Bard - they broke my job

[Snugglebutt]

I moved my comment here from other thread because it is more relevant to this one.

The current bard play style is just not fun for me anymore, I feel like it is trying to juggle with 40 balls and those 40 balls consist of light weight, medium weight and heavy weight balls symbolizing the various things like normal, oGCD, GCD and procs etc of which travel faster up and down depending on weight plus since 3.0 some balls have cast timers (hodge podge of some with and some without) which requires keeping your hand preoccupied unable to catch other balls on their way down. Some balls will overlap in the rotation and some will come down same time, some you miss because your hands are tied up with cast times, some will go up one speed but randomly come down a different speed while other times you have no balls in either hand waiting for more to come down.

It is a complete and utter mess to me, there is no stable and reliable optimal rotation post-starter rotation so I am quite often just having to focus on staring at your shortcuts watching ticks and refreshes that have both cast timed and non-cast timed, oGCD and GCD, DoTs and random procs etc. Sometimes having to stance change juggling with hands behind back and sometimes hands in front. As such it is like being on a drive through the countryside (countryside being the content taking part in) yet your forced to stare at the black dot painted on the windscreen (black dot being shortcut bars) all the time instead of being able to enjoy the drive or the scenery.

I am sorry but that isn't fun to me and when playing ninja or monk (even bard pre-3.0) it doesn't (monk or ninja) or did not (2.0 bard) feel the same compared to now. I feel like I am spending far less time having to focus on my shortcut bars when playing monk and can enjoy the ride in that car example even taking into account positional's which at least is based on whats happening around you as opposed to constant focus on shortcut bars aka black dot on windscreen. I notice people talking about BL a lot but it is only one small part of the problem and not the sole reason for the problem. The issue extends far beyond BL as far as I am concerned.

Starter rotations on bard are fine, but post-starter you have to master weave which really stands for what I describe in my first paragraph but on bard there is an excessive amount of oGCD/GCD, mix of some with cast timers and some without (all without if have to stance change, then some with and some without once change stance back) plus unreliable procs and that's not including song management or AoE's like Flamming Arrow that have to place which takes varying amounts of time instead of click and instantly casted under target mob (I would of preferred instead of having to place manually).

Sorry but it's no longer fun for me on bard and quite honestly I think SE is using skill quantity too much to create complexity instead of fight mechanics to create that complexity, the skill quantity becomes overly saturated (I currently have to micro-manage almost four entirely full shortcut bars total including cross class skills which to me is borderline excessive). More complexity in the fight mechanics would be appreciated with less complexity in skill rotations ideally is what I would like to see in future. Hate to imagine what will be like when SE forces everyone to juggle 10+ full shortcut bars full of skills in order to try and achieve anything close to optimal output.

I do not want to spend 80-90% of my time staring at my shortcuts bars in case of ticks or refreshes, random procs and juggling stances which have hodge podge of some using cast times and some not. On monk it doesn't feel that way yet (level 54), on ninja it doesn't feel that way yet (level 43ish) and while I cannot say for sure will remain that way on those by time hit 60...on bard these days it does feel the way I described which is no fun to me personally so I plan on switching classes to find one more fun or simply focusing on DoL/DoH which I enjoy greatly.

Let me make it clear though I do not consider myself a bad bard while had bard as my main even in 3.0, I did decent enough damage and for the most part did my rotations (not perfect but decent enough) to get through hard content without people complaining 99.99% of the time about me. The 0.01% I admit happens when I cocked up or forgot a mechanic but that happens to everyone, there were times a DPS check never passed but I am not the only DPS present and pretty much always people said my output was fine during those instances. Even if bard was now the biggest DPS class in the game it would not change my feelings about it not being fun anymore for me taking everything I said above into account.

The reason I picked bard was because of the 'stability/reliability' of rotations due to the freedom of movement and no cast times (with exception of songs) which allowed almost complete control over such regardless of how short or long those rotations were...as long as they were stable and reliable I was happy but now they are not which is why post 3.0 you have no choice but to master weave after the initial starter rotational sequence and by master weave on bard I mean what I describe in my first paragraph plus the impact it has had on my enjoyment described in the paragraphs that followed it. I wrote this so SE would know why the changes from 3.0 ruined my enjoyment of the class I used to love and why those changes have now forced me to find a different class to play as my new main DoW/DoM.

[Smeggles]

Provide QoL solutions then instead of wasting your time crying. That's why you get this message.

Don't flip the entire playstyle of a job that has been mained for 2+years on its head.

Thats the best QoL

[yamochan]

It's also frustrating to see people pointing to the fact that the developers say BRD is playing as intended as proof that it's a valid change in style and gameplay. FFXIV 1.0 was playing as designed and intended as well and we all know how that turned out.

damn i was planing for a big post to jump back into the conversation again after the weekend filled with maths and number that i stacked up over the years. then i read this one i just have to agree with it. XD

[Reinha]

Provide QoL solutions then instead of wasting your time crying.

Alright then. I have a few suggestions on how to improve WM without changing the traditional playstyle of bard. Some of these may have been suggested before by other players. Bard shouldn't have cast times and autoattacks should remain a part of our damage because bard is a physical dps job. Also mp management during battle should be vital for bard because songs are what makes bards unique, and managing them perfectly while watching buffs, dots and procs should be the skill check. If a dps song drains mp and isn't usable with other songs, it will be an actual situational choice over support instead of something everyone has to use all the time. Besides, being able to sing two songs at once is a bit weird if you think about it.

Wanderer's Minuet #1
Cast Time: 3s
Cooldown: 2.5s
Description: Increases your damage by X%. MP is drained while singing. Effect ends upon reuse. Cannot be used with other songs.

Wanderer's Minuet #2
Cast Time: 3s
Cooldown: 2.5s
Description: Increases a party member's damage by X%. MP is drained while singing. Effect ends upon reuse. Cannot be used with other songs.

Wanderer's Minuet #3
Cast Time: 3s
Cooldown: 2.5s
Description: Increases determination of all nearby party members by X% while lowering own damage dealt by 15%. MP is drained while singing. Effect ends upon reuse. Cannot be used with other songs.

Wanderer's Minuet #4
Cast Time: 3s
Cooldown: 2.5s
Description: Increases critical hit rate of all nearby party members by X% while lowering own damage dealt by 15%. MP is drained while singing. Effect ends upon reuse. Cannot be used with other songs.

Wanderer's Minuet #5
Cast Time: 3s
Cooldown: 2.5s
Description: Increases damage dealt by all nearby party members by X% while lowering own damage dealt by 15%. MP is drained while singing. Effect ends upon reuse. Cannot be used with other songs.

Pick one of these WM versions and also replace one or two of the other new abilities (preferably WP cause it's nearly useless lol) with a defensive song (parry, dodge, magic resist or defense) and/or a utility song (threat management, enemy debuff, extra maximum hp, cooldown recovery). These can be single target if balance requires it. This is how I envisioned bard growing from 50 to 60. What do you guys think?

[Felessan]

Since it's 2 dots this averages into 100% trait activation per crit of your dots

75% of trait activation.

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.

Bloodletter proc is a hidden dot, with the same benefits as other dots. Treat it as a 4th dot Bard gets for calculation/comparative purposes. Now it is even "multidot" as you can opt to use rain of death. Bloodletter add "virtual dot" to only one target instead of all targets in case of rain of death.
SMN for example benefits more than BRD from multiple targets as they have more dots than BRD.

[Teleste]

I'm hearing positive feedback. Hope everyone figures out the new mechanics without too much pain >

[Snowaeth]

75% of trait activation.


Bloodletter proc is a hidden dot, with the same benefits as other dots. Treat it as a 4th dot Bard gets for calculation/comparative purposes. Now it is even "multidot" as you can opt to use rain of death. Bloodletter add "virtual dot" to only one target instead of all targets in case of rain of death.
SMN for example benefits more than BRD from multiple targets as they have more dots than BRD.

Alright my math isn't what it used to be, so sure you'r right 75%.
That part of the calculation doesn't change the point I was trying to make though.

Now since my explanation wasn't clear, lets look at it in a way that you are calculating things.
Lets count Bloodletter as an extra dot for calculation purposes like you suggest.
Bloodletter alone is between 15-20% of bard damage now the more crit the more it will proc, the shorter the parse the longer % of the time crit (and other buffs were up) the stronger this skill is.

Now lets look at bard overall damage %. Windbite is worth around 11~12% of bard damage Venomous Bite is worth around 9~10% of bard overall damage. Flaming Arrow is worth another 5~6 %
If you take the low end of all of those % that still comes out at 40% of bard damage coming from dots if we include Bloodletter as a dot. But we could say it's 40%~48% of bard damage coming from this.

Now if you watch the video they actually stack the two adds which means instead of Bloodletter the bard would even use Rain of Death as you mentioned making it a 200 potency skill (there are some variations to this due to crit on bloodletter etc, but RoD still ups the potency in this case) meaning bard scales even more from having two targets over single target.

Now since I don't know the exact % of SMN dmg coming from dots on single target I will go from what the SMN I asked said and it's about 30-ish So lets give them 35%
Going to multiply both x2 for targets for simplicity calculation.
Bard: 40~48 x2 = 80~96
SMN: ~35% x2 = ~70

That's what I mean by BRD scales much better from double targets.
It's a higher percentage of Bards total damage that gets scaled with multiple targets compared to other jobs.

There is however a break point at 3 targets, because beyond that it would be too hard for the bard to keep dots on all targets.
Anything beyond 3 targets is going to be turning in favor of a SMN.

[nuyu11]

I don't know about others but for me dot double target is time consuming while WM is on if I see more than 3 enemy I just Wide Volley.

[yamochan]

more than 3 is turning WM off and multidot still. works pretty well for u will get lots of free aoe but thats just intuition from me i dont know if thats the best way to do it

[Snowaeth]

more than 3 is turning WM off and multidot still. works pretty well for u will get lots of free aoe but thats just intuition from me i dont know if thats the best way to do it

That is indeed the smart thing to do.
(As long as the enemies aren't super squishy and will die before you ll have the first set of dots running out in which case it's best to just quick nock cpam)

On 3 targets you should turn off WM while applying dots but turn it back on and keep refreshing with Iron Jaws.
On 2 targets it really depends on the fight if it's best to turn off WM or keep it on while applying.

But if it's an aoe situation where the mobs are going to live for a little while, turn off WM, dot up a ton of mobs while spamming Rain of Death.
By the end of it re-dot the ones that have the highest hp left, turn on WM again and use some more quick nock + RoD.