Bard - they broke my job

They should remove that annoying sound effect when casting skills with WM active.

When you get to play machinist with GB you'll understand quickly the machinist was designed first before thinking about bard after 50. They tried to make the bard different with their "casting" spell on. It feels a lot better to play with the WM equivalent as Machinist than playing bard with it... I don't know about Square but you re-defining the core gameplay of a class after 2 years is really a bad idea, it was worth the risk but in the end I think it turned out terrible. People never cared about having less DPS, if that was the case they would be playing another class.

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Originally Posted by Croisciento

When you get to play machinist with GB you'll understand quickly the machinist was designed first before thinking about bard after 50. They tried to make the bard different with their "casting" spell on. It feels a lot better to play with the WM equivalent as Machinist than playing bard with it... I don't know about Square but you re-defining the core gameplay of a class after 2 years is really a bad idea, it was worth the risk but in the end I think it turned out terrible. People never cared about having less DPS, if that was the case they would be playing another class.

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The logic to me is that they didn't want bard to be more appealing than MCH. They both offer the same raid utility, so they had MCH designed with cast times and realized how that would be unappealing to most people. Then from there they realized everyone would just play bard. So they had to bring bard down to that level without giving it any sort of thought.

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Originally Posted by LLamaPie

The logic to me is that they didn't want bard to be more appealing than MCH. They both offer the same raid utility, so they had MCH designed with cast times and realized how that would be unappealing to most people. Then from there they realized everyone would just play bard. So they had to bring bard down to that level without giving it any sort of thought.

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Well doesn't that just mean they made a bad design for the MCH in the first place?
You know they could have balanced it the other way around not giving MCH cast times and be more like the BRD, that was the general expectation to begin with until they announced how the class would work.

So now instead of copying design that a lot of people enjoyed, they copied a bad design decision and slapped it on a class that people played mostly because of not liking how the other classes played.

Or they could have just been more I don't know? Creative? And designed the MCH to be fun enough to pick even though it played completely different than the BRD.

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Originally Posted by LLamaPie

The logic to me is that they didn't want bard to be more appealing than MCH. They both offer the same raid utility, so they had MCH designed with cast times and realized how that would be unappealing to most people. Then from there they realized everyone would just play bard. So they had to bring bard down to that level without giving it any sort of thought.

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That's stupid, people would play it anyway for two reasons, it being new.. and guns.

WP works with Pacification now at least, so WAR's will love you during first pull.

I just came back from a long hiatus near the end of 2.0 I'm mostly only interested in the raids and what not. What exactly happened to the class to make it so hated? Is the dps terrible now or is the hate based on it being a turret stance? How does the class preform outside of said stance compared to the other classes? Is it viable atm in raids or am I better off gearing up and rolling dragoon/monk?

Will Foe's ever affect windbite and flaming arrow?

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Originally Posted by Arrik

To be fair, with two or more mages it becomes fine again, but if got into an expert roulette with your BLM friend, and a healer that wasn't DPSing you wouldn't sing for your friend anymore (outside BV) the way they want it. I much prefer a buff being an actual buff, all the time, like all the other dps' buffs.

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i don't want to be an ass and say "i would rather they let us play like we used to again instead of giving us some half baked design choices and cast times" especially since this is an idea that i am actually behind.

in terms of raid content you almost never play foes for the NIN so there's no point placing it in the argument, it does help them but compared to BLM it is EXTREMELY minimal.
you also need to remember that smn DoTs benefit greatly from Foes as well as all the new burst potential they have makes them get almost as much of a boost as blm.
however a pretty simple fix would be to allow only Foes through the WM support lockout. (foes already gets special treatment by not having the common misconceived damage penalty for playing it so why no allow it to be our only support ability within our kit that doesn't get locked out be that one specifically)
i mean dragoons and mnks get resistance downs within their rotation and if a nin is in party and you have a warrior they will most likely get the warrior to apply the slash resist down.
so why not let us throw the Casters a bone every now and then.

regardless of that, locking us out of support completely is the point. half the reason we don't get treated like real dps is because of our support hybrid bullshit, with this the risk is that you lose support for the party but you also need to know when you're better off letting the others have some help.
every raid team has their set ups, there's no one style of raid team that we MUST adhere to to clear. not to mention most times foes is played is only when BV is up except for on certain fights because you might need to save your MP for some emergency support.

while i know that most just play to 50% and then leave the rest if you're in an extended fight both brds and the melee become TP starved eventually so you'll need a lot of your MP to live till the next invig.
not sure if others notice but that 50% MP mark is really only good for MB when it comes to AP you want something closer to 80%+ otherwise you barely get any TP out of the song.

i will say i like your argument but i personally find that most of the time foes gets played during battle voice only so that we can save mp for other things. regardless the actual bonus you gain from foes for the casters was always pretty small, most just used it cause it was the only song we could play without a damage penalty which idm having FR be exempt from the suggested change we're discussing but I do really wanna point out that if SE really cared about our kit at all they wouldn't have let wide volley become useless.

The WM buff/EA+SW nerf translated to an about 50 dps increase for me with my likely subpar rotation. I didn't like WM when I first got it but by the time I hit 60 I accepted it and the dps was clearly higher so it was worth it to me. It does the change the rotation but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, its just something new and something we have to learn to play with and optimize.

For those of you bitching and moaning about WM just don't play with it on then. Outside of hardcore raid situations it won't matter if you have it or not. The only people that are really forced to learn and live with WM are the ones that will be doing hardcore raiding and looking to squeeze out every bit of dps from their class. With my own testing the dps difference between having WM and not having it on is about 100 dps.

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Originally Posted by lugiaXD

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The only time I mentioned NIN in regards to Foe's it wasn't comparing it to BLM. What I said was with the percent dps of NIN that would would be affected by Foe's, having a BLM and a NIN in party together still might not be enough to make it worth dropping the "doesn't stack with other songs" WM for Foe's, in addition to the 1 Caster scenario. It really wouldn't matter which Caster it was, if they are doing around 1k dps without Foe's you'd have to be lower than 666 dps for the increase from Foe's (without BV) to help them more than that version of WM would help the Bard. As for BV scenarios and multiple mages it would still work fine.

As for the locking us out of support, there's no reason for it. I've said it at least 3 times in this thread, and there is a whole thread dedicated to how us having more support than even some of the melees is a load of bs. So I don't don't really see the need to lock us out of support and/or make Foe's the exception just to please a bunch of melees. We're all DPS, we shouldn't have to jump through all these hoops to support when none of the others do, especially being punished twice for it. The mindset of us being a "support" dps needs to change, or we need a support role, that's been the core of my argument since the start.

I really do feel quite a few of us are on pretty much the same side in regard to needing changes, we just differ in exactly how it would be implemented. I personally like the no autoattack WM we have now (but I hate this version of BLM for other reasons), but I can see the reasons why people would want the playstyle adjusted back to how it was. My argument tends to center around the core of WM remaining the same simply because the last buff wasn't to Bard dps across the board, it was to the current WM. I even pointed out in my wall of text post that if WM is the new Bard playstyle it doesn't make a lot of sense to introduce it so late. And really, it makes even less sense to design a new job (MCH) and still make their playstyle change so much so late. I just feel the WM presented in previous posts is "here's the rule, but lets make this exception, and maybe that one" and I think we could do a less convoluted way of getting there.

And I absolutely agree Wide Volley being useless needs to change.

EDIT: And even though I like WM, I wouldn't be on the forums trying to get it back if they tore it out.

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Originally Posted by Tsaza

They should remove that annoying sound effect when casting skills with WM active.

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I mentioned this earlier in a semi-offtopic post, but I'd like to see the animation changed to nocking an arrow and pulling back the bowstring, and the hiss removed.

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Originally Posted by pinder2009

The WM buff/EA+SW nerf translated to an about 50 dps increase for me with my likely subpar rotation. I didn't like WM when I first got it but by the time I hit 60 I accepted it and the dps was clearly higher so it was worth it to me. It does the change the rotation but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, its just something new and something we have to learn to play with and optimize.

For those of you bitching and moaning about WM just don't play with it on then. Outside of hardcore raid situations it won't matter if you have it or not. The only people that are really forced to learn and live with WM are the ones that will be doing hardcore raiding and looking to squeeze out every bit of dps from their class. With my own testing the dps difference between having WM and not having it on is about 100 dps.

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The ppl who complain about about minuet's dps don't know what they're talking about and should be ignored. The problem with minuet has nothing to do with dps, its playability. It interferes with ogcds, bl in particular, in a really unsatisfactory way and sometimes you're forced to completely ignore the bl proc or fuck your rotation and it literally kills me inside.

Sad truth is WM is here to stay, so might as well get used to it now.

If they removed WM they would have to make BRD's weaker than MCH to keep balance of being able to move while DPS'n which would probably make BRD the odd man out of raid groups since MCH has the same amount of utility and can push out more DPS.

It sucks but I do not see a way they can keep BRD's comparable to MCH if they remove WM unless they get an amazing new support utility to make up for their weak DPS output.

well with the patch WM at least became somewhat playable im not saying that i like it but now its at least not completly bad. its finally respnsive as well it felt very clunky before and it gives us about 100 dps more than before.
so now lets see the bad things:
our playstyle is still not fixed as long as we still have cast times i will not stop complaining ^^
the dps is now around 1000 from the reddit posts, around 900 for the average bard (and thats considering standing heavy fights) so that brings us a bit closer to the rest but we are still the bottom of the table and since we are damage dealers thats not acceptable.

the conclusion is: bard is still pretty much useless but at least we can now go bismark without getting kicked hurray for boobys :mad:

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Originally Posted by yamochan

our playstyle is still not fixed as long as we still have cast times i will not stop complaining

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Agree 100%. Bring back the play style we had for the first 2 years and 50 levels. I'm fine with gating the new abilities behind WM, just get rid of casting times.

I will quote my reply to another thread because I believe it fits in here too. It is just my opinion on the new BRD, even after the "fix".

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

I find it funny that everyone uses the same crap argument about mobility. What if I told you that not every BRD used to run all around the place, but loved the mobility because of fights like Ravana EX, Titan EX or T13. Also I loved to do bluefire in T12, because I could. Same goes for kiting Renauds in T7 etc. You think I will bother to do anything like that anymore? Think again..

BRD always was the mobile class that supported people, did moving mechanics and had the lowest DPS for me. Now the lowest DPS is just plain unbalanced sh*t.
Not talking about the reality that in fights like Ravana EX I still do much more DPS without WM turned at all compared to BRDs who turn it on just for non-movement phases. Seems like the 30% buff with potency nerf of some skills and still no ability to weave off GCD skills like a boss was really a nice fix for BRD.

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Originally Posted by yamochan

well with the patch WM at least became somewhat playable im not saying that i like it but now its at least not completly bad. its finally respnsive as well it felt very clunky before and it gives us about 100 dps more than before.

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Bard with WM up is no less clunky than it was before patch. Weaving in off-gcds still doesn't flow very well, especially when using Straight/Straighter Shot. At least the MCH was built from the ground up designed around their barrel stances. WM was plainly just bolted on to keep Bard equivalent to MCH with very little consideration of the way the abilities flow and the frequency of off-gcds.

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Originally Posted by MrYaah

It interferes with ogcds, bl in particular, in a really unsatisfactory way and sometimes you're forced to completely ignore the bl proc or fuck your rotation and it literally kills me inside.

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Well said. I'm just gonna try to live on with it and hope one day we get our old playstyle back. At the moment I will be forced to run as a bard when Alex Savage comes, but I cant wait for the time we dont need a BRD anymore so I can switch to DRG. Playing with WM feels so clunky and I have always hated casters, so this situtation is anything but enjoyable right now.

On that note I would like to see a new thread for Bards where we could focus on theorycrafting instead on these pointless debates which keep going round and round.

So I was thinking about how Dragoons got BotD and BLMs got Enochian and how those work, and I was thinking...

Why couldn't WM work like that?

Lasts X seconds, increases damage, doesn't put cast times on abilities.
BUT
Empy increases duration of WM and has a 2.5 sec cast time, still requiring you to stop moving at least for that.

While we're at it, you could then gate Sidewinder behind WM, have it take off WM duration like Geirskogul, increase damage to balance.

Doesn't completely reverse how Bards played for 51 levels. It only expands on what they already did by giving you something extra to maintain to up your damage.

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Originally Posted by MrYaah

The ppl who complain about about minuet's dps don't know what they're talking about and should be ignored. The problem with minuet has nothing to do with dps, its playability. It interferes with ogcds, bl in particular, in a really unsatisfactory way and sometimes you're forced to completely ignore the bl proc or fuck your rotation and it literally kills me inside.

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Is it really as bad though? I dont really get it, maybe im missing something. I can still weave BL in there and cast it in the middle of the animation lock that comes AFTER the cast bar. Unlike BLMs, BRD's cant queue casts back to back, we have to wait for the animation to finish playing before we can start casting the next one, which I hate! BUT it is a small window where im throwing in the oGCD stuff like BL, SS+, and other buffs or even move a little inbetween if needed. Its not really much of a delay, if any, I dont think. Other than the actual cast times being added inbetween.

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Originally Posted by Aiselia

So I was thinking...

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BotD abilities also have really low potency when landed outside of position.

From 290 down to 100. A 190 potency loss.

I think that's as absurd as the cast times behind WM. So if SE fixes the cast times, they should fix our potency loss too.

The mechanic itself I think is cool, though plenty of Drgs don't like it.

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Originally Posted by Leonus

they should fix our potency loss too.

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To be frank, I think they should remove positional requirements from everything period and just normalize the damage of the attacks to a balanced average between the two potencies.

The positional requirements are pretty much the only thing keeping me from loving Monk since I feel punished every time I try to solo something in the open world as a Monk because monsters do tend to not like me circling behind them.

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Originally Posted by pinder2009

The WM buff/EA+SW nerf translated to an about 50 dps .

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I'm parsing 930ish at i183 on dummy now over 3+ minutes. Which isn't bad, but that is with flawless use of oGCDs and stuff. It's actually rough to maintain that type of management in fights with mechanics.

In 2.0 I mainly used my bard. So far I'm 53 in 3.0 and I'm not a fan of the cast timers. It feels clunky and unnatural now. I think they should have made WM act just like the other songs.
-Remove cast timers.
-Have it drain your MP while it's in use.
-No damage penalty like Foe's.
-Will force us to be strategic with our MP to make sure we have MP to be able to play the right song when it's needed.
-Continue to gate the newer abilities behind WM and give them a slight buff.
In other words you could look at it like a WAR and it's stance dancing. But for bard it would be a dance between support and dps. We retain the mobility we all love about our bards, the ability to help out others (MP/TP regen, caster buff), and pump out more dps.

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Originally Posted by Aiselia

To be frank, I think they should remove positional requirements from everything period and just normalize the damage of the attacks to a balanced average between the two potencies.

The positional requirements are pretty much the only thing keeping me from loving Monk since I feel punished every time I try to solo something in the open world as a Monk because monsters do tend to not like me circling behind them.

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And I'm not gonna lie, that's probably one of the biggest reasons why I don't main MNK today. Playing MNK in the open world feels terrible in ways that no other job feels. Not to mention the positionals make no sense with the lore of the job...

A major issue I'm finding is.. you get used to playing with the new WM.. then all of a sudden get thrown into a lvl 50 dungeon and have to relearn how to play the old way.. if they are going to force a change so big on us.. shouldn't it be in affect at all times?

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Originally Posted by mb52139

A major issue I'm finding is.. you get used to playing with the new WM.. then all of a sudden get thrown into a lvl 50 dungeon and have to relearn how to play the old way.. if they are going to force a change so big on us.. shouldn't it be in affect at all times?

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I stopped doing high level roulette on my bard, makes me so sad...

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Originally Posted by MercureXI

Yeah because playing Bard will get me to understand basic mechanics a lot better and why you seem to fail at giving any type of valid argument here ?
I can talk about all mechanics in the game, it has nothing to do with "levelling a class to 60" ... how dense are you really ?

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You have no Bard job and yet you think you have the vaguest clue how to play it? Good god..
I have a level 51 bard and even I would not feel I have the right to weigh in on how the new abilities will affect her playstyle. Although it looks like I'm not going to like it, or play on her much until all the dust settles.

The fact remains that currently virtually all her skills are instants plus she has auto-attacks and ogcds to use in between, but with this Wanderer's Minuet, ALL that will end. :(

How about giving every job cast bars, and see how much they enjoy it.
I doubt too many people would be saying, "Suck it up. That's the way it is."

Ofc, there would be a mass unsub and exodus to other games. And before anyone chimes in, "Well, that's just not realistic," I say screw you. It's not realistic for bard bow-mage to have cast bars either. But they do, and should not.

I still only use WM for the opener, finish with IJ just before buffs drop and turn it off.

Hello

I did not play BRD during ARR, but I am playing mainly like BRD and MCH since Early Access and Im not enjoying WM, but I dont hate it, I mean, I use WM because my DPS is higher with WM on, just it, I mean, If I get a bit more DPS using WM, Im gonna use it, I would like to avoid casts, but if Im getting more DPS and full movility, BRD will be OP.

I'm not enjoying WM, I dont like to cast, I preffer to use everything instant...but, a great power requires a great responsibility.

But, a lot of people is asking a change for WM...is SE gonna change WM? I don't think so...If You don't like WM and You want to do max DPS, You can post your opinion here and be prepare to reroll, I think

If you have to move you can use feint, lvl 2 lancer skill. Insta cast, 2.5 sec recast, 120 potency ( 30 less than heavy shot ) and 80 tp ( pretty steep tbh, heavy shot is 60, but you wont need that often )

Thought some bards might like to know.

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

If you have to move you can use feint.

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Burning one of the five cross action slots on a HIGHLY situational melee attack for a ranged dps is just plain stupid.
If you don't have mantra, even featherfoot is a better option than feint.

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Originally Posted by ChloeGrace

Burning one of the five cross action slots on a HIGHLY situational melee attack for a ranged dps is just plain stupid.
If you don't have mantra, even featherfoot is a better option than feint.

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Feint is basically a slightly weaker heavy shot. It's not mellee. "highly situational"..ah no, you will need it now tbh. Not using it would be "plain stupid"

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

Feint is basically a slightly weaker heavy shot. It's not mellee. "highly situational"..ah no, you will need it now tbh. Not using it would be "plain stupid"

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It's only useful if you're constantly messing up casts, for extended periods of movement you shouldn't be in WM, anything else post casting movement would be better.

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Originally Posted by Panasync

It's only useful if you're constantly messing up casts, for extended periods of movement you shouldn't be in WM, anything else post casting movement would be better.

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I'd use it when dodgeing those big huge rectangular aoes in A1 as an example if I didn't have a bl proc up. Random movement that will require instant cast interruption and last only 1 second. Like the blms say "always be casting" xD

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

I'd use it when dodgeing those big huge rectangular aoes in A1 as an example if I didn't have a bl proc up. Random movement that will require instant cast interruption and last only 1 second. Like the blms say "always be casting" xD

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You have plenty of time to cast and move out of it unless you're in a very specific area of a cast already that wouldn't give you time to move before the cast for completion, I don't think the perfect timing happens often enough to say Feint is an absolute requirement.

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Originally Posted by Panasync

You have plenty of time to cast and move out of it ...

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...and when u finish the cast and move u can feint?

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

...and when u finish the cast and move u can feint?

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And waste DPS by using a GCD on a weaker skill for more TP? I'm not saying you can't use it, or it can't be a help if you do get interrupted or are on the move during a cast where otherwise you wouldn't drop out of WM, but to say it's necessary, I don't think so.

TBH Feint is not a waste. Although it won't be used frequently but there will be times you are caught in big circle AoE where the AoE's cast time is not long enough for you to cast-move like how you do on BLM, you will have to use Feint as a filler like how BLM uses Scathe for that matter. If you move out of that AoE without using a GCD move you are losing DPS.

TP isn't an issue due to the benefits of IJ.