The Atrocious Changes to Bard in Endwalker and the future

[Easayia]

I have played Bard since 1.0 as my main. This is the worst bard has ever been. It went from being smooth with flow, and some excitement, to a really clunky AOE based rotation that doesn't even feel good in the first place. I don't really care about damage, I care about how it feels and how the skills interact with each other. Bloodletter feels horrific with the half charge, I feel like I have to save it up for Radiant Finale, which is a cool move that doesn't last long enough to discharge all banked moves. Sidewinder feels terrible now without interaction. Wind and Venomous bite are useless during the majority of dungeons and encounters now, where previously it was fun to balance them with your songs.

I am strongly considering changing classes because of how much I dislike this.

The AOE rotation is only clunky because of 2 things:

1. bloodletter/rain of death doesnt completely reset on a proc from the song

2. barrage doesn't immediately give you shadowbite the rng for this one makes it feel bad its fine if it has RNG just it shouldnt be RNG then barrage then shadowbite.....

overall I think what they are going for is better then the old rotation it just needs tweaks. Because now our rotation is 3 main skills instead of 2 and on top of that we have apex into a blast arrow.

I agree with bloodletter not fully resetting and its not mages I have an issue with at all as after each burst shot I basically always have a bloodletter. Its the longer Armies Paeon that feels bad because I feel the need to have to only use refulgent and emperial in order ot have the 3 starting bloodletter charges for my burst window so I have constant weaving.

Other then that though Bard plays the same its burst window now has more to it because of radiant and blast, and I like that the song continues to fill up soul gage even when the boss is doing something where you cannot target them. That is huge everything now lines up with our burst window. Saying Shadowbringers Bard is better I cant agree with even with the annoyances the fact everything lines up and the job is basically the same outside of AP being less busy it feels sooooo good to enter your burst window now even more so then before.

The dots are now single target only and I think that was a good move. While dotting all the mobs during a pull wasnt impossible to say it was a bit rediculous would be an understatement on top of that we never had a way to refresh all the dots at once durring very big pulls tabbing to each mob to use Iron jaws is not ideal. Rest of the jobs do the same as new bard in terms of what you do durring a pull its called you spam damage on the mobs as they move much simpler.

[Rika007]

I have played Bard since 1.0 as my main. This is the worst bard has ever been. It went from being smooth with flow, and some excitement, to a really clunky AOE based rotation that doesn't even feel good in the first place. I don't really care about damage, I care about how it feels and how the skills interact with each other. Bloodletter feels horrific with the half charge, I feel like I have to save it up for Radiant Finale, which is a cool move that doesn't last long enough to discharge all banked moves. Sidewinder feels terrible now without interaction. Wind and Venomous bite are useless during the majority of dungeons and encounters now, where previously it was fun to balance them with your songs.

I am strongly considering changing classes because of how much I dislike this.

Technically Bard didn't exist in 1.0 it only came later in the 1.x patches. Now that I got the snark out of the way I will counterbuff by saying that as a Bard since 2.0 main, the only time Bard has ever felt better then this was Stormblood. ARR bard was bland and frustrating, Heavensward Bard was just plain frustrating, and Shadowbringers Bard was easily the job at it's most braindead. I have no issue fitting every single bit of our abilities into our Radiant burst window, all 3 blood letters, Apex and Burst, Sidewinder, each and every buff and barrage refulgent. And thank got it's a heavy burst section, as I forgot the excitement of a well executed reopener after the tedium snore that was Shadowbringers bard. Blood letter only ever needs to be banked once you enter army's paeon, every other moment you can literally let it fly. And while Sidewinder yes does feel terrible without interaction, Sidewinder hasn't felt good or impactful since Heavensward, it's been a mediocre cooldown since day one.

Is there things I'd change? Yes. Army's Muse still sucks. Sidewinder I'd kick down to 30 second cooldown. I'd get full reset charges on Blood letter back. The class is by no means perfect and doesn't come close to the dream that was 4.0 Bard. But the pros massively outweigh the losses and I will take this Bard every day over the atrocity that was Shadowbringers Bard.

[Easayia]

Technically Bard didn't exist in 1.0 it only came later in the 1.x patches. Now that I got the snark out of the way I will counterbuff by saying that as a Bard since 2.0 main, the only time Bard has ever felt better then this was Stormblood. ARR bard was bland and frustrating, Heavensward Bard was just plain frustrating, and Shadowbringers Bard was easily the job at it's most braindead. I have no issue fitting every single bit of our abilities into our Radiant burst window, all 3 blood letters, Apex and Burst, Sidewinder, each and every buff and barrage refulgent. And thank got it's a heavy burst section, as I forgot the excitement of a well executed reopener after the tedium snore that was Shadowbringers bard. Blood letter only ever needs to be banked once you enter army's paeon, every other moment you can literally let it fly. And while Sidewinder yes does feel terrible without interaction, Sidewinder hasn't felt good or impactful since Heavensward, it's been a mediocre cooldown since day one.

Is there things I'd change? Yes. Army's Muse still sucks. Sidewinder I'd kick down to 30 second cooldown. I'd get full reset charges on Blood letter back. The class is by no means perfect and doesn't come close to the dream that was 4.0 Bard. But the pros massively outweigh the losses and I will take this Bard every day over the atrocity that was Shadowbringers Bard.

Yep current Bard while not perfect like you said needs bloodletter to completely reset. Additionally let barrage activate shadowbite its the same old issue refulgent had but now with our AOE rotation. Ive been doing the same thing as you stock up on Bloodletter charges durring armies peon and as a result you have so much weaving of skills durring that burst window which I also 100% can fit all the skills into the 15seconds of Finale.

[QT_Melon]

How do you feel Bard is on recovering?

By that I mean if there's a death. At this point I feel that it's really on the worst side of recovery over other jobs. I've seen other jobs with higher DPS sit on the floor and recover faster. I feel like if a death happens it really messes up things more with Bard.

That's not to say you should be dying - but deaths happen and in progression or new parties not necessarily the fault of the player. It feelsbadman when it does happen.

[Easayia]

The only thing I feel you lose as bard when you die is your soul gage so you are punished there but your main rotation stays the same. Getting up as a bard especially since you no longer have to dot everything again to get your rotation going feels about the same as in Shadowbringers. just not your not losing apex your also losing blast so it bit more punishing.

[Metricasc]

I'm gonna be honest, Endwalker BRD has god some solid changes that makes the class good. however as a BRD main since SB, the change to dot functionality (or the lack of) overall were super unnecessary and only served to make the kit overall less synergistic and to alienate people who has been playing the class for a long time.

to be quite frank, the fact that the current rotation is now holding your filler song (AP) to full duration simply because mage's ballard now only gives half a stack (kinda defeating the main reason why people wanted 3 bloodletters) is not fun.

the changes to repertoire while ok, and honestly something that should've been an 80+ trait but at a lower % rather than 80%, only made the class much less reactive as it was in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers and made it much more predictable, which honestly is kinda boring to play.

looking around at a few opinions. i don't think there was anyone that was asking to remove DoT functionality and for the repertoire changes.

also having different procs for both refulgant and current shadowbite is actually dumb especially since now barrage has the same issue for its AoE that it had in stormblood where it didnt proc straighter shot.

overall, i personally feel that this is kinda the worst iteration of the class since the days of Bow mage (which from what i've seen but not played) also had its own merits. and honestly the first version of the class where i actively hated taking to dungeons while levelling it (dotting 3-4 targets, using MB and spamming rain of death beats current AoE by a long shot)

how would i go for class changes?

1) consolidate shadowbite ready into straighter shot, and make the barrage triple hit extend to shadowbite, the fact that this wasn't done when they redid shadowbite is mystifying.

2) go back on the dot changes, make the dots have a total of 20-30% chance of making proc's and have the songs itself have a 50%-60% of procing itself after level say... 82, while this is lower than it was in SHB, it still would total to an 80% chance that you would at least get a proc while also regaining the dynamic element the class once had

3) make Mages ballard give 1 stack of bloodletter per proc up from half a stack, fixing its main rotation issue.

4) make sidewinder scale back on active DoT's again, while not changing much it helps gives the DoT's more reason to be there than just extra damage.

5) (while not nessasry but much helpful if happened) make Iron jaws or a new move that spreads the DoT's to other targets, having it work simmilar to Bane in SHB (where on spreading made the DoT's itself only a fraction as powerful as the original, this can also make its proc rate reduce to say... 5%-10%)

[IchiExorz]

I'm still lvling my BRD right now But i've been keeping up with the changes in Endwalker coming from Shadowbringers and all I see is that they're trying to make dots less important for BRD.
Inb4 BRD dots get removed next expac.

SMN had their dot interactions neutered to the point they just felt tacked on & eventually got removed now in EW.
Same is happening to BRD dots and i'm honestly not a fan of this. They're just there & don't interact at all with BRD's rotation.
Also Repertoire stacks now just "happening" for no reason whatsoever feels weird.

[LuckyHowls]

Ugh, yeah, it did flow nicely i will admit, but the changes to mages ballad and dots being meaningless to the kit sucks.
I don't think the job is ruined, but i hope they undo a couple of those changes for sure

Absolutely. There are some good changes among the larger swath of things that happened, but I feel that the media tour build was the intent and what many of the changes were designed for and the overcorrection seems like it heavily modified the feel of the class in a way that doesn't feel intended. A reversion of the proc changes would bring back a lot of the nuance of the class. Detaching dots from the class overall seems like an error and does too much to the class identity.

[Alberach]

There's been some good and some bad. Giving us longer durations on songs and DoTs and 3 charges on BL definitely helps keeping up the rotation without, in my opinion, dumbing it down a lot. BV buffing the bard as well is nice and gives me something to do with it when not in a group. I don't understand what the demand was for the Sidewinder change. Now it's just an oGCD for some damage. Might as well remove it and stick its damage into EA/RA or something. They could have done something like make it do some percentage of your remaining DoT damage, which would encourage you to IJ your DoTs every time Sidewinder came up. Making procs independent of DoTs was also unnecessary. Yeah they're more predictable now but the bit of unpredictability was one of the fun things about it, especially Mage's where you could just go ham by getting DoTs onto a bunch of stuff and using RoD constantly. And with the 3 charges you get for it now that would work even better while weaving in a standard rotation with some SB's. I'm also surprised that they didn't make Army's Paean any more interesting. It's just kind of a dead part of your rotation, even more so now that you're probably saving your BL charges for when you RS in Traveler's.

I appreciate making it easier to hit an optimal rotation but taking some of the character out of the build was unnecessary. Hopefully they change it back.

[Easayia]

I'm still lvling my BRD right now But i've been keeping up with the changes in Endwalker coming from Shadowbringers and all I see is that they're trying to make dots less important for BRD.
Inb4 BRD dots get removed next expac.

SMN had their dot interactions neutered to the point they just felt tacked on & eventually got removed now in EW.
Same is happening to BRD dots and i'm honestly not a fan of this. They're just there & don't interact at all with BRD's rotation.
Also Repertoire stacks now just "happening" for no reason whatsoever feels weird.

I dont think bard will lose the dots but the dots may be changed into 1 skill to reapply and open up 2 more slots for 2 more new skills just a hunch.