You act like 15k dps while running burst discs is an acceptable amount in todays game at max level/AA. Selo's Kick bursting for 15k is pathetic when you consider how much dps other classes' abilities/spells can do. Zerkers have the worst of the 3 pure melee's innate skill attacks, and even Frenzy is up to 20-30k sustained and spikes to 80-120k on burns... and thats just two of our many skill attacks. If Selo's is gonna be their one melee skill attack its gotta do better than Monk level kick dps, which everyone would agree would be silly. Especially when they can easily get a second melee skill attack AA. They already have Bellow and Shout for single/AE DD's, which btw should be overhauled to do meaningful damage. And you can mimic the template and make an AE melee skill attack called Selo's Swings (AE h2h skill attack @ 3000 w/10000% accuracy mod, can cap targets to 12 if it gets out of control on large piles). Start with that, and then look into also increasing their innate songblade to ~80-90%.
It was a hipshot guess. Needless to say it's still a complete joke. 15k from Selo's on Frenzied is about where it should be without burns.
I should also point out that my DPS comparison was on mobs that were blue to the Bard and red to me. She had EoK T1 gear and weapons, like Bifurk's Silence or better. I have level 85 weapons, Claws of the Bane and Spiked Rage. With an aug in the primary it's 81/20 and the other is 65/18. Maybe things are fine, but it seemed like I was giving her more of a run for her money than I should have been given the difference in levels and gear.
Frenzied IS a burn. It's the AA that's active 1 minute out of 12, tripling Selo's Kick dps. You've used pretty specific "hipshot guess"es (that happened to be off by 200% on Kick, 350% off on Prankster) to get to an arbitrary ~60% boost to the actual Selo's Kick ability without an actual why. What is "should"? "because reasons"? Pass on Bellow, thanks! I've no interest in making another spam bard nuke that arbitrarily has push actually matter. As a button purpose-built for pulling, its damage is intentionally meaningless except to break mezzes and I'm 100% fine with it remaining an optional pulling button with its debuff.
Because Bards are boring as and they won't increase ADPS for valid reasons and outside of clerics they are at the absolute bottom tier for dps. Atleast clerics have an interesting playstyle option (even if the dps just ain't there)
An alt bard. Bard + pets 53258k@54179sdps (55477dps in 960s) Bard + pets 47148k@60601sdps (60601dps in 778s) Opinions on if that is good or bad aren't the point - the point is 24k isn't accurate.
Bards do need a boost I agree. But your bard needs to learn how to bard. If you took that bard and made them good dps, then the good bards would be out parsing zerkers.
Fair enough. I don't know what was being done wrong, or if I was logging something incorrectly, but those numbers sound a lot better.
So basically half or less of any tank, dps, or healer other than Cleric. What are those parses from raid or group, seems a bit short for group stuff What was the group make up
I have a suggestion that could fix the problem. Merge our war march with the jonthan's self only haste song. For example: War March of Jocelyn Rk. II 1: Increase Attack Speed by 60% 2: Increase STR by 263 3: Increase ATK by 155 4: Increase Damage Shield by 117 6: Increase All Skills Minimum Damage Modifier by 40% 12: Increase All Skills Damage Modifier by 4% Now add lines to this song and limit to class Bard only: - All Skills Minimum Damage Modifier by 300% - Increase proc modifier by 200% - Increase all skills Damage Modifier by 20% If that's not possible (giving bards a stronger modifier on the same song without breaking it for the other classes), how about a vastly stronger new version of Jonthan's? I think this would be an acceptable solution because if bards want to improve their personal DPS they will have to sacrifice a song slot to add this into the melody. In any event, please Devs, help out us bards!! We are seriously struggling with DPS.
I see a lot of talk about selo's kick on this thread, so i'd like to share my experiences with it. My main is a bard with about half EoK raid gear and half TBM raid gear. I'm on magelo If you really wanna see. I got curious one day about how the damage from selo's kick was calculated so i sat on the combat dummy trying to see what modified the damage. Turns out it is based on the Singing skill, so anything that increases your singing mod will increase selo's kick. Harmonize clickies (there's one at the group vendor in tainted karana) and the rather excellent level 30 song Amplification. I did a few parses for selo's kick only on a combat dummy with only songs and Frenzied Kicks running (no other burns running at all) No Amplification song running, no auto attack, just my melee group melody, frenzied kicks, and me spamming my kick key: Combat Dummy Beza in 121s, 1411k @11663sdps -- #1 Ashtorroth@11663sdps (11663dps in 121s) [100%] Max kick was right at 50k. average kick 23k it seems selo's kick adds about 10kdps with no other burns from self or other classes other than frenzied kicks running. With Amplification song, no auto attack, just melee group melody, frenzied kicks, and kick key spam: Combat Dummy Beza in 119s, 3670k @30839sdps -- #1 Ashtorroth@30839sdps (30839dps in 119s) [100%] Max kick was 115k. average kick 61k so amp is adding 20k by itself. not bad. With Amp, Fierce Eye, Epic, BP click, CoP4 click, frienzied kicks, thousand blades, no auto attack Combat Dummy Beza in 119s, 4294k @36083sdps -- #1 Ashtorroth@36083sdps (36083dps in 119s) [100%] max kick of 259k. average kick of 71k I do not have any parses of just kick during raids or against named, sorry and i know these are just some short parses that i did while typing this, so your mileage may vary!
We don't even really need a "vastly stronger new version of Jonthan's." We just need it to stack with War March. Ideally though, it should be an insta-click AA like Selo's. Lastly, thanks for pointing it out Ashtorroth, but the honest truth is that the most that may come from this whole thread is the nerfing of the relationship between amplification and selo's kick. I'm skeptical that it is intended.
maybe. 20k dps for 52 seconds is a tiny fish in a whole ocean full of bigger fish to fry. It's the least of my worries as far as bard nerfs go...
There are many of ways that this can be fixed but none of our suggestions will matter if the dev team wont look into or consider them. It would be nice to know that its somewhere on the list to get looked into and they are looking at our suggestions.. give us some hope
It definitely seems like it's not being looked into. I wouldn't hope for much when this thread falls again beyond the first page. pd: I'm sorry for the necro/bump, just can't stand to see such a long fruitful disucssion ending up nowhere and forgotten
My opinion on bards from a purely group-centric perspective: 1. The class was originally a "jack of all trades" that had a few tricks they could do as a result of their goofy abilities and generally resource free and mobile casting (ex: swarm kiting). Garbage tier bards were good for mana song and that's about it, god-tier bards would drive the entire group. 2. Somewhere along the way, bards went from "jack of all trades" to an adps class. (and in the last two expansions are seeming to take a back seat to beastlords for melee!) 3. The previous setup of a bard having to choose what role to fill because they could only reliably twist three songs was more or less removed as song durations increased. Now I'm melodying 8 songs or something. This means I can cast pretty much every good song I want to and even some garbage songs like Arcane Melody. 4. DBG seemingly buffed bard dots/nukes in EoK by giving us 4k worth of AA to spend on them (or whatever), but they are still for a few reasons. My recommendation for ways to change it: A. Reduce the duration of the next expansion songs. B. Reduce the magnitude of the ADPS benefit for future abilities (and really not that much, bard ADPS is overrated). C. Add in a low-duration self-melee song that brings our melee DPS to a respectable level (If we're at 20% of a berserker's DPS now, make it such that we're at 40-60% of a berserker's DPS with that song). D. Do #3 but for tanking and another for casting. Either have them share timers or make them have a timer that prevents bards from keeping more than one up all the time. E. Make Charms . My opinion is that the above would turn a bard from feeling like 60% of their contribution is from hitting melody + a few AA's to being a fun class to play that would bring a lot to the group if they can balance a bunch of things. This about fits in with what my bard kicks out when I'm playing it properly.
I'm not sure how much the dps nerf to berzerkers did like 1.5 months ago, but before that, wizards were 40-60% of berzerker dps. Which means bards shouldn't be half that. Though hopfully, berzerker dps continues to get nerfed. No class should be 2x the dps of the next best dps class.
I agree with you on this; IMO this has to do with the overall danger in EQ decreasing over time. As tanking more mobs becomes easier, CC becomes less important, and as more classes get utility abilities, the relative power of bard's utility decreases. As importance of utility abilities decreased, ADPS became our strong point. I respectfully disagree - the choices we have for what role to fill have decreased because many of those roles have become less important in current EQ, and many of the abilities we provide are sufficiently filled by many other classes; not because of song duration. I think the increase in song duration since classic was a design choice made to help bards acclimate to a faster paced game - many classes have a variety of instant cast abilities and spells, and bards being limited to 3s cast time 12s duration abilities really limits what we can do. The issue with our songs is that most of them are not that powerful, aside from Aria. I don't know that there's a noticeable difference between me playing 1 song vs 8. Honestly, I'd accept this change if it meant our songs were given a big power boost, but I seriously doubt that will happen. I'd rather see our songs and abilities get longer, not shorter. I don't like that if I get stunned, cast mez, click my epic, or pull something it interrupts (aka reduces) the benefit I add to my group when all my songs drop. The relatively low power of most of our songs means that a longer duration gives us more insurance they will stay up. I'm missing something, what are we getting in return for reduced ADPS? I like this idea, something like an upgrade to Jonthan's would be great (it could even be a recourse of an existing song). I like the idea of improving our archetype bonus abilities, rather than purely melee ADPS. These are the problems I anticipate: - Tank bonuses - Right now tanks are their own tank buffs (via a myriad of disciplines), I don't think they will be happy if they need a bard. However, I do think they would like it if bards supplemented tanking a bit more (new AC / mitigation type song perhaps). - Caster bonuses - This has been marked as ENC's corner and not BRD in recent expansions (as much as I would like it). I think some interesting caster bonus songs would be things like spell haste or timer reduction (similar to our Accelerando line for heals).
