BRD Notes from 8/7 Live Letter

[TcomJ]

Well I'm happy to give that feedback Yoshi-P, and thank you for at least considering it. I would much rather sacrifice personal DPS to get more of my job identity back (although I feel both our personal DPS and our Party utility seem below average, especially when compared to Monk and DRG). I'm totally ok with being on the lower side like Dancer as that is what a Bard should be, a mobile ranged DPS that brings out the best in their team with a solid burst rotation.

My current suggestions to the devs would be is to bring back Foe's Requiem, but reworked into an oGCD ability on a 2 minute cool down that lasts about 15 seconds. I also would suggest a reworking of Warden's Paen, as currently it is an ability that see's little to no use and many Bard's take it off their bar's entirely. I would love if it provided a damage buff of some kind to a single party member, but if you want to keep it non damage flavored, a defensive buff of some kind like a mixture of Palisade/Apocatastasis would feel very good too. I also feel that the buff to Minne to work on oGCD feels great, but it's double on the cooldown time makes the ability much more difficult to get use from outside of anything except organized static play. I would like to see it lowered to it's original duration. Finally Battle Voice being lowered to two minutes but also have the percentage brought back to 10 or 15% would make it feel a bit more impactful.

If personal DPS need's to be brought down after these changes then so be it. I happily accept that trade off. It will make us feel more like a Bard again and give us back one of our most iconic abilities in Foe's Requiem that many of us feel should not have been removed. Then in the futre expansions some more utility based around the Soul Voice change would be awesome.

So they really try to make way for DNC by removing Bard identity. Who would have thought.
But if anything.

1) Just remove Apex Arrow and make Soul Gauge just for new FR. Add new name into "Song of Oblivion". The moment it's filled, the Soul Gauge is drained for 15 sec duration.
2) Minne AOE for the nerfed cooldown they give. If not AOE, then reduce cooldown back to Sb.
3) Play 3 songs give a party buff 15sec, I don't want 3 song emote abilities. Det%, DH% or whatever
4) BV gives something else than the buff of the 3 songs rotation.
5) Warden Paean....It just rarely ever remove anything in savage raid or extreme. I wonder if it gives minor counter effect for regular afflictions that can't be removed in savage but is in normal dungeon like: Poison/burn = small regen, blind = partial acc up from what's reduced, heavy = partial movementspeed up, confusion = reduced duration, etc. where only one effect can be partially countered at a time randomly.

[Cetonis]

Minne really is a good skill, and has a number of solid use cases this Savage tier, you just need to be cognizant of it as an option. Yes, Mantra comparison, but all in all I think the 90s cooldown is appropriate. Wouldn't mind a second charge though, to make it a bit more flexible.

Anyway, shower thought a way to get Foe back in without just feeling bland and redundant with BV. To reiterate, I think the most important goal here is to make Bard's support kit something they think and make decisions about. i.e. returning Foe as just a mindless button you press every 2 minutes would be a failure in my book. Feels come first - whatever the numerical outcome is, is pretty secondary in my opinion.


Core idea - return to the old magic damage idea, and split BV and Foe into physical/magical mirrors of each other that can't both be active at once.

:: Battle Voice / Ability / 180s cooldown / Max charges: 2 -- Increases direct hit rate on physical attacks for nearby party members by 30%. Cannot be used while Foe Requiem is active. Duration: 20s

:: Foe Requiem / Ability / 180s cooldown / Max charges: 2 -- Increases direct hit rate on magical attacks for nearby party members by 30%. Cannot be used while Battle Voice is active. Duration: 20s


(Note, these still would NOT affect self. 180s stuff doesn't play nice with our song cycle and it'd be bad to have a push/pull of using these songs for ourselves vs. for the party.)

All told, I'd expect this to increase Bard's raid contribution by arouuuund 400 or so. Considering that all three ranged probably need 800ish in buffs if SAM/NIN are to be brought up to meet DRG, this is well beyond safe to do and leaves ample room to touch up other parts of the kit.

But most importantly, you'd change Bard support from "just press the thing every 3m" to an AST-like decision system, where you have some timing flexibility and can be paid off for figuring out which song is best to use when.

Yet at the same time, newbies could just jam the buttons and not be too bad off, so the skill floor here would be okay. And, it's quite a different dynamic from what Dancer is doing, so I don't think there'd be a flavor overlap concern.


From there, I could see an expansion into a model where all of Bard's support skills have a second charge (including Troub, and then buff the other two in different ways) as a theme, with a rework of Warden's sadly required.

My favorite idea for WP so far is to make it like Excogitation, since the structure and flavor of the skill match that, just give it worse numbers than the real deal obviously.

Or, instead of or in addition to poking at the other songs, I'd certainly like Empyreal Charges, as well as making Muse 15s to fix some timing things. Apex could probably be safely buffed or moved to oGCD, alongside the Foe/BV idea, to fill out the total buff allowance.

[Connor]

Totally agree with the original post, Bard doesn’t have any issues to play or with its DPS numbers but it’s gone down a totally opposite road than before in terms of what it is and does. I really hope they take the feedback so many players are giving about Bard on board; both here and on other forums (I believe this is also something being brought up on JP forums).

Also I agree that I would take a personal DPS drop in a heartbeat. Bard has never been a high DPS low utility job, and there’s been various suggestions on how they could have continued with the original Bard ‘identity’ that has existed since 2.0, without making it guaranteed raid spot or making Dancer redundant.

Honestly besides the damage drop the 2.0/3.0 versions of songs were my absolute favourite iteration of the songs. It felt satisfying and ‘Bard-y’ to use, there was decision making based on MP usage and when to take the cast time hit, they always felt like they contributed something and could easily fit into your damage rotation if you needed them to, but not so easily that they’re just set and forget. Plus it’s easier to balance if it has a cast time, I know they’re hugely unpopular and I’ll be burned at the stake for even considering their return, but I feel like some kind of buff spells like how the songs used to work, but with a reduced 1.5 sec cast, would really bring back the ‘Bard’ feel without drowning out the ‘Archer’ aspects

[Proxanna]

They could add something like DNC's "dance partner" effect to BRD songs. BRD chooses a partner and whenever they're playing a song said partner gets a buff. Each song could have a unique buff so that the BRD would need to rotate between players any time they sing a new song to get maximum effectiveness from them. They could make this a static, set % buff or a buff that starts out very low and starts to ramp up whenever you get DoT procs. Something like this should be easier to balance since you're only buffing one party member at a time while still letting the player feel like they're supporting their party members in some way.

[Cetonis]

Buffing one player at a time is harder to balance, not easier, and starts to encroach upon Dancer flavor territory besides. We can very very easily look at the behavior of things like Battle Voice, Litany, Chain, Trick, Devotion, etc. to get a baseline for what we can expect from different party-wide buff ideas.

With single target buffs, it's much murkier to calculate what the optimal times look like because you have four dps and perhaps even two tanks to consider for any given window. It's a big wait and see at best, to see what the top AST speedrunners are able to do with the new cards, and even that is a really different dynamic than what's being described.

[Brightshadow]

I think maybe they should Introduce Ranger with crossbows and make BRD more supportive.

[Brightshadow]

Double post...

[Proxanna]

Buffing one player at a time is harder to balance, not easier, and starts to encroach upon Dancer flavor territory besides. We can very very easily look at the behavior of things like Battle Voice, Litany, Chain, Trick, Devotion, etc. to get a baseline for what we can expect from different party-wide buff ideas.

With single target buffs, it's much murkier to calculate what the optimal times look like because you have four dps and perhaps even two tanks to consider for any given window. It's a big wait and see at best, to see what the top AST speedrunners are able to do with the new cards, and even that is a really different dynamic than what's being described.

When I say easier to balance, I mean easier for the dev team as they're obviously afraid to go back to having the meta defined by jobs that bring too much utility (which I personally feel like is a losing battle since there's always going to be a meta and jobs who are chosen over others, but hey). I am by no means a developer or an expect at balancing but I feel like one job having a 5% crit buff(or whatever the buff may be) for 80 seconds is less likely to break the game than a whole group of 8 receiving said buff instead. My idea was to bring back more utility to the class with enough impact that it doesn't feel completely useless, but not enough to make it game breaking or a mandatory pick for every group.

Do I have any idea if that would accomplish that? Absolutely not. But it was just a suggestion and suggestions are what they were asking for. If enough people give their suggestions no matter how good they are then the dev team may just be able to make something cohesive and working out of them. *shrug*

[Rufalus]

Only loosely on topic but I love harpbows. I think Gandiva (anima series) is the only bard weapon that looks more harp than bow. It can be dyed too so that's the one I often use when I play bard to make it feel a little more like a bard than archer.

[Cetonis]

The dev fear of too much utility is irrational anyway, and easy to cover for. They've proven that they're capable of doing this if you look at the three ranged vs. one another - all fairly close if you assume a top-rate dance partner. If anything they undershot on Dancer a little.

Tuning for optimal-at-the-time jobs getting buffs is super hard to account for, and a constant +2.5-3% net damage for one rotating job is not substantially (if at all) smaller than adding 0.5% overall damage to the party. But the latter is an easier number to nail down with more precision.

I think, broadly, that Bards just want to be interacting with their support kit in a way that feels like they're putting effort into helping the party and getting a payoff for it. Whether it's your idea, or people wanting Foe back as an MP spender, or etc. the idea is that people want to spend more of their energy in combat thinking about what they're doing to help the party.

If, in the end, it's numerically nowhere near as much party-damage as Dancer or Ninja bring, I don't think people would really have a problem with that. It's more about feel and flavor than data output, I think.

Maybe just for added absurdity I'll post a new thread just trying to talk about these sorts of principles without getting into the nitty gritty of specific suggestions? That might be more useful feedback than the kind of wild all over the place stuff that the other threads are resulting in.