RIP Bard

[Edellis]

Straight Shot is a damage buff that needs to be kept up, much like Huton, Heavy Thrust, Maim, Greased Lightning...etc.

Bards have 2 dots that need to be kept up, just like the melee DPS classes.

Bards also have to Invigorate like the melee DPS classes.

What resource management does Bard lack?

Those aren't resources, they're buffs and DOTs. There's no way to "mess up" anything Bard does, worse case scenario, your DPS drops if you use them sub-optimally. It's not like you're going to fail a DPS check because of any of this -- just pop all CDs at once 90% of the time you'll be fine. Bards don't directly benefit from MP or their songs, other classes do. This is fun but it's also not very engaging, since outside of ballad, the BRD isn't sacrificing anything. And even then, it's a completely passive sacrifice, nothing changes from your point of view.

This new stance is the first time Bard actually has to think about an ability before they press the button, and it makes a very noticeable sacrifice.

The majority of BRD's difficulty for me seems to come from the fact the game doesn't explicitly tell you when you gain a bloodletter proc, and i guess that's just to stop them from just being 100% ezmode. BRD really just feels like a parse machine more than anything.