Bard - they broke my job

[Scyris]

I agree, Bard really got shafted with its 52-60 skills, we already did fairly low dps, and now most other dps even tanks have new hard hitting skills they can use whenever, and we get this garbage? I think they need to remove all the 52-60 skills, fire whoever the idiot was who thought them up, and give us completly new ones. I would accept the new skills IF and ONLY if, they enable auto attack while in WM stance. As it is auto attacks count for 25-30% of a bards dps, mostly due to how weak our weaponskills are compared to most classes. The 20% from WM does not make up for it, not even once your 60 with all the skills.

There is something wrong when a tank class can out parse a dps class on a boss, that is the current state of bard atm, Mch is in the same boat, tanks can even make our dps look stupid.

[Hikara]

I've personally not been greatly effected by the change, on an enjoyment level, it's different but it wasn't jarring enough to write the class off. I do however have a problem with certain indescrepencies the Bard has comparatively to other "Casters".

One major issue being part of the current end game content; the parry mechanic, on Ravana Extreme. The gist of it is Black Mages/Summoners/Healers essentially get a free pass on this mechanic for obvious reasons but the Bard does not.
Now we can argue that it's a simple matter of turning off Minuet and going about our mobile business but to be pedantic I could argue the same for instant casts, allowing the Black Mage/Summoner to be mobile but I rather not be facetious.

(Continued onto my next post)

[Hikara]

Due to this mechanic being fairly prominent throughout the fight, coupled with a multitude of other mechanics requiring movement, it renders Minuet relatively unusable. Which by itself wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that it locks me out of Empyrean Arrow and Iron Jaw, two abilities I very much enjoy using; more so aesthetically for the former and mechanically for the latter.

My main concern is this being signs of more to come. I'm one to embrace change but without Minuet being instant cast, like practically every other stance change (and it is a stance change) I'm worried I've essentially been given three new abilities that'll practically not see the light of day on any fights that future this mechanic or others like it.

Bismarck is in a similar place to Ravana, but that is more a role/style choice, however I'd find it impressive indeed for a Bard to efficiently keep Minuet up throughout that whole fight.

[Sindri_Myr]

I agree, Bard really got shafted with its 52-60 skills, we already did fairly low dps, and now most other dps even tanks have new hard hitting skills they can use whenever, and we get this garbage? I think they need to remove all the 52-60 skills, fire whoever the idiot was who thought them up, and give us completly new ones. I would accept the new skills IF and ONLY if, they enable auto attack while in WM stance. As it is auto attacks count for 25-30% of a bards dps, mostly due to how weak our weaponskills are compared to most classes. The 20% from WM does not make up for it, not even once your 60 with all the skills.

There is something wrong when a tank class can out parse a dps class on a boss, that is the current state of bard atm, Mch is in the same boat, tanks can even make our dps look stupid.

You have some serious l2p issues my friend.

[Scyris]

Didn't consider that. That pie graph I linked was out of 4,179 "swings", and barrage was used 25 times. If you calculate that Barrage has a 10s duration, and the average delay of AA's in this data is 3.74 seconds, that means at best you get an extra 8 auto attacks per Barrage, but realistically it averages out to 7. So in this data, out of 916 AA's, Barrage most likely accounted for 175 of them, so factoring that in your AA contribution goes down to 18.5%. Still not a big difference for what you lose imo.

Sadly barrage no longer effects auto attacks right? You use barrage, then use 1 weaponskill and it adds 2 additional non-crit hits to it. Sounds nice? but its not really, it was much more useful before they nerfed it to not buff auto attacks. When I play my bard now I feel like I am massivly lagging behind the other dps classes in the party. IMO with the songs we currently have our dps needs a buff outside of WM.

[JohnMccain]

.

I never said I had a problem with movement. What I have a problem with is being able to fire off CDs in a timely manner without missing bloodletter procs (the core game play of BRD). WM is hindering me from doing that.

[Melch]

You have some serious l2p issues my friend.

At the moment, Off Tanks are outdpsing Brds. So the problem comes from the game. I mean, you take an average OT and an excellent BRD the OT outparses the BRD.

[Melch]

I understood why SE did that. They want 4 tanks 1 AST + 1 SCH (WHMs took the shit too) and 1 MNK 1 DRG.
There's something wrong when we go in a content with 4 tanks.

[Ormeriel]

Right before coming back I told a friend "I bet they broke the bard, they never really knew how to deal and what to do with that class".

And what a surprise, they did break it!

Wanderer's Minuet is an aberration. Not even talking about the fact that this is actually very dubious in efficiency, this is first and foremost a terrible design for a class that most people chose to play for its mobility.

I have Black Mage maxed, guess what I do when I want to play a Mage, I switch to it!

Not only that, but basically every ability we get from 52 to 60 can only be used with Wanderer Minuet, wtf is that.

This is a joke, plain and simple, I don't care if it is "more DPS" (and apparently it is actually not), this is simply not the way I want to play.

There are plenty of way this could get fixed, and I wont list them all here, do your job SE and put some competent designer on this particular job for once.

[lugiaXD]

Again, "they dont want" is a very broad statement. I personally have no issue with standing and casting, but this is probably because i left Bard for Black Mage months ago. The issue with the old Bard playstyle is that Square is probably just opposed to Bard having competitive DPS with the other classes while being so safe and easy to use.

Look, there's really no way to screw up the 2.0 Bard style of gameplay. There's no risk involved to the class at all, and so by design it would make no sense to give them abilities like Empyreal/Sidewinder/Iron Jaws, so that they can just run and dump them all when they come up under buffs like you would in 2.0 bard. Minuet is supposed to add that risk/reward dynamic to Bard, which simply never had it before, which is probably where all the kneejerk reactions are coming from.

So I think the issue here isn't that they're making us adopt a caster style, it's that they're making us adopt a caster style without giving us anywhere close to caster damage.


It's currently viable (relative to other bards, at least) to just not even bother with Minuet outside opening. This probably isn't a mistake, i think it's cool that the class is possibly trying to be more dynamic and allow both stances to stay useful. But ATM, for both Stance and Off-Stance users, Minuet is just more trouble than its worth, even though it does increase DPS.

i actually take some offence to being told that this is a kneejerk reaction almost 2 weeks after patch and that entire time trying to actually enjoy the new playstyle.

it also seems you didn't read the bit where i literally said that i didn't like that the people who don't want to play that caster style (and yes it's a caster style we literally become like a blm) get locked out of some really good skills because they want people to stay in minuet.

while i can understand from a game design standpoint what they were trying to do with minuet they went about it all wrong.

for the risk/reward playstyle to be worth it they would need to actually make the reward really good, that's where they're failing miserably. the dps increase gained from WM is absolutely minute and given how content in the endgame likes to make you move (and given the fact that as physical we are still screwed by parries from bosses while casters aren't nearly as screwed) you end up doing less damage than when you play with it off.

in my honest opinion if they really wanted this to be some way to give you a risk vs reward type playstyle then they should allow AA in WM OR just outright increase the overall boost WM gives. take out the locks on EA and IJ and make it so that being in WM puts you at caster levels of dps while being out of it is still as it was before.
they can keep barrage as is (though i am loathe to admit to that as i feel they could have given it a dual personality, AA boost out of WM and the Triple non-crit single target weapon skill in WM) since it'll keep some balance and make it so that people still have some sort of risk/reward style of gameplay even in 2.0 BRD form.

How about actually understanding some of the info presented before telling us we're having kneejerk reactions and accusing us of just wanting it easy.
I for one welcome the Risk/Reward playstyle when it's done right (it's why i find gambling fairly fun) but when the risk is pretty high and the reward isn't justifying taking that risk then i'm sorry but please fix that bullshit cause i ain't standing for it.

evidently neither are A LOT of bard mains.