UN-RIP Bard

[The_Last_Dragoon]

There are a lot of great abilities they showed off for Bard, and it looks like cast times have gone the way of the dinosaur. It's going to be weird for a bit again since Bards will have to completely relearn how they play (again), but we'll have our instant casts back.

Hopefully I didn't do what I did last time and failed to notice some other major detail like it being an ability that makes everything an instant cast for 30 seconds...

[KaosKeith]

Hopefully they addressed bard's op lack of movement penalty, otherwise we'll have a repeat of 2.x where it was nerfed into oblivion to compensate.

[jameseoakes]

I didn't know the bard was dead O.o

[The_Last_Dragoon]

I didn't know the bard was dead O.o

it's more of a callback to this thread that I made 2 years ago. Honestly, the cast times were okay if you approached them as a challenge, but it just turned a class that made it easy to learn fights into one that required you to know when you had some breathing room where you wouldn't need to move for a while.

[Atmora]

I dunno', if you took the time to actually master it HW bard is a ton more fun than ARR.

[ShaneDawn]

I dunno', if you took the time to actually master it HW bard is a ton more fun than ARR.

This. Bard in 2.0 had ResidentSleeper tier of gameplay and was the "go to class" to those who wanted easy gameplay and the potential to hide behind the excuse of being a "support DPS". Although funnily enough, Bards were still able to dish out respectable numbers while being able to handle most mechanics with zero or close to no DPS loss at all. Minuet added an interesting new floor and ceiling of skill to the class and made it feel a lot nicer to me.

I'm hopeful for the song revamp though; I hope it's not a trivial mechanic, but rather an interesting new system with a possibility of an added layer of skill and decision-making. If the class will be a glorified 2.0 Bard with a couple more buttons to press, then meh.

[SaitoHikari]

Yoshi and company outright said bow mage and gun mage were dead entirely, so this isn't some temporary buff thing.

[Sylvain]

Yoshi and company outright said bow mage and gun mage were dead entirely, so this isn't some temporary buff thing.

Really? like they entirely removed the casting time thing?
Well, from what I've seen on all fr, eng and jp forum, most people were either unhappy or didnt care too much. So I guess this is a good thing.

[Risvertasashi]

Really? like they entirely removed the casting time thing?
Well, from what I've seen on all fr, eng and jp forum, most people were either unhappy or didnt care too much. So I guess this is a good thing.

They noted on the stream that a lot of players left bard (and didn't pick up MCH).

There were enough complaints. These forums are just rife with 'git gud' and 'not a problem for me, l2p!' and so on

[Maero]

And it was also addressed many times before as to why Bard had needed changes. They had all the mobility + very good damage.
HW Bard with WM is fine, people just did not like the idea of so called "cast times" and refused to adapt or even give it a chance.
The new changes do seem nice with the songs i will say