BRD 5.0 Feedback, Suggestions, and Requests

[Roshidon1]

Foe, Refresh, and Iron Jaws were more interesting to plan last tier,

How was Iron Jaws more interesting to plan last tier? I didn't play Stormblood so genuinely curious.

Although I do agree about not being able to plan around using Apex Arrow much. Procs are random and it is a nice ability but in single target it comes up pretty infrequently. How do you propose they change Apex Arrow?

[SaitoHikari]

While I'm happy that the Apex Arrow sound is being changed, I feel compelled to provide additional feedback to the Square Enix team based on their request for it, and their comments during the Live Letter. Here's hoping they see it.

The concern they addressed during the Live Letter is that Bard had its utility niche moved to Dancer. While I understand people are upset about this, I think there are more pressing issues that, most importantly, do not need to be solved by adding additional utility to Bard. These issues were not addressed during the Live Letter, so I hope the job design team takes them into account.

* The Ranged Physical DPS classes as a whole are not up to par. They are well balanced against each other. However, when you compare to the strongest DPS classes in the game, Monk and Black Mage, all of the Ranged DPS are in the range of 15% behind among top-level players on Savage content, and that's after you account for the discrepancy in utility. The difference is so big that top speedrun groups are preparing to take a second Black Mage instead of a Ranged Physical DPS, because the difference in DPS contribution is bigger than the LB generation and the 1% party buff combined.

* Bard lost planning complexity moving from Stormblood to Shadowbringers, and didn't gain enough complexity back in other areas. Foe, Refresh, and Iron Jaws were more interesting to plan last tier, and while I understand why Refresh can't exist in the current game design, Bard didn't get anything between level 70 and 80 that improves the planning complexity of the class. You can't plan around Apex at all because it's random and the optimal use is so constrained. This is the reason why so many of my requests in the thread OP focus on Apex and giving back Foe. Design updates to those two skills can help refund some of the complexity that Bard lost in the expansion transition.

Thanks again for reading, please do leave a post if you agree with these arguments so that we can help raise awareness for the job design team.

Yeah, pretty much.

Point 1: To give you an idea of how far behind ranged are compared to the upper DPS classes (mostly BLM, MNK, and DRG, though it's likely all three are super overtuned more than anything else, seeing as those three have a significant gap from the rest of the DPS), I scored a 95th percentile in E3S in my static a week and a half ago. I did 150 more rDPS than my Dragoon (who died once that run). That Dragoon earned an 18th percentile. If a top 5% Bard's contribution barely outperforms a low 20% performance from a Dragoon on the raid DPS scale - where damage gained from party buffs is subtracted from other party members and added to the caster of said buffs, something is incredibly wrong with the scaling between ranged/support and the raw DPS. And that's not going into the fact that Dragoon isn't even a raw DPS, having access to two party member damage buffs - oh, and Bard was designated as a 'hybrid' and yet only has one party member damage buff, one that doesn't even work on themselves (not that I'm advocating for Battle Voice to do that, for reasons already argued).

Imagine how much worse this kind of situation is for all the other supporty/ranged DPS too. This is only going to get worse as we get better gear later this expansion, as gaps in DPS will naturally expand as a result. Even now, when you take a look at rDPS rankings, the top performing Monks are contributing roughly 1,800 more raid DPS than the top performing Dancer. That should not be happening. There's also a massive drop off when you look at Dragoon (3rd place) VS Samurai (4th place) of about 500 rDPS, and the latter has no party utility to speak of. Then there's ANOTHER massive drop off between Samurai and Summoner (5th place) of about 600 rDPS. When you take a look between Dragoon and Summoner, that's a gap of around 1,000 raid DPS from 3rd place to 5th place. Summoner and below is when things finally start to level out, with Summoner and the remaining 5 DPS classes having rDPS contribution within 400 of each other.

(On another note, the switch from raw DPS to raid DPS on FFLogs was one of the best decisions that website owner could have done. Since padded runs are no longer obfuscating the statistics, it's opened a lot of eyes to the true state of the balance for this current expansion. Because really, such a large contribution gap between the top 3-4 DPS and the remaining 7-6 DPS is inexcusable. The ideal gap between the top DPS and lowest DPS classes IMO should only be about 700-800 rDPS, so that it's a matter of taking the player rather than taking the class for a raid, but the gap in rDPS is double that already and beyond any differences in skill that could have closed the gap otherwise.)

Point 2: Yeah, the reason why so many suggestions focus on Apex Arrow is because its design is pretty much reminiscent of the exact same problem Machinist had in Stormblood. Hell, one could say ALL of Bard's procs have that problem now. And that problem is that static RNG with no way to manipulate it does not make for compelling design at all. Stormblood Bard was well-received by the raiding community because you could make decisions with Iron Jaws and buffs from other party members to skyrocket your critical and thus your proc rates. Depending on how you used Iron Jaws in Stormblood, your proc rates could be around 35-40% (assuming end of Stormblood BiS gear), or it could be potentially increased to about 60+% during an opener if Litany and Chain Stratagem were up. There is nothing remotely rewarding to that level in ShB Bard, and our 'ultimate' level 80 skill is an uncontrollable mess that barely exists as a result.

You literally cannot plan around Apex Arrow coming into play, when I've had runs that vary wildly from having my first fully powered Apex Arrow coming in at 45 seconds into a fight, or coming in at 75 seconds instead. It's not a well designed skill when all decisions around it boil down to 'how do I use this without risking a DPS loss' instead of 'how do I use this as a DPS gain'.

(Honestly, I really wonder if Apex Arrow and Enhanced Army's Paeon should have their levels switched, so you got Apex Arrow at 78 and Enhanced Paeon/something else at 80 instead. Getting Enhanced Paeon at 80 would have actually fit the theme of the level 80 Bard job quest better than Apex Arrow, and getting that later means that it could have been designed around manipulating Apex Arrow's gauge generation/enhancing repertoire proc rates instead of its current boring design of... A mild 10 second skill speed buff.)

[Cetonis]

How was Iron Jaws more interesting to plan last tier? I didn't play Stormblood so genuinely curious.

In part because of how much we got paid off for using Iron Jaws under crit buffs, and in part because our default GCD was only ~62 potency stronger than Iron Jaws instead of ~130, optimizing Iron Jaws usage in SB Bard was a big difference maker.

If you used Iron Jaws at the start and end of Battle Litany, for instance, versus just using it once in the middle of it, you'd gain six extra +15% crit rate DoT ticks, worth some 300+ potency in Minuet, at a cost of maybe 30-50 potency lost due to the chance of using an extra IJ over the course of that uptime. Similar benefits applied to Chain Strategem, especially given that naive Jaws usage might miss Chain entirely.

And you also had regular ol' damage buffs to try and get on your DoTs, which you'd aim to do much more often than you do now because of the cheap cost of using IJ early. So you'd sit down with the timings sheet, look at the buffs your team has, when they're expected to be used, and figure out where you want all your IJs to be.


In ShB, between the buffs available being smaller, and the price of using IJ early being higher, and the lack of a proc rate bonus, the difference between just using Jaws every 28-30s vs. using it early from time to time to catch buffs, is much smaller, and in terms of gameplay feel it's a call that you make far far less often.

You can still, technically, do the sort of planning alluded to above, but instead of being something you really wanted to do to score a big payoff, it's just kind of a random micro-optimization for tryhards that improves your output on a scale much smaller than the noise of general RNG.


The loss, or drastic reduction, of similar planning dynamics surrounding Foe Requiem, Refresh, Troubadour, even song timings in relation to the potential payoffs of getting crit-buffed DoTs aligned with Minuet, is something that many SB Bard raiders mourn.

While it's probably unlikely that SE is going to make job changes for the sole purpose of re-introducing some depth, the hope is that when they're looking into common complaints like Apex disappointment or the absence of support, they might keep the issue in mind. It's very possible to aim for solutions that both address the base concern, while also introducing elements that provide players with impactful decision points / things they can explore on the planning side.

[rachcouture]

Bring back Foe's Requiem.
Bring back Refresh as a cross-class skill.
Bring back song cycling with party-wide effects, or better yet, take some sort of inspiration from Dancer.

The entire identity of Bard relies on the songs, and right now, outside of Wanderer's > Battle Voice, they might as well not even exist right now. This has always been an issue, but now it's somehow even worse.

[Roshidon1]

snip.

Very well thought out response, ty for that Cetonis.

[Cetonis]

I've posted this elsewhere, but might as well get it in the good thread.

General example of a damage-support setup that I think would be good at producing the flavor, while also not too powerful or hard to balance:

-- Battle Voice: Increases the direct hit rate of physical damage dealt by nearby party members by 30%. Duration: 20s. Cannot be used while Foe Requiem is active. Cooldown: 180s. Maximum charges: 2.

-- Foe Requiem: Increases the direct hit rate of magical damage dealt by nearby party members by 30%. Duration: 20s. Cannot be used while Battle Voice is active. Cooldown: 180s. Maximum charges: 2.


There would be a little bit of class-specific synergy mainly with Paladin but maybe Ninja or Red Mage depending on details, so I don't know if SE would do exactly this. But said synergy seems low impact, and no more powerful than the job-specific synergy between jobs with overlapping buff/bursts, so maybe it's fine.

Numerically, if we call current BV 600 raid dps on a dummy fight, this would probably be an increase to around 1200, in a landscape where Dancer is over 2000. So firmly in the middle of the three ranged, as desired.


But most importantly, it'd be a setup that asks Bard players to think about when it's best to use which one, by nature of each having a skew on its impact and the charge system allowing for more flexible timing.

Making players engage with their support skills, rather than just yawn and press the thing that lit up, goes a long way to making a job "feel" support-y. As does increasing the frequency of using such skills from once per three minutes to once per 90s plus two bonus.

And, it's the sort of thing Bards mourning the loss of depth would like to see added, something that feels rewarding to mull over and plan out. So it'd cover all the bases. Not that this is the only way, but it's an example of the sorts of dynamics that I think should be the goal re: adding support, as well as any other QoL / feedback-reaction changes.


(aside: One of the challenges, if SE wants to re-introduce damage support, is that if you bring back Foe as an interesting skill, and leave BV boring, as a design question why didn't you just make BV interesting instead? But if you just make BV interesting and don't return Foe, will that be enough for players to be satisfied? And trying to come up with a way to have both Foe and BV present as interesting / flexible skills without feeling redundant, is quite hard. So that's how I landed on the phys/mag mirror idea)

[CrashofZenki]

Snip!

Please take our Trick Attack away from us and place it on BRD instead.
Call it something cool like... "Last Verse"

[Raldo]

Please take our Trick Attack away from us and place it on BRD instead.
Call it something cool like... "Last Verse"

Before it was taken away, Foe Requiem basically was a weaker Trick Attack.

[Connor]

snip

These are great ideas for making these abilities feel more engaging to use.

One alternative I though of was to have the three main damage songs give some kind of boost (Haste/phys up/mag up/crit up/something along those lines). Foe Requiem could return as it was in 4.0, and Battle Voice could increase the effect of whichever boost you have up, meaning you’ll have to consider timing in relation to song rotation / party composition / etc. Alternatively, it would work Troubadour does in PvP and add a damage boosting effect to the current song being sung, though this would be harder to balance because there’d end up being one ‘best’ song. Though naturally that would be quite a big chance so it’s not particularly realistic.

Foe Requiem becoming is a cooldown does feel weird to me because I loved having to manage the cast time and MP. But if there’s only ability in the whole kit that uses MP, then you just end up wondering ‘why isn’t this a cooldown’ anyway. I feel like Foe Requiem could only work in the way it did before with cast time/mp etc if we had another song that also used MP to make it a meaningful decision. But it’d be pretty strange to give us the ability back, just to say ‘you’ll get to make meaningful decisions with this spell...next expansion’, so the cooldown-type Requiem is the easiest way for them to bring it back into Bard’s ability set without breaking the balance between ranged DPS.

[infinitestory]

I wouldn't want the three songs to give different effects, because it's the most rigid part of bard's rotation and if we had to plan the songs around buffing the party as well, it would cause nightmares and force us to make large personal dps sacrifices.

At the same time, the three songs giving the same buff effect is the SB situation, where bard just provides free damage utility that requires no real skill to capitalize on.

Therefore I think it's best that the three personal songs give no party buffs.