Change to Wanderer's Minuet

[JunseiKei]

You misunderstand what I said.....

Bishop and Rook Turret are still in the game and still require to be deployed. They are not shown in the trailer because they are still kept the same and do not need to be demo in the trailer since they have not been changed in anyway.

Only thing shown in the Demo Trailer are New Skills, Revamped skills and how the new skills and revamp skills work. Any skills that have not been revamped, linked to the new skills or revamped skills, nor are new will not be shown in the demo trailer.

I am curious you know the turrets are simply not summoned. Afterall, it was basically an overhaul of the classes and battle system as a whole.

[savageink]

a Bard playing songs is annoying?

Well, now that you ask. I always preferred Archer over Bard, but you can't play just archer, your stats suffer.... but in the context of what I was saying, having to play multiple songs you don't need to play just so you can get back to doing damage as you suggested, would be very annoying. Bards who play songs just to play songs are wasting 15% of their DPS as it currently stands. And I have no idea how what Ediwn said would work. If you just keep hitting play on WM with no repercussions why make people hit it again and again? An on/off switch would make more sense.

[Shurrikhan]

My hope is that it's not so much stance swapping, but more allowance to actually use the songs. Like instead of having a penalty for having Paeon or Ballad up, the BRD actually gets a buff for having any song up. Kind of like how removing the stance dance on healers might coax them to dps more. BRD might be enticed to use their songs more. I just hope it's not overly complicated and convoluted. Stance swapping won't really make sense if the songs have the same functions. That is to say, that if you don't need Ballad up at a particular time, why cast it just to get off another ability?

They seem to be oGCD (with cast times, like EA, or truly instant) now, so that in itself should help a lot. I hated losing a GCD just to cast a second Foe Requiem in time for (and with only enough mana to barely last for the length of) my BLM's Raging Strikes, etc.. As an oGCD, where we're merely swapping between some manner of melee support, caster support and personal buffing, this should feel a lot smoother. It's one of the few things I'm looking forward to with the SB DPS changes.

Well, now that you ask. I always preferred Archer over Bard, but you can't play just archer, your stats suffer.... but in the context of what I was saying, having to play multiple songs you don't need to play just so you can get back to doing damage as you suggested, would be very annoying. Bards who play songs just to play songs are wasting 15% of their DPS as it currently stands. And I have no idea how what Ediwn said would work. If you just keep hitting play on WM with no repercussions why make people hit it again and again? An on/off switch would make more sense.

10%. The nerf got nerfed in addition to the cast time dropping to a single second.

It looks like the songs are started oGCD, likely with no mana drain, and progressed by specific skills. The 'extra hit' (flute-playing) is likely some sort of song-buff or song-modified skill, that just happens also to progress the song's gauge.

[SendohJin]

having to play multiple songs you don't need to play just so you can get back to doing damage as you suggested, would be very annoying.

that's just a different flavor of Grease Lightning, Huton, Enochian, Blood of the Dragon, Dreadwyrm Trance no?

[savageink]

that's just a different flavor of Grease Lightning, Huton, Enochian, Blood of the Dragon, Dreadwyrm Trance no?

no. that would be an even bigger rewrite of Bard mechanics and they would probably have to call it something different. Actually, if they made a fusion archer, machinist dps that might be kind of cool. You could call it something like sniper. I'd totally play that. Might need a cooler name, though.

[EdwinLi]

I am curious you know the turrets are simply not summoned. Afterall, it was basically an overhaul of the classes and battle system as a whole.

You're assuming the Demo Trailer showed all the skills the Job can perform but that is not the case. The Jobs are revamped but not all skills are shown in the Demo trailer nor was all of the skills revamped. As said months ago by Yoshi-P only some skills were revamped due to being useless most of the time or just unnecessary but most remain the same.

For example, Paladin did not show Flash but Yoshi-P did say Flash is still in the game and remains unchanged from the original design. Warrior still has Steel Cyclone but was not shown in the Demo trailer as well.

The Demo Trailer does it job showing new Skills and the revamp to the Job mechanics but is just samples of what the Job can do once the Full game is released. It is not the entirety of the Job itself.

[ShaneDawn]

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.

This is actually somewhat concerning, although not just for Bard. A major factor separating great players from the good ones was often knowing how to line up your buffs and using them to their best effect. You would often want to delay certain cooldowns to get a stronger alignment with others, most likely discuss the cooldown usage with your party members to benefit more from your shared multiplicative damage modifiers. This is especially true for buff-heavy, dot-snipping class like Bard, whose damage is very relative to how well you know your buffs and get the best out of them. A thing that a lot of people seem to disregard is snipping your dots outside openers to get extended effects of things like Raging Strikes and Internal Release. As you also mentioned, the usage and general party timing for openers and mini-openers that usually happened several times throughout a raid were a key to maximizing the DPS.

Just like CPM, the general know-how is what takes players a long way in increasing their DPS. As it is, you can achieve decent DPS just by knowing your priorities. To achieve good DPS, you also need to know your opener and use your damage modifiers. To achieve great DPS, you also need to be able to use your cooldowns in an efficient manner. If you want to go even beyond that, you need to start effectively syncing the party cooldown usage so that you gain the maximum effect out of the shared modifiers. It is a somewhat more technical system than meets the eye, but adds a big layer of complexity for those wishing to go above and beyond.

It's probably too early to jump to conclusions, but the possible pruning of damage modifiers from classes could serve as a bigger dumb-down to the game (and especially Bard as a class) than removing the cast times ever did. Unless the consistent performance as you mention it will become more difficult to achieve than it currently is. However, since the removal of cast times will be dumbing that part down as well, the ease or difficulty of our consistent rotation is going to be largely dependent on how the song system is going to work out and how the combat changes will reflect in general battle design .

[Pomelo]

Rip Minuet, I actually really liked you, I liked ARR Bard too...and I'm hoping I'll like SB Bard as well.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

...

Wonder what's being done with machinist? From the trailer, it looks like the turret is gone; it's certainly not visible. Summoner and scholar kept their companions visible, so I can only assume you no longer have a set-and-forget auto-attack lump of bolts.

You didn't get to hear the disclaimer if you only watched the video and not the live letter.


Before they showed the video on the live letter they made a disclaimer that what was shown in the video isn't all the skills, and just because something isn't in the video doesn't mean it's been deleted.

[Mimiru_S]

I don't know how to feel about the gameplay, until I try it myself. I don't mind WM, honestly. Being rooted in place was never a real issue, as I only ever moved in 2.0 when I needed to. Though the fact that Yoshi-P felt the need to mention that so many people stopped playing BRD, because of WM, makes it seem like they're only changing it because of how many people couldn't figure out how easy it was or just didn't feel like trying to learn the new play style.