Can you tell me bards why so much hatred....

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Originally Posted by Inferiae

The problem with Foe is that we never know if we will need MP for something else. Can you imagine me singing Foe and then people start dying, healers need mana and I'm OOM? Yeah.

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I can get this in general, but it still annoys me if I don't get foe's for my opener. If ballad is needed that badly that early it's probably a wipe no matter how much mp the healers get. May as well roll the dice and line up foe req with everyone's cooldowns imo.

I agree that knowing when to preserve mp is a good skill for brd, but I see significantly more brds on the overcompensating end of the spectrum. I'm pretty sure I can count on one finger the number of times when we needed ballad and the brd didn't have mp.

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

You make occasionally looking over at the party list sound way more intense than it actually is.

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Lmao, this needs some intense action scene followed by it cutting to a BRD watching their party list and TP/MP bars going up and down slowly. Then cuts back to a massive explosion and that victory pose they pull at the end of A4. Maybe some Lux Aeterna for the soundtrack? Michael Bay please!

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Originally Posted by Duelle

You can infer plenty from those sort of comments, since they are generally dismissive in nature.

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I didn't infer anything of the sort. I felt that it was an objective comment void of any dismissive undertones. In my post, for example, I even mentioned that people who don't like WM can still be good with it. They simply do not enjoy the ability and nothing more.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Anyway, WM is easy to adapt to but it a) made the job less fun for a good number of people who picked BRD because of its instant attacks on the move, b) the change was very poorly-implemented, and c) made MCH and BRD mechanically similar. The key difference between the two is that one has procs to bypass cast times and the other one doesn't. And BRD still got the worse end of the deal.
Ease of play makes classes popular. I saw that first hand in WoW with prot paladins after the hybrid revamp. That in itself is not a bad thing, and "this class is easy" should never be used as a reason to make changes.

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a) I can understand why people wouldn't find BRD fun now, yet fun is subjective. I find that I have more to pay attention to as a BRD now, which makes the job more engaging for me. Movement may be limited compared to pre-HW, yet we are still far more mobile than casters and our cast times are fairly short.
b) WM did feel like it was slapped on. Sometimes we miss out on Bloodletter resets during a cast, and in some cases we get stuck in a cast bar we can't interrupt. Some QoL changes should be made to remedy these issues if possible.
c) That's something I've heard about a fair bit. SE probably wanted to have BRD and MCH on a fair playing field, but ended up having them homogenized. While BRD doesn't have similar proc frequency to circumvent cast times like MCH does, the job instead prioritizes instant or fast-cast actions with a potency of 150 or greater. It's a workaround for the issue, but it makes the job feel clunkier (yet strangely enough, frequent Bloodletter resets dispel that feeling).

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Ease of play makes classes popular. I saw that first hand in WoW with prot paladins after the hybrid revamp. That in itself is not a bad thing, and "this class is easy" should never be used as a reason to make changes.

This said, the issue was also that range had a notable advantage in general given than there were no hard DPS checks nor were there varied mechanics that punished range. The fact BRD was one of the two jobs that had a reliable cast interrupt (the other being PLD) did not help at all. This was also a result of separating interrupts into Stuns and Silences (imagine a world where DRGs would be able to join that rotation with Leg Sweep and SMNs got Leviathan-egi with the ability to interrupt spell casts). One thing leads to another, but raid design is partly to blame for why people stacked range during those days. As seen at HW's launch, they went overboard with the nerfs.

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Yet the changes were made since the raid design at that time didn't challenge BRDs like it did with every other job. Many of the mechanics that challenged casters had little impact on BRDs due to their mobile DPS, and the utility they provided ensured them a spot in a majority of raid groups. Even in Alexander Savage, BRDs are still brought for progression and the DPS they provide is pretty good.

I do not see how SE went "overboad with the nerfs," as BRDs can still perform well. It's just that WM was thrown in and little consideration was given to the job's QoL.

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Originally Posted by Rowyne

Now they have to concentrate so hard on stance dancing, timing and weaving of skills, they don't have time to pay attention to who's low on mana or TP. You're lucky if you get a Foe's, if anything.

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Actually, BRDs still have time to pay attention to who needs a song while taking care of themselves. Ballad and Paeon are still frequently played during moments of downtime, and playing Requiem for a while for your casters (including the healers) makes up for the 3s DPS loss of you playing the song. BRDs may have more to pay attention to now if they want to play optimally, but awareness regarding when to play which song and what to save your MP for hasn't changed that much to let the extra work get in the way. Maybe it's just me, but I find it strange how other BRDs don't play the appropriate songs as often as I do.

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Originally Posted by Rowyne

Sure, you can still do somewhat respectable DPS, but now you really have to work for it and it's just not fun for many people anymore. If it's a balance issue, I think it could have been achieved another way.

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Performance-wise, BRD is still a valuable addition to any group. QoL and identity, on the other hand, could do with some improvement.

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Originally Posted by SlyRoyale

a) I can understand why people wouldn't find BRD fun now, yet fun is subjective. I find that I have more to pay attention to as a BRD now, which makes the job more engaging for me. Movement may be limited compared to pre-HW, yet we are still far more mobile than casters and our cast times are fairly short.

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Mobility is an all-or-nothing deal. Hence why this change was so jarring to begin with. If they were bent on giving everything a cast time, allowing the cast bar to fill while moving would have been the best compromise. Even then long-time BRDs would have felt the change in pace.

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b) WM did feel like it was slapped on. Sometimes we miss out on Bloodletter resets during a cast, and in some cases we get stuck in a cast bar we can't interrupt. Some QoL changes should be made to remedy these issues if possible.

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Having to redesign River of Blood and rebalance Bloodletter is not what I would call QoL.

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Yet the changes were made since the raid design at that time didn't challenge BRDs like it did with every other job. Many of the mechanics that challenged casters had little impact on BRDs due to their mobile DPS, and the utility they provided ensured them a spot in a majority of raid groups.

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There's plenty of ways to challenge ranged without even touching mobility. That's what made Yoshida's claim that BRDs with their ARR mobility was overpowered laughable at worst, questionable at best.

A basic way would be to design a fight with adds that instantly explode for heavy damage when killed, forcing ranged to focus those while still minding where they stand. Another way would be a mechanic that involves kiting (Kologarn in Ulduar had eye beams that prioritized ranged DPS, who had to kite the beams away from the raid). A "nullify MP recovery" aura would challenge physical ranged (since they are the source of MP regen) AND casters without affecting mobility in any way. The most obvious way would be air phases (I'm surprised no raid here has anything like this, despite being a no-brainer element in terms of encounter design) or the inclusion of a vital target that is outside melee range (aerial command unit and V0L7R0N's head in Ulduar). All of these challenge or put pressure on ranged DPS without involving mobility.

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I do not see how SE went "overboad with the nerfs," as BRDs can still perform well.

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The fact they thought 20% bonus damage was enough then had to buff it to 30% tells me they went overboard with the nerfs, since if BRDs had been nerfed less going into HW, 20% bonus damage from WM would have been enough. Chances are if they had left weapon damage alone and just nerfed the cross class stuff, WM as originally implemented would have been enough (sans the cast time issue, of course).

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Originally Posted by Velhart

If you play MMO's you have to take with a grain of salt that the job you play may completely change in an expansion or two down the line. Classes in Vanilla WoW are nothing like they are now.

Casting times added a skill level BRD needed. Sure it needs some adjustments to have the procs and OGCD's flow better, but it works just fine. On either BRD or MCH, I actually have to plan my next move accordingly to how the boss is going to react next. In 2.0 on BRD, only thing to do after the opener was only worry about boss mechanics and if someone needed a song. It was really a brain dead job. Even then, BRD is still the easiest job to play of the DPS. It is still easy to be mobile if you actually take time to learn how to react and move in between GCD's.

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MCH and BRD playing similar is exactly why this is polarizing for some people, specifically former bard mains (like me)

It's comments like the bolded one that are either directed at the wrong people (who are complaining about the wrong aspects anyway) or missing the context of others. It's never really been about the mobility, and you even mention it that it's "still easy" to, which kinda goes against the fact that adding cast times is a "layer of skill" which is load of baloney imo as mentioned below.

And also, using WoW as an example, classes have undergone a lot of changes, still maintained their own idenity and their gameplay was improved upon rather than being changed with a single skill that has no care for their previous skill set. Take hunters; they were a class that required full uptime on the boss to keep their numbers, regardless of if they were using a mana bar or a TP bar. The difference between the change was that intially, they'd have to use their self version of "ballad" to regen their mana and just wait for it to tick, now they have to use filler attacks (think heavy shot) to regen their TP thats used for more potent abilities. They took their initial playstyle and made it more dynamic. It's the exact opposite of BRD when I can't reactively play to my procs anymore, it's less engaging and less things to worry about because I know I won't be able to catch my straighter shots, it ends up being a "meh, it's a bonus" than "shit I missed the proc" after that acceptance. Not to mention all the classes in WoW have three different specs that all have their own type of gameplay, and at least one of them is still true to their identity in vanilla in some form ; for example mages in vanilla were pigeoned holed to frost and no matter the spec, all three specs heavy nuking classes. Now that aspect is given to fire mages and frost/arcane have their variation of stacks to manage and/or a pet. The only class that really had it bad with the homogenization within the 3 specializations were... hunters with Survival and marksmanship because in the end, they'd both boil down to shooting specialized rounds/arrows for extra damage. Now they made them specialize with poisons/augmented ammo with DoTs versus immobile/sniper shots for strong hits.

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Originally Posted by SlyRoyale

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IMHO, saying WM requires "Skill" is a load of baloney unless you were one of those bards that moved in 2.0 just for the sake of moving (and chances are these are the same bards that doesn't see foe, so it's a completely different spectrum anyway). Looking on paper, they have no combo extensions, one less skill to use to maintain DoTs and 2 extra oGCDs; this class is probably the closest to 2.0 in the current stage of the game compared to any other class, even the healers.

My biggest problem with bard going into 3.0 was that there was clearly not enough play testing done when WM (and GB, since they were functionally the same abilities) was actually a dps loss up until 60, and still was for the case of MCH, let alone with how WM worked with their 2.0 toolkit. They had to buff the damage increase in the end to solve the numbers of it. I honestly can't even say that's a nerf as much as it is a lack of foresight when they somehow did not account that auto attacks were around 24% of their dps in 2.0, even with barrage and det affecting autos (the former being only up every 90 seconds)

Funny enough when you mention river of blood, it's because of this passive and straighter shot that makes playing BRD infuriating for me. I feel a frequent sense of disconnect when I have to double weave my oGCDs inbetween weapon skills that have cast times, and the fact that I can't re actively play to my straighter shot procs (think firestarter with BLM, except you can't even use an oGCD to trigger it sooner and SS is a regular part of your priority list) because the cast times more often than not, do not allow me to. It ultimately feels like I'm the same job as MCH, except I get roadbumps. Double weaving on MCH delays your weaponskills and can hurt your wildfire dps during rapidfire, but at least in that scenario, I can fully say it's my fault because all of MCH's procs occur in a way that I can play to them re actively.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

The difference is that classes from vanilla WoW generally changed for the better. BRD changed for the worse. The redesigns were also done from bottom to top, not arbitrarily thrown in at a late point in the class' lifespan.

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If I recall I quite Retribution Paladin because of the bar system they put in place for it. Wasn't fun to deal with and I switched classes because of it. WoW's intents were to make things interesting, some worked, some didn't. Just like this game.

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And let's not bring in the "skill" argument. All you're doing when you mention that is trying to belittle those who dislike WM.

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I did not belittle anyone. Nor do I think any less of someone for not like WM. In general, yes it did raise the skill roof of BRD's. There are definitely skilled BRD's who have strong opinions and valid points in the flaws of the system, which there are currently. I am speaking to those who played BRD because it was a job they did not have to put as much effort into the rotation, and now mad that they have to deal with the higher skill roof. If that is not you, then disregard the statement, i'm not talking about you.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

Why was skill "needed?" Is having an easy job a problem?

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It is if the other jobs are much harder to play. It is an imbalance if one job is much easier to play. More players jump to that job and end of lacking in others. More balanced your jobs are in the skill roof department, the easier it is to choose based on preference more than resistance.

Right now, I still think it is easier to play a BRD/MCH than other DPS roles, but that is just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

MCH and BRD playing similar is exactly why this is polarizing for some people, specifically former bard mains (like me)

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This is definitely a valid point. BRD's WM should of been designed to cater to it's abilities more. As many have said, it is tacked on. It works fine in design. It is not as proc heavy job as MCH is with GB. Alas, it is there, and I have my doubts that developers would completely rework it, but they do need to enough to make it feel natural.

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It's comments like the bolded one that are either directed at the wrong people (who are complaining about the wrong aspects anyway) or missing the context of others. It's never really been about the mobility, and you even mention it that it's "still easy" to, which kinda goes against the fact that adding cast times is a "layer of skill" which is load of baloney imo as mentioned below.

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If I am coming off as speaking to every BRD, I am not. It can't be argued that many, many people in the forums have complained about lack of mobility when there is still plenty in the job. Just now you can't just be moving and shooting at the same time.

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IMHO, saying WM requires "Skill" is a load of baloney unless you were one of those bards that moved in 2.0 just for the sake of moving (and chances are these are the same bards that doesn't see foe, so it's a completely different spectrum anyway). Looking on paper, they have no combo extensions, one less skill to use to maintain DoTs and 2 extra oGCDs; this class is probably the closest to 2.0 in the current stage of the game compared to any other class, even the healers.

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From an observation standpoint, I think BRD is still the easiest job of the DPS. I can't give a 100% opinion since I have not leveled any melee jobs yet. Also the argument of skill is subjective. Just because I say it requires more skill, does not mean you have to be some top notch player to fully grasp the system. It just means you have to do more on your end than what you were expected to in 2.0 to be efficient at the job.

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My biggest problem with bard going into 3.0 was that there was clearly not enough play testing done when WM (and GB, since they were functionally the same abilities) was actually a dps loss up until 60, and still was for the case of MCH, let alone with how WM worked with their 2.0 toolkit. They had to buff the damage increase in the end to solve the numbers of it. I honestly can't even say that's a nerf as much as it is a lack of foresight when they somehow did not account that auto attacks were around 24% of their dps in 2.0, even with barrage and det affecting autos (the former being only up every 90 seconds)

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Developers not properly testing new jobs or new abilities is an understatement. Rather it be Ninja's mudra lag or lack of testing on BRD/MCH. This game could -really- benefit from play testing by chosen few of us. They need to only make a test realm, open it on specific dates to a limited amount of accounts and let people play with the jobs on dummy boss fights not relevant to the final content. Nothing is ever 100% balanced out the door, but to not catch that auto-attacks do more than the stance you made, that is such a amateur mistake.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

If I recall I quite Retribution Paladin because of the bar system they put in place for it. Wasn't fun to deal with and I switched classes because of it. WoW's intents were to make things interesting, some worked, some didn't. Just like this game.

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I don't understand. You quit ret because when they added holy power you had to think (albeit only a little) instead of basically always hitting what was the strongest ability off cooldown for the entire encounter... but you are ok with the bard changes because you have to think a little and plan ahead?

I personally switched to machinist because it's what I wanted to play and because I felt like (as I think Flo said) the WM addition to bard seemed tacked-on compared to machinist which was basically designed from the ground up to utilize GB well... then I went summoner because we had a member who only really wanted to play bard. But then they quit so machinist it is! :O at least for the time being. I prefer to do whatever my group needs.

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Originally Posted by Tsilyi

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I never said I had a problem with the new holy power system. It was a system that helped make Ret Pally more tactical. I just didn't have as much fun with it as other classes's styles and changes, so I switched. Same with BRD, I have no issues with WM and how it plays, but I like the design of MCH better, so I switched.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

If I recall I quite Retribution Paladin because of the bar system they put in place for it. Wasn't fun to deal with and I switched classes because of it. WoW's intents were to make things interesting, some worked, some didn't. Just like this game.

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Holy power was across the board for paladins, not just retribution. It allowed you to either play as you did before (using abilties it as soon as it came up) or using it for abilities that required max charges. It's a change, but it doesn't require changing the fundamentals of playing a paladin (melee with mostly unresistable spell damage and the use of mana) and their previous toolkit was reworked to accommodate for holy power. Aside from there, they've received a bunch of other changes along their life...like having their seals buff/blessings buffed from being 20 seconds/5 minutes (which honestly was a stupid design to have to begin with, even by the times of classic) to 30 minute buffs.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

If I am coming off as speaking to every BRD, I am not. It can't be argued that many, many people in the forums have complained about lack of mobility when there is still plenty in the job. Just now you can't just be moving and shooting at the same time.

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Right, but that's not the perspective of me, duelle or a handful of other (former) BRDs. Like, there's no reason to bring up the perspective of "movement isnt as affected as you think" when that's not what's being discussed. Other than that, this is an incredible pet peeve of mine when people try to pro-WM because it usually means they don't play a bard and just flinging the word "they needed an extra skill cap" when they don't really know or have an idea on how it effects their skill cap for all spectrum of bards (those who jump around for no reason versus those who don't move at all in 2.0)

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Originally Posted by Velhart

From an observation standpoint, I think BRD is still the easiest job of the DPS. I can't give a 100% opinion since I have not leveled any melee jobs yet. Also the argument of skill is subjective. Just because I say it requires more skill, does not mean you have to be some top notch player to fully grasp the system. It just means you have to do more on your end than what you were expected to in 2.0 to be efficient at the job.

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Difficulty and skill is subjective, which is why I'd still argue that WM brings nothing new to how bard plays other than breaking what wasn't broken (their oGCD resets). It'd be a similar sense of giving BLMs a fourht stack of astral/umbral and saying it raises the skill cap...well it would if you didn't use III spells to switch and instead relied on transpose. I'm personally not doing any more than I was in 2.0 to be honest except for 2 extra skills; There's no extra management of buff uptimes, DoTs or specific skill rotations, and I'm already standing still and only moving when I have to (which I already did in 2.0 since your active positioning was best left settled for telegraphs/party interaction). WM doesn't do anything but to punish unnecessary plays rather than enforcing you to do something (such as watching for positional procs with BotD or timers)

And just for fun

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Originally Posted by Velhart

From an observation standpoint, I think BRD is still the easiest job of the DPS.

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That title belongs to deliverance warriors.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

That title belongs to deliverance warriors.

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Fair enough. I could try to argue this but I would by lying to myself.

Personally (raid brd since first coil through final coil) I entirely changed my main to PLD because BRD was so drastically modified from its prior form. Turning it into a sort of caster made all the appeal disappear for me. :/

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Originally Posted by Velhart

If I recall I quit Retribution Paladin because of the bar system they put in place for it. Wasn't fun to deal with and I switched classes because of it. WoW's intents were to make things interesting, some worked, some didn't. Just like this game.

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Depends. I was perfectly happy with the Ret first-come-first-serve priority system it had in Wrath because it created windows of opportunity to use that utility the job boasted. Exorcism had a long enough cooldown that I could spend Art of War procs on insta-cast Flash of Light when needed. It also gave opportunity to use stuff like Lay on Hands and Hand/Blessing of Protection.

What pissed some people off about Holy Power was that it turned ret into a holy rogue, since Holy Power v1 was a copy of rogue combo points and a chunk of the DPS was gated behind Inquisition, just like rogues were gated via Slice 'n Dice. The funny thing is that Holy Power was added because the 2-bit Rets that weren't using the full extent of the spec complained that the spec was too easy and boring because they were tunnel-visioning the DPS buttons without using the utility the spec had access to when needed. As a result, Blizzard took the spec I loved and made it play like a class I didn't roll because I didn't like that class' gameplay.

The main thing is that Holy Power was terribly implemented at first and could have been a lot better. When I realized what Blizzard was trying to do, I started chanting one mantra that did partially reach them: "Holy Power has to behave like an actual resource that can be pooled to work. Also Inquisition is garbage and has no place in Ret gameplay". It took them two expansions to improve Holy Power enough for me to want to play Ret but it eventually happened (one for them to turn it into a resource that can be pooled, another to get rid of inquisition).

I personally wouldn't want BRD players to wait as long as I did with Ret, for one. I won't deny it is a very similar scenario, and it is likely why I'm here instead of ignoring the topic of BRD.

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It is if the other jobs are much harder to play. It is an imbalance if one job is much easier to play. More players jump to that job and end of lacking in others. More balanced your jobs are in the skill roof department, the easier it is to choose based on preference more than resistance.

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You shouldn't throw variety in gameplay to the wind. There are gameplay elements that certain people will not like, no matter how much you try to force it on them. Yes, more people will roll the easier classes, but that's sort of the point.

969 Prot paladins were very common during Wrath since they were very easy to play, but as a whole it was a good thing because it swelled the number of tanks that were capable of clearing content. I'd rather have more people doing something they enjoy over increasing the chance of failure because you're designing everything around a certain skill/dexterity level. I feel part of the reason so many people in this game "fail at DPS" is because certain DPS jobs have contrived mechanics that have gotten worse with the expansion. Sure, you'll have the occasional ice mage RP'er (AKA a BLM that will only spam Blizzard spells), but that does not excuse some of the designs in place.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I'd rather have more people doing something they enjoy over increasing the chance of failure because you're designing everything around a certain skill/dexterity level. I feel part of the reason so many people in this game "fail at DPS" is because certain DPS jobs have contrived mechanics that have gotten worse with the expansion. Sure, you'll have the occasional ice mage RP'er (AKA a BLM that will only spam Blizzard spells), but that does not excuse some of the designs in place.

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Beautifully worded. The operating thesis for 3.0 seems to have been "Don't like movement mechanics? Too damn bad".

It's not even so much about sheer difficulty (nobody who hates or struggles with movement mechanics will be doing high-end raid content), but that it narrows the focus. Putting ALL of the difficulty into movement mechanics makes the game less accessible and less interesting.

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Originally Posted by Umbreon_skystorm

I didn't want to start a post of bard is bad... just like... give me an really good excuse based on why you hate bard.... if you don't ok... but I really don't get why they keep saying its a bad class

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It's not that it's a bad class or bad idea. It's just horribly implemented. For one thing you don't have a class play a certain way for 51 levels then yank the rug out from under them with an ability that changes the entire play style. It would be like having ninja go pure ranged at lvl 52 it changes everything that some people liked about the class. Add to it that cast timers are forcing us to miss bloodletter and straighter shot procs and it negatively affects people who chose bard because it's mobile playstyle compensated for higher latency and you have a formula for very angry players.