I dont get all the Bard hatred..

[RiceisNice]

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If they're doing less than 600, they're either not using WM at all or they would've been bad in 2.0 either way.

Nearly every piece of leveling gear and end game weapon has skill speed attached to it. It doesn't exactly help when my cast time is at 1.47 with a 2.45 GCD. Your example also requires you to be channeling a skill close enough to use repelling shot to begin with. It also wouldn't work with empyreal arrow (which is oGCD so you'd definitely clip it using it either before or after repelling)

[Croisciento]

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Did we play the same class? We got an extremely situational spell, another one to reset your dots so you only have to hit two keys when you first hit the target or after some kind of phase transition which removed them. In the end we only get two new spells its not that "much" abilities compared to other classes like BLM. When under minuet its actually less stressfull (its still clunky) to keep up with buffs since wihtout it you have to watch for your procs. You still can spam the key but to not loose DPS you have to put them effeciently (unlike that HS+Bloodletter macro). Your silence which entered in your rotation as much as your repelling shot are now even harder to put because it'll depend if you get lucky with procs. On a dumy fight you might be able to use it three times but sometimes two times only during the same ammount of time because procs.

And what the hell "it takes a lot of discipline"... ?? How is using Emp arrow hard? How is using Iron jaw hard? You were used to refresh all your dots manually and now you got a spell that refresh them both, its actually a lot easier to do multidoting. How is using a offgcd ard? It does more damage if you get your dots, but you should always have them up anyway so... In the end the only ability that needs attention is the Minuet. But it solely depends on your knowledge of the fight and not the spell. So yeah we could say Bard is harder to play on unmastered encounters, but wait... isn't it the case of all the DPS? Bards had it easy without Minuet because they were so polyvalent, now you got to the level to people that actually need to think ahead their movement depending on the fight to increase their dps.

The layer of "depth" people seem to think about, is that most Bard weren't actually used to think about how they could increase their dps by learning how the boss moves. Another difficulty was to know if you could multidot or not but it wasn't a big deal since it gets pretty obvious depending on how quickly your group kill them. They are also exceptions like T7, but most of the times Bards could just go in the fight and not really care about the boss because they were so polyvalent. On unknown fields they would mess up their rotation but by no mean it would change it.

If you talk about added difficulty because of spells, some classes changed and these classes actually have a lot more to keep up than you at 60. Black Mage have Enochian to watch out for every minute just like bard with sidewinder. But using enochian opens up the use of blizz/fire IV which do not extend the duration of umbral ice and astral fire. On top of that they got ley lines that increases their attack speed, that needs to be up everytime they get enochian so they can maximize enochian's effect. Sharcast is not a big deal but its something to consider in your rotation. And on top that they have longer cast time than bards and get punished way more for moving. Dragoon has a now a RNG based rotation and blood of the dragoon like many good DRG players will told you can be a pain in the ass to use efficently because it depends a lot on your groups dps and change everytime the more you get gear and the more you get used to the fight. Summoner always had a lot buttons to press because of its pet. They need to keep tracks of their dots just like bards but now their aetherflow usage is much more complex and they get to manage their dreadwyrm stance.

So yes let's be honest. Is playing bard harder because of Minuet? Yes it because as I said, bards weren't use to plan movements. Is it harder to keep up with bards because of new spells? Of course not. Do you see all those job I listed above have to deal with?

Bard has now the depth it should have get in its first place, but they need to fix it so it feels less clunky. People who played effectively bard in 2.0 will have zero issue with it now, and people who were bad at it will still be bad.

[aabe]

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Exactly, and the best part about the point we are in the patch is that a lot of your DPS is coming from your own intuition. How well you optimize around movement on the fly, and how well you can react to these changes and adapt and figure out what pulls you the highest numbers.

WM wasn't amazing or anything before it was buffed to 30% but I feel like lack of ^ is a lot of where the complaining about DPS comes from. I've played with and seen too many BRDs who underperform extremely hard and these are the types of people I can see blaming the job and the stance and begging for more changes. People also ignore the fact that BRD has never been near top DPS when placed next to a good melee, though.
I can totally understand the complaints about the playstyle, but I personally love it and I don't know a lot of people that can complain about an increase in the skill floor/skillcap.

[AFinch]

It's not a problem of dps. It's a matter of play style. If play style doesn't matter to you then tell me why we shouldn't just have three core classes (tank, healer, dps)? If play style does matter to you, then accept that WM has fundamentally altered the play style of BRD and that many people are upset about that.

[AkashiXI]

Nearly every piece of leveling gear and end game weapon has skill speed attached to it. It doesn't exactly help when my cast time is at 1.47 with a 2.45 GCD. Your example also requires you to be channeling a skill close enough to use repelling shot to begin with. It also wouldn't work with empyreal arrow (which is oGCD so you'd definitely clip it using it either before or after repelling)

There are plenty of situations where you can be near an enemy to use Repelling Shot. Both Faust and the Oppressor you should be trying to weave in your R. Shot if there's nothing else to use, it's still a dps increase no matter how small it is. You've motivated me to actually do the math and see how much SS you must have until it becomes a DPS decrease though, which is what I'll test tonight.

Snip

The problem I'm having with your entire post is that you think I'm comparing Bard to any other job, or how I'm comparing it to how all jobs have changed through 3.0. I'm not. What I'm saying is that Bard requires more discipline, more foresight, and more strategy than 2.0 Bard. It's childish and awfully pretentious to counter-argue that "people who were bad at it will still be bad" because it requires a different way of thinking entirely. One thing you cannot argue to me is this: Bard had the most significant change to its core gameplay than any job in 3.0. What does that mean to me? Your mileage will vary depending on player to player. I personally don't have difficulty with Bard, I can parse 1.1~1.2k and I'm no slouch in Savage Alex. I beat all of coil before it got nerfed (in each patch), experienced everything 2.0 had to offer, so I'm coming from a POV that I sympathize with those who struggle with 3.0 Bard.

And what the hell "it takes a lot of discipline"... ?? How is using Emp arrow hard? How is using Iron jaw hard? You were used to refresh all your dots manually and now you got a spell that refresh them both, its actually a lot easier to do multidoting. How is using a offgcd ard?

Once again, let me preface this with I personally don't think this is hard. I personally don't think this is hard. Using abilities in a priority system does take discipline, and I can give you an example. If at any moment the enemy is untargetable, your OGCDs will start to line up, and it no longer becomes as simple as a GCD into your OGCD. Prioritizing Empyreal Arrow, Flaming Arrow, BL, and the order in which you do it seems minor, but the damage adds up overtime. No other job has that sort of clunkiness installed into it, which is also why I said I personally feel the difficulty and discipline is more artificial than organic.

In conclusion, I DO NOT THINK BARD IS ANYMORE DIFFICULT THAN ANY JOB OUT THERE. <_< I feel like I have to hammer that in with every post. All I want to do is create insight for Bards who're confused on how to optimize their job with all these DPS checks that came with 3.1, and I want to see our job strive. I implore you to talk about your personal experiences with the job rather than a broad generalization .

[Skathi_Asatru]

I still love playing as BRD. Reached lvl 60 yesterday, The new ability works well on certain types of enemies - where your not dodging aoes. I still use the old way of playing the most.
Never had anyone complain about me and the way I play.

[RiceisNice]

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It's just that you're not getting your point across to me very well so I actually do not know what you're trying to say or at least interpreting it wrong.

One thing to note is that you must play Bard in a totally different mindset than your 2.0 counterpart.

It takes a lot of discipline to view each ability and know when to use them, especially in high stress raiding scenarios. Thus, I do feel the skill ceiling is much higher now....

It's not all that harder than it's 2.0 counterpart because it's not that different (unless you were monkeying around and jumping just to do so in 2.0). The base foundation is not totally different because you still upkeep dots (and the order of which is applied first is less stressed because they're both reapplied to the same time), use oGCDs as they come off, watch for SS procs and weave in cooldowns inbetween each GCD. You do all that even in WM, just the latter 2 isn't meant for interactin with cast times.

If people are doing bad as bard now (and I'm talking sub 600 on a dummy parse at 170 or alexander fights..which are typically dummies too) , they're either just as bad as they were in 2.0 (where they aren't playing the base foundation of the bard anyway, with or without WM) or they're too stubborn to use WM/reroll. These are typically the people you'd see in DF anyway and probably play just as bad on other classes. I wouldn't even call it as discipline toward playing bard as much as it is situational awareness, which is needed for all classes.

[aabe]

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Experiences from A1 Savage and A2 Savage;
Save Barrage + Hawks Eye + BFB for the Alarums in A1. You can kill your alarum before resin bomb goes off which allows you to squeeze in a bit more DPS because you don't have to move as much while kiting your alarum around at the same time. If you pop HE/BFB/Barrage ASAP going into the missile phase they will come back up around the time the oppressors jump, and you only lose 1 pop of the CDs from saving them the rest of the fight, so it's a reasonable boost.
Floor 2 is entirely about potency per GCD. Multidot with windbite in burst AoE, keep both dots up with IJ in sustained AoE like the gobwidows and jagd dolls, spam RoD as much as you can, just whatever you currently have off of cooldown that will be the highest potency is what you should press (besides quicknock sometimes cause TP) as it's a trash race against time and all that.

[Blaste]

The layer of "depth" people seem to think about, is that most Bard weren't actually used to think about how they could increase their dps by learning how the boss moves.

So lemme see if I got this right, people were jealous of how easy it was to play bard and easily maximize and maintain an acceptable DPS flow, so now that SE decided to completely change the mechanics anyone that complains about having their class completely turned on its side are bad DPS, this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that people were spitefull to how easy it was to play and have fun with the bard class that they are now screaming at any person that says WM isn't just some "new mechanic" that bards can deal with...Do I have it about right?

[Humorless]

So lemme see if I got this right, people were jealous of how easy it was to play bard and easily maximize and maintain an acceptable DPS flow, so now that SE decided to completely change the mechanics anyone that complains about having their class completely turned on its side are bad DPS, this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that people were spitefull to how easy it was to play and have fun with the bard class that they are now screaming at any person that says WM isn't just some "new mechanic" that bards can deal with...Do I have it about right?

Except bards pretty much play the exact same... except you can't double up on ogcds and DoT upkeep is easier than ever.


but omg mah flow