Would Bards and Machinists make good use of Diversion?

[Riko_Futatabi]

The last time I played a physical ranged Job it was Bard in 2.0 and since then it has went through many changes. But I remember back then that I did have some sort of skill to manage my enmity, I think it was called "Quelling Strikes" and worked somewhat like Diversion.

Currently I don't play either of these roles but, I was surprised that BRD and MCH have Second Wind as a skill to choose and not Diversion. Both Jobs lack any sort of enmity reducing skills now, right? I'm pretty sure Diversion would be far more useful over something like Second Wind, or am I wrong?

[Sunako]

Bard/MCH have Tactician and Refresh that halve enmity.

[Riko_Futatabi]

Bard/MCH have Tactician and Refresh that halve enmity.

Ah, ok! I didn't read those skills and just assumed it was only MP and TP regen.

[HyoMinPark]

BRD and MCH should honestly have access to Diversion. The main uses of Refresh and Tactician are party support. Having to use them as primary enmity dumps can be problematic if you run into a situation where party members need MP or TP, particularly for prog, but you had to use it to dump your aggro.

I use Tactician as my primary enmity dump, and then save Refresh for healer MP during progression. But as prog evolves into having something on farm, Refresh is used to also extend the duration of Foe's Requiem, almost as an offensive tool, since its more beneficial to extend each Foe's than to have more of them in a given fight.

Keeping Refresh on cooldown does help with enmity, since you will ideally use it ~3 minutes, which is also roughly how long it takes for a BRD's MP bar to reach full again. But I would love Diversion in my opener since that is usually when I build the most aggro (BRD burst is strong...I almost hit 10k!!!! progging o7s last night). Having a NIN to Smokescreen does help there, if you have one. But I would feel better being able to Diversion pre-pull... like in HW when the BRD opener used Quelling Strikes pre-pull along with Foe's. Plus, I prefer having Refresh readily available for prog, and do not use it offensively during prog outside of the pre-pull (depending on the group, sometimes I won't if the healers are poor with managing their MP).

Ironically, Diversion's animation is the same as the old Quelling Strikes. Which was an ARC skill.

[TraeSnow]

I'm not sure about MCH but Bards pull a lot of aggro in their opener. The BRD in my static is always complaining that she doesn't have access to Diversion and, as others have stated, sometimes has to use Tactician to reduce enmity depending on her procs.

Tbh it seems silly that they don't have diversion when they pull so much aggro xD

[Dualgunner]

I feel that bard and machinist absolutely should get diversion to use; it's worth noting that these two jobs, despite being middling to lower on the total damage over time compared to other jobs, have some of the hardest hitting opening bursts in the game. I'm admittedly more knowledgeable on MCH than bard but imagine every attack having a bonus 20% from overheat, 8% from hotshot, 5% from piercing debuff, 10% from trick, all with the possibility of critting or direct critting...and then 25% of everything you just did in damage happens again. The aggro is insane.

[Kurando]

It's a bit of a similar thing with casters, I mean in some situations you wouldn't use Lucid Dreaming JUST to deal with aggro because you could find yourself a little down the line suddenly needing it for MP regen (i.e. you happen to die, or extend a lot of MP). Having access to Diversion as well kinda helps with this, although casters probably don't have as many aggro issues as other jobs it still shows they can have both whether a player uses it or not.

[Shurrikhan]

Absolutely.

Having to waste a supportive raid cooldown just to not die, and for so much less value at the beginning of a fight than later, is truly painful. It practically forces a NIN in order not to make all the other DPSs' uses of Diversion worthless.

I'd much rather have Diversion than even the enmity-reduction on Tactician and Refresh.

[SpeckledBurd]

Bard and Machinist not having Diversion strikes me as kinda backwards when a job like Samurai has it. Both of them have strong opening burst, even if it isn't necessarily the strongest it's still above the median, but their sustained damage is pretty low so they inherently get less use out of the aggro 1/2 effect and also blow a major resource skill. Compare Samurai which is mostly sustained damage so it gets less use out of Diversion's burst management while an aggro 1/2 effect on say, Invigorate, would be a godsend.

Hopefully they'll fix this at some point but the devs love clinging to dumb design decisions (lol Tackle Mastery) so I doubt it'll happen soon.

[Zsolen]

I just use tactician, saving refresh to help healers out. The TP is isn't as important at the start of a fight, when every physical dps and their moms have invigorate available.