Quote Originally Posted by Easayia View Post
[...]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.