So about bard 7.0

[Shurrikhan]

As much as I adored dot procs in shb, I think it's time to move on.

Having a timer ticking down on the boss that needs to be kept up is good busy imo, but having two timers with same duration and are maintained with one button (and this button isn't even music or archery related) is redundant busy, and should be reconsidered. I can see them reworking Stormbite to not be a dot, and replacing Ironjaws with with something actually archery or music related while leaving Caustic Bite as the only dot skill (BRD already has some snake themed skills, and a snake needs its venom).

Wouldn't this imply that just removing Iron Jaws and varying Caustic's and Stormbite's durations would also be a sufficient solution...?

I think it needs more GCDs that are frequently used in its rotation, and reworking/replacing some of the dot related skills will free up hotbar space for such skills

Likewise... just reducing DoT durations from their current ridiculousness (say, back to somewhere between 30s and their original 18s) and removing Iron Jaws would reduce the portion of GCDs spent on Proc->Filler macros.

(And allowing us to bank up to two proc-shot casts would give us a reason not to simply consolidate those two keys / continue to simply key-swipe Refulgent->Burst together as to never pay attention to said proc, while Iron Jaws' removal could finally give us a reason to prioritize RA procs from other sources over perfect DoT maintenance.)

There's nothing inherently dated about DoTs. They're just a mechanic that manages a great many good things (soft-CD, tactics differing with target count between ST and pure AoE, rhythmic consideration, etc.) with minimal needs or apparent complexity.

I wouldn't mind seeing Stormbite or Caustic turned into something else, but let's not treat an arbitrary turn (such as away from Bard DoTs) as necessarily progressive / a turn for the better.

I may have an unusual take on dots. I've never been a big fan of them but for one single reason that's exactly the same as self buffs: the UI is absolutely terrible and it's hard to keep track of them.

While I can't say I've particularly had difficulty with this, there's an easy solution there we could easily borrow from add-ons: Enmity List DoT trackers and the current (or last selected) target's DoTs being tracked via the charge wheel (the 'cooldown indicator' that doesn't grey out the skill but still shows progress until the 2nd/3rd charge's completion) over one's DoT skills.