Bard - they broke my job

[Aikaal]

Snip

BLM was still bursting for 1.1k pre 3.0 I've seen bards at 1k+ but yeah. That's debatable.

That's unfortunate there was no BLM because I would have pummeled that parse

So you are saying that a stat is better for your Job. How does this proof that Bards are broken?

In T10, if you were in farm content, you were smart to multi DoT. This remind me how I was using Chaos Trust on my Dragoon on two of them then use Elusive jump to go on the other pack to Chaos Trust.

The only reason why you feel Bard is bad is because they lost their full-time mobility. This means if you have to move, you have to put Wanderer's Minuet away as SE intended to make this skill work. This means you won't have 100% up time WM and it's fine to stance dance that way, it will split the average and good bards.

You have ignored my last question. Do you have theorycraft behind all your claims how Bard is a broken job and needs help? I would actually like to have information since I am thinking of leveling Bard. No whine, actual information.

[Snowaeth]

BLM was still bursting for 1.1k pre 3.0 I've seen bards at 1k+ but yeah. That's debatable.

That's unfortunate there was no BLM because I would have pummeled that parse

So you are saying that a stat is better for your Job. How does this proof that Bards are broken?

In T10, if you were in farm content, you were smart to multi DoT. This remind me how I was using Chaos Trust on my Dragoon on two of them then use Elusive jump to go on the other pack to Chaos Trust.

The only reason why you feel Bard is bad is because they lost their full-time mobility. This means if you have to move, you have to put Wanderer's Minuet away as SE intended to make this skill work. This means you won't have 100% up time WM and it's fine to stance dance that way, it will split the average and good bards.

You have ignored my last question. Do you have theorycraft behind all your claims how Bard is a broken job and needs help? I would actually like to have information since I am thinking of leveling Bard. No whine, actual information.

I've bursted 1,1k+ pre 3.0 too with the normal bard opener so lets leave that as undecided.

About the stat being better for bards. It's the scaling that multiplies the more crit + targets you have.
Lets look at other jobs 1 target is worth 1 damage, with crit its 1,5 then two targets worth 2 damage and with crit 3 but for bard every of those targets add that basic damage and then increase your bloodletter procs by another multiplier (think black mage thunder procs, but at a much better rate).
I wasn not pointing out that this makes the bard broken, I was pointing out that it makes Alex T1 an amazing bard fight to boost the numbers more so than the other jobs, making the bard numbers look better than they actually are on most fights.

As for my issues with bard, it's not actually the loss of mobility. It's the implementation of how this is done. 11 OGCD's + one resetting non stop, require for a rotation that feels very clunky and destroys the flow of how bard was played before.
The change of playstyle is not something I'm a fan of, but it's not something I can't get used to, I can imagine a lot of bards hating it much more than I do though because it's a drastic change compared to non WM play which basically isn't building on top of the class but changing the class.

Sorry I didn't ignore your last question you edited that in while I was already writing a reply.

The bard needs help with the flow of the skills, not the damage, not mobility (although other bards would disagree even more because they strongly feel that they'r missing what they signed for in the loss of mobility).
I am also hating on the playstyle change, especially because the main 50+ skills are basically a copy paste from MCH which lowers the option of choice rather than increases it.

So for theory crafting It takes about 1,5s to cast a skill. Every 12 seconds you get Empyrean Arrow which is OGCD, but has a 1,5ish cast time too. Then you got a non stop flow of Bloodletter which can proc again while you'r casting.
What does this mean? Bloodletter > Heavy Shot because during heavy shot cast Bloodletter can proc. Now lets say I'm casting Heavy Shot then Bloodletter that's all the room I have for OGCD's. Yet I got a ton of buffs lined up and bloodletter resetting on top and there's Empyrean Arrow coming off cooldown too. There is no room to fit skills properly without cutting into GCD's.

That's not the end of it though. There's Flaming arrow, which is a very underrated skill, but ends up doing a higher % of damage than most bards realize. This skill is placed on the floor, but can't be pre queued before a cast finishes, so by the time your cast finishes and you get to queue it up you still need to place it on the floor, pretty much guaranteeing to cut a little into your GCD.

Lets look at the new Barrage on the side too, not even going into numbers on how exactly it's nerfed (especially vs quad barrage) but lets look at how it is used now. You would always want to use this before the strongest weaponskill for obvious reasons. The strongest weapon skill is Empyreal Arrow. Empyreal Arrow is already OGCD. I just explained how there is only room for 1 OGCD in normal cases. But before you do EMP arrow with Barrage you need to basically do 2 where EMP arrow also has a cast time which basically double cuts into your GCD unless you had a Straight Shot proc (Think Fire3 proc pre3.0 which is 20% chance per Heavy Shot used think Fire 1) then in that time Bloodletter most likely has procce'd which goes before HS because it can proc again during HS cast which means you delay your GCD even more.

It's not me whining about mobility. Not even whining about damage potential here although from what I just wrote, I am of the opinion that if we'r not going to get changes the damage gain from WM needs to be higher to compensate for a playstyle like this.

As for MCH vs BRD, MCH straight up parse higher on dummy and dummy like bosses than any BRD I have seen and asked during the same time of progression of the classes starting from hitting 60 up to now. I would love to show you numbers but I do not save those things so that would require quite a lot of effort to look them up for you again and I don't like you enough to put even more effort than I am already doing in this reply, but even here numbers can easily be tweaked by changing potencies up or down a little bit. What bard needs is not a numbers change, it needs to fix the mess that is our OGCD's in WM.

As to how to fix it, casting OGCD's during casts would go a long way (obviously tweaking numbers accordingly afterward).

Something I'd personally love is having WM not be a copy of Gauss Barrel and instead of giving cast times make our skills 3 or 5 yalm range to play as a melee during the song uptime.
Because on a bard being a melee but having no cast time wouldn't actually break the skill flow. Where MCH kit was already made to work with the class (MCH does need a couple QoL changes too tho).

[Aikaal]

So for theory crafting It takes about 1,5s to cast a skill.

I think you've answered your question. 1 GCD is 2.5 seconds, you have your window there.

You are also not the only one on this boat. I personally hard cast RS + Potion so I lose time and it feels weird but the damage is here.

A stat does not magically makes a certain fight better. I still fail to understand why you think A1 doesn't reflect the reality. Everybody gets more DPS on 2 targets and stat weights does not matter. You multidot on 2 targets as a Bard like a Summoner would. Like a BLM would Flare at the end of his rotation or a Dragoon would Chaos Trust both targets.

Well, the Bard on the video is form your Free Company, maybe you should ask him.

If you fail to perform like other Bards, the producer did mention Bard was working as intended and to deal with it.

I'm sorry about the question earlier but you still didn't answer it. I see no math that prove Bard is broken right now. There is no PPS (Potency per Second) You do not show with maths why Bard feels clunky. From what you told me, your skills take 1.5 seconds but triggers a 2.5 seconds GCD. It's enough for 1 OGCD. If multiple CDs happen and you have low latency, you could probably inset 2 OGCD losing minimal time. I personally don't see the problem. I'd love to have my spells be 1.5 secs and trigger a 2.5 GCD, unfortunately the BLM spam spell is a 3 seconds cast time. If I can deal with it along with my OGCD, I don't think you have the right to complain. Even if you have 11 OGCD.

If I were you, I'd try to math out the lost on OGCD before doing any claim :\ I would also question the Bard in my FC that is doing 1239 DPS in A1 what he is doing.

[Snowaeth]

I think you've answered your question. 1 GCD is 2.5 seconds, you have your window there.

You are also not the only one on this boat. I personally hard cast RS + Potion so I lose time and it feels weird but the damage is here.

A stat does not magically makes a certain fight better. I still fail to understand why you think A1 doesn't reflect the reality. Everybody gets more DPS on 2 targets and stat weights does not matter. You multidot on 2 targets as a Bard like a Summoner would. Like a BLM would Flare at the end of his rotation or a Dragoon would Chaos Trust both targets.

Well, the Bard on the video is form your Free Company, maybe you should ask him.

If you fail to perform like other Bards, the producer did mention Bard was working as intended and to deal with it.

I'm sorry about the question earlier but you still didn't answer it. I see no math that prove Bard is broken right now. There is no PPS (Potency per Second) You do not show with maths why Bard feels clunky. From what you told me, your skills take 1.5 seconds but triggers a 2.5 seconds GCD. It's enough for 1 OGCD. If multiple CDs happen and you have low latency, you could probably inset 2 OGCD losing minimal time. I personally don't see the problem. I'd love to have my spells be 1.5 secs and trigger a 2.5 GCD, unfortunately the BLM spam spell is a 3 seconds cast time. If I can deal with it along with my OGCD, I don't think you have the right to complain. Even if you have 11 OGCD.

If I were you, I'd try to math out the lost on OGCD before doing any claim :\ I would also question the Bard in my FC that is doing 1239 DPS in A1 what he is doing.

Okay you got your RS+Pot now compare it to this. These are the bard OGCD skills weaved into the normal rotation.

[Battle Voice] 300sec, [Pot] 270 sec, [RS] 120sec & [Invigorate] 120, (possibly a poison pot 108sec), [HE] & [Barrage] 90sec, [B4B] 80sec, [Sidewinder], [IR] & [Flaming Arrow] 60sec, [Blunt] & [Repelling] 30sec, [Bloodletter] 15sec [Resets 1-2 times per cooldown on average], [Empyreal Arrow] 12sec + Below 20%target hp [Misery End] 12sec.

Lets add that up That's 15 OGCD's right there. 16 if you use poison pot. Tell me again how you loose some damage from using your RS+Pot and how that compares to using 16 OGCD's.
Now lets look again at your pot and raging strikes cooldown shall we? 270sec and 120sec.
Now lets look at what happens with bard every 12 seconds? An OGCD with 1,5sec cast time and if below 20% hp Misery end on same cooldown.
Now lets look at Bloodletter, happens every 15sec guranteed averaging somewhere below two resets per cooldown so about one Bloodletter per 7,5seconds?
Flaming Arrow? Needs to cut into your GCD every 60sec.

Now lets align some skills shall we?
Straight shot needs to be kept up every 17sec. Iron Jaws needs to refresh dots every 15sec.

So every 17seconds you spend casting 2 GCD's at the end of their timer which you most of the time can not delay (by much).

So there are only 15seconds in which you could delay your GCD's as you please.

There are average-ish 2 Bloodletter procs and 1 EA to cast in that time + Misery End when target is below 20%.
Every other set of 15sec there would be Repeling (which is now only cast when SS procs) and Blunt arrow.
1/4 of the time IR and Sidewinder are up for these timeslots.
Now lets see what happens at that point already?
Every 1/4 of these 15sec windows you will have to fit in 6 OGCD's or 7 if Misery is up.
Every 1/7 of these windows you'd have 9 OGCD's to fit in that time 10 if Misery is up.
Every 1/9 of these windows you'd have to fit in 10 or 11 if misery is up and 12 if poison pot becomes a thing again.

Now a window of 15 allows you 6 OGCD windows with this cast time or if you count fitting them in after the two unmovable GCD's it's 8 OGCD spots at best.

1/9 of the time it doesn't fit by 4-6 OGCD's
1/7 of the time it doesn't fit by 3-4 OGCD's
1/4 of the time it possibly doesn't fit by 1 OGCD

Now lets look at Bloodletter again since it seems you don't know how this skill works and question me why crit scales better on bard.

Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Instant - Recast 15sec.
Comes with this trait: River of Blood
Grants a 50% chance that critical damage over time inflicted by Venmous Bite or Windbite will reset the Bloodletter recast timer.

A bard will always keep the 2 dots going, so every dot tick there is 2x a chance for a dot to crit and 50% chance on every of those crits to reset the Bloodletter cooldown. Since it's 2 dots this averages into 100% trait activation per crit of your dots so the reset of Bloodletter happens basically as often as your critical chance on your dots.

What happens when there are two targets? The Bloodletter proc rate is doubled. The extra damage you get from your dots is already ticking on the 2nd add, but now on top of that you gain a doubled proc rate which is on a single target a huge part of the bard damage as it is. The other classes only benefit from their dots/aoe's being up on two targets where the bard actually benefits by doubling a proc chance on top of the damage already going out on the two targets.

Now back to the GCD's and OGCD's. Bloodletter is a proc based OGCD you can not account for when it procs exactly and you want to keep the chance of proccing it going. To do this you need to use it, because when it's off GCD proccing it won't give you an extra Bloodletter but just waste it. What does this mean, that if Bloodletter proc aligned with you casting any other skill the Bloodletter will take the OGCD spot most likely, If this happens during EA cast which was already cutting into GCD it will delay the GCD even more. When a GCD gets delayed your little window for OGCD's gets smaller. As you can see 1/4 of the time you already have no proper window for delays.

The bard being in my FC and me complaining has very little to do with my skill or performance. I am not asking for numbers, I am asking for gameplay improvements. You pointing out any numbers does not change the gameplay whatsoever especially when you don't actually play bard yourself and do not want to listen to the issues however badly I am at presenting them.

I perform beyond the average bard, can parse 1k on that dummy, but that doesn't change my issue whatsoever. Although you seem to not be willing to understand and bring the discussion back to dps numbers where a game is not only about dps numbers.

As a long time bard player and with having cleared A1 enough to know the feel of the fight on the new bard, I know what I mean when I point out A1 as a flaw to show bard performance check as the fight is tailored for bards.

As for your Fire 4 on 3sec cast, that's a nice argument to enforce your point, only you leave out the fact that it's below 2,5sec when using Ley Lines.
But apparently you don't mind adjusting your points for the sake of your argument yet I need to give you extended proof for my arguments even though you don't play bard whatsoever and you know better how bards should feel about the class then players that played it for a long time?
Then you throw in some bonus jabs at my performance on the bard and throw in my FC mates performance which when pointed out why it is why it is apparently isn't true because I had other complaints before that don't even have to do with the actual dps numbers.

[KaelDrakkal]

Snip

That's some hero math right there.

[RiceisNice]

That's some hero math right there.

I just want to more dakka with bloodletter (or RoD since thats a thing now) on my bard. Getting those string of procs and weaving all those oGCD was what made it fun for me. I don't understand why people are doing all this number crafting for a drastic playstyle change, especially when their concern isn't even the damage numbers to begin with.

...I'd love to have my spells be 1.5 secs and trigger a 2.5 GCD, unfortunately the BLM spam spell is a 3 seconds cast time. If I can deal with it along with my OGCD, I don't think you have the right to complain. Even if you have 11 OGCD..

I don't think BLM has any oGCD damage abilities though? The fact that someone has 11 oGCD, esp if it's their damage skill, kinda does make it important that they can weave it effectively.

[Aikaal]

I think that people who dont play a specific class or understand how it works need to stop commenting on said class. The amount of willful ignorance in this thread is staggering.

I think Bard is quite a simple job rotation wise. That always depends on the person.

Snip

You fail to provide any Potency per second (PPS) if your argument. If you have too many OGCD, the obvious plan of action is to take a priority list for the biggest Potency move. This is where you should work on. There are scenairo that are obvious. Bloodletter > Blunt.

I'd also believe Poison Potion is a DPS lost for you if you can't move. It is only 250 damage. This applies to Repelling Shot as well. Then again, everybody is right when they say I don't play this job so I have no idea what I'm saying but since you can't provide any theory or maths of the potency on a spreadsheet that have detailed maths you actually don't have arguments against me.

It seems the main issue why this thread is still bleeding crying is a lack of OGCD management which usually is on the player side, not the job itself and this can be worked and improved. For the love of God, there's a Bard that almost top DPS a speed kill video that is from you FC, I remind you, and dealt 1239 DPS. Claiming 2 targets is not an argument as it is part of the fight and that its apply to everybody in the party since they stacked them.

If you intend to keep crying without seeing the obvious proofs, maybe Bard is not for you and you should abandon it. This reminds me a lot of the Summoner in 2.4 that would invest more time crying on their sake then working together to maximize the job. The exception is they actually had a valid reason in 2.4 because of MP. You do not have issue outside of an OGCD management. There's also the last point and I do not wish to attack or insult anyone but... WM actually requires you to pay attention and split the average with the good Bards. This is similar to Enochian for BLM, it separates the good and average BLMs. Fortunately personal skills can be worked on.

[Snowaeth]

I think Bard is quite a simple job rotation wise. That always depends on the person.



You fail to provide any Potency per second (PPS) if your argument. If you have too many OGCD, the obvious plan of action is to take a priority list for the biggest Potency move. This is where you should work on. There are scenairo that are obvious. Bloodletter > Blunt.

I'd also believe Poison Potion is a DPS lost for you if you can't move. It is only 250 damage. This applies to Repelling Shot as well. Then again, everybody is right when they say I don't play this job so I have no idea what I'm saying but since you can't provide any theory or maths of the potency on a spreadsheet that have detailed maths you actually don't have arguments against me.

It seems the main issue why this thread is still bleeding crying is a lack of OGCD management which usually is on the player side, not the job itself and this can be worked and improved. For the love of God, there's a Bard that almost top DPS a speed kill video that is from you FC, I remind you, and dealt 1239 DPS. Claiming 2 targets is not an argument as it is part of the fight and that its apply to everybody in the party since they stacked them.

If you intend to keep crying without seeing the obvious proofs, maybe Bard is not for you and you should abandon it. This reminds me a lot of the Summoner in 2.4 that would invest more time crying on their sake then working together to maximize the job. The exception is they actually had a valid reason in 2.4 because of MP. You do not have issue outside of an OGCD management. There's also the last point and I do not wish to attack or insult anyone but... WM actually requires you to pay attention and split the average with the good Bards. This is similar to Enochian for BLM, it separates the good and average BLMs. Fortunately personal skills can be worked on.

There you go again, pointing at dps numbers and the bard in FC.
I can keep up with the other bards just fine. And there are plenty of us that can play the bard in its new state.
But guess what, we are playing the game to enjoy it not to just put up the dps numbers in whichever state we are.

There are obvious priorities with gcd's/ogcd's. However you keep failing to understand the issue of bard playstyle that I am pointing at. It used to flow. Now it doesn't flow.

It's a playstyle issue, not potency per second, not dps all of that can easily be tweaked in case it is not on par, however the playstyle won't be as easily tweaked again and I don't want the bard to be thrown into a pre 3.0 Black Mage copy where the bard just like the BLM gets to ignore I don't know how many of their skills because they do absolutely nothing or have minimal situational use, that's not just shitting on the bards playstyle in the sense of movement, but also in the sense of how the job flows.

I am not sure how someone can promote homogenization to the point where we'r going to have Black, Gun and Bow mages with pretty much the only difference between them being aesthetics if it continues on.

So yea playstyle, no issues with cast times, do have issues with implementation of said cast times into the job kit.
No further numbers needed.

Also telling someone that enjoyed a job for the past two years to just go and reroll instead of trying to imrove it where it is enjoyable again to the actual players that picked that job in the first place and in many cases were playing the game because of that job is pretty shortsighted.

But I'm not sure if I can add a number to how shortsighted it is, so not sure if you will get my point there either.

EDIT: First time I get to experience a daily post limit on here so I will use this post to add my final say for today.

I ll throw in some bonus fixes that I think would improve the bard in WM and would require as little as possible chaning to how they work (focusing on number tweaks rather than mechanical ones as much as possible)

- Remove potency from Repelling Shot - make this a pure movement ability obviously put the potency somewhere elese. (Like back into Emperyal Arrow, Sidewinder or Bloodletter). Also add 10 yalm to the range from where you can activate it.
- Remove potency from Blunt Arrow - make this a pure cc ability obviously put the potency somewhere else. (Like back into Emperyal Arrow, Sidewinder or Bloodletter)
- Flaming Arrow castable even when casting other skills. Or if not possible to do that then: Flaming arrow is now a targeted skill that places the same aoe circle under the main target.
- Barrage has two modes now. The current one when in WM. And the old (but improved to compensate det nerf and lower potency outside of WM) 3 bonus auto attacks (so 4 vs old 3) when out of WM.
- Bloodletter is now usable during the cast of other skills. Or: Blooldetter can now store up to 2 charges when it proc's. (The double (or even tripple) charge stack would be more interesting)
- Heavy Shot has not only the current proc for Straight Shot but also removes the TP cost of Straight Shot when the proc happens and also has a 40% chance to proc Straight Shot vs the current 20%

- Wide Volley has become close to useless and needs a rework. I would personally lower its tp cost, make it single target and make it lower piercing resistance and then add a piercing resistance debuf to machinist too, to balance all physical dps to have their own ability of debuffing targets.

- Waren's Paen (The lvl 58 skill that is useless) needs some reworks. Make it last 45 seconds (so at the very least it has use pre-pull on warrior). Preferably go beyond just that though add actual esuna effect to it so it can be used to cure ailments not just hope you will prevent one in the next 30 seconds when it comes with a 3sec cast time. Or just look at it again really hard and make something more useful out of it than it is right now at least. If we'r copying BLM's why not make it a Physical Damage Apocastasis kinda thing instead.

Now after these changes would happen, some potency tweaking would be needed once again, but that's fine, potencies are the lowest concerns right now smoothing out the bard skill flow to actually be an enjoyable flow is priority.

[Aikaal]

Snip

So you are saying the Job is not broken and is viable for raid and it's a playstyle complain? Because the thread's name is "Bard - they broke my job" the reason I insisted on numbers.

I personally enjoy the game to maximize my performance and numbers and I wouldn't expect everyone to feel the same. You can't use the word "we" because I would enjoy the level 60 Bard.

They changed the playstyle of the job you've played for the past 2 years. They did the same for my BLM and I have to deal with annoying stacks like Monks are while dealing with movement. I adjusted. If you can't stand then looking elsewhere is probably the best option for you. I do agree the 180 degree playstyle from Bard is rough but right now the Job works and nobody from your community seems to care to make a thread to see what you can do to deal with that playstyle. You'd rather cry until your body is dehydrated. BLM complained and cried a lot at the beginning and I include myself because I was pissed about the playstyle change of BLM but we got over it and adjust I don't see why Bards can't. On this domain, we are similar.