Bard and how to fix it.

[Darian]

Problem is very obvious when you are looking for SS and BL proc optimization, repelling shot causing the next cast to interrupt and trying to quickly place flaming arrow

DPS is being lost just because the Job is SUPER clunky atm.

[dragoelete]

personally after seeing a lot of feedback on it (i don't have a bard yet) i think its less a problem of people needing to get good and more of a problem of people not liking the skill itself at all and as such is seriously hindering there progress in learning the skill. so i would recommend maybe instead of basically strong arming the bard into being a "singing black mage" that they make it where they have more choice in it. so like right now all there new skills are pretty much only useable in WM. why not instead of that they make it where all the skills are useable in either form but have different effects when not in WM so you are not essentially forced into a play style you don't like.

[ChalupaBatman]

My xp up to A3 savage it seems like BRD/MCH are doing fine, even without a DRG. They are great for A1s, essential for A2s(10:30 fight, healers will need ballad and ninjas will need TP), havent gotten numbers from A3s yet since we havent downed but so far so good.

So for people worrying about not being let into groups you will be okay.

Your only gripe should be that if there is no drg and its a double melee comp mch is better than brd hands down.

[AphelSaurus]

Sorry if this has been posted before but it seems to me that if we removed the casting times all the flow issues would go away.
Since SE seems to want to make it less lucrative to DPS on the move, perhaps it can be replaced with the 30% bonus activating if you are still. That way one could transition seamlessly between not moving and buffed or moving and unbuffed as the situation needed instead of being punished. That would also make it so we don't need to worry about all of the GDC and OGDC abilities interacting poorly (and keeping the ease of mobility we all grew up with )?

[Kayko]

My xp up to A3 savage it seems like BRD/MCH are doing fine, even without a DRG. They are great for A1s, essential for A2s(10:30 fight, healers will need ballad and ninjas will need TP), havent gotten numbers from A3s yet since we havent downed but so far so good.

So for people worrying about not being let into groups you will be okay.

Your only gripe should be that if there is no drg and its a double melee comp mch is better than brd hands down.

While yes, I somewhat agree that BRD is in an alright place in terms of stand still damage, it is clunky. Nothing about it feels right even in something like Faust. Before passing full judgment, I'd like to see how Skill Speed really affects the cooldown on EA, perhaps it will line up better with a round of shots rather then either waiting half a CD or pushing it back half a CD. It just doesn't work ATM with at the gear I am in (456 SS).

As for another major point you bring up however, that double melee comp. To have an ability that can be 100% or 200% better just by the group comp is mess up. Though not min-max, groups can essentially have 0 casters (aside from healers) There is no reason that an ability like foes can't be changed to just "lowers enemy resistance by 2%" (or even 1.5%) instead of just magic resistance by 10%. It then covers all group comps instead of benefiting one far more then another.

[Warlyx]

There is no reason that an ability like foes can't be changed to just "lowers enemy resistance by 2%" (or even 1.5%) instead of just magic resistance by 10%. It then covers all group comps instead of benefiting one far more then another.

5% physical / 5% magical dmg , MCH have to choose.... they shouldnt , why not both? :P

Emp Arrow should lower piercing resistance like Drg debuff , same goes for MCH (blank , remove knocback add 10%piercing )

[dragoelete]

5% physical / 5% magical dmg , MCH have to choose.... they shouldnt , why not both? :P

Emp Arrow should lower piercing resistance like Drg debuff , same goes for MCH (blank , remove knocback add 10%piercing )

if you did that a lot of DRG would be angry as it would remove their special snowflake status...

[Sessurea]

5% physical / 5% magical dmg , MCH have to choose.... they shouldnt , why not both? :P

Emp Arrow should lower piercing resistance like Drg debuff , same goes for MCH (blank , remove knocback add 10%piercing )

I actually agree with this. Before the argument was "drgs do less damage than mnks, but buff brds" ofc then came the rivers and rivers of dragoon tears, and now they have arguably the best offensive support ( bard boost/battle litany ) AND they have competitive dps and they are quite tp efficient compared to the other mellee that offers offensive support ( nin )

It's now at the point where I'd consider drg as essential to a group as a bard. and no group will do anything meaningful without a bard.

[Nadirah]

In the short period of time I've had WM, the biggest problem I'm having with it, is the cast time vs recast time(GCD).

They don't line up and it's driving me nuts.

if I had a 2.5s GCD with a 2.5s cast time, great. Nope. 1.44 cast with 2.4 recast... feels absurdly annoying.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

I like twitchy, as long its not necessarily an antithesis of 'smooth'. In Bard's case, I don't think it is. To me it feels twitchy, and still mostly smooth.

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.

I don't see how it could possibly interfere without extreme latency. Using it atop another oGCD, sure, but not a single oGCD alone.

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.

Bloodletter does, however, only refresh immediately after the 3-second global tick. The only times it can line up to cause you to actually waste a Bloodletter proc is if it refreshes just after you've already queued a double-weave, with a fair amount of latency, leaving you two animations and a cast time before you can trigger it (roughly one global if used after SS, or 3.0 instead of just 1.5s). If you have purposely clipped GCD to double-weave (dw'ed w/o SS), you will lose the Bloodletter. Even with the SS proc, it is possible that the effect will have then actually refreshed before it showed itself as available, such that when you queue your next Bloodletter seemingly with .5 seconds left to fire the old one, the new proc has already arrived and is fired instead. This has happened to me maybe once or twice since hitting 60, when spiking badly. In all other cases, the .5 seconds by which the next GCD arrives before the next Bloodletter makes firing another oGCD instead risk-less. Any time it arrives too late to factor into your decision making last GCD, you will have time this GCD to still use it.

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.

To laggers (e.g. me without WTFast), this single-weaving will feels familiar. Also, SS procs.

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.

No. See above.

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.

I see where you're coming from here. I just actually enjoy tracking the DoT tick times and weighing the risks where present (which, as I said above, is a relatively rare situation). Again, I find WM Bard twitchy, yes, but not unsmooth.

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 its main purpose of mobility if adjusted the way I suggest below and be like the bard style of BLM Aether Manipulation.

If Repelling were significantly changed, nostalgia would probably force me to hate the new version. Unfair, but true.

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.

100% agreed. My Summoner would also very much like to be able to queue Shadowflare mid-cast and my DRK his Salted Earth. [No sarcastic implications here; let's seriously fix them all.]

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.

True, though I think you'll find in a few cases that evening out the time you would have gained (like a reverse-GCD clip) from EA can be as beneficial as using it. At any rate, it costs us next to nothing.

Here's some food for thought though - Fuma Shuriken vs. Raiton during tightly timed CD coverage. Shuriken deals only 66% of the other's damage (though then improved by the physical bonus of 20%, iirc, so 80%) but leaves Mudra-Release as a mere double-weave, saving .5s GCD (more commonly .8- 1.0 with Mudra lag) window. Commonly worth it.

If critical strikes could not only be done during Barrage but Straighter Shot's effects also carried into each duplicated shot, Straighter Shot Barrage would deal 420 bonus potency, always, while EA Barrage would deal anywhere from 440 to 660 bonus potency, but may require us to hold onto Barrage for up to 14 seconds and consume an additional .5 to 1.25 GCD time (double-weave latency varies far more than single-weave as not only animation time factors but also server registry that the last animation finished, it seems). Sometimes the SS-Bar option may be worthwhile. It would also give pre-WM bards something to use it on that's not utter shit compared to the up to 660 bonus potency (almost 1k if all crit) it used to give (a 3.3s bow, 3 AAs in window).

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.

Agreed. Even a 30% chance would help tremendously. However, I'm tempted to ask for one step further. Given that SS-waste costs us far less dps than Firestarter waste on BLMs, it might not actually be too overpowered for us to get the stacks of the buff that BLM so often requested. This would give us one to spend to avoid capping and another to hold for mobility or weaves, a very useful tool in improving our tactical freedom.

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

Agreed. It is usable pretty much only instantly pre-pull on Warriors who pop Berserk on their second GCD (Heavy, Unchained, Zerk --> Maim/Skull). There is much I would trade in order to avoid its cast time so that I could actually use it the moment a boss targets a random party member for a debuff and actually prevent that cast's effect. I can still choicefully, though at significant dps cost, save a healer from a universally applied debuff or a Warrior from pacify, but it has no use against random targets. There are many ways to go with this and I will likely detail them later below.

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.

I don't see why. The two AoEs stack very, very nicely. Apply as many DoTs as you need to nearly guarantee RoD uptime and can maintain with IJ, then do 210 AoE potency every GCD atop your RoD-generating DoTs. Wide Volley still hits pretty hard, and tends to outdo DoTing a 4th mob at, well, about the time there are 4 mobs or your crit chance is over or even a 3rd if they won't live all live into the end of their 1st IJ duration. I like the balance of it.

- 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.

This would make the ability make no visual sense and lose its satisfying feeling when done well, imo.

- 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.

Again, please no. If anything I'd like to see the potency increased of Blunt or Repelling Shot increased. 'Harm' to the rotation is irrelevant, when you can figure out, as a player, per situation, how to work it in appropriately.

- Straight Shot Needs a faster animation or faster proc detection.

I'm sure many of us are curious as to why Thundercloud can replace a rotation Thunder after its already been queued rotationally but Straight Shot can't until half way through its cast, or why GL can detect that an ability successfully hit before the animation has even begun but pre-Enochian BLMs waste Firestarter after Firestarter for optimal dps. If SS procs get fixed, it will probably be alongside Firestarter. At best, our extra 1.0-second gap will make up the projectile time to make the fix unique to Bards. However, there is also already a fix for this, based on what I said in the last line. Don't queue your straighter shot until immediately before the GCD refreshes. Ofc, I too would love that QoL adjustment.

- 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).

Option 3 is something I'd suggested for a longbow stance back in 2.0, so of course I'm a bit partial to it. However, I don't feel that any of them are necessary. If any major changes like this were to occur, I'd most like to see them via Straighter Shot proc stacks and increased proc chance. I really don't mind prioritizing Bloodletter, feeling the occasional 'oh shit' moments it may bring, or learning how to avoid them.

- Heavy Shot Removes the TP cost of Straight Shot on proc. Now has a 40% chance to proc Straight Shot vs the current 20%

I don't see the need for TP cost removal. We already use the least TP of any virtually any job upon gaining IJ. Most jobs use an increased-cost ability every combo, and pay more for their DoTs atop it. We pay 60 for every move, including DoT refreshes, outside of procs.

- 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.

Even with the Determination nerf the old style Barrage, properly timed will outdo EA-Bar. There is no need to buff it unless you're trying to make optimal Bard play feel more disjointed.

- 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.

No.

- 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.

Agreed until the last line. That's a shadow skin/wall. And even if it were reduced to a single hit, the cast would make it near-impossible to time.

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)

Yeah, they're shit. I don't see why arching our backs, posing, for a second and a half improves launching velocity. And we look stupid doing so.


Tl;dr:

I feel like WM gameplay is pretty smooth as is, though it could use improvements to SS proc detection and allowing stacks of SS procs would greatly improve our tactical freedom. Flaming Arrow, and all ground targeted abilities like it, absolutely should be queue-able mid-cast/animation.

I would prefer to see Barrage have reduced or no natural crit chance applied to its duplicates (though this would dampen the otherwise kingly crit stat weight), but allow the original to crit and apply the SS proc to its duplicates, making SS-Bar viable as an alternative to EA-Bar. I would like to see the same apply to Duality on Ninja, allowing the original crit. SS proc chance improvements would be nice but probably are not necessary if stacking were allowed. I do not think that further changes are necessary, even for QoL, apart perhaps from Warden's Paeon, which has all the lackluster use of Smokescreen when your raid knows how to Quell/Aether/Shroud. Additionally, I'd love to see the WM cast animation changed to instead modify the original animation itself as to appear to be using a stronger (and/or arcane) bow.

However, if I were to any real further changes, I would like to see the mobile Bard become viable again in a way that requires a decent amount of mastery to get make the most of, where WM is dropped not just situationally (run to far side of room while shooting, repop) but has some rotational significance that is intuitive to time but does not feel overly led (e.g. pressured by tight maintenance as on DRG). I'd like to see IJ and EA usable out of WM's stance, with reduced and slightly different effects. Ideally, I'd prefer to see WM's effect as an earlier Archer ability, and something that influences songs put in its place, allowing us quicker, more adaptive, more reactive support. It's is the songs and the idea of supportive adaptability that I find as more central to the idea of a Bard than the sheer mobility it was granted in ARR.