SB Bard Changes: Good or Bad? Thoughts?

[gumas]

Brd 4.0 playstyle kinda like drg pre 4.0, use the skill while casting OGCD skill in between.

The priority still the same, straight shot buff and 2 dots, after that you need to remember to cast your OGCD in between skill, this is how i do it for now (still 61)

Straightshot ---- dot1 --*bloodletter*-- dot2 --*empyreal arrow*-- heavy shot --*sidewinder*-- heavy shot --*song1*-- and so on

Basically brd now feels like legolas because you'll be pushing a lot of button non stop once the fight start

[Alysanne]

Also, the fact that ALL OF OUR BUFFS don't work for the bard itself, is just plain stupid.

Yep. No crit, direct hit, no trobadour buffs.

Sidewinder crits for about 6-7k now when I used to get it up to 11-12k

Losing the damage from Paeon and only getting skill speed makes that song garbage.

Ballad is 30 seconds of our old rotation.

Minuet is the only neat one and its a crap shoot, although most times I get 2 3 stack pitch perfects off.

All these new abilities that are boring because you don't even get the benefits yourself, very disappointed to learn that

Raided in coil and alex as a bard but I'm going to put it on the back burner and level something else since I'm not raiding this time around

[KDSilver]

Basically brd now feels like legolas because you'll be pushing a lot of button non stop once the fight start

And that's exactly what I like with the new bard !
It feels like it so dynamic, always watching your song, your buffs, your dots, your oGCD.

I love it !

[Aeliott]

Though with Pitch perfect, the discussion of always waiting for 3 stacks for it or use it as often is up in the air.

I've been firing it at 2 stacks, and considering 3 a bonus (yet to get empyreal trait). If you're on 2 stacks waiting for a third you risk wasting another stack if both dots crit. And 2 two-stack PPs are stronger than 1 three-stack

[Escadora]

This is my favorite iteration of Bard, no questions asked. I love it, once you hit 68 you really start to feel the power behind the use of EA in conjunction with ballad/minuet/paeon. Pitch Perfect FEELS AMAZING. I can't wait until I hit 70 and get refulgent arrow. Barrage + Refulgent arrow will be monstrous damage. We have 30/30 dots with no cast times, so multi-dotting is a dream. Dropping multi dots while in ballad, or even paeon is a beautiful thing in AOE situations. (RoD spam in ballad, QN spam in paeon with reduced cast times - you should not run out of TP due to tactician + invigorate)

Bard feels and plays great. The amount of raid utility we have now is utterly ridiculous! My only thing that I can really nag about is that troubadour, and BV do not work on us if we use the skill . I'm not sure if this was intended, or oversight but I hope they somehow change it so that the bard that casts the spell receives their buff.

All around i'd give bard 9.5/10 right now. Would probably say its perfect if they changed the way some of our songs work on ourselves.

This version of Bard makes me so happy. Mad props to the dev team for their work on Bard. They really killed it with this job.

[Furious]

This is my favorite iteration of Bard, no questions asked. I love it, once you hit 68 you really start to feel the power behind the use of EA in conjunction with ballad/minuet/paeon. Pitch Perfect FEELS AMAZING. I can't wait until I hit 70 and get refulgent arrow. Barrage + Refulgent arrow will be monstrous damage. We have 30/30 dots with no cast times, so multi-dotting is a dream. Dropping multi dots while in ballad, or even paeon is a beautiful thing in AOE situations. (RoD spam in ballad, QN spam in paeon with reduced cast times - you should not run out of TP due to tactician + invigorate)

Bard feels and plays great. The amount of raid utility we have now is utterly ridiculous! My only thing that I can really nag about is that troubadour, and BV do not work on us if we use the skill . I'm not sure if this was intended, or oversight but I hope they somehow change it so that the bard that casts the spell receives their buff.

All around i'd give bard 9.5/10 right now. Would probably say its perfect if they changed the way some of our songs work on ourselves.

This version of Bard makes me so happy. Mad props to the dev team for their work on Bard. They really killed it with this job.

I have to echo these sentiments. I have no idea what the damage is like or whether the utility will warrent a spot, but the gameplay of the new bard is absolutely amazing. It's extremely fast paced, its back to complete mobility (even better than the original since nothing animation locks you except foe requiem), and the rotating songs make you keep adjusting what you're looking for and reacting to.

I didn't think I'd like it before they released it (besides the bardmage destruction bit), but it's really exceeded all expectations for me, and I'm not even at 68 yet.

[Exterium]

I'm back here, I've leveled to 67 now.

The damage is just atrocious, I'm leveling with a WAR and a WHM and they both outdamage me without any problem, the potencies are just WAY too low right now.

Leveling also adds a problem, my crit is getting too low, and most of the times I get very few procs (plenty of times where a pitch perfect never gets 3 charges during the whole 30 seconds), as the damage looks right now we won't be worth a spot EVEN with the huge utility we provide, the damage is just too low and heavy RNG based (mained MCH for all HW and BRD right now is more RNG based than MCH was).

EDIT because this has to be seen as much as possible: Not getting buffed by our own buffs is stupid, I can't even adress the stupidity of this, we are not getting a 15% direct hit from battle voice, a PERMANENT 2% crit from songs (and we are focused solely on crit procs), nor trobadour buffs, which are pretty huge against big boss hits.

[SaitoHikari]

Speaking as a Bard that only began playing after HW release and never got to experience ARR Bard, going into SB was a pretty jarring experience for me. But after practicing a bit in random dungeons, I feel that I have a good grasp on the new Bard even though I'm still missing all skills from 64+.

HW Bard prioritized proper positioning and planning around 90 second burst damage windows and nuking down mob packs with Rain of Death procs.

SB Bard, however, prioritizes quicker reflexes and planning out your moves 60 seconds in advance. It's a different kind of tactical thinking, but it's still Bard at its core. An example of this is a Saint Mocianne's Arboretum run I had yesterday - the tank elected to do the honeycomb skip method, so I decided to go into Army's Paeon mode and throw Windbite on everything possible before dotting the last honeycomb and swapping into Wanderer's Minuet mode. I was immediately rewarded with seven back to back fully charged Pitch Perfects to burn it to the ground.

(On a side note, I also ended up in an Antitower in progress with a lone Red Mage who had the rest of the party ditch him before the dungeon properly began. I proceeded to duo with him all the way to the first boss successfully before a White Mage joined us, and then I successfully tanked everything all the way past the second boss before a tank joined us for the final leg. Warden's Paean is good utility in that dungeon for the first leg on account of blocking the Paralysis and the Concussion, and I am actually really sad that Paean got nerfed, but it's understandable why the devs did it.)

I'd argue we're actually way overtuned at the moment, in every dungeon/24 man alliance I've been in ever since SB release, I was far and away the top DPS (and I've literally had to use Tactician/MP Refresh early in numerous occasions already to avoid taking aggro). SB Bard also gets access to better AoE in earlier levels - and THIS part is something I expect nerfs for, as I ended up in a Tam Tara normal mode for leveling roulette yesterday and found I had access to Invigorate and Tactician too (whereas SB Bard had a higher Quick Nock TP cost and only Invigorate). I was able to spam Quick Nock for one minute straight before running out of TP as a result, which is the kind of sustained mobbing potential most other classes can't even touch until level 40+, if ever. The dungeon ended in 16 minutes, even with the healer being new. A Bard/Machinist duo can easily speedrun all of the earlier dungeons far, FAR faster than any other class, especially considering the two could rotate Tacticians for even better sustain (and also enabling Warriors to use Overpower more).

So far, while it does feel like our AoE burst nuke potential got hugely nerfed, our sustain more than makes up for it, and my single target damage is far more consistent if not even higher than it was in HW. Remember that auto attacks make up a significant chunk of damage in a single target environment, not to mention that Direct Hit by itself feels like it essentially cancels out the loss of damage from old Minuet.

[Escadora]

I'm back here, I've leveled to 67 now.

The damage is just atrocious, I'm leveling with a WAR and a WHM and they both outdamage me without any problem, the potencies are just WAY too low right now.

Leveling also adds a problem, my crit is getting too low, and most of the times I get very few procs (plenty of times where a pitch perfect never gets 3 charges during the whole 30 seconds), as the damage looks right now we won't be worth a spot EVEN with the huge utility we provide, the damage is just too low.

Your damage is atrocious? Min/maxing damage atm is troublesome for various reasons. However, I have a differing opinion about bard damage at the moment..

[Exterium]

Your damage is atrocious? Min/maxing damage atm is troublesome for various reasons. However, I have a differing opinion about bard damage at the moment..

It does feel extremelly weak while leveling.

I'm kinda ok with the brd damage on long encounters (very long in fact), but in short combats/leveling, it feels very very very weak compared to anything else I've been with.

AA hits for 1k, usually less, both dots at the same time hit for around 1400, empyreal arrow hits for a bit more than 2k, I've seen direct hit crit sidewinders not even reaching 5k, the same with our execute, hitting for just a bit more than 2k.

The biggest hit we can land is pitch perfect, and I've seen a lot of encounters where it just won't get 3 charges (though I ussualy use it on 2 so I don't waste a possible 4th charge), that means more than 90 seconds without a big pitch perfect.

Throwing a lot of shit to the enemy doesn't mean good damage, I won't argue that it's fun to play, I enjoy the gameplay, but I do feel at the same time that I'm pretty weak.