Condensing Bard with Morphing Buttons

[Shurrikhan]

Adding in IJ removed the need to manually reapply both DoTs and gave BRDs an additional Heavy Shot cast, which was a net gain.

To potency per minute, yes, of course. But to gameplay? Is spending only 1 in 18 GCDs, down from 1 in 9, on anything other than (<your filler-proc> over <your filler itself>) a gameplay improvement?

It is still, however, used to snapshot raid buffs. Even with the 45 second duration that the DoTs have now.

Yes, but so would those DoTs be snapshotted, just the same, without IJ. It would just take 2 GCDs, down from 1.

And it still nets BRD a cast of Burst Shot versus doing Stormbite > Caustic Bite. Burst Shot is more potent, hence it is obviously the better GCD choice.

...At no point have I said that using Iron Jaws is inferior to reusing the DoTs separately, merely that so long as you would have (re)applied your DoTs in all the same situations (as you would have in single-target combat since Stormblood) without IJ as you would with IJ, then IJ has generated no unique gameplay value.

It is essentially a Caustic Bite trait that causes Stormbite also to be applied, except that it be used at the start of combat, and therefore can't reduce the time required for your DoTs to pay off, and takes up an extra button.

For that reason, Iron Jaws is not, in present contexts, a well-designed ability. It is an ability that exists to increase your filler action from 88.8% (16 of 18) of your GCD casts to 94.4% (17 of 18), but then charges you an extra button for the pleasure of spamming your filler more. It's an ability that actually give more diversity in button-flow, and slightly greater rotational complexity, for having been removed.

:: To be clear, I'm not even advocating its removal here, only pointing out that protecting every action/button at all costs, regardless of their actual impact on rotation, is not a great idea.

IJ wasn’t really spammed in Stormblood.

I never said IJ was spammed. I said IJ led to even less time being spent on anything but your spam (Refulgent>Burst). Which it has.

Heavy Shot spam "was already overly prevalent". Iron Jaws then "resulted in more spam" despite that.

In HW, it at least created certain new thresholds for DoT's (re)application, which gave some positives to offset that negative. It has not, however, done so since.

[HyoMinPark]

To potency per minute, yes, of course. But to gameplay? Is spending only 1 in 18 GCDs, down from 1 in 9, on anything other than (<your filler-proc> over <your filler itself>) a gameplay improvement?

Yes, I do believe it was a gameplay improvement. It certainly allowed for a kind of optimization that has slowly been stripped from the job. While IJ optimization is still there, it’s not as meaningful anymore. But I do believe that it was a gameplay improvement when implemented in HW, and that gameplay was later expanded up in SB—and IJ was made to be even more meaningful then.

I never said IJ was spammed. I said it led to even less time being spent on anything but your spam. Which it has.

Then I misunderstood what you wrote—but it also was not clear that the above was what you were even saying, either.

For filler spam, there is no other recourse but to basically add another button other than Burst Shot to BRD. Readding Straight Shot could alleviate this, since you would have to maintain it, and I would argue for having the self-buff be the original 20 seconds versus the 30 second version that the devs adjusted in SB. But removing IJ entirely and returning to manual DoT refresh would not really do much in terms of breaking up the filler monotony that you seem to be so fixated on. Giving BRD a 1-2 would just be copying DNC, and I’d rather not have that either.

If you remove IJ and add back manual DoT refresh to BRD as it is now, next you’ll have to address the issue of both DoTs allowing for RA procs on top of Burst Shot adding in a proc chance. If both your DoTs proc RA, you will have to lose a use of it. I feel like this is less of an issue with IJ despite it also proc’ing RA, since now we’ve reduced the number of skills that force proc a weaponskill that does not have a way to store procs from 3 to 2.



Personally, I don’t see the need for 45-second DoTs. I think they were fine as 30 second DoTs. It’s not a change I’m happy with, but I honestly haven’t been pleased with BRD since the ShB changes. Reverting back to 30-second DoTs is another option worth considering in my opinion—I’m not sure why the duration was upped to 45-second or what purposed this served, other than the developers wanting DoTs to be the same duration as songs—but even they aren’t perfectly 45 seconds.



But this is turning into a BRD adjustment thread—and the conversation is getting derailed. My original assertions about the actual thread topic still stand: BRD doesn’t have button bloat, and the amount of things you could condense are very few without changing aspects of how the job functions (e.g., making Mage’s change into Bloodletter while active—which then locks the ability out of the other two songs). The skills that could be removed are basically skills that you can get away with not even having on your bar now.

[Shurrikhan]

But this is turning into a BRD adjustment thread—and the conversation is getting derailed. My original assertions about the actual thread topic still stand: BRD doesn’t have button bloat, and the amount of things you could condense are very few without changing aspects of how the job functions (e.g., making Mage’s change into Bloodletter while active—which then locks the ability out of the other two songs). The skills that could be removed are basically skills that you can get away with not even having on your bar now.

I agree, so I'll just leave this final note:

I think the main thing in regard to IJ and Bard DoTs in general is to just shorten the DoT durations and perhaps offer each DoT some further utility of their own by which one might want to use them earlier (for more than just, and usually timed apart from, snapshotting purposes). Additionally, I'd like to see repertoire chances again scale with DoT counts, but that'd honestly be the far less impactful change anywhere outside of dungeons.

I think that Straight Shot / Refulgent Arrow should be bankable, as to have reason for a separate button (which, btw, already solves the issues of redundant procs that are an issue even with Iron Jaws... unless one breaks from regular/optimized DoT intervals just to apply IJ early after having just used RA as not to risk proc-waste, which one shouldn't). Perhaps even add some further interaction of interest.

But, I don't really want to see a further GCD of ramp-up, like the old Straight Shot Crit buff, added just for the sake of it, since it'd be used in nearly all circumstances and thereby provide little choice (and that little bit would not even be unique to that buff, merely a narrower form of the decision-making already done for DoTs).

If, however, we wished to retain the ability to reapply DoTs in a single GCD, there would be zero loss to anything but button-bloat to simply consolidate Iron Jaws into either DoT. (E.g., Caustic and Stormbite apply only themselves but each refresh each other, too, perhaps with a conditional added animation.)