BRD Charged Actions and update work

All I ask for Bard is that it gets some active support abilities like Foe Requiem was. Please SE no more crappy long-cool down ‘support’ skills that exist solely to give the job a ‘support flavour’ rather than actually adding something interesting to the jobs gameplay.

Honestly I don’t see any major issues with the dps side of Bard, besides of course the damage leak others have mentioned. If the devs didn’t want to add charges to stuff like Bloodletter then maybe they could have a stacking buff that slightly increases the damage each time it procs whilst not on-cool down? With a cap of course (for balance)

Personally I feel like the song gauge exists purely for the sake of giving Bard a gauge. Would anything really change if it didn’t exist?

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Originally Posted by Connor

All I ask for Bard is that it gets some active support abilities like Foe Requiem was. Please SE no more crappy long-cool down ‘support’ skills that exist solely to give the job a ‘support flavour’ rather than actually adding something interesting to the jobs gameplay.

Honestly I don’t see any major issues with the dps side of Bard, besides of course the damage leak others have mentioned. If the devs didn’t want to add charges to stuff like Bloodletter then maybe they could have a stacking buff that slightly increases the damage each time it procs whilst not on-cool down? With a cap of course (for balance)

Personally I feel like the song gauge exists purely for the sake of giving Bard a gauge. Would anything really change if it didn’t exist?

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Yes! This is what I want. Bard is about support first and that should be what SE should focus on first and foremost. Dancer is killing bard so much in the support department. Like you said, the damage is fine. They really need to focus on the support aspect. That’s what is very underwhelming.

I believe that Bard should get a minor rework in terms of how it's songs work and how certain skills interact with those songs as that would fix the support problems it has. I personally suggest the following:

- Make Bard Songs affect the user: Self-explanatory

- Change Empyreal Arrow to have charges: Damage-wise and ability-wise, Empyreal Arrow is fine. It's a guaranteed proc for any of your three songs which is good. However, it's usage is dependent on your procs to begin with. As an example I have noticed when I am under Mage's Ballad, I often find myself leaking damage due to using Empyreal Arrow when Bloodletter procs from Ballad, which also usually results in clipping. Empyreal Arrow should be a skill that should be used Off-Cooldown without the worry of "Will the effect of this be wasted?" Now, I would explain how the effect of this skill could change given the other suggestions but that will be covered in a later point.

- Remove Bloodletter / Rain of Death as a Mage's Ballad Proc and Give it Charges: Bloodletter is a good ability. However, as mentioned above, it is very easily to clip damage and leak damage with it as a Mage's Ballad proc. I do agree that it should be a charged skill, letting you weave damage between GCDs. By separating the skill from Mage's Ballad, we can avoid damage leaks. (Side note: Keep Quick Nock having a chance to proc Bloodletter / Rain of Death, though have it rewritten in this case to refresh one charge if that chance procs)

- Completely rework the proc system: As it stands, a lot of the damage issues with Bard revolves around its proc system. Is it currently better than the system where you had to pray for a critical hit? Yes. But it's still not that great. Instead, I would suggest reworking it to implement the Soul Gauge (which would mean moving it from a Level 80 Trait to Level 30 to coincide with when you get Mage's Ballad). My personal opinion is to change the Soul Gauge to give you procs similar to how Paladin's Oath Gauge works.

How would this work? While your songs are up, each auto-attack you land will increase the Soul Gauge by 5. Or maybe have it work like other classes where they have a gauge that increases if you land certain attacks. This gauge can then be used on Song Skills that can do Damage, increase damage the enemy takes, etc. Under this system, Pitch Perfect would cost 20 gauge and do flat damage, for example. Empyreal Arrow would add a flat amount to the gauge, much like how Samurai's Ikishoten increases its Kenki Gauge by 50 (Do note that Empyreal Arrow should add a smaller amount, such as 10-15 for the sake of balance).

(Part 1/2)

The following suggestions assume that this Proc System change is implemented.

- Rework Apex Arrow: It's no secret that Apex Arrow sucks. It's effectively a 600 Potency Attack every 60 seconds on average (in my personal experience). 2 Pitch Perfects or 4 Bloodletters do as much damage and those can be outputted faster. Instead, lower the cost of Apex Arrow from 100 for Max Damage to 50 and give it a secondary ability. We already have Pitch Perfect and Bloodletter for Damage. Let's give Apex Arrow the ability that Foe's Requiem had, where all enemies hit by Apex Arrow take increased damage for a short period of time. 3% increased damage would work for a AOE Song Skill (Note that Ninja's Trick Attack lasts 15 seconds where the single target takes 5% increased damage. Also note that this skill WOULD NOT stack with Trick Attack). This will add usage to Apex Arrow while separating it from Pitch Perfect and Bloodletter.

- Give Bard Bane: I believe that Square Enix hasn't given Bard a DoT spreader due to balance concerns with the current proc system. However, if that proc system changes to not be based on DoTs, then giving Bard Bane would be much more feasible and be a great QoL change in that it would give Shadowbite far more usability beyond putting DoTs on one enemy in a pack and then casting Shadowbite. Of course, that being said, this would mean that Sidewinder and Shadowbite might have to be changed as a result. Perhaps making them Song Skills would balance them much like how Summoner's Fester is restricted to costing Aetherflow. Heck, maybe change Iron Jaws to Bane as the changed proc system wouldn't necessitate needing your DoTs up 100% of the time to ensure you don't miss any proc chances on the current system.


There are a few other changes that would need to be made is all these are implemented, such as reworking the unique effects of Wanderer's Minuet, Mage's Ballad, and Army's Paeon (though Army's Paeon would still keep it's Reduced Weaponskill Cast Time, Spell Cast Time, Recast Time, and Auto-Attack Delay). What are your thoughts?

(Part 2/2)

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Originally Posted by CodingSheep

Is it currently better than the system where you had to pray for a critical hit? Yes. But it's still not that great.

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I'll personally take crit procs over intangible flatrate procs purely because critrate is a tangible stat that you can personally affect.

I feel like changing the soul gauge to affect song-based attacks isn't a bad idea though- it gives much more control over your burst much like other jobs and would tie together the bundle of archery and singing very nicely. Also makes me wonder if they could bring back active support this way? Personally I recognize that a job can't be both an amazing dps and a toolkit of utility but having it all tied around the same resource would give it a bit of a "one or the other" kind of deal which I feel would fit wonderfully with the lore of the job itself. Things like returning Palisade, or even a flat MP recovery (not Refresh) at the cost of a chunk of dps. In that same sense though, I also recognize that this would have to be during 6.0 where Dancer could also gain an extra tool or two to match up with Bard's newfound utility, should they choose to implement something as such... and Machinist would likely have to be a flat pdps increase over the other two to fill the niche of "the strong one that doesn't really bring utility".

I do recognize that this would give each of the three jobs a very clear and distinct advantage over one another, but since all 3 jobs can be co-mained without much issue (sharing gear and all) I personally feel that having them excel at different things isn't a bad thing. It's not like they'd have to be extremely far away from each other- sure, Bard's soul gauge would inherently tax itself for having access to the things and likely wouldn't ever become a speedrunning favorite because they'd probably still be the worst in terms of dps... But as long as you don't have too large of a gap between jobs, that should be fine. I wish the dev team and the community could understand that not every job in the game has to excel at everything - being able to build a team around strengths and weaknesses is simply part of the fun for some, and having jobs have clear advantages and disadvantages makes this all the more appealing. I love maining Red Mage right now because it allows me to support the party in a meaningful way, with instant raise being one of it's major strengths (yes, not as much in endgame, but since it's not so far away from the others, it still has a point in being there, especially to save a run during its final stretch for example).

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Originally Posted by CodingSheep

- Completely rework the proc system: As it stands, a lot of the damage issues with Bard revolves around its proc system. Is it currently better than the system where you had to pray for a critical hit? Yes. But it's still not that great.

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The Crit system was actually better. Stormblood Crit Chance ranged from around 35% up to 40% by the end of the expansion which is pretty close to where we are now at 40%. However, Chain Stratagem and Battle Litany meant that every now and then we could spike our Crit Chance for a bigger burst phase, and it encouraged intelligent snapshotting of our DoTs on buffs. The flat rate works fine, just makes things boring since we are unable to influence it. Nothing was more entertaining than a big opener with tons of Crit Chance.

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Originally Posted by CodingSheep

How would this work? While your songs are up, each auto-attack you land will increase the Soul Gauge by 5. Or maybe have it work like other classes where they have a gauge that increases if you land certain attacks. This gauge can then be used on Song Skills that can do Damage, increase damage the enemy takes, etc. Under this system, Pitch Perfect would cost 20 gauge and do flat damage, for example. Empyreal Arrow would add a flat amount to the gauge, much like how Samurai's Ikishoten increases its Kenki Gauge by 50 (Do note that Empyreal Arrow should add a smaller amount, such as 10-15 for the sake of balance).

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This is already similar to how the Soul Gauge functions in PvP. If under the effect of Wanderer's Minuet or Army's Paeon, each Burst Shot, Empyreal Arrow, or Quick Nock increases the Soul Gauge by 10 allowing for incredibly consistent Apex Arrows. I wouldn't mind poaching the Soul Gauge from PvP, but at a lower rate of 4 Soul per GCD since that would give us a maxed out Apex Arrow every minute which lines up well with raid buffs like Trick Attack. Hell, give it a vuln debuff too and let it stack with Trick Attack, who cares. We used to stack Foe Requiem and Trick, why not Apex and Trick.

I am less interested in your ideas for the song changes though. The current system has problems, no argument there, but I'd rather not see another massive overhaul of the way the songs function. They changed the way things worked from ARR to HW when they created Bow Mage, and they changed thing again from HW to SB where we got the current system. I would prefer to just see charged actions get added to help alleviate the issue of bleeding DPS through lost procs, as well as other fixes mentioned by Cetonis in this thread. I don't think your ideas are bad, just don't want to see another massive, Job changing overhaul.

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Originally Posted by Beddict

The Crit system was actually better. Stormblood Crit Chance ranged from around 35% up to 40% by the end of the expansion which is pretty close to where we are now at 40%. However, Chain Stratagem and Battle Litany meant that every now and then we could spike our Crit Chance for a bigger burst phase, and it encouraged intelligent snapshotting of our DoTs on buffs. The flat rate works fine, just makes things boring since we are unable to influence it. Nothing was more entertaining than a big opener with tons of Crit Chance.

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I have to disagree with this vehemently. The problem with SB Bard was precisely its reliance on crit chance. It made the class extremely dependent on specific raid compositions to shine. It’s not that it doesn’t feel good, but the fact it could shoot from top to bottom DPS based on whether a DRG was present (Piercing wasn’t the ONLY reason DRG/BRD was busted) was extremely annoying. That’s why I said Raging Strikes should buff Repertoire’s proc rate if we got a static proc rate from ShB's changes (which, we did). Any numbers SE went with would eventually feel unimpressive because we didn’t have that burst window to work with like before.

EDIT: Other than that, I think we agree though, including Bard needing charges and not much else. I'm happy with how they play, though I would add that using Ballad would still leak damage unless you adjusted the proc to reduce Bloodletter's cooldown by around 10-12s instead of granting a charge outright. The slight loss of potential prevents the ugly situation where you get back to back double procs and lose a charge. And erring lower on the cooldown reduction would also account for the fact it would happen more frequently with the Raging Strikes change I've mentioned above. This goes double for Quick Nock's proc, which contributes to a ton of leaked damage with AoE otherwise.