A QoL/Balance Shortlist for DPS (Tanks/Healers only as additional context)

[HyoMinPark]

Bard
Abilities now affected by Speed: Bloodletter, Rain of Death, Empyreal Arrow, Sidewinder, Perfect Pitch, Dissonance (see below).

Could I have some elaboration on this? Are you referring to Skill Speed affecting the damage of these abilities? Or are you referring to Skill Speed affecting the cooldown durations of these abilities? Or the proc rate like Critical Hit does now for PP, Bloodletter, and RoD? Or something else entirely?

[*]Refulgent Arrow now shares a slot with Straight Shot, replacing it upon activation.

A welcome change nonetheless.

[*]Perfect Pitch now shares a slot with Bloodletter, replacing it upon entering The Wanderer's Minuet.

I’d rather find another button to share a slot with PP, because you can still use Bloodletter during Minuet (you can get at least 2 off during it, maybe 3 if you time it perfectly—you want Bloodletter on cooldown regardless before you enter Mage’s Ballad so as to not waste a proc, assuming you would still want BRD to proc based on a substat, be it Crit or SkSpeed/“Speed” or even a flat percentage rate). I’d rather see the Minuet button change into PP, since the ability is only available during Minuet. Instead of taking away another oGCD during that window.

[*]New ability: Dissonance. Shares a slot with Rain of Death, replacing it upon entering The Wanderer's Minuet. Deals AoE damage of 80/190/330 potency.

This would obviously need to also change to be in line with my above preference. Assuming an ability like this was added. Maybe it could replace Misery’s End? Since that ability is only active at the last 20% of a boss’/mob’s HP?

By not having it replace Rain of Death, it could help give Minuet a bit more AOE boost to make it decent in AOE situations. I know the purpose of this ability is to fix that, but I don’t see the need to remove RoD’s usage entirely. Plus, it goes back to what I said above with Bloodletter—you want to make sure its on cooldown before entering Mage’s Ballad anyways to not waste a proc.

[*]Refresh and Tactician now also reduce your enmity by 5% of their current value once per tick.

I’d personally rather see Refresh and Tactician lose their enmity dump, and see BRD (and MCH) receive Diversion instead. Especially since every other DPS job has access to it (and it was originally Quelling Strikes—a BRD skill!). Tying aggro management to a support skill is not something that I’ve ever liked, as I have ended up using Tactician to reduce aggro, and then not had it available when it was actually needed for TP regen.

Plus, the aggro reduction has proven to not make much of a difference in my experience, since a lot of my aggro problems come after a really good opener, and even after hitting Tactician at various intervals (from 25 seconds to 30 seconds to even 60 seconds), I’ve still climbed right back to the #2 spot on aggro within my next song rotation. This week in O9S, I actually had to use it in the middle of my opener because I got super lucky with PPs and a Barrage+RA, and spent the next 2 1/2 minutes sitting at the #2 spot. Kind of scary. If the cooldown was shorter, it probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I still disagree with the overall notion of tying aggro management to abilities that should be used as party resource support.

[*]Repelling Shot has been made more responsive and its range has been increased to 12 yalms.

A better change would be for Repelling Shot to halve enmity like Elusive Jump does, on the same cooldown duration as Elusive (30s) if the developers insist on not giving BRD/MCH Diversion (like every other DPS job). And I would love a fix the animation so that it will not clip your next GCD, but I guess that’s not entirely necessary, since Elusive can also clip/make you lose uptime. Otherwise, delete it. The ability as it is now is completely useless, and most BRD mains I’ve spoken to don’t even have it on their hotbar.

[*]New weaponskill, Wide Volley, added at level 50. Shares a slot with Quick Nock, replacing it when over 12 yalms from the target. 30 yalm range. Deals 110 potency to all enemies within 8 yalms of the target. Costs 140 TP (20 more than Quick Nock).[/LIST]

I wouldn’t mind seeing instead a Trait Upgrade to Quick Nock at level 50 that upgrades it into Wide Volley. With a higher TP cost, it could come with a slightly higher potency as well. They could also consider making it an AOE combo, with Wide Volley comboing off of Quick Nock, but that’s not really necessary.


I’d like to see something happen with the Warden’s Paeon. It used to be a really good skill back in HW (with Berserk’s Pacification), but now it’s use is limited only to dungeons, or the rare 24-man or 8-man where debuffs are actually cleansable. I’ve wondered if making it a magical damage version of Palisade and making it a role skill would be better. Feels bad when I see Mustard Bomb coming in O11S and can’t help mitigate it (outside of Troubadour Minuet activation when it’s needed for other mechanics). It would also give BRD/MCH a more useful Role Skill, since almost half of ours are so situational they’ve proven to be useless at a higher level (i.e., the “___ Graze” skills—only Head Graze has been used in higher-end content, and for only 1 mechanic during Deltascape and Sigmascape).

The Warden’s Paeon — Physical Ranged DPS role skill
Reduces magical damage taken by a party member by 20%.
Duration: 10s
Recast: 150s


Something other than a Haste mechanic in Army’s Paeon would be nice as well. I dislike at high skill speeds clipping at 4-stack AP, and the Haste itself is only effective if 1.) you earn all of your stacks very early on during AP (within the first 2 DoT ticks), and 2.) if you allow AP to run its full duration (30s), which BRDs currently do not do in a normal single-target scenario. And the gain is only 1~2 extra GCDs, if I’m remembering the theorycrafting discussion correctly.

I’ve always liked the idea of seeing AP activate Flaming Arrow on a target when its used, and Flaming Arrow being the mechanic of the song (especially since it’s used as one of the two main AOE songs currently in AOE situations). Flaming Arrow would end when AP is either clipped or the song itself ends. Potency of Flaming Arrow could be adjusted so that it’s not “too OP”, but it would give the song more potential than it currently has.

[ShinShimon]

I want Monk QoL to line up with other melee classes. Change buff/debuff/DoT lengths so that the ideal combo is a simple 111>222 (or 111>111>222) instead of an awkward staggered 111>222>112>221>112>222. Let us max Greased Lightning instantly, without relying on a 1-minute cooldown and 3 GCDs; make it last up to 30 seconds; in general, make it as easy to maintain as Blood of the Dragon. Remove the randomness on filling chakras. Remove the fists system, give us 5% more base damage, bake in Wind Tackle/Riddle of Wind, make Riddle of Fire not slow you down.

[Shurrikhan]

I admit I don't fully understand the premise but I'll try to paraphrase as best I can and give my thoughts and you can tell me if I am way off base.

Everyone is doing their opening burst and generating 90% of that enmity themselves but then the remaining 10% that would be generated (numbers here purely for example) could be taken by the tanks with some sort of ability and thus a MT would have his own enmity generation and then have 10% of everyone else's as well? Sort of like everyone casting a weak Shadewalker all the time?

I feel like while this might eliminate Diversion as a skill it just puts all the responsibility for enmity management on the tanks which frankly seems like it's letting the rest of the party off easy. Plus I would assume this skill would be a dps loss in some capacity as most enmity generators are which then leaves us with the additional issue of tanks not wanting to take any more enmity than they need to. As a dps that sometimes creeps up aggro tables at the wrong time (and a part time WHM who does so seemingly all the time) I would say this is asking for trouble, specifically with situations where you have less skilled tanks who don't know how to hold threat.

Right now if I actually use Lucid on CD I won't pull off of a tank in single target and I do respectable damage as a RDM, assuming I was able to Diversion for my opener. Leaving that management up to tanks would likely see me tanking a lot more dungeon and normal raid bosses than I would like to.

I don't know. Perhaps I've misunderstood your intent but to me this sounds like something that would make tanks lives harder which isn't what we need, or it would be overturned and trivialize enmity management even more than it already is. I agree enmity as a whole could use a fresh coat of paint but I just don't know if this is that paint, I'd like to continue to see the responsibility shared over the entire party as to mimic the rest of the potential responsibilities like mitigation and dealing damage.

Sorry, I only had about 10 minutes to make all my comments before work and rushed my description there. My idea is still entirely spitball--I only just made it up then and there--but I think that effect (like a passive mass-reverse-Shadewalker), practically speaking, would be about right.

Think of it as some 20% of all non-tank enmity as dormant, latent, inactive. Whenever a tank hits, however, they instead claim that latent enmity up to a total of 25% of their own dealt. Thus, if, say, a tank and another ally were putting out the exact same nominal enmity continuously, the tank's enmity throughput would be 50% higher. (80% vs. 100% + 25% of the 80% --> 80% vs. 120% --> gap of 40% --> 40 is 50% of 80.) This would assume a removal of (enmity-based) "tank stances", though, or else the gap would have to be reduced significantly without said tank stance. These particular numbers are just spitball examples anyways; a more appropriate gap would be around 33%, or would involve applying this mechanic only to enmity skills.

It's poor bandaid fix even then, but I believe something like that would do the job. Diversion's enmity loss (though, to a much reduced degree) should honestly be the default, with the ability being replaced instead with a situational to massively enhance enmity generation. That would allow you to kite or redirect mobs, even when working with tanks, all while giving tanks a larger enmity pool to work with.

That said, in regards to the disproportionate and weirdly tiered Attack Power growth over ilvl, specifically... personally, I'd rather see tanks just get appropriate, capped attack power rewards on their accessories as not to need pentamelds. Ideally, you'd revise Vitality to grant, say, .33 Attack Power per stat, while Strength would give .66, rather than the more even AP split that therefore fully favored Vitality back in Heavensward. From there, you'd include two-thirds each of the normal primary stat value of Striking/Aiming/Healing/Casting accessories of the same ilvl to Vitality and Strength and give those accessories a shared cap of 167% same-ilvl non-Fending accessories' primary stat total, offering the choice of Strength or Vitality. Or give 75% of each and cap it there. It doesn't need to keep up completely; it just shouldn't feel awkward in growth progression, nor restrictively expensive to BiS.

[Shurrikhan]

Alright, so. Black Mage

All that MP fanangling is unneeded with just the "Independent UI tick".

UI/AF 3 do not reduce the GCD, only the cast time. The .625 Second deadzone between phase transitions would mean there's no risk of an MP deadzone.

I've not mentioned any change to the GCD characteristics. The cast time change has merely been increased to a 60% increase in cast speed, up from 50%, for symmetry with the more intuitive stack system suggested.

I'm fine with the MP deadzone being lost. Both the current MP values and the more intuitive formations suggesting here go to great care to avoid it. I believe my version simply reaches that goal more comprehensively.

Making the ice spells better at the expense of making F4 worse is horrible. We minimize Ice spells heavily. We only ever cast the one in UI: B4. Increasing B3's potency is an empty gesture beyond the very first cast. You have listed no changes regarding the damage reduction of Fire and Ice.

In the case that it is removed: We aren't suddenly going to use ice spells. There is no difference in time or cost between the two in spell tiers. Given the choice, we want to cast fire. Fire's bonus would have to be completely removed or reduced to the point of nullification to make it something to consider. Ice and Fire have the same exact cost regarding mobility, so given the choice you never choose Ice.

You will never use more Ice spells than you have to. That was the case and intent, and remains the case and intent. The problem is that the disparity reached breakpoints at which altering your rotation with anything but an earlier Fire cast to maintain AF was inviable. With the disparity decreased, it can now be mathematically worthwhile to tailor your rotation to the circumstances of the fight and your composition, offering Black Mage more flexibility, reduced deviation due to the fights and compositions themselves, and increased skill-gap in perfect performance when playing in more challenging situations (even if skill-gap may now be less obvious among poorer players).

In the case that it stays: ^^^^^^^ Double down.

Moving further towards toolkit imbalance for the sake of toolkit imbalance merely decreases flexibility, options, and upper-level skillgap. It treats performance, where varied by the spells cast rather than solely movement or a lack of unnecessary action delay, only as an absence of punishment, rather than strategy or ingenuity.

I will never use Scathe, stop trying to make me!

You do not need to use Scathe. The option is no more attractive now than previously for any form of proper play. Other means of mobile damage have been buffed just as much as it has. I simply chose not to curb-stomp it further.

Phase lengths look exactly the same. 7 GCDs + FS in fire, 6-9 seconds in Ice.

That is the intent. Nothing is to change about the rotation except that is less punishing to break from ideal rotation, thus granting more rotational options to certain fights to increase higher-level skill-gap and decrease unavoidable deviation.

Black mage turret is reduced for no concrete gain.

Again, the point is to slightly tailor in BLM maximal outputs, which currently make Samurai obsolete outside of one fight or SAM/RDM/NIN/MCH/SCH/AST perfect CD-stacking compositions, while increasing both QoL and available nuance. The point is to reduce BLM by-fight performance deviation.

The UI tick does, however, make Spellspeed a 100% damage gain compared to now though, where it doesn't influence your UI phase at all. It is possible the UI tick will reduce Ice phase further which means more Fire uptime.

I am fine with that. All other secondary stats already had this characteristic and would otherwise outperform it past the first rotational safety breakpoint if they'd been appropriately balanced from the start.

[Kabooa]

I've not mentioned any change to the GCD characteristics. The cast time change has merely been increased to a 60% increase in cast speed, up from 50%, for symmetry with the more intuitive stack system suggested.

I'm fine with the MP deadzone being lost. Both the current MP values and the more intuitive formations suggesting here go to great care to avoid it. I believe my version simply reaches that goal more comprehensively..

My point is that all the MP costs changes are unnecessary with an independent UI tick. The shortlist can be a short list in this regard.

We already tailor the rotation to the current demands. We adjust procs, cooldowns, early phase cutting, B4 skipping, and Leyline placement and timing. We already do these these things. Shifting power from Fire to the Ice spells to doesn't make it more flexible, it only makes our success working around the mechanics less rewarding.

Even in your variant, losing out on 60% bonus damage, even with Ice potencies mirroed for equity, doesn't change the final product in any comparable way to the amount lost. B3's potency increase doesn't matter, because it's cut in half when moving into AF. B4's potency increase is...alright, but if we're talking high pressure movement with unprepared procs or cooldowns, we skip B4 anyways. The intent behind the change doesn't match up with reality.

This could be a really short list without everything in the middle.

"Umbral Ice regenerates MP every .5 seconds"
"Fire 4 Potency reduced to 290".

[Shurrikhan]

Even in your variant, losing out on 60% bonus damage, even with Ice potencies mirrored for equity, doesn't change the final product in any comparable way to the amount lost. B3's potency increase doesn't matter, because it's cut in half when moving into AF. B4's potency increase is...alright, but if we're talking high pressure movement with unprepared procs or cooldowns, we skip B4 anyways. The intent behind the change doesn't match up with reality.

To preface, I don't mean this merely as a defense of what I've written. As you've said, that list could be pared down considerably by leaving the stack system in its current nonsensical state as at least people are used to it as is and nothing about gameplay over level 40 would necessarily change as a result. A shortlist has to do with immediacy available to usage/implementation, not to actually being short -- comparable to a "green-light list" or "final pass list" -- but even I'll admit we could easily go without those changes. They're there because I like intuitive design, and it has little (and, in my opinion, a solely positive) effect on BLM gameplay.

However, what you're saying here is wholly nonsensical. Losing out on potency from just a 100% modifier rather than a 160% or 180% is still 100% of the gap in base potency -- which is a gap in potency. You MUST use Blizzard III, even if as rarely as possible. Optimal play DOES use Blizzard IV. Potency buffs to either will be buffs in themselves.

If I intended merely to nerf Black Mage and call it a day, those two points would sufficient. If I intended to make Speed inferior on Black Mage after having just made it as closely balanced as possible on all others, those two points would be sufficient. But I don't.

As I said before, I don't expect the changes to be all that significant to gameplay (though, again, I do imagine what change there'd be would be beneficial). But, there is no change more easily accomplished than number-tuning, be it to potencies or buff percentiles. In terms of implementation, only one design change contains a significant hurdle -- the unpaired UI tick. I'll admit the changes seem perfectionistic -- they are, since I am -- but I think we can at least agree that there is no benefit to the current wonkiness of the UI/AF systems (save perhaps the 40% first tier on AF, which makes the Fire-obsession more obvious to a narrow band of players who can understand numbers on screen and change accordingly but cannot read tooltips). And its being made intuitive is a mere number entry each for a small span of tables.

[HyoMinPark]

Responses with relevant insight into the shortlist.
@HyoMin -- last edit Nov. 15, 9:30 PM PST

Sorry. The elaboration was listed only in the General Changes section, where Skill Speed and Spell Speed were combined into Speed and revised. I will reword that and each similar description slightly to make it clear that it affects only damage.

Thank you for the clarification—I wasn’t sure which aspect Speed would be affecting, since BRD has it’s current Repertoire mechanic that procs based off of critical DoT ticks.

In the event that it affects damage, I would think that a revision of Army’s Paeon’s Repertoire mechanic would definitely need to be done. Last tier, BRD’s High Crit BiS had us sitting at a 2.40 GCD, and with the full +16% Haste from AP the clipping was absolutely awful with just single-weaving (double-weaving is impossible in AP even at lower Skill Speed levels thanks to the Haste—I’m at a 2.47 GCD right now, and I still cannot double weave without clipping my next GCD). Even with AP’s lack of oGCD procs, we still have oGCDs we usage and manage during, and I’d like to see the clipping reduced as much as possible. If we start stacking Speed as a substat to enhance damage, AP would become an absolute nightmare with the current Haste mechanic to it. So that would need to be addressed to prevent lost damage due to clipping that we cannot control.

Still working on this. Some of the clipping issues are to be remedied by the changes to Speed (formerly SkS/SpS), but I'm fully aware that the animation time scaling suggestion is the least realistic of the whole lot. I'm still trying to find an equilibrium between a clean tooltip and a functional solution.

Moved this up here because it was relevant to the point above, but unless I’m misunderstanding your Speed stat proposal, if it subtracts from the GCD still, AP will need a rework to prevent it from being the song BRDs just opt not to use at all (as it stands, we already skip it in our rotation if we can get away with it). Especially if BRD’s damage will suddenly start relying on it to the point where it’s optimal to stack it the way we currently stack Crit.

Yes, the change would be nerf to Bard, and slightly more so than I intended. I hadn't finalized the wording. Please see if the new version (which I will post momentarily) is up to snuff, balance-wise. I've removed Pitch Perfect's own cooldown in favor of a "ghosted" cooldown, which cycles every 15 seconds, adding a stack to Repertoire. Swapping into WM with BL/RoD at the ready will convert them to Repertoire.

I intended it to be the WM equivalent of RoD, less effective than WM at low amounts and greater at high amounts. I'd prefer to offer it more uniqueness, perhaps by making Pitch Perfect a line AoE that deals full damage only to the main target and making Dissonance a mass-DoT, but I've not come up with anything beyond simple choice-matching just yet.

I suppose this sounds better; it could still be a bit of a nerf depending on the rate of procs when in the Wanderer’s Minuet window—having guaranteed procs can help mitigate the RNG of Repertoire and offset losing BL/RoD’s potency, but whether it can even out depends on the way Repertoire procs will be handled going forward, since there are outcries against it procing off of critical DoT ticks (personally, I like the way it functions now but there are concerns about balancing with the current way Crit scales).

I’m assuming you would want to keep the level 68 trait where EA can force one, but that can only, at best, give you 2 procs in a Raging Strikes window (and you save your third EA for your entry into Mage’s Ballad to force another BL/RoD proc).

If swapping into Minuet with BL/RoD off-cooldown equals a stack, it would become a case of holding Bloodletter/RoD for the upcoming Minuet+RS window to guarantee a stack. We already do this with EA so that we can force one stack, and then force another/settle for Barrage+EA if we don’t get an RA proc, but then that also takes away from what we can do in AP. Removing another oGCD from AP would make it even less potent than it currently is unless something was worked into it to make up for holding both a second 260 potency oGCD and a second 130 potency oGCD.

I ask of you what ideas you had for BRD’s current Repertoire mechanic—I’ve looked through your OP, and, unless I’m missing it, I do not see anything addressing that mechanic at this time. Is it still going to proc, depending on critical DoT ticks? Or are you wanting to shift it to a flat percentage?

I was hasty in including that particular solution. However, as every role is currently allowed 10 and only 10 role actions, I am hesitant to attempt to break that rule except as a last resort.

I think a significant portion of the physical ranged role skills need to be looked at going forward. It has always been the same 5 mandatory skills (Refresh, Tactician, Palisade, Invigorate, and Second Wind), with 1 being used for movement speed outside of combat (Peloton) and 1 being used for 2 mechanics the entire expansion (Head Graze). That leaves 3 that were effectively useless with regards to content mechanics (Arm Graze, Leg Graze, and Foot Graze).
I have listed the Physical Ranged role actions I would like to see further down.

Agreed. We need a Diversion-like solution for the time being. What are we willing to give up for it, though? I am loath to give up Peloton, and losing Palisade would be a massive utility loss, yet any other choice seems, by way of symmetry, even more harmful.

Personally, I don’t use Peloton that often, so sacrificing it would not be a loss for me—the instances where I play BRD, I’m mostly in-combat and cannot use it.

I would be more than willing to give up any of the Graze skills; as I’ve said, we’ve effectively only used one in any sort of high-end content, and rarely are dungeons ever warranting the use of CC due to how everything can be brute-forced. Any uses CC has is in PotD/HoH or Eureka, and those feel a bit too niche. And, as with dungeons, you can just power-through without the use of CC—unlike with the Savage mechanics where, if you didn’t Silence Ultros (O7S) or the Iron Giant (O3S), you wiped.

If BRDs, going forward, continue to be as bursty as they have been in the past, we will need a form of enmity management at our disposal. And I don’t want one tied to resource management. In the event they actually make TP a resource you have to think about conserving and managing (instead of the non-issue it is currently), blowing Tactician for enmity dumping as we do now could be even more detrimental to a party, and that’s the opposite of what a BRD is supposed to do.

I'm personally more fine with it being situational and left off many a Bard's bars than I am with it being obligatory, as it still wouldn't really suit it's situation. Gap-makers are for controlling attention more so than undoing it, and by the time there'd be a visible (beyond enmity bars) use for the aggro-dump, your life would already be threatened in using it. It then becomes either redundant, or the equivalent of a key locked in the chest it unlocks. At least with a 12 yalm range and greater reactivity, it could be worth the oGCD when needing to get away from a fool or stunned ally marked for an AoE.

Honestly, I still don’t see it being useful or worth the real estate in the bolded situation. There are already large AOEs present in-game, all of which can be safely ran out of without the use of a gap-maker. Since BRD loses nothing by moving, it makes little difference having to run out versus launching yourself out (by contrast, RDM—a caster—loses more by running out of an AOE since they cannot cast a run; this isn’t an issue with BRD now). The current iteration, you can launch yourself away from a target, but you cannot double weave with Repelling, and you will clip your subsequent GCD due to animation. It’s more prudent to just run out (and less of a loss).

Personally, I don’t like skills that are extremely niche, which is why I have such an issue with a lot of the physical ranged role skills—they’re rarely ever used, or, when they are used, it’s for a single mechanic. I’d rather see skills used more frequently as opposed to keeping those that have maybe one or two uses.

[Spitball warning] Repelling Shot was gutted with the gutting, rather than fixing, of "Bow Mage", but if a pseudo-cast full draw option were still available to Bard gameplay, I would have loved to double down on this concept by turning into a variable skill that could take, but did not require, a target. If no target were presented, you'd leave a repel point around which you could rapidly return to or switch from one side of to the other. Reactivation moves you about the pinion, pulling you to it and then rapidly accelerating manual movement in a unique animation with additional momentum. If a target were presented, then you would harpoon the enemy with a connected shot then pinning them to the ground through their foot; even once having freed their foot after the very brief bind fades, they'd be leashed to you through the pinion as if via a pulley, allowing you to manipulate the target's movement as if with a tether movement-restricting mechanic that loses HP over movement, but would only break quickly if both parties moved away from each other. Reactivation will attempt to draw the target towards the pulley if moving away or bound you toward and past the target if moving toward it. All this being said, such mechanics would be far more suited to a Ranger than a Bard, if such were ever made.

While an interesting construction of a skill, I, too, don’t think this would suit the Bard Aesthetic.

Right now, I think we could have included the effects, or near enough to them, of Warden's Paeon, Palisade, and Nature's Minuet under a single key if not for the rigid manner in which the songs rotate. But such is a complex discussion for a different time. Replacing Warden's Paeon with Palisade would affect balance with Machinist in ways I'm not equipped to handle right now, even if it would happily open a slot for Diversion.

Song rotation has little bearing on how you use Warden’s, Palisade, or Minne—they center around mechanics and what your party is doing more times than they do your song rotation (e.g., Palisade for physical busters; Minne for spreading Adlos from a WAR). There’s always a strict point in each encounter where you use one of them, independent of songs. Every instance where I use Palisade or Minne in an encounter is mapped out according to the fight’s timeline. In dungeons, both are used basically off-cooldown (Minne especially).

I wasn’t advocating to replace Warden’s with Palisade and make Palisade BRD only; I was advocating to give it a use similar, but for magic damage, and to make it a role skill so that both BRD and MCH can have access to it (and they will both continue to have access to Palisade). Palisade cannot be used for any of the heavy hits in O11S or O12S (minus using it on auto-attacks, and it will only work on Omega-M’s autos in 12 since Omega-F is magical) and it had zero use in UwU once you hit Ultima Weapon (I used it more for auto-attacks during the primals than I did for busters—the only Primal buster it worked on was Titan’s); I would like to have an option to give mitigation for magical busters.

For now, we are still bound by the 10 Role Actions per Role constraint. I'd like to see Role Actions removed entirely, but I'm trying to work within that constraint for the purposes of my suggestions here.

I think the Role Actions can be made into a better system than it currently is. But it requires the developers taking the time to make it better, rather than make it lazy/convoluted/a mess.

Here are the skills I would prefer to see in the Physical Ranged role actions:

Refresh: Party MP refresh. Duration: 30 secs; Recast: 180 secs
Tactician: Party TP refresh. Duration: 30 secs; Recast: 180 secs
Palisade: Reduces physical damage of a single target other than self by 20%. Duration: 10 secs; Recast: 150 secs.
The Warden’s Paeon: Reduces magical damage of a single target other than self by 20%. Duration: 10 secs; Recast: 150 secs.
Diversion: Reduces the enmity generated by 90%. Duration: 20 secs; Recast: 120 secs.
Invigorate: Restores 400 TP. Recast: 120 secs.
Second Wind: Restores own HP. Cure potency: 500. Scales off of Attack Power. Recast: 120 secs.
Peloton: Increased movement speed of party and self. Duration: 30 secs; Recast: 5 secs
Head Graze: Silences Target. Duration: 1 sec; Recast: 30 secs.

You can rename “The Warden’s Paeon” to make it suit both BRD and MCH in terms of aesthetic. It can be swapped with Palisade for applicable encounters (assuming they don’t just allow us to take all 10 going forward).

Refresh and Tactician no longer halve enmity, since BRD/MCH would have access to Diversion for enmity control. Refresh’s refresh potency can be adjusted in order to find a balance with casters’ Mana Shift, though I’d personally like to see Mana Shift changed from how it currently functions and buffed into a single-target MP Refresh buff that shares the same refresh potency as Refresh. It could keep a lower Recast on the premise that it is single-target versus AOE.

I removed Arm Graze, Leg Graze, and Foot Graze, as they are barely ever used (and, as I said earlier, I don’t like skills that have only one or two uses). I kept Head Graze, allowing BRD/MCH to supply a silence, since stuns are present in both the Melee DPS and Tank role actions, but Silence is only available in Physical Ranged. However, I would want to see an increase in mechanics that require silencing to make keeping it even worthwhile.

Given my love-hate relationship with fire arrow tropes this is perturbingly appealing to me, though I'd like for each song to be of both decent ST and AoE usefulness. Ideally, I'd like AP to be the perfect "setup" song, but that would require, again, a revision of the rigid song rotation system. For now I am considering lingering effects that can roll over into WM or MB, however, over one's you'd be reluctant to drop AP as a result of. I'd prefer it offer changes in gameplay and rotational opportunities over, even if slightly more functional, straight damage.

Personally, I would like to see a shift towards a 90-second song rotation, rather than an 80-second one, as it would make it more in line with the way major raid buffs are set up (though 2-minute ones still would not line up perfectly with everything except in the opener and at 6 minutes, but a 90-second rotation will allow BRD’s burst to line up with both 90-second and 180-second buffs).

The “lazy way”, of course, would be to just increase the Recast timers of Raging Strikes and Barrage to 90 seconds and do nothing to Army’s, but I would prefer to see the developers do something to make Army’s Paeon worth staying in for the full duration. In terms of PPS, it is the weakest of all three; having no oGCD procs during doesn’t help that, so I was considering adding Flaming Arrow to make up for that (and to give it a bit more PPS with Flaming’s DoT ticks):
—Minuet: 36 PPS
—Mage’s: 22.1 PPS
—Army’s: 8 PPS for the first ~15 sec, 17.5 PPS afterward.
Since we clip it at 20 seconds, that means we only get the 17.5 PPS for 5 seconds. And I believe this PPS is dependent on how quickly you get your 4 Repertoire stacks...and you better hope you get them all!

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...k4/mobilebasic

[Mansion]

I'm kinda sure that as of today, Diversion is one of the best use of the actual Role Action system, both MCH and BRD should have access to it, because the agro drop of Tactician an Refresh are clunky. Especially if the Bard uses refresh to milk a bit of Foe's Requiem. (In my former team, we had BRD and MCH, MCH used refresh on its opener so the BRD had the two songs available, and she kept ripping aggro anyway). Aggro management is part of playing this game and I don't mind. But I'd rather have all proper tools to do so, and it's a bit unfair for BRD and MCH.
If we are to keep the system as it is, I think having the aggro drop being changed to the same effect of Diversion (less aggro generated) on both songs would be perfect. And include an aggro drop on Repelling shot for BRD, Blank on MCH (and Fluid Aura or Assize on WHM).

[Shurrikhan]

I ask of you what ideas you had for BRD’s current Repertoire mechanic—I’ve looked through your OP, and, unless I’m missing it, I do not see anything addressing that mechanic at this time. Is it still going to proc, depending on critical DoT ticks? Or are you wanting to shift it to a flat percentage?

I have my thoughts on it, but I'd planned no changes to it here. The DoT-ticks-only concept will suffice for now, though I do believe there are advantages to widening this to all weaponskills (see below).

In the event that it affects damage, I would think that a revision of Army’s Paeon’s Repertoire mechanic would definitely need to be done. Last tier, BRD’s High Crit BiS had us sitting at a 2.40 GCD, and with the full +16% Haste from AP the clipping was absolutely awful with just single-weaving (double-weaving is impossible in AP even at lower Skill Speed levels thanks to the Haste—I’m at a 2.47 GCD right now, and I still cannot double weave without clipping my next GCD). Even with AP’s lack of oGCD procs, we still have oGCDs we usage and manage during, and I’d like to see the clipping reduced as much as possible. If we start stacking Speed as a substat to enhance damage, AP would become an absolute nightmare with the current Haste mechanic to it. So that would need to be addressed to prevent lost damage due to clipping that we cannot control.

As someone who's been forced to single-weave on Monk and SAM damn near forever, and often on Bow Mage before that, I don't personally have a problem with one song for which damage output doesn't particular depend on immediacy of oGCD usage having to single-weave. Nonetheless, I do understand that it is an important part of Bard-ing for many.

The change I'd most look forward to of all that I've suggested is scaled animation times/locks on Speed. (I've now underlined this for emphasis.) Even now, though, SkS's GCD reduction does not work additively with Attack Speed buffs. The more Attack Speed your buffs generate, the fewer hundredths of a second Skill Speed sheds. The same with occur with the revision. As the GCD reduction rate of Speed would be lower than that of present Skill Speed, at least once past ~2.46, iirc, it should force too the animations to be feel too weightless even then. But even with that huge adjustment I'm still a bit worried about it, yeah.

[Yet more spitball ideas] I've thought about replacing it with a burnable buff of 3 maximum stacks, similar to Wanderer's Minuet, where you build up stacks of Haste (5% per stack) and increased Heavier Shot chance (20% per stack), but the stacks supplying the added chance required to generate the Refulgent Arrow is "consumed" when used. Let me explain.
Think of it as a dice roll, 1-100. Normally, you'd have to score an 80 or better. With a single stack, 60 or better. With two, 40. With three, a 20 or better. So, let's say you have two stacks, meaning you need only roll a 40. Let's use a few test rolls here to demonstrate the "consumption":
(1) You roll a 12. No Refulgent Arrow procced, but no stacks can be consumed. Try again.
(2) You roll a 44. Refulgent Arrow is procced, and the (top, if you had three total) two Repertoire stacks are highlighted in red to show they will be consumed if you use this particular Refulgent Arrow. (2 required to allow the Refulgent Arrow = 2 consumed.)
(3) You roll a 68. Refulgent Arrow is procced, and the top Repertoire stack is highlighted in red to show it will be consumed if you use this particular Refulgent Arrow. (1 required to allow the Refulgent Arrow = 1 consumed.)
(4) You roll an 88. Refulgent Arrow is procced, but as you would have gotten it anyways, no Repertoire stacks are highlighted and none are deleted upon use.

That way, you'd have the option of holding onto the Haste stacks so that you can quickly mass-DoT, but you can also purge that added Attack Speed through more uses of your nuke.

If you wanted to further encourage low-Haste play, though, you'd want to remove the fair consumption mechanic and/or have the bonus chance scale in a tapering fashion over stack count, which may then require a slight reduction to RA damage (but at that point, Straighter Shot becomes more viable, meaning you'd have to stick the crit chance on RA -- which I'm fine with -- or allow those options separately again).

but whether it can even out depends on the way Repertoire procs will be handled going forward, since there are outcries against it procing off of critical DoT ticks (personally, I like the way it functions now but there are concerns about balancing with the current way Crit scales).

1. I think it would generally turn into a nerf unless you're sitting at 2 stacks with it about to refresh but your DoTs also about to mass-tick. For typical raid content, the most you could receive is two stacks per tick, so I don't think the benefits for 3rd-stacking would faintly outweigh the loss of the occasional Bloodletter on average? I could be wrong though, as I'm quite tired and am having difficulty mentally simulating that.

2. That's an interesting topic, though one I'd purposely avoided in my own suggestions for now. I am of that other camp: personally, I'd like for Monk and Bard to have a chance on all weaponskills (initial damage and, in Bard's case at least, including their DoT ticks) equal to their bonus damage multiplier from Crits/DHits/Crit-DHits to receive a Repertoire, where the damage bonus of Determination, multiplied by that multiplier, further augments that chance, such that every secondary stat contributes in some way. Your DoTs are still of higher value as they would give 11 chances each, as compared to 1, but then you do at least see something from every GCD. (Each use of Quick Knock or Wide Volley could apply only one stack, but takes the best roll of the bunch, making it damn near guaranteed.) That already would offer Army's Paean greatly increased benefits. This would take a fair bit of rebalancing, though (likely then using another multipler based on the attack's potency, such that RA has a higher chance to proc something on Crit than Windbite initial damage), and make Bard even more compositionally dependent.

If swapping into Minuet with BL/RoD off-cooldown equals a stack, it would become a case of holding Bloodletter/RoD for the upcoming Minuet+RS window to guarantee a stack. We already do this with EA so that we can force one stack, and then force another/settle for Barrage+EA if we don’t get an RA proc, but then that also takes away from what we can do in AP. Removing another oGCD from AP would make it even less potent than it currently is unless something was worked into it to make up for holding both a second 260 potency oGCD and a second 130 potency oGCD.

To the first sentence: Yes, and I'm fine with that, especially since you can only get 2 free stacks in this way regardless of whether you hold for WM, and the single-stack addition would be redundant with EA until after your DoT's have ticked (with only one critting).

The the last: I don't think losing a BL in the AP window makes AP itself any less potent. AP has no effect on BL, SW, or EA, etc. If it occurs during the AP window, that is coincidental. Now, the slight bonus to the WM window may diminish it by comparison, but we're aiming to make AP of decent strength regardless, and at present, that small increase to the gap is far from significant.

Personally, I would like to see a shift towards a 90-second song rotation, rather than an 80-second one, as it would make it more in line with the way major raid buffs are set up (though 2-minute ones still would not line up perfectly with everything except in the opener and at 6 minutes, but a 90-second rotation will allow BRD’s burst to line up with both 90-second and 180-second buffs).

The “lazy way”, of course, would be to just increase the Recast timers of Raging Strikes and Barrage to 90 seconds and do nothing to Army’s, but I would prefer to see the developers do something to make Army’s Paeon worth staying in for the full duration.

I think both would be of benefit regardless. That may make my RDM change to Embolden further favor Bard and Dragoon over Samurai, but so be it if needed for the sake of intuitiveness or sync; SAM should be fine even so. While the Barrage CD never feels too awful, the 80-second timer on Raging Strikes just feels really awkward anyways at many GCD speeds, sometimes forcing a saving Iron Jaws just before Raging Strikes just to use Iron Jaws yet again. I realize that shouldn't necessarily be the case, but many a time I'm either 2 seconds to early on DoT resets or .4 seconds too late, such that it's fairly consistently so.

I wasn’t advocating to replace Warden’s with Palisade and make Palisade BRD only; I was advocating to give it a use similar, but for magic damage, and to make it a role skill so that both BRD and MCH can have access to it (and they will both continue to have access to Palisade).

Thank you for the clarification.

That said, doesn't that then just leave Bard with one fewer support tool, or equivalent, than MCH? Additionally, Ranged jobs could then deny up to 20% of damage to be dealt to the tank twice per 150 seconds, depending on whether at least one magical and at least one physical nuke would go off per those 150 seconds. That seems a noticable buff to both, even if less so to Bard, that might not be warranted. Even if Palisade alone were changed to now affect all damage, that would breaks symmetry with Casters' Apocatastasis and the removal of a Bard ability would affect (if not typically significantly) symmetry/parity between MCH and BRD.

Less important stuff:

Honestly, I still don’t see it being useful or worth the real estate in the bolded situation.

Then for the time being, though, can't it just be taken off your bars, as Blank would be? When you exclude the redundancies within the Machinist toolkit, Bard has the same skill count as Machinist. Should Blank have to be removed as well, even though it does still at least see niche use? If it's fight-by-fight situational, it's not functionally taking up real estate except in the fights where it's helpful, and therefore equipped... where it's also worth that space. It seems a bit much to remove it, then, just for being a conceptual eyesore on the fights one refuses to use it, yet leaves it equipped.

The current iteration, you can launch yourself away from a target, but you cannot double weave with Repelling, and you will clip your subsequent GCD due to animation. It’s more prudent to just run out (and less of a loss).

That wouldn't necessarily be the case with its animation lock fixed, though. I can easily double-weave from the further-launching Displacement despite using the same high-SpS gear from my BLM when on my RDM. I can double-weave with Plunge. If I wasn't running 2.7k Skill Speed, I could do so with Gyoton on my SAM. Repelling Shot is just uniquely bad at the moment. But the more (Skill) Speed one has by which for the GCD to delay a third oGCD and more importantly the fewer needs to double-weave for other reasons, as per the changes suggested, the more viable it would be to launch oneself out. Necessary? As those AoEs are intended to give you enough time to escape anyways, not unless something goes wrong. But it's still nothing you're losing out on something else for, for now.

To reaffirm, I don't care that much about Repelling Shot. I just see no reason to remove it. There are just too many ways to make it not have its current issues for that to seem a close or warranted solution. I mean, heck, you could even have it share cooldowns and potency with Bloodletter, while Blank shares its with Gauss Round. Normally, you'd just use the other, but if you want to Repelling Shot out of somewhere or Blank something away, feel free -- it comes at no opportunity cost to you as those skills should be aligned for soonest possible use anyways and you lose no potency in the oGCD by taking the added utility.

Song rotation has little bearing on how you use Warden’s, Palisade, or Minne—they center around mechanics and what your party is doing more times than they do your song rotation (e.g., Palisade for physical busters; Minne for spreading Adlos from a WAR). There’s always a strict point in each encounter where you use one of them, independent of songs. Every instance where I use Palisade or Minne in an encounter is mapped out according to the fight’s timeline. In dungeons, both are used basically off-cooldown (Minne especially).

Oh, I'm wholly aware. I just made the mistake of thinking aloud without the other mental context. In my idea of an "ideal" Bard, the songs are all tied again to MP, with increasing activation and drain costs over use which then reverses over disuse (though at half the speed at which it increased), such that MP sustain would require that you rotate every 30 seconds, for a cycle of 90, but you have an MP bar's worth of flexibility. Foe Requiem would trade out to a sort "Inverted Mode" of each song of further activation and drain MP cost to inflict effects on enemies. From these 3 (inversions/augmentations included, 6) Song effects, you could then have tremendous variance in point-support (defensive or offensive) even with just a single key (though I'd prefer two). Heck, Iron Jaws, which especially now makes us feel rather HS-spammy, easily could have been an adaptive point-support option, giving it more of an adjustive gameplay feel. Battle Voice? Same idea. Additional activation and drain cost, spreading the benefits of (or based on) your song to your allies. But, that's just me, so I'm not about to include it here.

Personally, I don’t use Peloton that often, so sacrificing it would not be a loss for me—the instances where I play BRD, I’m mostly in-combat and cannot use it.

I would be more than willing to give up any of the Graze skills; as I’ve said, we’ve effectively only used one in any sort of high-end content, and rarely are dungeons ever warranting the use of CC due to how everything can be brute-forced. Any uses CC has is in PotD/HoH or Eureka, and those feel a bit too niche. And, as with dungeons, you can just power-through without the use of CC—unlike with the Savage mechanics where, if you didn’t Silence Ultros (O7S) or the Iron Giant (O3S), you wiped.

The less the game gravitates solely to the more rutted 8-man experience, the better, in my opinion. I'd much rather see Peloton worked into Bard's songs and MCH's turret skills themselves, and the graze skills reintegrated and revised (just as, imo, Refresh and Tactician should be), but what little content that remains outside of circular arenas and CC-immune mobs feels like it needs at least this much going for it. Not every Role Action needs to be useful to raiding for a sub-role or job to be entirely functional and balanced, nor does every Role Action need to be perfectly useful when you'd otherwise have extra slots to work with.

It really just comes down to one of the existing skills needing to carry an optional threat reduction in a way that feels right. Honestly, I'd probably be happy with Wildfire to instead cost the MCH 25% damage to later detonate for twice that amount with no enmity increase (counts like a one-time pet), and Raging Strikes replaced with... From the Brush or The Wise Hunter the like, which both increases damage and decreases enmity. (You'd just really need to be sure there was some smart auto-detonation mechanic on Wildfire at that point, to go off before any jump or when mob HP falls to or below the amount of damage stored in Wildfire. But as Wildfire would hereafter provide AoE damage... that'd be a pretty damn strong skill, all while diminishing the worst of MCH's enmity spikes.)

[Shurrikhan]

Haven't read much else yet but BRDs would much prefer an enmity queller akin to Diversion than another dump ability. Something is better than nothing of course but if beggars can be choosers.

Tentative addition up now, underlined: Raging Strikes replaced with Hawkeye. Hawkeye - 90-second cooldown. Increases damage by 10% while decreasing your enmity generated based on your range from the enemy or enemies affected, to a maximum of 50% at 30 yalms.

Machinist has been similarly aided via Wildfire.