Quote Originally Posted by Rymi64 View Post
It really wasn't, it added something else to focus on and optimize. Plus ya don't need to be moving the whole time in a battle for no reason and can take it off to get your mobility back, and when you can stand still again you just put it back on.
That's... no, that's not how it worked. The optimization levers for HW Bard were not about turning WM off, that only happened in certain cases where you could briefly cheese in an auto after downtime. If you needed to move for an extended time, you spammed Feint. Machinist could toggle their caster stance off at times though.

The optimization of HW Bard was largely based on having a pile of different self-buffs, on top of DoTs lasting 18s, procs being crit based, and a very small potency gap between IJ and filler GCDs - the result of all this being that there was a ton of snapshot and buff alignment optimization to do. Mobility stuff like holding SS procs or Feint in spots existed, but was secondary.


Anyway, talking about HW nostalgia is largely pointless. There is absolutely no way SE is putting cast times back on ranged, it's a waste of time to argue about it.

However, there is a broader point to make here - while the core DoTs-and-procs setup of Bard's kit is very good and people enjoy it, it can't be the [I]entire job[I]. It's fun and has plenty of fans, but it doesn't make you feel "rewarded", so much as it feels like getting punished for messing up. (Compare to i.e. Samurai sticker collection, dancer mini-games and huge bursts, etc.)

That's ShB Bard's biggest issue in a nutshell; it's basically the same issue Monk has had for ages. A good core that nonetheless needs some well-designed extra layer on top that give players something to feel good about. In HW it was the buff bonanza, in SB it was a wide collection of things. In ShB that space is just empty. SE needs to find a way to fill it in EW.