Evolved BRD ?

[Minali]

Short disclaimer: I don't play hardcore content nor am I a big number cruncher, so I cannot speak about any meta or stuff occuring at a harder level that might be more relevant to some. I am also going to say "skill" for general "button thing you press", not in the meaning of weaponskills specifically.


Personally I like the general idea of being able to use the three songs more freely (if I understand this correctly) based on group utility. However, I dislike how playing a song unlocks just very long combos.
I don't mind losing the procs, they never were a part of the core identity to me, but playing fairly freeform except the weird song timing was. (Cutting one short for the sake of it and being locked into what ever order you chose at the beginning unless there's downtime is what I mean with "weird"). I have my toolkit and can press whatever suits the situation. If a thing procs, cool! If it doesn't, oh well, guess I press a different button. That is why I considered this job quite freeform already.

Activating strict combos seems to be the opposite of this to me.

I'd rather have the songs being used more like stances.
(Random numbers for explanations sake, not actual skill numbers bc. I cba to count them)

Let's say there are 15 non-song skills in a bard's toolkit, and the three songs.

Song A unlocks skill 1-5 you can play however you so choose.
Song B unlocks skill 6-10 you can play however you so choose.
Song C unlocks skill 11-15 you can play however you so choose.

(Or maybe 1-3 are being unlocked with Song A, and 4 and 5 can be procs under specific circumstances or change like that new PLD version of Clemency, based on target. Could be fun and go more into single target support, as long as this doesn't end up replacing shield healers.)

You'd essentially have three small toolkits and the songs would determine which ones you can access. You would still have this situational spin you get from having to choose which song or song-related toolkit suits the situation the best but would preserve the whole "freeform"-ish idea, in my opinion at least.

As said, how much this would be of a help or a hindrance in Savage or Ultimates, I have no clue. But "you can press Song A and then five buttons in the same specific order until you're out of that" is as far from freeform as you can go. Unless I fundamentally misunderstood the system they presented, it's even more rigid than the current version, just a different flavour of that.

Edit: I realized half a day later that choosing songs in the current Evolved iteration isn't truly freeform either because you have to have played all three different songs for Radiant Finale or miss out on this skill entirely. Please change that into playing three songs of any kind! Otherwise it's just the illusion of choice considering it already barely makes a difference for Summoner when choosing their summons.