Bard. What if Straight Shot "proc" was not rng?

[MuseTraveller]

Please, for the love of all holy and scared and Thal's balls, do not touch bard! I... I get cast bars flashbacks.

[Shurrikhan]

Please, for the love of all holy and scared and Thal's balls, do not touch bard! I... I get cast bars flashbacks.

Increased frequency and reliability of the one skill that removed cast bars in Heavensward, gives you a fear of cast bars... in a post-castbar Bard?


On topic:

I'm fine with Straighter Shot being RNG, although I'd prefer that it be a normalized sort of RNG (see WoW for examples, wherein the actual chance starts much higher, fades on successes, and increases over failures to proc).
Now that Straighter Shot is no longer vital to movement and double-weaving, I don't mind its frequency as is. Any increase would adjust earlier levels' DPS and simply cost Refulgent Arrow potency, at best slightly improves its syncing with Barrage. This would be a slight improvement, but only slight.

What I'm not okay with is the button bloat involved in Refulgent Arrow and Pitch Perfect. I'd prefer that Pitch Perfect gain an AoE variant, e.g. Dissonance, and that each replace Bloodletter and Rain of Death, generating one stack per 15 seconds in addition to those generated by Repertoire. Refulgent Arrow should either lose potency to attach the usual crit buff, or now replace Heavy Shot on Heavier Shot procs, while Straighter Shot is effectively removed after acquisition of Refulgent Arrow.

The relatively low value of Army's Paeon also leaves much to be desired. I'd prefer that each Repertoire gained in Army's Paeon reduce the cooldown of Barrage (and perhaps Sidewinder) slightly, including after reaching 4/4 Repertoire, and that the clause on Barrage preventing additional effects from occurring more than once be removed, allowing Barrage to instantly grant three stacks of Attack Speed or Pitch Perfect.

[Snowaeth]

Increased frequency and reliability of the one skill that removed cast bars in Heavensward, gives you a fear of cast bars... in a post-castbar Bard?


On topic:

I'm fine with Straighter Shot being RNG, although I'd prefer that it be a normalized sort of RNG (see WoW for examples, wherein the actual chance starts much higher, fades on successes, and increases over failures to proc).
Now that Straighter Shot is no longer vital to movement and double-weaving, I don't mind its frequency as is. Any increase would adjust earlier levels' DPS and simply cost Refulgent Arrow potency, at best slightly improves its syncing with Barrage. This would be a slight improvement, but only slight.

What I'm not okay with is the button bloat involved in Refulgent Arrow and Pitch Perfect. I'd prefer that Pitch Perfect gain an AoE variant, e.g. Dissonance, and that each replace Bloodletter and Rain of Death, generating one stack per 15 seconds in addition to those generated by Repertoire. Refulgent Arrow should either lose potency to attach the usual crit buff, or now replace Heavy Shot on Heavier Shot procs, while Straighter Shot is effectively removed after acquisition of Refulgent Arrow.

The relatively low value of Army's Paeon also leaves much to be desired. I'd prefer that each Repertoire gained in Army's Paeon reduce the cooldown of Barrage (and perhaps Sidewinder) slightly, including after reaching 4/4 Repertoire, and that the clause on Barrage preventing additional effects from occurring more than once be removed, allowing Barrage to instantly grant three stacks of Attack Speed or Pitch Perfect.

I like some of your suggestions a lot.
Especially the ones that are just QoL changes.

Having Refulgent Arrow replace Heavy Shot on proc, would be a clean QoL change without adding any power.

As I suggested myself as well, Refulgent Arrow should indeed replace Straighter Shot proc at level 70.
RA > SS even if you need to refresh SS at that point, so having it conflict with SS is just an annoyance and serves no good purpose.
Once again this would not add any power, just a QoL change.

The Pitch Perfect idea where BL/RoD are replaced with Wanderers Minuet counterparts during that song while keeping the 15sec = stack mechanic sounds pretty sweet.
This would add some power though and isn't just QoL. Also the way WM works right now doesn't have serious issues with it, but nevertheless a great idea which would improve game-play and one I'd gladly welcome.

Army's Paeon would indeed feel a lot more useful if it actually had an effect for its stacks beyond the initial 4.
Right now it serves well as a filler song that you cut short, but it doesn't give you the feel of doing something unlike the other two songs.

Barrage being able to apply more than one effect, for the sake of game-play would be amazing.
But it would add a lot of power and is the least likely of being implemented imo, since that amount of power would have to be taken out somewhere else.

Coming back to Refulgent Arrow.
I've seen a couple of suggestions other than my own now how to change it up.
For me the amount of RNG and the influence this has on our dps is too high.
So I would applaud anything that would be implemented and which would normalize the RNG on it.

[Shurrikhan]

As I suggested myself as well, Refulgent Arrow should indeed replace Straighter Shot proc at level 70.
RA > SS even if you need to refresh SS at that point, so having it conflict with SS is just an annoyance and serves no good purpose.
Once again this would not add any power, just a QoL change.

Just to be clear, my suggestion here was actually to replace the trait. In other words, once you have access to Refulgent Arrow, Straighter Shot does not become Refulgent Arrow. Rather, Straighter Shot is gone at that point. The Heavier Shot now does something completely different. Now it replaces Heavy Shot itself with Refulgent Arrow. Straight Shot is untouched and does not share the proc. So you now have the option to refresh Straight Shot freely after banking a Refulgent Arrow, which overlays Heavy Shot.

This WOULD be an actual rotational DPS increase, because you can now (over)extend your Straight Shot buff one GCD further than before, or use one more Heavy Shot per Iron Jaws. Generally, for those who were already playing correctly, that's just a 10 potency gain, but its reduced skill gap would probably amount to more for most players over time (probably around 140-320 potency per IJ, if previously very negligent).

Barrage being able to apply more than one effect, for the sake of game-play would be amazing.
But it would add a lot of power and is the least likely of being implemented imo, since that amount of power would have to be taken out somewhere else.

...May I suggest Refulgent Arrow? At that point, though, priority would be EA (if no stacks WM or 1 stack AP) > RA > EA (if overcapping) Straighter Shot (if retained) > Heavy Shot.

The Pitch Perfect idea where BL/RoD are replaced with Wanderers Minuet counterparts during that song while keeping the 15sec = stack mechanic sounds pretty sweet.
This would add some power though and isn't just QoL. Also the way WM works right now doesn't have serious issues with it, but nevertheless a great idea which would improve game-play and one I'd gladly welcome.

True. Adding a single stack adds 100 potency, down from 130. The second adds 140, and the last adds 180. (The value per stack increases by 20 each time, after all.) However, this change would also increase concerns of overcapping. If the cooldown and the global (DoT) tick sync, you're looking at 1-2 stacks wasted per song, costing 200 to 360 potency over the 30 seconds' duration. Compared to leaving the 15s recast separate, attached to Bloodletter, it can be up to a 100 potency gain, or a 60 potency loss. While this would perhaps increase skill gap and offers new RNG issues of its own, I simply chose this design over the nerf of locking out BL/RoD completely because at least it retains the reliable 2 stacks per 30s. So again, it's not a perfect idea by any means, but I favor it in the same sense that I preferred not to have multiple stacks/charges of Bloodletter available in Heavensward's Bow Mage; I like the risk of waste, to a degree.