BRD 5.0 Feedback, Suggestions, and Requests

[Cetonis]

I've posted this elsewhere, but might as well get it in the good thread.

General example of a damage-support setup that I think would be good at producing the flavor, while also not too powerful or hard to balance:

-- Battle Voice: Increases the direct hit rate of physical damage dealt by nearby party members by 30%. Duration: 20s. Cannot be used while Foe Requiem is active. Cooldown: 180s. Maximum charges: 2.

-- Foe Requiem: Increases the direct hit rate of magical damage dealt by nearby party members by 30%. Duration: 20s. Cannot be used while Battle Voice is active. Cooldown: 180s. Maximum charges: 2.


There would be a little bit of class-specific synergy mainly with Paladin but maybe Ninja or Red Mage depending on details, so I don't know if SE would do exactly this. But said synergy seems low impact, and no more powerful than the job-specific synergy between jobs with overlapping buff/bursts, so maybe it's fine.

Numerically, if we call current BV 600 raid dps on a dummy fight, this would probably be an increase to around 1200, in a landscape where Dancer is over 2000. So firmly in the middle of the three ranged, as desired.


But most importantly, it'd be a setup that asks Bard players to think about when it's best to use which one, by nature of each having a skew on its impact and the charge system allowing for more flexible timing.

Making players engage with their support skills, rather than just yawn and press the thing that lit up, goes a long way to making a job "feel" support-y. As does increasing the frequency of using such skills from once per three minutes to once per 90s plus two bonus.

And, it's the sort of thing Bards mourning the loss of depth would like to see added, something that feels rewarding to mull over and plan out. So it'd cover all the bases. Not that this is the only way, but it's an example of the sorts of dynamics that I think should be the goal re: adding support, as well as any other QoL / feedback-reaction changes.


(aside: One of the challenges, if SE wants to re-introduce damage support, is that if you bring back Foe as an interesting skill, and leave BV boring, as a design question why didn't you just make BV interesting instead? But if you just make BV interesting and don't return Foe, will that be enough for players to be satisfied? And trying to come up with a way to have both Foe and BV present as interesting / flexible skills without feeling redundant, is quite hard. So that's how I landed on the phys/mag mirror idea)