Wanderer’s Minuet, Gauss Barrel and Positive Gameplay Additions

[Alahra]

I took Machinist to 60 not too long after launch, and over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started working on Bard as well, which has prompted me to re-examine the core gameplay additions for both jobs post-50 in Wanderer’s Minuet and Gauss Barrel. While I got used to Gauss Barrel, coming back around and dreading level 52 on Bard led me to realize that there’s still something that’s just poorly designed about the two abilities.

The way I’m looking at things now, the problem with them doesn’t, on its face, come down to the fact that cast times don’t interact well with the rest of the two classes’ mechanics or solely because they become “bow” or “gun mages,” respectively. While a lot of dissatisfaction with the two abilities is often expressed in terms of these two things, the fundamental issue comes down to the fact that the abilities don’t feel like a benefit.

New abilities should, and usually do, make your character feel more powerful, more capable in your assigned role, or make you more versatile on the field of battle (often through additional group utility). They should allow you to do something you couldn’t do before, increase your overall damage output, healing output, or survivability, or shore up some weakness inherent in your class’s kit in some way.

Most of the new abilities in the game hit at least one of these things. Deliverance directly increases a WAR’s damage output by 5%. Armor Crush lets a NIN spend Ninjutsu on other things instead of Huton, both increasing damage output and versatility. Form Shift gives MNKs a way to adapt to rapid phase shifts and downtime. Indomitability gives SCH a strong AoE healing option that they formerly lacked. And so on. Some abilities may not be perfect or all that useful, such as Clemency for PLD or Smokescreen for NIN, but they still expand their respective class’s versatility in a way that’s easy to understand.

Wanderer’s Minuet and Gauss Barrel are different, though. They don’t, by themselves, improve your character in any significant way, and in fact, they come with notable drawbacks. From the get-go, at level 52, both abilities make your character do less overall damage on single-target than you do before you turn them on because the math isn’t properly tuned: auto-attacks are already close to 30% of a BRD’s or MCH’s damage and because of issues with GCD-clipping, the loss of ability to use two Abilities per GCD, and the loss of damage while responding to fight mechanics, both of these skills feel like punishments rather than enhancements.

Now, the addition of special weaponskills and abilities that can only be used while using the respective class’s new stance does ultimately make up for the lack of auto-attacks (starting at level 54 with Gauss Round and Empyreal Arrow), but it’s worth contrasting these with the other major stance added in the expansion: Deliverance.

Deliverance is a damage increase in and of itself meant for situations in which a WAR would already not be using Defiance of 5% (a little higher if you include the Critical chance from Abandon). That’s not particularly gigantic by itself, but it’s noticeable and exciting and most importantly for the comparison, it doesn’t have a cost associated with it.

Like the stances for BRD and MCH, Deliverance has a few abilities that are associated with it, but none of them are necessary to make Deliverance worth using. Fell Cleave offers delicious burst, Equilibrium offers minor TP recovery (which while not that useful rotationally, is nice for AoE and after unfortunate deaths), and Decimate offers high, TP-less AoE damage.

The same can’t be said for the abilities tied to Wanderer’s Minuet and Gauss Barrel. Empyreal Arrow/Gauss Round and Sidewinder/Ricochet are essentially abilities that require you to do more to make up for the loss of auto-attacks, which require no additional work from you. As a result, they’re not exciting abilities in their own right but only exciting because they make up for the terrible ability you picked up at level 52.

From the moment a BRD or MCH turns on Wanderer’s Minuet or Gauss Barrel at level 52, they are weaker than they were before they had access to them. Quite simply, that’s not good design because new abilities—especially the introductory ability for a new expansion’s level range—should feel significant from the getgo.

Even at level 60, relative to their level 50 selves, BRDs and MCHs don’t particularly feel more powerful. In ARR, a BRD’s DPS ceiling was around 20% lower than that of melee DPS, and in Heavensward, BRD and MCH are sitting at about the same place compared to their fellow physical DPS. So what they’ve accepted on the road to 60 is the addition of cast times, which limit mobility, interact very poorly with off-global Abilities (this is of special note for BRD, but also relevant to MCH), and cause bizarre animation clipping (hey, aesthetics do matter), to arrive at exactly the place they were before.

BLM and SMN are of particular note here, because while they both saw some significant gameplay changes, these changes, which make both classes more difficult to play, increased the standing of each in situations in which they were formerly weaker (single-target DPS for BLM and area-DPS for SMN). Additionally, the changes to the casters don’t fundamentally alter the way the two classes function in the overall gameplay sense (though BLM does come close, admittedly—but at least they got a pretty significant single-target DPS boost to make up for it).

That’s ultimately why Wanderer’s Minuet and Gauss Barrel are so disappointing and frustrating: they have significant drawbacks, and the benefits they offer don’t actually make up for those drawbacks. They’re far more like nerfs to BRD and MCH mobility at level 50 than they are enhancements to their playstyles. New abilities shouldn’t feel like nerfs, and any abilities that do are badly designed.

I’m no game designer and ultimately, I don’t have a huge personal stake in making BRD and MCH’s central abilities play better, as they’re both just occasional diversions for me from my main jobs, so my thoughts on the best way to improve the two classes don’t come from a position of authority. And beyond that, I've been thinking about the two abilities more in a broader sense, regarding what gaining new abilities should feel like in general.

Edit: Through the course of discussion, I looked over the numbers compiled on FFLogs for BRDs and MCHs relative to DRG and MNK in Savage, and BRD has in fact gained somewhat relative to the other DPS, so some of the thrust of this post isn't spot on. Info on the exact numbers are available later in the thread--I don't want to clutter the original post with all of that, as it's already fairly long.

[StrejdaTom]

At first I was like "not another WM thread, please."
But to be honest, I must say that this is probably the best WM/GB thread I have seen since Heavensward was released.
I guess BRD or MCH is not your main which makes you quite unbiased compared to people like me (I have been maining BRD since 2013), but not annoying like people who have BRD on 43 and post "git gud".

You were able to write how I feel about BRD. I do not think that WM is completely bad, but I just do not feel that something really improved and I got stronger. So far I have only leveled also DRK, WAR and AST and DRK feels epic when he gets to Dark Arts, so does feel WAR when he gets to Fell Cleave. I have not felt any of these WOW moments while leveling BRD and that is just sad.

Our gameplay completely changed, which is fine with me, I have already got used to it. But I would also love to feel that it improved, which is just not truth, atleast for now.

[kazeandi]

When my BLM got Fire III it felt like wow. Now, Enochian, not so much. It's a rather annoying thing TBH.

[Nalien]

Honestly... I hate Wanderer's Minuet... I don't mind Gauss Barrel, though I'd love to see it changed significantly, but the fact that Bard got Wanderer's Minuet, instead of another Song, with more combat skills that do nothing for the Song aspect of the Job... That pisses me off...

I'd love to see Wanderer's Minuet changed to be a Song along the lines of Mage's Ballad... If it was an AoE +5% damage dealt Song (for when you don't have enough casters to justify Foe Requiem but still want to use your Song to boost damage output!), I'd love it... Bard is seriously lacking in the Song department right now... Empyreal Arrow, Iron Jaws, and Sidewinder would all then naturally lose the Wanderer's Minuet requirement. MP use and recovery has always bothered my on Bard, so how about turning Empyreal Arrow into a Syphon Strike style ability? Sidewinder... How about having that apply an additional effect which changes the effect of your next Song, effectively doubling Bards repertoire... With some native MP recovery that could actually work really nicely...

Seriously SE, I want to play a spoony Bard, not some pathetic Bow-Mage... The only casting aspect there should be on Bard is casting the damned Songs!

Damn... Now I'm thinking of what additional effects they could give each Song...

Mage's Ballad - Magic Defense Boost? Would be nice to throw that down for certain mechanics...
Foe Requiem - Single Target Sleep? Got to have one useless thing somewhere... Actually I'd really like that in solo/PvP situations...
Army's Paeon - +Skill/Spell Speed%? Nice for DoTs, would mirror the TP recovery nicely as well, since Skill Speed is what kills TP...
Wanderer's Minuet - Regen? A very light Regen would be kinda nice...
Warden's Paean - Perhaps switch that to targeting an enemy and removing a buff?

Some of those might seem particularly pointless, but if Empyreal Arrow provides enough MP recovery, I think that Ballad and Minuet would be fairly solid, Paeon would be OK as well, Requiem and Paean would be overwhelmingly situational, though. Big attack incoming, pop a Sidewinder Ballad, phase change where nobody can attack, Sidewinder Minuet... GG, now I really hate the Bard I have...

Gauss Barrel I kind of feel fits Machinist thematically... I wouldn't mind keeping it in some form, but I kind of wish it was effectively a different version of Reload though, rather than a stance... Rename Gauss Round to Gauss Shot, have Gauss Barrel apply five Gauss Rounds while removing any of the regular Rounds from Reload... +40% damage instead of +20 Potency, same cast time faff it currently has (though obviously only until you fire all the Gauss Rounds), throw in the same 100% additional effects on Split/Slug Shot (if I'm casting the shots they damn well better be 100%). Quick Reload would provide an additional Gauss Round if you currently have Gauss Rounds, regular Rounds if you have none. Then just have Gauss Shot and Ricochet completely expend all Gauss Rounds, with them having higher potency the more Gauss Rounds you have left. Then it effectively becomes a question of what you use those Rounds for... There would be some room to play around with that, do you use them all for a more potent, but less mobile Split Shot > Slug Shot > Clean Shot combo, or do you burn all the Rounds on a stronger Gauss Shot?

[Alahra]

I guess BRD or MCH is not your main which makes you quite unbiased compared to people like me (I have been maining BRD since 2013), but not annoying like people who have BRD on 43 and post "git gud".

Neither of them is my main, no. I level them to get more use out of my Aiming accessories since I'm a NIN main and for an occasional change of pace. I had similar thoughts about MCH back when I hit 52--I'd level sync to 50 to do High Level Roulette and realize how much more smoothly the job played then, and I seriously considered dropping it more than once. But with some practice I was able to get the timing down on the casts to get it to 60. But after I put it away for awhile, I found that I couldn't really play it well anymore, which lead to my dreading taking up BRD for the same reason.

I'm still going to take it to 60, but I doubt I'll seriously play either one going forward unless something changes so that they "feel" more fun. Even if they function mechanically, that's still a really important factor in my mind.

When my BLM got Fire III it felt like wow. Now, Enochian, not so much. It's a rather annoying thing TBH.

I wondered about this, too. I've had a few career BLM friends that have abandoned it in favor of other classes because of how drastically it changes at 60. But I haven't played it myself to really have any sense of it. Enochian does seem like its at risk of falling into a similar boat, and honestly, I really question the wisdom of placing it so late in the leveling curve. Since it's a significant rotational shift, it probably should have come in at level 52, just like Wanderer's Minuet, so that there was plenty of time to adjust to it before hitting cap.

[CrystalRainbow]

My wife is just starting to level BRD. She thought it would be a lost worse then it is.

She was saying it should auto turn off if a skill gets interrupted by movement.
She was running a leveling and the tank died and as a brd she was used to being able to run and kite the move and just about died before she realized she wasn't even shooting because everything was getting interrupted.

[RiceisNice]

Enochian itself though, adds a layer of management onto the job while it flows with their already-existing tool kit. It's design specifically to cater BLM's unique gameplay of astral-umbral, while requiring that you still use your old skills during it to maintain astral fire. I actually happen to like BLM's design because of this; it meshes very well with what they can do and allows them to do it better, even getting 1 successful enochian refresh gives you at most a 10-second downtime on it. It even resolves some of their previous issues at first since they don;'tt have to consecutively cast fire I and risk overlapping their procs (which in itself becomes more rewarding since now you can fit three fire IVs before needing to refresh). They give you the spells that interact with enochian one at a time to let you learn it at a regulated pace, much like DRG's FnG and WT with geriksoul. Enochian at first is just a 30 second buff for 5% damage, then you get blizzard IV which helps you maintain that 5% damage buff, and eventually a whooping 280 potency hit that's on a lower cost than your 180 potency one. While the gameplay changes a bit, you have to remember that this is an expansion, and ideally the jobs need to evolve a bit compared to their 2.0 counterparts. The option to play your 2.0 rotation is still there, and it's often enough to get the job down outside of raiding content, provided you yourself are a capable player.

GB and WM...it's really just a mess in general imo. For the record, I'm fine with having cast times on a ranged physical job, but there's absolutely no reason to put it on both and homogenize their gameplays even more; I actually like having some auto attacks when I'm using a gun or bow to give me the feeling of having multiple, weaker hits. And even then, the two play so similar to each other with or without WM/GB it's kind of disappointing really when MCH is supposed to be a brand new job that shares the role as BRD (much like BLM/SMN), their only real differences boils down to mobility due to the frequency of procs (which is it's own problem). As a BRD in 2.0 that rarely moved unless they needed to, mobility is honestly not that much of a selling point to differentiate the two jobs, let alone being the "new ability" that's supposed to evolve my job past how they played in 2.0. Everything else around them is aestehtics at best, and even they still both fail at it in some aspects (though I'm nit picking at this point, I'm more frustrated at the fact on how homongenized the two jobs are from a gameplay perspective).

Since it's implementation, I really feel that they did not play test these two abilities at all, and could have really used player feedback. Both abilities were actually a DPS loss until level 60, and was still a dps loss for MCH to maintain it fulltime. That alone screams severe lack of playtesting, although something like that shouldn't even happen when you have your typical parsers recording BRD auto attacks making up for 22-25% of their damage (with WM only boosting your damage by 20% at the time).

Then outside of the implementation is the interaction of it's abilities. WM does not work with 2.0 bard traits, and infact they have some delay/bugs/glitches unique to themselves. SS procs don't activate in time despite having a 1.5 cast time out of a 2.5 GCD and you can't even use a oGCD to force a refresh (a BLM can, and their cast time is longer/the same as their GCD, while MCHs do not have this problem at all. The nature of having a oGCD resetting trait does not work with cast times since you can't double weave or risk delaying your weaponskill, and for some reason, using SS when your previous HS has the proc not only does not use the proc, but it delays your oGCD too.

All this said, their numbers are fine, which is a shame since they typically do not make changes to jobs unless they are severely underperforming in content (like 20% WM/GB). I really can't stress enough how the two jobs (MCH and BRD) are so incredibly homogenized in gameplay, yet they still decided to give both of them an ability that is functionally the same when at first they'd preview MCH with this sort of addition, and ultimately it seemed shoehorned to BRD when they showed a gameplay video of it (and ironically, they didn't show the cast times on MCH).

[Alahra]

first they'd preview MCH with this sort of addition, and ultimately it seemed shoehorned to BRD when they showed a gameplay video of it (and ironically, they didn't show the cast times on MCH).

My best guess is that they planned for MCH to have cast times at least relatively early on (MCH definitely feels like they spent more time designing it *around* Gauss Barrel) but came to the conclusion that no one would play MCH if it had cast times and BRD didn't, so they had to add the cast times to BRD to even them out. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure they're right, too: mobility is a huge asset both in terms of mechanics and just in "fun" factor, so if the two had the same damage capability (and they sort of need to) but one had the casting drawback, it would be a dead class. Ultimately I don't think adding the cast times to either class was the best decision--at least not with the amount of time they actually put into designing them. The class design for both of them is very much in conflict with itself from a variety of angles now--which is actually rather curious as the class design in ARR was really elegant in general.

I don't have a problem with the homogenization issue personally (I think there's enough difference in the way their support works and their "combo" systems, but that's gonna be somewhat subjective).

Thanks for the breakdown of Enochian, by the way. I only had a vague idea of how it worked and that explanation was actually quite helpful. It definitely seems like it was put together better than the BRD and MCH changes.

[Warlyx]

Even at level 60, relative to their level 50 selves, BRDs and MCHs don’t particularly feel more powerful. In ARR, a BRD’s DPS ceiling was around 20% lower than that of melee DPS, and in Heavensward, BRD and MCH are sitting at about the same place compared to their fellow physical DPS. So what they’ve accepted on the road to 60 is the addition of cast times, which limit mobility, interact very poorly with off-global Abilities (this is of special note for BRD, but also relevant to MCH), and cause bizarre animation clipping (hey, aesthetics do matter), to arrive at exactly the place they were before.

that sum it for me , and i have been singing this song the whole expansion (see what i did :P) , im in the same spot as i were in 2.0 (dps and utility wise) BUT now i have casting times! , and frustrating gameplay...

i dont mind casting times , it got used to it , but if i lost my movility i want something in return! more dps or more utility (isnt going to happen i know )

ALL THE OTHERS JOBS GAINED SOMETHING IN 3.0 , QOL changes that fixed lots of 2.0 issues , new mechanics , new utility (NIN/DRG)

other job have issues? of course , see mnk / blm changes some weeks ago....+ poor PLD's

the only thing we got was a skill to refresh the dots with casting time and the worst animation ever....




like i said in other threads , it feels like Bard was rushed while the SE team was busy with SMN and WAR , dont get me started on MCH...the job had potential and all wasted because SE wanted a bard w/o bard....

[RiceisNice]

My best guess is that they planned for MCH to have cast times at least relatively early on (MCH definitely feels like they spent more time designing it *around* Gauss Barrel) but came to the conclusion that no one would play MCH if it had cast times and BRD didn't, so they had to add the cast times to BRD to even them out. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure they're right, too: mobility is a huge asset both in terms of mechanics and just in "fun" factor, so if the two had the same damage capability (and they sort of need to) but one had the casting drawback, it would be a dead class.

I don't have a problem with the homogenization issue personally (I think there's enough difference in the way their support works and their "combo" systems, but that's gonna be somewhat subjective).

I do not mind the casting drawback if it was not the only change in design. Which would honestly be the case right now if we were to take BRD and MCH the way they are, and take WM off of BRD. MCH's "combo" system relies entirely on procs, which BRD has as well albeit in a lower frequency. They also have the ammo functionality, but that honestly feels incredibly underveloped and it ended up becoming another oGCD to use as soon as it comes off cooldown. It has almost no special interaction with your moveset except for two weaponskills.
>>They had initately previewed machinist as a job that uses attachments to their firearms to suit the situation, their example being one that lets them charge their shots by standing still. I thought, "hey, maybe they'll have other attachments like making their weaponskills have an AoE effect for higher TP cost" and so on. Instead, they scrapped the idea entirely, saying that they didn't want to design too many unique attachments for different weapons (but still put in gauss barrel, which uses the same model for every gun regardless of how it fits), and gave us a direct copy of quick notch/wide volley for our AoE. We ended up with "one attachment" which is functionally the same as wanderer's minuet.


I mean honestly speaking, look at BLM and SMN throughout the game, one is still more mobile than the other, but players still play both jobs anyway and both are still feasibly in end game. They both do relatively the same damage with BLM being the less-motile of the two, but it doesn't change the fact that they both have different gameplays that appeal to different players. I can't say the same for MCH and BRD when you start anaylzin the two jobs; MCH has turrets but they have very little interaction with it that it's ultimately place-and-forget. The regens itself is only part of the job and not part of their intergral gameplay as a dps.

As for mobility being a huge asset in mechanics...I really do not agree with this. If this was really the case, why do BLMs (and SMNs) topple BRDs on dps back in 2.0, and still as of now where they've lost their freedom of mobility? The thing is, even the developers themselves constantly jump between "They have mobiltiy so they need less dps" and "they have support so they need less dps". Honestly at this point, I don't feel mobiltiy is a good justification for lower dps, let alone being something that has to differentiate two jobs as I mentioned previously. Heck, not a lotof the fights even cater to the heightened mobility; a SMN can still kite renauds in T7 (and more effectively since they have miasma that doesn't overwrite their heavy), and when it does it usually gimps their dps so much that it becomes irrelevant (bluefires in T12 and Beetle phase in Ravana for orb kiting, which in itself is a very short downtime)