BRD idea: Songs with MP usage

[Xieldras]

To me, it's one of those ideas that seems good on paper, and in terms class fantasy it kinda makes sense, but in practice it's not working. Part of me is inclined to think that putting all its power in its raid buffs has lead to it being plagued with so many problems with its rotation, and lack luster job design. It's why I'm obsessed with the PVP version of BRD because it feel like its personal firepower, and raid buff power are closer together in balance.

That's due to environment differences. In PvP a class is just allowed to be, while in PvE they have to be adjusted to encounter specifications and balanced because the Devs are terrified of a meta (especially one that has a rDPS in it), and also due to everyone having support surrounding the same 2min limitations. There are far more to design around in PvE. It didn't used to be like that before Dancer showed up and they gutted our own support kit. Bard was fine and working well before, so it cannot be a "good idea on paper but not in execution" scenario since it would imply that it wasn't working from its inception, which Stormblood disproves because of its popularity.
They have more than enough information from previous expansions about what worked with this class as well, so it's not like they're running short on ideas.

Back to OP, been thinking more about the MP usage. If we do tie the songs to MP, then the length would in general be around 15 seconds each no? That brings faster-paced gameplay, however 20 or 25 seconds would probably be best considering out current kit. Ballad was always the MP song, so it feels a bit weird for me personally to tie the MP regen to Paeon. Maybe a flip between both songs' effects? oGCD timer reset being on Paeon and the faster GCD + regen on Ballad. At least have all the songs available upon revive instead of locked behind cooldown.

[mallleable]

That's due to environment differences. In PvP a class is just allowed to be, while in PvE they have to be adjusted to encounter specifications and balanced because the Devs are terrified of a meta (especially one that has a rDPS in it), and also due to everyone having support surrounding the same 2min limitations. There are far more to design around in PvE. It didn't used to be like that before Dancer showed up and they gutted our own support kit. Bard was fine and working well before, so it cannot be a "good idea on paper but not in execution" scenario since it would imply that it wasn't working from its inception, which Stormblood disproves because of its popularity.
They have more than enough information from previous expansions about what worked with this class as well, so it's not like they're running short on ideas.

Back to OP, been thinking more about the MP usage. If we do tie the songs to MP, then the length would in general be around 15 seconds each no? That brings faster-paced gameplay, however 20 or 25 seconds would probably be best considering out current kit. Ballad was always the MP song, so it feels a bit weird for me personally to tie the MP regen to Paeon. Maybe a flip between both songs' effects? oGCD timer reset being on Paeon and the faster GCD + regen on Ballad. At least have all the songs available upon revive instead of locked behind cooldown.

My issue with tying songs to MP is that it would add another fail state to BRD's already massive pile of fail states for dying. Dying will leave you with no MP for songs. You could give BRD a button to recover MP, but then you are just adding hotbar bloat, and providing a fix to a problem that didn't need to be one in the first place. You could probably achieve a similar result by just making songs last like 25 seconds, make their recast be like 60 seconds, and give BRD two charges of each song. And then give BRD something to burn excess coda on like you get more gauge or a music themed attack as you will be getting twice as much coda with this system.

[Akonyl]

I'd like to see Bard damage drop and group augmentation increase.

(random shower thought)
Imagine if while running a song; using your certain abilities at certain "windows" within the song would provide group buff effects - akin to a rhythm game - so say "Mages ballad 20-15 seconds left - Blood letter will trigger a small group heal; Ironjaw will trigger a 2% damage mit for all, etc etc" the idea of treating bardic gameplay more like musical playstyles of its namesake - different songs make attacks provide different effects at different times and eventually result in when you hit Radiant Finale being a powerful party buff depending on the "score" you had written up to that point.

Never happen but would be nice to see bard become a support class; hell I cannot recall the last time I used Wardens Paeon outside of a dungeon where the healer was asleep.

The major issue here is that doing that with support skills just makes them necessarily worse, because it becomes time-locked and isn't always usable when it needs to be. Bard actually had something similar back in stormblood, when the current song system was introduced. Troubadour, the party mitigation button, actually had a different effect depending on which song you were in: +HP during WM, +mag def during MB, +phys def during AP. It led to a lot of feelsbad situations where someone goes "hey can you help out with this raidwide?" and the answer is "sorry, I gotta be in army's at that point". Troub also had the major issue where it didn't apply to the bard at first (making it a "the bard saves everyone but still dies" button), but that was fixed pretty quick + isn't actually relevant here (funny as it was in retrospect).

That's kinda why my suggestion is as it is, it lets them give BRD more potential utility without tying it to our rotation / requiring us to kneecap ourselves to mess up our rotation to align a timing to get the correct utility. I don't particularly have anything against bard damage staying where it is, so long as its group damage buffs are enough to compensate, or we get legitimate utility (with use that doesn't make people just want to shelve the bard after prog, hence my suggestion letting you switch the utility for a bit of damage), or whatever.

[Shurrikhan]

Just going to repeat a suggestion I've thrown out occasionally since Stormblood release: use ramping MP-cost penalties for sustained use paired with activation costs to enforce rotation in a far softer way.

E.g.

• Give each song an initial cost of 200 MP and a further drain cost of 50 MP per second.
• For each second a given song is active, its per-second cost increases by 2.
• For each second the song is not active, its per-second cost decreases by 1, to a minimum of its original cost. I.e., if you spend twice as long off the song as on the song, its cost refreshes to its original, and therefore using a song for more than a third of the time comes at a net cost.
• Since you generate ~66.7 MP/sec and can start with as much as 10000 MP, you can therefore sustain a song for as much as 108 seconds at a time, or afford up to minimum and maximum average swap times of 25-90 seconds (still in even thirds) for 5 minutes (or can spend a more uneven portion of time on a single song), 30-75 for 7 minutes, 35-60 for 10 minutes, or per 45 seconds to rotate indefinitely.
• That is to say, you have considerable freedom in how short or long you play a song or in what proportions, with costs increasing the further you stray from a 45-second rotation or from equal use per song.

:: These costs can easily be shuffled around to entice use around a different maximum efficiency or push players nearer to the most-efficient pacing from the start, reduce the penalties of disproportionate use, etc. I just went with these since it changed less (descending towards our current [nominal] 45s durations, assuming equal thirds, etc.).

:: My own preference would offer a bit more leeway to disproportionate use by having song efficiency return to normal in less than twice its use time, as to better recover from mistakes and allow more sway, but would probably escalate a bit more sharply to bring the maximum time down to 90 seconds or so. I'll mock up some numbers to that end soon enough.

ASIDE: Another consideration is whether BRD should be able to sacrifice flexibility in song use for flexibility in direct support actions. Presently, I'm slightly leaning away from that, at least in any directly MP-consuming form, since I don't want Bard to feel too much conflict between enjoying the nuances of optimizing its own damage and providing situational support to its party, but I would very much like to see at-cost support options in other ways.

Why at cost? If you get a capacity for "free", what you're really doing is pre-paying for it, as you will then be balanced around using that utility. You can still come out ahead in fights that make better than average use of that utility, but you then lose out in fights that make worse than average use. Having ways to divert those expenses to more general fall-back options (much like Scholar can get at least some use out of its would-be excess healing capacity by spending it instead on Energy Drain) helps to steady "supportive" jobs' contribution while also adding some further depth to their kits as a side-effect.

To be clear, some "free" (or, more representatively, pre-paid) utility is fine, and what we have now isn't even the half of what we're taxed for so there's plenty of room to add on utility without fitting damage loss, but I would rather any powerful/impactful additions be more flexible and reduce the tax instead.