Bard Silent Nocturne.

[Hik3n]

At this point, why don't we just remove this skill from the game, first they reduced it's damage, range, duration in one go, and now we get a recast time modification from 20 to 30... Just remove the skill, at this point , it's useless already in most cases.
Empyreal Arrow Potency has been reduced from 4,000 to 3,000. And this was not enough, they nerfed it's only skill that made any dmg in a burst, and it's useless either way because the mitigation tanks and meles have. Just remove silent Nocture and give another skill that works in synergy with the rest, i don't think at this point any Bard needs Nocture, in 80% of the cases it's useless, because when you need to use it, you can't anymore because of the range, and if i need to fight with a ranged character in mele range, then give me the tools to do so and don't force me to go in a range where i get destroyed in seconds.

[Valence]

I have no idea why they hate bard so much and what it did to them, but I certainly don't agree with everything that you're saying either.

[Zsolen]

Silent was still useful before this patch, but 50% less silences really hurts the job even more.

Empyreal Arrow potency reduction is just as big of an issue.

[Shekky]

I'm dropping BRD altogether. I'll be joining the DRG meta. :3

[VoidsentStatus]

.

So, I pretty much disagree with everything in this post for a few reasons.

1) Besides WHM Poly and RDM Resolution, you have the only on-demand ranged form of CC that can deny casts. That is a sabotage skillset and is one of the reasons that bard became standard in LP since it had one of the highest single GCD burst potentials in the game along with that denial of immediate healing from a range with no sacrifice to their kit's performance to achieve it.

2. One of the complaints I had as a bard main was the necessity of keeping uptime in order to build arrows. What they did was shift the damage from Empy Arrow to Blast Arrow which was commonly the ability paired with EA for a burst rotation. BA having a +2K buff makes the following situation:
(Pre Patch)
BA + EA (3) = 20K
BA + EA (2) = 16K
BA + EA (1) = 12K

(Post Patch)
BA + EA (3) = 19K
BA + EA (2) = 16K
BA + EA (1) = 13K

If you are dealing with heavy focus or have targets that need to be bursted cycling repeatedly, getting 3 stacks for each burst cycle is harder if not impossible. In those types of situations, Post Patch, your damage is the same or higher. And with BA being an AoE ability, your overall damage is going up as well especially on maps such as C9 or Red Sands where players are more funneled.

3. If you were bursting into tank and melee mitigation without excessive team support or a guaranteed goal in mind, then you don't fundamentally understand how to use your damage in a pvp setting.

4. If you couldn't adjust to the range requirement, that means you had no idea how to do risk assessment. You played in the back all the time and don't have the awareness/knowledge of when you can move in. There were top 100 and top 30 bard mains across several data centers on NA and JP minimum even after this change.

The WHM and Silence nerfs primarily hurt people that just spammed these abilities on cooldown that didn't have actual tactical play/decision making in their use. You could silence someone before they even casted a move inside of a current fight and if your team pressure them enough, by the time they retreated, elixir'd, and came back, your silence was up again to repeat the same thing. It was a crutch that bad bards were getting away with instead of using it to sabotage rotations and reactions at a specific point. The WHM poly nerf is likely due to the fact that WHM took over LP for the healer role and JP was using a WHM combo that NA/EU don't that was around 75-80% of your health with no counterplay possible regardless of your reaction time or if you had purify, guard, or mana available. You were locked up for 3s guaranteed like a Monk LB and lost 3/4th of your health minimum without even having damage buffs.

[Myrha_Lhlalheva]

snip

I've had this argument in the past ad nauseum, but I'm crawling out of the woodwork once again to point out that BRD does not, in any way, have anywhere CLOSE to the scariest 1-GCD burst. Max-stack full-buffed Empyreal dealt less damage than one (1) Recuperate, even pre-patch, unless you had LB up. DRG can Wyrmwind Thrust for 20k with AoE--granted, the 20k portion is only the last 5y of its range, BUT the DRG doesn't have to do anything to regain Wyrmwind other than hide and wait for cooldown. EA doesn't exist without the BRD constantly putting themselves in danger to spam Burst Shot.

I'm not sure about the state of Top 30 in the past season-ish, but I WAS one of the NA Top 30 Bards, twice. I'll say right now that T100 is kind of worthless as a metric, since the only real requirement for getting in is that you just keep grinding after most of the ladder stops playing for the season. In Primal Top 30, I was the only BRD main that actually played it in a majority of my matches. It's not an over-represented class at the top of soloQ, I promise you that. And it certainly isn't an OP crutch job that any old person could climb with by abusing Silence spam. Even on a 20s CD, Nocturne was one of the most easily wasted buttons in the game. Good Nocturne placement already mattered a lot. Now that Purify grants Resilience without needing to actually purify anything, Nocturne is gonna be next to useless.

BRD isn't an insane powerhouse job that requires nerfs to this extent, ESPECIALLY in a soloQ context. If a job is succeeding at a high, coordinated, team-play level--and more or less ONLY at that level--I'd argue that it's fine, and that that's a good indicator that it's skill-based.

[VoidsentStatus]

..

1. Blast Arrow + Empyreum Arrow (3) = 19K + Repelling Shot (4K optional) = 19-23K with Warden's Paeon defensively waiting.
Let's look at the other jobs in the game:
PLD: 8-16K
DRK: 14-16K
WAR: 18-23K'ish depending on health
Tank GNB: ~17k'ish?
WHM: 20K and you use your aoe healing ability potentially early just to get that
SCH: N/A
AST: 16-28K depending if they want to nerf their healing output. 12k of this goes away every other 20s burst compared to bard since macro is a 30s cd
SAGE: 20-22K on a 30s CD which is 50% higher than bard.
MNK: 24-27K, requires preloading, technically over 1gcd timer, melee and no cc interupt in order to get it off
NIN: 25K situationally since they have jutsu and stealth/melee requirements
SAM: 20-24K, requires melee and preload
RPR: 16-20K depending
MCH: 20K drill, situational, not constant
DNC: 11-15/16k? depending on dash buff
BLM: 16K guaranteed, situationally higher depending on preload stacks and cc resistance of the enemy team for sleep.
SMN: ~16K as well
RDM: 18-21K'ish

Kinda funny how the only RANGED job that beats BRD in a single gcd is a healer class that sacrifies healing to match it. You have melee class level of single target burst with no preload, less range requirement, and no telegraph like melees. There is little to no competition for BRD in a "in any random moment in a team fight, every 20s I need you to burst in the next GCD" that competes with BRD consistently.

2. Wyrmwind Thrust is only 20K under Life.
- 1. You don't get free life windows in high skill situations. That gets you full-lifed if you do the same predictable opening each time.
- 2. This is range dependent.
- 3. Telegraphed regardless because of the backflip.

3. And you realize that top 100 on JP for a BRD is 2000-3000 credit climb, top 30 being 3250-3750 in full crystal lobbies since their matchmaking was turned to be more competitive than every other data region?

4. The only people who are pre-purifying are frontlines/engage. secondary engage and range support are not going to be pre-purifying. You're not going to look up and have 3-4 members of the enemy team pre-purifying on openings.

[Hik3n]

I'm more than sure, they want to nerf bard to be a job that does only 1 thing, presses 1 button at the right time. By itself Bard is such a joke, almost every job in the game doesn't even care if you hit them, the only thing they fear is if someone else hits them and pushes them low enough, so the BARD can do the 1 job that is capable of, pushing that 1 button at the right time, that is the reason I say it's better to remove the entire silent thing, and make the job something that makes playing fun, not this punishing game because in the Fanfest PVP event everyone used BARD, or more precisely everyone used the same composition, but only Bard got hammered to oblivion.

[Myrha_Lhlalheva]

I think its worth mentioning that almost all those other burst values are AoE, if we're going to be transparent. And saying that emp requires no preloading is bit untrue. Sure, BRD has the flexibility advantage in protracted fights, but good disengage/LoS and cooldown timing will outpace BRD's ability to restack emp without spamming autos.

Again, idk what your exp is with BRD but I'd like to reiterate that I was pretty much the only active BRD T30 on Primal in S4 and S7. There was maybe also Kogi Tacos? But they switched to mostly RDM. People like to bring up Ellie Meeps too--they were a good bard with LP exp, but in solo ranked they were usually on SMN/PLD iirc...probably bc soloQ bard without comms and a cohesive team game plan is not that good. Anyway im retired and probably washed up now so idk

[VoidsentStatus]

I think its worth mentioning that almost all those other burst values are AoE, if we're going to be transparent. And saying that emp requires no preloading is bit untrue. Sure, BRD has the flexibility advantage in protracted fights, but good disengage/LoS and cooldown timing will outpace BRD's ability to restack emp without spamming autos.

Again, idk what your exp is with BRD but I'd like to reiterate that I was pretty much the only active BRD T30 on Primal in S4 and S7. There was maybe also Kogi Tacos? But they switched to mostly RDM. People like to bring up Ellie Meeps too--they were a good bard with LP exp, but in solo ranked they were usually on SMN/PLD iirc...probably bc soloQ bard without comms and a cohesive team game plan is not that good. Anyway im retired and probably washed up now so idk

Yes, they are AoE, but at same time splash damage alone doesn't mean much in solo queue or SMN would be one of the best jobs. It puts out the same damage as BLM but BLM is a harder carry because it has higher single target burst and better cc. As for preloading, I didn't say bard didn't need to. But doing basic 1-2-3 attacks is different than have effects showing on screen that can lead to pre-guard's and needing other utility ability cooldowns available. Targeting is also sometimes an issue like with BLM. You need previous stacks on that target preloaded so you don't have the same burst options on any target on the enemy team compared to BRD. Same goes for Sage where disengage/guard can desync their dot, debuff, and burst on several different targets. Outside of Volcano, in most situations, a bard shouldn't be put down to where they can't get 2 stacks of EA from uptime if you're proven yourself decent defensively. That being said, I'm moreso coming from a full crystal lobby standpoint since I'm mainly on JP in my spare time nowadays. When you have telegraphed rotations, they punish it extremely hard. But on Mana and Gaia I've seen top 10, top 5 players like Emil, Oyalamo, Mei Co, Kappi picking up Bard on C9/Red Sands mainly just because of how strong the single target burst is when they're shotcalling and people are listening.

S1 - Crystal - Aether
S2 - Crystal - Primal
S3 - Crystal - Crystal
S4 - Top 100 - Crystal, Top 30 - Dynamis, Crystal - Mana
S5 - Crystal - Mana
S8 - Crystal - Mana, Crystal - Elemental (WAR), Crystal - Gaia (DRG), Crystal - Meteor (RPR)
S9 - 1200 Credits - Mana, 1300 Credits - Elemental (WAR), 1100 Credits - Gaia (DRG), 900 Credits - Meteor (RPR), Top 100 - Primal, Diamond 2 - Chaos