Bards cant hear their own songs or voice?

[Shurrikhan]

I do hope SE notices how totally backwards and stupid this is.....

While it means that you'd be pressing 1 fewer button in solo combat, nothing else about this is necessarily backwards nor stupid. You can either lose proportionate potency from the rest of your toolkit, or benefit from your own songs. Balance will be the goal either way. You just need to decide whether you want 100% song uptime (even prior to WM being available) to further be a requirement for your full DPS (e.g. balanced around it, and penalizing any form of song saving, along with Bard during leveling, prior to having all 3 songs).

Take Brotherhood for example. If Monk was balanced around receiving the damage buff itself, it would simply be harder to time it appropriately as not to waste stacks, given that you'd have the same very rigid windows placed around it, then, as any other damage-modifying CD. Sure, now you use it in solo content, too, but it's only more annoying in group content, and your DPS, ideally, goes unchanged (having simply taken from somewhere else).

Wait... what? How would having the direct hit buff stop you from having song uptime?

Read again. I said that if you had the crit and direct hit buffs, you would be balanced around... having the crit and direct hit buffs, i.e. your DPS would be further dependent on Battle Voice. It's irrelevant to your actual throughput. The only change would be that your DPS has additional dependencies. At present, BV can always be popped whenever it would best aid the party; you are irrelevant to that, and thus a bit more freedom in how to deploy it. At present, you are not effectively losing 3% crit whenever you do not have a song active (e.g. saving it briefly during a dungeon run for when you can actually reel in the multi-DoT rewards, or when you're still leveling and don't have all three). Gaining effects for an ability and losing effects from the absence of an ability are just two sides of the same coin. One is simply dependent on the skill, for better or worse, increasing depth and reducing leniency. Whether that improves gameplay will depend on the ability, its surrounding toolkit, and likely on player preference.

It is not, however, an issue of throughput until such time as development decides that Bard is undertuned *and* that more general ways of buffing the class would be too powerful or otherwise undesirable.

[Enyalios]

Wait... what? How would having the direct hit buff stop you from having song uptime?

[Berethos]

Wait... what? How would having the direct hit buff stop you from having song uptime?

That's not what they meant - the part about song uptime was that benefitting from your own buffs from songs means that to maximize DPS you could never let a song drop, which is mostly how it is now but would be an even more important requirement.

The rest is pointing out that if we benefit from the 2% crit buff and the DH buff from BV, then we'd likely be balanced around that and have other things nerfed (likely potency of skills so individually they don't hit as hard) to compensate.

Basically gaining the 2% crit buff and the DH buff from BV wouldn't put as ahead of where we are now.

[Fredco191]

They can hear the Troubadour songs why not Battle Voice and their actual songs?

[Dyzmo]

During a trial today multiple times my army's paeon just cancelled on me, mid song. The song gauge was gone as well.

[Mirakumi]

I would rather that being with another Bard that our abilities stack... Even if we don't benefit, shouldnt the group benefit from 2?

[Arutan]

As the title suggests, when are we gonna be able to get our own buffs? Am I to believe all bards are deaf and cant hear their own songs? Or their own Battle Voice?

I do hope SE notices how totally backwards and stupid this is.....

Personnally I find it weird to be hyped by our own song. When a bard sing it's usually to hype the others, not himself.

[TankHunter678]

Bards are tone deaf, they inspire their allies to kill the enemy faster to get them to stop singing.

[Crimson_Hunter]

To be fair if we're being realistic, then bards should not be able to really attack or do anything else if it requires an instrument, unless you think you can play a flute/ harp while running around and (accurately) fire arrows.

While we're being realistic, Bard attacks should have a relatively high miss rate and lower damage the further you are from your target, especially so if you're moving and attacking, also have a limited amount of shots, need to craft or buy arrows and can only carry a limited amount.

[Berethos]

To be fair if we're being realistic

Could go the other "realistic" route and that the initial instrument use is to establish the pitch/get the notes right, and the rest is the Bard singing a capella as they fire arrows (which, incidentally, matches with the established lore, that Bards were born out of archers who began to sing to bolster the comrades and deal with the death of those around them in battle as they had to keep their eyes on the field no matter what and so could basically see the horror of battle more clearly).