HW bard- channeling?

Not sure what the animation is in the new video - are bards getting a passive where being stationary damage buff? quite neat i think.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2975050

Wanderer's Minuet thread? Wanderer's Minuet thread.

I wonder how it'll affect auto-attack ticks. Will the ticks be paused like when you turn away from the enemy, or will they still tick sans auto-attack damage? This could mean the difference of difficulty between getting in three or four auto-attack ticks during Barrage.

There are no auto-attacks under Minuet. There's going to definitely be some testing to figure out how to optimize minuets use in relation to bards other skills.

You realize stationary damage buff = be more like casters right? Its not like "if a bard can stay still he does more damage than any other class" it'll be more like "if a bard has to move they'll lose dps, if they stand still they'll be competitive".

Enjoy stutter stepping and/or turning into a caster!

Muahahaha. Feel the pain. Though bards will continue to be popular, and still more mobile than casters.

It'll mostly be about timing the minuet at the right time. Usually during openings, certain phases etc... i.e. t7 after you are done with a ren, pop it and go turret on melu or adds, turn it off as the next ren is about to pop... repeat. Same for other fights. It's finding that time to actually do it and then depending on how much you want to risk. T11 start... do you dodge first gas or do you eat it for the extra dps with all the buffs up etc...

Should make for an interesting fight. But it'll be treated just like b4b... do you pop it when you know incoming damage or do you wait for just after to give your healer buddies a bit of a breather. Risk vs reward.

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Originally Posted by Tilgung

There are no auto-attacks under Minuet. There's going to definitely be some testing to figure out how to optimize minuets use in relation to bards other skills.

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Easy. You just charge your abilities in between auto-attacks. You hold it for no more than 2s, so that way you can continue without disrupting your Auto-Attacks. In theory, this should work due to the nature of Auto-Attacks.

Impossible. Auto-attacks in general have 2.8 (the lowest possible number for bows) -3.4 sec delay time. GCD is 2.4 for BRD or bit less for those who carefully avoided SkS. Any song's cast is 3 sec, and 0.5-1 sec for the effect to kick in. If we do it this way, we'll be stuck in wm -> drop it -> auto-attack -> wm.

My thought process was, even whilst channelling your casts, your GCD will still continue... Then if you have an AA delay of 3s, let's say, your Auto would fire, then channel for 2.6s, Auto, channel for 2.6s, Auto, channel for 2.6s, Auto, etc.

We'll have to wait and see the proper implementation of it. It's a tricky one indeed :P

I just wish the animation made more sense. We shouldn't be channeling while reaching for an arrow, but while actually aiming at our target.

That's the point. You can't charge into auto-attack under wm the way, say, you can burst Aero II into Aero. You just don't have any auto-attacks while buffed by the song. The song basically makes us a less clunkier caster than a normal BLM/SMN. A crazy trade-in, but should stimulate people to git gud with BRD.

So, as a BRD main, I'd probably avoid using it as much as possible in heavy movement stuff similar to Titan EX, but it's extremely valuable for situations like Garuda EX where you've got all the time in the world to sit back and DPS the hell out of Garuda/other flying monsters.

Oh, but GCD ticking off while the cast is going is a valid point, indeed.

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Originally Posted by Riepah

I just wish the animation made more sense. We shouldn't be channeling while reaching for an arrow, but while actually aiming at our target.

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Agreed - maybe a bit more pull back on the bow or something as the animation. But I have a feeling the channeling might be channeling aether into the arrow itself. Also I wonder if this is what skillspeed will be used for or will it be subject to spellspeed.

Using SS for that makes no sense. OO Hey, guys, how about a new groundbreaking song that turns a completely irrelevant secondary stat into the new Crit? SkS, on the other hand...

Breaking channel to autoattack is obviously not the point of the song. They will either make the damage difference include autoattacks, or make them continue during it. If people are doing stutter channeling for dps my money is on they will fix that immediately, because it is not a productive dps mechanic and severely penalizes those with high ping.

My big concern is whether you can bloodletter during the channel.

Since casters cannot do oGCDs while channeling, this is my big fear.

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Originally Posted by Viar

Using SS for that makes no sense. OO Hey, guys, how about a new groundbreaking song that turns a completely irrelevant secondary stat into the new Crit? SkS, on the other hand...

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Well song casts are impacted by SS why I am wondering what else they might add.

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Originally Posted by ruskie

Well song casts are impacted by SS why I am wondering what else they might add.

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SC for songs. Please, SE.

Wait I'm confused... I was under the impression wm will add a cast time/channeling phase to existing abilities I.e. venom bite will have the cast time, wind bite will have cast time, straight shot will have cast time etc

is that right?

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Originally Posted by Shuon

Wait I'm confused... I was under the impression wm will add a cast time/channeling phase to existing abilities I.e. venom bite will have the cast time, wind bite will have cast time, straight shot will have cast time etc

is that right?

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Correct. And will make you a turret basically. Can't move or you lose the cast.

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Originally Posted by Viar

SC for songs. Please, SE.

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I soooo want this.

I'm looking forward to seeing how to optimize the use of this new song. Really can't wait to hear for info/try it for myself. It's a nice new wrinkle being added to BRD. I've been seeing complaints about taking away BRD mobility.. And sure, that will be lost at times, but it's just going to help make the job more interesting to optimize for each encounter.

Unless they add another skill to occasionally enable auto attack during charges/casts this song will likely want to be off whenever Barrage is available. But who knows for certain? Depending on exactly how much extra damage this song gives BRD as well as encounter mechanics it might even be better to pop your CDs outside of Barrage with the song activated provided movement is minimal and just saving Barrage for when you are forced to move. This would, however, change Barrage into a much weaker buff since it wouldn't 100% always be stacked with Hawk's Eye and Blood for Blood anymore. Another option is that Barrage has a different effect when used with Wanderer's Minuet up. Doubling the charge/cast speed for 10s sounds appealing and comparable.

Much excitement. :)

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Originally Posted by Shuon

Wait I'm confused... I was under the impression wm will add a cast time/channeling phase to existing abilities I.e. venom bite will have the cast time, wind bite will have cast time, straight shot will have cast time etc

is that right?

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That's what they made it sound like. I wouldn't be surprised if each attack were given a 50% potency increase given how high a percentage auto attacks are in BRD damage as well as Bloodletter procs that may or may not be used with this new song up. Not quite sure how Bloodletter and Misery's End will fit in yet. Time will tell! :D

Bards become black mages. I realize bards currently do less damage than most other classes, but is the best way for us to do higher damage to turn us into one of the other classes? If I want to play like another dps class, why wouldn't I just play as that dps class?

I think bards should either maintain auto-attack while using this song, or maintain the ability to move and use the abilities.

One of the reasons I love bard is it's mobility and constantly doing attacks or off the gcd abilities. Do we just completely lose bloodletter, misery's end, repelling shot, and blunt arrow? Do we just drop Minuet when barrage is up? Then spend another 3 seconds recasting it when buffs fall off.

Maybe in practice, this will be wonderful and fun skill. As it's written, this is killing the fun of the class. Even at it's best, I can't see this being a great concept change for the class. I see a lot of bards changing class if the skill goes live as described.

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.

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Originally Posted by Dervy

Gearing for a bard is going to be verrry interesting.

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This, indeed, unlike the other jobs, BRD lacks a theorycrafty heavy thread and Minuet dance (or rather sing) will bring that out :v

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

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

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Don't think any bard was even thinking we would be using spell speed. The only thing spell speed benefits, and will probably continue to benefit is song cast times.

By play like a black mage, those of us concerned do not mean we'll have the same rotation as a black mage. Bard isn't going to be casting blizzards and fires. By play like a black mage, we mean that bards will look for every opportunity now to minimize movement and maximize the times they can play this song and turret. That means us trying to finish attacks and getting clipped by avoidable AOE (something no bard should ever have as an excuse atm.) Bard right now is it's own play style. We can run around or stand still and it doesn't change our dps. We aren't the highest dps, but I'm okay with that considering the utility we bring.

Naw Dervy you are overthinking it.

I've shown like first week of bard it is physically impossible to miss a BL proc if you wait for an oGCD. Similarly, since GCDs are 2.5 and ticks are 3 sec baseline, SS will scale your GCD down faster than it will scale down ticks, so...unless something happens with animations that prevents you from executing gcd > bl > gcd then there is no problem here.

I would say unless there are TP issues SS will scale it better, because

1. SS increases in effectiveness the more you have.
2. BL behaves oddly at high crits, namely RoB procs, as shown here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/103696-Bards-and-BL-and-Crit-and-RoB

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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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Like BLM to the sense that you gotta stay still to attack and moving interrupts your cast. Basically, attacks with cast bar, that BRD has never had, and precisely why I like BRD.

It still doesn't make sense. There's situations in MANY FCOB raids where you DO NOT need to move. In these instances, you wouldn't want a DPS increase? Why are you moving all over the place when you're not meant to? Are you one of those bards who run around constantly just because they can?

Bards are bards. Bards are mobile. You can DPS whilst moving, you can run around and support those allies of yours. But in situations where movement is not necessary, where you're SUPPOSED to be standing still, why not accept the free DPS?

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Originally Posted by pandabearcat

Naw Dervy you are overthinking it.

I've shown like first week of bard it is physically impossible to miss a BL proc if you wait for an oGCD. Similarly, since GCDs are 2.5 and ticks are 3 sec baseline, SS will scale your GCD down faster than it will scale down ticks, so...unless something happens with animations that prevents you from executing gcd > bl > gcd then there is no problem here.

I would say unless there are TP issues SS will scale it better, because

1. SS increases in effectiveness the more you have.
2. BL behaves oddly at high crits, namely RoB procs, as shown here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...d-Crit-and-RoB

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Yeah, I'm speaking purely hypothetical here, but I'm really intrigued as to how how this will all work in 3.0. Lots of things will need to be tested.

Myself and MrYaah actually have a new BL proc model which is fairly accurate, we'd say. If you still have the raw data from that thread you posted, you're welcome to test it against your data to look for inconsistencies:

BL% Chance = 1-(1-CRT%*0.5)^2 (CRT% Takes into account IR + SS)

TpBL = (3*A) + (6*(A*(1-A))) + (9*(A*(1-A)^2)) + (12*(A*(1-A)^3)) + (15*(1-A)^4) ~ (Where A is BL% Chance, and the numbers are the tick times up until a hard-CD BL)

BLps = 1/TpBL

He knows more about how it works than I do, so it's best to ask him.

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Originally Posted by Arkenne

This, indeed, unlike the other jobs, BRD lacks a theorycrafty heavy thread and Minuet dance (or rather sing) will bring that out :v

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I asked MrYaah to make one, dunno if he's up to it still, however. I'm sure someone like Pandabearcat or someone else who knows their stuff/willing to help the community (Kreitor maybe) can make one.

I simulate cause for random events it provides for easier visualization, generally because events are discrete and most models simulate that with continuous functions.

Which is actually why I did the simulation (the graphs in the link are a simulation), it shows the jumps that occur with increases in crit.

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Originally Posted by Riepah

I just wish the animation made more sense. We shouldn't be channeling while reaching for an arrow, but while actually aiming at our target.

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hope SE change the animation , we are going to watch our char doing that for hours....

i prefer the "charged/aimed shot" animation , makes more sense

http://katella.files.wordpress.com/2...actionbard.png


lala archers are cute :P

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Originally Posted by RinchanNau

Unless they add another skill to occasionally enable auto attack during charges/casts this song will likely want to be off whenever Barrage is available.

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In regards to barrage, I have a sneaking suspicion that the attack right after Barrage was linked to it. Kinda like how you can only perform Energy Drain/Bane under Aetherflow, maybe the new skill is only usable while under the effect of Barrage, and consumes the buff after using.

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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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Having to turret and hard cast every ability, not just one? Since that's exactly what Black Mages do now?

When mobility becomes a liability for dps and you are encouraged to maximize your lack of movement to perform higher levels of dps then you can safely say a class is pretty much like a Black Mage because that is exactly how they play right now.

It's pretty speculative that Minuet will be an always on ability, but I can understand why people would be worried about something like this if it's powerful enough to warrant being always on.

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Originally Posted by Instrumentality

Having to turret and hard cast every ability, not just one? Since that's exactly what Black Mages do now?

When mobility becomes a liability for dps and you are encouraged to maximize your lack of movement to perform higher levels of dps then you can safely say a class is pretty much like a Black Mage because that is exactly how they play right now.

It's pretty speculative that Minuet will be an always on ability, but I can understand why people would be worried about something like this if it's powerful enough to warrant being always on.

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is a stance , will be always ON

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...RIP-Bard/page8