Thread: Changes I would like to see in 3.15 Patch Notes

Originally Posted by Sylve

That said, I do think Bloodletter needs to have "Charges" instead of a flat cooldown with the River of Blood proc adding a charge rather than replacing the cooldown. The charges would recover on their own at the same rate BL currently does, but it would essentially allow the River of Blood to give us 2 uses of Bloodletter (3 if it happens at the same moment Bloodletter naturally resets) if we get lucky enough that both DoTs crit AND trigger. Place a cap on the charges or a duration on them so you can't prestack or save up dozens of shots.

I think that'd pretty much eliminate the one 'bugbear' Bard currently suffers.

Just a small note: DoT timers already occurred simultaneously prior to having IJ. IJ hasn't increased BL waste. Only using WM poorly (not keeping track of our the 3-second tick timer compared to offset + GCD + x oGCDs) has made any changes in regards to BL waste. The charge suggestion, if it were to take advantage of simultaneous procs, could easily increase our BL dps by an additional half our crit rate x # of double-dotted targets. If the same were applied to Rain of Death, it could well become an AoE king...

Moreover, even if it didn't take advantage of simultaneous procs, instead simply allowing for a bit more leeway, is that really something we want? At worst it would take away from the constant decision checks of WM Bard, and at best it would simply delay them those decisions by a GCD + 1.5 oGCDs. (This would let you use CDs in a more prompt manner, but unless you proc a Straighter Shot that GCD, you're still going to lose a BL or have to clip GCD on the next.)

Apart from making up for lost uptime on a melee (where rotations are finally not perfectly consistent), I typically find Bard the physical dps class of those I've leveled (all but MCH) that takes the most effort, or at least consciousness, to maximize the dps of, but I like it that way.

What I'd like to see for next patch notes:


Universal:

• Fading damage-per-target AoEs (Flare and Holy) have been revised to deal equal damage across all affected targets. Penalty has also been slightly reduced. Instead of decreasing damage per enemy hit in a chain, damage is now split evenly across all enemies. Each enemy that would be hit increases the AoE's damage by [100-<3*enemies hit>]%, to a minimum of 50% each. Damage increased at fewer than 13 enemies hit, decreased faintly at greater than 17. [Damage efficiency % = 100/97/94/91/88|85/82/79/76/73||70/67/64/61/58|55/52/50/50||50/50/50...]
• Certain stacking buffs or debuffs are now carry separate timers per each stack, allowing the stacks to fade separately. Adding stacks will not refresh the durations of prior stacks on these abilities.
• Macros are now capable of queuing.
• Macros now support a new command, /sswitch [Stance or buff condition] [ability to be changed] [ability changed into], e.g. /sswitch Defiance Fell Cleave Inner Beast; /sswitch Deliverance Inner Beast Defiance, OR /sswitch Sharper Fang and Claw Wheeling Thrust Fang and Claw; /sswitch Empowered Wheeling Thrust Fang and Claw Wheeling Thrust. Automatically adjusts tooltip and image. This should allow players intuitive control of their bars without giving access to the true automation of conditional statements.
• Pet orders may now be given mid-cast/animation.
• Using Sic no longer removes manual control of all pet abilities.
• Pets have a new modifier ability, Automate, which toggles the state of the next pet ability hit from Sic to Obey state individually. This can also be done by right-clicking the ability on PC.
• Pets now begin movement at 33% greater speed for up to 3 seconds, but this effect fades over time spent moving. Recharges over time spent stationary.
• Ground-targeted spells and abilities may now be queued.
• Stance-type spells now act as Abilities after activation and may be turned off / toggled oGCD (E.g. Oaths, Grit, and Songs)
• Healing received bonus effects now affect all healing received, not only by Spells. (Including abilities and damage conversion effects)
• Skill Speed and Spell Speed have been combined into a single stat, Speed.
• Base and bonus TP refresh ticks have been reduced by 20% but now tick per player base GCD rather than on server tick.
• Animation timers are now reduced by half the effect of any reductions to the GCD timer. Animation "locks" are reduced by the full effect.
• The weights of Speed, Critical Strike, and Determination are now basically equal across all jobs depending on per-execute potency value range, DoT proportions, rotational plateaus and specifically stat-related mechanics (e.g. Crit on SMN or Bard).
• On average, the weight of Speed has been increased on physical classes.
• Speed now affects the damage of AAs and oGCDs, at lesser value than by Determination or averaged Critical Strike bonus effect, but greater than the effect of Speed on damage over time.
• Speed now reduces your GCD by a percentage, rather than by a fixed amount, increasing its value at less than 15% bonus speed (2.17 from 2.5), but reducing its value thereafter. Speed still has less flat GCD reduction value per point when stacked with speed-increasing effects like Huton or Greased Lighting (though equal percent-of-remaining-GCD reduction).
• The cooldowns of the following abilities now scale with Speed: Cleric Stance, Dark Arts, Fists of Earth, Fists of Fire, Fists of Wind, Gauss Barrel, Gierskogul, Meditation, Transpose, and Wanderer's Minuet.
• Abilities like Duality and Barrage no longer prevent critical strikes on the original ability. If the original strike hits critically, the duplicated potency will receive the same bonus from the Critical Strike stat.
• Base Stoneskin has been returned to a 2.5s cast. CNJ's trait, The Whispering Stones, now reduces its mana cost by 20% instead. Stoneskin II's cast time has also been reduced by 20%, from 5s to 4s, and its mana cost by 20%.
• A player who has been unable to receive base MP regeneration for more than one tick will receive one instantly upon again becoming able to receive them. (Transposing from Astral Fire if a tick or more's time since the last MP tick will cause a base mana tick instantly.)

Gladiator:

• Shield Swipe now has a chance based on block strength to refresh its CD on blocks. [~40% Tower, 33% Kite, 28% Buckler] (Up to a ~8% MT dps increase)
• Fast Blade TP cost has been reduced from 70 to 60.
• Flash now scales with Fight or Flight.
• Tempered Will now also prevents cast interruption from damage. Cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes.
• The cooldown of Bulwark has been reduced to 2 minutes.

Paladin:
:: Paladin has gained ~4% OT dps, ~7% MT (up to ~15% when blocking frequently; see above), and unique AoE dps. Sword Oath tanking also improved. Support improved. Shelltron (Aegis Boon) may now affect magic damage and can be used as support.

• Goring Blade TP cost has been returned from 50 to 60.
• Shield Oath enmity multiplier increased from 2.0x to 2.3x.
• Shield Oath now diminishes only weaponskill damage. (~6.5% MT dps increase)
• While in Shield Oath your combos cannot be broken, damage required to interrupt your casts is increased by 50%, and Shield Swipe does not require a block to activate and cleaves for 50% potency. (~100 diminished or 75 undiminished potency)
• Sword Oath now increases the potency of all attacks by 25. [~19% dps increase, equivalent to current Sword Oath with a 1.7s blade. Remains the strongest dps stance. ~2% SwO dps increase compared to with a Hautenclair-speed weapon.] [Potency bonus to Auto-attacks is made at the 100-potency-per-3-seconds level, rather than per attack, equating to a only a 25% increase to AA damage, 2% less dps than otherwise.]
• Sword Oath has gained an additional effect, applied upon activating Sword Oath -- Zealous Blade. While active, your weaponskills will cleave all enemies for 25% potency, at 20% additional TP cost. [Additional TP cost cannot exceed +100%]
• Recasting Sword Oath will now instead toggle its additional effect, Zealous Blade. Sword Oath cannot be turned off except by swapping to Shield Oath. Toggles are done oGCD. [See Universal changes]
• Rage of Halone potency increased from 260 to 280. Enmity modifier increased from 5.0x to 5.5x.
• Rage of Halone now applies 10% STR down by default.
• The level 40 RoH trait, Improved Rage of Halone, has been changed to Keen Savagery, which increases Savage Blade enmity from 3x to 4.5x.
• Royal Authority may now combo from either Riot Blade or Savage Blade. (Up to a 2% dps increase over GB-RA-RA, up to triple mana generation.)
• Cover range increased and now shares your Cooldown effects with the target (thereby affecting transferred damage, but also applying effects of Tempered Will, Awareness, etc.). Link can now be toggled off/back on by caster or target by right-clicking the buff or by recasting Cover. Any blocks, dodges, or parries done by the Cover target will proc effects for both.
• Clemency is now a two-stage ability. After reaching 50% cast progress, it will continue to increase %ManaCost and %Healing per %Progress but can be released/used at any time. Interruption by any other means than manual cast cancellation will release/use the effect generated thus far.
• Divine Veil can now be activated by your own healing done.
• Shelltron has been revised to Aegis Boon. Animation revised. Can now be cast on self or an ally within 22 yalms. Now absorbs damage equal to four times your shield's block value. Cooldown scales with shield type (18s Buckler, 24s Kite, 30s Tower). Effect procs your on-block effects and generates MP on consumption. When cast on self, it will guarantee that you block the next physical attack against you and all incoming physical attacks within 1 second thereafter, but the blocked amount will take from the absorb. Essentially, it now has slight usability against magical attacks.
• PLD now receives 30% of its combined STR and VIT as bonus MND upon equipping its job crystal, to a maximum of the greater value of either, and scales its spells based on Weapon Damage instead of Magic Damage. (A PLD Cure should now be worth about 60% of a true healer's Cure/Physic/Benefic.

Dark Knight:
:: OT dps increased ~1.5%. MT dps increased by up to ~3%. Utility improved.

• The cooldown of Dark Arts now scales with Speed.
• Blood Weapon may now be used in Grit, but while in Grit it provides healing instead of mana. This is primarily meant to aid with TP issues. The MP cost change to Grit is the primary save for stance-dancing and MP issues. The healing done is generally inferior in value to mana generated.
• Living Dead now requires the DRK to be healed for 80% of its health, down from 100%. Reaching full health at any time during Walking Dead will remove the debuff.
• Delirium will no longer be removed by Dragon Kick, though their effects will still be incapable of stacking.
• Reprisal no longer requires a parry to be usable, but its duration has been reduced to 12 seconds. Using Reprisal also triggers the buff Revengeance, which gives a 20% chance for Reprisal to be usable regardless of cooldown (neither affected by or affecting CD) after a dodge or parry. Reprisals used under this effect will only deal 120 potency, however, and refresh the duration of Reprisal by 10 seconds, to a maximum of 20 seconds. Proc available for 5 seconds.
• Blood Price has been revised. Blood Price will now give mana per attack attempted against you, rewarding dodges and enemy misses, and its mana returns are averaged with a flat value, an amount based on the mitigated attack’s original potency, and the attack's actual damage. It should now give lesser returns against minimally damaging attacks but much greater returns against heavier attacks. Dodges now only waste 33% of mana returns.
• Darkside’s visual effect has been revised. It should now appear smaller and more concentrated around the Dark Knight’s eyes, right arm, and blade (when drawn).
• The Soul Devourer trait now improves Souleater’s damage-to-healing drain percentile both in and out of Grit by 50%. (After 48, Grit Souleater will heal for 100% of damage, but non-Grit Souleater will also heal for 50%.)
• Losing Darkside will no longer remove the Dark Arts buff.
• Soul Survivor may now be used on allies, and will apply a duplicate effect to you when doing so. If the allied target dies during the duration, you will gain Soul Survivor's normal amount of health and mana. If you die during the duration, the allied target will gain the health and mana instead.
• Physical attacks that trigger but are immune to dodges will automatically force a parry while Dark Dance is up. (If the attack rolled a 'dodge', but the attack cannot be dodged, wasting the roll, it will instead be parried. DA-Dark Dance is no longer wasted against undodgeable physical attacks, but simply has a doubled parry effect instead).
  
• The mana costs of several abilities have been reduced to provide slightly higher mana efficiency, improve stance dancing, improve Darkside prioritization/dropping, and provide more smoothly rounded values at level 60.
• Grit MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 1326 to 700. (53% of past value)
• Darkside MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 442 to 350. (79% of past value)
• Unleash MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 800 to 770. (96% of past value)
• Dark Passenger MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 884 to 800. (91% of past value)
• Abyssal Drain MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 974 to 880. (90% of past value)
• Dark Arts MP cost reduced from (at lvl60) 1764 to 1500. (85% of past value)

Marauder:

• Maim potency increased from 190 to 200.

Warrior:
:: Warrior remains basically unchanged. Equilibrium has been adjusted for universal changes. Maim buff increases OT dps by ~0.6%. Universal changes provide a noticeable increase to MT survivability.

• Equilibrium's self-healing has been reduced by 25%, from 1200 to 900, but now synergizes with Defiance and Convalescence. (9% weaker on average, but 5% stronger with Convalescence.)

Ninja:

• The leniency in maintaining or reapplying Huton via Armor Crush has been increased. If the animation began while Huton was up, Huton will be gained with 30 seconds atop its previous duration even if it briefly disappeared.
• The cooldown on Smokescreen has been reduced to from 180 to 120 seconds.
• The range of Shukuchi has been increased from 20 to 23 yalms. The cooldown of Shukuchi has been reduced from 60 to 45 seconds.
• Duality no longer prevents its original hit from striking critically. Duplicated strikes are still unable to strike critically but are affected by Critical Strike's bonus critical damage percentile if the original was a critical strike.

Pugilist:

• Mantra's %Healing received bonus has been increased from 5% to 8%. Traited version remains the same.
• The shared cooldown of Fists of Earth and Fists of Wind have been reduced to 2 seconds and now scale with Speed.
• The activation speed of Fists of Earth and Fist of Wind has been improved. Their animation lock has been reduced.

Monk:

• The shared cooldown of Fists of Fire has been reduced to 2 seconds and now scales with Speed.
• The activation speed of Fists of Fire has been improved. Its animation lock has been reduced.
• The recast time of Meditation now scales with Speed.
• The cooldown on Tornado Kick has been removed except in PvP, potency has been increased from 330 to 340.
• The TP cost of One-Ilm Punch reduced from 120 to 90.

Dragoon:

• The cooldown of Elusive Jump has been reduced to from 180 to 90 seconds. Enmity dropped has been reduced from half to a third.
• Losing Blood of the Dragon no longer removes procs of Enhanced Wheeling Thrust or Sharper Fang and Claw that have already been generated. However, both will still be removed by using another weapon-skill.
• The cooldown of Gierskogul has been reduced to 9 seconds and now scales with Speed.

Archer:

• Repelling Shot potency has been increased from 80 to 100.
• Blunt Arrow potency has been increased from 50 to 70.
• Bloodletter potency has been reduced from 150 to 140.
• Heavier Shot trait has been renamed to Wild Shots. Heavy Shot now has a 25% chance, up from 15%, to generate a stack of Wild Shot, which causes your next Straight Shot to be a critical strike and, in Wanderer's Minuet, require no cast time. You can carry up to 2 stacks of Wild Shot.
• Barrage no longer prevents its original hit from striking critically. Duplicated strikes are still unable to strike critically but are affected by Critical Strike's bonus critical damage percentile if the original was a critical strike.
• Quick Nock range increased to 10 yalms.
• The level 36 trait, Enhance Quick Nock, has been replaced by Hail of Arrows, which faintly increases your attack speed for every action you make that hits at least one enemy for 7 seconds. [Increases attack speed by 1% per successful attack. These buffs have no icon or display. Each instance of the buff will fade separately. New instances do not refresh old instances of the attack speed bonus when stacking.]
• Straighter Shot and River of Blood now each produce an additional sound effect.

Bard:

• The cooldown (duration for which you cannot leave) Wanderer’s Minuet upon activation has been reduced to 8 seconds and now scales with Speed.
• Warden's Paean is now an oGCD, but costs 10% of base maximum mana. Cost doubles after each use, with this penalty fading over 30 seconds (150% cost 15 seconds after use).

Machinist:

• The cooldown (duration for which you cannot leave) Gauss Barrel upon activation has been reduced to 8 seconds and now scales with Speed.
• Procs generated from Split and Slug Shot now each produce an additional sound effect.

Thaumaturge:

• The cooldown of Transpose now scales with Speed.
• The casting speed benefits of Astral Fire and Umbral Ice now last for an additional .5 seconds after their buff fades, allowing a second quickened elemental cast.
• Blizzard II potency has been increased from 50 to 70.
• Astral Fire and Umbral Ice duration increased to 11 seconds.
• Astral Fire and Umbral Ice are now applied on cast release, rather upon dealing damage. Both consequently now work against invulnerable targets and apply faintly sooner.
• Astral Fire now increases Fire spell mana costs by 50/30/20% per stack, to a maximum of +100%, instead of costing double immediately.
• Astral Fire now increases Ice spell casting speeds by 12/15/23% per stack, to a maximum of +50%, instead of only affecting cast times at AF3.
• Umbral Ice now increases Fire spell casting speeds by 12/15/23% per stack, to a maximum of +50%, instead of only affecting cast times at UI3.
• After having missed one or more ticks of MP regen due to effects that prevent base MP regeneration, leaving those effects (e.g. Astral Fire) will cause you to regain a base MP tick of mana instantly.
• Surecast is now consumed on spell completion, rather than upon starting your next spell.
• Level 16 Enhanced Surecast adjusted. It now causes Surecast to also require you to take damage equal to at least 15% of your HP for you to be knocked back while casting while Surecast is active, and gives it a 30% chance not to trigger its cooldown.

Black Mage:

• Flare potency increased to from 280 to 300. See universal changes.
• Freeze mana cost decreased from ~15.5% base MP to ~11.7% base MP (Equal to Fire II). Potency increased from 100 to 140.

Conjurer:

• The cooldown of Cleric Stance now scales with Speed.
• Stoneskin cast time reduced from 3.0 to 2.5s.
• Quick Stoneskin trait changed to Whispering Stone, reducing the MP cost of Stoneskin by 20%.
• Stoneskin II cast time and mana cost have been reduced by 20%.

White Mage:

• Holy potency increased from 200 to 210. Its mana cost has been reduced by 14%. (Now equal to that of Medica II, reduced from 15.5% base mana to 13.2%.) See universal changes.

Astrologian:

• Draw will now begin its cooldown immediately, progressing up to 50% (15 seconds) before the drawn card must be consumed to continue progress.
• Spread and Royal Road no longer have cooldowns.
• Shuffle can no longer draw the same card that was Shuffled.
• Shuffle now has two charges.
• The duration of Spire has been reduced from 20s to 15s, but its bonus TP regen per tick has been increased by 33%. Spire card will now also reduce TP costs by 10% for its duration.
• The duration of Ewer has been reduced from 20s to 15s, but its bonus MP regen per tick has been increased by 33%. The Ewer card will now also reduce MP costs by 10% for its duration.
• Spear now also causes all cooldowns to cool 50% faster over Spear's duration. (Their timers will decrease by 1.5 seconds for every 1 second of real time until Spear fades.)
• Bole now also causes the target's healing over time effects to fade at half speed over the duration.
• Balance now increases the target's largest primary stat and all secondary stats by 6%. [Unlisted: When giving bonus Mind, also reduces healing done by Spells by 3%.] Balance can now to be used to benefit any role.

Arcanist:

• All stats which affect you now also affect your pet.
• Sustain is now an oGCD with a cooldown equal to your GCD. Its effect has been reduced by 40%. It can now stack up to 3 times. Each instance of Sustain fades separately.
• Using Sic no longer removes manual control of your pet abilities.
• The base movement speed of pets has been increased by 33%, but this bonus fades over movement, to a maximum of 3 seconds of movement before returning to normal speed. This duration recharges, up to 3 seconds, while stationary.
• At the distance at which your pet would otherwise disappear due to range, it will now reappear at your side after a short delay (based on distance, roughly equal to the time it would take to reach you at mounted speed).
• You can now issue pet command mid-GCD, mid-cast, and mid-animation.
• Shadow Flare may now be queued like any other Spell. It can now be targeted during your GCD. It will begin casting at the previously targeted area once your GCD has completed.
• Enhanced Pet Actions trait chance to trigger increased from 20% chance to 25% and its bonus to skill speed increased from 20% to 30%.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Just a small note: DoT timers already occurred simultaneously prior to having IJ. IJ hasn't increased BL waste. Only using WM poorly (not keeping track of our the 3-second tick timer compared to offset + GCD + x oGCDs) has made any changes in regards to BL waste. The charge suggestion, if it were to take advantage of simultaneous procs, could easily increase our BL dps by an additional half our crit rate x # of double-dotted targets. If the same were applied to Rain of Death, it could well become an AoE king...

It's only really applicable on single target mobs (and a good handful of fights allow you to multi-dot, and outside of raiding, I just don't have a fun time multidotting on my BRD), and even then it's still a pretty shoddy feeling to have your oGCDs reset mid-cast, let alone trying to make empyreal arrow make properly inbetween your GCDs.

Having oGCD resets is fine and makes for a frantic, situational awareness gameplay (which I enjoyed in 2.0), it just doesn't work or flow very well for a job that uses cast times and really just feels like they didn't put any thought into it. I'm also against your idea of wild shots on BRD, if only on the basis that I don't want them to be even more homogenized with MCH gameplay by having procs for (stronger) instant shots. Numbers should really be the least of the concerns for making these sort of suggestions, since those factors are probably the easiest to change inbetween hotfixes; the changes should be more toward making the two different from each other (like...not giving bard WM when it's functionally the same as GB).

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

It's only really applicable on single target mobs (and a good handful of fights allow you to multi-dot, and outside of raiding, I just don't have a fun time multidotting on my BRD), and even then it's still a pretty shoddy feeling to have your oGCDs reset mid-cast, let alone trying to make empyreal arrow make properly inbetween your GCDs.

Having oGCD resets is fine and makes for a frantic, situational awareness gameplay (which I enjoyed in 2.0), it just doesn't work or flow very well for a job that uses cast times and really just feels like they didn't put any thought into it. I'm also against your idea of wild shots on BRD, if only on the basis that I don't want them to be even more homogenized with MCH gameplay by having procs for (stronger) instant shots. Numbers should really be the least of the concerns for making these sort of suggestions, since those factors are probably the easiest to change inbetween hotfixes; the changes should be more toward making the two different from each other (like...not giving bard WM when it's functionally the same as GB).

What I was going for with Wild Shots was mostly just more double-weaves per EA/IJ/rotation and the ability to store at least one so that these opportunities can be more tactical in nature, rather than mostly just RNG (holding onto SS+ for no more than a single additional HS before EA or double-weave). I see how that could feel like Slug/Clean Shot procs though, and therefore without identity, even if Straighter Shot came first.

Tbh, ideally I'd have liked WM to be a stance variance for Archer that is only situationally stronger (at certain points of the rotation) actually requires the Archer to weave in and out of the stance for max damage. The only major issue with that is that I find the current non-WM Bard gameplay a bit flat; it would have to be adjusted to a similar intensity in some way. Rather than getting WM or anything like it later on, I'd have preferred that each song interact in some way with our actual combat rotations, likely modifying Blood Letter and Rain of Death, and allowing us 'spot' adjustments, such as specifically helping out the mana of one healer over another, or secondary effects, Windsong, for instance, being a movement (Swiftsong) or Attack Speed/Cooldown-reducing buff, Paean being a TP regen and debuff/knockback/DoT-mitigating resistance buff, etc. Something that makes our combat itself potentially feel more supportive, and varied, with the addition of songs.