, the last two do not. So you can use both of them. One has a 10 second cooldown and the other an 18 second cooldown. So it creates a unique situation trying to twist two songs and bellow twice, and keep both songs running. However, at low gear levels this is not recommended, the mana consumption is high and you would get more dps out of using one bellow.
Song Choice When you have a firm grasp of what your songs do, now for the important part. Song choice. Being that you are limited to only eight memorized songs at any given time, you must be careful in your song selection. Generally if at all possible you are only going to want to keep two beneficial songs memmed, you don't have room to really keep more than that. Your top two bellows for bellow spam. You are left with four other slots. Generally one of these will be taken up by your best chance and your denon's agonizing discord. You are left with two slots. Past that you have three main song choices. Jolt, Slow, and Mez. It's really up to you to decide based on the situation at hand.
Now that the meat and potatoes are done, a leveling guide shall follow to give a general overview of where to level at what levels!
Leveling
While leveling a bard you are faced with a unique conundrum. It's much faster to level your bard by itself. However, at 65 there are not many places to kite, so you really need to be able to melee with a healer at your back to duo for money or experience. So you have two options. You can kite most of the way with a bit of grouping and get a healer access from a friend or make your own later. Or you can box a healer the whole way and make your life easier. I will give information on both options.
While leveling make sure to do any and all quests available to you for gear. There is a great quest timeline that can help you find quests for gear appropriate for your level. Ideally if you were to put the work in you could have a full set of gear to level in at about level 40 that would last you till your early 60's. Always do your quests. Sure some of the quests suck, but the instruments, items, and money gained will make your life a lot easier.
Also remember, that if you want to level fast, a group is always your best bet. It's faster then kiting or duoing. Those are your fall back options, but do whatever suits you best.
Leveling With a Box
The first thing about leveling with a box is that, you must choose a box. As a bard, your best option is and always will be a healer. You have the three options of course, Cleric, Druid, and Shaman. Now there are two approaches to picking which of these three you should choose. One is picking what will make leveling the easiest. The other is picking what will be the best box at 65 with gear and aa's.
For leveling druid will make it the easiest, providing you with ports, additional damage shields as well as decently large heals. While shaman works (and this is what I did) druid is just much better for leveling.
For end game farming/duoing, cleric is far and away the best of the three healer classes to box. Their sheer throughput plus mana-less dps from auto attacking with a summoned hammer on makes for an awesome box with a bard. While Slightly harder to level than with a druid, it's the best duo in the long run.
How to At the lowest of levels you will be meleeing with one weapon and one dot. Ideally your healer will help you dps via melee. As you level it will go to two dots, and a bellow plus your healers small amount of dps. Eventually dual wielding plus dps from your cleric as well as two chants and a bellow. Ideally while leveling you should be skilling up all your weapon skills, and your instrument skills each level. Your instrument skills can only skill up if you are playing a song that is of that type, except voice which skills up as long as you are singing a song that requires singing, which if you are playing haste you will be.
Now that you know how to level the question is where?
From levels one till six or seven you should be leveling in the newport sewers, underneath northern newport. Your goal here is to collect ratman hoods and rat tails to hand in for experience to the newports guardsman. You can hand in 20 of each.
First you need to get in the sewers. The closest entrance is northern newport entrance near the northern newport gate. From the newport gate head east. You will find a wall with vines on it, you can walk through it. Swim down and you will land in the sewers. In the Sewers swim down forward, and then up. You will be on land. Head south to the first intersection. Go west and take the southern branch of the two way split heading west. You should find a room with three skeletons. Follow the wall west and swim across the small water path (you may have to kill the skeletons first, I am not sure of their aggro range). Follow the water south past the first two ways out of the water.
You should find yourself at 667, 202, -38.84 Here you will find a large section of rats. Kill them and collect their tails. There is one named here, a large sewer rat. You probably will not be able to kill him with a duo unless you are really twinked until level 8 or so. If you go to the southern most part of the rat platform and hit the water swimming south east you will come to another platform. From here you can find the ratlings. Head south and west you will come to an intersection with two routes of travel. One to a bulbous room in the west. DO NOT ENTER THIS ROOM. Several level 8-13 rat men spawn here. They will kill you. Instead head south. Kill the ratling by the bulbous room The pather ratling and come to an intersection. To the south you will find two ratlings. To the east you will find two ratlings.
Make a circuit of the ratlings and rats till you have collected 20 of each the tails and hoods for your bard and your box. Collect everything else you can, and store it in your bags to vendor.Take note that the rats start to go light blue at 4 and the ratlings at 5 or 6. So ideally try to collect your rat tails first, but that is not always an option. Some of the rats go straight to green and even skip light blue. Once you have 20 of each go back to the Newport gate entrance and give your rat tails and ratmen hoods to Guardsman Stanton who will reward you with experience for your hard work!
You should find yourself at this point with two characters anywhere between levels 6 and 8. Vendor everything you found off the rats. This is where you should buy as many of your songs and spells for your box as you can. If you cannot afford them all, I recommend killing the large sewer rat in the sewers a few times to vendor his drops; they will net you nearly a plat each. They are lore so you will have to leave each time to sell, but 5 platinum will buy both your bard and box all their spells to level 16 or so, so definitely worth the time. Once you have in your possession chant of battle, chords of dissonance, selo's accelerando, hymn of restoration, and jonathan's whistling warsong and all of your box's spells through level 8. Train all new skills especially percussion and stringed instruments and then it's off to elsewhere to earn more experience.
At this point you can make your way to Blackburrow, located in centaur hills. You can start clearing the top floor. This should last till level Eleven or Twelve. Take any gnoll ears you get and hand them into the guard at the guard tower located off the eastern most path in southern centaur hills. You can hand in 5 for 750 xp each (location 1042, -846). When you finish here you should be level eleven or twelve. At this point purchase your new songs and spells. It is highly recommend at this point you start looking at quests to do for gear. You can start the mandy wandersong quest line which will lead you to a set of mastercrafted instruments and you can do the antique plate line to get most of a set of gear that will aid you in leveling. At this point you can begin duoing on the next floor down of blackburrow, which should last you till level seventeen or so. At that point return to town pick up songs and spells and train dual wield, and it's time to move away from newport, and head to the warrens.
Take the Mansion of portals to Erudin. From Erudin head south through mistwoods to Erimal. Head east, to the grassy gnoll, and find your way into the warrens. From the entrance head north and west till you find the pool of water. Across the water you will find where the higher level mobs start. Most of these should be blue to you. Begin to pull them as singles, and kill, kill, kill. Most come as single (not all). You can clear your way back to the throne room. You can ride the throneroom area out till 20 or 21. At that point return to town, purchase your songs and spells. Hit your trainer and train any new skills. Then head to northern badlands.
Head east from Centaur Hills, then all the way east through west badlands to reach north badlands. Once in northern badlands head to the bandit camp in the most eastern part of the map near the middle. There are several bandits 6 bandits at this camp. You should be able to kill them all, with a short amount of time in between respawn if any. They drop bandit heads that can be used for newport faction as well as quest items for the newport ring quests. You can ride this out until level 26 or so. At that point return to town and grab some more spells and songs! Then it's time to head to warpstone caverns
To get to warpstone take the mansion of portals to sadri malath, then head east. Head towards the back of warpstone. Start killing in the big room, most of the mobs come in singles or doubles. I'd recommend grinding all the way to 30 here. At 30 return to newport for more spells and songs. At 30 head to east badlands.
To get to east badlands head east from north badlands. In the south east corner of eastern badlands you will find a camped filled with plague gnolls. They drop hides that can be turned in at the south newport guard tower for experience, you can hand in 20 of them in sets of two for 8500 experience per set. Grind out one stack for each character, then turn them in. The grinding and turn ins should carry you to level 33 or 34. Once again return to town, collect some spells and songs. At this point you should probably start your main quest. You can easily do the first two parts plus the sidequest for the second part, netting you nearly 350,000 experience. This should take about 5-6 hours and net you 4-5 levels total. At that point you should be nearly 38, if not 39 or 40. You should proceed to do your starfall quests for both your bard and box. With the two rewards in hand, you should be 39 or 40, have acquired some new gear. Pick up all your new spells, songs, and skills, and hunker down for some heavy experience grinding.
Your best bet at this point is a Robot group in Heartland Plateau.. A group here can easily net you a level an hour, if not more. You can ride this XP gravy train all the way till 49 if you'd like. I'd recommend stopping at 45, grabbing new songs and spells then doing main part three plus it's sidequest and part four. This should take you to about 48. Grab new spells and songs.
You now have several options. You can try to find a group in Tunnels of Lasanth or Sorceror's Labyrinth. Or you can duo wraiths in any of the badlands. Or you can go duo Wyverns in wvyvernfang. Any of these is acceptable and will carry you to 53-54 relatively easily. If you want money go with wraiths, slower experience but much better money. If you want experience the groups are your best way to go, but if you just want to duo wyverns would be my suggestion for you. Buy your spells and songs, and move on.
At this point you can do you thurgadin quests. Giving you even more loot. At this point I'd take whatever extra money I have and start trying to find gear. If you spent time killing wraiths you probably have a few hundred plat. You are mostly looking for gear to help you take hits better, and gear to get your box more mana. While new weapons for extra dps would be nice they are not your main concern being most of your damage will come from songs.
Acquire some gear and head to great divide. Find the harthuk cave to the west. Either get a group or duo here till fifty seven; they drop up to 9 plat each, the warriors are very simple. Be weary of the mages, they are casters and do a decent amount of dps. Make frequent trips to Thurgadin to vendor and you can ride this out till 58 or 59 and net several thousand platinum in the process. Buy all your spells and songs. At 57 you can stop and do the two level 57 Adepts; however, it is not the best and most efficient way to get gear or experience by locking at 57, so I would not recommend spending more then two or three of the adepts spawn cycles sitting there. Farm enough plat to get yourself some gear, and make your way to 60. You can ride sixty out on harthuk's or sorceror's labyrinth. At this point finish buying all your spells and songs that are vendor buyable, and score whatever gear you can afford.
On your way from 60-65, I cannot stress how important it is to start doing treasure maps for gear. The gear is very useful, and doing maps starting at very easy and doing them up through difficult will net you nearly a full set of equipment for both characters giving you a good start for building gear. You can also xp in plays like Lair of Mielech, Eldenals, East Waste Orc Fort, Or the Plaguelands. If you are going to duo i'd recommend the plaguelands, you can huddle by the tunnel in eastern plaguelands and pull singles all day this could easily carry you to 65. However at this point grouping is so much better experience that not grouping is sort of a waste. Try to find yourself an East waste orc fort group, the experience there for how easy it is is very good. Maps themselves are also good experience do as many as you can!
Kiting