HW bard- channeling?

It's too early to decide how it will play out. A fully channelled Heavy Shot for example, may deal a base of 300+ potency per attack, which is greater, or nearly as good as 1 GCD + 1/2 GCD + base AA damage. Another thing, it could also boost the base damage of your DoTs. So think about this for a moment....

Wind Bite is base 60 Potency, 45 DoT potency for 6 ticks. Let's say a fully channelled skill deals x2 damage.

That's a base 120 Potency skill for 90 DoT potency for 6 ticks. Then you have Sidewinder which increases the effect of your DoTs. Let's say it provides a 30% buff to your DoTs.

That's a 120 Potency Windbite for 117 Dot Potency for 6 ticks, totalling to 822 Potency.

Now, this is obviously a massive overestimation and I fully doubt the multipliers are accurate, but that's how scary the damage output could potentially be if it's done correctly.

You can still play bard at lower dps than other classes while maintaining mobility and support.

Should that support not be needed you can go turret and do better dps, probably about the same as other casters.

To expect otherwise is ridiculous.

You cannot have full mobility and do the same dps as casters, why would you play a caster?

This is a good idea imo, so bards can actually be fulltime dps if they wish to, but on mobile fights and ones where they need to sing they can retain mobility while staying competitive.

The actual damage numbers are not of concern to me. They will obviously be enough to make turret stance worthwhile. Otherwise, it will not be used, and it will be buffed. This is a silly thing to be worried over.

I wanna see how this turns out. I don't really wanna be forced to act as a caster to reach optimal DPS. That's precisely why I'm a BRD and not a BLM. If I need to use Wanderer's Minuet to be able to reach my job's full potential, and pretty much become a caster, I'll be disappointed.

I'm all for new skills and stuff, but changing the playstyle that much, no thanks. If you want to stay still to shoot, go BLM. Or maybe they could make Machinist be the ranged-aimed-shot job and leave Bard with it's own unique playstyle.

Of course, it's all based on assumptions and may work differently, at least I hope so.

Eh, I just think of it like we are getting a new stance over our own. If anything I'd like to have is a trait to get the first shot in wm to crit. Master Archer and stuff. Besides, it's a neat idea which still allows BRD to remain relevant even without using wm.

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Originally Posted by Inferiae

I wanna see how this turns out. I don't really wanna be forced to act as a caster to reach optimal DPS. That's precisely why I'm a BRD and not a BLM. If I need to use Wanderer's Minuet to be able to reach my job's full potential, and pretty much become a caster, I'll be disappointed.

I'm all for new skills and stuff, but changing the playstyle that much, no thanks. If you want to stay still to shoot, go BLM. Or maybe they could make Machinist be the ranged-aimed-shot job and leave Bard with it's own unique playstyle.

Of course, it's all based on assumptions and may work differently, at least I hope so.

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Other than having to Hard Cast an ability, what makes the "new" playstyle of the Bard like a Black Mage? Because everyone says this and it absolutely baffles me.

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Originally Posted by Dervy

Other than having to Hard Cast an ability, what makes the "new" playstyle of the Bard like a Black Mage? Because everyone says this and it absolutely baffles me.

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Didn't you know? Cast times make BRDs into BLMs and positionals make NINs into MNKs.
It's not like their rotations are largely different or there's anything more to those jobs.

/sarcasm

To be fair, their rotations are LESS complex than BLM.

So that would actually be a good thing.

We don't know exactly how it will work, but I'm assuming you can turn off this effect at any time...

So... Why would BRD's be like BLM exactly? Maybe if you only have to move like one or two steps it's worth staying in that "stance", but if you have to move around, you would just turn off the song and continue attacking like you do right now.

Example of T13: You should be standing still for big parts of this fight... In Adds phases, and in parts of the other phases too. You could for example use Minuet in first and last phase while standing still at a good location(should really do this right now too), and when he casts Megaflare, turn of Minuet and go about doing things just as you usually do. Then get back into Minuet and wait for Earthshakers. If you're not targeted, then everything is good, if you are, you can still finish your "cast" and have time to turn off song to continue attacking while moving.

If you move like a BLM, then you would be doing a bad job as BRD... At least from what we know of it right now.

In fact, you might never use it during some fights, because you have to move too frequently.

Wanderer's Minuet will NOT be enough of a damage boost for it be worth playing like a BLM all of the time. If it were, then they would be OP probably

For anyone freaking out inexplicably that WM mode will somehow make you spec for spell speed, you're panicking over nothing. Windbite, Venomous Bite etc are and have always been "Weaponskills" (in the actual tooltip text) which are governed by Skill Speed. While they will be the first Weaponskills (in ARR at least) to have a cast time, there is already an established precedence in non-casters' involvement with spell speed. Sword/Shield Oath, Flash, and songs are all considered "Spells" (in the actual tooltip text) and affected by spell speed.

tl;dr you aren't going to need spell speed just because your attacks now have a "cast time".

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

For anyone freaking out inexplicably that WM mode will somehow make you spec for spell speed, you're panicking over nothing. Windbite, Venomous Bite etc are and have always been "Weaponskills" (in the actual tooltip text) which are governed by Skill Speed. While they will be the first Weaponskills (in ARR at least) to have a cast time, there is already an established precedence in non-casters' involvement with spell speed. Sword/Shield Oath, Flash, and songs are all considered "Spells" (in the actual tooltip text) and affected by spell speed.

tl;dr you aren't going to need spell speed just because your attacks now have a "cast time".

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It's a double edged sword for Bards again. Assuming the cast time for your Weapon Skills under Wanderers Minuet are exactly the same as their GCD, skillspeed will decrease the duration between each DoT tick. This sounds great, especially with what I posted. But, Bloodletter comes off from every DoT tick. So you'll get Shorter Cast Times, but also much quicker Bloodletter procs.

If Skillspeed actually does affect the duration of DoT tick, again I'm using if, then it would all depend on how it scales vs your GCD and DoT ticks. If it scales better with DoT ticks than it does with GCD, you're going to run into serious problems of getting BLprocs as your window of opportunity would greatly diminish with high Skillspeed, making you potentially miss a proc of Bloodletter.

And if it DOES scale with Spellspeed rather than Skillspeed, you're probably going to want close to 0 Skillspeed, again due to all of that GCD clipping and potential BLproc loss.

This is all me chatting into thin air, but it's highly probable it'll work like this. I could be completely wrong however. I guess we'll have to wait and see when we get the NDA lift either tomorrow or sometime next week from the Press.

Gearing for a bard is going to be verrry interesting.