DEV REQUEST: Remove cast bars to MCH & BRD

[Daralii]

While I'm in the camp which absolutely hates Wanderer's Minuet, I don't see it changing any time soon.

At first I assumed they had added WM in order to make us equal to other DPS jobs in terms of raw damage. Then I actually did some testing and found it came up horribly short. The main reason was that the small damage bonus didn't make up for the loss of auto attacks. They later gave it an extra 10% damage bonus and then it just slightly pipped ahead of the auto-attack damage.

They're very afraid of utility jobs making pures obsolete, which is in part why AST was so awful until recently. Unless their mindset changes, I don't see bard/machinist matching the casters, never mind the melee, at any point.

[Riardon]

I did't play MCH yet but BRD with casting bars is annoying and boring. It feels way slower now. It still confuses me sometimes.

[LazyC]

WM probably isnt going anywhere at all at this point so i gave up on hoping for that, i still feel that WM was just GB tacked onto bard because SE couldnt think of anything actually creative to do with bard, so of course it all just feels clunky as hell, thats what i want Sqaure to fix, adjust abilities or i dont even know, just fix all the clunkyness bard has now, its so damn obviously bards toolkit was not designed for this at all

and please get rid of wardens paeon already, it is like 99% useless

[Coatl]

BRD feels a lot more rooted to the ground especially with Empyreal arrow being an oGCD attack but still having a cast time, so it will clip into your GCD almost all the time. I leveled my MCH before I maxed my BRD and I can say that they definitely built MCH from the ground up with gauss barrel in mind.

If you shoot a split shot at a target with gauss barrel on, you will be able to tell whether you got a procc or not before your GCD resets. This is not true for BRD's heavy shot though. The actual attack lands way too late and you won't be able to tell you have a straight shot procc until after your GCD resets. Just little things like that make me prefer MCH.

[rappa]

My answer about this "request"

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[RiceisNice]

...

And to add onto this, BLM's counterpart to this is firestarter, which makes their fire III instant cast with no mp cost. Compared to straight shot, no BLM would ever hardcast fire III unless it's switching from umbral to astral (in which case, you have more than enough time to use up that firestarter). They also had another issue where thudercloud was worth less than the potency of fire IV on top of the risk of dropping enochian, they had to buff the former. That's an example of 3.0 skills not working well with 2.0's design and they managed to correct even that.

With straight shot, I have to keep the buff refreshed regularly which means casting SS when it falls off.

If I'm doing it right after heavy shot (and heavy shot lands the proc), I get the buff, but does not get used up and I do not get the 100% crit. I can't even buffer the time by using an oGCD right after heavy shot, it just doesn't work. It's all the more frustrating since SS uses more tp for lower potency.

And compared to MCH, split shot doesn't suffer this problem between the comparatively shorter animation and the other designs behind it. Heck, slug shot and clean shot doesn't have this problem considering I can hit one after another during rapid fire (instant cast with a 1 sec GCD) and still use up the procs that pop from the previous skill without having to wait for it.

[Felis]

It should be very simple for the devs to rename the Cast Bar of BRD and MCH into Charge Bar.
There are already different bars in the game (a wait bar, a watch bar, an examine bar, etc.), one more shouldn't be a problem

[RiceisNice]

It should be very simple for the devs to rename the Cast Bar of BRD and MCH into Charge Bar

If it functioned differently like the charge could be done while moving or allowed oGCDs to be used inbetween, then sure. Though there still needs to be tweaks to make BRD function better with cast/charge times in regards to procs, and to differentiate the gameplay of BRD and MCH.

Having a cast bar brings all the restriction (that is, the amount of oGCDs you can use and the absolute freedom of movement, although this is more of a pvp concern) of having a cast bar, but in BRD's case (and MCH in PvP) without the payoff of a cast bar (which is usually higher damage output)

[kalasnikov]

Why there are so many different topics about bards current state? Because every single thread gets flooded by anti bards and black mages.

[ExiaQuanta]

If square is gonna give back brds mobility and take away WM, they will also have to nerf every fight and every class to accommodate the dps checks and to keep the dps ratio between brd and others classes the same. As people have stated before, with WM brds are still behind dps by like 200. But wait, if thats with WM, than wouldnt that mean the gap would be even bigger with out it?? I don't think a potency buff to every of brds skill will fix the gap. If that is the case here, than your lookin at

Mobility + 190 potency Heavy Shot/Bloodletter. 130 potency on venomous bite with a dot potency of 40 potency, 80 potency of windbite with a dot potency of 60 and so on so forth. It all sounds reasonable yea? Cause you need potency around these for brd to do the same dmg as they do now. But the mobility and the idea of ignoring AoEs and still have 100% dps and uptime is the winner here and deal breaker.