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

[mallleable]

Not a single BRD change in 7.1. Gotta keep playing a buff bot, and not a real dps for another patch cycle.

[Carighan]

(btw if someone is wondering why they keep making jobs simpler, keep in mind that opinions such as these here "remove player skill expression please" are just as valid as your "I want more complex plays")

[Cetonis]

Yeah, it's one of those things where jank tends to create a form of "skill expression" to manage the jank. So dealing with messy design elements ends up reducing skill expression in that way.

I'd point out that flexibility can also lead to skill expression, for instance truly maximizing EA charges would have its own little line of opti. Case by case scenario but sometimes you can fix things without it being a pure "dumbing down". But other times it's something like deleting Muse which would be a straight simplification. (one that's easily worth it imo ofc)

[mallleable]

I would love love love for Empyreal Arrow to work like how it did in PVP (it's been replaced by Harmonic Arrow). It technically would simplify its use during buffs, but outside of buffs it would have a lot more moving parts to play around with.

[Schan]

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"

O M G!!! I thought this was a skill issue on my part when I was leveling Bard. It was driving me mad how if I only switched songs at the end of their timer Wanderer's Minuet would drift itself out of my buff windows!

Is this why?!

[Valence]

O M G!!! I thought this was a skill issue on my part when I was leveling Bard. It was driving me mad how if I only switched songs at the end of their timer Wanderer's Minuet would drift itself out of my buff windows!

Is this why?!

If you wait for each song to reach 0, then you'll end up with a full loop of 135s, which is longer than the 2 minute window. You need to cut at least one song when minuet gets back up online, usually Army since it's the last one in the rotation. Also, try to cut songs just after the last repertoire proc at 3s remaining, there is no proc after. There is more than this to it for optimization, but that's the basic gist of it.

Unless I misunderstood your predicament. The EA drift is another issue which tends to have EA coming back up at the same time than your GCD, which clips into it and will either drift your whole GCD sequence, or drift EA if you wait and use it just after said GCD not to upset it. The latter being usually preferable, you end up with EA drifting over and over when your skillspeed is not close enough to the optimal thresholds (either too slow or too fast). Optimal thresholds tend to prevent EA to clip with most GCDs in the rotation (not cleanly though).

[Schan]

If you wait for each song to reach 0, then you'll end up with a full loop of 135s, which is longer than the 2 minute window. You need to cut at least one song when minuet gets back up online, usually Army since it's the last one in the rotation. Also, try to cut songs just after the last repertoire proc at 3s remaining, there is no proc after. There is more than this to it for optimization, but that's the basic gist of it.

Yes, you understood it right and uuuh... I don't like that design. Why is it optimal to cut things short?

You know what? I agree with OP and this should be changed. Inexperienced people will not know you have to cut things short to get the best out of BRD.

[Valence]

Yes, you understood it right and uuuh... I don't like that design. Why is it optimal to cut things short?

You know what? I agree with OP and this should be changed. Inexperienced people will not know you have to cut things short to get the best out of BRD.

The OP isn't advocating for the song duration to be changed, it's more a problem of how EA conflicts with the whole segmentation of the whole kit that requires to cut songs short in a very specific and awkward manner. The fact that you have some margin of excess within songs is actually good because it allows for some flexibility when you have downtime for example, which can allow to cut a song earlier without screwing up the entire rotation alignment timing with buffs, or to extend songs for similar purposes. If all songs were 40s each instead of 45s, you'd have literally zero leeway and you'd end up like SMN which struggles with certain downtime scenari because the structure of its rotation is too rigid: it suffers enormously when you have to delay bursts.

[Connor]

I wasn’t expecting much for Bard this patch. But even I wasn’t expecting them to get literally nothing lol; not even a token 10 potency increase on Empyreal Arrow for absolutely no reason.

I get the horrible feeling Bard is going to remain ass to play for the entire expansion then SE will be like ‘but look guys! Look how slightly competitive your funny numbers are!’. Gee, thanks Yoshi-P…