Thread: "Serious" Bard 6.0 predicted/suggested kit

I mained Bard through ShB, and dabbled a bit in some high end content. I am by no means an expert or a high end player, and I have no familiarity with pre-ShB bard, but as a more 'casual' bard who is still somewhat familiar with it I think I may have some unique perspective.

Song Procs are fun, its really awesome to go on a tear with bloodletter or pitch perfect and get a lot in a row. Refulgent Arrow is less wowzers but helps even it out. The problem is if no procs are happening you just mash 1 over and over, which is kinda... mind numbing! Maybe making it so that Straight Shot Ready was an enhancement to Refulgent, rather than a requirement, would help the job feel a little less 'bleh' if you don't get any procs.

The support fantasy of bard is enjoyable. Echoing the sentiment fight design should have more 'cleansables' and bards should get more 'assist' abilities, even if they aren't a general damage assist class like DNC. "Spike" support may be neat. The numbers don't matter as much as being able to look at your party and intervene in some way that feels like a choice that you can feel good about. The reason Trubador feels better than all your damage buffs despite being less impactful is because your making a choice to deploy it and can see the difference it makes and hit it just because it was on cooldown. More like that please! Likewise, Battle Voice just doesn't feel good, and I would love if it was reworked to be a more 'active' ability.

AOE doesn't feel good, even though you can have some fun with Rain of Death. We definitely need an AOE DOT spreader. Maybe make it so your proc chance is based on having the poison up at all, rather than per-target, so it 'evens out' the procs?

Mainly though, the class is interesting but while its active, its a 'bad' active. It feels like homework to maintain your debuffs and song. It is a bad sort of passive, yet still hectic busywork, mainly due to I think some UI issues: If you use a default UI or something resembling it because you don't want to redo UIs per class and are a filthy casual who learned on the default and doesn't want to shake the boat too much, you gotta look up to see debuffs and song duration, right to see apex gauge, and down to see procs. I think making the song guage also have two icons for your procs, and show your DOT timers, would be a really great fix for this problem without dumbing down the class by removing debuffs or debuff refreshing.

Obviously for bard mega experts using custom UIs for the class this isn't even a real change, but it would make the class so much more readable and less hectic for new players, allowing more active choices and complexity to be added without overwhelming our poor casual minds.

Originally Posted by Rika007

This pretty simply put is the issue. The core of Bard's rotation is fine and doesn't need a rework, maybe a little bit of TLC in forms of an AoE dot spreader, and charges on the blood letter procs, along with making Apex Arrow a timed oGCD so it can line up with burst windows properly (or just make it useable at full power at 50 gauge so their is a way you can guarantee it in raging strikes). Not much work is needed there.

It's the support kit where all the work needs to go into. Yes Bard's damage isn't good and people would like to see it be better. But that's just a numbers change and easily solved (if they ever will anyway). The issue with the support kit though is not something you can just slap a passive onto Bard's already active song rotation and expect the players to be happy.

I appreciate you agreeing with me that bards support should be the focus in Endwalker. Yes and I agree with you that some of its ranger abilities need to be addressed but their support is what’s really lacking and that needs to be thoroughly addressed.

Originally Posted by dezzmont

The other big problem with bard is button bloat:

Right now most of your mental energy is spent trying to maintain your DoTs, and rotating song effects without 'wasting' any like a bloodletter or not casting pitch perfect before the time is up, which doesn't feel like the real 'bard fantasy.' But any new focus on other stuff might get overwhelming as Bard already has a lot of ways to lose quite a bit of DPS, so removing those tedious punishments for mistakes makes a lot of sense going forward.

I like what you said about bard not feeling like the fantasy job it should. That’s a really good point. Allot of people on this forum has really good ideas on where they want to see bard go in the future. I just hope SE is listening to us and won’t continue to tell us to leave feedback when they aren’t really listening themselves. I am okay with bard just getting small bandaids this expansion. I just hope in Endwalker we don’t see allot of the same things on what’s going on in this one. Bard and dancer do about the same dps to me yet I’ve heard people say SE looks at dancer as more support oriented and bard is in the middle of mch and dnc. I think that should be the other way around but I digress.

I’m not sure what abilities will go or change but if I had my guess it will be Shadowbite that will change into the dot spreader. Repelling shot and quick nock might go bye bye. Not sure why we have to be in sorta melee range to use quick nock. We’re ranged so it’s just weird to have to be that close to enemies. I don’t even use repelling shot at all and I know many bards who don’t even have it on their hotbar anymore. I’d also like to see sidewinder improved. Weird that it’s on a 60 second cool down when it just does mediocre damage. I’d like the songs to attach some kind of support to it for the party. If not just make it a weapon skill in place of burst shot that does a bit more damage as long as you have and keep both dots up.

Someone has to explain this Bane thing to me. What... is the goal of this anyway? It's not like we spend all that long applying DoTs, by the time a pack is gathered I only want like 2-5 more usually. It's not bad at all.

I rather like the (DoTs while running --> song up after a couple --> a few more DoTs when stop -> Apex/Nock procs everywhere flurry) personally, and WM is quite fine for this too honestly, really underrated.

It's a different and unique AoE setup and I think that's a good thing. Also in so far as dungeons go, "play another job if you don't like how x plays" is super applicable, because you don't need to be particularly well geared at all. I'd like for more jobs to have distinct AoE rotation styles honestly.

Originally Posted by Cetonis

Someone has to explain this Bane thing to me. What... is the goal of this anyway? It's not like we spend all that long applying DoTs, by the time a pack is gathered I only want like 2-5 more usually. It's not bad at all.

I rather like the (DoTs while running --> song up after a couple --> a few more DoTs when stop -> Apex/Nock procs everywhere flurry) personally, and WM is quite fine for this too honestly, really underrated.

It's a different and unique AoE setup and I think that's a good thing. Also in so far as dungeons go, "play another job if you don't like how x plays" is super applicable, because you don't need to be particularly well geared at all. I'd like for more jobs to have distinct AoE rotation styles honestly.

I can understand your thinking, but for me anyway, the current AOE rotation of having to apply the dots on 3-4 targets before going ham just feels kinda tedious to me, and is not something I really enjoy to do. And speaking as a controller player, where d-pad switching isn't probably nearly as effective as tab targeting, and I know for a fact the cone of vision isn't as precise as mouse targeting, the current option of having to multi dot up several enemies during the initial run up and after the first volley is not fun either.

The last thing I'd want is a straight up copy of Summoners: "Wait till the pull is gathered > swiftcast outburst > Tri-disaster priority target > bane > summon durgen/birb" rotation though. I'd instead like to see something that has a mathematical potency advantage/disadvantage, where if it's only like 2 or 3 targets, keep to the current Bard rotation. The moment we at 4 though, we would do something like: "Storm & Caustic primary target > Let enemies gather > quick knock > hit new ability that has a harp styled animation (I don't know call it Elegy of Torment or something, I'm bad with names) that then uses a Bane effect to spread a new singular DoT that is potency based on if you had Both Caustic and Storm on the initial mob." This new Dot will count for Repertoire procs, and just because this is all theory crafting, let it increase the potency of Shadowbite as well if a target is marked by it, but the potency of the dot will only be like 30, so it's best use will be on those major pulls where you have like 4-10 mobs, where multi-dotting is not a fun thing to do. This will allow for more Apex procs and nice big Shadowbytes, along with even more rain of deaths, and to me at least would feel more satisfying.

How is using the enmity list on controller? That's honestly what I've always used to swap targets.

Originally Posted by Cetonis

How is using the enmity list on controller? That's honestly what I've always used to swap targets.

Possible, but also not the most comfortable, essentially you have to set it up to hold down R1 or L1 and then use the D-Pad to scroll through it, and depending on how you have your Crossbar setup, this can create most issues. Most players who are serious players who play on controller (and while not a lot of us, we do exist), set up their controller to either use the shoulder bumpers or triggers to either swap to a new cross bar or to activate the Expanded Crossbar. Regardless of which way you do it, those shoulder buttons are at a premium as it is, and the more you use them for one off things like targeting, the more strain in your fingers.

Also for Endwalker,

Can bard do more with their instruments please. Dancer flows through their many dances to attack and ninja flows through their many ninjutsu. Why does bard only give a flick of the string once and that’s all? It’s so bad. I hope to see more instrument play during battle. Not just the single flick of the harp string or the no sound of the flute, just a weird spin. Come on SE. Do better by bard please. We deserve so much more than what you giving us...