SB Bard Changes: Good or Bad? Thoughts?

[Furious]

Straight shot, storm bite, bloodletter, caustic bite, mage's balad, heavy shot, barrage + empyreal, heavy shot, sidewinder, if you have any suggestions, go ahead.

Seems fine, but saying it and executing it are different things.

2. It revolves around ogcd resets every 90 seconds during 30 seconds, during another 30 you are just hitting faster (with luck), and during another 30 you may get a hit.

All 3 songs are effectively ogcd resets in their own ways. Mage's ballad is a direct ogcd reset. Paean is the least impactful in terms of gameplay but still makes your stuff reset faster (all of it, not just ogcd), and Wanderer's minuet is an ogcd reset disguised as something else (think of pitch perfect as the ogcd, and it requires 2-3 "procs" to reset). However, when talking about solo, not being affected by a buff doesn't mean you do less damage than if you could use it; it means you do damage more consistently (your base damage is higher than it would be if you had access to the buff).

3. I don't, I've been playing ranged since HW came out, both BRD and MCH, edit: also, the buffs part is fun, we don't even buff ourselves with anything, thus making the solo experience even worse.

I don't have a problem with the dps portions of our buffs not buffing us directly; any time you don't benefit from a buff, it means you need to have higher baseline damage to offset the difference in terms of balance. "Not benefiting from a buff" is often a good thing even though most people think otherwise. Any time you can't gain damage from x, for balance to occur, the designers must somehow integrate x damage into your spec in other ways (often baseline damage).

So, the "problem" of buffs not affecting us is not intrinsically a problem unless we have bad damage as a result. Where this is most problematic is if those buffs are multiplicative with other buffs; the 2% base crit is only marginally so since it is additive with our base crit anyway, but the direct hit buff is multiplicative and thus could become a problem later for bard damage.

I definitely DO have a problem with the defensive buffs not affecting us, because raidwide cooldowns need to affect the whole raid. Troubadour has problems walking out the door because if it is to be used to combat a risk to the entire group, the bard remains at risk when it's used and demands another cooldown or healer attention. It's a weird design choice in terms of defenses, in offences it's not intrinsically a problem.