I feel like BRD's bloodletter and maybe Empyreal Arrow could use a charge system.

[Gallus]

Like Gauss Round/Egi Assault. These 2 OGCDs just come too often and make BRD too much of an OGCD fest that feels too much over the top, especially during Ballad.

[SnowVix]

Especially Empyreal. Watching EA come off cooldown during AP while you've already got 4 repertoire stacked is just painful.

[Connor]

Charges on Bloodletter and Empyreal Arrow have been requested since they announced they were adding charged actions. I definitely think it’ll become a thing at some point in the future, if not just because it’s so frequently requested

[TheRealQuah]

Charge on Empyreal Arrow seems kinda pointless, you would just do 2 of them in your opener and use it on cooldown. Bloodletter/rain of death should have stacks though for when they refresh whilst its up.

Edit: Changed my mind on empyreal arrow after reading SnowVix post.

[Jirah]

ehhhhhhhh I dont want Bard to be what MCH is i feel we need something abit more complex for Bloodletter/Rain of death as it would just feel like MCH. Maybe restrict it only for Mages ballad example being once under Mages ballad Blood/Rain can now have charged actions until it ends or if theyll implement Mages muse or somthing idk

Empyreal arrow sure, 2 stacks sounds fine it feels great in PVP. But allow me to make u question the point of having multiple stacks if your just gonna spam them and they dont refill like say MCH actions and Empyreal is vital for repertoire resource a "Quick Reload" for the songs if you will. it would be more beneficial to have some sort of skill or trait that resets Empyreal arrow rather than a pointless stack youll never see unless you lagging or you died or your opener. or if they make a phase beyond the repertoire requirement but that also goes into the field of dps loss... its all complicated and adding a stack wont do much tbh unlike Blood and rain

[Cetonis]

The ShB Bard animations video appeared to be meant to show off BL charges, leading us to wonder if it was prevented by technical issues. Specifically:

:: The code that handles the mechanics of BL's reset hasn't been touched since 2.0

:: The current BL reset is not a true reset. Rather, it accelerates the cooldown rate of the skill temporarily, by about 30-40x or so. You can imagine this not playing super nice with a charge setup, let alone double procs

:: Speaking of double procs, being able to double weave BL+BL is going to be an important part of this. But currently, charged actions seem to have a 1s cooldown before you can use a new charge. So that would need to be reduced, presumably across the board.

So some of us theory peeps are assuming that some combination of the above must have blown up their time estimates or something and stopped the implementation from happening. Hopefully they make sure to tackle whatever the hangup is and get things fixed and ready to go for 6.0.


As for EA charges, I don't think there'd be anything but positive impacts, other than similar-to-MCH gripes, but I think the function of Gauss/Rico is so specific that I doubt it'll really feel all that similar in the end.

On the plus side, it'd make the job a lot easier for newfolk (EA drift is a very common problem), and I think vets would prefer skillful use of the flexibility to whatever skill there is in staying tightly on top of it npw. And most of all, it would enhance Bard's downtime recovery, which is a huge weakness of the job relative to the other ranged.

It's not really as important as BL charges though, so if it's a matter of SE not wanting to overdo it, BL should for sure take priority.

[Eclipse12187]

Give BL the GR/Rico treatment, make the reset instead proc a 15 second cooldown reduction and bake in a 1second cooldown between being able to use charges. EA could use a secondary charge as well for convenience sake from transition from paeon back to WM. I’d also like to see potential charges to refulgent, especially during the opener if you have to delay barrage because you ignore the proc while applying dots or when you have to Refresh dots and you happened to have a proc already. Last thing is I’d like Apex Arrow to either be more impactful or taken off the gcd.

[Stepjam]

Personally, I just want iron jaws to have a bane effect. It can even be a high level trait, I just want it so bad

[LeonKeyh]

Personally, I just want iron jaws to have a bane effect. It can even be a high level trait, I just want it so bad

That would definitely be nice, but I feel like they'd have to figure out something else with the repertoire stacks then, I feel like it would end up being too powerful.

I would even take it if you had 10 seconds or something after applying Venom/Stormbite where Iron Jaws would apply both to a new target so it's only 1 GCD for each subsequent enemy (up to ~3 additional enemies).

[Gorondu]

Let BL stack charges but always use all charges with doing damage per charge?