All the zerker nerfs didn't do all that much to be honest. A decent zerker still has 0 competition. In my guild nobody even counts the zerkers anymore and the real parse starts after them. Granted we do have 3 good zerkers but nobody can really even get within 50% of them on most events, as long as they haven't died multiple times.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. Especially regarding CC. It would take monumental changes to make CC important again in a well-formed group. Tanks are too powerful and healer mana is too plentiful (which I like better personally than needing to CC everything to either survive or have constant kills). The one exception to this is charming which improves group DPS. In my opinion the game should be designed such that in group play any good bard and enchanter are wanting to charm mobs. It's too great of a risk vs reward and high skill-cap gameplay mechanism to not include. The one thing I'd note is that when I recommended having three mutually exclusive, low duration songs I intended them to be self buffs only. With the intent that bards could self-buff themselves to be totally viable tanks at the cost of their ability to deal melee or caster DPS. I think a bard should be able to fill in for a tank, but should be less able to then contribute ADPS and mana to the group. I also think that bards should be able to contribute good DPS with a short term Jonathan's type song, but then less able to contribute ADPS. In my opinion bards should get a repertoire of songs that are ALL as powerful as aria of maetanrus, but the bard has to pick only a few of them to use due to limited song durations. That's the best way I see to make bards a great class again without making them overpowered. The other way is to use resource management which I've never liked for a bard. I'd be happy if they phased out resource management entirely and just relied on cooldowns and song durations for bard gameplay choices.
New patch today 21st of June, sadly the only mention about Bards is this: - Song: Saryrn's Scream of Pain is now available on Minstrel Silnon when Planes of Power unlocks. Not even related to live servers.
Also The spell on Darkened Breath of Harmony should no longer break Melody. Which is a good thing as it makes it easier to multibind it and keep it going all the time. And with some hope, maybe this might fix other instant cast clickies that interrupt melody?
I don't think any do or they wouldn't let this go on so long. I thought they did a great job rolling out the old set hardcore zone it was fun and great setup I wish they would put just a little time into bard issues I know theat we aren't a large segment of eq population but it would be great for moral of eq community in light of all the recent nerfs they did something positive that enhanced a class that fell way behind.
For the love of all things good, could someone at Daybreak PLEASE look into this. This thread is currently 16 pages long, and no sign of a dev to even give us some indication if this is being looked into.
Apparently they want bards to get their DPS from Alliance spells. The bard alliance spell is on just under a 6 second refresh. So that is over 2 million damage potentially every 5-6 seconds if you have the guild mates to proc yours every time you use it. There is one bard in particular on my server that I have seen put up some insane numbers for a bard by extensively using their alliance. They have gotten 10+ procs on 2-3 min event which as you can guess allows him to put up respectable numbers. Mana quickly becomes an issue for him I think, but on shorter events when he can land 10+ alliance procs, he is beating DPS, and these DPS aren't bad DPS either.
The fact that they havne't doubled bard dps doesn't mean they are not aware of the posters feelings on the matter.
That damage is the bard team's, though. That he's credited for that burn phase is coincidental. Unless the event goes long enough for him to blast through his Alliances, and then for him to be on Insult long enough for each other bard to blast through their Alliances also, not a real comparison. The same consideration doesn't afflict other classes, who are cooldown-limited on their Alliance without overlap concerns within the class.
Please tell me us getting all our dps from alliance is a joke? Did they come out and state this somewhere?
Alliance of Sticks and Stones having a 6s cooldown, instead of 60s like each of the others (Forceful Rejuvenation notwithstanding), has clear ramifications. An explicit mission statement is no more necessary than it is in comparing Pulse of Sionachie with Reflexive Rejoinder. Function and form don't just go hand in hand, they're equivalent.
Not sure what you meant here, but as it's a normal alliance spell of course you will need other bards to proc your alliance fulmination. It's fairly simple to setup an alliance rotation, which every other class with a DPS alliance spell has to do as well. That doesn't change that fact that with a 6 second refresh you can potentially generate huge amounts of damage quickly using the bard alliance, even taking turns in the rotation. I have seen it personally.
As a non raiding bard now its extremely rare that Im grouped with another bard. Can someone explain what conditions must be met to proc or cast this fulmination? Fooling around with solo and looking at the spell dat it appears first step is to sing the alliance songx once the icon hits the mob im assuming the timer for conditions being met, begins. So far so good? If yes, what needs to happen next? Spelldat lists two groupings of insult line of songs. One grouping has 3 songs, the other 4. Does one bard need to sing all of one group and the other bard 3-4 of the other group? Does one bard just need to sing the alliance part while the other bard sings one of the groupings? Very very curious about the dps implications with the conditions, so much so I've considered leveling a bard box to my main.
One bard puts the Alliance on the mob. Some other bard has to sing 3 Insults (which are doubled in damage by the Alliance, whee!) on the mob within the Alliance's duration to Fulminate it, crediting the Alliance singer with 2mil damage. Now, even if one wanted to, a bard can't chain-sing only Insults, they have a cooldown timer (5s). A little more intricately, there are two cooldown timers for two groups of Insults - that's the categories you've found. Only one from each group (presumably the highest level in that group, but it doesn't have to be) can be employed at a time. So. If one other bard has a standard 1-nuke melody going between their usual group songs (/melody insult 1 2 insult 3 4 insult 5 6), it will naturally fulminate Alliances while taking up most of the timer. If that same bard has a 2-nuke melody going (one Insult from each group)(insult insult 1 insult insult 2 insult insult 3, maybe further with A Tune Stuck AA running), then any other Alliance will fulminate faster, so Alliance can be reapplied sooner, for much higher dps, at least until mana runs out. If there's more than two bards present, Fulminating gets real fast. With four bards, three of them on the standard 1-nuke melody will Fulminate the fourth bard's Alliance inside a tick and Alliance can be chained on its cooldown. 2166816 damage ÷ 6s ÷ 4 bards = 90k dps each for a team operating like that
The resource limitation is real, too, though. They don't benefit from Paragons/Circles/Glyphs/etc. The dps contributed by Alliancing until OOM will fall off precipitously after a few minutes. Does a total damage per enounter, basically. Very much like Manaburn that way (only much better )
Oh yeah. I hope I didn't come as saying bards are fine as is. There's a lot of good points in this thread about how they need help. I just only pay attention to raid DPS and few bards seem to do pretty good. I'm sure it's terrible solo and in groups. And as a wizard, bard ADPS is pretty much useless to me at this point. Totally agree on that.
This. Without full blown adps like a raid and other bards our group and solo dps is pretty pathetic(Even in raid gear!), which can easily be fixed by giving us a sustained damage disci and spammables and would still keep us below actual dps classes if done right.
Agree 100% but Devs need to do the cut and paste + mods to give us stances and disp... I just dont see them giving us the time theirs not enough bards for them to justify the work. Even though they just piled on excuses for 8+ years.... Bard codes to complicated we will do it when we do class balance update..... every other class got done we got skipped... The one good thing they did was when they gave us our Dichotomic giving a class like bards a nitch ability then taking with the over nerfed version is laughable.
