BRD idea: Songs with MP usage

This is just a passing idea I had, but I thought I'd share to see how it would stand to scrutiny as feedback.

What if Bards could integrate our MP into the gameplay like the HW/SB days, while also merging the songs into the Coda & Apex Arrow systems? The current song system treats playing them a bit like an afterthought; play Minuet/Ballad/Paeon once every 45 seconds in rotation. If they were linked to the MP bar, perhaps it would work like this:

Minuet: Remains as is in effect. Uses MP. Gains Coda once you reach a certain number on the Apex gauge.

Ballad: Remains as is in effect. Regenerates MP. Gains Coda once you reach a certain number on the Apex gauge.

Paeon: Remains as is in effect. Uses MP. Gains Coda once you reach a certain number on the Apex gauge.

Of course we would have to reduce the cooldown on the songs. This also allows for easier recovery if you die and have to pick yourself back up. I'm also in favor of adding cast times on them to compensate.

As for the Apex Gauge, it is already linked to the songs. I thought perhaps something in a similar vein to Sage's Gauge, as in it slowly going up the longer the song plays, would be cool and in tune with Bard's identity as a songcaster.

One of the issue remains with Bard's DoTs. I want to keep them, yet I do not know how well they could fit into the kit. Perhaps the procs having more of a link to Ballad and Paeon than what we currently have?

The other is how busy the job would become. Having to weave our weaponskills and keep an eye on our songs plus MP? Might be too complex and put the class lower in the popularity ranking. Not to mention how the Coda would interact with the Apex Gauge and thus Apex Arrow itself (as the two are separate right now) which could cause issues.

A third is, of course, Paeon. If we reduce the cooldowns on the songs, then Paeon becomes just as redundant as before. You would simply go from Minuet, to Ballad for MP regeneration, to Minuet again. The Enhanced Paeon buff might not be worth it in the long run unless you gain something worthwhile for casting it. Perhaps Radiant Finale would be enough of an incentive?

That said, I do believe the idea could make for some interesting decision-making gameplay for the players and offer optimisation opportunities.

TLDR: Songs have lowered cooldown and use/give MP. Play it long enough to gain a Coda sticker.

As far as the songs go, if the order was the same you wouldn't have MP for Minuet. since there's only one MP regen song in this idea. Unless a coda isn't linked to a song Then you'd have to do a ballad after Minuet and Paeon.

If they did something like this, I think reclassifying Songs as ‘spells’ and removing the cool-down could potentially alleviate a lot of Bard’s issues with the strictness of song timing/rotation. At the same time, if there was a risk of ‘bottoming out’ on MP with improper usage, it would still give the job a ‘fail state’ (should it be deemed necessary). Plus as you mentioned they could use MP drain/restoration if they really wanted to enforce a specific song order.

For Paeon they could make it a ‘MP restoration’ phase where hitting weapon skills or Heartbreak Shot restores a certain amount of MP. Like, if Minuet and Ballad cost 5000 MP (2500 each) total, then you restore 5000 MP over the course of Paeon, which also gives you an additional 5000.
Alternatively, it could be cool if Paeon was a ‘support stance song’ that added effects to certain skills like Minne/Paean/Troubadour(maybe), though more flexibility with song order would be needed for that to work. I mean, we do already have 2 pure dps songs, so maybe having one go in a different direction could be fun.

And in this scenario honestly I’d go all-in and make Nature’s Minne and the Warden’s Paean spells, with a 1000MP cost. Maybe update Paean to give a HP shield if no debuff is removed, add a regen to Nature’s Minne and lower duration if necessary. They could add Foe’s Requiem at the same cost but with like a 2-3% vulnerability up effect to counter high uptime and a fairly short duration (10 seconds). It’d ultimately be used for 2-min obviously, but with the extra MP you’d also have flexibility to apply it in-between if Minne/Paean aren’t needed.

Additionally for DoTs I feel like in this scenario they could act as the ‘MP management’ aspect of the job? Like having DoT ticks after ‘X’ time has elapsed to proc MP recovery, or certain abilities that restore MP having that restoration scale with whether they have 1 or 2 DoTs (Foe Requiem could count for three?)

Those are my thoughts, naturally I’d love this personally. Though note I’m putting aside balancing / community perceptions/ etc, just my theory of what would be ‘fun’ lol

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Originally Posted by Connor

If they did something like this, I think reclassifying Songs as ‘spells’ and removing the cool-down could potentially alleviate a lot of Bard’s issues with the strictness of song timing/rotation. At the same time, if there was a risk of ‘bottoming out’ on MP with improper usage, it would still give the job a ‘fail state’ (should it be deemed necessary). Plus as you mentioned they could use MP drain/restoration if they really wanted to enforce a specific song order.

For Paeon they could make it a ‘MP restoration’ phase where hitting weapon skills or Heartbreak Shot restores a certain amount of MP. Like, if Minuet and Ballad cost 5000 MP (2500 each) total, then you restore 5000 MP over the course of Paeon, which also gives you an additional 5000.
Alternatively, it could be cool if Paeon was a ‘support stance song’ that added effects to certain skills like Minne/Paean/Troubadour(maybe), though more flexibility with song order would be needed for that to work. I mean, we do already have 2 pure dps songs, so maybe having one go in a different direction could be fun.

And in this scenario honestly I’d go all-in and make Nature’s Minne and the Warden’s Paean spells, with a 1000MP cost. Maybe update Paean to give a HP shield if no debuff is removed, add a regen to Nature’s Minne and lower duration if necessary. They could add Foe’s Requiem at the same cost but with like a 2-3% vulnerability up effect to counter high uptime and a fairly short duration (10 seconds). It’d ultimately be used for 2-min obviously, but with the extra MP you’d also have flexibility to apply it in-between if Minne/Paean aren’t needed.

Additionally for DoTs I feel like in this scenario they could act as the ‘MP management’ aspect of the job? Like having DoT ticks after ‘X’ time has elapsed to proc MP recovery, or certain abilities that restore MP having that restoration scale with whether they have 1 or 2 DoTs (Foe Requiem could count for three?)

Those are my thoughts, naturally I’d love this personally. Though note I’m putting aside balancing / community perceptions/ etc, just my theory of what would be ‘fun’ lol

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Initially I did think about removing the cooldowns on the songs, but I decided against it when writing this because I did not have any ideas about issues that could arise. And great idea about the support options for Minne and Paean! I do love those two skills, even if they aren't as useful currently.
With this idea, the songs would probably be weaved as so: Minuet -> Ballad -> Paean -> Ballad and restart the chain. However players would have options and not be locked into a specific rotation, especially with no cooldown as your said.

Naturally I'm also in favor of bringing back Foe's Requiem. I know it's a huge debuff which means Bard will be picked more often, but I just miss it so. All in all, I agree with your suggestions!

As for 'fun', it is indeed subjective to everyone. But I think it is what I feel is missing from general gameplay: everyone focuses so much on damage, and optimisation, that they forget the fun aspect. Is it fun to play? To me a Bard integrating its MP management into its spells would be a resounding "YES".

I agree, Any kind of mana usage would be 100% improvement of gameplay perspective.

I hate how game is just adding new resources that complicate things even further

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Originally Posted by Tunda

I agree, Any kind of mana usage would be 100% improvement of gameplay perspective.

I hate how game is just adding new resources that complicate things even further

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I think what irks me most is how those resources are all very similar to one another in my experience (Gauges, stickers, etc). Sure makes for easier balancing, but it seems to render things complex for complexity's sake.

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Originally Posted by Xieldras

I think what irks me most is how those resources are all very similar to one another in my experience (Gauges, stickers, etc). Sure makes for easier balancing, but it seems to render things complex for complexity's sake.

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it is easier for developer and complex for players

I myself have wanted a sort of reintroduction of MP usage to Bard's gameplay, but have always been considering how it could work given what we have.

Few ideas i've tossed around is Repertoire procs being the thing which regenerates MP and having something to do with Soul Voice.
Maybe give us Foe Requiem and make it a personal DPS buff or smth that requires Repertoire to maintain?
Maybe make it a timer-based thing that replaces Soul Voice as a (Get 3 stacks of 20 second-proc things to use Apex/Blast Arrow. The amount of procs you get increases the potency?)

Kinda just tossing around a few ideas here!

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Originally Posted by Kazamaiya

I myself have wanted a sort of reintroduction of MP usage to Bard's gameplay, but have always been considering how it could work given what we have.

Few ideas i've tossed around is Repertoire procs being the thing which regenerates MP and having something to do with Soul Voice.
Maybe give us Foe Requiem and make it a personal DPS buff or smth that requires Repertoire to maintain?
Maybe make it a timer-based thing that replaces Soul Voice as a (Get 3 stacks of 20 second-proc things to use Apex/Blast Arrow. The amount of procs you get increases the potency?)

Kinda just tossing around a few ideas here!

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Repertoire procs restoring MP would work pretty well, it’d give more incentive to squeeze out as many as possible beyond pure dps optimisation.

I feel like Foe Requiem would work best the way it did previously as an enemy debuff. If it was a personal dps buff, it would essentially be like Noxious Gnash wouldn’t it? Those type of skills have mostly all been removed, so I’m not sure devs would want to add that sort of thing. Making it an enemy debuff with a super low % damage taken up effect would make it add a ton of damage over the course of the fight assuming high uptime, so it’d maybe even be too powerful . But I think 1-2% would be enough? but not gamebreaking (as low as those values sound lol)

I've always been for bringing back resource management so I like the idea in theory. What I'd do actually would be to keep Minuet and Ballad the two damage songs and they would consume MP as you say, and I'd make Army the MP/resource regen song. And as you said, I'd remove all recasts on songs (beyond a very low minimum). As such, when you die, you'd instantly revert to Army to gain back MP, then you'd recycle onto Minuet/Ballad, and play with and adjust the timers so you realign with bursts. Which would certainly make the job a lot more complicated and I already see people complaining about dying on rphys being too punishing, which I find silly, but that's another debate.

Could even have the songs change what warden's do, like cleanse debuffs on Minuet and Ballad, but regen MP for a target when on Army for example. Or perhaps the MP regen could become attached to Minne but one would have to be careful about how it interacts with the BRD's own song rotation.

For the lack of cooldown on songs however you'd have to circumvent the fact that they currently have one specifically to avoid people to go into Minuet most of the time. Or perhaps, you can turn BRD into a BLM inspired model where Minuet is the astral fire song that consumes MP, and both Ballad and Army regen MP, except like for SMN demi primals those two would turn into each other after use.

They'd also need to be careful into balancing something like Foe Requiem within that paradigm since it would completely veer away from the 2min meta, which I do personally like, but wouldnt work very well into the current model and would probably need to wait for a rework there on all jobs.

My take is to make each song has quite significant buff effect but they drain stamina/mp each second, then when you are out of mp, the song effect revert back to what we have now

So maybe mage ballad give 2 or 3% damage buff but once our mp/stamina run out, it revert back to the 1% effect

since technically you are singing or playing music in the mid of combat while also fighting the enemy, thats quite a taxing activity i say

Anything to remove or lessen those awful CDs.

Bring back cast bars too, I think that would be fun

I bring up the usage of the MP gauge for BRD pretty often, it's something I miss from the HW days. But I don't think just inserting MP into the rotation is the way to go (because rotations, even when they seem freeform, tend to arrive at an "answer" at which point the MP cost doesn't become very relevant), what I'd like to see is them delving more into the support side of the "support role" brd was supposed to be (rather than just +rdps), like how MP+TP songs used to be (+foe, but that was just +rdps).

For example, give BRDs extra OGCD utility buttons that cost MP, but also give some mediocre, non-rotation-defining MP-cost OGCD ability. That way, during prog, we can blow our mana on utility skills and support the group, but as the training wheels come off, we can funnel more of our MP resource into the extra damage ping ability as a reward for optimizing well.

I'm still steamed about how the "Ballad of Oblivion" questline was related to burial rites/soothing of souls and it wasn't a ressurrection or something (since we'd just had our healer LB3 taken away), and was instead just the boring sidewinder button. Maybe give BRDs a rez song that takes like 80% of the bar too or something, then you could have other things be a tiny heal, a tiny solo mit (palisade), etc.

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Originally Posted by Akonyl

I bring up the usage of the MP gauge for BRD pretty often, it's something I miss from the HW days. But I don't think just inserting MP into the rotation is the way to go (because rotations, even when they seem freeform, tend to arrive at an "answer" at which point the MP cost doesn't become very relevant), what I'd like to see is them delving more into the support side of the "support role" brd was supposed to be (rather than just +rdps), like how MP+TP songs used to be (+foe, but that was just +rdps).

For example, give BRDs extra OGCD utility buttons that cost MP, but also give some mediocre, non-rotation-defining MP-cost OGCD ability. That way, during prog, we can blow our mana on utility skills and support the group, but as the training wheels come off, we can funnel more of our MP resource into the extra damage ping ability as a reward for optimizing well.

I'm still steamed about how the "Ballad of Oblivion" questline was related to burial rites/soothing of souls and it wasn't a ressurrection or something (since we'd just had our healer LB3 taken away), and was instead just the boring sidewinder button. Maybe give BRDs a rez song that takes like 80% of the bar too or something, then you could have other things be a tiny heal, a tiny solo mit (palisade), etc.

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I'd like to see Bard damage drop and group augmentation increase.

(random shower thought)
Imagine if while running a song; using your certain abilities at certain "windows" within the song would provide group buff effects - akin to a rhythm game - so say "Mages ballad 20-15 seconds left - Blood letter will trigger a small group heal; Ironjaw will trigger a 2% damage mit for all, etc etc" the idea of treating bardic gameplay more like musical playstyles of its namesake - different songs make attacks provide different effects at different times and eventually result in when you hit Radiant Finale being a powerful party buff depending on the "score" you had written up to that point.

Never happen but would be nice to see bard become a support class; hell I cannot recall the last time I used Wardens Paeon outside of a dungeon where the healer was asleep.

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Originally Posted by Ayan_Calvesse

I'd like to see Bard damage drop and group augmentation increase.

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It's already like that, and it feels awful to play right now. I, a BRD player, do not want this anymore.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

It's already like that, and it feels awful to play right now. I, a BRD player, do not want this anymore.

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I can only speak for myself but I don’t feel this way at all personally. I’d gladly take whatever kind of DPS hit they think we need if it means having valuable support tools actually worth bringing to the party. I mean, Bard has always been the very bottom personal dps in the game until Dancer came out and was like ‘hold my beer’, so it’s not like it’d be making any changes to where they are now. That’s assuming we ever get valuable and interesting support skills lol

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Originally Posted by mallleable

It's already like that, and it feels awful to play right now. I, a BRD player, do not want this anymore.

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Current BRD is more like a "Master of None" scenario because they put it between "High DPS" and "Low Damage with Support" so it just feels off. I would like more meaningful support because that's what was appealing in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Connor

That’s assuming we ever get valuable and interesting support skills lol

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Will it ever be granted? Maybe after they put a Raise on a Tank first, who knows? Though Pictomancer seems to suggest that anything new and interesting will be given to the shiny new toys before fixing the broken ones.

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Originally Posted by Ayan_Calvesse

I'd like to see Bard damage drop and group augmentation increase.

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Bard damage is almost in Tank territory already, anymore nerfs to Bard damage and you'll be fighting for the top spots in tank damage.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I can only speak for myself but I don’t feel this way at all personally. I’d gladly take whatever kind of DPS hit they think we need if it means having valuable support tools actually worth bringing to the party. I mean, Bard has always been the very bottom personal dps in the game until Dancer came out and was like ‘hold my beer’, so it’s not like it’d be making any changes to where they are now. That’s assuming we ever get valuable and interesting support skills lol

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To me, it's one of those ideas that seems good on paper, and in terms class fantasy it kinda makes sense, but in practice it's not working. Part of me is inclined to think that putting all its power in its raid buffs has lead to it being plagued with so many problems with its rotation, and lack luster job design. It's why I'm obsessed with the PVP version of BRD because it feel like its personal firepower, and raid buff power are closer together in balance.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

To me, it's one of those ideas that seems good on paper, and in terms class fantasy it kinda makes sense, but in practice it's not working. Part of me is inclined to think that putting all its power in its raid buffs has lead to it being plagued with so many problems with its rotation, and lack luster job design. It's why I'm obsessed with the PVP version of BRD because it feel like its personal firepower, and raid buff power are closer together in balance.

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That's due to environment differences. In PvP a class is just allowed to be, while in PvE they have to be adjusted to encounter specifications and balanced because the Devs are terrified of a meta (especially one that has a rDPS in it), and also due to everyone having support surrounding the same 2min limitations. There are far more to design around in PvE. It didn't used to be like that before Dancer showed up and they gutted our own support kit. Bard was fine and working well before, so it cannot be a "good idea on paper but not in execution" scenario since it would imply that it wasn't working from its inception, which Stormblood disproves because of its popularity.
They have more than enough information from previous expansions about what worked with this class as well, so it's not like they're running short on ideas.

Back to OP, been thinking more about the MP usage. If we do tie the songs to MP, then the length would in general be around 15 seconds each no? That brings faster-paced gameplay, however 20 or 25 seconds would probably be best considering out current kit. Ballad was always the MP song, so it feels a bit weird for me personally to tie the MP regen to Paeon. Maybe a flip between both songs' effects? oGCD timer reset being on Paeon and the faster GCD + regen on Ballad. At least have all the songs available upon revive instead of locked behind cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Xieldras

That's due to environment differences. In PvP a class is just allowed to be, while in PvE they have to be adjusted to encounter specifications and balanced because the Devs are terrified of a meta (especially one that has a rDPS in it), and also due to everyone having support surrounding the same 2min limitations. There are far more to design around in PvE. It didn't used to be like that before Dancer showed up and they gutted our own support kit. Bard was fine and working well before, so it cannot be a "good idea on paper but not in execution" scenario since it would imply that it wasn't working from its inception, which Stormblood disproves because of its popularity.
They have more than enough information from previous expansions about what worked with this class as well, so it's not like they're running short on ideas.

Back to OP, been thinking more about the MP usage. If we do tie the songs to MP, then the length would in general be around 15 seconds each no? That brings faster-paced gameplay, however 20 or 25 seconds would probably be best considering out current kit. Ballad was always the MP song, so it feels a bit weird for me personally to tie the MP regen to Paeon. Maybe a flip between both songs' effects? oGCD timer reset being on Paeon and the faster GCD + regen on Ballad. At least have all the songs available upon revive instead of locked behind cooldown.

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My issue with tying songs to MP is that it would add another fail state to BRD's already massive pile of fail states for dying. Dying will leave you with no MP for songs. You could give BRD a button to recover MP, but then you are just adding hotbar bloat, and providing a fix to a problem that didn't need to be one in the first place. You could probably achieve a similar result by just making songs last like 25 seconds, make their recast be like 60 seconds, and give BRD two charges of each song. And then give BRD something to burn excess coda on like you get more gauge or a music themed attack as you will be getting twice as much coda with this system.

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Originally Posted by Ayan_Calvesse

I'd like to see Bard damage drop and group augmentation increase.

(random shower thought)
Imagine if while running a song; using your certain abilities at certain "windows" within the song would provide group buff effects - akin to a rhythm game - so say "Mages ballad 20-15 seconds left - Blood letter will trigger a small group heal; Ironjaw will trigger a 2% damage mit for all, etc etc" the idea of treating bardic gameplay more like musical playstyles of its namesake - different songs make attacks provide different effects at different times and eventually result in when you hit Radiant Finale being a powerful party buff depending on the "score" you had written up to that point.

Never happen but would be nice to see bard become a support class; hell I cannot recall the last time I used Wardens Paeon outside of a dungeon where the healer was asleep.

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The major issue here is that doing that with support skills just makes them necessarily worse, because it becomes time-locked and isn't always usable when it needs to be. Bard actually had something similar back in stormblood, when the current song system was introduced. Troubadour, the party mitigation button, actually had a different effect depending on which song you were in: +HP during WM, +mag def during MB, +phys def during AP. It led to a lot of feelsbad situations where someone goes "hey can you help out with this raidwide?" and the answer is "sorry, I gotta be in army's at that point". Troub also had the major issue where it didn't apply to the bard at first (making it a "the bard saves everyone but still dies" button), but that was fixed pretty quick + isn't actually relevant here (funny as it was in retrospect).

That's kinda why my suggestion is as it is, it lets them give BRD more potential utility without tying it to our rotation / requiring us to kneecap ourselves to mess up our rotation to align a timing to get the correct utility. I don't particularly have anything against bard damage staying where it is, so long as its group damage buffs are enough to compensate, or we get legitimate utility (with use that doesn't make people just want to shelve the bard after prog, hence my suggestion letting you switch the utility for a bit of damage), or whatever.

Just going to repeat a suggestion I've thrown out occasionally since Stormblood release: use ramping MP-cost penalties for sustained use paired with activation costs to enforce rotation in a far softer way.

E.g.

• Give each song an initial cost of 200 MP and a further drain cost of 50 MP per second.
• For each second a given song is active, its per-second cost increases by 2.
• For each second the song is not active, its per-second cost decreases by 1, to a minimum of its original cost. I.e., if you spend twice as long off the song as on the song, its cost refreshes to its original, and therefore using a song for more than a third of the time comes at a net cost.
• Since you generate ~66.7 MP/sec and can start with as much as 10000 MP, you can therefore sustain a song for as much as 108 seconds at a time, or afford up to minimum and maximum average swap times of 25-90 seconds (still in even thirds) for 5 minutes (or can spend a more uneven portion of time on a single song), 30-75 for 7 minutes, 35-60 for 10 minutes, or per 45 seconds to rotate indefinitely.
• That is to say, you have considerable freedom in how short or long you play a song or in what proportions, with costs increasing the further you stray from a 45-second rotation or from equal use per song.

:: These costs can easily be shuffled around to entice use around a different maximum efficiency or push players nearer to the most-efficient pacing from the start, reduce the penalties of disproportionate use, etc. I just went with these since it changed less (descending towards our current [nominal] 45s durations, assuming equal thirds, etc.).

:: My own preference would offer a bit more leeway to disproportionate use by having song efficiency return to normal in less than twice its use time, as to better recover from mistakes and allow more sway, but would probably escalate a bit more sharply to bring the maximum time down to 90 seconds or so. I'll mock up some numbers to that end soon enough.

ASIDE: Another consideration is whether BRD should be able to sacrifice flexibility in song use for flexibility in direct support actions. Presently, I'm slightly leaning away from that, at least in any directly MP-consuming form, since I don't want Bard to feel too much conflict between enjoying the nuances of optimizing its own damage and providing situational support to its party, but I would very much like to see at-cost support options in other ways.

Why at cost? If you get a capacity for "free", what you're really doing is pre-paying for it, as you will then be balanced around using that utility. You can still come out ahead in fights that make better than average use of that utility, but you then lose out in fights that make worse than average use. Having ways to divert those expenses to more general fall-back options (much like Scholar can get at least some use out of its would-be excess healing capacity by spending it instead on Energy Drain) helps to steady "supportive" jobs' contribution while also adding some further depth to their kits as a side-effect.

To be clear, some "free" (or, more representatively, pre-paid) utility is fine, and what we have now isn't even the half of what we're taxed for so there's plenty of room to add on utility without fitting damage loss, but I would rather any powerful/impactful additions be more flexible and reduce the tax instead.