ShB Bard wishlists?

[SaitoHikari]

Warden's Paean is actually situationally useful and can make the difference between someone living and dying in the right hands. It's the only instant cast Esuna-type skill in the entire game, and the only one that outright blocks those types of debuffs ahead of time. It was a big factor in enabling me to successfully tank Mist Dragon without dying last week. I've saved a lot of people in the 24-man raids with it, in situations that a healer would have a very difficult time reproducing with Esuna. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

As for wishlists... I assume the three songs are going to get enhanced in some way. My guesses:

- Mage's Ballad is upgraded to have a 'magic quiver' system, which lets you store up to 3 Bloodletter/Rain of Death charges for the situations where you get procs faster than you can use them, so you end up with less 'wasted' procs.
- Army's Paeon is upgraded to enhance critical hit rate per repertoire stack (up to +8% crit rate, +2% per stack). Most importantly, it is given a 'linger' effect that transfers the song buff to the full duration of the next song activated.
- Wanderer's Minuet is upgraded to store up to 5 repertoire charges, although you can still only expend up to 3 at once with Pitch Perfect.

Other things:
- Have Flaming Arrow come back in some way, maybe as a wind-element damage field since bards are rather wind-themed now.
- Heavy Shot to be upgraded/adjusted so that critical hits have a 50% chance to proc Straighter Shot instead of the base 20% rate. (Or using Barrage force triggers the Straighter Shot buff, but that's less interesting and too easy, as the critical hit suggestion is meant to synergize with Army's Paeon.)

[Valdima]

Vicious Mockery.

[SaitoHikari]

Vicious Mockery.

Okay, this I can get behind.

Maybe give it a stun effect, or damage reduction. Or have it force the next enemy attack to miss if we want DnD accuracy, but that'd be utterly broken.

[xkazh]

Vicious Mockery.

Alright, yeah, I want Vicious Mockery. It's even the name of my Bard gearset...

Really liking the suggestions atm. There's a few QoL things here I hadn't thought of.

[AncientCrystal]

The 3 buffs BRD can cast party wide depend on the song that is currently playing, I wish you could simply just cast them whenever you want to, keeping the long cooldowns though....

[Sylvain]

Warden's Paean is actually situationally useful and can make the difference between someone living and dying in the right hands. It's the only instant cast Esuna-type skill in the entire game, and the only one that outright blocks those types of debuffs ahead of time. It was a big factor in enabling me to successfully tank Mist Dragon without dying last week. I've saved a lot of people in the 24-man raids with it, in situations that a healer would have a very difficult time reproducing with Esuna. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

But there you said it, in mist dragon... an expert.

This is somehow the core of the issue, the skill is only usable in casual content but requires expert hand (because a casual barely knowing what he's doing will never use it)

If they were to put more debuff (and reduce Esuna recast time to its cast time...) that would definitely be a good skill. But it currently isn't, because no situation makes it useful.

Another example would be Dismantle. Dismantle is a very powerful tool because you can stack it with Reprisal and it makes a lot of difference in late Savage (looking at you Ion Flux).

However, if no attack in the game would do more than expert level damage... then... what would be the point of dismantle?
No one would care, it would just be a trash ability because there's no need for damage mitigation.

A great tool is useless if you can't use it, and this applies to a lot of things, like WHM "over abundance of heal"... well great... but we don't need CureIII spam... so what's the point?

[Kalise]

A great tool is useless if you can't use it, and this applies to a lot of things, like WHM "over abundance of heal"... well great... but we don't need CureIII spam... so what's the point?

To follow on from this, it's a similar thing for Vercure too.

Vercure is a powerful skill and I've saved countless lives with it. In casual content.

It also has massive potential, because if a clutch Dual Cast Vercure can prevent someone dying (Long enough for a healer to react and bring them back from the brink of death) then it's super impactful, as it means you don't need to use the MP sink that is a Raise skill, nor does that person then have to suffer the Weakened debuff penalty from being raised.

But at the end of the day, in content where such bonuses actually matter, it becomes too niche.

WP suffers from the lack of debuffs being used in encounters. Just like Nature's Minne suffers from the fact that healing a single target just isn't an issue (For the most part healing increases like Minne/Convalescence and Largesse are notable for AoE "healing" through getting massive Critlo shields to spread off of a WAR with tank stance bonus to boot)

That said, as I mentioned prior, I don't think the skill needs a complete rework so much as just enhanced utility. Something else to go along with the cleanse effect that can make it be useful in some more situations. Hence the proposition of a 10% max health shield on it. Since 1) It already mentions "Shielding" an ally as part of its debuff protection mechanic and 2) You'd now have some minor utility with helping someone stay alive a bit, be it using it on a tank to give them 10% EHP for a Tank Buster or similar to a clutch Vercure you can pop it on a low health ally to buy a second for the Healers to get their cast(s) off to recover the target.

It would still retain its niche use for anti-debuffs in the situations where that actually matters, but now you also have a few more niche situations in which you can use it (Or at the very least, slap it on the MT to get some free LB generation)

Nature's Minne is the niche utility skill that I'd look for a complete rework for. Due to how mediocre heal increases actually are when you consider just how high healing throughput is even with just oGCD skills - To say nothing about trying to actually time the use of a heal increase skill as a non-Healer as you have no idea what tools the healer has available and is planning to use at a given moment in time. I.e. Someone might be getting low on life but the healer is planning on full healing them with Tetra/Dignity as soon as they finish their cast anyway before they then get hit by an Adlo to shield them from further damage and so bonus healing is not necessary.

As for what to work it into, I don't really know exactly. A random idea would be to try and recreate the common tool available to Bard characters in most other games and have it be a HoT effect for the party. Possibly as a trait that causes your songs to give small ticks of healing. Though, even this would be suspect given how healer throughput works where they're very bursty so sustained healing diminishes in value. (To say nothing of the massive enmity generation such a thing would provide...)

[Cetonis]

I dunno, I don't think this is all that hard. It's easy enough to add things onto the kit without changing the core.

Whatever they do with Foe, they could add a second song with similar properties (i.e. if Foe becomes an oGCD but still drains MP, make a second song like that).

If they keep MP draining as a thing that happens in Bard's kit, they could add things that interact with that - i.e. a skill that's only usable at low MP, or an additional way to gain MP back besides Refresh, etc.

Adding a cooldown that's usable at 4 AP stacks is an easy enough way to do something with AP that doesn't involve a rework. I'm sure the current design as a "cool off" skill is intentional and probably a good thing overall regardless of veteran grumbling, but I could envision SE adding just a little more spice to it.

A random oGCD that deals damage are easy enough to slot in. If it has a DoT element that procs repertoire, it would be a sensible addition. If it was AoE, maybe kinda a fiery arrow of some kind, that'd be cool...

And there's always the ability to add other narrow support skills, maybe something that fusses with song cooldowns so you can re-arrange them more plausibly, a means to force Refulgent, maybe a second buff besides Raging Strikes, or a trait that makes Raging Strikes do something additional, really I could list at least a dozen easy skills/traits they could add that would be interesting but not mess with the core kit.

[TaiyoShikasu]

Their own Bane and for Straight Shot to proc at opportune times rather than when the boss jumps.

[Awha]

I personally hope they do not touch brd too much in fear of them mucking it up. I love the SB take on Brd and personally would not change a thing about it.