Bard - too few skills?

Is it just me or does Bard have too few abilities? Even with role actions I know (and don't know if) I'll use & up to level 80 abilities, I have four empty spaces on my hotbar... When I tried applying some, turns out they were just higher level versions of others, like Heavy Shot / Burst Shot.

Would it be possible to get more skills? It honestly feels like BRD has less skills than the other classes I have because some are "level up" as they go, like the aforementioned heavy shot (other examples: venom bite > caustic bite; straight shot > refulgant arrow). DRK I was able to fill up completely. Weird complaint, I know.

Edit: our support skills would be really nice to have back. Would fill those empty spaces perfectly. Maybe even through in an AoE DoT or spread. /Halo, sparkles


https://i.imgur.com/W5wM8Ve.png

Welp, guess I'll be looking into Bard. RDM has more active abilities than I'd like, now. An AoE rotation for dungeon trash doesn't need 4 unique abilities.

While bar's GCD sometimes reduces down to using the same skill 5 - 10 times in a row, using another to just reset timers, it's not slow or boring for me, I've got so many off global abilities to weave in that I'm closer to overwhelmed then bored.... and I don't even have them all yet.

i still not sure shadowbite is an effective skill or not. in bard case, when you have a lot of enemy (5+) the good way is just spam quick nock and ROD nonstop, now that TP is gone, i can even spam quick nock more than i should.

doting all enemy one by one will just resulting the enemy die when you finally finish doting them all or usually only end up with 1-2 enemy left, thus no reason to use shadowbite at all, might as well use sidewinder instead.

they should change shadowbite to a skill that spread our dot in certain radius if you hit to enemy that has your dot.

also... almost every class now has aoe combo, where's ours yoshi? =/

I'm feeling a bit lost without the Straight Shot needing to be up at all time tbh, old habits die hard lol

But it feels alright, althought yeah, it kind of feels like we don't have much skills.

You only need to apply the dots to one mob to cast the effect of shadowbite on all of them. It's damage calculation goes only off the target. Bard has never been a combo class, it's about procs, so it makes sense that our aoe "rotation" is proc based. With the trait added to quick nock it's proccing almost every time.

ah so i just need my main target to be dot and the rest splash damage is consider as full 2 dot damage? i guess i miss the tooltip meaning .

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Originally Posted by MOZZYSTAR

Is it just me or does Bard have too few abilities? Even with role actions I know (and don't know if) I'll use & up to level 80 abilities, I have four empty spaces on my hotbar... When I tried applying some, turns out they were just higher level versions of others, like Heavy Shot / Burst Shot.

Would it be possible to get more skills? It honestly feels like BRD has less skills than the other classes I have because some are "level up" as they go, like the aforementioned heavy shot (other examples: venom bite > caustic bite; straight shot > refulgant arrow). DRK I was able to fill up completely. Weird complaint, I know.

Edit: our support skills would be really nice to have back. Would fill those empty spaces perfectly. Maybe even through in an AoE DoT or spread. /Halo, sparkles


https://i.imgur.com/W5wM8Ve.png

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Been playing bard since the first hour of early access, and it feels really good. You'll get it when you gitgud.
Bard is a pretty busy job, add all the songs' 20% procs and you get a 60~100% everytime, constantly needing to spam the proc'd buttons. It's completely fine as it is.

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Originally Posted by Mugear_bahamut

Been playing bard since the first hour of early access, and it feels really good. You'll get it when you gitgud.
Bard is a pretty busy job, add all the songs' 20% procs and you get a 60~100% everytime, constantly needing to spam the proc'd buttons. It's completely fine as it is.

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"Get good" is such a weak argument. The reality is Bard had abilities removed despite not suffering from Button Bloat like the rest of the classes. Our Role Actions are still terrible and mostly useless, and now with the removal of our Support-styled Role Actions, we have nothing from that section to add to our hotbar.

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Originally Posted by DarkMasamune

I'm feeling a bit lost without the Straight Shot needing to be up at all time tbh, old habits die hard lol

But it feels alright, althought yeah, it kind of feels like we don't have much skills.

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Same here. I'm constantly hitting my button where Straight Shot used to be. Just old habits I guess. I had the timing pretty much down in my head so that I'd hit it every so often to refresh it and it's throwing me off not having it. I truly miss feeling like a support class but other than that not too much has changed.

While I am only 70 on bard, so far feels really good, it is a pretty busy job when you are fully utilizing procs. That being said, really miss foes, MP buffs, and misery end. Straight shot gone will take some time getting used to.

So for the first time since release I am going to switch to something else. This class is now boring beyond comprehension. It's like they decided to restructure the class and forgot to add back anything to balance the stuff they took out. Why does my Tank Gun Blade have a better and more interesting DPS rotation than my DPS Bard?

The class has been reduced to mindless mashing buttons on cool down. If you are going to trash the job like this, just unlock macro limitations so we can fully automate the rotation and turn the job into a glorified screen saver.

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Originally Posted by MOZZYSTAR

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They totally over-pruned it, and made some really weird decisions on what they pruned (instead of sidewinder) and made... an AOE sidewinder (why).... Oh, and and hopefully arms length will be able to negate Suzaku's songs, but if it can't: the addition will just makes no sense. Head grazes will probably be rare, Bind hasn't been like useful since PVP was introduced, and a single target heavy isn't useful to Physical ranged classes. So, it's just Second wind and peloton as the only useful/practical skills in all types of content. The changes to EA hurt as well in pre-lv 70 content

If you guys like talking few buttons, you should try MCH lol

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Originally Posted by Priya

Welp, guess I'll be looking into Bard. RDM has more active abilities than I'd like, now. An AoE rotation for dungeon trash doesn't need 4 unique abilities.

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Well I've got bad news for you then, because the interactions bard got in this expansion make dungeon aoe at max level more involved than it was at 70. You have the 2 dots, 2 aoes, and apex to manage, and now with apex you have to think more about the dots as well beyond just "how many do I need to keep my RoD procs constant", because you want those extra repertoire procs anyway for the soul gauge.


WRT ability prune, it definitely feels like a little too much got taken away, but in general I'm not too worried about it since the 40% repertoire proc rate means we have more procs to deal with (outside of army's) anyway. My one main beef with the class is that apex arrow is a GCD instead of an OGCD, it just feels so bad to use.