Buff Bards or Riot

[Wavaryen]

If I wanted to play a caster I would play a caster. You took the flavor and fun out of a class tossed it out the window.

Also did not one of the devs said they wanted brds with this song to do damage onpar with blm or something? They sure did not hit the mark on that one. If you are going to take away the fun of the class, you better at least give us amazing dps with it.

[Mimiru_S]

As a former BRD now MCH, I feel your pain. I hope both of our jobs get the attention they deserve. Usually devs listen to the JP community, so imo, it's looking good for WM.

It's a shame that they made MCH, essentially, a carbon copy of BRD.

[Reinha]

I don't think anyone is asking to move freely while maintaining BLM level dps. The way I would want bard dps to work is, in short, reduce it while singing support and buff it while not moving. Here's an example:

Lets compare the damage of bard and another job, for example BLM (can be any other one as well).
A) Highest possible dps: 95% of BLM damage. Bard does competitive numbers against a BLM when he is singing WM but not support songs.
B) Mediocre dps: ~80% of BLM damage. Relatively same damage as during ARR. Never top but not bad either. Bard does these numbers when singing support songs and WM at the same time, or when singing neither.
C) Low dps: 50%-60% of BLM damage. This is the situation we have currently, with or without WM and whilst not even singing support songs. I would be happier if bards only reached these numbers when singing support songs while not singing WM.

In ARR bards would do either B or C damage depending on if they were singing. But now they seem to be around C levels of damage and even drop below when they sing support songs. I don't think it would be too much to ask for bards to do close to a BLM if they choose to not move nor support. All SE would need to do is buff the damage bonus of WM, let us use all the new abilities without WM and increase the dps penalty in support songs. That way a party of all bards is not overpowered, and people could also choose to play more like a sniper with cast times and no support. Most bards would probably utilize both kinds of songs and average around B levels.

[Edellis]

^ Yeah

Square is just going to have to bite the bullet, and decide to phase out the old 2.0 playstyle.

The other DPS classes all got some serious deeps increases, while all of bards skills from 51-57 have been geared soley towards dps, which is completely opposite of its 2.0 job skills. But the skills seem to be trying to not completely invalidate off-stance while at the same time being DPS increases, and it just isn't working too well when other classes are getting 100% straight DPS boosts with every added skill.

They need to either buff minuet or lower the implied reliance on it and buff them both. It takes nearly until Lv56 for Wanderer's Minuet to compensate for loss of AA's in the old style of gameplay. That alone is why their DPS is faltering behind. The other classes are taking strides forward, while BRD is just dancing around itself.

[UltimateAoe2]

Unfortunately, in my opinion, they should just buff the weapon damage. Not by a whole lot, but yeah..
Like honestly, look at this:



:v.

[ErzaScarlet77]

everyone always complain about WM. cant you guys just use the tried and true level 50 rotation?
if WM actually decrease your dps, then dont use it.
yeah sure you dont get to use the fancy new skills but hey, drg got 2 skills that are basically the same thing and MNK new skills only work when theres nothing to punch

[Wavaryen]

everyone always complain about WM. cant you guys just use the tried and true level 50 rotation?
if WM actually decrease your dps, then dont use it.
yeah sure you dont get to use the fancy new skills but hey, drg got 2 skills that are basically the same thing and MNK new skills only work when theres nothing to punch

So people should not be upset that they took a class design that made it fun for many people, and tossed it away? Also, this game like it or not forces us to group with each other. Seeing others go, *sigh* another brd or mch. when you first join makes one feel really good.

So brd lost what made them fun, and are weaker to show for it. Your logic makes no sense.

[Catwho]

I basically only use WM in a situation where I have a ton of adds to mow down. The 20% buff applies across all mobs there, and makes up for the lack of auto attacks since those only hit the main target anyway.

I would like a few things to improve WM without losing the changes SE added:
- Wanderer's Minuet should be instant activation like every other class's stance change
- Iron Jaws should be instant cast, with a 10 second recast, not on the global cooldown

Those two small tweaks would allow a bard faced with 3+ enemies to pop WM, pop DoTs, pop buffs, do a Sidewinder, Empyreal Arrow, then Iron Jaws and then roll into AOE spam heaven.

I also find myself fantasizing over an ability that'd transfer the DoTs from one enemy in a group over to the next one, like Bane, so I could then pop Iron Jaws on it without having to waste two GCD spells reapplying the DoTs, but that's wishful thinking.

[Vespar]

Everytime I use WM I kill stuff extremely slow and I cant move around. I actually spent an hour on a training dummy comparing the two and I felt I hit far more bloodletters thereby increasing my dmg and also the added auto attacks plus crits on my skills appears to be far more dmg output that with WM on.
Mind you I'm only level 55 on Bard at the moment, but it doesnt sound like it changes much at 60. I actually stopped playing bard at 53 because I was so ticked by the changes so I leveled DRG instead. Now that my DRG is 60, I went back to retry bard again. I'm really not happy with WM, truthfully, they didn't need to make us casters. They could have made WM something like Blood of the Dragon for example, and that you needed to do certain actions to extend its effects over time and thereby let you use Empyreal arrow, etc.
Just a thought but Bard does need a major overhaul now in my opinion. I for one, will not be using WM, and if folks aren't happy with me for that, then I guess they can kick me =/

[FaileExperiment]

The main argument here is that the damage BONUS simply doesn't cover it. It needs to be significantly higher than it is to counter the loss of mobility and auto-attacks. Even a bonus of 30% would go a long way to counteracting the balancing issues, which was already suggested had you been paying attention.

What if WM was changed to not stop auto-attacks?