How is this Balanced? (Bard)

[Koltik]

Why are you in Diurnal Sect in PvP? These ASTs are so much easier to kill than Nocturnal shield instaspammers.

Noct shield spamming cannot even come close to outhealing semi-competent DPS since it received its nerf.

Suddenly getting Windbyte is the first sign you'll be bursted in a couple of seconds. You'll have Venomous Bite as your last warning and that's when you should top HP, pre-apply shield from Aspected Benefic, and be ready for Essential Dignity, Swiftcast+Benefic II or Lightspeed Benefic spam. Turning on Attunement for a few seconds is also an option, just cancel manually before it expires after the danger is gone.

This is all legit advice, except that it requires Noct stance which severely dwarfs your ability to party heal. I've run both, and so have all of the heavy-pvping Astros on my DC, and all agree that Diurn is the better choice. You fall way too far behind on party healing without the regens.

Even if I were noct, that's only a 750 point shield. The numbers I gave were 13600 damage in less than 1 second. Simple math:

Damage Dealt:
Disabled: 13600 * 0.90 = 12240

eHP:
Noct Shield: 10900 + 750 = 11650

So basically unless the astro plays it perfectly, disables the bard, Swiftcast is up and/or lightspeed, and are qeueud right as bard casts barrage, and heal is cast before it actually hits (since heal delay), then the Astro is dead.

Let me also mention that Barrage is instant cast EMP arrow is 1s. oGCD is 0.5 seconds. Why does this matter? Well basically from the moment Barrage goes up the Astro has 1.5 seconds to Disable the bard, be full HP, get a Noct shield off, hope no one else is hitting him to weaken that shield, queue up Swiftcast, and have bene 2 ready to cast the second Emp arrow is about to finish casting. Hopefully he's not stunned, silenced, or otherwise CC'd.

Meanwhile the bard only has to pop a few buffs, pop b4b last for the 1 second it takes to cast emp arrow, blow their cd's, and then disable b4b to be free and clear. Oh, and the healer and/or their target is dead.

[Nakanishi]

Stuff

Try LoSing the bard, attuning the burst, timing heals to go in between it, and or out-ranging. You have plenty of options.

[Enlial]

or stop playing ast if its so horrible that you melt to every bard you come across?

[SuperZay]

This is all legit advice, except that it requires Noct stance which severely dwarfs your ability to party heal.

But it's not. All Diurnal gives you are very weak healing ticks from Aspected Helios/Benefic which have never stopped any burst. In Noct, if you keep shields up, you party members basically have extra 10-15% HP at all times which is a good mitigation. Diurnal has zero mitigation. And your main party healing spell, Helios, is actually 5% stronger in Noct because of sect healing boonus. And if you'll go full Piety+Crits build those critted shields are pretty strong.