Bard - they broke my job

[The_Last_Dragoon]

Bard's been my main job since the start of 2.0, so I can definitely feel the hurt when it comes to limiting Bard antics. What's really funny though is that Wanderer's Minuet is quite literally the saving grace of the Bard now since they've reduced auto-attack damage and changed Barrage to affect your skills. I'll tell you the truth, I'm only level 55, mostly because I've worked the past 3 days, and the damage output is absolutely insane for Bard now. People seem to forget that Bard's had absolutely horrible dps in ARR, and if you actually did get 1st on the parser list then it spoke volumes about either the boss fight or your other dps. There were literally people dropping out of dungeons because double Bard dps was "too weak."

I'm not sure if you realize or not, but you can actually make very subtle movements in the single second between the end of a cast and the end of the global cooldown, and while you have Straight Shot proc'ed you can move freely since it becomes an instant cast again. Not to mention that Iron Jaws is a literal godsend to single target damage since you can keep up your damage over time with a single ability and you have two new moves, one is a 240 potency while the other is a 350. The 20% damage buff is quite nice, and as long as you rotate your self-buffs accordingly you can very easily out-dps other classes without much trouble at all. Not to mention, have you used the new Bard dps LB? I quite literally never had it on my Bard until around 2.3 where I started getting this uncanny knack of outliving the healers.

If anything has been completely ruined on the Bard it's Quick Nock, since there's really no reason to keep it on your action bar anymore. Not only is there no proc from either Wide Volley or Rain of Death, but it does the exact same damage as Wide Volley with the caveat that you deal damage in a cone. So really, Bard dps has been reduced to Wide Volley spam + ogcd Rain of Death (Though now there's a reason to keep Venomous Bite on your main target).

In reality, Bard was pretty powerful (and they kinda still are) in their ability to kite other enemies. I distinctly remember killing enemies 10 levels higher than me on ARC/BRD since it was so easy to abuse enemies who couldn't invoke ranged attacks. I don't know of any other class that can do the same without getting help from someone else.

EDIT:

•Seeing a Straighter Shot proc next to your character, and queueing a Straight Shot during your current GCD will cast a full-channel non-proc Straight Shot, while the buff is applied right after you start casting.



Currently a bug exists locking you out from casting skills for 1~10 seconds.

I've noticed these happening to me frequently, the lockout especially is jarring, but I thought it was due to me losing target for some reason. Hopefully these issues and the others get fixed soon.