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

[Ryodi]

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.

I planned to read this whole thread before I gave my opinion but this idea is perfect in my eyes. I also have learnt to deal with WM but honestly I still wish it wasn't there. I love the addition of the burst damage from barrage empyreal/sidewinder, and the convenience of iron jaws, and the utility of WP with a WAR in your group. But my main issue, as a lot of people have discussed, is the play style. I keep seeing people referring to the play style of running around like a headless chicken, that's not what I liked about BRD gameplay at all. To me it was the pace of the combat, weaving your oGCD in between skills, spamming those bloodletters just in case it proc'd, being able to quickly respond with blunt arrow rather then deliberately interrupting my cast which doesn't feel very fluid at all. I want to play a fast responsive bard that Orlando Bloom could be proud of, not the archery mini game on the original Wii.

[bardaboo]

Thing is.. bards as is.. don't have the dps.. we don't have mobility and we dont have any more support then other classes.

So what exactly did we gain by sacrificing our mobility?

Maybe if you didn't use that stupid macro you use, you would have batter dps

[Hyperia]

I would strongly want to see the cast bars go away, I loved to play bard during the 2.X series but once WM hit... it felt horrible and I could never really recover. I tried, I really tried but in the end, I just gave up the class, its a shame really, it was the most enjoyable DPS classes I ever played.

/rip Bard

[RyuDragnier]

People still haven't adapted to the cast bar? It's really easy to deal with, and if you move at the right time the skill will finish casting anyway, giving you extra time to move. It's more jarring for me to be able to shoot while running, simply because I've been used to the aiming since 3.0. If you can't handle it, maybe the class isn't the one for you.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

There's a bit of contradiction in saying people aren't used to the cast bar, then admitting you're too used to it.

And the bigger issue is that a PHYSICAL DPS job that had the ability to maneuver freely (at the cost of damage), suddenly became a half-caster, yet still with the expense of the gained ddamage when providing the party support it was always originally penalized for.

So: A support-yet-not-a-support, physical dps with cast times for extra damage, that only loses the extra damage when it comes time to render support. . . What even is a Bard now?

This is how you kill a job, SE.

[Astyrah]

I think people miss the 'smooth' feeling when using skills of 50 bards.
You can't have it all.
You can't have the DPS, 100% mobility, and support buffs so they had to knock something down to get it.
That's what people don't seem to understand. I said this before and people bit my ass about it.

going by with what you said, what i think you don't seem to understand is that while foe's is the most used song in duty finder, our TP and MP songs are equally important during raid progression. but even then, other classes bring support buffs that are equally important so one can argue every other DPS class is as a hybrid support as BRD and MCH are.

ninjas get to goad (almost as good as a TP song) without having their damage reduced by 10%, get to use trick attack to give a -10% to the enemy, and lastly: enmity reducers and redirects

dragoons can improve crit rate which is a party wide DPS and HPS increase

monks can use mantra to aid raidwide healing (very important in early progression for some teams) and dragon kick if there's no DRK

summoners can battle res

black mage can give a magic def cd to a party member

granted BLM isn't mobile, SMN was very mobile.

BRD and MCH have the lowest weapon damage, are penalized for doing most of their party support skills, and have been given cast bars despite being a physical dps

most of us bards here aren't asking to beat MONK or BLACK MAGE in terms of DPS, but rather to give us something that was taken away unreasonably from us, we don't move around like headless chickens you meet in duty finder - we dislike the cast bar because it breaks the traits and certain ogcds of our class. what part of that you can't understand?

So: A support-yet-not-a-support, physical dps with cast times for extra damage, that only loses the extra damage when it comes time to render support. . . What even is a Bard now?

This is how you kill a job, SE.

exactly. what did bard gain when they gave it cast times? what the negative people don't understand is WM and GB only brought BRD/MCH damage back on par with the scale of the damage they did in 2.xx (lv.50 sync content) in relation to the other DPS jobs. so it's more like a catch-up rather than an actual buff.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Then why was it taken away? Why can't we have it back?

The Bard mobility wasn't really taken away as Wanderer's Minuet can be turned on and off. Bard is very much intended to stance dance based on the needed level of mobility in a fight. Wanderer's Minuet was intended to be a buff in damage during fights/phase were mobility was not necessary (most classes had increased dps in stationary fights such as Avatar in T8 the Bard did not) allowing Bards to trade unneeded mobility for increased damage.

The problem with WM is a combination of players defaulting to WM as base state and the OGCD Bloodletter/Rain of Death DoT proc system not working properly with cast times which causes WM damage to be less than intended.

[SaitoHikari]

Speaking as someone that only began playing shortly after HW was released, I never did enjoy 2.x Bard, thus meaning I got used to WM rather quick (and have probably achieved a level of mastery with Bard that I don't think Bards are actually weak at all - though they definitely require high crit in order to make the most of a certain trait which is basically the entire point of the class by now).

That said, I do agree that WM is heavily flawed, especially when compared to the MCH counterpart.

- MCH skills and traits were designed around Gauss Barrel, Bard isn't outside of Straighter Shot (and a 20% proc rate isn't much).

- In accordance with the above point, there is ZERO indication beforehand that Bard is suddenly going to turn into a caster-type class. I had met several new players that picked Bard as their first class that were so completely and utterly surprised that many either dropped the class or quit the game outright. And Bard doesn't get any earlier traits or skills that allow them a 100% chance to strategically circumvent the restrictions like MCH does - which furthers the belief that WM was really a last minute change intended to 'nerf' Bard playstyle out of a fear that nobody would play MCH, which is a crackpot theory tier belief that will continue to exist as long as the devs don't give us any straight answers as to why they thought this was a good idea in the first place.

- And continuing with the above, there are compounding reasons why the Bard class has a reputation as having very low damage and a dis-proportionally higher population that is less effective at playing the class compared to other classes. The total playing style change, the fact that you need to gear for super high crit rate to see more Bloodletter/Rain of Death procs, and then having said Bloodletter/Rain of Death reset procs being lost/clipping into GCDs... It's highly contradictory design.

- WM doesn't even add anything to the Bard playing style. Sure, it gave us Emperyal Arrow and Iron Jaws, but if its only positives are locking two essential skills behind it, then one has to question whether it's actually a good system at all. Minuet usage doesn't even help with the support side of Bards at all. One could argue Gauss Barrel doesn't do anything for MCH support too, but at least their support doesn't share cast timers like Bard songs still do.

Despite what it sounds like, I don't even have that much of a problem with WM at the end of the day. But from a design standpoint, the only reasonable response is to ask why it was created the way it was, and it's very very easy to see why people hate it so much.

The Bard mobility wasn't really taken away as Wanderer's Minuet can be turned on and off. Bard is very much intended to stance dance based on the needed level of mobility in a fight. Wanderer's Minuet was intended to be a buff in damage during fights/phase were mobility was not necessary (most classes had increased dps in stationary fights such as Avatar in T8 the Bard did not) allowing Bards to trade unneeded mobility for increased damage.

The problem with WM is a combination of players defaulting to WM as base state and the OGCD Bloodletter/Rain of Death DoT proc system not working properly with cast times which causes WM damage to be less than intended.

If Bards were actually meant to stance dance, the devs would have drastically reduced WM activation cooldown forever ago. 15 seconds is ridiculous. Can you imagine Cleric Stance with a 15 second cooldown? There's a reason why raid Bards use Feint of all skills if they have to move during a fight. I highly, highly doubt that is intended behavior by the developers, this is players trying to circumvent something that clearly didn't have much thought put into it.

[awbalto]

The Bard mobility wasn't really taken away as Wanderer's Minuet can be turned on and off. Wanderer's Minuet was intended to be a buff in damage during fights/phase were mobility was not necessary (most classes had increased dps in stationary fights such as Avatar in T8 the Bard did not) allowing Bards to trade unneeded mobility for increased damage.

On the T8 part, as a bard my mobility allowed me to handle mechanics like eating a mine, homing missile and tower push without sacrificing my skills. While the dmg buff of WM is nice i don't like it and after 3 patches of trying i just gave up and switched to another class because the cast bar is so finnicky

[Kabzy]

and all that mobility was never needed. ppl ran around cause they could, not cause they had to.

Not 100% true. Back in the coil days, Bards were assigned a few mechanics here and there which required someone to run around. Yes it's true that other jobs could do them too, but if they were to bring more of these mechanics back, it could justify allowing them to have their complete mobility back. Every group has a BRD/MCH in it anyway, so it could definitely work.