Bard and how to fix it.

[Snowaeth]

A thread aimed at finding solutions on how the current issues with the bard can be solved. Please only constructive feedback.

There are a lot of threads around filled with bards showing their dislikes and others disliking the bards making those posts everywhere.
Some people have pointed out that there is no actual thread that focuses purely on possible solutions to the bard issues.
So lets try and focus the many possible solutions to the issues bards have in here.

Please try to respond with either ways that would fix the bard for you, or constructed feedback on why you think someones suggestion wouldn't work or could be improved.
Please refrain from the get good, you bards don't adapt and whatever comments this is to try and find solutions for the issues that bard players have with the job.
Try to make suggestions that require as little changing as possible to improve the chances of them actually being possible to implement.
(Don't shy away from total rework suggestions though if you think it's necessary.)

Also if you have seen good solutions burrowed somewhere in another thread, please copy paste them in here, so that we can have as many suggestions in one place as possible.

Keep in mind that my issues are not necessarily the same as yours and others might have very different ideas about how things (should) work, right now it's hard to say one is right or wrong, because the change is pretty drastic.
So if you feel your issue is not being mentioned or something isn't an issue feel free to add constructive input on why this is the case or which issue it is that bothers you.

I personally am assuming that Wanderer's Minuet is here to stay the way it is now no matter if we like it or not, when proposing these fixes.
So my suggestions are focused on the things that could use improvement while under the effect of WM.

Suggestions below.

[Snowaeth]

I realize that I should separate my suggestions from the introduction so excuse me for double posting.
Also excuse me in advance for my formatting skills, someone else could have probably done this much cleaner.

Summary of the Issues I am seeing with the new bard playstyle mainly when under effect of Wanderer's Minuet. (Suggested fixes near the bottom)
TL;DR below

I am not complaining about the playstyle change, I dislike that it happened, but I am trying to find solutions for actual QoL issues that came with Wanderer's Minuet.
Wander's minuet now that it got the instant cast treatment is something that isn't as bad to use anymore compared to how it initially was.
Since Wanderer's Minuet is here to stay most likely in its current state I am focusing my suggestions on how to improve bard with the current WM as part of our kit.
I am very well aware of the damage potential and am able to output more than decent numbers myself. (Here is for example my 3min solo, xpot, apkallu on dummy (i180) http://i.imgur.com/43IgjiI.jpg)
It's not our dps that is the real problem it is the issues that stem from cast times being implemented on a kit that wasn't built for it.

One of the big issues is the way our rotation works, it now became super twitchy because of casts combined with double rng procs topped off with a bunch of ogcd's.
One of the main bard mechanics now is Wanderer's Minuet which comes with cast times and cast times are interfering with one of our main mechanics from 2.0-2.55 namely Bloodletter+River of Blood proc's.
Bloodletter combined with its trait is a very strong skill, but it's also based on RNG and Bloodletter being OGCD in our old rotation never interfered with this mechanic.
Now that we have cast times and even one of our new main damaging skills Empyreal Arrow being an OGCD skill but with cast time we have a non stop flow of interference's with our Bloodletter.
Now I am not saying it is impossible to play around this what I am saying it is not fluid and a lot less enjoyable imo because of this.

Then there is the high amount of ogcd's that don't work well with casts to begin with, pre 3.0 the bard was a job that used to double weave OGCD's (as long as you had half decent latency) without loosing any GCD time.
This is not possible anymore since the window to weave OGCD's became smaller by 1,5ish sec because of cast times.
As mentioned before Bloodletter is RNG based so it can reset pretty much anytime, or not at all. You can't build around Bloodletter RNG so you will have to delay it.
You also have to prioritize Bloodletter over actual GCD's now because it can reset during the cast of those which scews the timing of our GCD's which has two buffs that have to be kept up around set times.
So any of the lower valued OGCD's have to take a step back even further, which is not a big deal, but for QoL sake they should be adjusted.

Now as I've been saying it isn't impossible to play like this and it's not a dps issue.
It's the flow of the bard that is affected by these and really needs improvement to make playing the job a more streamlined experience like it was in 2.X patches.
This affects bards of any skill level, good or bad.
I also understand that not everyone cares about improvements and some might even consider a job with flaws like these a challenge, I am however a fan of a fluid skill flow.

Now besides the big culprit Bloodletter + River of Blood Trait not meshing well with cast times there are smaller improvements that can easily improve our QoL.

Repelling shot with its 5y range becomes really hard to use with cast times, so as part of our old dps rotation there is only room for it when we get SS proc's and nothing else is up and we can get close enough to the target.
When used normally the repelling animation will cancel out our next queued cast and thus becomes not worth using as a dps skill.
However it could very well serve for it's main purpose of mobility if adjusted the way I suggest below and be like the bard style of BLM Aether Manipulation.

Flaming Arrow is a ground targeted skill yet we can not activate the targeting circle until we are done casting.
The input of where we place the skill was already often not registered before 3.0 but now the OGCD window is even smaller making this skill feel very, very clunky.

Barrage was our highest potency buff before 3.0 and it still is very strong, it did get nerfed however and on top of that changed in functionality.
The reasons for the functionality change is obvious, but for the sake of QoL it would be cool to have two stances for it for when WM is on and off, so we can still leave it as a part of the rotation for situations when bards have to disable WM.
Also Barrage in WM is now meant to be used with Empyreal Arrow, yet Barrage is an OGCD and EA is an OGCD with cast time. In a normal case this means that we will be cutting into our next GCD by the full duration of EA cast and if Bloodletter procce'd on top of it even more from using BL.

Heavy Shot's trait Heavier Shot serves the same purpose as the BLM firestarter trait and I feel like it could use the same benefits as firestarter.
Having it proc more often would give us more room to use our OGCD skills too improving overall flow and it would give us that little bit of extra mobility to compensate for the new cast times.

Warden's Paen is considered close to being a ueless skill which is pretty disappointing for a lvl 58 skill.

The changes we had to Rain of Death left one of our AoE skills Wide Volley that was already not the best option to use close to completely useless and it needs some attention in one way or another.

From a design perspective the job's gameplay suffered quite a bit. You can claim that people adjusted to it, and that much is true. Poor implementation remains poor implementation, regardless of whether the players adjusted to it or not. Hence why the OP made this thread.

Since you are asking for explanations, I'll indulge you:

The base design of BRD and WM as implemented clash because cast times and reliance on off-GCD abilities & procs don't mesh well. The intent of the changes also doesn't make much sense, since WM is introduced so late in BRD's relative "life" and implemented in such a ham-fisted way that it doesn't feel like natural growth of the job. It's no surprise that people who are just picking up the job also seem to be saying that the change is too abrupt and feels clunky as hell despite the nice DPS numbers.

It sounds like Bards feel like their current skills are clunky, and don't flow well together, and the fixes are more about adding fun to the class without adding power.

TL;DR:
Bard is capable of doing damage, the new playstyle has QoL issues with the new skill-flow that weren't present pre 3.0 and are caused mainly by cast times.
It is playable, but can be more enjoyable if the skill flow was not as clunky.
I am suggesting some changes to skills with as little rework as possible.
Bloodletter & its trait are the main culprit of this skill flow issue. There are however some other skills that should be looked at too.
(This does not sum up every bard issue players have with bard, but focuses on the issues that result from using the new song.)

Here are the fixes that I came up with and think would improve the bard (in Wanderer's Minuet)

- Repelling Shot Remove the skills potency. Put the potency on another skill. Add extra 10~13 yalm to the range of Repelling Shot from where you can activate it.
~ Thoughtprocess behind this: Easing up OGCD flow while giving us a mobility skill that works with casts from medium/far range (A la Aether Manipulation from BLM). Also the repel part of this skill bugs the next GCD cast and cuts heavily into GCD when this happens.

- Blunt Arrow Remove the skills potency. Put the potency on another skill (Like Emperyal Arrow, Sidewinder or Bloodletter).
~ Thoughtprocess behind this: Easing up OGCD flow while still making the skill serve it's true purpose of silence. This would also make silencing smoother when silence is actually needed.
* Another option if you don't want to take an extra OGCD attack from bards is adding the potency from Repelling shot to Blunt Arrow since Blunt Arrow does less harm to the rotation than Repelling.

- Flaming Arrow *option1: Castable even when casting other skills.
*option2: If casting this during another skill is not possible then make Flaming Arrow a targeted skill that places the current aoe circle under the main target.
*option3:

An option added where ground-target AOEs, if you just double-tapped the skill's hotkey, would simply be placed on top of the current target, centered around them. I think that'd work for things like Flaming Arrow.

~ Thoughtprocess behind this: Currently with cast times we are not able to queue up Flaming Arrow during the actual cast time, by the time we are able to queue it up and actually place it without the server eating our input we are cutting into our GCD's

- Straight Shot Needs a faster animation or faster proc detection.
~ Thoughtprocess behind this: With the added cast times Straight Shot is suffering from the same issues as firestarter, which is just bad design. When we cast Heavy Shot with cast times and it proc's Straighter Shot, by the time the proc goes through we can already be casting the next skill (if we needed to re-apply Straight Shot buff this means we will be casting SS and then have an SS proc happen middle of our SS cast).

- Bloodletter I am going to add some extra solutions here as this is the main culprit of our QoL issues in WM.
* option1: Bloodletter is now usable during the cast of other skills.
* option2: Blooldetter can now store up to 2-3 charges when it proc's.
* option3: Bloodletter now increases in power every time a proc happens, up to 3 stacks (lasting 10sec) First stack adds 100% of the damage, 2nd stack adds 75% of the damage and 3rd stack adds 50% of the damage (all stacks are fired next time you use the skill).
~ Thoughtprocess behind this: Bloodletter is OGCD, but we have cast times now. It can proc during a cast and has the same potency as HS. Thus making it a priority over HS since another BL can proc during the cast of HS. Since the proc's are based on RNG you can not plan out for them entirely because there are skills that have a forced use like refreshing Iron Jaws/Dots and Straight Shot buff. This can cause double procs before you can use the skill at all, basically loosing lots of Bloodletter procs over a longer fight.
The first change would adress the issue entirely, the other two would give the bard a very cool new mechanic to play with especially option 3. Have to be careful here though, since the cooldown is now bound to Rain of Death, the effect needs to translate to RoD too.

Blood Letter should just operate differently whilst under WM.
If you get a BL proc whilst under WM, your Bard will fire two shots with your next Weaponskill. Potency + BL_potency together, or it could just boost your next skills potency by 150.

Make blood river proc boost the next heavy shot/quick nock for 150 potency (stack max 3)

- Heavy Shot Removes the TP cost of Straight Shot on proc. Now has a 40% chance to proc Straight Shot vs the current 20%
~ Thoughtprocess behind this: It currently serves the same use as firestarter proc's on BLM. Why not make it the same thing with bard flavor instead of this currently inferior option.

Shorten HS's animation.

- Barrage Has two modes now. (Changes to barrage would be a low priority fix though as it isn't horrible or anything, just could be improved now that it is combined with EA cast time).
* Wanderer's Minuet is turned on: Barrage has current effect.
* Wanderer's Minuet is turned off: Barrage has the old pre 3.0 effect. Increase the amount of extra hits by 1 to compensate determination nerf and lower potency outside of WM so 3 bonus auto attacks vs 2 on old.
~ Thoughtprocess behind this: Currently the idea is that bards should be able to turn off WM when movement heavy phases are happening, this would allow the bard to not delay their rotation for those phases and still keep some of the pre 3.0 feel on a 90seconds cooldown.
This does not solve the issue where Barrage + Empyreal Arrow are 1 OGCD + 1 OGCD with 1,5sec cast time which guarantees to cut into GCD's, so the potency of Barrage or EA in WM might need to be looked at a little bit more to compensate for this.

Maybe an inherent barrage+EA skill since any bard worth his salt is going to be pairing those 2 up anyways; Why not cut the clicking down some and have every EA every 90 seconds to 3x damage?

- 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. Then add a piercing resistance debuf to machinist too, to balance all physical dps to have their own ability of debuffing targets.

- Warden's Paen (The lvl 58 skill that is useless) Needs some reworks.
At the very least make it last 45 seconds (so we can use it pre-pull on a warrior). But even then the actual skill feels very lackluster.
So you could add an actual esuna effect to the skill, this would give it a little bit more use, but still not make it very useful at all especially with the 3sec cast time.
Preferably you look at it again really hard and make something more useful out of it than it is right now.
If we'r copying BLM's why not make it a Physical Damage Apocastasis kinda thing instead.

Change level 58 song's effect to an AoE damage reduction bubble for one hit. Range... let's say 5y radius around BRD, and 8% reduction.

WM:

Wanderer's Minuet: 3 second cast time
Increases overall damage by 15%, cannot be played with other songs and is unaffected by Battle Voice. effects end upon reuse
Additional effects: Barrage now causes a single target non-critical weapon skill to hit 3 times. can only be applied for one attack.

Wanderer's Minuet could add more damage in melee range and go down when farther away, that would be great

Latency
Bard used to be the most latency friendly dps pre 3.0
The lag difference is easily tested between players by Ninja Mudra spam. For example with my latency from EU it varies between 9/10 where US players are reporting 11/12 mudra's.
I'm not complaining here, just pointing out that there is another group of players being affected by these changes in ways that might have been not meant like that.

For extra info i live in australia playing on gilgamesh so i have inherent latency issues, i've done as much as i can to fix it but being on a ps4 my options are limited, and after basically being shown that i should never be able to dps as well as non-latency players it felt really good to even come close to fellow bards in 2.x now i can physically see just how much my latency screws with me and it's most the reason i didn't switch to ninja, blm or smn because they really aren't lag friendly classes.

Bard Animations in WM
What is this?
(I personally don't watch animations mid combat anyway, but as people pointed out they are pretty bad)

After any of these changes would happen, some potency tweaking would be needed once again, but that's fine.
Potencies are the lowest concerns right now making the bard skills flow smoothly is the priority imo.

[Aiselia]

Warden's could be an AOE song that stays up indefinitely and removes a chunk of MP each time it blocks an effect. Can't be played with other songs (except WM) so you could potentially have it up when Foe's and resource regen isn't needed. Maybe for balance, MP regen could be slowed/stopped while playing to prevent 100% uptime.

I'm not sure about the rules regarding name-dropping other games, so I'll say it this way: A certain other MMO I played had an option added where ground-target AOEs, if you just double-tapped the skill's hotkey, would simply be placed on top of the current target, centered around them. I think that'd work for things like Flaming Arrow.

[RiceisNice]

One thing they can do to compliment bard's River of Blood while under the effects of WM, or as a new mechanic.

> While in WM, River no longer resets the cooldown on bloodletter. Every time River of blood procs, you gain one stack of Wanderer's Arrow, up to a Max of 5.
> Get rid of the cooldown on Empyereal, but instead it consumes two Wanderer's Arrow. Extra arrows will add onto the potency
> Instead of Wanderer's Paeon, you get another ability in it's place. Honestly with the current design of paeon, it's too situation to be useful, and when it comes to the time that it is useful, it'd be incredibly desirable.
>> In it's place, you get Trick Arrow...or something. Requires two WA. Deals damage to a single target, and splits into arrows that bounce toward two other targets for the same potency. Extra WA would add extra targets, and this ability is affected by barrage.

Though the concept of having entirely new skills or mechanics are way beyond scope this early in the game I'd think. WM just needs to have some sort of synergy the tool kits that bard has from 2.0m the bloodletter resets topped with that many oGCD doesn't work with a cast time.

Hello

You are asking constructive idea, well I agree with this post, but I'm gonna try to be realistic,

You can not ask "skill <X> be able to use during cast time" There is no one skill of that kind right now in game, maybe for design issues.

My idea to fix current state of BRD/MCH:

WM/GB cast timers reduced to 1 second casts.

Why?

Current issues are based on oGCD skills, I mean, If I have 2,5 seconds of GCD, and skills cast take 1,5 seconds, 1 left for some oGCD skills like Reload, Misery's End etc...but, a lot of oGCD skills have more than 1 seconds of animation lock, between 1,5 - 2 seconds and this fact makes BRD and MCH to spend between 0.5 - 1 second of the next GCD...this can sound a bit ridiculous..."OMG, 0.5 or 1 second..." but during a 10 minutes encounter You could be losing a lot of GCDs for a desing issue.

Honestly most of the oGCD problems is exclusive to bard because of river of blood's reset. MCH doesn't have as much of a problem because they don't have to pop so many oGCDs in a short period of time. let alone having one that'll randomly reset mid cast.

[Greywolfamakir]

Hello

You are asking constructive idea, well I agree with this post, but I'm gonna try to be realistic,

You can not ask "skill <X> be able to use during cast time" There is no one skill of that kind right now in game, maybe for design issues.

My idea to fix current state of BRD/MCH:

WM/GB cast timers reduced to 1 second casts.

Why?

Current issues are based on oGCD skills, I mean, If I have 2,5 seconds of GCD, and skills cast take 1,5 seconds, 1 left for some oGCD skills like Reload, Misery's End etc...but, a lot of oGCD skills have more than 1 seconds of animation lock, between 1,5 - 2 seconds and this fact makes BRD and MCH to spend between 0.5 - 1 second of the next GCD...this can sound a bit ridiculous..."OMG, 0.5 or 1 second..." but during a 10 minutes encounter You could be losing a lot of GCDs for a desing issue.

[Snowaeth]

Hello

You are asking constructive idea, well I agree with this post, but I'm gonna try to be realistic,

You can not ask "skill <X> be able to use during cast time" There is no one skill of that kind right now in game, maybe for design issues.

I agree that this is a long shot. It is still worth mentioning, in case it is possible to implement this then it would be a working solution.
I do however suggest a second solution for both of the skills that I mentioned this on exactly out of fear that it isn't possible to implement the first solution.

I ran out of my daily forum posts again, so I'm going to edit this in.

Shorten HS's animation.

I disagree with removing Repelling Shot's potency. It's the shortest get-away skill out of all which is made up with its potency. It makes it possible to use it in TEX unlike DRG's Elusive Jump, but still.
I disagree with removing Blunt Arrow's potency. Blunt Arrow is the least evil out of all off-GCD skills, and it doesn't need changes.
Change level 58 song's effect to an AoE damage reduction bubble for one hit. Range... let's say 5y radius around BRD, and 8% reduction.
I agree with double-tapping Flaming Arrow, but let us choose placing for Flaming Arrow if we press on the keybind only once.

Let me explain my thought process behind these changes.
I am trying to ease up the OGCD flow on the bard, by removing potencies from skills that are not meant as damaging tools at their core.
I agree that Blunt Arrow isn't particularly harmful to our rotation, but having it serve just for its purpose would still make our overall OGCD flow smoother.

Now I also disagree with your comparison of Repelling Arrow to Elusive Jump.
We are much more like BLM's now and BLM have Aether Manipulation with no potency and on a 30 sec cooldown.
The purpose of Aether Manipulation and in my case the cahnged Repelling Shot is to move out of the spot after finishing your cast and finishing casts is pretty important now.

A DRG is not really limited in his movement and Elusive Jump serves quite a different role for them

I also agree on the double tapping of Flaming Arrow, that seems like a good solution.

Still unsure about WP

[Viar]

Shorten HS's animation.

I disagree with removing Repelling Shot's potency. It's the shortest get-away skill out of all which is made up with its potency. It makes it possible to use it in TEX unlike DRG's Elusive Jump, but still.
I disagree with removing Blunt Arrow's potency. Blunt Arrow is the least evil out of all off-GCD skills, and it doesn't need changes.
Change level 58 song's effect to an AoE damage reduction bubble for one hit. Range... let's say 5y radius around BRD, and 8% reduction.
I agree with double-tapping Flaming Arrow, but let us choose placing for Flaming Arrow if we press on the keybind only once.

[OPneedNerfs]

One other way of making brd playstyle less reliant on random cooldown resets of bloodletter is to allow River of Blood to buff the next bloodletter for 1 bloodletter's potency worth of potency PER STACK of perhaps up to 5 stacks.

This way, not only does it make bloodletter procs less reliant on actually casting it asap but also helps brds actually weave in oGCDs better into their rotation during WM.

[Sessurea]

they should either remove bloodletters natural cooldown under wm, or deactivate rivers of blood under wm ( to prevent loss of bloodletters )and compensate this loss of damage across our dots and shots. Bard fixed.

[RiceisNice]

they should either remove bloodletters natural cooldown under wm, or deactivate rivers of blood under wm ( to prevent loss of bloodletters )and compensate this loss of damage across our dots and shots. Bard fixed.

Pretty shoddy design to straight up ignore one of your core passives from 2.0 though...