Bard - they broke my job

[Jericho_Cross]

My two cents. Keep in mind I have raided all of 2.55 content well before nerfs and echo as a bard. I was probably one of the very few who tried really, really hard to like WM.

In the beginning I really was interested in WM because I kind of liked the idea of channeling your shots but when it was made clear that WM will not allow auto attacks and only give 20% increase in damage, that made me more cautious than curious. I parse myself constantly in FCoB to make sure I can maximize my DPS and our auto attack does roughly 20% of our damage.

First things first, the damage increase in this song should be at least 50% to even make us worth considering the mobility and auto attack lost. I don't know what SQUEE was thinking when they were developing this job but for a class to have 2 of it's new skills gated by a song is really un-intuitive. Our auto attacks make up a pretty decent portion of our damage and to only have the song increase it to 20% barely offsets that lost.

[Jericho_Cross]

(Continue)

Secondly, synergy and oGCDs. Before, we could squeeze in 2 oGCDs between one single GCD. That means our buff management was streamlined and it doesn't take us twice the amount of time to put them up. For a class that relies so much on our buffs aligning to increase our damage output, the cast time pretty much f*ck us over. On top of that, BL is our bread and butter. With GCD and cast time gating it from being spam is a HUGE, HUGE DPS lost. There has been time where I spammed 3 or 4 BL's back to back to back...

Thirdly, movement. As other mentions we have zero mobility skills to help us reposition besides our Jump Shot. We can't use TP to sprint like BLM's.

It feels like a complete mess trying to play this class now.

I am level 59, closing on 60. I was pretty excited for Sidewinder but now that I know Barrage doesn't even proc it, that was the last nail in the coffin for me. Help me pick a new class? DRG or BLM!

[Xellos2099]

There is even bigger issue for people starting to lvl bard, lvl 1-52 play COMPLETELY different from 53-60. I been trying to use WM in 4 man dungeon on trash with aoe. I am saving a bit of tp and it is hitting harder but here come another issue. It is very time consuming to apply/reapply dot on several target for the Rain of Death proc. IJ help with u are only on one target but that really only happen during boss. For boss I just use WB as opener and switch back to normal.

[LunarEmerald]

I'm honestly not a fan of dotting everything and relying on rain of death for aoes. It's unreliable.

[Xellos2099]

I'm honestly not a fan of dotting everything and relying on rain of death for aoes. It's unreliable.

Well, minuet made it worse with casting time for the dot. Before it is easy to apply dot to two or 3 target.

[Inferiae]

My two cents. Keep in mind I have raided all of 2.55 content well before nerfs and echo as a bard. I was probably one of the very few who tried really, really hard to like WM.

In the beginning I really was interested in WM because I kind of liked the idea of channeling your shots but when it was made clear that WM will not allow auto attacks and only give 20% increase in damage, that made me more cautious than curious. I parse myself constantly in FCoB to make sure I can maximize my DPS and our auto attack does roughly 20% of our damage.

First things first, the damage increase in this song should be at least 50% to even make us worth considering the mobility and auto attack lost. I don't know what SQUEE was thinking when they were developing this job but for a class to have 2 of it's new skills gated by a song is really un-intuitive. Our auto attacks make up a pretty decent portion of our damage and to only have the song increase it to 20% barely offsets that lost.

Oh, trust me, I tried hard, and I'm still trying. Only to get more and more disappointed.

At first I thought it was a good idea, and I'm not gonna lie, I like the Barrage+EA followed by Sidewinder spike damage (dat 4279 damage tho). But the casting time on skills that weren't designed to have cast times or to be used in between cast times kill it for me. And turning WM off, while being an option, is sub optimal in most cases.

[Jericho_Cross]

Yep. I too did try hard to like WM I am not going to lie. lol... I am not even 60 yet and that burst sounds nice but once every 60-ish seconds? Nah.

[Melch]

With that new skill, I honestly don't see any reason to have a BRD in a party.
I don't know why it has been made a bardmage while BLM and SMN were already way above BRD in terms of DPS before 3.0.
Sorry SE but you just erased one job from the game.

[MrYaah]

My parses are coming out as more dps on a dummy with minuet but its really hard to consistently get more dps on most bosses with minuet vs without.

I dont think theres any way to really consolidate a casting playstyle with bloodletter and bards other ogcds. Even if you discount bloodletter its already going to be hard to consistently get all the ogcds used in a timely matter and they will frequently collide during your rotation forcing you to either delay once of the ogcds or delay your gcd. Then you add in bloodletter with an average cd of 6 seconds.... What the hell was square enix thinking? They're forcing players into no win situations where you constantly forced to decide between delaying an ogcd, delaying a gcd, or leaving bloodletter off cd during your next dot tick. Its always unclear what the correct choice is and its extremely unfun to be put into situations like this 10 times per minute.

[Jericho_Cross]

...Its always unclear what the correct choice is and its extremely unfun to be put into situations like this 10 times per minute.

This, so much this. This class just feels like a mess as compare to a class like DRG where all their attacks and buffs line up nicely and it feels fluid. Now for us it is just another clusterf*ck of stuff being up and us mashing which ever button we can.