Bard's 6.1 changes - why bother?

[dartfan]

Bard saw three extremely minor changes in 6.1. Can't help but think none of them were necessary and one of them is counter productive.

repelling shot - increased jump back distance. Ok, I guess? Being honest, haven't had it on my toolbar since it stopped doing any damage years ago because the odds of it sending me into a wall/off the arena are too high relative to the minor benefit of extra mobility.

battle voice - no longer needs a song playing to use. Again, ok. I suppose this may change the opener slightly since you don't have to have a song up (the number crunchers out there will tell us where to slot it in), but it seems like a solution in search of a problem. Never saw anyone complain about this.

pitch perfect - now shares a button with wanderer's minuet. This change makes no sense and clearly was made by people who don't play bard and thought it was a way to reduce button bloat. Anyone who plays bard regularly knows why this isn't the case. One is a song that will be on your secondary toolbar next to the other songs so you can do a rotation and hit it once every 2 minutes. The other is an oGCD that you will spam heavily over a 45 second window and will have on your main toolbar near your other oGCD skills. So rather than eliminating a button, you now have the same one on there in 2 different spots because you will still want minuet near the other songs and pitch perfect near the other oGCD attacks.

[Maglor]

The Pitch Perfect change makes absolutely no sense when taken in the context of anyone who plays bard.

To add to the issues OP listed.. If you are a person who will sometimes spam abilities until cast, Spamming WM during opener/re-opener will cause an attempted trigger of Pitch perfect and not allow Raging Strikes within the GCD window.

Can we please just.. remove this change???

[YukiB]

Yikes. I just checked BRD for the first time this patch and they did indeed turn Pitch Perfect into a "This action cannot be assigned to a hotbar" action.

I told them. I told the defenders of this decision that SE would do this, when they argued "Button bloat bad, if you don't like it just put it somewhere else on your hotbar lol". Now we don't have a choice. We're forced to change keybinds for a core rotational skill. We either have to put Minuet somewhere away from the other songs, or settle and leave Pitch Perfect, a proc-based keybind pressed on average about once every 9 seconds for 45 seconds, nestled next to cooldowns pressed once every 120 seconds.

"You'll put your keybinds where we tell you, and you'll like it." YoshiP knows best.

This will fly under the radar compared to SAM and NIN updates, and for good reason, but it's nonetheless a major annoyance that very much turns me off of the job and raises questions about who, exactly, is in charge of making these changes and why.

[Ransu]

lol ya I just left pitch perfect on my hotbar and don't even press the button on minuet. Muscle memory aint gonna change that easily....though I do hate that I accidentally fire off a pitch perfect sometimes when pressing minuet.

[dartfan]

I just read about the multiple bards in a party issue. So they made a change that didn't need to be made, and ended up breaking the game in the process.

[GeneralDil]

I'm not entirely sure there was any thought process behind this one. It seems like a roll the dice and see where they land to make a random change for the sake of making changes.

Also not major but very annoying is the change not mentioned in patch notes: hearing the Soul Voice Gauge ding me at 80 gauge now and causing me to think I'm already at 100. Who asked for that change and why was it not noted in the patch notes?

[baklava151]

hearing the Soul Voice Gauge ding me at 80 gauge now and causing me to think I'm already at 100.

Ah man, kept cursing to myself during the alliance raid every time I blew gauge at 80 because of this lol.

[QT_Melon]

The other problem I'm also understanding/seeing is that due to the how Pitch Perfect queues up on the button change, it is causing issues with Raging Strikes being weaved in properly. At the moment, really not happy with the change as it really scews with muscle memory when you just had it there for many years.

I'm also not a fan of the "Known issue" considering how Bard was broken out the bat of Heavensward with Bloodletter and not being able to do actions. You'd think they wouldn't do this again. Running the 24 man is a nightmare since it robs us of our song. It's not like we can choose to run with another bard.

As far as Battle voice I think that actually IS a good QOL change. We have the skill at 50 and only 2 songs...so being able to use it is nice. Also during a death that can leave people songless, you can still use it in sync with others in the 2 minute burst window.

As far as the change in Apex/Song Gage it's fine. Basically it's been in practice to use it at 80 during first run of Mage's Ballad so you can align it with the next burst window.

I'm not entirely sure there was any thought process behind this one. It seems like a roll the dice and see where they land to make a random change for the sake of making changes.

Also not major but very annoying is the change not mentioned in patch notes: hearing the Soul Voice Gauge ding me at 80 gauge now and causing me to think I'm already at 100. Who asked for that change and why was it not noted in the patch notes?

Actually that was mentioned in the patch notes.


The following additions and adjustments have been made to job gauges:

The appearance of the dancer's Esprit Gauge when filled to 50 or higher has been adjusted to be more discernible.

The sound effect played when a bard's Soul Voice Gauge reaches 100 will now also play when the gauge reaches 80. Moreover, a new visual indicator has been added for when the gauge reaches 80.

[Chopstix]

i have pitch perfect on its own still after the patch, but i could not see it on its own under actions, so im going to just go ahead and leave it on my bar like that forever

im not bothered by the changes, none of them actively hurt u...

just have the song on ur bars twice, one where u keep the song, and the other where u kept the dmg ability

if somehowe u dont have a song available for 2 min windows (bad death timing), u can now pop ur raidbuff... it will never actively hurt u

i think repelling shot is now usable from further away, maybe it is a pvp thing if u have the same ability there, otherwise it also wont actively hurt u, though i agree that is a curious change

[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.

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.