Can you tell me bards why so much hatred....

[SlyRoyale]

And let's not bring in the "skill" argument. All you're doing when you mention that is trying to belittle those who dislike WM.

If you honestly believe this, you are taking unnecessary offence over a fact. At no point did Velhart go out and belittle anyone who doesn't like WM. BRD pre-HW has been a very easy job to play. All you had to do was manage your DoTs, face the target so you don't miss out on auto-attacks, dodge AoEs while still firing off skills, and knowing when to sing which song, all while spamming Bloodletter between GCDs in case River of Blood activates and pairing up cooldowns for extra DPS.

Now BRDs have to pay more attention to positioning and know how to stutter step (and we have it easier than real casters), along with prioritizing (instant) attacks that do equal or more damage than Heavy Shot and popping our buffs just before we use Iron Jaws. While we lose out on our auto-attacks and Barrage was adjusted to make up for it, we can still sneak in auto-attacks with stance dancing for roughly a 1% DPS increase. As for songs, not much has changed aside from the addition of Warden's Paean which adds some synergy between BRD and WAR.

Ultimately, BRD is still an easy job despite WM raising its skill floor a bit. Even if people don't like WM, they can still be good with it.

[basketofseals]

If you play MMO's you have to take with a grain of salt that the job you play may completely change in an expansion or two down the line. Classes in Vanilla WoW are nothing like they are now.

Casting times added a skill level BRD needed. Sure it needs some adjustments to have the procs and OGCD's flow better, but it works just fine. On either BRD or MCH, I actually have to plan my next move accordingly to how the boss is going to react next. In 2.0 on BRD, only thing to do after the opener was only worry about boss mechanics and if someone needed a song. It was really a brain dead job. Even then, BRD is still the easiest job to play of the DPS. It is still easy to be mobile if you actually take time to learn how to react and move in between GCD's.

Why was skill "needed?" Is having an easy job a problem?

[SlyRoyale]

Why was skill "needed?" Is having an easy job a problem?

Back in 2.0, BRD had a bunch of strong cross-class buffs. Blood for Blood used to give a 20% damage boost before the trait, and a 15% crit rate for Internal Release if my memory served me correctly. Their weapon damage wasn't nerfed around that time, too, so any good BRD worth their salt could easily out-damage the other jobs without having to worry about positionals or dodging AoEs. BRDs were even strong enough to have BCoB statics bring two of them just for rotating Blunt Arrow without having to worry about a loss of raid DPS, and this was also before the nerf to LB generation by having multiple players in the party as the same job. Come 2.1, BRDs were nerfed by having the power of their cross-class buffs tuned down alongside their weapon damage.

Raising the skill floor for BRD to allow it to do more damage is more of a balance issue for SE to avoid a repeat of 2.0, I believe.

[Duelle]

If you honestly believe this, you are taking unnecessary offence over a fact.

You can infer plenty from those sort of comments, since they are generally dismissive in nature. The moment you say something like "it makes X take skill", you're basically setting up a person arguing against the topic for "well, you must suck since you don't like this". You're also subtly discouraging people from arguing against it and encouraging those likeminded to stroke themselves over how good they are at the game compared to the scrubs that obviously cannot/do not want to adapt. It's not that different from the ending to The Emperor's New Clothes.

Anyway, WM is easy to adapt to but it a) made the job less fun for a good number of people who picked BRD because of its instant attacks on the move, b) the change was very poorly-implemented, and c) made MCH and BRD mechanically similar. The key difference between the two is that one has procs to bypass cast times and the other one doesn't. And BRD still got the worse end of the deal.

Back in 2.0, BRD had a bunch of strong cross-class buffs. Blood for Blood used to give a 20% damage boost before the trait, and a 15% crit rate for Internal Release if my memory served me correctly. Their weapon damage wasn't nerfed around that time, too, so any good BRD worth their salt could easily out-damage the other jobs without having to worry about positionals or dodging AoEs. BRDs were even strong enough to have BCoB statics bring two of them just for rotating Blunt Arrow without having to worry about a loss of raid DPS, and this was also before the nerf to LB generation by having multiple players in the party as the same job. Come 2.1, BRDs were nerfed by having the power of their cross-class buffs tuned down alongside their weapon damage.

Raising the skill floor for BRD to allow it to do more damage is more of a balance issue for SE to avoid a repeat of 2.0, I believe.

Ease of play makes classes popular. I saw that first hand in WoW with prot paladins after the hybrid revamp. That in itself is not a bad thing, and "this class is easy" should never be used as a reason to make changes.

This said, the issue was also that range had a notable advantage in general given than there were no hard DPS checks nor were there varied mechanics that punished range. The fact BRD was one of the two jobs that had a reliable cast interrupt (the other being PLD) did not help at all. This was also a result of separating interrupts into Stuns and Silences (imagine a world where DRGs would be able to join that rotation with Leg Sweep and SMNs got Leviathan-egi with the ability to interrupt spell casts). One thing leads to another, but raid design is partly to blame for why people stacked range during those days. As seen at HW's launch, they went overboard with the nerfs.

[T2teddy]

Hold on a sec
bard is your main but you didn't even re-read the tooltip changes to the skill. On your main. Okay.

As I said, and you obviously missed, my bard WAS my main char. WAS. Up until 2 weeks after HW hit the ground. Not been on her since so oh please forgive me if I don't recall what the new tool tips say, 3 months after I read them.

[AskaRay]

As I said, and you obviously missed, my bard WAS my main char. WAS. Up until 2 weeks after HW hit the ground. Not been on her since so oh please forgive me if I don't recall what the new tool tips say, 3 months after I read them.

I read that part.. So for those two weeks you didn't know that Barrage had been changed? You were firing off Empyreal Arrow without Barrage? Yikes..

[Vinestra]

If you play MMO's you have to take with a grain of salt that the job you play may completely change in an expansion or two down the line. Classes in Vanilla WoW are nothing like they are now.

Yes but none of WoW's Classes changed the basic fundamentals of how the class played. Rogues didn't suddenly gain cast bars for all their skills and no basic attacks, Paladins even though the gained combos to manage, they didn't become casters for their dps.

[Rowyne]

Why was skill "needed?" Is having an easy job a problem?

That's actually a really good point. The tradeoff is that before, BRDs could more easily concentrate on lending support. Now they have to concentrate so hard on stance dancing, timing and weaving of skills, they don't have time to pay attention to who's low on mana or TP. You're lucky if you get a Foe's, if anything.

Sure, you can still do somewhat respectable DPS, but now you really have to work for it and it's just not fun for many people anymore. If it's a balance issue, I think it could have been achieved another way.

[Malevicton]

That's actually a really good point. The tradeoff is that before, BRDs could more easily concentrate on lending support. Now they have to concentrate so hard on stance dancing, timing and weaving of skills, they don't have time to pay attention to who's low on mana or TP. You're lucky if you get a Foe's, if anything.

You make occasionally looking over at the party list sound way more intense than it actually is.

I do feel lucky if I ever get Foe's. And that's the problem. I really shouldn't feel that way. I don't feel lucky when I get battle litany, I just feel like "oh this person is actually using their abilities. This is normal."

[Inferiae]

You make occasionally looking over at the party list sound way more intense than it actually is.

I do feel lucky if I ever get Foe's. And that's the problem. I really shouldn't feel that way. I don't feel lucky when I get battle litany, I just feel like "oh this person is actually using their abilities. This is normal."

Take away its three seconds cast time and you'll see Foe a lot more

The problem with Foe is that we never know if we will need MP for something else. Can you imagine me singing Foe and then people start dying, healers need mana and I'm OOM? Yeah.

Knowing when to sing and when to preserve MP makes a good BRD, of course, I'm just saying this because you compared Foe with Battle Litany, and they are fundamentally different.