Should BRD lose one of the DoTs?

[Cabalabob]

At this point having both stormbite and caustic bite feels kind of pointless. It’s not like DoTs do anything for BRD anymore, no more effect on songs, no more effect on bloodletter, no more effect on sidewinder.

Is it time to just remove stormbite and iron jaws and just have the one DoT (increasing the potency accordingly)? If they need skills to fill those levels they can add an AoE version for sidewinder and empyreal arrow or even repurpose stormbite as an AoE DoT.

[Renathras]

DoTs are in a weird place right now. I personally have always hated them, especially if they were just "slap on, refresh" (like...every last Healer's right now...) with no kit interactions, and it's one thing I dislike about BRD, a Job I'd probably otherwise like...

...but that said, we have enough homogenization, and if nothing else BRD at least hasn't been smacked with the homogenization stick. Much as I might personally dislike them, I think for the game, it's good for BRD to have its unique mechanic and identity there, and I'd wager a lot of BRD mains agree. It's like how old PLD was a clunky mess and old SMN before was even MORE of a clunky mess, but they had adherents who loved them and it would probably have been better to add new SMN as a new Job and PLD...to just not do the 2 min meta that forced the change in the first place.

I dunno, maybe a bunch of BRD mains will come in here and say they would love to be rid of all the DoTs, too, but...

[VentVanitas]

At this point having both stormbite and caustic bite feels kind of pointless. It’s not like DoTs do anything for BRD anymore, no more effect on songs, no more effect on bloodletter, no more effect on sidewinder.

Is it time to just remove stormbite and iron jaws and just have the one DoT (increasing the potency accordingly)? If they need skills to fill those levels they can add an AoE version for sidewinder and empyreal arrow or even repurpose stormbite as an AoE DoT.

Unless you plan to suggest to replace it with something, no. I would rather just delete Iron Jaws on its own and return DoT procs.

[Connor]

As above poster I’d said I’d be more than happy for them to remove the DoTs if they replaced them with something else to manage upkeep of (*cough* actively used buffs *cough*).

I think just deleting one would just make Bard feel even worse though - it’s already very simplistic and you’re mostly just hammering Burst Shot 80% of the time, so with one DoT it would feel even less engaging. Then again, it’s not like pressing Iron Jaws every 45 seconds is the pinnacle of depth either. I think if they keep them they should have them interact with songs in a different way from before and just keep procs fully randomised and unconditional. Like a X% chance of granting an additional buff effect for each song, or X% chance to lower current song recast for each DoT. Critical based interactions are out the window since that was problematic lol

[ForteNightshade]

DoTs are in a weird place right now. I personally have always hated them, especially if they were just "slap on, refresh" (like...every last Healer's right now...) with no kit interactions, and it's one thing I dislike about BRD, a Job I'd probably otherwise like...

...but that said, we have enough homogenization, and if nothing else BRD at least hasn't been smacked with the homogenization stick. Much as I might personally dislike them, I think for the game, it's good for BRD to have its unique mechanic and identity there, and I'd wager a lot of BRD mains agree. It's like how old PLD was a clunky mess and old SMN before was even MORE of a clunky mess, but they had adherents who loved them and it would probably have been better to add new SMN as a new Job and PLD...to just not do the 2 min meta that forced the change in the first place.

I dunno, maybe a bunch of BRD mains will come in here and say they would love to be rid of all the DoTs, too, but...

The sad reality is they completely killed that unique mechanic in Endwalker. Whereas in prior iteration, DoT were a core component of Bard's actual kit, they now function exactly like healer DoTs. You set and refresh them with Iron Jaws at 3-6 seconds. No procs, no interaction with Sidewinder and no DoTing multiple targets. Not only that but the increased duration means you're pressing them even less. Bard is wholly unpopular right now due in no small part how every little unique gameplay element it had was squeezed out. You're a Burst Shot spammer and almost nothing else. The hilarious irony is despite them likely doing this in the name of accessibility, Bard remains the single most punishing job to make any sort of mistake on. It's incredibly rigid and if you misalign buffs or god forbid die, you're completely boned for the entire fight going forward.

While Summoner may have been lobotomized, Bard is just a shell of itself; playing the same way but with no real identity or quirk. Getting rid of the DoTs wouldn't even matter any longer because they do nothing.

[Rongway]

I don't BRD much but really I'd rather see them double down on the DoTs instead of removing them. In particular, I would add a DoT aura to each song such that all enemies within 15y take damage every tick for as long as the bard is singing. I'd also add an oGCD action that does some instant damage on its own but also ends Caustic Bite and Stormbite on the target to do their remaining damage immediately so that DoTs might be worth casting even when a target is about to die or go invulnerable.

[Amenara]

The sad reality is they completely killed that unique mechanic in Endwalker. Whereas in prior iteration, DoT were a core component of Bard's actual kit, they now function exactly like healer DoTs. You set and refresh them with Iron Jaws at 3-6 seconds. No procs, no interaction with Sidewinder and no DoTing multiple targets. Not only that but the increased duration means you're pressing them even less. Bard is wholly unpopular right now due in no small part how every little unique gameplay element it had was squeezed out. You're a Burst Shot spammer and almost nothing else. The hilarious irony is despite them likely doing this in the name of accessibility, Bard remains the single most punishing job to make any sort of mistake on. It's incredibly rigid and if you misalign buffs or god forbid die, you're completely boned for the entire fight going forward.

While Summoner may have been lobotomized, Bard is just a shell of itself; playing the same way but with no real identity or quirk. Getting rid of the DoTs wouldn't even matter any longer because they do nothing.

When I saw SE removing the DoT interaction with the Bard kit and the removal of DoTs on Summoner my first thought was they are priming the game for the complete removal of DoTs. I honestly think Bard will have them removed in the next expansion.

[Valence]

As a BRD player I actually miss the dot interaction with repertoire and procs, but I also do feel that the change was necessary because the system was just not designed for it to work properly. Between massive proc overcaps, insane weaving issues and clipping (especially on BL but not only), and even today the job can have some clipping problems especially at different speeds than BIS.

I'd have thought however that raising the amount of charges to massive amounts could have alleviated the problem a little, but let's be honest, it still suffers from clipping all the same, and this doesnt solve the problem with Pitch Perfect (which has the same issue than the monk chakras).

Now I also know that they removed this specifically because bard always got out of control in the late stages of the post expansion endgame especially in the last tier where crit and itemization just made it go out of hand. Personally I'd think this would be less of a problem if they actually made this a thing for a lot of jobs to make substats less... vapid and useless, but well. There is pros and cons.

Anyway, in their current state, the bard dots are pretty useless and don't serve any purpose anymore but the snapshot with raging strikes (which is like any job with dots, you snapshot under buffs). On top of it they most of the time don't even continue dealing damage to bosses that are gone, which could help the job during downtime... but nope I guess. My real issue with dot tbh is the lack of proper UI and tools to keep track of them.

[baklava151]

I'd rather see them restore the DoT interactivity it had before and give them their own version of Bane, but I think it's likely they just double down and end up removing one or both DoTs in 7.0 which would be pretty sad to see.

[Zarkovitch]

Dots are trash if there no purpose on the rotation. The game will be more intaractive and dots will be plague of existance. We already see with hardest content it's starting to be little bit of griefing level. Dots should vanish if there no use to it. Anyway it's overtime fluff damage.