Change to Wanderer's Minuet

[HyoMinPark]

It's not a vaild concern, we don't know how anything is going to work this is a brand new expansion.

Which is part of why my concerns are valid: we don't know all the details, so, based on what little information was provided in the Live Letter (not sure if you noticed, but ranged physical DPS barely got any sort of mention with regards to their cross-role skills), we could very well be taking a huge hit. Not to mention, SE already has a past of screwing over BRDs with regards to our damage output.

At 2.0 launch, BRDs had the highest DPS of all DPS; we were the strongest. And we had free mobility. Come 2.x, the developers thought that was "too OP," so they nerfed BRD. But, they nerfed BRD so hard that we were the weakest in terms of DPS numbers. So, a couple of patches later, they buffed us, to give us an equal amount of DPS with regards to how much mobility the job had, and to try and fix how hard they nerfed us the first time.

I already addressed how BRDs once again got the shaft at 3.0 launch with our personal DPS, and how we had to be buffed to be put on par with MCH and be able to get into statics and achieve "speed-kill meta comp status," so I'm not going to repeat that whole spiel again. My point is: SE already has an apparent habit of giving BRDs the shaft with regards to a lot of things. And with how little they even bothered to address in the Live Letter, I am still concerned that the overhaul they're giving us may just break the job even more. Or make us like AST where we are buffed or get ability redesigns every other patch.

If you weren't dancing in and out of Wanderers to start with you weren't even maximizing your potential dps. You don't even seem to understand that you're not intended too be kiting, the movement aspect of the class is meant to lay down a constant stream of dps while moving out of AoEs.

The only required stance dancing for Minuet is in your opener, and if you have to move for more than a GCD. Since such instances are rare, and most BRDs tend to fill such movements with use of Feint, the need for excessive stance dancing is minuscule. If you know how to stutter-step out of AOEs, you barely have to drop Minuet at all.

And you seem to have missed all the posts people made in the past about how sad BRDs were that they couldn't kite mobs anymore now that they were expected to use Wanderer's Minuet. I know I'm not supposed to be endlessly kiting mobs, but a lot of others don't seem to know that, or for, whatever reason, find some enjoyment zigzagging around while attacking.

Wanderers is an overall loss on BRD dps, you also don't get the 30% increase if you play Mages or Army, you get 20% when playing those songs. Look at MCH and you'll understand why it gets more attention. Under GB It can still keep an auto attack with Rook out, they don't lose any percentages generating players TP back, and they have more skills to benefit being under GB. BRD loses more than it gains under WM, all WM was is a bad attempt at copy and pasting another jobs base gameplay idea onto itself due to laziness on the dev team.

Do your research first, please, because this point is completely wrong. When a MCH promotes their turret, it cancels out that turret's auto-attack. A turret makes up about 15-20% of a MCHs damage. So they actually lose MORE overall damage than a BRD does by singing, since our penalty is only 10%. Not to mention, if we're really in a crunch to help regen MP for starved healers or TP for melee, we can Battle Voice our songs to double their effectiveness, potentially reducing the time we even have to sing them. MCHs have no such ability.

A MCH could potentially lose even more DPS if they have to promote their Bishop turret during a large pull. Because Bishop is their AOE turret.

And I still don't understand this mentality about how Minuet is a flat DPS loss. Not only is it a permanent 30% increase ACROSS OUR ENTIRE SKILL POOL, it also grants us access to Empyreal Arrow, which behind a fully buffed-double DoT Sidewinder is our most potent skill, and Iron Jaws, which is far more conservative on TP than having to reapply Windbite and Venomous Bite. Unless you have to move for more than a GCD in Minuet, you don't lose out on that much damage. And most BRDs that have to move so much either master stutter-stepping, or fill in with Feint. Going off of some of the top BRD parses on FFLogs, that seems to work out well for them, since most only stance-dance during their opener.

Auto-attacks are about 15-20% of our pre-HW damage. Losing them and gaining a 30% buff is not a loss.

You're crying about losing WM, but MCH also lost cast bars, they're redesigning everything and once again WE DON'T KNOW ALL THE DETAILS.

Again, see my point about how little mention BRD/MCH got in the Live Letter. Especially compared to every other job. And just based on the cross-role icons we've seen, barring any last-minute changes, BRD lost Blood for Blood and Internal Release, and we seem to gain Foot Graze, Leg Graze, and Head Shot. Did we need a stun? Yes. But we already had a bind skill and a silence. Personally, losing two of my damage buffs for two skills I already had (basically), isn't an even trade off unless they give me some sort of buffs to replace those. Let me repeat, BARRING ANY LAST MINUTE CHANGES, this does not seem like a good trade-off TO ME.

I know people who share my concerns. I have a friend who is concerned about SMN, since the Live Letter didn't address if Ruin II was going to be kept as-is, or be made part of the Ruin I - Ruin II - Ruin III skill graduation system. They are also sad that they will lose Raging Strikes, and wonder if SE is going to provide them with a buff alternative to make up for it. So little was mentioned that they're left in the dark about their main job, like I am. Plus, like BRD, SMN also has a history of getting the shaft: when Coil was the current end-game raid, statics favored BLMs over SMNs because of how OP BLM was. Even if SMN had some good support skills like E4E and a battle Raise, they didn't have the numbers BLMs had, and statics much preferred that as opposed to any support SMN had.

Reading Mr. Happy's Google Doc summarizing changes also made note of how it appeared that Low Blow became just a stun-only skill, and did not appear to have a damage potency attached to it anymore. Again, another "is this really a good change" concern here, because DRKs benefit a lot from Low Blow procs while MT. I'm not going to address every change that I question, but here's another example from a job unrelated to BRD.

I wasn't aware that just because I don't share the majority opinion that Minuet was the worst thing in the world and that it's removal is like Christmas coming early automatically invalidated my concerns and my opinions. :/ Or that I'm not allowed to be concerned--or to be "cautiously optimistic" if we want to use a euphemism here--about what these changes could mean. :/ People are allowed to have a different opinion from me, but I don't agree with how "different opinions" equate to said different opinions being "invalid" or "wrong."

[Shougun]

(a playstyle that I, and all who've continued to play Bards heavily through HW, am I apparently the minority in liking?)

I liked it but I have to admit it's not my main. I really liked the idea of long drawn super attacks because I loved Ranger from FFXI.. and I feel that Bard has cannibalized any chance of having Ranger in FFXIV, and the pew pew mobility is not the image of that lol. I always think of Ranger like Dark Souls giant's bow massive freaking draw weight and just eviscerating attacks XD. Thought having a range booster on bard would be fun (sniper feeling), in WoW it's kind of funny to be able to hit people at a shocking distance away .

Definitely seems like this change pleased the crowd though, but I wonder if they're going to go from very competitive great damage back down to okay damage and more support focus. Will be interesting to see how everyone adjusts, and what SE has done.

This change and the new UI could always make sniper super long range job, Ranger like, option in the future though, but I think people would prefer something more unique in place like Dancer, Blue, Puppet, Beast, etc. Oh well, I respect that it seems a lot of people who mained it (not me) are happy for the change. Just wanted to say that I thought WM was pretty cool, liked the idea of a slower methodical firing rather than Machine gun arrows :3.

Extremely interested in how those two new UIs work though (MCH too), they seem rather important to mastering the job - not like "this is an Aethertrail UI" but this actually seems that it has some underlying change to the job. Some good guesses I've read but we'll not know for sure until later I guess.

[SaitoHikari]

Actually, if there's one thing I'm starting to notice going through the live letter, it's that it looks like the developers want to kill the concept of double weaving entirely, by massively reducing the amount of oGCDs that have potency attached to them and getting rid of personal damage buffs that have nothing to do with resource building. This would make it so that people with low ping no longer have such a major advantage over higher ping players of equal skill level. This also has the added effect of people no longer blowing their crowd control abilities to push out extra damage, if said crowd control abilities no longer have potency attached to them.

Consider this picture from the live letter when Yoshi briefly swapped to Bard to show everyone the ranged role skills.



Note how many off-GCDs are missing. One of the reasons why Bard is so hard to optimize is due to the sheer number of personal oGCDs we have to juggle, and from the looks of that picture above, a good 3/4ths of them are gone. The only ones that remain either assist with party utility or are key attacks.

(The damage buffs such as Hawk's Eye and Internal Release aren't the only ones that are missing though, there's stuff like Flaming Arrow too, which I'd be legitimately sad to see gone, so I'm hoping that Yoshi either just forgot to put it on there or Bard has a number of other replacement skills that weren't ready to be shown in any capacity. Indeed, if they're pruning THAT many skills from Bard, that would leave the early leveling phase pretty barren, because everything that's missing are entirely from the first 50 levels.)

Indeed, think back to the new job UI with all the resource/meter building, compared to the combat environment of today. Today's raiding scene places massive emphasis on the concept of openers, where everyone has all of their best tools ready to use at the very beginning of a fight. Said openers were also fairly reliant on player ping and the limited class synergy currently available, which is a part of why the BRD/MCH/NIN/DRG setup became so popular this late into Heavensward. With what appears to be the overall removal of straight personal damage buffs AND most of our strongest abilities now appear to be locked behind resource building now, the focus on 'openers' will essentially shift to building towards our strongest attacks as quickly and as often as possible, so combat is now less about perfecting burst damage windows and more about consistent gameplay throughout.

[Naunet]

Actually, if there's one thing I'm starting to notice going through the live letter, it's that it looks like the developers want to kill the concept of double weaving entirely, by massively reducing the amount of oGCDs that have potency attached to them.

Great. Then damage combat gets even slower than it already is.

The crazy conspiracy theorist in me is hypothesizing that they're doing this to make up for how they made lots of people's ping worse by moving the NA datacenter. :P

[Khalithar]

(The damage buffs such as Raging Strikes and Hawk's Eye aren't the only ones that are missing though, there's stuff like Flaming Arrow too, which I'd be legitimately sad to see gone, so I'm hoping that Yoshi either just forgot to put it on there or Bard has a number of other replacement skills that weren't ready to be shown in any capacity. Indeed, if they're pruning THAT many skills from Bard, that would leave the early leveling phase pretty barren, because everything that's missing are entirely from the first 50 levels.)

Raging strikes is there.

[SaitoHikari]

Raging strikes is there.

It's there, but I'd be willing to bet that the effect may have been overhauled, or the devs may have deemed it acceptable to remain as is because it's only one damage buff, as opposed to the four that Bard has access to now (I count Internal Release because it leads to higher rate of Bloodletter procs).

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

much like having viable and considerable burst damage.

Rejoice bard mains, your damage is returning to the single digits!

[Mycow8me]

I feel like arguing about this right now is pointless cause we just don't know how much this is going to change bard other than "yay were not a ranged caster anymore". You're either happy with that change or you aren't. DPS changes are all just assumptions right now.

[EdwinLi]

Actually, if there's one thing I'm starting to notice going through the live letter, it's that it looks like the developers want to kill the concept of double weaving entirely, by massively reducing the amount of oGCDs that have potency attached to them and getting rid of personal damage buffs that have nothing to do with resource building.

Mass Weaving is actually how Machinist is designed to be so i am guessing they are focusing on Weaving gameplay more for Machinist and letting the other Jobs get a less weaving demanding gameplay style.

Doubt that will change much because certain players hate Machinist because it focus a lot on Weaving skills between down time of normal skills.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

As someone who always needed to pay double my subscription (another $10/month atop Legacy rates) to double-weave, I have mixed feelings about losing double-weaves. Were the net code good enough and server locations well placed enough to allow most players to double-weave without clipping, I would prefer to keep that one thing that XIV has unique (even if not especially noteworthy) -- doubleweaves. That said, I'm not sure I would choose to keep those over a shortened GCD (e.g. to 2 seconds). Were not all my battle classes capped, I most certainly would prefer a shortened GCD over double-weaves. And as it stands, it seems like there are more who cannot losslessly double-weave than those who can.

I'm definitely going to miss ranged macro-rotation and CD syncing. I'd much rather had kept those than gotten more damaging oGCDs that we simply toss out on cooldown with no further consideration of timing or multiplicity.

I can somewhat see why Flaming Arrow in particular, though, would have ended up on the chopping block. SE may likely consider ground-AoEs tend to be a more susceptible to failure, and therefore a disproportionately significant contributor to skill gap.
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The sad thing is that the PvP concept of TP, much more similar to the smaller-windowed stamina or energy resources of many a Korean MMORPG (e.g. B&S) or simply swapping out of tiered/weavable skills (GCDs and non-GCDs) would have already limited 'wanton-utility-burning-for-dps' just fine. If you don't want people blowing their crowd control for minor damage increases, simply append an opportunity cost. By categorizing abilities specifically as GCD or oGCDs, they'd basically gone out of their way to keep them from having opportunity costs already. And now that they're experimenting with resource costs that might actually be noticed in under 2 minutes of steady uptime, yet more potential means of limiting contribution without necessarily having to remove these skills completely from rotation should now be visible.

Personally, I'd rather be weighing damage against utility (I generally like weighing things and making decisions, apparently), but that means that there at least needs to be more to do with said skills as to give weight to the utility side. Instead, our CC has turned into the likeness of incredibly situational HW PvP abilities. That's precisely the opposite direction from what I was hoping for, and puts even less pressure on SE to actually design interesting mobs, frequent CC-involved mechanics, etc. I'm not saying I want to be rotationally silencing shit every fight—far from it—but there should at least be something that could well be worth holding onto my silence for, if I don't need to spend everything I can to kill another mob asap.