We should have a "Lance mage", "Ninja Sword mage", "Fist mage"

[T0rin]

Friggin' bards, man.

Complain for ages about how they are this low-tier DPS class and should have much more competitive DPS even though they have significant utility, more significant than any other class.

Then you give them more DPS, and they complain about having to stop moving 100% of the time. (even though most of them don't actually move but maybe 10% of the time)

Look Bards. You can have two of the following, but not all 3.

* High Mobility
* High Utility
* High DPS

You pick.

[Snugglebutt]

I've started to just ignore non-Bards trying to convince Bards that it's good, because nobody who hasn't mained a Bard can understand the real problems with it. They just assume it's all about not being able to hop around the room while shooting.

Just to add to this as it annoys me too, if the class is as great as 'some' of the non-bards claim then why are they not maining a bard too? It is because they enjoy the play style of a different class more and what a lot of bards are saying is the play style has drastically changed after 3.0 so as such they have every right to complain. If the classes these other people chose to play because of the play style also subjectively changed too much in their opinion then they would complain too. Let's be clear that play style is a QoL issue in my opinion, skill design and implementation does however increase or decrease the QoL on a class. I do not consider the class broken or bugged, I simply consider it not enjoyable anymore due to those changes.

I went into quite a lot of explaining how the play style has changed on bard for me and why I not longer enjoy it, it is a valid complaint even if it is a QoL complaint. As far as I am concerned you cannot compare positionals on melee to the changes bard for the reasons I explained in the link. Put simply positionals allow for you to LoS/focus your attention on the fight, the boss, other players and whats going on around you aka enjoying the content but bard 3.0+ feels like need to spend most of your time LoS/focused on your shortcut bars watching for ticks and refreshes plus random procs while WM is on or switching in/out of it throwing your rotations into chaos instead of enjoying the actual content, I have monk and ninja so I do know how positionals feel in comparison.

The beauty of for the most part no cast times (other than songs) and the freedom of movement allowed for the creation and use of 'stable/reliable' rotations and managing those rotations and that is the play style I liked on bard prior. It did not matter how long those rotations were, they were more stable and easier to manage while now the class is a mess and has become a rotational nightmare post-starting rotation (also known as master weaving). If I wanted a master weaving class I would of picked one instead of bard, the benefit of the bard class was it's stable/reliable rotations at the cost of a lower DPS output which are now thrown out the window in favor of becoming a master weaving class...sorry but that is a huge change to play style which I do not enjoy.

In my personal experience I went from pretty stable and reliable rotations that allowed me to enjoy the content while keeping on top of the skills...to a stable starting rotation that devolves into anarchy, weaving a complete mess of oGCDs/GCDs, random procs, DoT management, songs and mix of cast times and non-cast times in/out of WM that gets chaotic when have to switch between stances throwing out of sync your previous rotations. Most of which is due to incompatibility of adding partial cast times (aka partial as in some skills get cast times added while others do not) and that's not even taking into account having to switch in and out of it which messes it up further while at same time having some skills locked behind it and others not. The sheer amount of oGCD, GCD's plus random procs and other such things impacts the rotational stability even more on top of that.

As I said it in my link it feels like I no longer get to enjoy the content because all post-starter rotations are chaotic and at worst a complete mess which forces me to spend most of my time not enjoying the content while I am forced to focus too much of my attention on shortcut bars managing the hodge podge or random procs, unstable ticks and refreshes while switching in and out of WM or even if remained in WM the entire time the class was not designed around these changes so it is now trying to organize chaos. In the past I could focus on the fight and only once in blue moon need to glance down to my shortcut bars to make sure my ticks, refreshes and procs were not throwing my rotation out the window but now I have to spend most of my time staring at those bars and not getting to enjoy the fight since the introduction of WM on a class that most of it's skills were not designed to compliment.

SE have forced changes on the class I liked and tried to justify it by the increase in DPS but the impact on play style has changed a lot and people play classes mostly because they enjoy the play style of that class, so even if they increased bard DPS to be the best DPS output in the game it would not alter the fact the play style change has made it no longer enjoyable to me. To people saying suck it up and adapt to it well they can get lost to be honest since the class is no longer enjoyable and if it is no longer enjoyable why the hell should I waste my time doing something I don't enjoy. Instead I would rather go find another class to play and that is what I will be doing...but I am justified in complaining how a class that I mained for so long in one swoop was ruined by SE in regards to my enjoyment of it even if enjoying a class is in itself a QoL issue. The DPS output on bard is fine now but the QoL playing it is a big stinking pile of turd in my opinion.

I can understand why those who enjoy master weaving might enjoy it but those who played it for the stability and reliability of the classes rotations allowed for by the freedom of movement and no cast times on almost all except songs regardless of whether the rotation was a million skills long or just couple skills long even at the cost of lower DPS output are the ones who feel the changes most in the decrease to our enjoyment of it. If I wanted a master weaving class that had very little to offer in rotational stability I would not have picked bard in the first place a long time prior to 3.0 and had it as my main for so long. Neither monk or ninja feel as annoying as bard currently does despite positionals or mudras of which I play both of those too though they were not my main class prior to 3.0.

People might say rotational stability or reliability is just like saying you wanted an easy class or less complex class to play and while I do not agree with that overall I have to say...so what even if that were true? SE needs to stop making classes the main focus of added complexity and instead refocus back on making the fights and content more complex instead. Some people might say 'I like the chaotic nature of master weaving', well good for you but be sure to let me know how you feel later as your continued support of SE making that a primary focus of added complexity when you have to juggle 10-15 shortcut bars full of skills that force you to keep you LoS 90% of the time monitoring ticks and refreshes on them while only 10% of the time watching or enjoying the content going on around your shortcut bars.

[Rafaelhades]

The best part of all of this hullabaloo is that when SE does decide to buff BRD/MCH to match melee DPS numbers, no one will take melees anywhere. Except maybe NIN for Trick Attack.

The worst part is that instead of having 1 or 2 massive complain threads, there's one created every minute saying the same exact thing. Why not just spam the entire board with copypasta'd threads? Oh wait...

[Tila]

Friggin' bards, man.

Complain for ages about how they are this low-tier DPS class and should have much more competitive DPS even though they have significant utility, more significant than any other class.

Then you give them more DPS, and they complain about having to stop moving 100% of the time. (even though most of them don't actually move but maybe 10% of the time)

Look Bards. You can have two of the following, but not all 3.

* High Mobility
* High Utility
* High DPS

You pick.

Pretty much this. ARR BRD mobility + competitive DPS = overpowered as hell. The OP had the nerve to compare to melee as if it were the same thing. How about we give BRD's positionals and forced an AoE pie plate on them every 5 seconds?

[Solsanna]

This just in, adding stance dances, extra skills, and fundamentally changing a class to create two different feels depending on stance, need for mobility vs damage, and all that, is less complicated than the original pressing 2 dots, making sure a 20 sec buff is up, hitting a proc button, and then pressing 1 for ever. I did coil as a brd, I didn't want to because it was boring, but i did because ranged on-demand silence is good for T9. I could pretty much fall asleep or roll my face across the keyboard and win. It didn't feel smooth, it was stupidly simple, I'd call it the laziest class in the game. Needed to know just about nothing and worry about just about nothing. Braindead.

Welcome to being a real class that actually has to pay attention to shit.

[Aiselia]

Less complex than 2.0 BRD? How?

I literally said how in the same thing you quoted.

Out of curiosity how much time over the course of a 3-5 minute fight are you forced to move?

Firstly, depends on the fight.

Secondly, are you implying that mobility isn't important because you're not frequently forced to move?

Does it may that much of a difference? Bloodletter aside.

Yes. Does it matter if it makes that much of a difference regardless? No. Because if it's possible to limit mobility without adding cast times, then you don't mess around with play style as much, since Bards have to level from 1 to 52 without worrying about it.

How does it slow things down?

Less frantic trying to fit in all the OGCDs you can

[Kumori_Kumo]

I have an addendum to my previous question.
How necessary is WM to Bard DPS now? I mean could you just eschew it and not be viewed as a total scrublord, or is it like doing Dragoon without Heavy Thrust? I've tried to parse that from the conversation but it's been all over the place and I'm kind of a meathead.

[Snugglebutt]

I have an addendum to my previous question.
How necessary is WM to Bard DPS now? I mean could you just eschew it and not be viewed as a total scrublord, or is it like doing Dragoon without Heavy Thrust? I've tried to parse that from the conversation but it's been all over the place and I'm kind of a meathead.

If not using WM you tend to get insulted and/or kicked or blocked from groups quite often from what I have seen. There are always exceptions though especially if your group consists of FC, general or static friends which would be more accommodating. It can be quite a large DPS loss if don't use it at all in fights that you are not forced to dodge constantly throughout since you lose out on couple good skills, SW being an exception plus lose the WM 30% buff even though that is slightly mitigated by the added cast times and lack of auto-attack.

My issue is not with the DPS output though, it is with the QoL and play style change WM created. To me bard went from a fun stable and reliable rotational class to a chaotic rotational mess when became a prominently master weaving class due to WM and WM's effect on the other skills...skills that were not designed to compliment WM to begin with and for many skills still do not. Like I said before even if bard was the top DPS class it would not change my current feelings on it. Honestly I am not sure how SE can fix it with WM part of the equation so my problem now is having to find another class to main.

[Aiselia]

Welcome to being a real class that actually has to pay attention to shit.

If you weren't paying attention to things as a Bard before, you were being carried.

Look Bards. You can have two of the following, but not all 3.

* High Mobility
* High Utility
* High DPS

You pick.

I pick high mobility and high DPS.

I don't use my TP/MP songs in most of the game anyways, and Foe's is only particularly useful if I'm with a caster.

[Kumori_Kumo]

Yeesh. That sounds like a definite 'no' then.
Also if the rest of you aren't getting why this feels bad, create an entire UI of abilities that work through macros. Not even complex ones, just literally macros of the same abilities you use. It's sticky and doesn't flow well and... just doesn't feel good. Makes you feel like you're trying to control your character through a layer of molasses. It's arguably exactly the same, but at the same time it isn't, ya know?