Bard: The (Nearly) Perfect Job

[inhaledcorn]

Bard in every expansion seems to have changed its playstyle, going from a straightforward arrow slinger in 2.0 with the songs to restore MP/TP or increase damage to a bowcaster (that everyone hated) in 3.0, to (what is hopefully its final incarnation) a “stance singer” in 4.0. The damage over time effects that were always important to Bard thanks to Bloodletter in the 2.0 incarnation were expanded to include Rain of Mercy in 3.0 (to adjust Bard’s weird AoE “rotation”, which was weird since it was proc based and would have actually been great with Wanderer’s). In 4.0, this idea was expanded to the “stance singer” idea making the three different songs grant different effects if the dots crit.

Mage’s Ballad: It received the Bloodletter/Rain of Mercy reset trait (bringing it in earlier in a Bard’s leveling)

Army’s Paeon: Increases Skill Speed (up to 4 times) for each proc

Wanderer’s Minuet: Increases the damage of Pitch Perfect (learned at the same time) for each stack (stores up to 3)

The current incarnation is extremely popular, and not just from a meta perspective. Players generally like the way the job flows (I’ve heard Summoners wanting the same mechanic with their Egis). However, I feel that there are areas where Bard can be improved.

Problem 1: Army’s Paeon.

Army’s Paeon is considered the “weakest” of the three songs since a “haste” effect is very underwhelming compared to the other two that have an extra damage ability. Army’s actually makes it harder to weave those in-between since your GCDs are back up sooner. In addition, after you max out your gauge, your added procs become useless. This is why Army’s is generally cut short 20s in (or at the 10s left count), and I don’t think that’s what the developers wanted.

Problem 2: Wasted procs.

This is mostly related to Army’s problem, but this can also be found in Wanderer’s and Mage’s since they have an “odd” number of needed procs when you have an “even” amount of dots, which has a chance of wasting procs. Most players launch Pitch Perfect at 2 stacks (unless Empyrean is nearly up). And, for Mage’s, you only need 1 proc to reset both Bloodletter and Rain of Mercy.

Problem 3: Raging Strikes

Raging Strikes is “kind of” Bard’s burst phase, but its problem is a “hit this button to do your damage, and if you don’t clip your dots at the end of Raging, well, fuck your damage”. Fortunately, it’s not as bad as, well, Wildfire, but Raging is just not a “fun” mechanic to deal with. In addition, this forces the watching of the buff bar that the developers have deliberately moved away from to make sure you’re getting maximum damage out of Raging.

Problem 4: Foe’s Requiem

Speaking of an unfun mechanic to deal with, Foe’s is another means of increasing damage for everyone, but you need MP to do it. The best way to handle this is to pair it up with Refresh to max out the effect of Foe’s. Because of this, Bard can have mild enmity problems since Refresh is one of their two hate dumps, and it has very little effect in their opener since they generally use it immediately. And, if you want to use Foe’s later in the fight, you need to stand still and physically cast it. It’s just another unfun mechanic that’s a core part of the Bard’s job identity. Oh, by the way, if you die, well, you just borked your Foe’s period.

So, my proposed fixes:

Roll Raging Strikes into Army’s Paeon

Instead of the current Haste effect, why not grant additional damage for each stack of Repertoire? You don’t have to watch your buff bar for Raging, instead clipping your dots at the end of Army’s to grant its maximum damage going into your next song. Since Caustic/Storm Bites last 30s, this prevents you from needing to refresh until the end of your next song.

Wind/Storm Bite and Venomous/Caustic Bite refresh Bloodletter and Rain of Mercy independently while in Mage’s.

This could potentially jack up Bard’s personal DPS to unintendedly high levels, but this makes it so that there’s an even amount of procs and reduces the chance of a wasted proc. I think they would still share a cooldown timer, so even if you Rain of Mercy because that’s the one that’s up, both Rain of Mercy and Bloodletter will start their cooldown timer over again. This could cause code complications, however, so I don’t know how practical this change is.

Wasted procs become Straighter Shot procs

If a dot procs that you can’t use (like both dots crit while in Mage’s), instead of it going to waste, you instead get Straighter shot to use on Refulgent Arrow (for damage) or Straight Shot (to refresh your Straight Shot buff). Like with the fix above, this could cause Bard’s personal damage to increase too high, so I think this would be better as a trait come next expansion, so that Bard’s damage can be properly balanced against this idea.

Foe’s becomes a cooldown to charge up

For each song that you let play to the end, you gain a stack of “Round”. For each stack, the crit buff that you pass onto your team becomes stronger by 2%. So, if you let three songs play to the end, your Foe’s will turn that 2% crit buff to a 8% crit buff. This makes Foe’s weaker but lets it be up more often. It also fixes the problem of Army’s being clipped early. This also let’s Foe’s be useful at lower levels since you only have two songs until 52. However, this will make openers in general weaker due to the loss of that extra 3% damage. It also would line up weirdly with Trick Attack (being held to line up with the 4th or lining up with the 6th).

These are just some of my ideas I felt would help Bard flow even better from a gameplay perspective. In my opinion, it lowers the skill floor just a bit more while keeping the skill ceiling at a decent level for high level play. The Raging Clipping is still present to maximize damage. Foe’s change allows for more raid optimization. Army’s becomes very viable. If they want Foe’s to line up with Trick Attacks, they could make it so that songs only last 20s instead of 30s (also adjusting Storming/Caustic at the same time to make Raging clipping not nearly as strong). But, what are your thoughts?

[HyoMinPark]

Problem 1: Army’s Paeon.

Army’s Paeon is considered the “weakest” of the three songs since a “haste” effect is very underwhelming compared to the other two that have an extra damage ability. Army’s actually makes it harder to weave those in-between since your GCDs are back up sooner. In addition, after you max out your gauge, your added procs become useless. This is why Army’s is generally cut short 20s in (or at the 10s left count), and I don’t think that’s what the developers wanted.

I can agree that Army's Paeon is the weakest of the three songs. Between that and the 80-second cycle of Raging Strikes and Barrage, this encourages BRDs to clip it early (or skip it entirely if the fight allows). I agree that Army's needs more flare to it to make it valuable, or to give BRDs a reason to not clip it early. As it is now, Army’s seems so lackluster because the Haste causes you to clip GCDs when weaving, and it tends to be mostly Heavy Shot spam, since there are very little in terms of oGCD procs to weave like in Minuet (PP) and Mage’s (Bloodletter/RoD procs) outside of the normal EA and Bloodletter usages.

Honestly, the easiest way to fix this would probably be to up RS and Barrage's cooldown timer to 90 seconds from 80 seconds, though BRDs could still probably want to clip it early considering they can still fit RS+Barrage into the last 20 seconds of Minuet as opposed to the first 20.

However, I disagree with the idea of pairing Raging Strikes with it for a song mechanic. I will get into why further down.

Problem 2: Wasted procs.

This is mostly related to Army’s problem, but this can also be found in Wanderer’s and Mage’s since they have an “odd” number of needed procs when you have an “even” amount of dots, which has a chance of wasting procs. Most players launch Pitch Perfect at 2 stacks (unless Empyrean is nearly up). And, for Mage’s, you only need 1 proc to reset both Bloodletter and Rain of Mercy.

I can understand the validity of the concern with regards to this. It makes it difficult to prevent, however, because DoT crits can happen individually or at the same time. DoTs in general would have to be reprogrammed to never Crit simultaneously when other DoTs casted by the same player have been applied to a target/targets.

A fix for Minuet could be to increase PP proc stacks from 3 to 4 with a 5.0 trait (level 80 trait, perhaps?). This gives you a full 4 stacks to use if both of your DoTs crit back-to-back, and it also serves to give you a potent burst skill (assuming they give the 4-stack PP a higher potency than 420).

Problem 3: Raging Strikes

Raging Strikes is “kind of” Bard’s burst phase, but its problem is a “hit this button to do your damage, and if you don’t clip your dots at the end of Raging, well, fuck your damage”. Fortunately, it’s not as bad as, well, Wildfire, but Raging is just not a “fun” mechanic to deal with. In addition, this forces the watching of the buff bar that the developers have deliberately moved away from to make sure you’re getting maximum damage out of Raging.

RS is your burst phase - you always pair it with Minuet, and you always use Barrage during its duration regardless of whether you get to Barrage+RA (and be happy) or Barrage+EA (and be a little sad).

This has never been a problem for me. You're already wanting to watch your cooldown for Barrage during your Minuet+Raging phase anyways, your PP procs if you have Litany+Chain up (you use them at 2 stacks instead of 3 to reduce the number of wasted procs), and watching for if you get to pair it with Refulgent or settle for Empyreal, so glancing between boss to arena to hotbar has never been an issue for me, and I'm acutely aware of the duration of my RS buff. The latter is from just how often I play the job, though.

Honestly, the bigger "eff you" to your damage is not double-IJing your DoTs under critical hit enhancing buffs. Failure to do so can result in less Repertoire procs overall, which can hurt BRD more. You'll still IJ at the end of RS, obviously, but missing a Litany or a Chain with a double IJ will severely impact your incoming procs, which impacts your damage. Most of BRD's damage comes from DoT management with regards to that, not just snapshoting RS.
Well, that in addition to not having a DRG in your party...

Problem 4: Foe’s Requiem

Speaking of an unfun mechanic to deal with, Foe’s is another means of increasing damage for everyone, but you need MP to do it. The best way to handle this is to pair it up with Refresh to max out the effect of Foe’s. Because of this, Bard can have mild enmity problems since Refresh is one of their two hate dumps, and it has very little effect in their opener since they generally use it immediately. And, if you want to use Foe’s later in the fight, you need to stand still and physically cast it. It’s just another unfun mechanic that’s a core part of the Bard’s job identity. Oh, by the way, if you die, well, you just borked your Foe’s period.

I agree with the comments about enmity. It's one of my few complaints that they took Diversion (which is just Quelling Strikes on steroids—it even uses Quelling’s animation) away from a job that bursts every 80 seconds, and instead gave it dumps on a 180 second cooldown, one of which is, at the most optimal level, used offensively. But tying enmity reduction to support skills has always been a bad decision, in my opinion. I would rather have an enmity dump on Repelling Shot, since it would make the skill useful for more than just attempting to cheese knockback mechanics, or looking flashy while simultaneously clipping your next GCD due to animation (obviously reduce the animation lock to it if this change is implemented; I don’t like clipping my GCDs).

As for the casting Foe's comment, I've learned to slidecast to avoid this "standing still" if you have to move for mechanics (I mastered this during BRD's bowmage period). But, otherwise, it never really bothers me all that much. I tend to stand pretty still while playing regardless. It would be a nice QoL change to see it changed to an oGCD like the other songs were when 4.0 launched, but it doesn’t seem like a necessary change in my personal opinion.

It costing MP has never bothered me. If anything, I'm glad it makes MP useful, since it is just a wasted asset on most physical DPS.



Now on to the comments I have about fixes:

So, my proposed fixes:

Roll Raging Strikes into Army’s Paeon

Instead of the current Haste effect, why not grant additional damage for each stack of Repertoire? You don’t have to watch your buff bar for Raging, instead clipping your dots at the end of Army’s to grant its maximum damage going into your next song. Since Caustic/Storm Bites last 30s, this prevents you from needing to refresh until the end of your next song.

I disagree with this. The developers would have to make the damage buff meaningful enough for it to make up for no longer pairing RS with your Minuet burst phase. If it wasn't meaningful enough, then it would be an overall loss to personal damage (since RS already buffs Barrage+RA/Barrage+EA and PP, which are BRD's strongest hits). Also, if RNG screwed you over in terms of Reportoire procs, your damage would also suffer if the maximum amount of damage increase is tied to the fourth and final proc (yes, I have been in Army's for the 20 seconds and ended at only 3 procs before; it feels awful); they would have to give BRD something aside from Empyreal to control Repertoire a bit better, I think.

While I can manage with most of BRD's RNG, I'd rather not have RS tied to it. It also will mess with the beautiful buff alignment that BRD already has; unless Army’s is made into BRD’s new “burst phase” (which I don’t think your change would change it to that since Minuet is bursty mostly because of PP), the misalignment of Minuet+RS+Barrage is not something I find myself liking.

Instead, I've always advocated for them to bring back Flaming Arrow, and work it into the Army's Paeon mechanic. Gives it a bit of boost in terms of DPS, and it brings back my beloved fire circle that I still miss to this day. They would have to make this new Army’s Flaming Arrow good enough and interesting enough, though, to prevent BRDs from clipping it to get back to their burst phase faster. Another option is to introduce a skill that procs only during Army’s, so then all 3 songs have a skill that proc during it, and that could potentially also disencourage BRDs from clipping it (since Army’s is just HS spam, and I find it sooooo boring after coming out of two songs where I’m actively weaving oGCD procs).

Wind/Storm Bite and Venomous/Caustic Bite refresh Bloodletter and Rain of Mercy independently while in Mage’s.

This could potentially jack up Bard’s personal DPS to unintendedly high levels, but this makes it so that there’s an even amount of procs and reduces the chance of a wasted proc. I think they would still share a cooldown timer, so even if you Rain of Mercy because that’s the one that’s up, both Rain of Mercy and Bloodletter will start their cooldown timer over again. This could cause code complications, however, so I don’t know how practical this change is.

The mechanic already kind of works like this - Stormbite OR Caustic can already refresh Bloodletter/Rain of Death in Mage's. Wasted procs are only an issue when they Crit at the same time. I understand you're looking to minimize the waste of procs, but that would require programming to prevent both from Criting at the same time. Because them criting at the same time is what causes the wasted procs.

I don't think the developers are going to want to reprogram the way DoTs function with regards to critical ticks. Even if you wanted them to just implement the limitation in Mage’s, it wouldn’t solve the wasted procs in the other two songs, so the only decent solution, I think, would be to just completely rework DoT critical hits in general.

Wasted procs become Straighter Shot procs

If a dot procs that you can’t use (like both dots crit while in Mage’s), instead of it going to waste, you instead get Straighter shot to use on Refulgent Arrow (for damage) or Straight Shot (to refresh your Straight Shot buff). Like with the fix above, this could cause Bard’s personal damage to increase too high, so I think this would be better as a trait come next expansion, so that Bard’s damage can be properly balanced against this idea.

I can somewhat agree with this. However, I know they would probably nerf the potency of Refulgent to compensate. Bloodletter was nerfed to compensate for the fact that Mage's new River of Blood trait increased the proc rate from 50% to 100%. The upside to this, I suppose, would be it reducing opener RNG with regards to Barraging Refulgent, if it's not worth as much in terms of potency compared to Barraging Empyreal.

Foe’s becomes a cooldown to charge up

For each song that you let play to the end, you gain a stack of “Round”. For each stack, the crit buff that you pass onto your team becomes stronger by 2%. So, if you let three songs play to the end, your Foe’s will turn that 2% crit buff to a 8% crit buff. This makes Foe’s weaker but lets it be up more often. It also fixes the problem of Army’s being clipped early. This also let’s Foe’s be useful at lower levels since you only have two songs until 52. However, this will make openers in general weaker due to the loss of that extra 3% damage. It also would line up weirdly with Trick Attack (being held to line up with the 4th or lining up with the 6th).

Interesting concept.

Only issue I have is how the timing would function with lining it up with periods of high raid burst, which is how you optimally use Foe's now. If it made it too clunky, Foe's could end up like Embolden, where you're either holding the buff, or you can never line it up with other periods of high burst (e.g., 3-minute marks where things like Trick Attack, Battle Litany, and Battle Voice are all up). I'm assuming you'd be able to hold the increase, or is your design proposing it procs automatically after a completed song rotation?

Foe's usefulness at lower levels wouldn't really change, in my opinion. It's still 3% damage at lower levels as it is at higher levels; adding an 8% Crit buff enhancement to it doesn't really change usefulness between the levels. If anything, it would delay the new Foe's usage, since you have to wait 20 seconds to get your third song, and then 30 more seconds for the song to play all the way through and for the buff to be able to be used. More so, they could just give you Minuet+PP at level 50 if you are wanting a more robust song rotation.

As it stands now, I do not agree with the idea of making the buff more clunky. BRD already flows really well in terms of buffing the raid, and I'd rather not have a clunky mechanic introduced to it.


My personal thoughts on 4.0 BRD are just that a few QoL changes need to be made.
+ Another option for enmity management that isn't tied to support skills (remove the dumps from Refresh/Tactician, and give it to Repelling Shot so I have a reason to have it on my bar again outside of trying to cheese a single mechanic that may or may not even be present in a piece of content).
+ Removal of piercing resistance down to remove BRD's (and MCH's) reliance on DRG for maximizing damage; adjust potencies if need be so that BRDs do not now feel unnecessarily weak (though yeah, I know, the don’t balance BRD damage around Disembowel but bleh - MCH would suffer if nothing was done to its potencies since it’s already being pushed out of the meta by a good SMN, and since it has less support than BRD, why not let it do more damage).
+ Finding a way to make Army's Paeon more useful - preferably by adding a mechanic different from its Haste mechanic to it, like bringing back a skill to be used only during its duration (Flaming Arrow), or giving it an oGCD skill you can weave in when Repertoire procs. Either would give it a bit more potency, and maybe make it worthwhile to play it for the full 30 seconds (though upping RS/Barrage could maybe serve the same purpose).
+ A bit more control over opener/burst phase RNG - something like a skill that can force a Refulgent Arrow proc to pair with Barrage. Put it on a cooldown so it's not "too OP".


At the end of the day, though, I would rather not see another rework or overhaul of BRD, as I feel the developers finally got it right (even though I am one of two people alive that liked the playstyle of bowmage), and it's the only job that I think most can agree plays the best out of those who got massive changes for SB. I would rather the developers focus on fixing the DPS jobs that need it (like MCH, which is by far the least popular DPS job, and a few others) as opposed to messing with jobs that are more or less perfect.

Edited at 19:50 CST since I had a computer to better format and clarify my points/thoughts.

[MPNZ]

There is really not much outside of QoL stuff (refulgant refreshing straighter shot, turning battle voice into a a trait, general QoL across jobs and player specific QoL )and expanding it's party utility in hopefully a fun and rewarding way in the future (for example, an encore gauge that when filled would cast reraise on the entire party, or refresh everyone's cooldowns, or just restoring of the party's 10% of TP, MP, and HP). Paeon's effect would be useful by just allowing it to continue onto the next song and shortening the cooldown times for it's songs or cooldowns in general.

[Eloah]

I'd say Bard is one of the more "finished" jobs, just some QoL. I read all of the thoughts and they are interesting, but while some make sense others I don't agree with. The big one Army's Paean does need a change. My thought was per stack increasing the proc rate of Straighter Shot up to 80%, not sure if thats OP or not. As for Foes I personally don't have an issue with it, I also dont use Refresh with it, let the hate flow, lol.

[Cetonis]

Other than Army's obviously being underwhelming, I don't know that I agree with any of these being real problems, just aspects of the job that may or may not differ from others.

They honestly don't need to do anything fancy with Army's, they could just make it 6% so that players really feel the speed at max stacks, which would be a very small buff at the end of the day. Though any buff to Army's would lead to optimization nightmares, it really isn't all that far behind Mage's at max stacks as it is, so a buff would likely create a web of conditionals surrounding EA's cooldown and crit buffs.

Foe imo is a lot of fun to work with as a group, figuring out Refresh timings and when you can Mana Shift and when you should sing, so much so that I really just wish it -mattered- more. It could be healthy for the game to see it go back to +10% for magic only, or put it to 5% for all damage and change Battle Voice to something not directly damage related.

My only other real QoL wish is for Pitch Perfect to go to a 1s cooldown. Getting caught with a proc at the end of WM sometimes is a pretty crappy experience for no good reason.

[HyoMinPark]

My only other real QoL wish is for Pitch Perfect to go to a 1s cooldown. Getting caught with a proc at the end of WM sometimes is a pretty crappy experience for no good reason.

Now that would just be beautiful.

[inhaledcorn]

Other than Army's obviously being underwhelming, I don't know that I agree with any of these being real problems, just aspects of the job that may or may not differ from others.

They honestly don't need to do anything fancy with Army's, they could just make it 6% so that players really feel the speed at max stacks, which would be a very small buff at the end of the day. Though any buff to Army's would lead to optimization nightmares, it really isn't all that far behind Mage's at max stacks as it is, so a buff would likely create a web of conditionals surrounding EA's cooldown and crit buffs.

I was thinking my idea for "Straighter Shot force proc when procs are wasted" would probably be better as just an Army's thing. It makes the full song very useful and gives you something when you hit max, which is a problem that it has now. It gives you more Reflugents, and for the phase that makes you go faster, fitting more Refulgent in that window just seems like the perfect thing to do. Making Army's go any faster would start to run into TP problems. I mean, sure, there's Invigorate and Tactician, and that's just on the Bard itself, but Tactician has a fairly lengthy cooldown. Invigorate's pretty good, but it's also got a decent chunk of a cooldown as well. There's Melee and AST for Goad/Spire, but you're relying on another job to fill in the gaps of yours, and you may not always have them (less likely in an 8-man scenario, but decently likely in a 4-man dungeon run where you'll just bleed TP). (I also want Reflugent to be an AoE with falloff because, I mean, if I'm going to fire that many arrows, why are they only hitting one person. Come on.)

Foe imo is a lot of fun to work with as a group, figuring out Refresh timings and when you can Mana Shift and when you should sing, so much so that I really just wish it -mattered- more. It could be healthy for the game to see it go back to +10% for magic only, or put it to 5% for all damage and change Battle Voice to something not directly damage related.

This is bringing us back to a problem we're still facing since HW: Certain comps are being kind of forced or else. Bard already pretty much needs a Dragoon for the piercing buff or else that's 5% of their damage just flat out gone. Then Dragoon also has a Crit buff for Bard which is absurdly good for this job in particular, and still great for all jobs. Scholar has a crit debuff on a single foe, so they're brought along. I'm not saying that Dragoon shouldn't have that crit buff, and I do realize that this meta comp doesn't matter outside of the top percentiles and speedrunning meta, but even lower ranked players like me can feel a difference when I don't have those things. I don't know how they could change Battle Voice at this point unless they decide to just make it buff the crit percentage that you already pass by playing a song.

My only other real QoL wish is for Pitch Perfect to go to a 1s cooldown. Getting caught with a proc at the end of WM sometimes is a pretty crappy experience for no good reason.

I mean, that's pretty much a given.

[HyoMinPark]

I was thinking my idea for "Straighter Shot force proc when procs are wasted" would probably be better as just an Army's thing. It makes the full song very useful and gives you something when you hit max, which is a problem that it has now. It gives you more Reflugents, and for the phase that makes you go faster, fitting more Refulgent in that window just seems like the perfect thing to do. Making Army's go any faster would start to run into TP problems. I mean, sure, there's Invigorate and Tactician, and that's just on the Bard itself, but Tactician has a fairly lengthy cooldown. Invigorate's pretty good, but it's also got a decent chunk of a cooldown as well. There's Melee and AST for Goad/Spire, but you're relying on another job to fill in the gaps of yours, and you may not always have them (less likely in an 8-man scenario, but decently likely in a 4-man dungeon run where you'll just bleed TP). (I also want Reflugent to be an AoE with falloff because, I mean, if I'm going to fire that many arrows, why are they only hitting one person. Come on.)

Honestly, TP is less of an issue and GCD clipping would be the main problem, in my opinion. Already Army’s can make you clip when you weave during it (especially if you’re already running High Crit, sitting at 983 SkSpeed, and your AST gives you an Arrow >.>). I wouldn’t want it to go much faster because of that. I’m not so much concerned about the TP problem, since none of our single-target abilities are particularly TP-costly, and TP has become a non-issue in SB outside of instances where you’re doing heavy AOE (which is rarely a thing in raids and more of a dungeon thing anyways).

I still think they’d likely nerf the potency of Refulgent if this mechanic was introduced, because it was the same logic they used with the Bloodletter potency nerf, if I recall correctly (more guaranteed procs [50% > 100% guaranteed in SB] meaning lower overall potency to prevent “OP-ness”). But, I guess if that gave me less opener/Barrage-RNG... I’m a bit torn honestly, because Barrage+RA in your opener and in the majority of your Minuet+RS burst phases just feels so good... but it feels so bad to not have a Barrage+RA, or get a late RA and have to still settle for Barrage+EA. >.>

This is bringing us back to a problem we're still facing since HW: Certain comps are being kind of forced or else. Bard already pretty much needs a Dragoon for the piercing buff or else that's 5% of their damage just flat out gone. Then Dragoon also has a Crit buff for Bard which is absurdly good for this job in particular, and still great for all jobs. Scholar has a crit debuff on a single foe, so they're brought along. I'm not saying that Dragoon shouldn't have that crit buff, and I do realize that this meta comp doesn't matter outside of the top percentiles and speedrunning meta, but even lower ranked players like me can feel a difference when I don't have those things. I don't know how they could change Battle Voice at this point unless they decide to just make it buff the crit percentage that you already pass by playing a song.

The issue with piercing can be solved by removing Piercing Resistance Down (and all the resistance downs) from the game in 5.0. Yoshida has already made it clear that he won’t give it to BRD/MCH, so the only other option is to remove them (and honestly, giving BRD/MCH piercing just makes it even more redundant than resistance downs already are). That would solve one of BRD’s (few) current issues, as well as break the DRG/BRD/MCH meta that has been a thing since the truce formed between them in Patch 3.4. BRD’s reliance on Crit isn’t going to change unless they change how drastically the job interacts with the substat. But I honestly prefer DRGs for the piercing debuff over Litany; Litany is nice and all, but piercing wins out in terms of overall DPS gain—Disembowel tends to give three times the damage increase that Litany does. You would still feel the absense of a DRG with regards to crit RNG, but I’d rather that than 5% damage PLUS crit RNG like it is now. ;-;

BRDs that care about their damage would still probably choose DRG/SCH for parse runs because of the Crit synergy, but for other things—or even for the more softcore/midcore groups where a BRD may care about their personal DPS, but not so much for min-maxing and squeezing out every onze of damage—it would at least break a bit of the reliance BRD (and MCH) have on DRG. And they would feel less crappy for not having one, and the melee would feel less crappy for wanting to play, say, MNK instead of DRG for them. I’ve gone the majority of Deltascape and Sigmascape without a DRG, and it is a crappy feeling to know that 5% of my damage is just gone and there’s nothing I can do about it, and I know melee that have felt equally as trashy because they wanted to play something that was not DRG with a BRD or a MCH in their static. I want piercing gone.

I do agree that I don’t think Foe’s should return to +10% Magic Damage; it’s current design is fine, in my opinion. And I also agree with Cetonis that I enjoy the optimization aspect of it in its current design. And I like being able to buff more than just my healers in terms of their damage with it. Which, in Creator, the meta was all physical, so Foe’s was just for the healers anyways. I understand the idea of reworking it to offer different comp options/synergy, but I still prefer it as it stands now. It feels like... less of a waste, and it benefits everyone (well, almost—BRDs rarely win out with it, but that’s fine with me honestly). In HW, if your group had no casters, and your healers didn’t DPS, then Foe’s was just a wasted resource. With it affecting all damage, it’s no longer wasted. That’s my train of thought with it.

I don’t know what buff they could give BV to not make it, in some way, a damage buff. If Cetonis has any ideas, I’d be open to hearing them; I just cannot think of any that would work with the way BRD currently plays, since you can no longer augment Mage’s or Army’s the same way you could in HW for more MP/TP regeneration, and I doubt they would allow it to be paired with Refresh/Tactician because then MCH would need an equivalent to make sure the two are balanced. Pairing HWesque-BV with Foe’s would still be a damage buff (e.g., it augments Foe’s 3%). Having it affect the BRD’s Repertoire or song duration would make it a selfish damage buff, which kind of goes against BRD’s inherent design of support. Again, I’d be interested to hear if Cetonis has any ideas with regards to that concept.


All in all, though, I still think the developers should give BRD light QoL treatments, and then focus on fixing the gameplay of some of the other DPS jobs—MCH needs help, as it’s by far the least popular DPS job; the “selfish DPS” jobs need an answer to make them viable against utility jobs; and RDM needs a lot of TLC because Raise utility dies when people stop dying.

[Cetonis]

10% Magic Foe would mainly be to nail-in-coffin the BRD+MCH "meta", BRD as presently designed will and should always be the speedrun pick over MCH as presently designed - BRD has more group synergy upsides/downsides, so it's worse for rando pugs and better for dedicated speedruns - so nothing would really change there. But yeah I'd be equally happy with 5% for everything. It was just thinking SE might wish to deal with the all-physical issue.

As for Battle Voice, the main thought that comes to mind would be "reduce the cooldown of all songs by 20s", still on the 180s cooldown (if not longer), which would give BRDs some capacity to shuffle their song order mid-fight. I'm sure there's some kind of dps gain there somewhere, but optimizing BRDs already manipulate WM uptime vs. buff alignment vs. clear time to some extent.

[HyoMinPark]

10% Magic Foe would mainly be to nail-in-coffin the BRD+MCH "meta", BRD as presently designed will and should always be the speedrun pick over MCH as presently designed - BRD has more group synergy upsides/downsides, so it's worse for rando pugs and better for dedicated speedruns - so nothing would really change there. But yeah I'd be equally happy with 5% for everything. It was just thinking SE might wish to deal with the all-physical issue.

Understandable; I’m just not sure how well that would work, since the current issues with 2/3 casters are them offering very little utility/synergy themselves with utility jobs at large—the “selfish DPS job” design just doesn’t work that well in this game when utility is preferred (i.e., “Why take someone who can buff themselves when I can bring in someone who buffs everyone”), and RDM has its own bundles of issues in terms of utility given to a group and personal damage. I still have a sense that physical meta would reign regardless, or the comps would be DRG/NIN/BRD/SMN. Maybe BLM over SMN if the BLM is really good, but since groups that optimize tend to prefer utility, they would probably still go with SMN over BLM. MCH is already being benched as it is now by good SMNs, so I think that could cause more issues with them unless they adjusted Hypercharge some more... which then things would have the potential to remain the current NIN/DRG/BRD/MCH.

As for Battle Voice, the main thought that comes to mind would be "reduce the cooldown of all songs by 20s", still on the 180s cooldown (if not longer), which would give BRDs some capacity to shuffle their song order mid-fight. I'm sure there's some kind of dps gain there somewhere, but optimizing BRDs already manipulate WM uptime vs. buff alignment vs. clear time to some extent.

Interesting concept to say the least.