Thread: Bard's 6.1 changes - why bother?

Originally Posted by Ardour

I agree. I suppose seeing PP light up in two places on your bar could be an eyesore, but functionally speaking, nothing has changed if you want to keep the old layout (apart from the bug, which obviously needs to be fixed ASAP).

That said, I don't think "messes up muscle memory" is a good argument against a job change in the first place. It's pretty much a given that as jobs evolve over time you'll need to make some changes to your hotbar layout.

I appreciate this change, since while BRD is not button bloated, I'd still rather use as few keybinds as possible unless there's a functional demand for more of them. This change probably would have happened at some point to make way for new abilities anyways - just because the job isn't bloated now doesn't mean it never will be.

Yeah but you're not understanding WHY it screws with Muscle Memory.

WM changing to PP screws up with the Queue. So for years people are proc fishing for Pitch perfect so they hit it maybe double hit it. On its own not a problem, but now since your button shares with another skill, WM double pressed thinks you're trying to queue PP again.

So it's not that it screws with a muscle memory of the rotation or some kind of functionality of having it there twice. You're screwing with the proc fishing and how the button itself queues and causes more queue jams like it does with Raging Strikes. Some bard players aren't the mashy types but many are for years of priorty/proc fishing. Just overall conditioning for Bard. While it's been slowed down a lot with the RoB procs it's just the habit from the style of play Bard has had over the years.

Nor is anyone blind to knowing a job eventually evolves - even if we miss our Flaming Arrows and Wide Volley.

Removing button bloat for future job evolution is fine. However, I think the rework button share would have better suited Burst Shot/Straight/ Refulgent. Just feel that dual OGCD button sharing doesn't mix well vs dual GCD button sharing. But honestly, killing two GCD DoTs and merging them into 1 would have been the best solution since they seem to be bent on getting rid of multi DoT jobs anyways.

Originally Posted by Hunky

Agree 100% about Pitch Perfect.

I play on console, so I have cross bars.

My secondary crossbar has the songs because like you mentioned, it's not something you'll be using often.

Battle voice change is good for low levels and for deaths, as people mentioned. Definitely fairly minor, but still good tweaks.


But yeah, as stated, the Pitch Perfect change is weird, especially playing on controller. Like Hunky said, I have my songs on a secondary crossbar because you don't hit them much, but Pitch Perfect is with the normal attacks. Definitely won't be removing that from my bar.
Pitch Perfect though gets a spot on my primary crossbar because I do spam it during the song window. It should be near the other oGCDs. Making it share a button with Minuet messes up the flow.

Extremely annoying. And to be honest, Bard doesn't even suffer from button bloat. They should've left it alone.

Ditto; That was an example of a poor button bloat fix.

Repelling shot change just allows for more mobility while still remaining in range for most attacks (Repelling shot range is 15y + 10y puts you at 25y which is in range for most abilities still). It's a nice QoL change.

Originally Posted by Ayche

I would rather have a single button that changes based on song played. It could cycle between Bloodletter, Pitch Perfect and something new for Paeon.
Pitch Perfect feels like such a vestigial button like this.

Bloodletter being tied to Mage’s won’t work because we use the oGCD outside of Mage’s Ballad. Pitch Perfect only worked being consolidated because it can only be used within Minuet. That said, I don’t particularly care one way or another for the change. I will just continue to keep the buttons separate, as they have been for 4+ years. This job doesn’t have button bloat, and the consolidation wasn’t inherently needed.

Probably won’t be taking BRD into random content until they address the fact that they broke Minuet/PP, though. It would be my luck I take it into the new 24-man and there’s two other BRDs in my alliance or something equally horrible. I’m guessing the bug was an oversight but…really? It wasn’t tested? It wasn’t thought to be tested??

Who am I kidding, though. This is the same dev team who didn’t balance BRD around DRG’s piercing resistance down so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Originally Posted by Ayche

Oh I know, I was implying bloodletter would be exclusive to M's Ballad, maybe to make each song feel more different from each other.
It is just idle thoughts really. If there is actually an action that needs either removal or redevelopment, it is Sidewinder. It is just very boring after it lost its conditionality, even if you ought to have never dropped the dot upkeeps.

I’d rather not see Mage’s lock BL usage to just it. Having it lower the CD for more frequent usage is enough, in my opinion.

I would rather see Sidewinder return to scaling off of the DoTs. Maybe it wasn’t the most interesting interaction, but at least it was an interaction. That the DoTs are so meaningless now and have no interactivity with the toolkit makes me worry they will be cut in 7.0, and I really don’t want that. The job is still not the BRD I loved in the past, and I just don’t want to see it continued to be stripped down.