Bard Deep Dive discussion

Xilith

Fidric will you fix the snare/slow song to work on named to just apply the attack slow? considered increasing it's x4 target cap too, which gets very messy in terms of what it selects when more than 4 targets.

The application of effects that include snare on nameds is on my list to look at.

Michael

The accidentally leaving detrimental songs on is a reasonable useability tradeoff.

I remember in everquest as a bard, I made that mistake around town guards and was punished for it. I think it's something easy to learn not to do.

What's hard is that it does not seem to be deterministic which song will drop when I use a detrimental song.

A source of weirdness might have to do with shouts and other one-and-done abilities taking up a slot temporarily in the 3-slot queue. But 'twisting' them seems to mean I can't reliably keep up a single beneficial song. They seem to rotate through.

Maybe I just haven't gotten used to it yet. An example is if I want to maintain just regen song and charm. And use the attack ability. I cannot just leave the charm song and regen song up and mash the attack button. Regen or charm seems to drop. To me, that would be 3 'slots' in this system? Or do I misunderstand?

My mental model is that the shouts and attack ability are both meant to take up a song 'slot' and force others out? If that is the case, it could be better telegraphed and with more deterministic rules.

In this model, to be consistent, songs like mesmerize need to show up as multiple slot fillers - multiple of the same icon in the slot pool. This makes it obvious what's going on.

Loekie1978

Xilith I love the work on the bard! Only thing I’d that it will be better to have some more control about the songs in the measure. Someone here suggested that the sings in the measure should be stuck and that you would have to manually delete them before being able to use another and that sounds great. That way you are on control of what says on and what goes off. In this case perhaps 4 in the measure is too much and should be like 3 so that you can always cast 2 others and max out at 5 in total.
Again, great work on the bard so far!!

Phlyn

[unknown]

The reason you can't just maintain 3/4 songs and do as many detrimental songs as you like is because then you're effectively almost twice as powerful, and we'd have to look at reducing power.

Is bard already not pretty weak in comparison to most classes?
It cant keep up basic buffs other classes can keep up on a 30 min cast.
It cant CC like a chanter
It cant dps like a dps.

I think its misleading to say that you can do "as many detrimental songs as you like" ... its 5... you can have 5 detrimental songs up if they're all 18 sec duration. if you want us to have 4 songs up then it'd be 15 seconds.

i want to love bard but i feel like a couple of mostly solo relevant features hold one of the most group focused classes back from being good in a group.

casting while running is 99% solo relevant
mana costs being irrelevant is nice but most groups already have super low/zero downtime is not like bard's zero downtime actually impacts anything.
large variety of buffs hardly matters when i need to stop to mem to get x or y and theres a ton of cross cover on buffs from other classes.

i dont know if you've played EQL yet (and i dont know if its in any other EQ bard flavor). However, EQL has an AA called Symphonic Aura. which allows you to passively have X number of aoe songs playing in the background. now i think the implementation of songs measures is a better UI interaction. but the major thing with symphonic aura is it impacted aoe songs. single target songs were still up for the player to interact with.

would it be that much for us to have 2/3/4 ae songs going, then allow us to have our 4/5 single target things to do, lull, mez, dot etc.

i know i'm likely to start a war but i'd give up charm entirely to actually be a good partymember/buff bot...

Loekie1978

Phlyn do groups have little to no down time? Wonder is that’s by design or something they found out later (and if it’s a desired effect)

Phlyn

Loekie1978 i've leveled a lot of characters into the 20s, and one to 40. i'd say the number of mana breaks i've taken in hundreds of hours in game is legitimately, without exaggeration under a dozen.

Edit: 100% of my leveling after ₇/8 is in groups on all characters.

Ophrikk

Inquisitors already have a few auras including their group wide haste and overhaste. Every bard has to be running mana song, and probably haste / overhaste, why not let Bard's have those songs as auras and free up some song slots for all of our other abilities. We have too many abilities and not enough song slots and / or time /buff duration to do them. Frankly even with these changes, the enchanter is just better for what really matters reliable CC in tightly packed dungeons. Bard's can kind of get away with a big pull chaos in the early to mid levels because the NPC damage is manageable. In the 40's and 50's mobs can't be running free beating the hell out of everyone while the bard takes 10 to 20 sec to lock it all down. I want to play a bard. Learning this new system is interesting but in reality I don't see anything meaningful here that changes the core problem other than helping out some carpal tunnel issues. The Chanter is still the gold standard and Bard's aren't silver or Bronze, their honorable mention. I wish I had the solution.

Caiden7777

Xilith Thanks for doing this. It's rare for devs to explain their design decisions in such a straight-forward way.

Ophrikk

An idea, how about a 10 sec buff after casting paralyzing Shriek, that gave the bard a 50% reduction in casting speed. This would allow the bard to cast mezz at 1.5 sec a cast and semi lockdown a 4 or 5 mob train quickly, the buff would wear off after 6 casts so to maintain the mezzes he would need to cycle through all the mobs later at normal 3 sec casts. The AE stun is on a 90 sec timer and frankly we all know it was put in to deal with big pulls gone wrong.

fun-enjoyer

I actually appreciate how earnestly the dev team have nerfed all playstyles I'm drawn to and removed all doubt that this ain't a game for me. They've gone to the same well repeatedly over these patches -- if you seek effective solo play, either get on the boxing server or this game isn't for you.

Raybane

[unknown] You are correct that Bards zero downtime doesn't impact a group, but if Bards did have to sit down a lot then that would impact a group with low downtime.

Loekie1978

[unknown] it’s been stated a lotof times that it’s a group based game so that can’t be a surprise right?

Fidric

Also of note mez should not be in any group as it is not a continuing effect anyways.

Timotron mez is absolutely a repeating 6 second song if you leave it running on one target, you can actually do some interesting things with this if you want to with regards attack timings to reposition a mezzed target or chip away at life either by yourself or kiting with a caster or as a repeating interupt etc

Loekie1978

[unknown] so you could let is stick on 1 mob and that way it keep 1 slot of the 4 on the measures bar occupied? Do I see it right that way?

Fidric

Loekie1978 no, because as an single target or enemy targetted song/shout, it halts all measure refresh

Fidric

WIND

top cc suggestion, is make bard mez duration scale if they have a wind instrument equipped in some form.

this would now be at major cost of their buff effectiveness for not having a 50-100% lute out, esp now the song baseline values are reduced down.

that is "fine" as a decision cost.

if the full 50-100% instrument scaling is too large as raw duration (27-36s so probably would be), scale this against say a flat 6 second increase from 100% cap

e.g. a 50% vendor instrument boosts mez duration by 3 seconds from base 18s to 21s duration

e.g. a 100% bis instrument boosts mez duration by 6 seconds from base 18s to 24s duration

the other interesting option this could then give is for it to interact with the new cooldown power

Crescendo - Raise your song in a mighty crescendo, increasing your Instrument bonus with all Instruments, as well as Singing.

(tooltip of this power states it gives 50% instrument bonus for 30 seconds, cooldown unknown)

if during this power it then gave an additional flat amount of increase to the mez duration in seconds

e.g. 50% vendor instruction gets another 3 seconds for 24s duration

e.g. 100% bis instrument gets another 6 seconds for 30s duration

at the moment it looks like the only wind instrument scaling is the AC/Absorb song, which does not even unlock very late in the 30s level and has extremly low values and frankly does not compete with the values you get from a lute's HP regen let along the other lute songs such as mana.

* i can only assume that is the wind scaling song from it's name "Faedawyn's Piping of Protection" the vendor tooltip preview does not tell you

5 L34, to 45 L60

so 7.5-10 L34 to 67.5-90 L60 values with 50-100% instrument

[this song could use something more like increased to dodge skill etc]

lute is still king for in combat instrument choice.

bosui

[unknown] up to 30% when at the instrument cap

That's an interesting tidbit, I wonder how achievable it would be to get that high of a mod without Crescendo!

Some more feedback, still a 34 bard but had a dungeon crawling party earlier:

We didn't have any rough pulls, and I wasn't relied upon for handling mez or anything but I would still weave one in here and there. It was a late night chill group so I just kept up a playlist of the classics of hp and mana regens, and both hastes. I thought about using the low level Beats song, but I didn't feel like swapping from lute to drum just to get a couple extra str/agi/dex. When I checked earlier the higher level Beats was on the song vendor but the tooltip was broken, so I'm curious what values it gives.

Paralyzing Shriek feels like the new staple for me, even though it wasn't really necessary for my party setup at the time I was still throwing it out there any chance I could. I still think if the single target stun shouts were a bit lower cooldown I'd be more inclined to use it either over or concurrently with the aoe stun.

I also made heavy use of the buff purge song, love a good utility like that. Would be cool if hitting certain break points of instrument mod for both the purge and dispel would allow it to hit additional buffs/debuffs off the target but they are still super useful in their current form.

While I can understand that some people would prefer a way to just twist the classic EQ style, I much more appreciate that things are different here with the Measure system. In my experience so far it wasn't quantifiably better or worse regarding song uptimes or anything like that, which is perfectly fine. When I had to play songs that were outside the measure I simply used whistling slash to help estimate debuff timers, wasn't as optimal as it could be but got the job done.

Also, giving people a shock by boosting runspeed with Crescendo makes me so happy.

Fidric

bosui what's the cooldown of Crescendo?

Gathbard

[unknown] also, out of curiosity, what Loadout you ended up with at 34? What felt "must have this absolutely" and what felt "nice to have, but I wouldn't miss it"? Did you feel that there was space for individual expression with skill selection, or did the skills you picked felt mandatory?

Fidric

in terms of early leveling, feels strange bard does not get their first DoT song until level 8 and the second part then also waits until level 16, so you honestly miss the bulk of the earlier soloing levels you might actually care to use these tools more.

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