EZ Server

My friend and I are trying to put together a solid 12 man group. Bards have a lot of useful songs, but one can only twist so many. Would it be a good idea to add a second bard to sing additional songs? Would it even be worth it?

Not particularly. The way the 5.0+ click was designed, one bard can buff a ton of players without being grouped. However, two bards can keep click up ~70% of the time (by chaining them). They are fair enough DPS on their own. If you are melee heavy though, one bard per group will add a substantial amount of DPS.


-Hate

would you add the bard to a melee group(zerk/rogue/monk) or a group with pets(mage/necro/beast)?

tempest blade is much more effective in a group of pet classes because pets weren't effected by the attack delay so you will get more DPS return from TB in a group of pet classes since they are hitting more often.

A second Bard would still have value in using a song that your other Bard has no room for (Chorus of the Risen, for example) while still adding TB to a second group.  A second Bard could also twist a disspell song for DS mobs

Single click on your pally takes care of pretty much any damage shield on a mob. I'd not waste a bard song slot on it. About the only time I'd consider using a 2nd bard is to have one for a pure caster group to pump spell damage and click 3.0 for increased DPS, and maybe alternate casting 4.0 + for mana, if you need it. Most dont after the caster necks and class-centric mana recovery abilities.


Only downside to this is having to play a pet class :P Maybe its because I am only as far as T5 atm, but right now, for me, pet classes are a waste of space.

All in all I see diminishing returns on a boxed team any larger than 6 to 8 characters anyway. Any larger and its just too big a hassle to manage (in T5 at any rate). I kill almost as fast with 1 solid group of 6 in T3/4 and T5 as I do with boxing 12. Adding another group to a T5 run cuts my clear time by less than 10 minutes. Not worth it unless I want to give a group kill credit....and I think you can still do that just parking them at zone in.

We don't have any pet classes in our group. We got a mage to 4.0, but he and the pet dies instantly when killing t3/t4 bosses, so we dropped him.  We're full melee now running the following setup:

war, bard, bard pal, pal, pal, clr, monk, monk, rogue, zerk, zerk.

So we'll have a bard in each melee group.

that is a lot of plate!