The Atrocious Changes to Bard in Endwalker and the future

[HappyHubris]

[Warning] Crazy Talk:

Can we give Venomous/Caustic Bite and Wind/Stormbite a reason to exist besides "maintain per 45s for slight bonus damage in ST if the enemy will live longer than 13.7|17 seconds"?

No, because this is an incremental step to killing these DoTs in 7.0.

[aveyond-dreams]

And nothing of value would be lost. Bard in it's current state is an Arcane Ranger. Yeet the dots and buff the songs.

[Connor]

I’ve only reached level 82 so not exactly seeing the full BRD picture yet, but it feels so…stale? For want of a better word. It’s easily the class that requires the least amount of brainpower.

Your DoTs aren’t really use worth using outside single target, and even then you put them up once and forget about them until four years later it’s time to refresh with Iron Jaws. With less need for DoT maintenance / usage it ends up regressing to just spamming Burst Shot until something procs.

Radiant Finale is a nice addition to give Bards more of a way to support the party, but it feels way too little, way too late. I mean, until level 90 all we have to help are…Paean and Minne? Battle Voice I guess, but since that affects us it now it may as well be a personal dps cool-down. Removable status ailments barely exist, and pretty much every healer has at least 2 abilities with the same effect as Minne anyway (increase healing done) so it’s kind of pointless unless you really want to make your healers overheal. If they don’t want us to be entirely focused on pure personal dps and DoT management then that’s fine, but at least give us something worthwhile to do instead.

The new AoE ‘rotation’ is fun, Ladonsbite looks really awesome and getting to use Shadowbite more is always good. But, because we have no DoTs in AoE anymore, and no way to meaningfully support the party that’s not purely passive, again devolves into hitting the same (admittedly cool looking) ability, over and over and over while you wait for procs.

I want to hope that they’ve stripped so much from Bard because it’s finally going to get the rework it deserves next expansion. They really need to take it back to drawing board and just rethink the class as a whole, like they did with Summoner. I’m not holding my breath though, and even if it was true it does nothing to address the issues it currently has. It feels like SE is sending Bards the exact same message as they did last expansion.
“Bards are not allowed to be support oriented, you’re not allowed to be dps oriented, you’re not allowed a complicated dps kit but you’re also not allowed any active support skills. Enjoy your Burst Shots”

[KDSilver]

Speaking of DOTs, my only contrary opinion on the subject is that "snapshotting" is a poor mechanic

It's not a poor mechanic.
But most of its fun died in SB when BRD abandonned crit reliance

[ExcogEnjoyer]

The songs are boring as shit and do nothing, yeet the songs and buffs the dots

[Shurrikhan]

And nothing of value would be lost. Bard in it's current state is an Arcane Ranger. Yeet the dots and buff the songs.

I could do with or without the DoTs. I just want more to press than just Filler! or My-Filler-Procced! and for those buttons to have more than a single or shallow interaction(s).

[Easayia]

No Bard does not need a sumn treatment most sumn mains I talked to feel like its now over simplified AF and way to easy and the ifrit phase also appearently doesnt fit in with the other 2.

Im not understanding the Bard issues the only song I really feel the hit of not double proccing is Wanders at the end and peon. Mages ballad still feels plenty busy burst > bloodletter> burst > bloodletter >refultgent > bloodletter > burst > empyreil when things dont proc IDK Im not feeling the hit as everyone is saying. Peon I have been using as a time to refill my blood letter charges SO Ive been only burst shotting, REfulgent, and emperial during that I then pop my burst phase with wanders and I have plenty to use and any time I need filler because I have no procs I use burst > bloodletter or throw in a refulgent if that procced. but once im out of the blood letter charges and nothing is proccing ya it feels slow again until I get back into Mages then it picks up again a bit.

AOE wise for dungeons though and adds I like the new way of no dotting every mob and just using ladon bite > rain of death > ladon bite > shadowbite > rain of death > ladon bite > rain of death hit 80 gauge apex > blasting back into the ladon > rain of daeath occational shadow bite. I personally feel it feels fine like that and shadow bite now having more uses and blast arrow being a thing keeps it interesting and instead of dotting mobs during a pull Im spamming aoe which just feels better.

So weak parts of bard I would say is Armies using it how I use it feels super slow but you get more action when in wanders minuet. So maybe give our weak song more to do please?

I think the proc rate at 80% might be to low on the songs maybe we bump it up to 85 maybe even 90% if we are going to use this as a dot replacement so its a bit more busy at least on wanders since that is where the issue lies wanders. Armies peon has always been slow so Im not against keeping it slow but I also wouldnt mind making it more interesting. especially since now the song time increased!

[Easayia]

I think dots can be yeeted next expansion if they make the songs either themselves double proc or increase the rate which you get proccs to a nice spot. Bottom line is removing the dot upkeep opens up 2 new skill spots and SE knows this. However they could also just add stronger dots with new animations for next expansion thats strictly just more damaage. The problem is as a bow as a weapon dots simply make since poison arrow is pretty common for bows classes in mmos

[aveyond-dreams]

No Bard does not need a sumn treatment most sumn mains I talked to feel like its now over simplified AF and way to easy and the ifrit phase also appearently doesnt fit in with the other 2.

New SMN main here, I like the class without the dot nonsense thank you very much. Bard should be a bard just like how Summoner should have always been a Summoner. Let the songs be stances or buffs/debuffs or do literally *something* because as it stands now the ranger/archer people would be better off with a class that uses a crossbow where they can effectively focus on stuff like poison arrows etc. I would even play that class too alongside a real Bard. But with the current state of the job, Bard is the last ranged job I'd recommend to anyone.

[Shurrikhan]

Personally, I'd love to see the DoTs remain but in such a way that the DoT maintenance component of their use/play is mostly an after-thought compared to what else those skills provide.

To be clear, what I like about DoTs isn't that I need to track them, as that only matters to me if there are actual preemptive and consequential decisions to be made around their upkeep (as on Monk or HW Ninja, etc.), but rather because DoTs act as soft CDs with further use available up to n targets (with n being the point at which their use is fully eclipsed by AoE). Such helps to keep varying situations more interesting and offers a sort of investment gamble ("Will the targets live long enough or the DoT provide enough over X seconds of Y enemies alive to exceed the value of simply AoEing?").

That said, I'd also be fine with our DoTs (or rather, the sense of variance, investment, or the up to nearly a third --per ARR-- of our ST GCDs that DoTs have historically provided) being on a shared CD system for choiceful ammo usage as to manipulate synergetic additional effects, so long as there was still some sense of variance grantable to our proc rates based on our actions (not just singing any song with what would later happen to be more enemies in range).


To be fair, though, I also think the gameplay effects of the songs is painfully underwhelming. There's a ton more gameplay variance we could pick up there, too.