SB Bard Changes: Good or Bad? Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Exterium

Hmmm... that's pretty much impossible, I'm at 306 ilvl and around 1500 crit

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Impossible? Lol.

My lodestone: https://puu.sh/wq4zS/527cf0784f.jpg

I have kind of a newbie question since I haven't been playing long... I just unlocked iron jaws and I was trying to learn what it is and what it does.. Goggled it before I came on here and still kind of confused on the whole kind of reapplying dots thing... When in the rotation is it best used? And with a certain skill maybe?

reset your dots lol, use it when ur dots are at 1-3s left

Tbh, I am actually okay with both the bowmage style and the 4.0 bard, though I cannot really say anything much about the 4.0 bard's dps, since I have not check it with act or those tools. As in gameplay, I feel 4.0 gave bard a more unique character, which is nice. (I have to adapt a lot from the old bowmage style though...)

Some things that I noticed though: Even though Traubador's idea is absolutely interesting in theory, getting the preferred effect in the right time is pretty hard, since throughout the fight, you will be rotating through all the songs endlessly. For you to get the correct effect at the right time, a lot of planning in song rotation needs to be done, imo. I will need to check it out :P.

The second thing is how you will be pressing just heavy shot and not having any ogcd in between. This seems rather different from the bowmage in 3.0, where there's just too much ogcds to use in the 0.5s duration after the cast time. Furthermore, since the cast times are gone, you can basically put in 2 ogcd in between each gcd really, but there's nothing to press in most of the situations... It just seems awkward, but it's not bad or anything.

There is only one concern with the current bard for me: it's heavily RnG dependent (rely heavily on crits), which makes the bard's dps varies a lot. Is this a good thing? It depends on the POV. Normally, I feel RnG should act as an add-on to the skill rather than a core mechanic to the skills, meaning it's not that bad to have the RnG on your side, but having it procs would be very good. This, I feel, is not that case for Bard, as all songs rely on crits procs to activate its additional effect. However, even though I said "concern", I am not going to say that it's bad, because there's no proof that RnG ruins bard (no dps statistics and such). It could turn out really good in the end :P

My question with the new Bard is one of control vs. variation. Essentially, I want to control what song I'm using at a given moment; their being oGCD now would otherwise wholly enable this. But, because of their CDs, one only has control over an average of 3 seconds per song (the difference between the 80s CD and the 30s duration each). And yet, if we had this control, and an obvious better choice for a given situation, we wouldn't see much variance. AoEs would be MB. Focus targeting from a DoT spread would be WM. Acclerating the spread of more DoTs or struggling to fit in an extra IJ across 7 targets in preparation for a rushed MB — AP.

Yet, would having control over the durations, not just the order of the songs its initial cycle, really be such a bad thing? If the choices were just a bit more balanced, such as AP being more worthwhile, or MB reduced to its original River of Blood strength, the ability to swap as we please seems like an enjoyable change to me.

I'd rather be able to swap songs at will, but each stack, of buff or 'ammunition' lasts for a given amount of time, allowing you to better swap between songs.
...And that all this info should be optionally visible on status bars...

That's to say nothing of how I'd rather regain some of the more finely tactical or bursty aspects of the HW Bard, or even being able to actually choicefully support our comrades as when it actually made a difference what song we played. At least, we're only ever going to be a permanent Crit Fey Wind, could we at least have some more control over our how our songs affect us, as to better make something of their rotational impacts?

HW Bard is like the second Highlander movie. Let's just pretend it never existed, and everything will be fine.

Requiem is like explosive diarrhea now, especially since bard has a thimble sized mana pool. They could have just put hard timers on it (like 15s, 2m cooldown).
I find I'm really missing the old aoe. The new ballad mechanic is clunky. I only have 3 choices for a big group of trash mobs.
A) I'll need to mutli-dot to reliably proc. If I do that, I'm not aoe-ing, and the big group of mobs is dead (or close to it) by the time I'm ready to use ballad and it's wasted. The dots don't see their full duration either, so there's another inefficiency.
B) Use ballad with only a few dots, and hope I get lucky with RNG. Sure, empyreal auto-procs, but you get one (maybe two) per song. Usually, the effect is marginal at best.
C) Just not use it at all, or go with Paeon instead.

this job now feels like wow fire mages , crit dependant to the max ...if your dots dont crit your whole job mechanic doesnt do anything for u ...thanks good EA trait exist but still ugh.

i would love to see 1 change...remove Nature's Minne and give Brds a way to "bane" dots , with Mana song and 5-6 mobs doting 1 and spreading the dots would with lovely to spam rain of death .....

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Originally Posted by Escadora

Impossible? Lol.

My lodestone: https://puu.sh/wq4zS/527cf0784f.jpg

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I'm all for debates on the boards, but when someone calls you a liar, rebuttals like this are gold. Seems to be a learn to play Issue if she's unfamiliar with min/max itemization.

HW Bard is like the second Highlander movie. Let's just pretend it never existed, and everything will be fine. LOL

Well im sure it is just choice of gear as well. Im only around 1500 crit, but I also have like 900 Det. Not by choice, just because of the gear that has dropped for me. He has less than 400 Det and is likely why he has so much crit. Once we all have a plethora of gear to choose from, itll be easier to fool around with stat weights. But I agree, 2000 crit isnt impossible espeically when your other stats are much lower.

My bard was collecting dust after HW when it became a generic version of a Black Mage. Now it is finally a bard once again. Even at level 60 the class is already back to its fun pre-HW and with added mechanics with the songs.

To all lv70 BRDs, are you all saving barrage strictly for Refulgent Arrow or throwing it on Empyreal Arrow occasionally.

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Originally Posted by ExiaQuanta

To all lv70 BRDs, are you all saving barrage strictly for Refulgent Arrow or throwing it on Empyreal Arrow occasionally.

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Empyreal is 230, Refulgent is 300. Using it on refulgent is a 30% damage increase. As long as you don't lose 1/3rd of your barrages over the course of the fight as a result it's almost definitely a dps gain to save for refulgent; it's not like the proc is that uncommon that you'll wait long.

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Originally Posted by Furious

Empyreal is 230, Refulgent is 300. Using it on refulgent is a 30% damage increase. As long as you don't lose 1/3rd of your barrages over the course of the fight as a result it's almost definitely a dps gain to save for refulgent; it's not like the proc is that uncommon that you'll wait long.

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I agree, when it comes off cd, I try not to hold it for more than 3-4 gcds.

Heyo! Lvl70 BRD and ilvl309.

Would love to know how stats are weighed as I’m looking into melds very soon, also a lil help on rotations will be appreciated.

That being said, I love Pitch Perfect, I’ve been told to use it on 2 stacks and not wait for 3. Barrage+Refulgent always for me

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Originally Posted by BakaChin

Heyo! Lvl70 BRD and ilvl309.

Would love to know how stats are weighed as I’m looking into melds very soon, also a lil help on rotations will be appreciated.

That being said, I love Pitch Perfect, I’ve been told to use it on 2 stacks and not wait for 3. Barrage+Refulgent always for me

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I was actually just thinking about this today. Using perfect pitch on every two stacks instead of waiting for the three.

Admittedly all I've done on bard thus far is whack a few dummies and a 60 roulette.

But there is one thing I think they missed.

Given that most jobs have ui elements for their core stuff. Like ninja has a Huton guage. Monk has a GL one. Sch has aetherflow charrge guage etc etc.

I'm wondering why bard doesn't have a more prominent ui Guage for it's Straight Shot buff instead it's still buried in the myriad of other buffs and stuff.

All it'd really need is a small timer element like Huton. And maybe make it change colour if you get a straighter shot proc.. would be much more prominent and visible than constantly trying to read a bar full of buffs. which is why huton and other core things got there own elements so curious why straight shot didnt

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Originally Posted by SugarBunz

I was actually just thinking about this today. Using perfect pitch on every two stacks instead of waiting for the three.

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It's a bit difficult to work out the relative value of doing this or waiting for three, and it depends a lot on your crit chance. We're not actually interested in the direct value of a single stack or a single shot, we're interested in the total value of the stacks you can generate throughout the duration of the song. The chance to lose a stack when going from 2 stacks up to 3 based solely on the fact that both dots crit at the same time is almost exactly crit chance^2; at 25% crit, we would lose ~6.25% of our total stacks over time when going from 2 to 3 stacks. As crit goes up, the number of stacks lost this way goes up and so does the number of 2 stacks that become 3 for "free" when you only go to 2 stacks before using.

However, the gain per stack is a lot higher than 6.25%, so I think it would take a relatively high crit chance to make it worth sitting on 2 stacks overall. The value per stack when going from 2 to 3 goes from 120potency to 140, which is a gain of ~15% damage per stack. There is some overhead loss that brings this number down a bit (you would sometimes have to use a 1 stack at the end of the song after using a 3stack, when you would have done 2:2), but the overhead isn't that large.

Broadly speaking, as long as you can always use pitch perfect within the window of a single dot tick from proccing (ie: use the 3 stacks before the following dot tick from it proccing), it's going to always be the right choice to wait for 3 stacks until absurdly high crit chance.

Anyone bards on ps4 that have any pics of their hotbar loadouts?

I kind of wish Refulgent arrow was just a straight shot replacement when the straighter shot buff was up, instead of a completely separate skill. Overall I'm enjoying the new bard, but a few minor things bug me. I'd say first it's which songs affect Troubadour in which way. I would think Mage's Ballad would protect against magic, Army's Paeon against physical and then the HP boost would be on the WM. That's just being nitpicky, but that feels more logical and easier to remember. As others have mentioned it seems odd that it has no effect on us personally either. Army's Paeon feels lackluster compared to the other two songs. The last thing that gets to me is having my effective aoe tied to a cooldown. Are other classes getting locked out of doing decent aoe damage every other group of mobs?

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Originally Posted by Furious

Empyreal is 230, Refulgent is 300. Using it on refulgent is a 30% damage increase. As long as you don't lose 1/3rd of your barrages over the course of the fight as a result it's almost definitely a dps gain to save for refulgent; it's not like the proc is that uncommon that you'll wait long.

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I'm revisiting this; the number of times Im sitting there waiting for multiple empyreal cooldowns to come and go without a straight shot proc feels really, really bad.

I still think its probably true that it's worth waiting for a straighter shot proc to use barrage on refulgent, but has anyone done any math around it? It feels REAALLLY bad when you can go for >30 seconds easily with no procs. Let alone aoe!