Angry Bards

[SlyRoyale]

Also, bard is NOT at all harder to play. It actually got A LOT easier to play thanks to less oGCD weaving and Iron Jaw. What's actually hard about stopping a cast to move or what else about 3.0 bard makes people say it suddenly takes skill to play vs. 2.0?

There's still plenty of oGCD weaving. It's just trickier to do without clipping into your GCD, and even then the best times to double-oGCD weave outside of Straighter Shot procs is just before Iron Jaws reapplication for your buffs, and attacks that are stronger than Heavy Shot, especially if they're instant cast.

Cast times aren't that hard to deal with, but stopping DPS to get out of an AoE is not an ideal situation to be in. If you're finishing up a cast, you can still get an attack out and dodge. If you get targeted with an AoE just as you start casting, it's better to dodge than be a floor warmer. WM simply introduced new challenges that BRDs never had to deal with before.

[AskaRay]

There's still plenty of oGCD weaving. It's just trickier to do without clipping into your GCD, and even then the best times to double-oGCD weave outside of Straighter Shot procs is just before Iron Jaws reapplication for your buffs, and attacks that are stronger than Heavy Shot, especially if they're instant cast.

Cast times aren't that hard to deal with, but stopping DPS to get out of an AoE is not an ideal situation to be in. If you're finishing up a cast, you can still get an attack out and dodge. If you get targeted with an AoE just as you start casting, it's better to dodge than be a floor warmer. WM simply introduced new challenges that BRDs never had to deal with before.

Feint is a good cross-class skill now.
Not affected by WM.

[SlyRoyale]

Feint is a good cross-class skill now.
Not affected by WM.

Indeed it is. Despite being TP-inefficient compared to Heavy Shot without WM (Feint's 156 potency in WM for 80 TP vs. Heavy Shot's 150 potency w/o WM for 60TP), it's still great to have for extended movement periods when WM is on cooldown or you need that buffed Empyreal Arrow to nuke an add down. I can usually burst down an Alarum with Hawk's Eye + Blood for Blood + Barrage buffed Empyreal Arrow, followed by Feint and Misery's End. Depending on how far the missile you're on is from your Alarum, any BRD should be able to place and kill it before Resin Bombs go off. It feels great to pull it off.