In 4.0 can we please get rid of caster bars on physical ranged jobs?!

[AskaRay]

/basks in Bard Tears

Please give me more of them. Please don't change WM in 4.0 Squeenix (as in, take it away).
I'm really just hoping for more traits in 4.0, not skills.

[CaptainLagbeard]

For Bard... Please, more focus on new songs, less focus on it needing to catch up on DPS...

[Dzian]

LOL I'm guessing that ability was not very well recieved by the playerbase

It's the one reason I don't play bard anymore and levelled ninja.

I kinda feel brd doesn't fit anywhere these days. if it's going to have cast times then it needs to have caster levels of dps.

in 2.0 it was shrugged off as lower dps because its a support job. but that's no longer true. half the jobs in the game bring as much support/utility if not more than a brd does. ninja for example can throw tp on party members. lower mobs resistances to slashing / everything. help manage enmity with shade walker and smokescreen. a ton more support than a bard has and can do all of that support with no loss of dps. by comparison best a bard can do is foe req as long as mp allows, any other songs cripple there dps even more than it already is.

personally would love nothing more than to see minuet get axed though. currently the only thing my bard ever sees is the occasional 50 roulette or crystal tower.

sidenote archer was one of the first jobs I levelled in 1.0 and I'd always hoped it would go the ranger path not the bard. oh well

[mb52139]

Thing is, we already have/had two caster classes with cast bars. Now we have 4. Removing variety is not a good thing here...

People who like the caster type, will play Black mage or Summoner.. those who prefer the other style, went Bard.

Now we have 2 classes originally designed to be casters, a third that was sorta designed to be like that(MCH) and a class that has had a cast bar tacked onto it at the last minute with no thought put into it. Likely because none of the devs play bard/care for the class.

How is this good?


Don't get me wrong, while I never supported WM.. I think that removing it now would just be a disaster. They'd have to come up with a clever way to make both stances viable. Bonus points to SE if they can figure out a way to make both bard camps happy here.

Off the top of my head.. make it so you don't need WM to use all the 50+ skills. This way everything is accessible to both stances. DPS can be adjusted, so that in WM you'd be close to the mobility of a black mage and do comparable DPS... while without WM, you'd be mobile with.. maybe slightly less DPS (like we were in 2.0)

Dunno.. at this point I'm rambling.

[enthauptet]

Casting just conflicts with the proc resets core you have. I think if they made empyreal arrow instant cast (like gauss round) it would help slightly but meh. Even with our instant casts GCD lag is very real (and feels terrible, also easily noticeable on dragoon).

In addition at least blm and mch feel powerful, bard not so much. Also sound WM makes is pretty annoying and makes every ability seem like it's the same so there's no variety. (mch has this same problem, though with ammo you get some reprieve)

I've seen it mentioned is "casting" is like drawing the string. Well bard already has slow GCDs because it has no "speed up" skill and it like dragoon in that regard we have big weapons so our GCDs are slower so that really is not a valid reason at all.

[MPNZ]

I agree that WM is a bad ideia for a moving class like Bard.

I know (and undersdand) they did that to increase BRD damage, but there is other ways to increase Bard's DPS and sacrificing other things than mobility.

For example, if WM is active, Bard can't use others song, so he/she loses his/her support ability to be a full DPS class. And in a time of need, deactivate de WM to be used as a support class.

I totally love this idea!

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

When it comes to the debate of damage vs maneuverability, a lot of people fall back on the old argument of "well if you're ranged you don't need to worry about dealing with certain mechanics and can move while attacking and providing party support, so dealing less damage/having less damage mitigation is fair." This is no longerso valid.

There have been mechanics designed to target ranged/players at range, and party-wide damge does happen. Not only that but positionals aside, melees can be just as mobile as ranged, the difference being that they cannot fight AT range. And while not to the extent of BRD/MCH, they too provide party support, and at no penalty to their primary fuction. So limiting our movement in exchange for extra damage (that we then lose anyways for providing said support) is old logic that needs to be reviewed.

Change is coming in 4.0, and what better time to look carefully and change some core issues as well as address player grievances.

[Stormfur]

Wanderer's Minuet and Gauss Barrel can both go wrap themselves in Titan's loincloth and fling themselves off a cliff.

I have leveled both classes and cannot stress to you enough how much I hate the bow/gun caster stance.

IF you want to keep them, let them be toggled on just for the moves that need them (Iron jaws and Empyreal arrow) but even that is stretching it.

I'd go back and look at what they have to sacrifice in order to do more damage. For example Dragoon has the more complex rotation, but monk has positionals. What does BRD/MCH have? Standing still and casting? Really?

If we're going to be a DPS support class, let us toggle between them, then and make our support really count.

[Astyrah]

I main Bard and i have adapted to the WM gameplay. i can do good damage with it and clear Trials EX and Raids with it but it doesn't mean im liking it. a good compromise would be to keep the cast bar on WM locked actions such as Iron Jaws and Empy Arrow and leave the archer skills instant cast, that way bloodletter procs could be utilized more properly and using a gcd immediately after repelling shot wouldn't be clunky.

[FunkyBunch]

I main Bard and i have adapted to the WM gameplay. i can do good damage with it and clear Trials EX and Raids with it but it doesn't mean im liking it. a good compromise would be to keep the cast bar on WM locked actions such as Iron Jaws and Empy Arrow and leave the archer skills instant cast, that way bloodletter procs could be utilized more properly and using a gcd immediately after repelling shot wouldn't be clunky.

All they'd have to do to fix the issue is lock the skills behind being a certain distance away from the target (some skill are close, some are far, some are in between) it'd be the equivalent of ranged positionals. That would allow them to un-tether BRD and still keep the skill cap high enough to justify an increase in DPS.