Why were bards changed?

P

Puella

Dalayan Adventurer
I am requesting a reason as to why the bard class was changed.

Please dont respond if you have no idea and are just being a smart ass.

Specifically, why the following changes (and if they are not purposefull changes, please explain which are bugs that team is working on)

1) Bard limitation to 2 buffs 2 non-buffs.

2) Bard twisting now two songs at once instead of one at a time (this is refering to the fact that switching insturments to make two different buff songs better is no longer possible as both in the melody are cast at the same time)

3) Bard song effects being canceled on sitting or being stuned.

4) Inability to cancel a song and sing another with something like duck, without the spell effect previously cast being canceled.

This is all I can think of for now, will edit if I think of more. Would just like rational reasons for the above changes, as I used to play Puella and have found since the changes that playing a bard is a completely different beast.

Thanks in advance for your responces.
 
The original intent of the changes, as I remember from Wiz's explenation in ooc, was to limit the "OH GOD MY HANDS IT BURNS WHY WHY WHY GOD WHY" nature of extended bard twisting, and the mouse damage resulting from it. All the things you list are predicated on the autotwisting thing.
 
1) Make bard class more accessible to everyone.

2) Change the fact that a single bard could do almost every needed buff song on a raid, highly limting the usefulness of multiple bards.
 
Before I go off on one of my usually long winded posts, can you answer a couple of questions for me please?

1) Rumor has it several bard songs were changed from group to AE. Is this true and which songs were they? I did some testing today and took some faction hits I did not want while playing around with melody command and what I thought were group only songs.

2) Right now, when we get bashed/stunned, ALL songs wear off. Do you view this as a bug that needs fixing or part of the change?

3) How many bards should a raid want before bards become "extra's"? A lot of classes face this problem I think.

4) How do you feel about the bard power level with respect to soloing/grouping/raiding? Were you comfortable with our current balance before this change?

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Lastly, there is a problem with the change you made about being able to twist 2 offensive songs. You can start 2 offensive songs, but 1 will just quit on you. Havne't been able to pin it down exactly, but if you log on a bard and play around with 2 chants I think you'll see what I mean. This happens often.

The 2 song beneficial melody will also occasionally just stop. It seems to work quite well with just 2 beneficial songs, but when I started adding 2 offensive songs in the mix, occasionally the beneficial ones would just fall off as well. Again, haven't been able to pin it down, this doesn't happen that often.
 
1) Rumor has it several bard songs were changed from group to AE. Is this true and which songs were they? I did some testing today and took some faction hits I did not want while playing around with melody command and what I thought were group only songs.

2) Right now, when we get bashed/stunned, ALL songs wear off. Do you view this as a bug that needs fixing or part of the change?

3) How many bards should a raid want before bards become "extra's"? A lot of classes face this problem I think.

4) How do you feel about the bard power level with respect to soloing/grouping/raiding? Were you comfortable with our current balance before this change?
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1) I only changed the spell damage/DoT damage/bane damage/overhaste lines to be PlayerAE.

2) This needs a tweak.

3) Won't give an exact number, but definitely more than the one that was norm before.

4) I think bard soloing was probably a bit over the top before, but at any rate, it's something I intend to test more throughoutly now and change if needed.
 
1 & 3) Couple of points on the new AE songs:

AE songs are great but one negative is that we can easily take unwanted faction hits and collect unwanted aggro from non-kos mobs simply because of other people doing dumb things and running into our song radius. On live, I would refuse to sing AE mana during the 10th ring war because of all the people who would get dwarf aggro. Since overhaste and spell damage songs are group staples, I'm kind of worried about random faction hits. I took a faction hit today in Yaralith that knocked me from dubious to kos just by testing overhaste in a melody near a group that was fighting. If you do decide to go this route, could you think about having a group version as well? (ala our mana song, one group version, one AE version, same function)

*Disclaimer: I was an active raiding bard on live, I'm not (yet) on SoD. I may not know what I'm talking about here. Please correct me if I'm wrong *

Another point about making overhaste and spell damage songs AE is they take away bard roles in a raid. No matter what raid group I ended up in, overhaste and/or spell damage songs were always welcome. By making these songs AE, one bard can cover a raid and other bards usefullness really drops off. For bard roles, one bard could be dedicated to buffing the main tank (overhaste, AC, damage shields, possibly resists), other bards could split up doing occlusion, AE mana, AE resists, and all could do overhaste/spell damage for their respective groups. Plus we all can contribute our massive melee dps! :D

2) The sooner you can tweak this the better. Testing/playing is difficult right now.
 
wiz said:
2) Change the fact that a single bard could do almost every needed buff song on a raid, highly limting the usefulness of multiple bards.
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This is an interesting point. While making it so that multiple bards are now useful on raids, it is accomplished by making a single bard less useful. Would it be possible to maybe tweak spell effectiveness for bards in order to make a single bard more effective while keeping the limitation on number of songs? That way, in a non-raid situation, it would still be desirable to have a bard in a group doing a couple songs, and in a raid situation it would still be usefull to have multiple bards doing more songs.
 
Could you please elaborate on a bard's role on raids? I'm having trouble seeing how a single bard can cover an entire raid and other bards are of limited use. What songs are bards currently singing for what roles? I'd like to know this so I could better offer suggestions.
 
Moving offtopic just a tad to comment on the 'raid benefit' of bards.

I as well fail to see the benefit this has to raids. Granted 1 part of the 'fix' (AE overhaste) is very useful and should most definatly be implemented, but limiting a bard to 2 songs just makes multiple bards useful for the wrong reason. Its as if making it so an enchanter can either CC or haste/slow, granted you now would prefer 2 enchanters+ on the raid, the usefulness of the enchanter goes down.

Many raids I have attended were not limiting what bards can come, but were rather limited to what available bards there were. Bards know what they sing and usually converse with eachother to see who's singing what and what to avoid because its covered by someone else. Being there are now plenty of ae songs which are at our disposal, we are even mroe valuable on raids.

I dont see how multiple bards are a redundant resource (pre-nerf) considering if need be you can split the bards between groups. If they are in the same group, there are plenty of songs which will benefit the group and not be redundant.

Aside from all this, these changes have taken more dramatic bard 'benefits' from soloing and grouping then has been given to the raid aspect. I would like everyone to ponder the last time they had 2 bards in a group, and/or felt that 2 bards ina group would be bad. It is about the same as having two of any class.
 
i like to have 2 wizards in a group. and i dont complain with 2 mages... basically any dps class is fine to have 2 imo.
back to the point though. bards..
now i dont know much about em. but i have known a few of em. and they can solo better then i can duo... sometimes it gets a little time consuming but usually they can kite 4-5 mobs. making the time consuming battle actually same or quicker then my kills. bards were capable of soloing far to well imo=/ and it appears this fixed that. now i dont know if this went a little to far. but i still see usefulness from bards. and have no problem having a bard in my group.
so, im kind of curious if people are just complaining about it because they cant do what they use to be able to? or if there is an actual problem..
 
Talamr said:
i like to have 2 wizards in a group. and i dont complain with 2 mages... basically any dps class is fine to have 2 imo.
back to the point though. bards..
now i dont know much about em. but i have known a few of em. and they can solo better then i can duo... sometimes it gets a little time consuming but usually they can kite 4-5 mobs. making the time consuming battle actually same or quicker then my kills. bards were capable of soloing far to well imo=/ and it appears this fixed that. now i dont know if this went a little to far. but i still see usefulness from bards. and have no problem having a bard in my group.
so, im kind of curious if people are just complaining about it because they cant do what they use to be able to? or if there is an actual problem..
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I *think* you are confusing how we kite. On this server we can not charm kite like we did on live (charm a mob while kiting a lot, mob gets low, break charm and kill old charmed mob easily), and from my experience, ae kiting is fugged. So we are either dot kiting, or charm kiting with the respect to keeping the pet alive. and killing the other mobs.

The 4-5 mobs you see are not all what we are killing, we are killing 1 mob at a time, and the rest are just chasing us.
 
Wiz said:
1) I only changed the spell damage/DoT damage/bane damage/overhaste lines to be PlayerAE.

...

3) Won't give an exact number, but definitely more than the one that was norm before.

...
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If Fiery Warcry of Tarhyl has been made AE, you have effectively reduced the amount of bards that are useful on a given raid to one.

I can't give an exact number on how many bards should be needed, but right now, one bard is all you need for an optimal raid. If Fiery Warcry was changed to group, it would be two under perfect raid setup conditions.

There are only a few songs that are, or need to be used on raids:
- Relevant AE resist songs
- Fiery Warcry of Tarhyl
- Lcea's (when out of battle)

Everything else is irrelevant and needs not even be considered in 99% of situations. Of those, the only one that makes a bard more useful than virtually any other class is Fiery Warcry of Tarhyl. Like various other classes that include Beastlords and Paladins, Bards are currently one-trick horses that have no real merit beyond a single thing they can do. For Paladins, it is SSS (their 65 HP buff). For Beastlords, it is Spiritual Purity, though Spiritual Vigor also provides a little utility with its ATK buff. For Bards, it is Fiery Warcry of Tarhyl with a hint of resist song and their ability to vigorously allow the casters to med very fast while out of battle.
 
Zod, you missed only 1 song. Song of the Blademaster.

Other than that you are right on the mark.

Normally, I'll group with a bunch of rogues and sing Blademaster and Relic: Fiery Warcry of Tarhyl (now AE) and a 2nd bard will either be useless (since we rarely have more than a group of Rogues and other classes' DPS won't make or break a raid dps-wise other than the group of rogues I am singing for or ALL wizards that I am now singing for), or else this 2nd bard will sing both resist AE songs required (Pot4 and one of the relevant Choruses).

So every raid is perfectly fine with 1 or 2 bards, depending on the mob being raided.

Also, in a problem situation on a raid, formerly we could pitch in to slow. With a pulse of slow creating large agro each tick, that's now not an option for raids, btw.
 
On an average encounter, each class is useful in the following amounts, assuming you are going for maximum efficiency and loot-per-member:

Tanking
Warrior: 1 (if target is an SK-tank mob, reduce to 0; if target Rampages, increase to 2 or 3)
Shadowknight: 1 (reduce to 0 if target is not an SK-tank mob AND the present Warrior is fully AAed and equipped)
Paladin: 1 (assuming he has SSS, otherwise reduce to 0)

DPS
Rogue: 6 (Melee DPS kings)
Wizard: 6 (Spell DPS kings)
Ranger: 4 (10 rogues would be better but you can only bring 6)
Mage: 4 (10 wizards would be better but you can only bring 6)

Support
Cleric: 6 (Clerics are required for CH chains and also the best padders)
Druid: 3 (9 clerics would be better, but you can only bring 6 of each class)
Shaman: 1 (buff and slow/malo bot)
Enchanter: 1 (buff and curse bot)
Beastlord: 1 (Spiritual Purity and Spiritual Vigor)
Bard: 1 (See previous post)

Total: 36


This is based on my own experiences as a raid leader. I am not speaking as an administrator of SoD, but rather as a player of SoD, and I do not believe things should be this way, nor do I imagine Wiz does. Think of it as an acknowledgement that I understand what is wrong with the raiding game at the moment.
 
Missed monks too Zod.

Is Occlusion considered a raid song? The extra long 1 min duration on SoD means it's pretty well covered by one bard regardless. Or is it just not needed?

Are bard damage shields songs on non-slowable mobs considered a useful tactic here? If not, why? (Lack of non-slowable mobs, song stacking issues, bard damage shield not high enough without instrument mods etc....)

Niv's Harmonic isn't worth singing on the main tank? I'm guessing not enough of a tangible difference. Would it be worth singing if the bard had an item that gave a singing instrument mod to increase it's power?
 
I didn't miss either monks or necromancers.

Also, it should be noted that on certain encounters this does not hold true, such as Dergalak, but I can count the number of mobs that would not be killed by even a sub-par equipped raid force setup like this on one hand.
 
depending on the raid mob you may need more bards, you will really need one to mana regen the healers, maybe another to mana regen the casters, one to debuff the mob adn another to buff up the mob. I dont have a bard, and seen many people complaining about this adn quiting their bards, so i have seen a lack of bards in the server, people not playing them, seems like the cure to have more bards in a raid has actually been worse than the problem itself...
I think a good raid leader can organize a raid with a good amout of people regardless of the class, as long as you have the MAIN classes, like clerics for CH chain and a heavy tank(war/pal/sk), back in the days we used to use paladins for LoH the main tank while he was trying to build agro on a ToV dragon raid, so it is all about putting the players to good use. Granted DPS+CH clerics+tank needs to be there but everyone is useful on a riad. But even if bards can cian alot of songs at once, i wont say no to more bards coming to my raids, they are always useful doing other groups not just the main group, and their debuffs, there is never not enough debuffs for a raid.
 
Laksha said:
I think a good raid leader can organize a raid with a good amout of people regardless of the class,

...

it is all about putting the players to good use.
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voice of reason.
 
remember when LDoN came out and after awhile people started forming weird groups to do dungeons... like all rangers, or all bards... or five monks and one enchanter?


all classes are important and useful. (...don't get that confused with "all classes are balanced"... because they're not. not perfectly anyway.)


you will be amazed what you can do with the right tactics.
 
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