Bard Help(?)

[Gamer3427]

How bad is your latency specifically? I play with a ping of 650-700 due to satellite internet. While I'm playing as a MCH and not a BRD, I would imagine that in this regard the general effects would be the same. I'm not seeming to have any of the issues you are, however. While I haven't done a pure DPS check lately, (I'm on PS4, so I have to manually add the numbers if I want to), I do know that in most level 60 runs I'm typically putting out more DPS than BRDs I've seen with higher iLevels and that are clearly good players, (rare though they may be), and if not more then at least the same as. More and more lately, I'm also beginning to wonder if the PS4 doesn't just handle latency better than PCs, since most PC players tend to consider the game completely "unplayable" with even half as much latency as me......

The only real issue my latency causes in my rotations that I've noticed is that procs take slightly longer to activate on the next skill in the chain. I'm aware that the BRD rotation is quite different than the MCH rotation, but perhaps attempting to use this to your advantage and make more use of OGCs as buffers while a proc is activating will help some?

[Linadae]

While I'm playing as a MCH and not a BRD,

There's your answer to be honest...sigh. Brd's "rotation" generally involves weaving two ogcds in between heavy shot and the two dots. Now with a cast timer we can't do that. Or if we do, we clip into the next cast, loosing dps in the process. Or even worse, we lose procs thanks to being mid-cast. Latency only makes it worse.

Bard was not built from the ground up to account for cast timers, unlike MCH. So now we're not only fighting latency and the boss, but also the class's own mechanics.

And the problem will only be solved if:

A. SE does a COMPLETE redesign of bard so it's skills and traits work properly with Wanderer's Minuet.

B. Make Fire arrow and our procs able to be fired off while mid cast (naturally adjusting damage to account for the change)

Or C. scrap Wanderer's and go back to 2.0 bard (once more tweaking damage to account for the old playstyle)

[Gamer3427]

There's your answer to be honest...sigh. Brd's "rotation" generally involves weaving two ogcds in between heavy shot and the two dots. Now with a cast timer we can't do that. Or if we do, we clip into the next cast, loosing dps in the process. Or even worse, we lose procs thanks to being mid-cast. Latency only makes it worse.

I can see how it might be more of a problem. We MCH do have a lot of OGC skills we have to weave in between our attacks, (between 2-5 depending on number of enemies, their current health, and whether they're immune to knockback or not), but if I remember right from a thread where someone was complaining about WM, the BRD OCGs have a longer animation before they are considered "used", which I can see causing some slowdown if you don't want to interrupt them, though I can never see a situation where using an OGC would interrupt a cast if you are paying attention. Still, even with that in mind, I do think that complaints in general about relatively low levels of latency such as 300ms are a bit blown out of proportion in regards to how much damage it does to a player's ability to play, (with possible exceptions to NIN, as I haven't gotten to that point on that class to test it out). As I said, I am genuinely beginning to wonder if it's not actually a PC related issue, rather than pure latency, if it is truly as bad as people claim.......