Bard - they broke my job

[Cetonis]

I'm curious about people asking for a toggle - care to elaborate on the reasoning? Personally, I like the idea of WM being something you mainly use on a phase-by-phase basis... dancing in and out of it every 5-15 seconds seems like it'd be miserable.

[Sessurea]

I'm curious about people asking for a toggle - care to elaborate on the reasoning? Personally, I like the idea of WM being something you mainly use on a phase-by-phase basis... dancing in and out of it every 5-15 seconds seems like it'd be miserable.

Raids don't have as much phase change downtime as lolextreme primals.

In a 11 minute + raid a bard can expect to foe requiem + bv 3 times and definitely sing paeon once and possibly even ballad tho at least the 1st foe is cast pre pull. that's already 12-15 seconds given to singing. If a situation were to arise where an add would appear and have to be burst asap ( think bismarks back ) then the bard would have to sing the stupid minuet to get high burst and this just adds further to the hurt and pain to bard dps.

Don't forget we still are losing 15% during tp/mp songs. Don't support this cast time please.

[Cetonis]

We don't necessarily know that will be true for Alexander the way it was for Final Coil (which had to support pre-Chakra Monks). Plus, what you're talking about is ultimately just numbers balancing - all the cast time means is, that it reduces the damage we gain by going into WM. Assuming the burst in question is at least predictable timing-wise, you give up ~260 potency to sing before it spawns. If that's not worth it, don't do it.

If it "should be" worth it and isn't, that can be fixed in any number of ways that don't introduce the danger of making frequent stance dancing the optimal play. If people think Minuet is making things miserable now, wait until you're expected to learn to press a toggle every time you start or stop moving...

[Sessurea]

You WANT a cast time on what is essentially just a stance. Why? There has been such an amount of hurt done to bards this patch, we have never ever been in a worse situation. We could even be like smns in fcob now, where no1 wanted them. This isn't a big thing to ask for, nor does it stylistically take from minuet. What's the problem with this change?

Also, if raids were to actually have a lot of downtime, this means physical dps need our tp songs less, healers need our mp songs less, and.......tell me, why again was the bard brought along? to have his dps shred to bits by song cast times? Every bard should in the very least be screaming at the top of his lungs for this to be changed to cleric stance alike skill.

[Wishles]

I'm screaming as loud as I can.

[Snowaeth]

I'm not sure about people asking for potency increases.

Are you guys not noticing that everytime you try to use your Bloodletter procs/OGCD's you guys are cutting into your GCD's when WM is on?
Are you guys not noticing how the skills don't flow well when WM is on?

Obviously the stance is bad for more than just that, but just number increases won't fix those issues.
Do you really want to be able to put out big numbers that badly even if it means having to play it in such a clunky way?
Or do you rather have them fix the core issue and adjust the numbers afterward to be where they should be, because straight up changing potencies is the easiest way out for devs and not something that would fix the class for me.

[Wavaryen]

The song should just have gave us a damage boost. That is it, all this casting stuff, just ruins the flavor and fun of the class.

If they really wanted us to cast. Had one powerful skill that is a cast, where we take aim and fire. Changing how the core class plays is the dumbest design choice ever.

[Cetonis]

You WANT a cast time on what is essentially just a stance. Why

It's not about wanting a cast time so much as not-wanting a toggle. If it's easy to turn it on and off, that means it will be optimal to turn it on and off very very often. At minimum, every time EA is off cooldown you go WM -> EA -> IJ -> off.

You wouldn't leave it on, because your DPS is getting wrecked the rest of the time - SE packed all the benefit into those skills. So why even bother having it if it's going to be like that? You might as well ditch the song and provide access to EA and IJ full time, because there'd be no reason to be in the stance at any other point in time.

And if you give the toggle a cooldown, now it becomes even more marginal than it was. Because, again, every second you spend in WM not using EA/IJ is a DPS loss. The entire kit is built around having a cast time, it won't work if you just blindly slap a toggle on it without actually thinking it through.

[elPresidente]

The changes overall are bad. I don't mind the cast bars on abilities as it does add a needed skill check to the class. However, casting our abilities interrupts the flow of cooldown/bloodletter weaving in dps rotation. Having literally all of the dps abilities we gained from this patch require minuet was a bad idea.

I would suggest any of the following changes:

-Allow bloodletter and/or abilities to be used while casting, limited by cast animations as before

-Reduce cast time of minuet and warden's paeon to 1 second

-Reduce base cast bar time induced by minuet to 1 second

-Allow E Arrow/IronJaws/Sidewinder to be used outside of WM, at the cost of either a tp increase, an added mp cost, a cast bar even though outside of WM, but not a potency reduction. A potency reduction would be incurred by default by not using WM

-As a cost to implement the other buffs, make minuet cost mp at a much lower rate than other songs, or have a ~15-30 second cooldown once dropped

[JadeS]

The best I've done so far is 1440 top burst in my opener(that getting a decent crits, especially SW crits). That being just on dummy with no food/party/buff going. I use WM for it and then take it right off, tapering off to about 760-790 after about 3mins. This being at full i180 with Hive Bow.

I found that:

(With WM going) HE > RS > EA > BL > SS > BfB > IR > WB > xdex pot > Blunt Arrow > VB > Flaming Arrow > Heavy Shot > Sidewinder > IJ > Barrage > EA > (all CDs end) > BL (take off WM) > SS and refresh basis after that. - Seems to get me the highest for open.

I haven't come up with a better way and always looking for anything that could increase that or be better output. Basically able to get that slightly buffed EA in and the dots before ending with a fully buffed SW + IJ (pot still running for dots as well) + Barrage EA to finish off.

Basically still....Just toss WM and let us have IJ + EA full time please.