Bard and how to fix it.

[Aiselia]

- When a player remains stationary for five seconds, he will gain 1 stack

You lost it here.

20 seconds of no movement to get up to 20% damage? No. Even with the complications of adding cast times, that would be an objective DPS loss, especially on fights with consistent AOE.

If they want Bards to not run around, there's no reason to severely punish them for moving a step or two. A non-stacking boost that is inactive while moving and active when stopped is enough to prevent people from running around all over the place.

At worst, it should just be a non-stacking buff that applies on use of a weaponskill and is removed when you move. But having to wait 20 seconds even in things like Fractal or Neverreap where you're going to be moving frequently? Your DPS would tank. You also may as well take Repelling Shot off your bar because it'd be super counter-productive.

[Tharkis]

Personally I'm just finding bard no longer the 'fun' class to play that it was for the last 2 years. If I wanted to play BLM I'd have played BLM. It feels like they ran out of time getting Heavensward out the door and brd wasn't done yet, so they said "@#% it, give them the MCH stuff and call it a day" but it really doesn't work. You have all the problems of BLM with their procs plus the unique problems of BL procs in the middle of cast times, and none of the benefits of MCH when using the stance.

If you want to expose every weakness of the FF14 combat system play brd the way it currently is with WM. You get hit with every combination of bad proc synergy, bad proc timing, OGCD timing failures, and ground targeting weakness / bugs, and even the ability that interrupts itself now (bye bye repelling shot)! yet you get no benefit in DPS for dealing with it all either, you're still a 3rd rate "support" dps but you just lost the #1 class defining ability of 'doing it all on the run'

[Tharkis]

I think one of the biggest issues right now is people saying "look when using WM and not moving, bards are about on par relative to where they were before 3.0!" but before 3.0 we took a penalty to DPS in order to be mobile. Now we have that same relative penalty to 'top dps', and lose the mobility as well. If drg was 100% and brd was 80% well... drg is 100% and brd with WM is 80% and brd without WM is 60% and that's just not how it should be at all.

Lets face it, "doing it all on the run" was THE reason to play a bard prior to 3.0 No one played a bard because they "wanted to be support"

[Warlyx]

SE isnt removing WM , it needs to be ironed out , isnt going to be easy , since BARD wasnt created with WM in mind , so the gameplay is a bit clunky ....giving BRD some QOL changes would alleviate some of the issues.

BL procs , forcing a ranged character to be in melee range for conal aoe dmg , skills interrupting midcast for lots of reasons , leaving WM and still casting .... and on top of that awfull animations for the new skills ( WM casting , iron jaws , Sidewinder animation is meh )

[Snowaeth]

I'm just afraid that SE is going to look at the dps numbers that the bards are pulling and say, look they'r fine.
But a big part of the appeal of an mmo is having a class that you can enjoy (be it a crafting or a combat class).
With MCH being comparable to BRD and BLM being comparable in other ways that's 3/4 ranged classes that fall in a same-ish playstyle.
SMN is different due to the focus on dots, but in the end even that is a caster making 4/4 of the ranged dps a caster.
So lets say if you enjoy playing ranged dps, there's the option of SMN or the other 3 pick the one with cooler aesthetics and that's it.
And if you do not enjoy casters, you'r basically out of luck. Instead of appealing to different playstyles we now have 3/4 ranged dps appeal to the same group.

Then lets ignore the homogenization for a second the other issue with bard actually able to pull the dps in its unpolished state is what makes me afraid of not seeing proper QoL fixes.
But look you can pull good numbers, you don't need no fixes is the argument being thrown around so much lately.
Well I can pull good numbers and still dislike the way I'm doing it while I'm doing it.
It's these kind of fights that people are pointing at where you top dps Alex Savage as a bard http://i.imgur.com/fBn2mIB.jpg
Only these people don't play bard and don't realize that I am not complaining about the dps output of bard at this point rather than issues with its playstyle which needs more attention than an easy dps tweak by upping or lowering potencies.

[Noira]

So wait you're afraid that the good Bards will make SE NOT make QoL changes ? SE makes changes based on the hardest content, if Bard is pulling good dps in the hardest content then yeah probably won't change much.

That said just because Bard is doing good dps doesn't mean SE won't notice some clunkiness involved.

[Snowaeth]

So wait you're afraid that the good Bards will make SE NOT make QoL changes ? SE makes changes based on the hardest content, if Bard is pulling good dps in the hardest content then yeah probably won't change much.

That said just because Bard is doing good dps doesn't mean SE won't notice some clunkiness involved.

When did quality of life = dps?
You can make QoL changes and if that causes dps to increase you can always balance the potencies afterward, as that's a simple change to numbers rather than anything else.

Just because I can pull good numbers, doesn't mean I like the way I have to do it, playing around broken/problematic skills/interactions.
This goes even more so for the top raiders going for world first, they will take the classes that work best for the situation, no matter what state it is in, so basing QoL fixes around those players is probably the worst idea, you base dps around them not qol.
If class X would be broken and unplayable in every fight, but would pull 5000dps in Alexander Savage Floor 4, those same raiders would take that class into that raid any day, it wouldn't mean the class is fine.

[Roshidon1]

I think someone stated this earlier, but I'm going to repeat it again anyways. It seems you have a million buffs/bloodletter popping at the same time and you have to choose the lesser of two evils; Basically pick the best option at the time, which can be confusing because chances are they are all pretty good options. Example: You lose some dps if you skip bloodletter to say, pop another damage cooldown to renew your dots at a higher damage potential, and while this is happening another bloodletter procs. So it's almost like they are dangling candy in front of us, only to snatch it away.

[Bogy87]

As a couple others have stated, I would love it if they removed the casting and instead required you to stand still to get the damage bonus.

I would vote for standing still 1.5 seconds - as that is the length of the cast time - for the 30% damage bonus to apply.

You could leave WM and the skills requiring it the same, your skills would not conflict with each other as they would go back to being skills instead of spells and you would still have to stand still for the 1.5 as if you were casting w/o the need for cast bars.

If this meant people would be using WM all the time, or simply too much, they could make it mp dependent or only active for a set time - though I don`t see a problem with it always being active (like sword oath, for example).

If the numbers didn't make sense you could push the stand still time towards 2 secs and the damage bonus down to 25% or whatever it took to make the numbers appropriate.

I believe this:

- is one the smallest amounts of change to the current WM system

- solves the bowmage problem (If we wanted to main a mage we would have.)

- solves the proc interference problem

- (with numbers adjusted accordingly) would still retain the dps ratio to the other dps classes

- distinguishes our class better from mch

(I realize that because of my brd's lvl (51) some may say that "I have yet to try it as it is so how can I say i dislike it?" I'll tell you: I had blm at 50 it wasn't good or bad but it was the most enjoyable for me at the time though I didn't find it spectacular. Then nin came along and I loved it while lvling but I found that latency impeded by ability to play it optimally so I leveled bard.

Playing brd was like a sustained epiphany. I loved it so much more than nin and especially blm. The thing I loved was the ability to be a ranged class without cast bars.

I had played exclusively brd since that day (until 3.0 when I read the bs and picked up mch before learning about its similar nature and hence haven't really played at all) and grew to hate cast bars.

So, without playing it with its (short) cast bars, I can safely say the reason I loved the class was ruined with the addition of cast bars.)