Bard. What if Straight Shot "proc" was not rng?

[Snowaeth]

Increased frequency and reliability of the one skill that removed cast bars in Heavensward, gives you a fear of cast bars... in a post-castbar Bard?


On topic:

I'm fine with Straighter Shot being RNG, although I'd prefer that it be a normalized sort of RNG (see WoW for examples, wherein the actual chance starts much higher, fades on successes, and increases over failures to proc).
Now that Straighter Shot is no longer vital to movement and double-weaving, I don't mind its frequency as is. Any increase would adjust earlier levels' DPS and simply cost Refulgent Arrow potency, at best slightly improves its syncing with Barrage. This would be a slight improvement, but only slight.

What I'm not okay with is the button bloat involved in Refulgent Arrow and Pitch Perfect. I'd prefer that Pitch Perfect gain an AoE variant, e.g. Dissonance, and that each replace Bloodletter and Rain of Death, generating one stack per 15 seconds in addition to those generated by Repertoire. Refulgent Arrow should either lose potency to attach the usual crit buff, or now replace Heavy Shot on Heavier Shot procs, while Straighter Shot is effectively removed after acquisition of Refulgent Arrow.

The relatively low value of Army's Paeon also leaves much to be desired. I'd prefer that each Repertoire gained in Army's Paeon reduce the cooldown of Barrage (and perhaps Sidewinder) slightly, including after reaching 4/4 Repertoire, and that the clause on Barrage preventing additional effects from occurring more than once be removed, allowing Barrage to instantly grant three stacks of Attack Speed or Pitch Perfect.

I like some of your suggestions a lot.
Especially the ones that are just QoL changes.

Having Refulgent Arrow replace Heavy Shot on proc, would be a clean QoL change without adding any power.

As I suggested myself as well, Refulgent Arrow should indeed replace Straighter Shot proc at level 70.
RA > SS even if you need to refresh SS at that point, so having it conflict with SS is just an annoyance and serves no good purpose.
Once again this would not add any power, just a QoL change.

The Pitch Perfect idea where BL/RoD are replaced with Wanderers Minuet counterparts during that song while keeping the 15sec = stack mechanic sounds pretty sweet.
This would add some power though and isn't just QoL. Also the way WM works right now doesn't have serious issues with it, but nevertheless a great idea which would improve game-play and one I'd gladly welcome.

Army's Paeon would indeed feel a lot more useful if it actually had an effect for its stacks beyond the initial 4.
Right now it serves well as a filler song that you cut short, but it doesn't give you the feel of doing something unlike the other two songs.

Barrage being able to apply more than one effect, for the sake of game-play would be amazing.
But it would add a lot of power and is the least likely of being implemented imo, since that amount of power would have to be taken out somewhere else.

Coming back to Refulgent Arrow.
I've seen a couple of suggestions other than my own now how to change it up.
For me the amount of RNG and the influence this has on our dps is too high.
So I would applaud anything that would be implemented and which would normalize the RNG on it.