Quote Originally Posted by Beddict View Post
Because it's garbage seeing Bloodletter refresh itself at the same time you hit Empyreal Arrow, pissing away a 150 Potency proc. Losing DPS does not feel good, and there's a whole lot of lost DPS because Bloodletter doesn't have charges. As for Empyreal Arrow, charges would smooth out the end of Army's Paeon. It's not unusual to have Empyreal Arrow coming off cooldown around a GCD before Wanderer's Minuet comes off cooldown. When that happens, do you use Empyreal Arrow the moment it comes off cooldown at the end of Army's Paeon where it only exists to give you 5 Soul Voice, or do you drift Empyreal Arrow by a GCD so you can Empyreal Arrow the moment you enter Wanderer's Minuet for an instant Pitch Perfect stack? Obviously, it's better to let it sit for a GCD so you can take advantage of the stronger proc in Wanderer's Minuet. If Empyreal Arrow had charges then there wouldn't be a problem at the end of Army's Paeon. Army's Paeon would be nearly over, you get a charge of Empyreal Arrow, and then you can safely go into Wanderer's Minuet as the second charge counts down. No wasted proc at the end of Army's Paeon, no drifting the cooldown of Empyreal Arrow, just a nice and easy transition.

That's why people want charges, to smooth out the kinks in the kit and prevent BRD from hemorrhaging DPS all over the damn place, especially during Mage's Ballad.
I get the desire, but at the same time, some enjoy the skill ceiling, urgency, intersecting cadence that comes with having only one charge of Bloodletter or the (though typically faint) opportunities for decision-making that then come from having only a single charge of Empyreal Arrow.

Bloodletter can only reset from the entirely consistent 3-second ticks. Playing around them completely nullifies the risk of wasted Bloodletters, even if, at the very worst case, it can cause faint clipping.

A second charge to Empyreal Arrow, meanwhile -- while I'd certainly appreciate it -- is not a direct or unique fix to its interaction with AP. (A far more intuitive fix, for instance, would just be to make AP less terribly designed, e.g., by not capping its value or causing its effective value per proc to vary so greatly with AP's remaining duration.) Moreover, that loss of decision-making would not be purely positive change. If the decision is already there and the more complex action very frequently viable, why remove all that?

Increasing the job's performance disproportionately across its lower skill tiers, where Bard performs fine, by reducing its complexities rather than just raising its maximal output directly might be decent QoL, but it can be both a slap to those who already manage those mechanics well, let alone enjoy them, and a poorly aligned solution to Bard's performance issues (relatively small though they be compared to MCH).