Bard Healers and LeatherFollow

Alright, so I am a newb to the bard soul on the game and peaked interest when I heard they were viable healers. So first off - are they actually viable healers? Meaning, can a group say, 'Sweet, we have a bard healer, gtg'.

Second off, I see that perhaps cadence is the main constant heal used alongside the motif that HoT's for 30 seconds. With Cadence dealing life damage then that is 'spell power' right? And not at all effected by Dexterity or Strength, the two stats most commonly seen on Rogue gear.

So would it make more sense to put on Cloth gear that holds wisdom? Or does it matter little to change over to a lower armor protection?

Any direction assisting DIRECTLY with the above questions is helpful. Any further advice relating to bards is appreciated, but is tertiary to the questions above.

Thanks for the insight, good to know. I'll probably begin testing that sometime soon to see if the bard really uses dex. Either way, along with many others I would guess, I am lovin' this bard.

As far as stats go, Trion has been fairly smart about that. Clerics have melee souls, but each of them receives passives at 0 point to convert spell power to attack power, spell crit to physical crit, and focus to hit%. They don't need to roll for str or dex gear, and probably shouldn't.

I've found I can squeeze better numbers out of Cadence by improving my weapon, and by making sure that my highest-damage weapon is the active one while I'm Cadence'ing.

Cadence looks at "weapon damage", so I'm not talking about attack power, I'm talking about the actual number range of the weapon's damage. Typically your ranged weapon will be the highest in this regard and so that's the one you should aim to have active

Other things that will influence Cadence's damage are any boosts to non-physical damage, the Nightblade soul has a bunch of these and it will also contribute damage to other generic things that fit Cadence like "combo point generating abilities"

Also make sure you pick up Power Chord, even though it doesn't seem terribly useful at the level you get access to it, once you get access to Coda of Restoration, you'll be glad you have it

Cadence gives you a CP at 0, 1, and 2 seconds, while Power Chord gives you 2 CP and a 1 sec Global. Unless you're moving, you're better off using Cadence twice and interrupting half-way through the second cast to use your Coda. Energy allowing, you should get a little more healing out that way.

It's 50 energy for 2 (or 3 if you let it run it's course) ticks of healing vs 40 energy for 0 healing. Energy fills up extremely fast, about 20/sec.