The Atrocious Changes to Bard in Endwalker and the future

[Easayia]

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Well I agree that aoeing mobs feels wierd at first give it more time. Now that I have finished the expansion with Bard I really feel like it plays much better and the whole no way to refresh all your dots when mobbing has kind of been adressed.

MB is not worse then armies Peon it still works the same and you still can dot up the mobs for extra damage I do it during the pulls still out of habbit from before. But what you should have been doing before with your AOE mobbing was dot up mobs then rain of death > quicknock repeating using shadowbite when its up to hit as many mobs that have the dots as possible and of course APEX arrow to help clear when you have enough charge. Now its basically the same just your Dots are now single target focus only and applying them is just extra damage instead but your combo remained the same rain of death > ladons bite ( new quick nock) occasionally ladons bite will trigger shadow bite when that happens you use shadowbite > rain of death > ladons bite. You also like you said can now use barrage to buff the shadowbite. Armies peon feels the same as before just spam ladons bite with occasional rain of death and on top of that now you have APex arrow into Blast arrow so even more clear. on top of that you could also use the codas 2% damage up buff and Battlevoice since that now also buffs the bard.

Bard has not really changed outside of the way we aoe being a bit different and the job now has more to work with. The main thing that happened to Bard is they simplified the dots to one location but the dots still have a purpose damage and a chance to proc refulgent arrow which you want happening. our burst window is now fully lined up with all our skills including the new ones and every time you do a rotation you have Battlevoice up again which it all just feels super good to play. Shadow Bringers Bard played almost identical just had less abilities to use in the burst window.

Now Bards opener is raging strikes >dot 1 > bloodletter > Wanders >dot 2 > Battlevoice > Coda (even if you have 1 charge this will be back up for the next burst window so just take the 2% ) > Refulgent ( if you got it) > Barrage > refulgent > apex arrow > sidewinder > Blast arrow >then you just use what you have available as you normally would and rotate between the songs using what you have available and making sure to refresh the dots towards the end of each song. Mages ballad is still just the same as before weaving between burst shot > bloodletter occasional refulgent and empyreal arrow. The only thing I do recommend now is during Peon save up your 3 bloodletters so you have them for the burst window. Wanders > raging strikes > refresh dots > Battlevoice > coda > same as before.

Bard is the same Job as it was before they just added to it and changed where the tick is but the % chance is high enough it feels the same.

[ExcMiddle]

[...]MB is not worse then armies Peon it still works the same and you still can dot up the mobs for extra damage I do it during the pulls still out of habbit from before. But what you should have been doing before with your AOE mobbing was dot up mobs [...]
Bard has not really changed outside of the way we aoe being a bit different and the job now has more to work with. [...]
Now Bards opener is [...] Mages ballad is still just the same as before weaving between burst shot > bloodletter occasional refulgent and empyreal arrow. The only thing I do recommend now is during Peon save up your 3 bloodletters so [...]
Bard is the same Job as it was before they just added to it and changed where the tick is but the % chance is high enough it feels the same.

A few clarifications:
I was referring to single target. Right now, Mages ballad is actually worse dps for single target situations than AP (full duration of each). And it makes sense with how it was nerfed. The charges only matter in the opener/reopener, (not quite true, you can hold onto 1.5-2 charges in MB for trick attack/ cards but that is a requirement) which yes it looks busy and yours is unlikely to be the one used. People are still discussing with other mains on when they would want each buff etc. Also you should open with WM first (since first proc is at 43 secs so might as well get that early. I cannot speak about proc alignment.) and on single target follow a song duration of 43 34 43 (on WM, MB, AP). (the tentative opener I have seen is SB> WM, RS > CB > EA, BL> GCD> BL/PP, BV> GCD > RF, BL/PP>...)
Is it bad to wish for MB (and AP) to be busy? To want the charges to have a proper reason to exist? To have a rotation that goes beyond the opener and reopener of it? You used to adjust to a lot of things for slight dps gains as bard and now it looks very much on rails.

On the dots: if they removed the dots on Summoner, they should do the same on brd. On healers, the dot is a movement tool, on samurai, it is a timer for your rotation. On bard you have 3 buttons that don't offer anything in terms of gameplay right now. You either remove them or you have them be useful in some way. These are just half measures but I don't know what their plans are and how they treat the X.0 releases in terms of what they change.

I do understand that there is obscurity in the dot mechanic, tracking who are dotted and when they proc but you know, they could instead fix it via UI adjustments (debuffs on enmity list, proper debuff listing on focus target, an element to track when the dmg will be dealt on a given enemy.

Finally, I do agree that lower level content is way better now but they could have achieved that with changing the proc rate on the dots as well. Either way, it shows that they want to improve on the leveling experience of the job and it's less of a testament to the current proc itteration.

[Easayia]

A few clarifications:
I was referring to single target. Right now, Mages ballad is actually worse dps for single target situations than AP (full duration of each). And it makes sense with how it was nerfed.

Even single target it would make no sense why your mages ballad is weaker then Peon. I weave bloodletter burst shot the same as before where in peon you can only fire off basically whats off cooldown thats not skills you want in your reopener/ opener. There is no way Peon that is only giving you the haste as a song is making you do more then in Mages unless numbers are not tuned right currently.

[ExcMiddle]

Even single target it would make no sense why your mages ballad is weaker then Peon. I weave bloodletter burst shot the same as before where in peon you can only fire off basically whats off cooldown thats not skills you want in your reopener/ opener. There is no way Peon that is only giving you the haste as a song is making you do more then in Mages unless numbers are not tuned right currently.

Let me do some potentially bad AP math (because idk how the game counts the cooldown reduction as) and proper MB math:

Counting procs from after 34 (until 43 since you don't get a proc at 45), you have a max of 4 procs you can get (1 from EA). This makes an average of 3*0.8 + 1 = 3.4 procs. So 3.4/2= 1.7 bloodletters * 110 = 187 potency on average.
AP gives 16% gcd reduction and autoattack cooldown reduction at 4 stacks (which you should have by 34 seconds in it). This puts you your gcd ahead by 0.685 seconds and your autoattack by 0.57 seconds. I am assuming here gcd of 2.5 and autoattack delay of 3 seconds respectively (gets better with lower numbers but we don't put too much sks on brd regardless). Assuming avg gcd potency of 241 and autoattack potency of 80 (I know that's the number people were using for shb due to the trait not buffing autoattack dmg), you average at 210.9 potency.
Idk how bad my AP calculations are but I have heard similar quotes and that even with the buff difference between the two, MB is expected to be 1-2 potency worse per second as a worst case (that full stacked AP). I don't have the numbers they do to make such a calculation so I cannot comfirm that.

But MB was not that much higher in dmg than AP before. These changes just tipped it under it.

Overall minor grievance since they will probably fix that in 6.01.

Personally I wanted the charges to at least mean that MB would have been busier than before. And of course there were the minor questions on whether MB will be the better opener on media tour bard, which was easilly rebuttled by the fact that you don't have the weave spots to be efficient with it.
As I had said in my first post, ShB bard is a job about planning your weave real estate. Currently, there is nothing to worry about during MB (I was personally feeling that it could easily become a boring song and I didn't want 3 stacks of BL even with procs on dots and full procs). Opener looks nice but WM looks way more relaxed afterwards. Apex& Blast looked interesting to optimise in media tour since you would be adjusting their use timings and planning based on kill times etc using the media tour build info, now they are a different 1-2 combo you use on reopener. RF looked like something you would optimise for, now you are kind of forced to have all the codas so it kind of has a long description for no particular reason. To me it looks like they took what bard has to offer as a job and they stripped off all the adjustments you would be making in a heat of rush.