BRD Rework in Final Endwalker Patch Notes!

[Rika007]

If you told me three months ago that they were going to take away DoT-based procs, I would have readily believed it. It makes sense, if only for AoE-related reasons, and falls in line with SE's tendency to make a chainsaw to job's identity when they get a lot of complaints about it being too difficult.


What *is* a shock, is that they seemingly made the decision to do this in the 11th hour before the expac launch. Not only leaving behind changes that no longer make sense - halved MB proc value, 3x BL stacks - but resulting in a kit that can't be justified.


For better or for worse, DoT-based procs were Bard's entire identity. They were the only thing the job had to separate it design-wise. You don't just rip something like that out of a kit on a whim. You do it early on in development when you have the time to figure out what else should change and how, in order to ensure the job still feels unique and interesting.


Instead, Bard is a job with -

:: A simpler version of Dancer's GCD system (solo and AoE)

:: A simpler version of Dancer's fan procs

:: A more boring version of Dancer's Standard Step upkeep

:: A slower version of Dancer's Espirit gauge

:: A more boring version of Dancer's 2-minute buff execution

:: A DoT upkeep mechanic that's just left sitting there for no reason


Other than bow aesthetics and possibly power level, what is the reason to play Bard, gameplay-wise? What's the defining feature, what's the signature mechanic or unique play style? What part of the job is better-designed than the equivalent aspect of Dancer?

None of it is. No part of it at all.

And people were happy with the media tour setup. They were excited. Still some gripes about self-song and Bane, sure - but the former didn't force any of this, and the AoE situation could have been handled in some other way (i.e. they could have, if they wanted, put a cooldown on Storm and Caustic).

It just doesn't make sense. Going to have to hope that the DoT decouple just isn't actually there, but that too would be kind of wild if there's a per-DoT 80% rate. Or maybe it's based on something else DoT-related. Something something copium.

Yeah it's an odd call. While I don't agree with the idea that Bard has no identity now and am REALLY excited for the other changes, the change on how procs now occur seems like one where they were fixing the job then thought "Lets keep fixing it, even though we don't need too." If anything I felt the only changes to the procs that were needed was to up them to 45 or 50% rate to get some more speed back to the job.

It's gonna all depend on how the job feels now. I really am eager to play it through the MSQ so I can give feedback. Despite the negative aspects of this change it really does feel like the team was very much listening to the post media tour feedback. Songs being able to now be heard, battlevoice affecting us, 3rd blood letter charge, increase to the 3rd coda, heck even the proc rates now on the songs addressing the leveling experience on bard being too slow all in some way address concerns we had in the post media tour. The dev team DID listen, it just looks like they took it one step further with this last change. Need to try it out now. If it works it works, if it doesn't we give that feedback just like we did before.