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

[Kling-Klang]

I like WM.
I would like more support stuff and more songs for my bard.

[MPNZ]

They'll probably add cast bars to the remaining classes in 4.0, you know, cast bar when a monk pulls their arm back to punch...

It's only fair. XD

SE, it's time to decide, and 4.0 is a perfect catalyst for the change:

If you want BRD/MCH (or should I say Dex based jobs overall, considering the trend?) to be limited as a DPS for the sake of party support, then it's time to break the Trinity, and fully, officially create and designate Support as a party role.

Please consider this seriously.

That is just way unnecessary and unneeded. It would be so much easier to just simplify the rotation by cutting skills out like sidewinder, making Paeon an aoe, and greying out and canceling songs when using WM. Or, actually anything that would allow bards more time to, like, focus on the entire party instead of just the cast bars and their crossbar/hotbars the entire time.

[MuseTraveller]

I'd love if the cast bars are removed but I doubt it. I did eventually get used to WM but what still makes me cringe to no end is all the missed blood letter procs cause you are locked in mid-cast.

[Dzian]

That's why it bothers me. I've HAD to swap mains with 3.0, too, and I know I'm not the only one who did so. Scholar is borderline impossible on a controller set-up at level 60. I couldn't micro the fairy since I ran out of slots to put her skills on!

So, I tried SMN, DRG, PLD, and eventually landed on AST for a long time. I found another option that was different but still fun.

Going off topic a bit but Scholar is far from impossible with a controller it doesn't require massive numbers of hotbars or anything drastic.. As an example here's my layout uses just 2 hotbars plus the expanded one.

A few points about it.

A: is hotbars 10 and 9 vertically. they're never actually used i only ever set skills there so i can track cooldowns.

B: the 3 macro's i have here are all targetting macros. one is target circle. one is target attack1. and one is assist <t>. they're not used alot but can be helpful when everything is crammed in a really confined area. or to mark a key player in another alliance in 24 man content is if the main tank is in another party. makes it quicker and easier to target him and toss a heal if his own party is in bad shape.

C: is my pet commands which are changed when i cast the relevent summon spell. you can see my macros for these in the picture. also changes them on hotbar 10 again only for visual indication of cool downs.

set 4 is my expanderd bar which is mostly pet commands plus I have resurrection on there near swift cast and my summons as those are typically the 3 things I use swift cast for. so have the full toolkit on 2 hotbars plus the expanded one.

I'm personally a big fan of emergancy tactics as well. i use it a hell of a lot with adlos instead of lustrates as often as possible and succors instead of indomibility. it frees up so many aether flow charges over the course of time.

it's probably not the best layout in the world but it's one that works very well and very easily on controller. a few friends have copied my layout and have said it works very well.

so yeah if its a class that still interests you. maybe this will be useful.

[Voltyblast]

And I'm one of those people. I loved BRD in 2.0, it was so much fun to play. Then 3.0 happened and SE turned it into a caster. I leveled it up to 60 and then dropped it like it was hot. It wasn't the archer class I loved anymore.

I didn't main bards back in 2.X BUT I used to play one constantly, to the point that it was nearly raid-geared at the end of 2.55. I loved bard so much that I even made an archer/bard alt first THE I made my main character a bard later. It was so much fun to play alongside my warrior (my main job) and I even kept my artemis bow because of its looks.

And yeah, 3.0 came, they turn bard into a caster, I just don't see the reason to be one so I went BLM. Afteral they're both casters and while enochian is a new mechanic, it benefits from the lack of mobility that blm already possess (especially when ley lines is deployed).

IMO, if they want to fix WM and GB, they should make them have unique buffs when they stand still, and not just put casting bars onto them. That, or just remove them: i doubt we will miss them...

[Maero]

Except you do not have to stand still all the time, there is a threshold you can move and the attack will still go off... this is true for other jobs as well.
It is rather funny as i have seen countless Bards while dealing in level 50 content moving around like crazy, but why? There was no aoe that needed to be dodged, it does not bring up your damage either, lol
Bards still have it easier then many jobs, be thankful of it
Change was needed for Bard as 2.x Bard was far too simple

[Tint]

[...] it does not bring up your damage either, lol

with all the missing auto attacks the opposite did happen: bards who were running around like crazy lose damage.

[Kabzy]

I think it's more about the diversity between jobs than it is people failing to adapt. The good players will be fine with WM and GB, but that doesn't validate the ability as being good.

I also don't think it's as easy as turning the ability off for 4.0, I think they would need to pair that with certain mechanics that use the mobility to good use. As has been mentioned, running around like a headless chicken should not be promoted, but having mechanics that require mobility from jobs would make it more worthwhile. I prefer the diversity option, so i see no reason why the ranged support jobs can't be given their mobility back. We already have casters with cast bars in this game.

And to second this other point I read, it would be great to give BRD/MCH some more support abilities rather than making them full on DPS. It's something that could add a whole new dimension to this game, and I'm sure it'll be more fun than being strictly a DPS job.

[ToasterMan]

There's a good reason why MCH, BRD and BLM are in such high demands for raids is because nobody wants to play them because they are too difficult or not very fun. Every time I see a PF looking for static members it's always looking for MCH BRD and BLM. Of course I don't blame them. Would YOU want to use Enochian in Alex savage? I sure wouldn't!

[Khalithar]

No, it does not - it means that unlike the person I quoted suggested, there IS no job currently in the game that better suits the playstyle of the people who preferred the old bard to move on to. We have no ranged jobs, neither DPS nor otherwise, without cast times in the game right now. Zero, nada. It's on the same level as telling poor people to just eat cake if they lack bread, purely condescending.

That's why alt jobs aren't a solution. They're not even a tangent. That's like telling a person who prefers ranged classes to just pick a different class when theirs and every other class in the game gets turned into a melee. There are no options for that playstyle and therefore, such a suggestion is ignorant at best and malicious glee at worst.

People will complain about it until the day it gets removed..

They took a class that specialized in mobility, and forced it to stand still. If people wanted to stand still, they have BLM, and SMN. You cant take a class that people have picked, and have played for fifty levels, and change up the formula on them so drastically. It's not even the fact that people dont want to adapt, its that people picked a class and put large amounts of time into it, and suddenly its something entirely different that they didn't choose, and may not even like.

Quoting these because they're absolutely true. I've leveled every combat class to 60 and I have to say, Brd/Mch were significantly less fun when I got the cast times. I will say however, I think Gauss Barrel works better than Minuet does. I can get past GB on Mch because not ALL of it's attacks have the cast bar and it's not as hampered, Mch "feels" like it was designed from the ground up with GB in mind, Minuet feels really tacked on.