Are the bard 'buffs' a Halloween prank?

[Rika007]

Still very concerned about the nerfs to the DOT damage and why of all things they thought that bringing back the passive songs is what Bard players wanted. We wanted more active support, not passive support.

[VenKitsune]

You have to remember that it's 1% for each person. So in an 8 man group, what classes are balanced around, that's a 8% damage increase across the board...That's almost as strong as pre-patch trick attack...and it applies to players, rather than enemies, and so its useful against adds and mobs.

You really dont have the right to complain, to be honest...These buffs are pretty damn good.

[Fannah]

You have to remember that it's 1% for each person. So in an 8 man group, what classes are balanced around, that's a 8% damage increase across the board...That's almost as strong as pre-patch trick attack...and it applies to players, rather than enemies, and so its useful against adds and mobs.

You really dont have the right to complain, to be honest...These buffs are pretty damn good.

I agree it's a good buff, but I'm just wondering how you did have that 8% damage increase x) 1% crit chance is not equal to +1% overall dmg (or maybe I'm missing something from a formula?)
Overall, in a very simple way, 1% crit means 1 more attack every 100 hits will proc a crit. Let's say your GCD is 2.40sec (so 25GCD per minute) and you have 16oGCD per minute (it's a random exemple), you would have like 25 + 16 = 41 Hit per minute. Now let's think the boss lasts 10min (and is always targetable and vulnerable), you will make 410hits total. So in 10min, you will have done 4 more crits, maybe it's nice, maybe it's not that relevant actually, it's still something, maybe it will just be on low potency skills and will trigger at a moment you're not in a specific short dps-check phase, maybe it will trigger twice for several people during a dps-check phase. Maybe those 4 hits will proc with a direct hit, maybe not. It's always worth if the purpose is to not the the final enrage of the boss as it's an overall timer of the battle since its beginning..

Iirc, crit chance can be understood as dmg itself according to a formula (without direct hit)
In a very simple way, " crit chance*total crit dmg + nocrit chance*base dmg = average of dmg"
Let's say you have 25% crit chance for 1,5dmg multiplier. And your move deals 1000 basic dmg (and will have 75% chance to happen as it's when it doesn't crit)
It goes like : 0.25*1500 + 0.75*1000 = 375 + 750 = 1125 dmg average per hit of that specific move on the total game.

Let's add 1% crit chance.
0.26*1500 + 0.74*1000 = 390+740= 1130 dmg average per hit of that specific move on the total game

Now to know how many dmg you gained in %
1130/1125= 0.44% dmg increase.

So in that scenario, +1% crit chance means +0.44% overall dmg. (the more bonus crit dmg is high, the more crit chance is worth, in short).

Let's assume a team of 6 char would have 12000dps, they all gain +0.44% dmg, upgrading their dps to 12053.
So, they all gained +53dmg per char.
53*6= 318.
So it would be a increase of 318dps on the total game for the bonus provider (here it's a Bard). To you to know if 318dps total is nice or not from a passive thing.

Be careful, it's all exemple even if I took the 12000dps that could remind some existing dps. I'm not saying that buff is worth 318rDPS for the Bard.

[Akiudo]

You have to remember that it's 1% for each person. So in an 8 man group, what classes are balanced around, that's a 8% damage increase across the board...That's almost as strong as pre-patch trick attack...and it applies to players, rather than enemies, and so its useful against adds and mobs.

You really dont have the right to complain, to be honest...These buffs are pretty damn good.

the raidbuff is fine, and yes about 1%, (probably slightly below right now all things considered , but it will get stronger in the future and its pretty obvious 1% is the ballpark they were aiming for

BUT

A) it doesnt hit the bard so only 7 people affected left.
B) if your tanks and heals do as much damage as your actual dps players you may need a new group, 1% raid dps buff even if bard was included (which it isn't) is NOT an 8% buff to the bard, closer to 5 than to 8 all things considered, and thats in a good group
C) Bard personal damage got nerfed by around 2,5-3%, even with the potency buffs on apex and sidewinder, yes , the dot nerf was that big a hit to bard dps

Bard according to the balance gained around 450 dps in a perfect group scenario, if your group is blue instead of gold its just 350, lets not even talk about the poor sob doing purple parses in a 30% group, and that in a patch were literally anyone but the strongest 2 got buffed for close to that amount or even more while coming from a position of total suckage which square even acknowledged themselves in the last live letter.

Sorry but if thats not reason to complain than what is ? doing healer levels of dps ? getting mana song back but in exchange doing a fixed 0 dps total so the group can decide if they want a mana baterry or 8 players ? the gap from bard to the weakest melee right now is literally as big as it was before the patch, just that summoner is so good now you wouldn't even need double blm to replace the phys ranged, you can simply take 2 melee/blm/smn.

[AxelDH]

I'm not blown away by the raid buffs we got to be honest. Does a passive effect running in the background really make anyone feel like they are playing more of a support class than before? Its not interactive in any way.

It can be pretty inconvenient in some situations. Any time where the party has to split up for any reason, or If the Bard has to go far away to bait a certain mechanic, then it can become a raid DPS loss. Sure, there are ways you will be able to adjust your positioning or strategy in order to keep the party in range for most mechanics, but its a consideration that Machinists and Dancers wont need to worry about.

I would have much preferred them bringing back Foes Requiem, although it would need to be stronger than the old 3%. It would have been easy to fit in line with the burst windows, and we wouldn't have to keep in range of 7 other players 100% of the time.

Overall, its a decent sized raid DPS increase. But I think we'd have been better off with just getting potency buffs!

[Juicymama]

looking at the numbers on fflog for E2S after patch, the physical range jobs continues to be a joke, SE might as well delete the physical range group altogether. Where as SMN got over boosted and rdm is now in a good spot. SE's balance team does not have a clue how to do balancing for physical range group.

[Vaina]

looking at the numbers on fflog for E2S after patch, the physical range jobs continues to be a joke, SE might as well delete the physical range group altogether. Where as SMN got over boosted and rdm is now in a good spot. SE's balance team does not have a clue how to do balancing for physical range group.

Ty for that.

[pandabearcat]

Bard wanted "utility", you got it. If it didn't become abundantly clear that the more utility you have, the lower raid damage you do (as in total, combined rdps, melee notwithstanding) from watching nin rdm and dnc flounder at the beginning of the xpac, I don't know what to tell you guys. FFXIV team overvalues their raid "support" way too much.

IMO, they should revert the dot nerf. Bards are fairly weak because of the many spread mechanics that outrange the song, and being the only dps class that can't really utilize trick attack and other raid buffs is killing them as they don't really have a burst phase.

[Saefinn]

1% -sounds- tiny.
But BRD will -constantly- have a DPS buff up. The only other job with a constant up time of a buff like this is DNC and theirs is only for 1 person, which is 5%. And then 5% on themselves, but we can count that as part of DNC's personal DPS.
Sure DNC gets a bit more thanks to Technical Finish too, but their personal DPS is also lower than a BRD as BRD is sitting in between MCH and DNC in the balance of personal DPS and support DPS. So it makes a little more sense here.

That 1% can turn in 8% in an 8 man (or 7% if we count BRD's buff as part of their personal DPS) and 4% in a 4 man (or 3% if yada yada) but is only 1% solo. Tank DPS and healer DPS will be lower, but it all adds up. So in this respect it adds a little more than Standard Finish to the overall party DPS if 8 man, but less if a 4 man.

The problem is, they have to be careful with BRD balance, because it doesn't need high DPS & still have utility, because it'd step on MCH's toes again. And it doesn't need too much utility to avoid one-upping DNC because their DPS is higher. Sure if they nerf BRD's DPS more in favour of stronger buffs, DNC can be the one in the middle, but people will be unhappy that BRD personal DPS is too low. As I understand it, there's 2 schools of thought when it comes to BRD, those who favour it as a bow DPS hitting stuff and those who favour it as a support DPS class. So IMO it kinda makes sense to sit in the middle. With MCH leaning more towards selfish DPS and DNC leaning more towards support DPS in terms of balance.

However, the return of the buffs has re-interested me in levelling BRD more, because I like the idea of support DPS. And actually I feel the job still plays well and flows really nice IMO.

If BRD end up finding themselves in a bad place on the rDPS table, then I definitely see argument for adjustment. However, I'd argue that the buffs contribute more than they sound just be looking at the description.

[pandabearcat]

I don't understand the fetish for "support" dps. DPS is dps. Either more of your damage is from rdps or more from adps, that's fine.

We don't need to waffle about on the "1% can be X" or "it has 100% uptime". It does not have 100% uptime. Anytime the group spreads it is not 100% uptime.

And with 100% uptime, you can easily see that the avg raid dps is like 80-90k. Which means we don't need to guess at the damage increase, it is literally 800rdps or so at the top end.

Contrast with DNC's roughly 1500rdps, and you can see where their numbers need to be to make up the difference.