Bard is utterly destroyed

[Kataz]

My perception as a bard thats been 60 for a couple days is that all of your cool downs (Cross class and otherwise) exist for Wanderers Minuet burst. Which I think is incredibly dumb.
What I do, time permitting on a boss - dot - dot - straight shot - wanderers minuet - internal release - hawks eye - raging strikes - blood for blood - iron jaws - sidewinder - barrage - empyreal arrow -> filling in bloodletter when able. If you are feeling a good vibe and getting lots of bloodletter resets, sit in wanderers minuet for a bit but otherwise I think you're done with that until cool downs are back.

The damage is huge... but its just a burst that you can do once every 2 minutes. Meanwhile, other jobs appear to be pulling the same numbers all of the time. Certainly needs to be evaluated. Wanderers Minuet being an instant cast would greatly improve it. Sidewinder staying open for use without Wanderers Minuet would be nice but I have a feeling that it will soon be behind the immobile curtain as the tool tip says. Personally, the immobility isn't the worst part of Wanderers Minuet. Straight shot is. Without a straighter shot proc, this crucial ability being cast in Wanderers Minuet makes me sad. Adding straight shot timer to iron jaws would be nice.

[Seifa]

Sidewinder is usable outside WM. The tooltip is wrong.

[Kataz]

Has SE confirmed that the tool tip is wrong and the ability is working as intended?

[HeavensSword]

I need to try and find a source for this, but I had heard that the JP skill description does not mention requiring WM on it.

[xenok]

This is actually a good thing. Its shares a recast with bloodletter but it is also affected by the reset from the dots. So in an AoE situation you apply your dots and spam wide volley as usual, but instead of rain of death becoming free from wide volley, its a free instant OGC skill when your DOT's proc it. Which from my eyeballing is way more often than it was before.

The problem with this is that it destroys another skill, wide volley. Quick Nock is more TP efficient, but the reason you use Wide Volley is a) the circular aoe (minor reason) and b) the chance to proc a free RoD. These days, I never use wide volley anymore, instead I stand near the tank and use Quick instead.

This is the difficult and tricky thing about changing skills; there are secondary and tertiary effects. I can live with the new RoD, but the devs need to do something to make wide volley more viable or not obsolete.

[Lisotte]

At the end of the day, I'm not sure whether Bard is stronger or weaker than before. What I am sure of, is that by homogenizing Bard to fit in with BLM and such, it makes it far easier for the devs to balance the job and make it put out comparable DPS to other jobs.

I wasn't exactly asking for this, DPS wasn't the reason I rolled Bard, but I see why they did it and I can live with it. Also I'm cool with change. If we get another rework just as big in 4.0 then that'd be great.

[awesomeuno]

At the end of the day, I'm not sure whether Bard is stronger or weaker than before. What I am sure of, is that by homogenizing Bard to fit in with BLM and such, it makes it far easier for the devs to balance the job and make it put out comparable DPS to other jobs.

I wasn't exactly asking for this, DPS wasn't the reason I rolled Bard, but I see why they did it and I can live with it. Also I'm cool with change. If we get another rework just as big in 4.0 then that'd be great.

The problem lies not in that we are now immobile, it's that we were promised DPS comparable to other DPS in exchange for a loss of mobility...and we simply aren't getting the numbers for that. so we are now immobile with WM...for nothing more than a stronger starting burst. I really hope they change this, such a slap to bards.

[Seifa]

SPOILER ALERT.

After doing Bismark Extreme, i found WM best used during the burn phase: pre cast WM, precast Foe (yay, 6 seconds of no dps) and burn the hell out of the spine with cds up and as soon the burn phase ends, return to instant casts expecially because that fight has a lot of stuff to avoid between tornados and water bubbles, you can't stand still for more than 1 cast. When the burn phase returns, i repeat the WM burn rotation. Not so bad, but not good at all. The cast time is horrible, the OGCD cluttering is terrible and the sustained damage can be even lower than the regular bard stance; i even tested with a DRG friend for the piercing debuff, and it resulted a higher DPS when i tried the WM opener switching back to normal attack after buffs ran out and using the stance only for Hawk / B4B / Barrage + EA (which i'm not even sure if it's worth doing in a real fight).

Continue.....

[Seifa]

After my rough testing, i think WM isn't a good stance outside the opener and super fast burn phases (but it requires a lot of pre cast time); SE just underestimated the value of auto attacks, ogcds weaving (hi Bloodletter proc mid cast) that 20% more weaponskill damage don't cover the loss of those two things. I'd like to hear other opinions from Bards in dungeons and raids to share opinions and see if i'm utterly wrong at this point and the naysayers like me are baddies.

Ps. Bloodletter's bug happened to me even without WM, i couldn't use instant cast spell but autos were shooting like normal until the spell returned off cd and it casted itself automatically. Anyone else had this happening?

[SasakiNori]

Has SE confirmed that the tool tip is wrong and the ability is working as intended?

Considering half of the english tooltips are worded wrong or poorly and it doesn't state anything regarding wanderer's minuet in the japanese tooltips, it's very likely to be the case.