Bard - they broke my job

[aabe]

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FCoB (these are all with IW bow and a DRG in group. I never got my DW bow until lockout raiding was over lol 15 clears)
530 T10, 515 T11, 512 T12 (I never did bluefire because week 1 prog had our WHM offering to do it) and 440 in T13 (you parse lower in T13 as BRD by a lot if your group bursts add phase well, best with a slower group was 495)

On dummies right now I pull 880-900 avg without food/pots/pt. 800 or a little less without Minuet at all, and a bit towards 830 if I open with Minuet and flip it off afterwards.

I mean, trust me, I'm pretty sure the job I've been playing for TWO YEARS I'm a lot more familiar with than this stance that flips everything around, which I've had for 5 days. I'm still outparsing myself very handily with WM up full-time. Movement isn't even an issue either with how scripted raids have been since First coil, considering that I've had no issue with it with RNG tornados in fights like bismarck EX and neverreap.

[aabe]

Also, you lose out a bit on double weaving yes, but it's not nearly as important anymore outside of the opener. In cases outside of your opener you have SS procs to double weave and situations of movement where you can pop all the stuff you want until you're done.
Like I said about CRIT/DET/SKS, there are a million cases outside of those where minuet scaling is more beneficial than autos such as selene buffs/AST cards/TA/DRG etc.

The only complaint I can see anybody having for Bard right now is that melee DPS now do exponentially more than the bard at this point, disregarding the argument of WM vs no WM melee do like 400 more DPS than bards now rather than just 100.

[SasakiNori]

Yeah we have shit WD scaling, but its been like that for a while yet we still kept up pre 3.0.

I know it's been like that even before 3.0, but the WD margin between bard and every other classes increases with higher WD, which puts us behind even more.

at i95: Bard WD is at 42 compared to Monk at 47 (5 WD difference)
at i135: Bard WD is at 52 compared to Monk at 58 (6 WD difference)
at i190: Bard WD is at 65 compared to Monk at 72 (7 WD difference)

[Sessurea]

Meh take it all back, give back original barrage and stop trying to fix brd >_<


The difficulty and fun of bard was trying to connect every last one of your AAs...and now se want us to have none. Like wtf.....


I was up for the challenge when I saw the changes, even blindly defended them as I thought at least a substantial damage increase was there, but now that I tested a bit it's like "why even bother?" Open with minuet, switch it off, and continue on as normal. Yay for sidewinder but....oh dear, barrage sux now ( refuse to go back into minuet unless downtime + buffs off cd ). Nice freaking update =_=

[Ooshima]

FCoB (these are all with IW bow and a DRG in group. I never got my DW bow until lockout raiding was over lol 15 clears)
530 T10, 515 T11, 512 T12 (I never did bluefire because week 1 prog had our WHM offering to do it) and 440 in T13 (you parse lower in T13 as BRD by a lot if your group bursts add phase well, best with a slower group was 495)

On dummies right now I pull 880-900 avg without food/pots/pt. 800 or a little less without Minuet at all, and a bit towards 830 if I open with Minuet and flip it off afterwards.

I mean, trust me, I'm pretty sure the job I've been playing for TWO YEARS I'm a lot more familiar with than this stance that flips everything around, which I've had for 5 days. I'm still outparsing myself very handily with WM up full-time. Movement isn't even an issue either with how scripted raids have been since First coil, considering that I've had no issue with it with RNG tornados in fights like bismarck EX and neverreap.

Your FCoB numbers, considering with IW bow and a DRG were still far off from some of the best parses/performances I've seen. DRG parses I could do 53X on T11 and T13 47X with an average speed group (which kills fast enough that leaves you about 1-2s idle time per pack of mobs and the last add dies just as Bahamut charges the last Divebomb). BTW I didn't have DW bow too until lock out was released and by then it was became a mere vanity item.

I did some dummy parses for the past 2 days and without WM it was 83X region for a 3min parse without food/party/buff. WM did either on par or worse. Double weaving isn't un-important outside opener because you are nearly doing it every now and then. BFB+Hawk, IB+Flaming Arrow, Repelling+Blunt are you most common double weave combos due to the fact that their refresh time syncs. Need not to say that you have to add in BL/SS procs and also SW as OGCD. I've lost count the number of times when everything that needs to be done falls together at the same time - SS buff and DoTs needs to be refreshed back-to-back and you have BL/Repelling/Blunt/EA all up at the same time. You are losing DPS in such situations because you can't fire them off in a timely manner unless you are off WM.

Oh BTW you must have been shit lucky if you claim that you have zero issues in Brismarck EX. The Tornados ain't an issue, it is those annoying floor AoEs that are, and if they kept spawning on you in succession there is no way that you can't lose DPS there. I have a fair share of FCoB experience as a BLM, while not doing the same level of DPS as BLM mains but still coming out top when playing with pugs so I guess that's fair enough. As a BLM I can manage with F3 procs, scathe, swiftcats and also AE but BRD in WM mode lacks such abilities to manage. You are bound to lose DPS if you are on perm WM mode for the fight in such scenarios.

The same goes to Ravana EX. I simply could not believe that for such fights, perm WM is the way to go. Of course if there are gurus out there with parses to show that they are already doing a respectable DPS on non WM mode in Brismarck/Ravana EX and they did even higher on perm WM I will be more than happy to stand corrected and learn.

[Sessurea]

and don't forget blms got sprint on demand and aetherial manipulation too and now even sharpcast as if they didn't already have enough tools to make their "hard"job a bit easier. They are built to move and always be casting, Very ironically the "new bard" , ffxiv mobile ranged class is anything but that.....

[aabe]

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I'll give you T13 but you have to remember that sometimes in T11 you need to help on the cube.
Also I already acknowledged T13 is weaker with a quicker group. On my alt group I parsed up to 495 with an average-ish kill time, in my own group where we were nearly getting 3 akh morns my DPS was much lower by the time I had T13 decently optimized because you get SO MUCH MORE flaming arrow ticks/multidots/etc. in the add phases which are very set amounts of health. No matter what I did in my main static I couldn't get higher simply because a gigantic portion of my DPS came from multidotting on add phases and such.

In Bismarck the RNG levi-plume ish AOEs take so long to drop that you can start a cast as the marker appears, finish it, and move out of the way before the aoe hits.

but I really do not know what you're doing wrong if you can't outparse WM. I'm doing 4min parses and WM is much better. 4MIN is a lot weaker on non-minuet than 3:00 or 3:30, my results are the same in any dummy timing but you're more geared than me so I can see the 30 DPS discrepancy there with no-WM if you're doing parses that are a full minute shorter than mine as a standard.

And dummies are supposed to "theoretically" be where WM would be king, if you parse 800 DPS with ~140 from autos 20% of that is around 130, the rest can easily be made up by IJ and Emp arrow. Easily. I've been doing ravana for a bit and it hasn't been too bad so far but we've just started progressing on it.

[Ooshima]

and don't forget blms got sprint on demand and aetherial manipulation too and now even sharpcast as if they didn't already have enough tools to make their "hard"job a bit easier. They are built to move and always be casting, Very ironically the "new bard" , ffxiv mobile ranged class is anything but that.....

Sprint + high enough spell speed is good enough to move around back then in ARR already. There's also Manawall/Manaward to stay still at critical times if need be (albeit its nerfed now)

BRD? I laughed at myself whenever I have a supercharged EA + SW incoming (Hawk+BfB at least, best with RS) but I get targeted by a floor circle AoE that I have to move out immediately because my cast ain't fast enough to pull of the tricks you do with BLM.

Ravana EX, the opening needs to be timed so precisely that I fire off the barrage EA in time for the first all knowing stance and use the animation time of EA + SW to quickly shift to the correct position for the next all knowing stance. Just an example of some of the annoyance.

The baseline for me is the idea of WM ain't bad. Probably their testers were terribad that knew shit about the job. They forgot that BRDs are a fast pewpewpew double OGCD jobs and the way the implement WM and the WM kit into our base kit feels too forced. It's super clunky right now that it give us more problems than any benefit at all. Previously an excellent bard knows how to catch SS/BL procs before the GCD counter ends and fires it off before the next GCD skill. Now? You can't fire off SS immediately because you are facing queuing problems similar to Fire 3 procs. You are no longer reward being able to quickly spot a BL proc and fire it off together with maybe a Blunt Arrow that just refreshed at the same time before your next GCD skill, because in WM mode you can only do 1 OGCD per GCD. I'm no longer being rewarded with what I've initially signed up for as a BRD, even with all the nerfs they did to me back in ARR.

So what rewards a WM BRD now? Good control of movements? Heck, if that's what it is then I'm better off playing a BLM (which I pretty liked it too). Deals a shit ton more damage then a WM BRD with ample tools to manage movement requirements. Hell, I'm even leveling a MCN right now despite some of its woes, because MCN is designed ground up and it would be less clunky than a BRD with a new set of skills that are entirely of a different concept from its base kit being forced to work together.

For a start, if SE would make WM activation/deactivation work like Cleric Stance then that's quite a big QoL improvement. And look into how our OGCDs can be used during a "cast" too. Having to waste 1s of GCD to place a flaming arrow is pretty... meh.

[Ooshima]

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What kind of gear are you on? As long as you have an IL180 bow you shouldn't be too far off, since things like accessories gives +1DEX as an upgrade from IL170-IL180. Only WD can make up differences such as 30+DPS, unless your main stat is so lagging behind mine.

I can try comparing 4mins WM vs non-WM parses tonight.

WM mode I'm not sure. I keep finding myself having too much OGCDs to trigger off and weave.

[Inferiae]

Leaving my two cents here.

I've been a BRD ever since I started playing, at beta. I don't care if my DPS isn't the highest of all DPS jobs (for those who care about numbers, my highest was 557 at T12), I play BRD because I enjoy it's mobility and play style.
Two things that were taken away from me in Heavensward. No, I don't like any other jobs as much as I like(d) BRD, so switching is not an option. And being forced to switch because of a skill I never asked for is a bit too much. If I wanted to play a caster, there are other jobs available for me. If SE wanted to introduce a ranged physical caster DPS, they could've used MCH. Or the other way around, I wouldn't care switching to MCH if it was like the old BRD. But no, they made both dependant on a caster stance.
My problem isn't not being able to adapt. I can think of rotations, I can make optimal use of cooldowns and Wanderer's Minuet, I just don't enjoy playing BRD anymore.

Before, every time I thought about running some content, I was excited, specially new content. Now, I get excited, then remember that I'll have to go as BRD and there goes my excitement.

Uniqueness? Don't make me laugh. Because cast time is very original, right? Because we have so many jobs that can hit from a distance and keep running, right?
I never asked for a caster. If I wanted a caster I'd go play a caster.

Improve a job, yes. Don't change its play style. All my friends with their other jobs seem so excited with their new skills, while I'm hoping I'll wake up one day after a hotfix to see Wanderer's Minuet removed from the game.
It's not increasing potencies or decreasing cast times that'll make me enjoy playing BRD again.

And for those saying "You asked for higher DPS, that's the price": No, I never did. I know the price I was paying for having increased mobility and I was okay with it. AND, every other job (decently played, of course) is out-DPSing me right now anyway (except MCH, for now), even BLM in movement-intensive fights.


Oh yeah, and I won't even talk about the majority of the new fights being movement-intensive, because it's probably me never noticing before.