Bard Songs

[wereotter]

You are correct. That brings up another issue, though. Even an exponential increase has that point where it is seemingly 100%. Does that predict a nerf to our job? D: Does increasing crit increase damage when critting or does it just affect the chance for your abilities to crit?

It increases both. Higher critical hit increases your chances to perform a critical hit, and higher critical hit increases how much extra damage a critical hit does. I don't play bard personally, just understand some of the base mechanics of how the songs function with regard to your other skills, and I personally think that either Bard needs a slight decrease on their proc rates, or Monk needs a slight increase, or both, which is the comparison I was making as someone who plays monk, related to your initial post. Monks only have a 50% proc rate on critical hits while Bards have a 100% proc rate on their applicable skills, so that discrepancy needs to be addressed.

But as to your point, as the expansion rolls on and Bard crit continues to increase, you'll see a lot more procs from repertoire which alone may make the job seem too powerful both when compared to its counterpart, Machinist, but also for the amount of other utility the job provides and its general mobility, at which point there may be a change to the trait. We will have to see how that turns out.

[Idolon]

I don't see much of a point in the song buff affecting the bard themselves when bard already has a self crit buff in straight shot. If that changes were made, then you'd have to make sure both straight shot and a song are up before you put up your DoTs for max damage, which adds complexity for no good reason. If SE were to make that change, they'd probably nerf straight shot's buff by 2% to compensate anyways.

[Grimoire-M]

The crit buffs from any source do not apply directly to the stat, they only buff crit rate. It's similar to the Haste buff from Fey Wind/PoM/GL/Leylines in that regard. You can see this pretty clearly in ACT if you use that, but even without that you can test it by simply opening your character menu with and without the buff on and compare your stats.

That said, I'd much rather see BRD get some evening out, given their current scaling they are incredibly reliant on their peaks to be effective, and RNG can still screw you.

Up the potency of Heavy Shot (Not their DoTs, they don't need it) and nerf the potency on Bloodletter/Pitch Perfect accordingly to balance it out.

[Azerhan]

Well, even at 3000 crit, the 2% increase would make it 3060 crit

You forgot ALL the other buff for Crit. Idk how the game is calculating buff, but if you consider others players's buff, you're more than only +60.

@ThirdChild_ZKI: I agree. I was hoping to main MCH this tier again, but I've gave up. Like DRK, SE seems to doesn't care about this job, that still clipping a lot, with FT that sometime is buggy... Well, I'll try BRD, and if not, I'll just go SAM.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

I'm sticking with MCH (cause I stuck with it through worse, you know?), but this tier really does highlight the disparities between the "Aiming" jobs. There are no "bad" pieces for BRD this time around. MCH unfortunately is left to scrape and choose over-selectively what to get when, where, and how, or we're taking a step backward.

And while I'd love Sniping gear, it would be easier to just make Skill Speed more useful to MCH, though I can't think of how exactly.

[AxelDH]

I'm not exactly a MCH expert but, the gear choices don't look that bad to me... you can do an ilvl 370 build with just 1 skill speed piece (http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/157IZ), or you could opt to take the Crafted belt instead of Diamond, for a 0 SS build. (Correction - I've since noticed that I picked the same ring twice on that build. Whoops! So you'd actually need to take 2 skill speed items in a full ilvl 370 set)

And Machinists get some good choices for early progression weapons too; the Byakko & Crafted guns are both good options, while the Bard equivalents suck! XD

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Yeah, I was looking at that earlier. But until the top can be gotten, crafted seems to be the best option (and until some friends recently went hardcore crafter, it wasn't that much of an option for me personally). The Byakko and crafted options for weapons are pretty good too, can't deny that.

Still, while I understand SE likes to mix up stats for the sake of variation, at some point they've got to understand some jobs just don't need a particular stat, or one is valued far greater than another, with respect to jobs that share gear.

[Repulse97]

Yeah, I was looking at that earlier. But until the top can be gotten, crafted seems to be the best option (and until some friends recently went hardcore crafter, it wasn't that much of an option for me personally). The Byakko and crafted options for weapons are pretty good too, can't deny that.

Still, while I understand SE likes to mix up stats for the sake of variation, at some point they've got to understand some jobs just don't need a particular stat, or one is valued far greater than another, with respect to jobs that share gear.

How's MCH holding up?

[Azerhan]

I'm sticking with MCH (cause I stuck with it through worse, you know?), but this tier really does highlight the disparities between the "Aiming" jobs. There are no "bad" pieces for BRD this time around. MCH unfortunately is left to scrape and choose over-selectively what to get when, where, and how, or we're taking a step backward.

And while I'd love Sniping gear, it would be easier to just make Skill Speed more useful to MCH, though I can't think of how exactly.

MCH is still my favorite job between all others, I love the lore, the style, guns and stuff, but I don't like clipping all my gcd and make less dmgs than others. Btw, I don't find it fun to play when your die and you're suppose to recover a good dps with all your timer without breaking the "1 min rotation".
So I'm playing BRD, is quite fun in fact. And when I'll have all the good stuff for MCH, I'll play MCH again!

Btw, I don't understand about the Byakko's weapon. Is not a lot of good for MCH, I don't see Crit, and for me it's a problem, since you stack a lot of crit in your stuff for both ranged.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

How's MCH holding up?

1% less Hypercharge feels no different at all, and someone pointed out it was a temporary fix for the turret's consistent firing rate bug, which is why it was removed now that the bug is fixed. The job doesn't feel any better or worse currently, but all the Skill Speed on the Aiming gear this time around (or rather, the very sparse offerings of Crit without Skill Speed) are a bit of an annoyance.

It wouldn't even take any serious measure of numbers/statistics to see that Crit/Det is generally favored by MCH players, and Skill Speed is especially avoided, but SE likes to keep gear stats varied for the sake of variation, and seemingly sacrificing practicality in the process.

And @Azerhan I have both the crafted and Byakko wep. I opted to use the Byakko wep mainly because primary stats still outweigh secondary.