So how would you buff bard? (Just like to hear peoples thoughts)

[Carighan]

I don't know where this myth comes from that BRD is harder than melee jobs to be honest.

Because melees are dirt-easy to play, at least half of them (Viper, Reaper, Dragoon), so it really isn't difficult to pick a job at random and have it be harder?

[Connor]

Once again we’re forgetting 2.0 though.

They already tried to make Bard ‘a competitive dps’. It completely fucking broke the game lol. They literally had to put a 20% personal damage reduction on every Bard song just to stop people stacking it lol. Have we ever seen another job so overwhelmingly powerful its own abilities had to nerf its personal output?

There’s no world in which Bard ever becomes ‘competitive’ with a melee without extreme reworks anyway (i.e removing all semblance of party support, implementation of actual mechanics and not pressing shiny buttons randomly, positionals Etc).

I mean frankly I find it jarring that people are calling by far one of the easiest jobs in the game as ‘hard’ lol but I guess it’s subjective

[Shurrikhan]

Numbers-wise? I wouldn't, at least until its rDPS falls behind DNC's a majority of the time or MCH's ever or its cDPS falls consistently behind both. (This assumes that BRD would also benefit to similar in-role variance if Rangers as a whole were buffed.)

Gameplay-wise? There's a ton I'd like to do, but for a small but decently impactful start, remove Iron Jaws and reduce the durations of Wind/Storm and Venom/Caustic to, say, 15 and 21 seconds, respectively.

___________________

They already tried to make Bard ‘a competitive dps’. It completely fucking broke the game lol. They literally had to put a 20% personal damage reduction on every Bard song just to stop people stacking it lol.

15%, later nerfed in 3.3 to 10%. And that was mostly irrelevant to the desire to stack Bards, since the debuff was only applied to MP song (Mage's) and TP song (Army's), not their [magic-]damage song (Foe's), and they just stopped singing those songs before cycling into their burst again (snapping song duration to just before re-DoTing and/or hitting their CDs).

The nerfs that most discouraged stacking Bards were...

1. reducing Cross-class Lancer's Blood for Blood from a 20% to 10% damage bonus and Pugilist's Internal Release from 20% to 10% crit chance bonus in 2.1 --since they stacked too well with Archer's Hawk's Eye (15% primary stat bonus for, in essence, 15% more damage, for 20s per 90s) and Raging Strikes (straight 20% damage bonus for 20s per 80s) for absurd multi-DoTing damage and generally high average ppgcd--
   --and--
2. buffing and/or bug-fixing other DPS (see Demolish originally not scaling with Greased Lightning, painfully low starting DRG skill ppgcds, etc.).

[Valence]

You've never tried to maximize BRD to be honest it's so much harder than SAM PCT VPR for example

From a rphys main that has mained BRD in raids for many tiers, joke's on you. I find SAM loopium incredibly unintuitive to me in comparison.

But all of this tends to show that this is very subjective. I just deal well with rng and priority/proc jobs, and a lot less with uptime jobs or APM which will look easier for most people than to me.

Because melees are dirt-easy to play, at least half of them (Viper, Reaper, Dragoon), so it really isn't difficult to pick a job at random and have it be harder?

I do not either understand where the idea that RPR is easy to play comes from. The burst/resource/gauge optimization doesn't seem exactly noob friendly to me, and drifting Gluttony is a big pet peeve of mine. Way more punishing than drifting EA.
Not gonna argue about VPR though, it's mostly brainless to me.

Gameplay-wise? There's a ton I'd like to do, but for a small but decently impactful start, remove Iron Jaws and reduce the durations of Wind/Storm and Venom/Caustic to, say, 15 and 21 seconds, respectively.

Fair enough but as personal taste, I'd hate it. I don't like juggling dots, just not my cup of tea. I find the proc and priority system a lot more interesting on that job.

[Connor]

So I misremembered the exact values of the % damage debuff on Bard songs from 12 years ago lol. That doesn’t really change anything about the point that Bard was so overpowered people were stacking it nor does it address the abject terror Bard has put into devs since that debacle. What exactly is the point of the post you’re trying to make except ‘oh btw you’re technically wrong by 5% [but also right]’ lol? Isn’t that a little pedantic?

[Carighan]

So I misremembered the exact values of the % damage debuff on Bard songs from 12 years ago lol. That doesn’t really change anything about the point that Bard was so overpowered people were stacking it nor does it address the abject terror Bard has put into devs since that debacle.

Sadly their remedy was the exact opposite of how, in game design, you're supposed to remedy this.

You aren't supposed to sand all the edges off. You're supposed to keep them, just make them... rubbery? To drop the analogy, you want everyone to feel overpowered, and ideally at completely different things, and ideally then something they're the only one feeling that OP at. But, it only feels that may. It's all smoke&mirrors, the game is created so that your seemingly-overpowered nature is expected and already factored in.

So say one job is best at augmenting a single player, and to a ridiculous degree. But this in turn is factored in because they themselves deal so little damage that it balances out, and their augmentation is in flat values so it doesn't matter who they put it on (to not create further buff problems down the line). Another job, say Bard, augments the whole group by a fairly substantial amount, but maybe doesn't even attack, they're busy playing the harp or lute. Etc etc.

[Connor]

Sadly their remedy was the exact opposite of how, in game design, you're supposed to remedy this.

You aren't supposed to sand all the edges off. You're supposed to keep them, just make them... rubbery? To drop the analogy, you want everyone to feel overpowered, and ideally at completely different things, and ideally then something they're the only one feeling that OP at. But, it only feels that may. It's all smoke&mirrors, the game is created so that your seemingly-overpowered nature is expected and already factored in.

So say one job is best at augmenting a single player, and to a ridiculous degree. But this in turn is factored in because they themselves deal so little damage that it balances out, and their augmentation is in flat values so it doesn't matter who they put it on (to not create further buff problems down the line). Another job, say Bard, augments the whole group by a fairly substantial amount, but maybe doesn't even attack, they're busy playing the harp or lute. Etc etc.

Unfortunately it’s definitely true that the devs seem to love dropping entire concepts instead of making the necessary adjustments to refine them. Whether it’s something small like Bard’s support songs or much more sweeping changes like Summoner’s rework.

And the saddest part is that everytime they do they mostly just cause new issues precisely by removing things from jobs that needed refinement lol. As a result [almost] every job ends up being ground down until they’re all just slightly different coloured piles of dust. Bard is at that point where we don’t even have the dust left lol, like even in the current ‘balance’ it doesn’t feel* like it contributes anything like other jobs do (relative to anything non-phys-ranged). It still just feels, bad , for want of a better word lol

* Addendum: ‘feels bad’ does not mean ‘literally outputs bad dps’

[Shurrikhan]

So I misremembered the exact values of the % damage debuff on Bard songs from 12 years ago lol. That doesn’t really change anything about the point that Bard was so overpowered people were stacking it nor does it address the abject terror Bard has put into devs since that debacle. What exactly is the point of the post you’re trying to make except ‘oh btw you’re technically wrong by 5% [but also right]’ lol? Isn’t that a little pedantic?

That the entire game's paradigms regarding burst self-buffs have changed since then (hell, since 2.1), so the fear hasn't been warranted for any reason remotely approaching what you wrote in a long ass time (again, basically since 2.1).

It was overpowered only for reasons that were game wide or due simply to grossly negligent tuning to other jobs, and those issues were fixed with the gamewide changes and general job balance.

It had next to nothing to do specifically with Bard or even physical ranged. They simply hadn't tuned the game worth a damn yet and underestimated massive multiplicatively stacking multipliers (1.3x1.15x1.2x1.2x1.1").

Both your claims about the problem and solution were wrong and your conclusion wouldn't follow soundly even if they were correct. I wouldn't have mentioned anything otherwise.

Fair enough but as personal taste, I'd hate it. I don't like juggling dots, just not my cup of tea. I find the proc and priority system a lot more interesting on that job.

Outside of maybe songs... what priority system exists outside of deciding between to risk wasting a Hawk's Eye stacks when refreshing DoTs, though? As long as you're targeting correctly, there's never a time where both Shadowbite and Ladon can compete with each other, let alone Refulgent and Burst Shot.

[Valence]

Outside of maybe songs... what priority system exists outside of deciding between to risk wasting a Hawk's Eye stacks when refreshing DoTs, though? As long as you're targeting correctly, there's never a time where both Shadowbite and Ladon can compete with each other, let alone Refulgent and Burst Shot.

Beyond IJs overwriting a proc, priority on BRD (and same for DNC) mainly happens during the burst segment. There is multiple consideration to be taken, whether or not the gauge is full and can be used immediately, whether or not there is a proc up for use when entering the burst or not which informs Barrage use (not to overwrite), but once you're past this, there isn't much priority left as everything can just unfold and be used in whatever order, although one still has to be mindful of the short timer on Barrage. The burst isn't a fixed sequence and still has some priorities remaining to it, even though it is less than what we used to have before ShB which had some games around Barrage since it didn't proc any RA, as well as less fixed 120s nukes to fit.

My post was just meant to state personal taste. I like priorities, triaging and procs. I don't like babysitting and juggling multiple timers on dots.

[Shurrikhan]

Beyond IJs overwriting a proc

Okay, but that risk only really amounts to anything during DoT refresh.

The difference between a 95 and 100 Apex under buffs vs. wasting 5 over minimum Soul Voice without later overcap on out-of-buff Apex Arrows is barely two digits, and you have 5 GCDs to fit in the Burst Arrow after Apex. Similarly, you have 9 GCDs of drift margin available before Barrage can fall out of the raid window; even if you waited for Hawk's Eye and Apex both each time due to unpredictably weirdly high generation between non-burst and burst Apexes each time, the fight would have to go on for over 8 minutes for that to present a risk.

Moreover, the only skills to grant Hawk's Eye... are the filler (which never competes with Refulgent anyways, as it can only be a pure loss), and DoT resets (though, admittedly, that generally also outcompetes it due to the lost tick and potency difference between <Burst + Iron Jaws> vs. <Stormbite + Caustic> so exceeding the potency difference of Burst and Refulgent, but at least isn't necessarily reduced to mere keyswiping of RA->BS).

Which means your only real GCD potential priority conflicts... are once per 45 seconds.

My post was just meant to state personal taste. I like priorities, triaging and procs. I don't like babysitting and juggling multiple timers on dots.

The only difference in single-target between a DoT and a CD is that the DoT is a "soft" CD (can use it earlier for near-proportionately less net potency bonus, a la Apex) and its UI is displayed elsewhere.

But alright, let's say we put Stormbite on a GCD-scaled soft-CD that charges up over 20 seconds and Caustic Bite on a 15s soft-CD. Maybe there's a shorter-than-CD DoT for each, or maybe they're wholly direct damage now; doesn't matter. Regardless, you would then see 12 instances of potential decision making regarding priority conflicts per 120s, up from 2.67, and it'd offer some varied rhythm to the spec, as they loops their number of intervening GCDs, before procs, from 0 to 2 to 4 and back.

0 | 8 | 16 | 24 —— | 32 | 40 | 48 —— |
1 | 7 | 13 | 19 | 25 | 31 | 37 | 43 | 49 |

If priority conflicts are of value... you'd now have 450% as many — with, as a side-benefit, a noticeable improvement to button variety and rhythm variance.