"Serious" Bard 6.0 predicted/suggested kit

[Cetonis]

(sorry for the spam-ness, it seemed best to break it up like this -.-')

The "serious" is to mean that I'm hoping to keep within the bounds of what SE might be willing to do, or is likely to do based on past patterns. No sense soapboxing over things that are clearly never going to happen. With any luck, half of this is predicting stuff SE is already looking at doing.

And "serious" in that - while SE would never implement a forum-posted list verbatim obviously - if theoretically all of this did happen, I think it'd be at least somewhat well-received by veterans, while also taking a lot of measures to make the job more newbie-friendly.

This is going to be very long. Proper explanations felt appropriate. It is hopefully skimmable.

Credibility: I've been playing and theorycrafting for Bard for a long time. I'm also a Bard mentor on the Balance, and in that capacity have seen lots of questions and gone over quite a few logs of Bard players looking to improve. So I have at least some knowledge of common struggle points for people learning the job.

I'm going to try to stay thin on exact details i.e. potency values or such, because for the most part they don't realllly matter compared to the general thrust of the ideas here. Plus, typing out hypothetical Muse tooltips is a great way to make people run for the hills. This is beyond long enough as it is.

[Cetonis]

Big-picture goals:

:: Solve the two glaring QoL problems in the kit right now.

The first, of course, is Bloodletter vs. Empyreal Arrow in Mage's Ballad. Nothing much to say, it's an obvious design flaw that anyone who plays 68+ Bard for 5 minutes will notice. And the more you dig into the detailed decision tree, the uglier it gets. Newer Bards regularly lose 150-300 potency per cycle due to this, and even veterans get stung on a regular basis.

The second is the fact that Pitch Perfect stacks expire, and PP becomes unusable at the end of WM. This wasn't too big of an issue in 4.x, but with EA timing becoming stricter, and Army's Muse moving the GCD around, it's now all too easy now to get logjams in the last couple seconds of WM - resulting in either wasting stacks, ghosting PP, or leaving WM extra-early. It's a lot of lose-lose that isn't fun or interesting for anybody, and newer bards lose-more more often.


:: Regain some of the feel of Stormblood Bard

The gutting of Bard from Stormblood from Shadowbringers was at least partially on purpose, but there's no denying how poorly it's been received. Bard went from being the most popular dps in the game, to the second-least popular, ahead of only (the getting reworked for good reason) Monk.

SE needs to realize that the reason Bard was popular was not just "people like running around". Sure, that's what you'll hear from people who just started leveling it, but that novelty wears off long before level cap.

For those who still played the job a lot at cap, many of them liked the feeling of actively supporting the group. They also liked things like buff snapshotting, some of the other flexibility in the kit, and so on. While of course we cannot and should not just fully revert to 4.x, there should be an effort to replace some of the lost dynamics, in ways more in line with modern design.


:: Mind the skill gap

SE saw Bard's skill gap as a big concern heading into 5.0, which is part of the reason the job was stripped down. While no sensible person could believe that it's still a problem today, SE is surely going to be reluctant to introduce things that lesser players are going to mess up badly.

That said, it is also true that what little skill gap does exist right now, is mainly due to the two big QoL problems and how well players manage those. Needless to say, "skill is defined by working around design flaws" is not the healthiest dynamic, but that's where the job is at right now.

Presuming those get fixed, SE should feel safe to add a little bit of player agency back in return - so long as it's intentional, and fairly clear to novice players that it's something on the table. But I think it's best to be conservative in our expectations here. As much as I and others might want a super interesting job rife with planning and decision points, that just isn't something SE is comfortable with having around.


:: Move Bard onto a 2-minute (or 2m-adjacent) cycle

This is part prediction, part suggestion. With 11 jobs aligning into a 1m/2m cycle, and only 4-ish that are still on 90s-type cycles, it stands to reason that SE might just throw up the white flag on differentiation here, and move everything into the 1m/2m club. Monk is already set for a rework, and it's not like the 90s tank spam-mode buttons have some critical need to work on the exact timers they do, so it would not be a big stretch for SE to make this happen.


Other expectations:

:: We will 99.9% be getting a single-target version of Apex Arrow.

It's clockwork at this point, when SE adds a gauge like this, they make an AoE spender and a single target spender. I also suspect that Soul Voice trait will be getting a Soul Voice II of some kind. That's less certain, but the fact that they made a Soul Voice trait reminds me of i.e. Kenki and Ninki traits.


:: There will probably be Muse effects for WM and MB.

Enhanced Army's Paeon is a really wacky and convoluted thing to have just show up out of nowhere, so I figure it's most likely a part of a longer term plan to have a muse for each song come 6.0.

[Cetonis]

Changes to the existing kit


:: (Important) Bloodletter should have 2 charges.

This would more or less solve the first big QoL issue, and Bards have been asking for this literally since 2.x. It's such an obvious need that one can only assume that it was technical hurdles that prevented this from happening in 5.0; but even if so, it's well worth the effort to resolve them.

At the latest, such a trait could be added at level 68, when it becomes most needed. But, putting it really early on would make low level Mage's Ballad feel a lot better. Low level Bard tends to drive people away, so that could be wise. Note though that MB with a charged BL would be very close in power (slightly better, even) to WM at the 20% proc rate, so that could dissuade SE.


:: (Valuable) Put Enhanced Wanderer's Minuet (Wanderer's Muse) into the level 58 gap, instead of post-80.

I don't know exactly how it will work, but we can only assume that Wanderer's Muse will allow for Pitch Perfect to be used a little while after WM ends, which would take care of the second big QoL issue very cleanly. There will probably be some net potency gain attached somehow as well, similar to Army's Muse.

This may be a reach, but if they drop it in at level 58, it'd solve the QoL problem soon after it appears, instead of waiting 30+ levels to do so. And, it'd cement WM ahead of MB, so adding BL charges earlier on would be more comfortable.

As an aside, one of the more frequent mistakes is that a lot of players are loathe to leave WM or MB a second early when needed, and wind up piling 1-2s song gaps into a hefty overall songless time. I don't know if there's any real design fix for that (maybe there's a UI one), but well-built Muses could help a little on that front I'd think.


:: (Valuable) Remove the current passive song buffs

These simply aren't a good design. The goal of support skills should be to make the player feel good about helping their party. The song buffs just don't. They're automatic, never asking the player to engage with them in any way. And because they're omnipresent, they're too small for anyone to notice or care. It's best for these to be replaced with forms of damage support that have more gameplay value and/or impact.


:: (Valuable) Rework Battle Voice

Speaking of which, Battle Voice ought to be more than a press-once-every-3m button.

That doesn't necessarily mean buffing it, though absent the passive buff it likely could be. The main goal should be to make it more frequent and/or more flexible - so long as it still feels potent, the sense of "supporting the party" would be bolstered by having the player engage with that support more often.

A maybe-too-ambitious pet idea of mine would be to have BV usable once per song, and it'd activate a party buff from that song for 15s. By only being up half the time (and also replacing existing BV), this buff could be more impactful than the current passives, in the 2.5-3% range or so. It'd be a similar gameplay dynamic as AST, so maybe if that's an acceptable system for SE, then it'd be fine here too.

That's but one example though, there are lots of ways to go about this. However it's done, the main point is that I think it'd help players' impressions of the job a lot if BV was somehow made into more of a premier, standout presence. Not just some token variation of a skill that half the other jobs have.

But whatever a new BV is, clearly people won't ever stop asking for it to affect ourselves. It's really not necessary at all, but SE might as well just give in. Given a move to a 2m-type cycle, I'd imagine most BV rework options would be amenable to affecting-self, without having to worry about people getting tripped up by misalignment.


:: (Valuable) Add around +50 potency to Stormbite, Caustic Bite and Iron Jaws, as part of Bite Mastery II

This would shore up a key weakness of Bard's kit, that being their damage output against fresh targets, i.e. low HP adds etc.

Narrowing the gap between Iron Jaws and Burst Shot will make snapshotting slightly more relevant, though still a far cry from Stormblood. It would also mean that newbies who over-spam Iron Jaws, or that drop DoTs often, will be punished less for that. All good things! There's no reason not to do this, and it's stunning that SE hasn't already.


:: (Valuable) Give Empyreal Arrow 2 charges

The main reason to do this would be to help newer Bards out - one of the more common places they lose damage is simply by not being on top of EA. Veterans would enjoy storing up charges for this or that, and it'd help Bard recover from long downtimes better than it currently does, so there are those benefits too. BL charges are much more important, but EA would be very nice as well.


:: (Important) Make Barrage only affect Straight Shot and Refulgent Arrow

This needs to happen if the single-target Apex is going to be a GCD. Or if SE wants to ever be able to do anything GCD-wise that's bigger than Refulgent Arrow.

Plus, there's no reason not to - Barrage'ing anything else is a mistake anyway, just a newbie trap really (newbies also get confused about what can and can't be Barrage'd all the time). It wouldn't be that weird either, it's kind of natural that Barrage should be restricted to the skills it's now proccing.


:: (Valuable, possibly Important) Make Army's Muse 15 seconds

This is a big deal if there is no plan for a Wanderer's Muse, or if for some reason it doesn't allow post-WM PPs to be used. Making Army's Muse 15 seconds will allow players to consistently get 7 GCDs under Muse, which slides the GCD timer by a more workable 2.1 seconds instead of 1.2s or 1.5s, making the end of WM less dicey.

But even if a new Wanderer's Muse trait helps with that particular concern, it'd still be nice to put everyone on even footing with 7 Muse GCDs and 9 Raging GCDs. Current Army's Muse punishes players with -1 GCD of one or both if they don't do the late-window WM - or if they have non-trivial ping and dare to double weave.


:: (Optional) Reduce the cooldown of Nature's Minne to 60s

This may be less of an issue with a fourth healer in the mix, but in its current state Minne has this sort of depressing issue where it gets tied to a Scholar's Deployment Tactics, leaving no real room for honest single-target usages unless deploys are more than 3m apart. A 60s cooldown would allow it that space much more often, since deploys that are > 2m apart are naturally a lot more common.


:: (Optional) Increase the original proc rate to 30%.

While it's fair for SE to worry about people being overwhelmed by too many procs early on, newer Bards currently tend to be very underwhelmed, and find the job slow and rather boring. I've seen people ask if something is bugged or broken on numerous occasions, because the kit just doesn't make sense when procs are that rare.


:: (Optional) Make Straight Shot bigger

Straight Shot only being 20 potency more than Heavy Shot is just... weird? And makes that 20% proc rate you get very early on just feel kind of sad. I see no reason not to make it 220p or 240p or something, make lowbie archers feel better about things.


:: (Optional) Combine Leg Graze and Foot Graze

Just an easy way to save a button; I can't think of a single reason we can't have one or the other just do both bind+heavy. It'll still be hyper niche but at least it'd be cooler? (maybe even revive Shadowbind as a role action that does this?)

[Cetonis]

Post-80 additions

These are more or less in the order that I'd expect them to appear (82/84/86/88/90), though obviously they could be moved around any which way, including stacking a couple on the same level even.


:: A fourth super-song on a 110s cooldown. (Ideally carrying a large party buff)

This is how we get to a 120s-type model, albeit in the vein of RDM and some others where we can go 110s where called for. Typically you'd use the new song - we'll just call it Foe Requiem as a "placeholder" - and then the three basic songs, and then FR again, and so on. It would just-work quite cleanly, with a couple added benefits.


First, it would become possible to re-arrange those 80s song in between FRs to some degree. And, in longer phases / fights, the AP interaction on a 110s song would make it 92s, leading to additional sequencing options. It wouldn't always (or even often) be a good idea to vary from the basic cycle, but veteran Bards have wanted more song flexibility since the outset. And unlike most current "optimizations", it would be obvious to any new Bard that such decisions are available.

Secondly, it would reduce the death penalty, as unless you're on the fourth song in the first cycle, there would always be a song available when you get back up. Along similar lines, newbie mistakes on song timings would be more immediately recoverable, instead of leaving them songless.


As for the song's effect, it doesn't strictly have to, but I like the idea of a having it grant a significant party buff of some kind to really drive home "best song" status. There'd still need to be a direct damage element though, to bring it at least up to WM/MB power levels and avoid dumb selfish approaches.

Obviously there's any number of ways to do both of those things, but in pet-idea land, given my pet idea for BV, Foe could simply have a stronger BV effect. As for direct damage, while a little boring, I think bonus Soul Gauge on procs (i.e. 20-25 instead of 5) makes a lot of sense overall (given certain other of these ideas occurring, anyway).


:: A trait changing Raging Strikes and Barrage to 55s cooldowns

Simply enough, this would be needed to complete the conversion into a 110/120s kit. May or may not include Sidewinder here.


:: A new healing cooldown to compete with Curing Waltz

(Machinist should get one too!) Curing Waltz is a sneaky big deal that sets Dancer's defensive utility well ahead of Bard - Minne doesn't even begin to compete. There's no good reason why the other ranged shouldn't have some equivalent.

Bards have wanted a regen song since forever, so perhaps now is the time - if Waltz and Phoenix are okay, surely this would be fine. It could afford to be a tad better than Phoenix, probably, i.e. 100-150p for 30s on a 120s or 150s cooldown, something like that. Then I figure Machinist could maybe get a big single target heal cooldown, like a first aid / medkit type of concept or similar.


:: Enhanced Mage's Ballad

No idea of what Mage's Muse could possibly do, but we can assume it will exist, and will have some relation to Bloodletter / Rain of Death. Maybe it makes the next one deal more damage? Or adds a proc chance to weaponskills for a bit or something. Anyway, it probably won't be too exciting, it'll just be a thing.


:: Single-target Apex Arrow + Soul Voice II

With the Barrage tweak above, this would be free to just be a super lame, max 1000 or 1200 or something, single-target carbon copy of the Apex Arrow we have now. Which, let's be honest, is by far the most likely thing for SE to do.

However, I think there's a good chance we also get faster gauge generation to go along with it, and that would be welcome. I'd be surprised if they want to tie any further power to multi-DoT'ing, so I'd expect this to instead do something like 5 gauge upon using a weaponskill, or maybe a larger amount upon using one of the four songs, etc. Anything like that would reduce the randomness of the gauge as well.

[Cetonis]

Outcomes

If everything besides the "optional" bits here were to be done, the resulting kit would:

:: Resolve the two major QoL problems

:: Move Bard onto a timing structure that synergizes with the rest of the jobs

:: Add a song cycle flexibility that should be obvious enough to be an acceptable decision point

:: Get players engaged with the support aspects of the kit a little more frequently, and more impactfully

:: Give DoT snapshotting a little more room to be relevant, without being a major factor

:: Make the Soul Gauge less tacked-on, and more completely filling the GCD void left by old Straight Shot

:: Limit button bloat to +2 to +4, depending on details. Same for new animations.

:: Aid skill floor performance by reducing the damage lost for: dropping dots, dying, botching the song cycle, losing track of EA, using Iron Jaws too much, timing Barrage poorly, and mis-managing Army's Muse.



Overall, it's not my "dream" kit of course. It won't be anybody's dream kit. Nothing realistic would be, frankly. But, I think this would be a large step forward for helping less familiar or lower skill players manage, another large step forward for everyone in terms of QoL, and at least a half-step forward for flavor hawks and for optimizers.

Discussion is of course welcome But let's try to stay within the scope of reality here. A radical rework is very unlikely to be on the table (that honor goes to Summoner this time, most likely), stuff that would require ten new animations isn't happening, etc. Still, there's a lot of good that can be done within the confines of reasonable expectations.

Extra curious what else people think a fourth 110s song might / could do. Adding one would make a whole lot of sense for the reasons outlined, but it's a tricky space to come up with something that would justify a longer cooldown and also isn't too much like the existing songs.

Similarly, there's quite a few forms a reworked BV could take, especially if it's allowed to carry the weight of the current (BV + song buffs). My pet idea here is a bit more ambitious than what I want to presume is likely, so I'm curious what some other ideas are.

[SweetPete]

Thank you for this. All I’ve wanted is for bard to have better support. I want to feel like I’m actually helping the team and not just being there. Good ideas and I’m totally behind them. Also your note on summoner rework yes please. I had to stop playing summoner because with high ping it’s just not as playable. It’s mostly the opener that’s bad. After that it’s smooth sailing. Just that crazy 2 minute opener on high ping is not good.

[VentVanitas]

Love this, this was clearly made by someone who understands not only BRD's flaws, but the flaws behind SE's job design philosophy in Shadowbringers. Well done and good post! I won't pretend to be a Bard expert but it doesn't take one to imagine how these suggestions make the class less punishing for simply existing and I'd be lying if I said that the idea of a fourth support orientated song didn't interest me. While I agree that making it the phase to build Soul Voice is the safest choice, it'd still need something to preoccupy the player with so they're not just hitting Burst Shot for god knows how long.

Long shot, but maybe whilst the fourth song is active, the three other songs become available temporarily as different versions of themselves. Shorter duration and cooldown (less than 10 second duration so there's some leeway for weaving and all fit within 30 seconds reasonably. Also so that all three songs are available at the end of the fourth one so it doesn't disrupt the rotation), higher potency so damage isn't abysmal for the duration and their effects are replaced with stronger party buffs? (Shorter duration would justify stronger party buffs too) Makes it so Foe's Requiem essentially becomes the ultimate support song while incorporating the others in some fashion without making it a clustertruck combination. Just wanted to possibly rouse that idea though, like I said I won't pretend to be a BRD expert.

Minor note: the prediction that SE is going to include a single target version of Apex Arrow made me wince, because I know it's 100% going to happen and I hate it. They did it with Hissatsu: Guren, Forbidden Chakra, Bhavacakra, etc. and I won't be surprised if more and more skills just follow this rule. (e.g. Confiteor, Blasting Zone, Elixir Field) I don't agree with this direction either, not everything needs to have an AoE or single target equivalent because I think it just wastes space and potential for more creative skills, especially for a newly implemented gauge like Soul Voice. Though this is just my conjecture and I probably sound insane for blowing it out of proportion, but I like to think it's most evident of how SE thinks of job design these days and it's important to note that. (Master thread detailing and criticizing the dev team's general job design philosophy anyone?)

[Jirah]

God i live for these job break downs, responding shortly ...

[Jirah]

God i live for these job break downs, responding shortly ...

so far so sound (pun intended) Im a little upset you didnt have any way to de-homogenize Troubadour as a glorified ranged role action, or have any notable suggestion for Wardens Paean. but ill give my 2 cents on what you did discuss.

EA having charges bothers me abit. Makes sense for the likes for support or healing but for a attack where its only use as a backup if you somehow avoid it or die is far too kind and a tiny bit defeatist. Holding off on a potency resource like EA is odd unless EA itself resets somehow which can work on paper but Im gonna avoid getting too deep into this topic

After mentioning Barrage barraged other skills, Barrage is a dead weight skill, super useful yes but on principle skills where its only purpose is to have it pared up with only 1 skill isn't ideal especially with skill clutter. Simple solution have it be used on different occasions such as have another skill worth barraging, or delete it and morph it onto another skill example being MCH lost rapid fire but it was morphed onto overheat because their was no other way to utilize it (ironic example as most of MCH kit never utilizes it so its a downgrade but i dont wanna digress the topic with my MCH hate). The closest thing is raging strikes, have it proc barrage ready ezpz fix along with unable to barrage anything else.

Controversial move removing the buffs for the songs, and it makes perfect sense as its too automatic and routine and a nightmare with multiple bards to not override eachother. and most of all feels loose that 1% crit rate buff feels hollow. With Dancer showing off its stuff, its best to not double dip we dont need the support being too identical whatever the alternatives are for support but somehting MUST be compensated for the support loose.

Also not that i disagree with your remark on MCH support (Hell ill take anything to make MCH more fun and less of a unintutive bore) but the devs show zero signs on making MCH support so the healing options are for naught sadly, which imo all ranged should have some form of support to compensate with absolute free reign which is one of the reasons ranged isnt very fulfilling to dps besides BRD hence why im here.

besides the confusion on that 4th song setup, All and All lovely ideas

[Cetonis]

To pull one thing from replies at a time for now -

any notable suggestion for Wardens Paean

I actually think the real answer here is to just have more cleanse-able debuffs in fight design.

There's lots of room to use white-bar debuffs as a punishment for mechanic failures, first of all. I don't think we've seen this in challenge content since... O3S? And nobody was mad about O3S.

Imagine, for example, if instead of a vuln up, getting hit by Strike Spark applied a cleanse-able burn DoT. Like a vuln up, it's a penalty that ultimately lands on the healers' shoulders, and isn't too big of a deal if one person has an oops. But unlike a vuln up, you could never just have the whole party absorb it.

Or, think about the Maelstroms in E3S. These were almost certainly nerfed at some point in development, because they're just way too laughably easy to belong in a third Savage fight. Whatever that nerf was, mayhaps they could have instead considered making the heavy cleanse-able, like it is in normal.

So while SE coulllld rework Warden's, I think there are plenty of non-WP reasons to have more white-bar debuffs in the game, and in turn make WP feel a little less niche.