Bard's big list of problems

[Cetonis]

My goal for this is to avoid fussing over DoT procs, as well as (directly anyway) the half-proc Mage's Ballad idea - those things, at least, I can imagine a rational explanation for.

However, while on the whole I do think this new Bard setup is workable, the 6.00 build has quite a big pile of flaws, oversights and random jank that need some cleaning up. In rough order of import:



1. Mage's Ballad is weaker than Army's Paeon.

This is, presumably, not intentional. If it is, it's a bad idea. As SE should know, Army's Paeon is very unpopular. Players are not going to be happy once word spreads that sitting in AP for ~45 seconds is ideal.

The easy solution is to simply buff Bloodletter - by a solid chunk, preferably. I think it can/should be as high as i.e. 150p, considering the procs now only half-reset it.



2. The new AoE implementation feels awkward and incomplete.

First of all, the 5y targeted circle is a pain to work with, especially since in theory we want to be using single-target skills like Empyreal Arrow, Sidewinder and Pitch Perfect on whatever enemy has the most hp. Which is rarely the one in the dead center of the pack.

If possible (and this may need more time) it'd help if Shadowbite got an 8y radius, matching Rain of Death.

Secondly, Barrage not giving a Shadowbite proc is very annoying. Presumably this is just an oversight but it should be fixed.

Lastly, compared to ShB we get dramatically less Apex usage in dungeons now. When not in Mage's Ballad, EW Bard's AoE can be quite dull, and really needs more than just Shadowbite procs. A little more Apex frequency (i.e. if Ladon/Shadow gave some gauge) would be one way to improve things.



3. The coda system does not make sense if Radiant Finale is going to have a 2 minute cooldown.

You'll always have 3 coda at 2 minutes, unless there was downtime in which case all coda is doing is punishing downtime for some reason.

If a 90 second cooldown was confusing, Radiant simply shouldn't have a cooldown - it's gated by songs anyway. Or perhaps some nominal 20s cooldown or something so you can't do anything hyper jank with it. At 2% per coda, so long as it doesn't say 60s or 90s it should be very clear that you can just use it at 3 stacks by default.



4. Song flexibility and death recovery are lacking.

When songs were 30s / 80s and you had a little cheat room on WM due to AP, you could usually figure out a way to work around fight downtimes, and in most cases you were at worst 10-15s away from a song if you died and had to be revived.

At 45s / 120s, with no reduction available, and a coda system even punishing a song skip, things are a lot more awkward. You can now be 25-30s away from a song when you die, and there's very little you can do if a fight's timings line up weird.

For instance, if your group kills adds very fast on the first extreme, you can't get into Army's Paeon and your whole rotation is set back by 25(!) seconds. If Mage's Ballad were to be fixed, you'd be screwed outright unless you gave up MB time on the first rotation to make the AP swap on adds possible.

Situations like these are apt to continue, and while not entirely damning, it is pretty bad QoL and reminds me of the Dragoon eye situation that was rightfully done away with.

One possible fix would be to make songs non-targeted + only usable in combat, which would solve for any scenario short of a down for the count cutscene.

Another more brave (and thus unlikely) option would be to make MB and AP 80 second cooldowns. MB isn't likely to become strong enough to try and deliberately cut out APs at the cost of alignments and codas, so aside from "confusing" some people, it'd be harmless.

On the flip side, it'd make working with fight timings much easier, make it possible to delay WM when needed (which we presently can't do at all), make dungeon songs super comfy, make the job make sense at level 50, allow for a 4% RF opener, and greatly reduce the odds of reviving into a long songless lockout.



5. Mage's Ballad feels a lot slower now.

This is not actually that numerically true, CPM-wise; it's only ~one less button press over 30s on average.

However, there's no longer any urgency at all to use BL procs. This is good overall, ShB Mage's Ballad was quite stressful. But if SE wants it to be completely zero pressure, they need to find some small way for Mage's to be at least a little engaging, or else Bard is in snoozy songs 5/8 of the time.

Personally I think moving Raging back to 60s (ideally, keeping it at 15%, balance pending) would be a clean solution, creating a secondary mini burst window to work with. But there are plenty of options, i.e. some interaction on Sidewinder, etc.



6. The DoTs are out on an island and have no clear purpose.

Having something to upkeep as part of the kit is fine, but there's no longer any reason for there to be two separate DoTs. It just stretches out the windup pointlessly.

This is obviously more of a 6.1 thing, but the DoTs should just be combined into one (I guess Caustic) with Stormbite and Iron Jaws getting some rework.

There are a number of things that could be done with a pair of loose skills - imagine if Iron Jaws was a weak GCD attack that lowered songs' cooldowns to help fix things / death-recover a la Ninja's Huton GCD, for instance. Or if Stormbite was usable once per song to generate a double proc or something. Plenty of design space and possible needs here really.



7. Since we're unable to hold Blast Arrow, Apex is pigeonholed into being a 60s cooldown.

In the media tour build, Blast Arrow gave the player a 30 second window to use it, so they were free to decide when to use Apex on its own merits and still get Blast under the next round of buffs. This should be brought back.

With only a 10 second window, the optimal line shifts to trying to land Apex+Blast in every 2 minute window. Since if you're waiting until 10s before to Apex, from that point it's worthwhile to sit on it until everything is up.

And then since that's our goal, the default play in a trial/raid is to just use it every ~60s (so long as the gauge isn't somehow sub-80). Including, if it fills early, just leaving it at 100 for however long it takes to get the 2m buffs up.

This is pretty unintuitive, not to mention lame. It's not really a "problem", but I think it'd be friendlier (and widely preferred) to just be able to sit on Blast for a while so that Apex's timing could be more independent. Alternately, faster gauge generation from somewhere could shift this as well.



8. The songs are missing a proc

Songs now proc precisely at 42s, 39s, 36s, and so on - but not at 45s (or 0s, but that'd do nothing besides in MB). So you can only get 14 proc chances in 45 seconds.

This isn't a "problem" in the sense that it doesn't break the game or anything, but it seems unintended. If it's not possible to make it proc at the start of the song it might be better to move the procs to 44, 41, 38 etc.

[Rika007]

My goal for this is to avoid fussing over DoT procs, as well as (directly anyway) the half-proc Mage's Ballad idea - those things, at least, I can imagine a rational explanation for.

However, while on the whole I do think this new Bard setup is workable, the 6.00 build has quite a big pile of flaws, oversights and random jank that need some cleaning up. In rough order of import:

Wanted to get this back up to the top so discussion can continue on it. I personally do like a lot the new changes, and overall I massively prefer this iteration over the awful 5.0 version of Bard.

1. Mage's Ballad is weaker than Army's Paeon.

2. The new AoE implementation feels awkward and incomplete.

I know you wanted to stay away from the half reset but I feel the best way to handle both of these (and others below) is by just reverting that back to a full reset. While it won't handle the targeting issue, and even though procs are consistent enough, it just feels underwhelming overall compared to when you just fire them off like a machine gun. I do feel this was an oversight, just hopefully one that doesn't take too long to address. With Muse still being present (ugh), its clearly meant to still be the ending song cut short. The moment guides start coming out saying to use Paeon over Balad I doubt it's gonna take long to be addressed.

As for the lack of Apex Arrow and barrage not proc'ing refulgent, full agree here. I honestly would like to see maybe a change around Empyreal Arrow and Sidewinder giving 5 and 10 respectively Soul Gauge. Give them another effect, Sidewinder especially needs it after the DoT lost. Those numbers could be even higher if necessary, whatever it takes to get Apex moving faster.

3. The coda system does not make sense if Radiant Finale is going to have a 2 minute cooldown.

This one doesn't bug me as much. Maybe I'm just so happy to have a premier rDPS ability again and getting a replacement for the loss of Foe's that I just don't care what form it takes, I just am please to see it. Would be nice to see it back to 90, but I think all the questions a head of the launch is what led to them just making it locked in. I'm ok with them keeping it that way for now, if only for it leaving open other stuff for Coda's in the future.

4. Mage's Ballad feels a lot slower now.

I do like your ideas, they would work. But I again just have to stick on the full reset being a thing. Half reset makes the 3 charges almost unnecessary. Full resets with the current more steady procs is just gonna feel really good.

5. Since we're unable to hold Blast Arrow, Apex is pigeonholed into being a 60s cooldown.

Full agreement on your points here. The 30 second hold on Blasting Arrow ready was one of the things I looked forward to most of the new rotation, it made up for how underwhelming Apex Arrow feel so much better. Upping the speed of how Soul Gauge generates would help this a bit, but yes overall just please give back the 30 seconds hold. The dream of being able to Blast > Apex > Blast during the burst window just sounds too good and too much fun.

6. The songs are missing a proc

I've always felt that the launch of the song should auto proc repertoire immediately. Full agreement here.

7. The DoTs are out on an island and have no clear purpose.

Full agree here, issue is I don't see what more they could do to make them matter save the sort of rework you see normally for broken jobs or in expansions. Reverting Sidewinder or the proc mechanic really are the only two to make them matter. Reworking the other abilities so it's down to only one and the others do totally different things just seem far more drastic.

[anhaato]

I agree with the points made here but not with some of the solutions. Particularly with dots; just don't try to "fix" them anymore. They were never broken. We didn't need these changes and we don't need anything else. Make them function as they used to, that's it.

[Cetonis]

I don't think we can expect major reversions to full BL resets or DoT based procs. Both were responses to widespread player outrage, so I don't see why SE would go back on them.

Following the media tour, large numbers of players continued to fume about not having Bane. Obviously SE was never going to give Bard Bane, so they went after the root problem instead - the fact that DoTs are required in AoE at all.

Also, players were very upset about the fact that Bloodletter could still cap out on charges. Bard was memed on, "oh they didn't really fix anything", etc.

Just adding a third charge would not have solved this, not at an 80% proc rate. You'd still get more BLs than you could use (without awkward 1.7s BL-BL weaving) on a regular basis. So we have these half reset procs instead.

Players asked for things, and the monkey paw curled. In SE's eyes they've done everything the playerbase wanted. I doubt they're going to go back on the big parts of the changes. Even asking for a Radiant fix is a stretch, just on the hope that they recognize how stupid that design is right now.

[QT_Melon]

Even though I did like DoT management, I can see why they wouldn't go back on it for the most part. I do feel and agree though Mage's Ballad does need something for it to be more engaging.

It's rather sad to feel like you're in the back of the bus for AOE which was one of the things Bard was known for.

Also I think cutting ANY of the song's duration isn't great game design IMO - even if I did really enjoy Stormblood's bard...cutting a song's duration just didn't sit well, and the songs should really fulfill a good purpose for keeping it longer. I'm not telling people to cut the songs rather than I'm stating the DEVs should have made each song duration worthwhile.

Potency increases are an easier solution that is usually used.

What I think for Mage's Ballad is that it should be speeding up the Soul Gage even more. Each song had an interesting proc going for it. To see Mage's just sit there is sad.

[Cetonis]

Also I think cutting ANY of the song's duration isn't great game design IMO

Sort of, but the main purpose of it is flexibility - if all three songs were 40s long, for instance, you'd be unable to leave a song slightly early without incurring songless time. Since they want the cycle to be 2 minutes, there's not really any option (barring use of some wacky number) besides to make each song 45s. And then the weakest one will always be cut short in practice.

I wonder if SE actually knows that people dislike AP. It appears as though they only just now realized how many people hated multi-dotting (even if plenty like me were fine with it), so it makes me think that there might be other things (a la ping) that seem like common knowledge to players that SE just isn't aware of.

[quotey]

I don't ever see XIV fights having periods where you really want to desync Battle Voice and Radiant Finale. Couldn't they have just been one button? The DH buff could have just been put on top of the coda stuff.

I'm not really a fan of the move to 120s, I liked having one class with a little uniqueness, but I understand the change. I miss the crazy MB AOE as well- it was a real RAIN of Death.

[Cetonis]

Something that's a little bit missing from the op here is the general lack of song flexibility / the difficulty of working songs around funky fight timings.

AP affecting song cd was jank but helped, and it'd be nice if SE found some creative way to manipulate song cds more on purpose. But for now, I think the current setup could be fine if they were to make songs no longer require a target (but only be usable in combat, give or take server timing being annoying on that).

You could make up the potency loss there by giving BL the +20p it needs, and just that pair of changes (plus Bar ShB proc) would suffice for the time being ahead of the inevitable 6.1 DoT rework. Though certainly some other things would be nice-to-have.

[ExcMiddle]

I think playing overall with the song timings would be a good dirrection to take bard since they are moving away from the use of dots in its kit.

An example I can think of without adding this element to a different button would be that they could change the effect of AP so that it generates more apex gauge and army's muse gives your song a second chance to proc based on the stack count. Then lower its cooldown to say 60 seconds, maybe even remove the target requirement on it specifically. Granted this doesn't help in reducing its infamous tooltip length. Either way, my point is that it would be interesting to have a song rotation that is more nuanced than the stormblood established one where we were swapping from one to the next.

As you said, many dirrections they can take it but I am uncertain whether it is something they would head towards even at the 6.1 patch with how much they have on their plate besides bard.

[Aurikai]

Why they would ever consider changing the class over AoE considerations is beyond me, AoE has such miniscule uses, for any class, it's mainly only for trash pulls. Bard feels incredibly simplistic now, 100% agree with DoTs being almost pointless now. Songs being on shorter CD was better as they were more situational.

They could have added a DoT spread effect to CB if it was that important. Honestly it seems like Bard went the way of SMN and got nerfed to remove DoTs completely, not sure the purpose of dumbing down these classes was. The only change I like is SSR proc timer being extended. Most of these changes just feel like they were made just for the heck of it to "freshen" up the class.