Bard - they broke my job

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Originally Posted by ChloeGrace

Because they obviously don't think it's broken, and don't care enough to address it.

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I believe I can fly. If two hundred people tell me I can't, I'd reconsider.

Bard will always have a raid spot during progression. however, if the job remains the same it wont be required anymore with higher ilevel gear. only if there are long extended fights that will drain the melees tp. otherwise we are just a burden!

the fact that war doing comparable dps to MCN and close to Bard, makes me really hate this game.

and that smn is more mobile at times compared to Magebard.

whatever was inteded to Machinist DOES NOT FIT with bard playstyle at all. unfortunately SE made a big mistake with the ranged dps. and unfortunately WM will remain, and i dont think they will remove it any time soon (maybe look forward to it in 4.0).

i think we are stuck with it. they could make it better and increase the dps increase % to make it somewhat vialbe.

otherwise, im afraid we are stuck with.

im not optimistic, they could do some cosmetic potency buffs here and there. everything else will stay the same :(

i mean look at how long it took them to fix/remake tri-disaster. or how long it took them to address drg magic defense issue.

Bard and Machinist are both in severe need of improving, I feel however a lot of the suggestions in this thread are overly complex ways of doing it and not required to such an extent being so complex aka changing a lot of skills instead of just one and/or changing a lot of stats instead of just one...the biggest issue is DPS compared to other classes currently and while for example on Bard WM is a good idea in principle aka the idea that sacrifice mobility to increase DPS; it fails miserably at this on multiple aspects.

The simplest and easiest solution to increasing DPS while under WM is for me removing the auto-attack restriction. Anyone who thinks that would not make a significant improvement for very little effort on SE's side is seriously underestimating the impact auto-attack has on overall DPS. Without that restriction I believe the class would be more inline with others while using WM, however unless they remove that restriction it is hard to know for sure. While the current form of WM is not really detrimental to our DPS, it does not improve it much either, certainly not inline with most other classes.

In my opinion the restriction is not even required in the first place as tackling mobility is handled by the two other elements of WM stance such as cast timers and cancellation of skills in progress if have to move, the auto-attack restriction takes it too far and in combination with those other two things is partially why we have serious DPS comparison issues with other classes. The 20% increase on WM is already offset by cast timers and mobility consequences on casting skills, any benefit is damaged to much by the lack of auto-attack on top of the knowledge groups won't stop asking you to be playing Paeon or MB which is -15% from time to time and those skills alone reduce that 20% from WM down to 5%, adding on that the mobility consequences, cast times and auto-attack restriction then no wonder DPS is not on par with other classes despite using WM.

Increasing WD is another partial solution but it is not the sole solution, WM is doubtful will be removed so it is best to make the skill more worthwhile and not so crippling of which can be done with auto-attack re-enabling to start with; WD increase on the other hand can be used/increased in combination with that to further balance the class or fine tune it. I have not yet had enough first hand experience to make proposals for Machinist though. There is a reason SE why these forums are not filled with 'fix [x] other class' compared to how many are present and popping up for Bard and Machinist, these two classes above all others need improving, Machinist the most but Bard second.

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No cast times on any skill. I suggested to remove WM altogether and replace with those suggested skills. With that change, BRD playstyle will remain exactly the same as 2.0, they won't be OP and they will still be competitive with a better chance at getting a raid spot.

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good good im with ya ^^

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Originally Posted by Snugglebutt

The simplest and easiest solution to increasing DPS while under WM is for me removing the auto-attack restriction.

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If SE does that, they should also make EA and IJ usable outside of WM, so that the gap between normal mode and WM mode doesn't become so large that it becomes correct to stay in WM for all but the most extreme movement cases. Nobody wants that kind of complete "removal" of the job, including SE, which is perhaps why WM is balanced so meekly to begin with.

Plus, non-WM Bard needs a boost badly anyway; every other DPS got a potency gain of some measure (Elixir Drive and extra ninjutsus are no joke, even if DRG got pushed harder) while Bard broke even with Sidewinder being counterbalanced by the Barrage nerf.

I don't hate this solution, if SE is willing to backtrack on their original setup. It's better than some of the other wacky things being tossed around.

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No cast times on any skill. I suggested to remove WM altogether and replace with those suggested skills. With that change, BRD playstyle will remain exactly the same as 2.0, they won't be OP and they will still be competitive with a better chance at getting a raid spot.

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Hear, hear!

what i find to be the biggest shame in all of this is that Sqaure still did not give us any feedback nothing from the gms or anything makes me wonder if they even care. even wow reacts faster and that says something

Let's see here... Let me start with something that is very basic, an issue with the job 2.X and is continuing into 3.X.
It was mentioned much earlier (or in another BRD thread) that we should have never been penalized in the first place for having our songs then get penalized for using them. This has been the case since 2.1 and this needs to change. BRD has it's place in progression only. There are points were the songs are just no longer needed, why would anyone bring a BRD over an actual damage job at that point? Why should 7 others basically be penalized for continuing to bring the BRD with?

Okay, new abilities, well only one new ability that is the problem, WM: Casts times being added for WM is not that bad. Even with the casts times, BRDs have more 'basic' movement then others. You can move a decent distance while under WM to not be not see too bad of an overall damage penalty if you are paying attention to the encounters. With that, please get away from any sort of standing still buff. (I.E. anything that stacks as long as you don't move.) These fights force you to move, having to do simply do mechanics shouldn't be a damage penalty.

Increasing overall damage in and out of WM can be easily achieved by some simple changes.
1) Increase weapon damage. Put it on par with other damage dealers. This is just a flat out needed to even start fixing the job as a whole.
(first possible solution)
2) During WM changes: Remove the damage bonus from WM... Yes, correct, REMOVE the bonus. Basically have it add cast times as it does at this very moment. The reasons for this below.
2a) Allow auto attack during WM
2b) WM should be changed to an instant buff (ala Cleric Stance)
2c) Continue to allow EA and IA only to be used during WM.
2d) Allow WM to remove (or reduce drastically) the damage penalty while using other songs.
I think changing WM to be more like Cleric Stance will allow people to actually weave it in for a general damage increase while those that can stay in it for longer have overall increases then either weaving or just not using WM at all.

Okay, with that, the more exciting changes that can be done.
-Heavy shot now has a 30%+ change to proc straighter shot.
-Increase DoT potency when WB or VB are refreshed with IJ.
-Increase critical hit chance of damage over time effects. (more Bloodletter)
-Reduce TP costs overall
It can also change how songs work too which would be very nice to have. For example)
Under the effects of Wander's Minuet, In addition to their normal effects.
1) Mage's ballad will now refreshes a slight amount of TP for party members.
2) Army's Peon will now refreshes a slight amount of MP for party members.
3) Foe Requiem lowers physical resistance by X%

Giving reasons to use WM more often should have been the goal of the ability from the start (after fixing the job in the first place though)

To those natural idiots who think that our utility is anything meaningful if this percentage damage scaleoff keeps up. Need for TP regen can be negated very effectively if you pipe down a little bit in your TP consumption skills, just a little bit ... and go all the crit det acc way on gear. So its way better to get another tank instead of bard, they got a backup tank just in case and their dmg is even to us, if fights are tuned to keep bards/machinists in dooable content loop. Ppl will always go the most less restrictive play, If extra tank can do same dmg as bard and they get safty net to boot, we will be kept out of PF. I allready saw 3 tank compositions on PF - 3 tanks 3 dps and 1 healer for content were undersized parties are allowed, because warrior just does the job perfectly with relative easy.

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Originally Posted by SethLex

250 replies, 25 thousand views in 5 days - why is this not answered by SE?

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Just in case anyone was wondering, the equivalent thread to this one on the official Japanese forum is 50 pages long (40 of which are disgruntled), has 250,000 views, and they seem to be asking that same question. I plugged it into Google Translate out of curiosity after reading the two big threads on Reddit, just to see if they were remotely upset, and they look PISSSED OFF. It's the "Kyujutsu-shi-bard thread." The sadness starts at the top of page 11.

https://translate.google.com/transla...551&edit-text=

And if anyone can confirm, it also seems to me that (over there, at least, I'm not 60 yet so I don't know) bards are being excluded from PF and kicked from DF? I could easily be wrong...but even if the damage was repaired, it's not all about the damage, it's about how the job FEELS, and the "flow" is just gone.

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Originally Posted by WaffleFaerie

snippity snip

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GOOD I AM GLAD TO READ THIS!

Thank you so much.

They seem even more angry than I could have imagined.

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Originally Posted by WaffleFaerie

And if anyone can confirm, it also seems to me that (over there, at least, I'm not 60 yet so I don't know) bards are being excluded from PF and kicked from DF? I could easily be wrong...but even if the damage was repaired, it's not all about the damage, it's about how the job FEELS, and the "flow" is just gone.

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It's just not optimal in some parties to have 2 BRDs or MCHs in the same party. There's a "DPS check" in Bismarck EX that requires a high DPS to down the adds in time. Even in Ravana EX, there's an enrage timer at 10 minutes which also makes having two BRDs or MCHs not very good.

well and why shoulndt they flame the everloving crap out of this? japanese are just like us very into the classes play and changes such as this will cause an uproar. wich the best thing that happened to me this week ^^
also again to those who still think we only cry for more dmg you guys are only part right dmg is needed yes but we want our damn movement back thats the key. again there are enough BLMs we dont need more of them.

We have plenty of movement, its a 1.5 cast with a 2.5 CD. During that time you can use instants (off GCD) abilities while you are moving. With the exception of BizEX (which I've had maybe 10 pulls on so far), I haven't found the need to be constantly moving though even there it really doesn't seem to bad anymore as the group I play with is getting adjusted to the mechanics.
Changes can be done to improve WM. I made just a few suggestions on page 25 that could work and really bring life to WM as it stands with cast times.

At least even japanese players are complaining, at least i'm more optimistic that SE will listen to our concerns.

I told my FC i'd love to see a move where I could toggle a stance and get more DPS when standing still, but retain current DPS when I have to turn it off. Then they go and come out with these changes to bard. If I hadn't switched to MCH, I would have loved to mess with these changes to brd. It's just unfortunate that changes were made to DET and CRIT and auto-attacks and all that jazz...I went to parse my bard on a dummy in 3.0 and could only average about 460-470, whereas previously after 3 minutes I could hit 490-520...

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Originally Posted by Seifa

At least even japanese players are complaining, at least i'm more optimistic that SE will listen to our concerns.

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This. Our greatest hope and ally are the Japanese playerbase. As sad as it is to say, SE is far more apt to listening to changes needed from the JP players, always have, hopefully wont always be the case, but how seriously they take NA/EU issues when compared to the JP players is highly highly questionable.

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Originally Posted by Panasync

This. Our greatest hope and ally are the Japanese playerbase. As sad as it is to say, SE is far more apt to listening to changes needed from the JP players, always have, hopefully wont always be the case, but how seriously they take NA/EU issues when compared to the JP players is highly highly questionable.

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Maybe this some sort of united effort, then? Strength in numbers? Post in their thread also letting them know that the EU/NA community is also concerned about this and want a change.

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Originally Posted by SethLex

Maybe this some sort of united effort, then? Strength in numbers? Post in their thread also letting them know that the EU/NA community is also concerned about this and want a change.

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I would call these threads that, I just think that the JP playerbase has the ears of the developers when they issue complaints like this, where as NA SE can mention that we're complaining, but if/and how much the JP developers care about us is questionable. I get the feeling the JP developers pull what they did in 2.0 with WAR a lot of times when NA/EU complaints spring up (you're just not using WAR how it was intended yet, wait until you unlock it's full potential... buff a patch or two later due to all the double paladin parties being the norm and WAR being crap).

They also should give us some ability on GCD that has an instant cast under WM. BLM has Scathe, SMN has RuinII, but if BRD has to move out of AOE and he has no luck with some procs he.. just runs?

I had to register an account just to add my voice to this discussion. I have played Bard since 2.0ARR release.

What we have now, is NOT Bard. I dont really mind that we don't do the best DPS (being comparable would be nice, but thats just balance) what I HATE is that they changed how the job plays. No more double GCD weaving, movement causing DPS loss, clipping on cast times due to being moved (pushbacks etc) all adding up to an extremely unenjoyable playstyle. If I wanted to stay put and dps I would be a blackmage.

If I choose not to use WM (Which I have had to do so it still feels like im playing Bard) then I don't get access to new abilities except Sidewinder (once a minute......)

Get rid of WM, give us access to EA and IJ without WM, old Barrage and give us a lower cooldown on SW and I would be content. You can take away WM and our 3 second pre-emptive Esuna (what a joke of an ability) and just leave us with 3 new ones.

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Originally Posted by Empty-handed

And most off all close to useless. The gap between us and the other jobs is huge. I just saw my friends clear Bismarck with 3 tanks monk drg and smn ...... Ravana too.
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I ran The Vault with 2 tanks - DRK and WAR, and a ACT as healer with me as MCH. Tearing through the trashes as if speed run lmao.

On a side note, just raised MCH to 60 and I can say MCH is much smoother.

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Originally Posted by Smeggles

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Heck, I wouldn't even care if they took away WM and Warden's Paean with nothing in return. Will gladly have EA, IJ, SW and Bard's mobility back.

My thoughts, after leveling up, gearing up, and clearing ravana-extreme already:

- Empyreal Arrow should not have a casting timer. It already has a medium recast. This should be enough.

- Iron Jaws also should not have a casting timer.

- Wanderer's Minuet should be a 30% damage increase, to offset the huge damage lost for the older, main DPS skills having a casting timer.

- Remove the shared recast timer for Rain of Death, but keep it under Wanderer's Minuet.

- Wide Volley: there's absolutely no reason to use this ability anymore. It's either Rain of Death, or Quick Knock. Wide Volley should now chain Quick Knock.

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Originally Posted by Nanga

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My contribution to your very good list of improvement would be Barrage.
If WM is not active, Barrage should function as before back in ARR but with WM active, Barrage should work the way it is now.

This would give us Bard players an option whether to use or not use WM without losing our past playstyle/dps.

Wanderer's Minuet:
1) Either a) allow battle voice to affect it, or b) increase it to 30%. Minuet itself isn't really the problem though.

Empyreal Arrow
This is the real problem. The move is mainly supposed to be offseting your auto attack loss, while the 20% on your abilities covers the remaining difference. But this is half the reason why Minuet is underwhelming as an ability -- reclaiming the lost AA damage is taking up way too much of your effort while using it.


So, buff Empyreal Arrow to about 450-475 potency. This way, as long as you're using it, you shouldnt really be worrying about your AA loss. 14 seconds worth of auto attacks is roughly 500 potency worth of damage a bard is losing in the stance. And every second you leave Empyreal Arrow up without casting it, you're wasting even more AA damage. Even considering optimal conditions for both stance and off-stance, there is no reason why using minuet as intended should provide only marginal DPs increases.

Sidewinder
Does it need to be 60 seconds? Can we make it like 30ish? With everyone else throwing out ridiculous combo attacks, and our best damage being tethered to Barrage, i dont feel like this is strong enough to be on a 60s cooldown. Plus, if we're intended to stay in Minuet during high-mobility fights, we need access to all the instant cast we can get.



OR:

While minuet is up, have every successful cast shave some seconds off Barrage's timer.

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Originally Posted by Edellis

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Minuet is a problem though. The fact that you have only a small window to weave in so many abilities (including an ability that resets randomly) is the problem. Increasing potency numbers isn't going to make the class fluid like it once was. I see two solutions: let us use abilities during casts or rework the whole Wanderer's Minuet idea entirely into something like Sniper Training from WoW.

I say rechange WM altogether and make it a party song buff. Change Keeper's Paeon to also be a party-wide buff as well. That would make Bard truly valuable in helping the party.

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Originally Posted by Nanga

- Empyreal Arrow should not have a casting timer. It already has a medium recast. This should be enough.

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Thus denying us Barrage'd EA. Haha, no.

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Iron Jaws also should not have a casting timer.

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Removing a cast time on a weapon skill that shaves off a GCD already doesn't help the problem.

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- Remove the shared recast timer for Rain of Death, but keep it under Wanderer's Minuet.

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The point being?

Under 1000 char, I didn't quote changed that I'd agree with. But I'm definitely interested in the reasoning behind what I quoted.

Buff Bards or Riot
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

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Originally Posted by Entropic

Buff Bards or Riot
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

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Worry not my dear brother in arms. Pitchforks have been raised and tables have been flipped over at the JP forums. Our Japanese brethren shares our frustrations.

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Originally Posted by Edellis

Wanderer's Minuet:
1) Either a) allow battle voice to affect it, or b) increase it to 30%. Minuet itself isn't really the problem though.

Empyreal Arrow
This is the real problem. The move is mainly supposed to be offseting your auto attack loss, while the 20% on your abilities covers the remaining difference. But this is half the reason why Minuet is underwhelming as an ability -- reclaiming the lost AA damage is taking up way too much of your effort while using it.


So, buff Empyreal Arrow to about 450-475 potency. This way, as long as you're using it, you shouldnt really be worrying about your AA loss. 14 seconds worth of auto attacks is roughly 500 potency worth of damage a bard is losing in the stance. And every second you leave Empyreal Arrow up without casting it, you're wasting even more AA damage. Even considering optimal conditions for both stance and off-stance, there is no reason why using minuet as intended should provide only marginal DPs increases.

Sidewinder
Does it need to be 60 seconds? Can we make it like 30ish? With everyone else throwing out ridiculous combo attacks, and our best damage being tethered to Barrage, i dont feel like this is strong enough to be on a 60s cooldown. Plus, if we're intended to stay in Minuet during high-mobility fights, we need access to all the instant cast we can get.



OR:

While minuet is up, have every successful cast shave some seconds off Barrage's timer.

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good ideas :D

i will keep saying that Blood River procs in WM need to put a buff (stackable ) on bard that boost next heavy shot/quick nock attack by 150 , since if Blood River procs while we are casting and then again before we finish casting.... we lost 150 potency right there.... and happens a lot if u have 2-3 mobs doted...is frustrating.

That or let me cast BL / ROD while casting , call it double shot trait.

Battle voice affecting WM would be nice :)

Wanderer's Minuet killed the bard. Since this job is dead - please give us a replacement and don't mess it up. Lol

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Originally Posted by Wishles

There's a "DPS check" in Bismarck EX that requires a high DPS to down the adds in time.

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Hehe I always have agro for a few seconds on bismarks back <3 Bard burst still stronk as hell at least

IMO the problem is not the dps. I don't rly care about dps as long as i have utility.
For me the main problem is that the class isn't fun to play anymore.

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Originally Posted by JohnMccain

Minuet is a problem though. The fact that you have only a small window to weave in so many abilities (including an ability that resets randomly) is the problem. Increasing potency numbers isn't going to make the class fluid like it once was.

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The problem with this is that this idea (Minuet as a concept being bad) is just a personal preference and not an actual issue. Me personally, the ONLY reason I even came back to bard is because Wanderer's Minuet was looking to alter its playstyle. Some people identify with Bard as a run-n-gun class, but the simplicity behind that is why i personally stopped using it a long time ago.

And honestly? I think trying to avoid slighting people who don't want to even use Minuet is why it's underwhelming in the first place. The design of the skills and such seem to suggest they didn't intend for it to be hands-down optimal to use over regular stance, but instead gain efficiency over time.


Either way, increasing potency will solve the real problem with the stance, which is that it doesn't provide nearly as much reward as it takes effort to use it correctly. The most efficient rotation will only ever do ever-so-much better than off-stance without cooldowns.

Meanwhile, everyone else is throwing off 500 potency strikes and getting stances that don't do anything other than offer more damage. But unlike any other stance in the game, Minuet actually takes more from Bard than it adds. Tweaking some numbers can easily make that irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Edellis

The problem with this is that this idea (Minuet as a concept being bad) is just a personal preference and not an actual issue. Me personally, the ONLY reason I even came back to bard is because Wanderer's Minuet was looking to alter its playstyle. Some people identify with Bard as a run-n-gun class, but the simplicity behind that is why i personally stopped using it a long time ago.


Honestly? I think trying to avoid slighting people who don't want to even use Minuet is why it's underwhelming in the first place. The design of the skills and such seem to suggest they didn't intend for it to be hands-down optimal to use over regular stance, but instead gain efficiency over time.

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i will say this. if we wanted to play a dps that had cast times, a lot of burst and not that much free movement potential with no auto attacks; i would have leveled black mage.


while i tried to play minuet only i ended up just using minuet for my openers and when barrage comes up as basically a toggle skill because honestly i hate that playstyle. i'm trying to make it work for me now but honestly i would rather they just replace minuet with another song that actually helps the party or better yet just replace warden's paean or fix the useless song because it honestly stops so little i don't even know why they didn't just specify what it prevents in the description.

for me it's about the damage as well but that's mostly because i'm finding the dps gap just a little too big for my liking. i also hate that i basically only have one skill i can use whenever i want that actually does something for me (sidewinder).

i'm not gonna lie it pisses me off that i payed for expansion and all i got out of it for my main class is basically 1 skill because the rest of it is locked behind a personal 90 second cooldown because there's honestly no point in keeping on WM for me since i absolutely despise the playstyle.
i would have liked a sort of you can play like this for pure dps or his way for the support dps we've always had, the skills are free for all but the damage and potencies depend on the stance you're in.

alas what we got was a marginal dps increase and a whole lot of walling off in an attempt to force people into a playstyle they don't play the class for.

Again, "they dont want" is a very broad statement. I personally have no issue with standing and casting, but this is probably because i left Bard for Black Mage months ago. The issue with the old Bard playstyle is that Square is probably just opposed to Bard having competitive DPS with the other classes while being so safe and easy to use.

Look, there's really no way to screw up the 2.0 Bard style of gameplay. There's no risk involved to the class at all, and so by design it would make no sense to give them abilities like Empyreal/Sidewinder/Iron Jaws, so that they can just run and dump them all when they come up under buffs like you would in 2.0 bard. Minuet is supposed to add that risk/reward dynamic to Bard, which simply never had it before, which is probably where all the kneejerk reactions are coming from.

So I think the issue here isn't that they're making us adopt a caster style, it's that they're making us adopt a caster style without giving us anywhere close to caster damage.


It's currently viable (relative to other bards, at least) to just not even bother with Minuet outside opening. This probably isn't a mistake, i think it's cool that the class is possibly trying to be more dynamic and allow both stances to stay useful. But ATM, for both Stance and Off-Stance users, Minuet is just more trouble than its worth, even though it does increase DPS.

The whine is strong in this thread.
Every job has it's problems this expansion, but from some reason, every job feels like their special and thus the qq begins.

I play BLM, and we're forced to deal with constant cast interupts, we're slow and lose dps on every encounter that requires movement.

Dragoons cry about their combo chain damage, and how easy it is to fuckup their hard rotation.

Monks cry about positioning.

Mechanist cry about extremely low dps.

Astrologists cry about their weak healing compared to other healer jobs.

Black Mages cry about fights involved alot of movement.

Ninjas cry about class being too easy to play.

FML!
I can keep going on if you like...
stfu and stop this pointless bitching, learn to play your class and adjust to the new updates. If you cant, reroll!