A QoL/Balance Shortlist for DPS (Tanks/Healers only as additional context)

[HyoMinPark]

Responses with relevant insight into the shortlist.
@HyoMin -- last edit Nov. 15, 9:30 PM PST

Sorry. The elaboration was listed only in the General Changes section, where Skill Speed and Spell Speed were combined into Speed and revised. I will reword that and each similar description slightly to make it clear that it affects only damage.

Thank you for the clarification—I wasn’t sure which aspect Speed would be affecting, since BRD has it’s current Repertoire mechanic that procs based off of critical DoT ticks.

In the event that it affects damage, I would think that a revision of Army’s Paeon’s Repertoire mechanic would definitely need to be done. Last tier, BRD’s High Crit BiS had us sitting at a 2.40 GCD, and with the full +16% Haste from AP the clipping was absolutely awful with just single-weaving (double-weaving is impossible in AP even at lower Skill Speed levels thanks to the Haste—I’m at a 2.47 GCD right now, and I still cannot double weave without clipping my next GCD). Even with AP’s lack of oGCD procs, we still have oGCDs we usage and manage during, and I’d like to see the clipping reduced as much as possible. If we start stacking Speed as a substat to enhance damage, AP would become an absolute nightmare with the current Haste mechanic to it. So that would need to be addressed to prevent lost damage due to clipping that we cannot control.

Still working on this. Some of the clipping issues are to be remedied by the changes to Speed (formerly SkS/SpS), but I'm fully aware that the animation time scaling suggestion is the least realistic of the whole lot. I'm still trying to find an equilibrium between a clean tooltip and a functional solution.

Moved this up here because it was relevant to the point above, but unless I’m misunderstanding your Speed stat proposal, if it subtracts from the GCD still, AP will need a rework to prevent it from being the song BRDs just opt not to use at all (as it stands, we already skip it in our rotation if we can get away with it). Especially if BRD’s damage will suddenly start relying on it to the point where it’s optimal to stack it the way we currently stack Crit.

Yes, the change would be nerf to Bard, and slightly more so than I intended. I hadn't finalized the wording. Please see if the new version (which I will post momentarily) is up to snuff, balance-wise. I've removed Pitch Perfect's own cooldown in favor of a "ghosted" cooldown, which cycles every 15 seconds, adding a stack to Repertoire. Swapping into WM with BL/RoD at the ready will convert them to Repertoire.

I intended it to be the WM equivalent of RoD, less effective than WM at low amounts and greater at high amounts. I'd prefer to offer it more uniqueness, perhaps by making Pitch Perfect a line AoE that deals full damage only to the main target and making Dissonance a mass-DoT, but I've not come up with anything beyond simple choice-matching just yet.

I suppose this sounds better; it could still be a bit of a nerf depending on the rate of procs when in the Wanderer’s Minuet window—having guaranteed procs can help mitigate the RNG of Repertoire and offset losing BL/RoD’s potency, but whether it can even out depends on the way Repertoire procs will be handled going forward, since there are outcries against it procing off of critical DoT ticks (personally, I like the way it functions now but there are concerns about balancing with the current way Crit scales).

I’m assuming you would want to keep the level 68 trait where EA can force one, but that can only, at best, give you 2 procs in a Raging Strikes window (and you save your third EA for your entry into Mage’s Ballad to force another BL/RoD proc).

If swapping into Minuet with BL/RoD off-cooldown equals a stack, it would become a case of holding Bloodletter/RoD for the upcoming Minuet+RS window to guarantee a stack. We already do this with EA so that we can force one stack, and then force another/settle for Barrage+EA if we don’t get an RA proc, but then that also takes away from what we can do in AP. Removing another oGCD from AP would make it even less potent than it currently is unless something was worked into it to make up for holding both a second 260 potency oGCD and a second 130 potency oGCD.

I ask of you what ideas you had for BRD’s current Repertoire mechanic—I’ve looked through your OP, and, unless I’m missing it, I do not see anything addressing that mechanic at this time. Is it still going to proc, depending on critical DoT ticks? Or are you wanting to shift it to a flat percentage?

I was hasty in including that particular solution. However, as every role is currently allowed 10 and only 10 role actions, I am hesitant to attempt to break that rule except as a last resort.

I think a significant portion of the physical ranged role skills need to be looked at going forward. It has always been the same 5 mandatory skills (Refresh, Tactician, Palisade, Invigorate, and Second Wind), with 1 being used for movement speed outside of combat (Peloton) and 1 being used for 2 mechanics the entire expansion (Head Graze). That leaves 3 that were effectively useless with regards to content mechanics (Arm Graze, Leg Graze, and Foot Graze).
I have listed the Physical Ranged role actions I would like to see further down.

Agreed. We need a Diversion-like solution for the time being. What are we willing to give up for it, though? I am loath to give up Peloton, and losing Palisade would be a massive utility loss, yet any other choice seems, by way of symmetry, even more harmful.

Personally, I don’t use Peloton that often, so sacrificing it would not be a loss for me—the instances where I play BRD, I’m mostly in-combat and cannot use it.

I would be more than willing to give up any of the Graze skills; as I’ve said, we’ve effectively only used one in any sort of high-end content, and rarely are dungeons ever warranting the use of CC due to how everything can be brute-forced. Any uses CC has is in PotD/HoH or Eureka, and those feel a bit too niche. And, as with dungeons, you can just power-through without the use of CC—unlike with the Savage mechanics where, if you didn’t Silence Ultros (O7S) or the Iron Giant (O3S), you wiped.

If BRDs, going forward, continue to be as bursty as they have been in the past, we will need a form of enmity management at our disposal. And I don’t want one tied to resource management. In the event they actually make TP a resource you have to think about conserving and managing (instead of the non-issue it is currently), blowing Tactician for enmity dumping as we do now could be even more detrimental to a party, and that’s the opposite of what a BRD is supposed to do.

I'm personally more fine with it being situational and left off many a Bard's bars than I am with it being obligatory, as it still wouldn't really suit it's situation. Gap-makers are for controlling attention more so than undoing it, and by the time there'd be a visible (beyond enmity bars) use for the aggro-dump, your life would already be threatened in using it. It then becomes either redundant, or the equivalent of a key locked in the chest it unlocks. At least with a 12 yalm range and greater reactivity, it could be worth the oGCD when needing to get away from a fool or stunned ally marked for an AoE.

Honestly, I still don’t see it being useful or worth the real estate in the bolded situation. There are already large AOEs present in-game, all of which can be safely ran out of without the use of a gap-maker. Since BRD loses nothing by moving, it makes little difference having to run out versus launching yourself out (by contrast, RDM—a caster—loses more by running out of an AOE since they cannot cast a run; this isn’t an issue with BRD now). The current iteration, you can launch yourself away from a target, but you cannot double weave with Repelling, and you will clip your subsequent GCD due to animation. It’s more prudent to just run out (and less of a loss).

Personally, I don’t like skills that are extremely niche, which is why I have such an issue with a lot of the physical ranged role skills—they’re rarely ever used, or, when they are used, it’s for a single mechanic. I’d rather see skills used more frequently as opposed to keeping those that have maybe one or two uses.

[Spitball warning] Repelling Shot was gutted with the gutting, rather than fixing, of "Bow Mage", but if a pseudo-cast full draw option were still available to Bard gameplay, I would have loved to double down on this concept by turning into a variable skill that could take, but did not require, a target. If no target were presented, you'd leave a repel point around which you could rapidly return to or switch from one side of to the other. Reactivation moves you about the pinion, pulling you to it and then rapidly accelerating manual movement in a unique animation with additional momentum. If a target were presented, then you would harpoon the enemy with a connected shot then pinning them to the ground through their foot; even once having freed their foot after the very brief bind fades, they'd be leashed to you through the pinion as if via a pulley, allowing you to manipulate the target's movement as if with a tether movement-restricting mechanic that loses HP over movement, but would only break quickly if both parties moved away from each other. Reactivation will attempt to draw the target towards the pulley if moving away or bound you toward and past the target if moving toward it. All this being said, such mechanics would be far more suited to a Ranger than a Bard, if such were ever made.

While an interesting construction of a skill, I, too, don’t think this would suit the Bard Aesthetic.

Right now, I think we could have included the effects, or near enough to them, of Warden's Paeon, Palisade, and Nature's Minuet under a single key if not for the rigid manner in which the songs rotate. But such is a complex discussion for a different time. Replacing Warden's Paeon with Palisade would affect balance with Machinist in ways I'm not equipped to handle right now, even if it would happily open a slot for Diversion.

Song rotation has little bearing on how you use Warden’s, Palisade, or Minne—they center around mechanics and what your party is doing more times than they do your song rotation (e.g., Palisade for physical busters; Minne for spreading Adlos from a WAR). There’s always a strict point in each encounter where you use one of them, independent of songs. Every instance where I use Palisade or Minne in an encounter is mapped out according to the fight’s timeline. In dungeons, both are used basically off-cooldown (Minne especially).

I wasn’t advocating to replace Warden’s with Palisade and make Palisade BRD only; I was advocating to give it a use similar, but for magic damage, and to make it a role skill so that both BRD and MCH can have access to it (and they will both continue to have access to Palisade). Palisade cannot be used for any of the heavy hits in O11S or O12S (minus using it on auto-attacks, and it will only work on Omega-M’s autos in 12 since Omega-F is magical) and it had zero use in UwU once you hit Ultima Weapon (I used it more for auto-attacks during the primals than I did for busters—the only Primal buster it worked on was Titan’s); I would like to have an option to give mitigation for magical busters.

For now, we are still bound by the 10 Role Actions per Role constraint. I'd like to see Role Actions removed entirely, but I'm trying to work within that constraint for the purposes of my suggestions here.

I think the Role Actions can be made into a better system than it currently is. But it requires the developers taking the time to make it better, rather than make it lazy/convoluted/a mess.

Here are the skills I would prefer to see in the Physical Ranged role actions:

Refresh: Party MP refresh. Duration: 30 secs; Recast: 180 secs
Tactician: Party TP refresh. Duration: 30 secs; Recast: 180 secs
Palisade: Reduces physical damage of a single target other than self by 20%. Duration: 10 secs; Recast: 150 secs.
The Warden’s Paeon: Reduces magical damage of a single target other than self by 20%. Duration: 10 secs; Recast: 150 secs.
Diversion: Reduces the enmity generated by 90%. Duration: 20 secs; Recast: 120 secs.
Invigorate: Restores 400 TP. Recast: 120 secs.
Second Wind: Restores own HP. Cure potency: 500. Scales off of Attack Power. Recast: 120 secs.
Peloton: Increased movement speed of party and self. Duration: 30 secs; Recast: 5 secs
Head Graze: Silences Target. Duration: 1 sec; Recast: 30 secs.

You can rename “The Warden’s Paeon” to make it suit both BRD and MCH in terms of aesthetic. It can be swapped with Palisade for applicable encounters (assuming they don’t just allow us to take all 10 going forward).

Refresh and Tactician no longer halve enmity, since BRD/MCH would have access to Diversion for enmity control. Refresh’s refresh potency can be adjusted in order to find a balance with casters’ Mana Shift, though I’d personally like to see Mana Shift changed from how it currently functions and buffed into a single-target MP Refresh buff that shares the same refresh potency as Refresh. It could keep a lower Recast on the premise that it is single-target versus AOE.

I removed Arm Graze, Leg Graze, and Foot Graze, as they are barely ever used (and, as I said earlier, I don’t like skills that have only one or two uses). I kept Head Graze, allowing BRD/MCH to supply a silence, since stuns are present in both the Melee DPS and Tank role actions, but Silence is only available in Physical Ranged. However, I would want to see an increase in mechanics that require silencing to make keeping it even worthwhile.

Given my love-hate relationship with fire arrow tropes this is perturbingly appealing to me, though I'd like for each song to be of both decent ST and AoE usefulness. Ideally, I'd like AP to be the perfect "setup" song, but that would require, again, a revision of the rigid song rotation system. For now I am considering lingering effects that can roll over into WM or MB, however, over one's you'd be reluctant to drop AP as a result of. I'd prefer it offer changes in gameplay and rotational opportunities over, even if slightly more functional, straight damage.

Personally, I would like to see a shift towards a 90-second song rotation, rather than an 80-second one, as it would make it more in line with the way major raid buffs are set up (though 2-minute ones still would not line up perfectly with everything except in the opener and at 6 minutes, but a 90-second rotation will allow BRD’s burst to line up with both 90-second and 180-second buffs).

The “lazy way”, of course, would be to just increase the Recast timers of Raging Strikes and Barrage to 90 seconds and do nothing to Army’s, but I would prefer to see the developers do something to make Army’s Paeon worth staying in for the full duration. In terms of PPS, it is the weakest of all three; having no oGCD procs during doesn’t help that, so I was considering adding Flaming Arrow to make up for that (and to give it a bit more PPS with Flaming’s DoT ticks):
—Minuet: 36 PPS
—Mage’s: 22.1 PPS
—Army’s: 8 PPS for the first ~15 sec, 17.5 PPS afterward.
Since we clip it at 20 seconds, that means we only get the 17.5 PPS for 5 seconds. And I believe this PPS is dependent on how quickly you get your 4 Repertoire stacks...and you better hope you get them all!

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...k4/mobilebasic