It's probably two things:
1) FFXIV lacks the DoT interface management tools of other MMOs.
2) (Partially due to 1) DoTs may be considered too much for FFXIV's target audience to handle.
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Yoshi-p has literally said he hates pet classes in the past. It's was pretty much a meme when he did.
But the whole debuff cap was fixed when they reduced the amount of debuffs we can apply in 4.0.
These changes are either saying we believe these kind of job Mechanics are too hard for the general player base or them saying " hey we can't get this to work so we are giving up on making it work and will be gutting then out of the game"
Now I want to say this. I don't like bard. Never care for it but when you see a negative trend, you have to say it
I hope they don't get rid of DoTs on Bard. That's my favorite part about Bard. They already removed my other favorite part which was DoT procs in songs.
The only other thing I want is, if you're capped on Repertoire in Army's, any other procs grant "Straight Shot Ready" or "Shadowbite Ready".
Srsly such "tech issues" is an easy excuse for everything even if it isn´t a thing. So many games can handle a bunch of debuffs, DoTs on any classes, mass PvP, 1,5s GCDs and so on. Just FF14 can´t do it? Do you really trust all the excuses in favor of homogenization and dumb downs, when the game, classes and players had even more skills and possibilities back in the days?
If you told me three months ago that they were going to take away DoT-based procs, I would have readily believed it. It makes sense, if only for AoE-related reasons, and falls in line with SE's tendency to make a chainsaw to job's identity when they get a lot of complaints about it being too difficult.
What *is* a shock, is that they seemingly made the decision to do this in the 11th hour before the expac launch. Not only leaving behind changes that no longer make sense - halved MB proc value, 3x BL stacks - but resulting in a kit that can't be justified.
For better or for worse, DoT-based procs were Bard's entire identity. They were the only thing the job had to separate it design-wise. You don't just rip something like that out of a kit on a whim. You do it early on in development when you have the time to figure out what else should change and how, in order to ensure the job still feels unique and interesting.
Instead, Bard is a job with -
:: A simpler version of Dancer's GCD system (solo and AoE)
:: A simpler version of Dancer's fan procs
:: A more boring version of Dancer's Standard Step upkeep
:: A slower version of Dancer's Espirit gauge
:: A more boring version of Dancer's 2-minute buff execution
:: A DoT upkeep mechanic that's just left sitting there for no reason
Other than bow aesthetics and possibly power level, what is the reason to play Bard, gameplay-wise? What's the defining feature, what's the signature mechanic or unique play style? What part of the job is better-designed than the equivalent aspect of Dancer?
None of it is. No part of it at all.
And people were happy with the media tour setup. They were excited. Still some gripes about self-song and Bane, sure - but the former didn't force any of this, and the AoE situation could have been handled in some other way (i.e. they could have, if they wanted, put a cooldown on Storm and Caustic).
It just doesn't make sense. Going to have to hope that the DoT decouple just isn't actually there, but that too would be kind of wild if there's a per-DoT 80% rate. Or maybe it's based on something else DoT-related. Something something copium.
Yeah it's an odd call. While I don't agree with the idea that Bard has no identity now and am REALLY excited for the other changes, the change on how procs now occur seems like one where they were fixing the job then thought "Lets keep fixing it, even though we don't need too." If anything I felt the only changes to the procs that were needed was to up them to 45 or 50% rate to get some more speed back to the job.
It's gonna all depend on how the job feels now. I really am eager to play it through the MSQ so I can give feedback. Despite the negative aspects of this change it really does feel like the team was very much listening to the post media tour feedback. Songs being able to now be heard, battlevoice affecting us, 3rd blood letter charge, increase to the 3rd coda, heck even the proc rates now on the songs addressing the leveling experience on bard being too slow all in some way address concerns we had in the post media tour. The dev team DID listen, it just looks like they took it one step further with this last change. Need to try it out now. If it works it works, if it doesn't we give that feedback just like we did before.
For better or worse, I'm exciting to try the changes out and see how they feel.
Sitting around and theorizing's never done much. I want to see how it 'feels' to play. And all the changes there seem to promote 'having something to do while minimizing how much you 'waste' on rep procs sometimes'.
The BL change is probably gonna even out to the same amount of BLs going out, but with less of a 'oh I wasted like 2 repetoir procs because they just keep ticking while I'm doing other stuff'. Now it's just "Lets keep my BL stock healthy. And maybe a few extra when MB ends"
Most people didn't like how shadowbite worked, so trying something different with it makes sense.
I'm optimistic at the very least.
In the end the only thing they really badly need to do for 6.01 is to revert the MB half-proc thing. Then it will feel more like an rng smooth-over than spending 30-45s in slow motion. And the remaining kit will still be a 2 minute cycle, and still generally improved for the average player.
It would still be a "bad design" in light of Dancer juxtaposition, and in need of some 6.1 work most likely re: what are the DoTs for etc. And players like me who were looking forward to deleted elements of the MT kit will still be sad, and we'll still miss ShB Bard's AoE.
But with full BL resets they could run with this kit with a straight face, at least for a little while.