Hot Take Inside: Remove raidwide buffs (2m) to explore new job design

[Rika007]

snip

Full stop, I disagree with you entirely and in every single way possible (and one i was talking about Finale working with the kit and coda's, not Battle Voice). Go join all the other players who just clamor for Bard to be a sad WoW Hunter imitation and want the Music identity stripped from the job. It's takes like yours that got them to remove Foe's Requiem and the fun boosting powers of ARR Battle voice, because they weren't perfect.

The mechanic of Bards support utility is in the full kit, using them all together. No other job brings three different raid wide offensive buffs at once. Complain all you want about fire and forget buffs on cooldowns and how you would rather they be removed, that sounds exactly like all the people who complain about how we can just consolidate a few other gcd buttons into morphing actions, aka just make jobs more one button monotonous spams. Lets just change burst into Refulgent while we are at it. Lets just remove the songs entirely and merge blood letter and pitch perfect since they are in the end functionally the same, oGCD's you need to press before they overcap from a repertoire proc.

Unless they have a sick new ability to replace battle voice that brings the interplay you so desperately want, I'd rather keep it. It's another button to press. Another cooldown to manage. Another piece of an opener I need to keep in mind. Another cooldown that I need to gather based on fight design if I should delay or not.

And that's my main sticking point really. For a game that was praised for its really well designed MMO kits, where every single skill was valuable and important, its sad to see so many jobs in the same state as bard; a mess with a smattering of "thematic" skills that don't interact with each other at all. Like for instance imagine if instead of having a gauge, Apex Arrow was on a 60 second internal cooldown, like how Sonic Break works? What would really change for the job?

No it would not because there is some actual skill interpretation that goes into current Apex Arrow's usage based on fight timings. Go look up any current savage Bard guide, you will see there are min max timings on Apex Arrow/Blasting Arrow based on if your comp and static choose to delay burst windows, not just on the 2 minute usage, but on the odd 1 minute usage as well. There is min maxing options in both phases of 4s, and 2s in 3s. It does not function like a basic 60 second cooldown, where you just decide if you should delay or not, you do have to actually sometimes choose if it has to be used early on in your 60 cycle to insure full power in your 120 cycle.

Also as Shurrikhan just said, you don't need to nearly un desync that long to screw up your Radiant Finale timings. I will also echo what many Bards say that the song timings are far bigger of an issue then most Bard players are complaining about. More flexible song timings would actually lead to some possible more flexible Coda useage. The Coda's themselved are 100% a mechanic that could be flexed, they are just currently at the mercy of Bard's biggest issue, it's inflexible song rotation.

Retro edit: If I sound slightly hostile, its not my intention, but I'm tired of hearing so many players talk about removing things from kits they don't like, but never talk about what they want to see added in replacement of that. It's what lost us Foe's Requiem (Players complained about the janky cast time and how awkward it felt, and how theyd rather see the move replaced, but they never talk about what they want to see added on in it's replacement). It's what gave us this current summoner (calls to remove dots, pets, aetherflow, etc, summoner opinions were everywhere on what needed to be removed, but very few people talked about what should be added outside of 'Make it feel more like a Summoner'). It's what just lost Samurai's Kaiten.

At this point I'm just gonna disagree with the idea that the Dev's removing or consolidating anything that isn't GCD healing abilities on the healers, on principal alone. These jobs do not need anymore pruning. For the love of god most need more. Anything we discuss about being removed needs to have an idea for replacement. We've already seen how the dev team does if they have an excuse to remove an ability. They hack without a second thought.