As a couple others have stated, I would love it if they removed the casting and instead required you to stand still to get the damage bonus.

I would vote for standing still 1.5 seconds - as that is the length of the cast time - for the 30% damage bonus to apply.

You could leave WM and the skills requiring it the same, your skills would not conflict with each other as they would go back to being skills instead of spells and you would still have to stand still for the 1.5 as if you were casting w/o the need for cast bars.

If this meant people would be using WM all the time, or simply too much, they could make it mp dependent or only active for a set time - though I don`t see a problem with it always being active (like sword oath, for example).

If the numbers didn't make sense you could push the stand still time towards 2 secs and the damage bonus down to 25% or whatever it took to make the numbers appropriate.

I believe this:

- is one the smallest amounts of change to the current WM system

- solves the bowmage problem (If we wanted to main a mage we would have.)

- solves the proc interference problem

- (with numbers adjusted accordingly) would still retain the dps ratio to the other dps classes

- distinguishes our class better from mch

(I realize that because of my brd's lvl (51) some may say that "I have yet to try it as it is so how can I say i dislike it?" I'll tell you: I had blm at 50 it wasn't good or bad but it was the most enjoyable for me at the time though I didn't find it spectacular. Then nin came along and I loved it while lvling but I found that latency impeded by ability to play it optimally so I leveled bard.

Playing brd was like a sustained epiphany. I loved it so much more than nin and especially blm. The thing I loved was the ability to be a ranged class without cast bars.

I had played exclusively brd since that day (until 3.0 when I read the bs and picked up mch before learning about its similar nature and hence haven't really played at all) and grew to hate cast bars.

So, without playing it with its (short) cast bars, I can safely say the reason I loved the class was ruined with the addition of cast bars.)