Thread: "Serious" Bard 6.0 predicted/suggested kit

Originally Posted by Cetonis

Hey, it is part prediction. Regardless of how much I like the idea, it's just what SE does 99% of the time with such things. <snip>

<snip>Anyway, on the benchmark, we saw:

- What seemed to either be an upgraded Nock or a combo off of Nock, or a conal Refulgent. Not terribly surprising.

- A large single target skill that is, probably, the solo Apex. Would be a surprise to have a big single hit that didn't work off the gauge.

I mean, that's fair, but... still, the pain.

"Realism" in this case basically just means the kit reiteration was doomed from the start.

Sorry for the slight derail, but here are my foolish hopes:

Warning: Very spitball.

General Changes:

• Skill Speed and Spell Speed combined into Haste.
• The % contribution/modifier/chance of your Haste, Critical Hit, Determination, Direct Hit, Tenacity, and Piety are now shown on your Character pane.
• Knockbacks which are intended to be used (e.g., purge deadly debuffs or bring one to safety not otherwise reachable -- or would by any other means be a loss to immune) can no longer be nullified.
• Tentative: Role Actions removed. Good riddance. Each job gets their own way to provide towards those capacities or capacities of similar value in the context of their kits, in their own way, under their own flavor. (Replacements not on this list, though.)

Modifications:

• Heavy Shot and Burst Shot no longer proc Straight Shot and Refulgent Arrow. Instead, they add, stackingly, to the Critical Hit chance of your next Straight Shot by 25% (Honed Aim) and the number of projectiles fired by your next Refulgent Arrow (Heavens' Volley). (You want to use Straight Shot as near as possible to an effective 100% Critical Hit chance, and Heaven's Volley as near as possible to 6 additional projectiles -- the central 3 of the animated 9 are baseline.) This allows for a bit more flexibility/banking and demands slightly more mindful gameplay.
• Straight Shot and Refulgent ArrowRaging Strikes replaced with Hawkeye, since the prior still sounds more like a Marauder ability. 90s CD. Gives 30% added Critical Hit chance and doubles contribution towards Honed Aim and Heaven's Volley. This means increased depth of burst window; individual potencies slightly decreased in compensation, but Bard should be faintly stronger except when narrowly missing the ability to use another burst window.
• Army's Paean, Wanderer's Minuet, and Mage's Ballad now longer require targets, but neither do they deal any damage on activation.
• Apex Arrow initial effective potency is raised nearer to that of Burst Shot, decreasing the need to hold it for 95+ charge. It is now worth using early within Hawkeye at 75 or more charge.
• Barrage replaced by Wild Quiver, which has only a 30 second CD that scales with one's GCD (similarly to Drill, etc.). It now instantly repeats your last weaponskill, off the global cooldown, other than Apex Arrow. Gains a second charge after level 64. (That is all. Use it to milk a particularly strong attack -- or quickly multi-DoT, or easily maintain DoTs across two targets via Iron Jaws now that the duplicated skill needs not hit the same target.)
• Songs no longer have cooldowns. Instead, they consume mana upon activation and over time. Those costs increase with MP recently spent on the particular song and decrease over time spent out of combat or not singing that same song. This therefore still forces a sort of rotation, but far softer than previous.
• Army's Paean is no longer terrible, nor dependent on a later trait. Its Repertoire proc now increases Haste (the effect, not the stat itself, as always) by 10% for 10 seconds. Up to 3 applications may overlap. Procs after the third will refresh the lowest duration among your applications and reduce the cooldown of Wild Quiver by twice the remainder. Any number of applications may overlap (e.g., decreasing one's GCD to 59% of what it was with 5 overlapping applications -- 0.9^5). Use it to accelerate your GCD before multi-DoTing or QN-spamming. This remains your lowest value song except under Hawkeye on single-target, but no longer by a significant margin, and provides considerable flexibility by which to make rotational timings meet.
• Pitch Perfect now additionally AoEs at half potency. It still deals slightly less overall AoE damage than Ballad's RoD spam at 4+ targets, but has greater focus target potential. Pitch Perfect's recast time has been reduced to 1.5 seconds, scaling with Haste, down from 3.
• Passive song raid buff effects reworked to take advantage of their added flexibility and add more agency. Army's Paean now grants 5% Haste, Mage's Ballad a chance to generate additional gauge or procs, and Wanderer's Minuet 25% increased movement speed, but the effect is split among allies based on relative proximity. (Technical speak: You want those you least want to affect to be as many multiples as possible of your distance from the player you want to affect.)
• Bloodletter animation adjusted to fire more quickly (and thus less likely be clipped by following animations). When that animation was created, after all, Bloodletter was the equivalent of Apex Arrow, a massive laser with recoil; it no longer needs that kind of plodding wind-up.
• Battle Voice now functions as a resource-drain, rather than a fixed cooldown. It holds up to 20 seconds of duration (3 minutes' worth of charge), but can be used at any time in excess of 10 seconds' duration (90 seconds' charge).
• Battle Voice no longer grants Direct Hit. Instead, it delimits the group benefits of your song, sharing them across the entire party, instead of only with/among the ally or allies nearest. Put simply, now grants Haste, Movement Speed, or Gauge/Proc Bonuses.
• Nature's Minne changed to Wayfarer's Minne, which causes up the next 5 seconds of the target's casting to be usable while moving, starting from when next within 10s a cast would be cancelled by movement, or allows them to activate Sprint within the next 10s without it triggering its cooldown. (Unless otherwise in some other way, WHM will now be asked to provide their own Bard for certain Savage fights or else remain barred due to poor uptime over movement.)
• When cast on an enemy, Wayfarer's Minne will move swap the places of you and your target. If the target is not thus moveable, you will simply appear behind them instead.
• Warden's Paean has been buffed slightly; in addition to the first debuff removed, it now nullifies the effect of all status effects from the target ally for 5 seconds, or, if no status effects are present, for 5 seconds after nullifying the next (which must land within 5 seconds).
• Warden's Paean may now instead be used on an enemy, in which case it stuns the enemy for 3 seconds and thereafter binds it for 30. Neither effect triggers nor respects diminishing returns.
• Iron Jaws removed as a weaponskill. We have few enough casts outside of Heavy/Straight or Burst/Refulgent spam as is. It instead becomes an oGCD utility-cast called (Foe) Requiem, which will share 2 60s charges with Wayfarer's Minne and Warden's Paean, above.
• Foe Requiem instead becomes Hero's Hymn when cast on an ally, causing them to heal over time. Potency: 300. Duration: 9s.
• Following a trait at level (TBD), time spent in Army's Paean reduces the recast time of your next Warden's Paean, Mage's Ballad on Foe Requiem, and Wanderer's Minuet on Wayfarer's Minne.

New:

• Any 3 among...
• New Apex Arrow trait causes it to have up to a 100% chance, equal to gauge spent, to instantly trigger a tick of each of your DoTs on targets struck, thus adding up to 90 potency per target struck and maxing one's Repertoire. (With an extreme number of DoTs present, it may be worth swapping to AP, but usually WM is best after having just spent Repertoire, and with time enough before the next server tick to spend it again).
• New Empyreal Arrow trait gives it a second charge.
• New Refulgent Arrow trait causes it to duplicates 25% of its damage to enemies within 8 yalms of its target and have a 50% chance to gain Heaven's Volley from Quick Nock. OR Quick Nock marks targets for spread damage from your next Refulgent Arrow.
• Apex Arrow now also leaves a wake of effect, greatly increasing movement speed for allies and decreasing enemy movement speed along the path (Wanderer's), increasing proc chances on allies/enemies along the path (Ballad), or increasing allied Haste and decreasing enemy Haste along the path (Army's). (This is primarily how you'll more easily deal with stacked movement mechanics, if movement speed can provide any advantage thus.) ???
• Empyreal Ordinance trait for Empyreal Arrow cause you to fire an additional Empyreal Arrow at any enemies recently struck by Wild Quiver.
• Rain of Death has a chance to empower Quick Nock, upgrading it to... something something better conal AoE.