Bard's 6.1 changes - why bother?

[Ayche]

I’d rather not see Mage’s lock BL usage to just it. Having it lower the CD for more frequent usage is enough, in my opinion.

I would rather see Sidewinder return to scaling off of the DoTs. Maybe it wasn’t the most interesting interaction, but at least it was an interaction. That the DoTs are so meaningless now and have no interactivity with the toolkit makes me worry they will be cut in 7.0, and I really don’t want that. The job is still not the BRD I loved in the past, and I just don’t want to see it continued to be stripped down.

There would just be nothing left really if they DoTs were removed. Keeping track of the timers while smashing away Shots and Arrows atleast keeps the brain cells atleast somewhat active.
Then again, I never expected 6.0 SMN to happen either...

[QT_Melon]

Probably won’t be taking BRD into random content until they address the fact that they broke Minuet/PP, though. It would be my luck I take it into the new 24-man and there’s two other BRDs in my alliance or something equally horrible. I’m guessing the bug was an oversight but…really? It wasn’t tested? It wasn’t thought to be tested??

I dunno...(sarcasm) I was told that Double Bards were easily able to easily clear the new EX trial with 1/2 of our kit messed up if both pressed WM but...nah it's not a big deal right?

[Sqwall]

Bard saw three extremely minor changes in 6.1. Can't help but think none of them were necessary and one of them is counter productive.

repelling shot - increased jump back distance. Ok, I guess? Being honest, haven't had it on my toolbar since it stopped doing any damage years ago because the odds of it sending me into a wall/off the arena are too high relative to the minor benefit of extra mobility.

battle voice - no longer needs a song playing to use. Again, ok. I suppose this may change the opener slightly since you don't have to have a song up (the number crunchers out there will tell us where to slot it in), but it seems like a solution in search of a problem. Never saw anyone complain about this.

pitch perfect - now shares a button with wanderer's minuet. This change makes no sense and clearly was made by people who don't play bard and thought it was a way to reduce button bloat. Anyone who plays bard regularly knows why this isn't the case. One is a song that will be on your secondary toolbar next to the other songs so you can do a rotation and hit it once every 2 minutes. The other is an oGCD that you will spam heavily over a 45 second window and will have on your main toolbar near your other oGCD skills. So rather than eliminating a button, you now have the same one on there in 2 different spots because you will still want minuet near the other songs and pitch perfect near the other oGCD attacks.

This is completely subjective. Your making this change all about how you set up your hotbar and assuming everyone does it EXACTLY like you. This change would then force you to change hotbars. This is an inconvenience for you.

This was a simple fix that represents a TON of other skills that could use the same treatment.

Less....is...has...and forever WILL be MORE!

I play bard and enjoy it immensely, but one thing I could give as opinion. I like that it is incredibly busy, but busy needs to make sense. This makes sense that I can put more buttons on my hotbar as I play with controller. Anytime a change like this happens I have to sit back and redesign my whole hot bar, rotation, to get a better sense of what my muscle memory will pick up.

Did nobody even catch High Jump changes to Mirage Dive now? Because I think that is perfect to fit the major skills on the 1st page of my hotbars. Others might arrange differently, but this just makes sense. Condensing, combining, traiting, will be a huge theme for Endwalker for the future of what is to come.

[HyoMinPark]

This is completely subjective.

This was a simple fix that represents a TON of other skills that could use the same treatment.

Less....is...has...and forever WILL be MORE!

Tell that to the healers. I don’t think they’ll agree.

Saying “less is more” is also an equally subjective statement.

I play bard and enjoy it immensely, but one thing I could give as opinion. I like that it is incredibly busy, but busy needs to make sense. This makes sense that I can put more buttons on my hotbar as I play with controller. Anytime a change like this happens I have to sit back and redesign my whole hot bar, rotation, to get a better sense of what my muscle memory will pick up.

I also play on controller. This change didn’t do anything, considering BRD can fit everything it comfortably needs into less than two crossbars. I don’t know if you’re trying to make a “controllers have less space” argument for bloat or not, but controllers have a ton of available space to them that don’t fall into impractical.

Did nobody even catch High Jump changes to Mirage Dive now? Because I think that is perfect to fit the major skills on the 1st page of my hotbars. Others might arrange differently, but this just makes sense. Condensing, combining, traiting, will be a huge theme for Endwalker for the future of what is to come.

So, apparently, is simplification. Which is a divisive position at best. More and more people are coming out to express their dissatisfactions with what is being done. While there are jobs that do have bloat issues and could stand to have some skills removed due to pure redundancy (SAM, AST), the changes being made are still failing to address that problem. The BRD change is ultimately inconsequential…until you consider the problems that have already arisen from it. The only thing I can give the dev team is that they acknowledged one as a bug. But the issue QT brought up is still present.

[SweetPete]

I actually love the pitch perfect change. I always thought it was quite ridiculous to have it as an extra button to push. I got use to WM changing to pitch perfect very fast and I truly hope they don’t revert it. Or at least make it a choice. If you want to put it back on the hotbar you can and if you don’t then that’s fine too.

I know some people have gotten use to it as it’s own button for years but I’m glad about the change.

Please don’t come for me for having an opinion

[Sqwall]

Tell that to the healers. I don’t think they’ll agree.

Saying “less is more” is also an equally subjective statement.



I also play on controller. This change didn’t do anything, considering BRD can fit everything it comfortably needs into less than two crossbars. I don’t know if you’re trying to make a “controllers have less space” argument for bloat or not, but controllers have a ton of available space to them that don’t fall into impractical.



So, apparently, is simplification. Which is a divisive position at best. More and more people are coming out to express their dissatisfactions with what is being done. While there are jobs that do have bloat issues and could stand to have some skills removed due to pure redundancy (SAM, AST), the changes being made are still failing to address that problem. The BRD change is ultimately inconsequential…until you consider the problems that have already arisen from it. The only thing I can give the dev team is that they acknowledged one as a bug. But the issue QT brought up is still present.

Well...they're a healer...sooo..

...they shouldn't heal?

Are you saying AST needs more DPS buttons?

[Sqwall]

Tell that to the healers. I don’t think they’ll agree.

Saying “less is more” is also an equally subjective statement.



I also play on controller. This change didn’t do anything, considering BRD can fit everything it comfortably needs into less than two crossbars. I don’t know if you’re trying to make a “controllers have less space” argument for bloat or not, but controllers have a ton of available space to them that don’t fall into impractical.



So, apparently, is simplification. Which is a divisive position at best. More and more people are coming out to express their dissatisfactions with what is being done. While there are jobs that do have bloat issues and could stand to have some skills removed due to pure redundancy (SAM, AST), the changes being made are still failing to address that problem. The BRD change is ultimately inconsequential…until you consider the problems that have already arisen from it. The only thing I can give the dev team is that they acknowledged one as a bug. But the issue QT brought up is still present.

There is that word again. Simplification.

If it was SOOO simple to press Pitch Perfect on another button, why would this be any different as it's now...the SAME button.

This whole dumbing down and over simplification is just out of control. The game isn't getting dumbed down or over simplified. It's becoming a well oiled machine. Fine tuning should NOT be mistaken for removing unnecessary old design choices that "seemed good at the time", have just become a hindsight 20/20 situation. I'm constantly going back to older programs I wrote and refining them, which DOES not mean I'm dumbing it down or simplifying. It means I'm making it better, and more elegant code.

The big picture here...you have no idea what is on the horizon for 7.0 and beyond. This is clearly a "cleaning house" phase of the game and setting the game up for a new style of adding buttons, skills, abilities. You will see MUCH more merging and traiting up skills to higher versions.

[HyoMinPark]

Well...they're a healer...sooo..

...they shouldn't heal?

Are you saying AST needs more DPS buttons?

I mean, why not? They spend 80% of their time dealing damage anyways. Might as well make it interesting.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but healers don’t do a lot of healing in this game. They’ve always been more support than anything else. DPS is part of being a healer.

There is that word again. Simplification.

If it was SOOO simple to press Pitch Perfect on another button, why would this be any different as it's now...the SAME button.

Perhaps because of the queuing issue with it. I suggest you read QT’s posts, since she already addressed this problem.

This whole dumbing down and over simplification is just out of control. The game isn't getting dumbed down or over simplified. It's becoming a well oiled machine. Fine tuning should NOT be mistaken for removing unnecessary old design choices that "seemed good at the time", have just become a hindsight 20/20 situation. I'm constantly going back to older programs I wrote and refining them, which DOES not mean I'm dumbing it down or simplifying. It means I'm making it better, and more elegant code.

The game is getting simplified. It has been for a few years now. Jobs are more simple—a lot, BRD included, have lost the nuance they once had, and had the gaps between their skill floors and skill ceilings closed to the point where the two might as well be the same thing. Content is more simple—Extremes can hardly be called Extremes anymore, and the first two floors of Savage have debatable monikers as well. The only decent difficulty comes from Ultimate and Unreal, and we only get a handful of those each expansion.

There’s a difference between “well-oiled” and “dumbing down”. FFXIV is definitely teetering way closer to the latter instead of the former.

The big picture here...you have no idea what is on the horizon for 7.0 and beyond. This is clearly a "cleaning house" phase of the game and setting the game up for a new style of adding buttons, skills, abilities. You will see MUCH more merging and traiting up skills to higher versions.

Neither do you. Yet you still make your subsequent comment… Think on that for a moment.

[QT_Melon]

The issue at the moment is less to do with the fact the song turns into a replacement button for Pitch Perfect.

The problem comes with it being a double OGCD button which causes queuing issues with the system.

Since Bards for many xpacs have been fishing for procs for many years there's quite a bit of ingrained button mash mentality causing an error with weaving Raging Strikes at this time. Players have been complaining in the bard communities and reddit as well.

Its one thing to make this change at the beginning of an Xpac so at least you have time to re adjust or ask them to fine tune how the skill executes since it shares with another OGCD. To have it done mid cycle and add insult to injury have it be buggy with other bards present. Causing you to lose out on a song cycle.

It causes animosity and toxicity amongst the playerbase. Granted this is likely the bug is likley to be hotfixed tomorrow but it's not an acceptable bug given this was the second time messing with Bard causes a backlash. Beginning of heavensward bards saw themselves unable to execute actions after their first bloodletter.

Its something that double OGCDs sharing the same button should be addressed as its not the only job suffering ie DRG with the jumps.

[QT_Melon]

Well now. Apparently Bard will not be fixed until April 26th. So I guess its okay to have 1/3 of your kit messed up because they don't want to do a client update sooner.