Bard Changes 1.9-(a preemptive discussion)

[Mirimon]

Indeed, I now say 51 point bard is out the window.

"facemelter/Burnbard" 40brd, 15nb, 10mm offers not only superior cadence/invigorating soul healing compared to 51 point brd+anything, but also much higher Coda of Restoration against a 51point bard.

Many 51 point bard abilities are not used in raiding, many of those skill points do not benefit healing or buffs at all. Verse of Joy is not infact needed by any guild geared and compitent enough to raid ID( I run this spec for ID and they don't even notice that there was no VoJ, nor do they request it.). Though I do miss verse of vitality sometimes, my overall healing has literally doubled in raid, and is strong enough to main heal 5m's and Master mode instances..

It's time for other bards out there to check it out, play with their souls, re-evaluate how they play their roles and what they can do to be the most usefull for their raid groups.

I'm not saying we are good, or even close, I am only stating what works best with what we have been given thus far and that bard still does need a massive overhaul. Some interaction with devs, and even some dialog is needed here, at least tell us that "it's in the works" or something.

Standing by, to test out the new bard for 1.9 on pts, hope they don't make us wait too long...

[Nakotix]

I know it's been said, but more is good!

make cadence 30m and maybe make the RS shields work off a bard ability for more proctection?.

Also make the Buff cast times shorter please! In pvp everyone runs away before I get them up lol

[Valsheres]

had an idea on how to "improve" verse of joy, aswell as fix that silly little motif of encouragement.

change motif of encouragement to:

regenerates 0.3% mana, 3 energy and 3 charge every 3 seconds. (or 1/3 of that per second)

verse of joy - Refreshed all motifs and Increases the power motif of bravery, motif of encouragement, and motif of regeneration by 400%, lasts 15 seconds.

that way verse of joy will still give the same ammount of regen, though adding a little bit extra from motif of encouragement, and gives a nice little power boost to make it feel useful again

[Purina]

I haven't replied to this thread for a while, since Sharia's post seem just what I am thinking anyhow.
Although (call it oddly) but I had a weird though, actually a dream. What if they did a whole make over to Bards? I mean ok, that's what we've been talking about, but more gigantic.

You know all those types of music genres? Give us three typs of stances that increases our abilities drastically to our own choice.

1) Stance that increases our dps to the same point like a Archon, reducing the healing we do by 25%. We got more dmg abilities to use unlike the Cadence spam. If the guild doesn't need Bard healing, or you are at enrage and can quickly switch to higher dps mode to help with.

2) This stance would increase your hps, reducing any dmg we do by 25%. This would make us more of a healing Bards, maybe get more healing abilities or change our dmg abilities fully to heals. Like Riff would be a 1min instant heal on a tank/raid member while targetting that person it'll heal them. It'd grow our hps by a lot, though it makes people choose if they prefer dps/hps

3) This stance keeps our hps/dps as what it currently is. However, it increases duration/strength on your buffs and debuffs. Motifs could become 1 min, but it would only get it's strongest power from using this stance. I would like to switch once a minute to this stance get all the debuffs/buffs up and switch back to the dps/hps stance.

All three stances are unlocked by certain point total spend in Bard, if you want to unlock them all you need to go 51 in Bard.

Things that are not affected are Fanfares/Anthems/Verse of Joy and Virtuoso. All other abilites are affected by damage, healing or buffs/debuffing. Verse of Joy however still needs a complete make over that requires you to go (let all dps go!!) :'(

[bctrainers]

had an idea on how to "improve" verse of joy, aswell as fix that silly little motif of encouragement.

change motif of encouragement to:

regenerates 0.3% mana, 3 energy and 3 charge every 3 seconds. (or 1/3 of that per second)

verse of joy - Refreshed all motifs and Increases the power motif of bravery, motif of encouragement, and motif of regeneration by 400%, lasts 15 seconds.

that way verse of joy will still give the same ammount of regen, though adding a little bit extra from motif of encouragement, and gives a nice little power boost to make it feel useful again

400%? I sure hope you did your numbers right.

[Valsheres]

400% increase would power up motif of bravery to 310 ap / sp, which for a cooldown ability, seems about right

[HeavyMetalLucidity]

I know it's been said, but more is good!

make cadence 30m and maybe make the RS shields work off a bard ability for more proctection?.

Also make the Buff cast times shorter please! In pvp everyone runs away before I get them up lol

there are lots of things that should really affect cadence more, some of which i havent fully tested but just as an example

Marksman:
Keen Eye - Increases the range of your ranged weapon attacks by 1/2/3/4/5 meter. This affects all marksman abilities making them upto 5 meters longer distance. Now we all know cadence is definitely ranged, this was confirmed true when they nerfed the Bladedancer deadly dance spec making it only work with melee for anyone having doubts about it. However, this STILL doesnt grant +range to cadence.
Things I really havent tested fully though I didnt see any visible change: Master Archer and Sniper Training

Weapon Enchantments:
Hellfire Blades
Lethal Poison
Virulent Poison
(Using an ability such as firey spike which has a 20m range these all go off, but cadence wont. Though NB is a melee soul so it is calculating it off melee weapons.)
soooo....

Vampiric Munitions
Electrified Munitions

(These are unquestionably weapon enhancements of a ranged soul. They will not proc from ablities such as firey spike which are calculated from melee weapons. However, oddly enough they also dont work for cadence which is calculated from ranged weapon damage. )

[Valsheres]

simple explanation for that: cadence is flagged as a spell, not an ability, its why invigorated souls procs healing greaters trinkets, if it were tagged as an ability it wouldnt

[HeavyMetalLucidity]

simple explanation for that: cadence is flagged as a spell, not an ability, its why invigorated souls procs healing greaters trinkets, if it were tagged as an ability it wouldnt

a good point.
though if this is the case then why doesnt increasing your spellpower increase cadence damage? if it were flagged a spell (wrongly so as rogues dont use spells) then spellpower would have to increase its damage and therefore i could go out and grab a full set of cloth gear and cadence would be affected by it. we all know its not though, and its affected by attack power.

also if this were truly the case that cadence was considered a spell then all of the nightblade abilities would be too because they do the same thing. what it actually considers it as is non-physical. its a magic/elemental weapon based attack rather than a spell which is not based on a weapon.

[PORTERR]

That is a very interesting concept and i really like it. This should also apply to other support specs like Archon. This however will be a pain to balance out and don't think Trion is quick enough to make this idea go live in 1.9

[phellman2]

I hope for some sort of participation from the devs/admins on this discussion...cough

[Mayi]

Bard scaling and 60 second motifs would be great.

Another version of making cadence usable on the move is to make cadence an instant attack instead of channel. Then have cadence apply the heal it does now every second for 3 seconds. That way bards can weave in other attacks and they won't just be hitting the same button over and over again.

"facemelter/Burnbard" 40brd, 15nb, 10mm offers not only superior cadence/invigorating soul healing compared to 51 point brd+anything, but also much higher Coda of Restoration against a 51point bard.

51bard-10mm-5rs has higher coda of restoration.

[Misun]

Please make fanfares instant cast! Why are they still 3 seconds long to cast? Come on...

Also, please extend cadence to 30 meters, instead of 20.

Longer motifs would sure be nice too, as someone else mentioned.

[Misun]

Bard scaling and 60 second motifs would be great.

Another version of making cadence usable on the move is to make cadence an instant attack instead of channel. Then have cadence apply the heal it does now every second for 3 seconds. That way bards can weave in other attacks and they won't just be hitting the same button over and over again.



51bard-10mm-5rs has higher coda of restoration.

I really love your ideas about Cadence

[Mirimon]

Bard scaling and 60 second motifs would be great.

Another version of making cadence usable on the move is to make cadence an instant attack instead of channel. Then have cadence apply the heal it does now every second for 3 seconds. That way bards can weave in other attacks and they won't just be hitting the same button over and over again.



51bard-10mm-5rs has higher coda of restoration.

True, in my studies 10mm/5s had an average Coda of Restoration of 1927 health
BUT, to get that, the highest coda of resto around, you give up almost all cadence/invigorated soul healing, coming in at ~401... so, depending on the build and how you gain all your cp each rotation you are looking at 1927+ heals every 4-5gcd's..

in comparrison, Burnbard will offer 1828 on CoR (which i have seen crit over 3k healthin raid) AND puts out Invigorated Soul healing of ~523 health per tick... all self buffed parses in hk raiding gear (no ID gear yet) no consumables...

Burnbard: Invigorated soul healing to 1 person every rotation=2615, + 1828 Cor per rotaion=4443 health per rotation.

51brd: CoR for 1927 per rotation + ~2005 invig per rotaion=3932 health per rotaion. (thats 511 health less than burn bard per rotation)

Not counting in MoR which varies little between the specs.

You could run about trying to scrounge up ways to consistently do each rotation in 3gcd per heal.. having tried several things myself this proves to be an epic fail. As we go further into ID, and the actual raid healers get better gear and better at healing the type of content, you will begin to see less and less overall raid healing (yeah.. healing 5 people at a time...) from the bard. Long before that though, you will see people not require VoJ what so ever (they should alrdy be at this point).
I could sit down and make a spec with pure AP and dominate on CoR healing, but it will suffer greatly in the cadence department.

You could also try to create a spec that will offer resonance still, but focus on increasing dps, you may get some, but it will again be laughed at by tanks and more so by Archons. Then again, who cares? it's a thankless job and we are simply trying to make some better lemonade from this lemon that is barding.

But yes.. some sort of scaling does need to occur, with resonance being the only thing keeping bards in raids the role seems more lost than it was a year ago.