It's high time SE addressed Bard's timing issues

[Cetonis]

Hi, can we talk about how much of a mess Bard's timings are?

I've been working on Bard TC and rotation planning, doing a few write-ups, answering questions and so on. Getting very frustrated about the number of times I have to say things like:


"Oh yeah you just clip the gcd there, this is planned"

"You used that song late, so you were stuck for the rest of the fight"

"If an Army's Paeon proc misses then you have to make adjustment x"

"If you have medium-high ping just kind of wing it, nothing you can really do"

"Empyreal Arrow has to go here or you'll chain drift it over and over until you've lost a usage"

"If we second-weave Minuet (insert bizarre string of domino effects here)"


This is cursed. It's toxic. It's stupid. Nobody wants this mess.


Stepping back - to be clear, this is largely about trying to get relatively stable and consistent timings. Keeping party buffs aligned, keeping Empyreal Arrow on cooldown, having a repeatable song rotation to learn and grow comfortable with, and so on.

You can totally wing it and perform at... idunno, 95% capacity or so just fine, and the eventual basics guide will probably recommend that space. But people want to tighten things up at some point, and that's when things get weird.

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The tl;dr explanation is that a varying-length global cooldown does not mix well with Empyreal Arrow's firm 15-second cooldown. And the kit, in general, is not designed to be aware of what Army's Paeon does to mess with a slate of stiff cooldowns. Not songs, nor two-minute buffs, nor Empyreal.

These were known issues in Endwalker, that should have been fixed but never were, and the implications of 20-second party buffs have only exacerbated things.


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Specifically, I'll start by taking it as a given that Army's Paeon isn't getting a rework anytime soon. As much as most bards would like that, SE clearly does not want to change it. So, given that:


1) Empyreal Arrow needs a second charge

It's awkward to find timings where Empyreal doesn't crash into a global cooldown at some point, because our speed keeps changing. And when you do find a timing, Army's Paeon randomness could kick it into orbit anyway.

The "solution" is to delay our entire cycle, including party buffs, to give Empyreal time to come back. Or to just let it go, and keep drifting it again and again as it's fallen out of its rare workable timing map. These both feel bad, and are bad.

A second charge would make Empyreal smooth in situations where the shifting global cooldown pushes it around by a second here or there. We could put it at key spots in the rotation and count on it to stay there. And not have to use Pitch Perfect at 2 stacks because we can't afford to move Empyreal around it.



2) The songs themselves need more flexibility

A second source of issues is that songs need to be used exactly on cooldown. Using Wanderer's Minuet late in particular means your cycle got delayed, which leads to buff timing / alignment issues that are unrecoverable.

But of course, we can't always use it exactly on cooldown - Army's Paeon can just say no, there's a GCD there. The answer at the moment is to not care, clip into that GCD anyway, and possibly even *plan* to do that so that a missed Army's proc leads to the same timing outcome. This is crazy.

Nevermind how punishing it is in general for a Bard to use a song a little early or late simply by mistake. There's often no getting out of that either.

Even a 115 second song cooldown would be plenty to mitigate this. 118 seconds, honestly, but there's no way SE makes a number that strange. Heck, make it scale with skill speed and we can figure it out probably... maybe. But we need *some* give here.



3) Army's Muse is, was, and always has been a problem

Firstly, it's 10 second buff that makes our GCD 2.2 seconds, and some of that 10 seconds is burned by the animation of Wanderer's Minuet itself. That means that not only does Bard really want to use Minuet at exactly 120.0s, it wants that timing to specifically come at the end of a window between weaponskills. Otherwise, you will get four faster attacks under Muse instead of five.

That wouldn't be the end of the world, except that having randomly one or the other would screw with Empyreal and other timings. And positioning WM at the start of an off-global window would make it more susceptible to getting delayed by Army's rng. At least the other way we can just take a clip sometimes, and it's insane that this is a conversation.


Second, it's brutal for players with ping issues. Bard unavoidably has to double-weave during Army's Muse, and 2.2 seconds is not enough for many people to use three skills without some delay. And then with enough delay, you miss out on the fifth fast GCD, making things even worse. It's a very bad feeling.


Third, as things stand, it creates inflexibility for Empyreal timing - many possible plans for Empyreal are instantly dashed by the weirdness of Muse shifting exactly some few GCDs, before even considering Army's Paeon. It similarly, to a lesser degree, impacts options for raid buff timing, as there's no room to slide one earlier or later into a window.


Army's Muse should do literally anything else. Delete it, even, that'd be great. We have more than enough things that make us weaker on the first cycle. Or make Enhanced Army's Paeon affect the actual song in some way. Literally anything with a semblance of sense.



4) Matching Battle Voice's cooldown to Radiant Finale's 110 seconds could help

Same for Raging Strikes, really, but in terms of being able to keep party buffs on time, just Battle Voice would help. If over a fight your buffs have drifted a little too much, being able to adjust by using both a GCD sooner would be nice.


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If you've made it this far, you may have noticed, these things are pretty inter-related. So even only doing one or two of them could help mitigate the others. But please, can SE start caring about this stuff after ignoring it for all of Endwalker and then doubling down in DT?