Paladin needs more mitigation.
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Paladin needs more mitigation.
Archer/Bard major changes I want to see in Endwalker:
1. Make it be able to compete in dps/contribution with other classes, right now you could drop any support class in favour of a pure dps and nobody will ever notice a difference.
2. Add Ranger stone, I would love to see a pure ranged dps that uses a bow. Machinist does not count.
Some minor changes:
1. Having to hit songs at exact 30 seconds intervals feels too much, instead, I would like to be able to cast all 3 songs at once, rotating through buffs does not feel natural whatsoever. (I played another pretty old MMO and there was a class that also had song buffs that lasted 2 minutes and you could keep them up all at once, it was amazing, I believe it works the same way until today and nobody ever complained).
2. Dot spread ability.
3. Add Bloodletter charges similar to pitch perfect.
This is simply untrue. Bard is entirely on point with Machinist, the only job it'll ever compete with is the "selfish" category. If you meant you could drop the physical Range entirely, the party bonus prevents that as it's significant enough of a loss you'll never want to drop any of the physical Range from a comp.
This will never happen. The dev team has outright stated they have no interest in branching jobs, and in fact, regret ever attempting it with Scholar and Summoner due to the balancing issues it caused. They'd rather make an entirely new job. Furthermore, ShB's iteration of Bard is essentially Ranger in all but name at this point.
This more or less turns Bard into Ranger while completely destroying its whole gimmick. Wanderer's and Mage's function very differently. You couldn't simply press them both and have the job still play the way it does now. Not to mention, the songs used to be "utility" back in Heavensward. They were hated since you hardly ever bothered to press them.
Now a "super song" on say, a 180s, could be neat. But not something permanent.
It’s not a rework but I want Bard to be designed so that it’s actually a Bard and not a glorified Ranger who pulls a harp out of their ass every 30 seconds but then also interrupts their harp animation with bow attacks so it may as well not really exist.
And frankly the songs literally make no sense at all anymore in terms of justifying their existence. Mage’s Ballad is a song about the sages of eld and their feats of exceptional healing. This song makes you shoot faster and has no relation to anything magical or supportive whatsoever. Oh but it makes your party stronger, because, reasons. And Warden’s Paean? ‘I can literally sing away your disease but I'll only do it every 45 seconds because DPS so enjoy your Doom tanks. Oh but it’s ok because the skill may as well not exist in 99% of content anyway.
And can someone please explain me to what the hell Iron Jaws is, because it’s honestly been on my mind since Heavensward. Is it magic? Archery? Is it a Bard skill? Some kind of musical reference?
Honestly Bard isn’t even that bad to play (if you like feeling impotent), but the whole job is a mess of skills that have been smashed together, deleted, constantly buffed/nerfed, with little to no thought for the job or what they actually want it to become. Shadowbringers Bard is basically what happens when a developer becomes completely terrified of its own creation after the Stormblood OP Refresh fiasco. None of its skills work the way they do to make the job fun or exciting to play, or to create an ‘identity’ for the job. They all exist basically to make sure Bard never becomes the ultimate job and invalidates every other dps again like in Stormblood and early ARR. And I’m not saying that they should come anywhere close to that level, I’m just saying that I think the developer’s fear of Bards becoming super OP is having a really bad effect on how the job feels to play.
I genuinely believe that the best thing they can do with Bard is basically go back to the beginning (by which I mean level 30 not the core archer gameplay) and start again with a concrete idea for what they want Bards to be. I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like this happen during the games lifespan because obviously it would require sacrificing an entire expansion pack worth of work to a single job, but personally I think it’s something they could consider (could not should, I don’t expect them to ever actually do it)