UN-RIP Bard

[The_Last_Dragoon]

There are a lot of great abilities they showed off for Bard, and it looks like cast times have gone the way of the dinosaur. It's going to be weird for a bit again since Bards will have to completely relearn how they play (again), but we'll have our instant casts back.

Hopefully I didn't do what I did last time and failed to notice some other major detail like it being an ability that makes everything an instant cast for 30 seconds...

[KaosKeith]

Hopefully they addressed bard's op lack of movement penalty, otherwise we'll have a repeat of 2.x where it was nerfed into oblivion to compensate.

[jameseoakes]

I didn't know the bard was dead O.o

[Atmora]

I dunno', if you took the time to actually master it HW bard is a ton more fun than ARR.

[SaitoHikari]

Yoshi and company outright said bow mage and gun mage were dead entirely, so this isn't some temporary buff thing.

[Sylvain]

Yoshi and company outright said bow mage and gun mage were dead entirely, so this isn't some temporary buff thing.

Really? like they entirely removed the casting time thing?
Well, from what I've seen on all fr, eng and jp forum, most people were either unhappy or didnt care too much. So I guess this is a good thing.

[Risvertasashi]

Really? like they entirely removed the casting time thing?
Well, from what I've seen on all fr, eng and jp forum, most people were either unhappy or didnt care too much. So I guess this is a good thing.

They noted on the stream that a lot of players left bard (and didn't pick up MCH).

There were enough complaints. These forums are just rife with 'git gud' and 'not a problem for me, l2p!' and so on

[Maero]

And it was also addressed many times before as to why Bard had needed changes. They had all the mobility + very good damage.
HW Bard with WM is fine, people just did not like the idea of so called "cast times" and refused to adapt or even give it a chance.
The new changes do seem nice with the songs i will say

[Risvertasashi]

And it was also addressed many times before as to why Bard had needed changes. They had all the mobility + very good damage.
HW Bard with WM is fine, people just did not like the idea of so called "cast times" and refused to adapt or even give it a chance.
The new changes do seem nice with the songs i will say

I'm not going to say mobility + damage wasn't/isn't a balance concern, but consider this: There's already casters in the game. One in particular that rewards you with big numbers and good DPS for going turret mode, and another that has middle ground mobility while still maintaining very high DPS output and excellent AoE characteristics. And it was always more than what a bard of the same skill/gear level could do.

It's more about playstyle. Those that liked casters already had options. Then SE made BRD a low damage version of the above. So why play it? If you like the caster playstyle, go for the much more rewarding jobs. And SE did buff BRD/MCH damage towards the end here, but then that's its own problem: Ok, now why bother with the traditional caster jobs if bow/gun mage outclass everything?

[Khalithar]

I'm not going to say mobility + damage wasn't/isn't a balance concern

It isn't. WoW's hunter has had damage and mobility for roughly a decade now and while it's had its ups and downs as the game evolved, it showed us that you can have both and still be balanced.

Besides, it's not like people will just run around spamming shots and topping meters. You have to manage your dots, your songs, your song bar, and whatever other cooldown it has. Good players will still shine above the rest.