So how would you buff bard? (Just like to hear peoples thoughts)

[Shurrikhan]

I'd use the chance to also declutter hotbars, which Bard can urgently need like most jobs can:

* Iron Jaws removed
* Stormbite left as-is
* Caustic Bite is a trait-upgrade from Stormbite that has Stormbite spread to one nearby target with its remaining duration each time it deals damage, effectively multiplying in AoE situations on its own. Otherwise exactly intact. And as you say, combine the potency.

So from 3 to 1 button, for actually more functionality than before. And it's not like Bard is lacking for buttons to push, anyways... Plus some extra AoE spice because eh, always useful.

Serious, if subjective, question:

Which has more DoT "gameplay" available for dungeons, a single GCD of AoE DoT, or actually DoTing multiple enemies over multiple GCDs?

For my part, it's generally the latter, especially if the extent to which one should multi-DoT shifts according to available targets' TTK in ways that would actually be felt frequently enough, but it feels here like often the more convoluted the tooltip, no matter how self-playing or reductive of prior value of optimization, that's what gets considered thematic here.

Not meant as a dig at the caustic auto-spreading idea, as that at least might see reason to target enemies on opposite side of a pack or still allow multiple GCDs of DoTing in AoE just to get the spread up faster for slight (even if massively diminished) increase in net ppgcd, but that's always felt like a strange contrast on these forums.


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For broader context:

I'd personally prefer to simply unsync the DoTs, such as by making one a 15s and the other a 21s timer, or one 12s and the other 18s, etc., with damage per tick amped up commensurately. Ideally, I'd then have Iron Jaws be an alternative to Sidewinder, where, say, Sidewinder ricochets off DoTed targets and Iron Jaws instead refreshes all active timers and deals focal damage to a target from all DoTed enemies nearby.