Someone recently posted a thread titled “Bard stuff ideas for next expansion?” I’ve been meaning to post a long thread on bards for months now, but I’ve been unable to put something together. That post, however, has inspired me to throw something small together. I’m intentionally not adding to that discussion because I want to be clear about the types of suggestions I’m making. Specifically, I don’t want anything new fits into either of two criteria: 1.A completely novel idea to solve a perceived issue. 2.An idea that, to me, pushes the bard in a direction the developers don’t intend. For example, changes to charm that make the ability more powerful strike me as falling into the second criteria. Why? Because developers have been reducing the power of charm on bards for many years now and I think that intention is well-known. Additionally, a suggestion such as flash000’s “Last id like to see bard get a low level pet AA a shadow man pet "missed note" this is a commandable pet to assist in pulling” as falling into the first criteria. Here are my thoughts: 1.Alter long recast timer songs to be skipped in melodies (when on cooldown) rather than interrupt melodies. This is somewhat similar to the changes made to our nukes, which are now skipped when there is no target selected or when the bard is OOM. This will GREATLY simplify melodies, and more bards will be interested in using these songs (Crescendo and Dicho, specifically). 2.Give bards access to the AA Auroria Mastery. This will allow the bard to use two of our Auras/Echos simultaneously. 3.Improve Selo’s AA to increase speed cap. Basically, make it equivalent to EoK’s Selo’s Accelerato. 4.Add ranks to Fleet of Foot (bard’s like to be the fastest). I don't care about this too much (sometimes I feel too fast...), but many bards are frustrated that other classes are moving as fast as them. 5.The Bard Epic should be instaclick. I think most bards argue that this needs to be done for convenience, but I don’t personally care about that because a macro can solve most of the problems associated with the bard epic’s cast time. The primary reason that the bard epic should become instaclick is because there is a well-known bug that causes items with cast times to lock out bard spell gems. This bug is sometimes fixed with /stopcast, but not always. If the epic is instaclick, it will simply reduce this bug from occurring more often. This bug can still occur when you use a well-written macro depending on how latency is acting at any given time. 6.Improve Bard mitigation. There are so many suggestions on how to do this, but I don’t personally care how it is done. I don’t know the true intentions of the developers--maybe they don’t want bards to be very tough--but I agree with the bards that think we should be able to mitigate damage better. 7.Spells: a.Jonthan’s Mightful Caretaker upgrade, preferably an insta-cast AA ability. Ideally it would stack with our Warmarch line. If not, just make Warmarch finally out-damage this old song so we can be done with it. b.Improve Barrier line of songs. Could also be made into an AA (would certainly get more use). c.Combine Aria and Fatesong spell focus songs. They are too weak on their own. Furthermore removing the restriction of min mana and cast time (let them work on procs) would allow for some more diverse gearing options. d.Improve Assonant Binding line. These songs just don’t serve much of a function and Largo’s Assonant Binding is too low level to stick on anything. Increase the duration as well (this would be smart with all bard detrimental effects as they have lagged behind our group and self buffs). 8.More instruments and consider giving bards a reason to equip them. It’s been suggested many times, but one drum every expansion that fits in the range slot and give bards Percussion Fineness and Bard Melee Damage Focus would be amazing, but I’m sure players would be pleased with a bunch of options. 9.Tie something that bards do to the bash skill. This request is a bit out-there, but we currently don’t have an effective way to trigger shield procs. (I personally used to use Ogre illusion to gain access to slam, but now that we were given kick and selo’s kick was tied to it, this isn’t remotely viable.) If it is intended that bards should not have access to shield procs, I’m fine with that, but I thought I’d put it out there since we are one of the classes listed on the tank shields. 10.Restore Boastful Bellow functionality to Sonic Disturbance. I think all bards are thrilled that Boastful Bellow was made into a great source of damage for us. Additionally, it is great that we were given a replacement in Sonic Disturbance that has much of the same pulling functionality as the old BB. However, Sonic Disturbance does not apply a resist debuff (BB still does). It would be nice if that functionality was restored to Sonic Disturbance somehow. 11.Have fun. I trust the devs in general and some of the recent changes to bards have been a step in the right direction with streamlining, improving damage, and good quality of life improvements. I don't think my thoughts are the only was to improve the class, so whatever choices the devs make, just make them fun. Thanks for reading.
Hi Ecchi liked your post i had a idea i wanted to run past the bards and was hoping the devs would see it and consider it. Instrument weapon hybrids for bards ... id take other suggestions as well Harp Axe Guitar Axe Flute Staff Hammer Drums Symbol shield these would give bards the damage from instrument combat mod as well as a secondary item that can cause damage giving the bard a bit of a DPS boost thoughts ?
Using an instrument should provide enough situational benefit to counter the loss of using a weapon. It should be a trade-off. This proposal just looks like creating bard only weapons with an aesthetic theme. Something that will invariably just remove something more useful and universal from the loot pool. They could accomplish the same thing just putting the mod on all bard usable weapons in which case it just gets factored in with everything and is a non-gain in the end.
7c: we have been asking for the spell focus songs to combine together since a decade ago lol still to no avail I'm surprised. Left game in 2010 just came back for a bit see what's going on with bards nowadays. Everything is still in a wrong direction compared to the role of a classic bard back in the days. instrument is still useless, our buff songs aren't as significantly helpful, everyone has selos speed etc etc. the game has come to a point that all classes having the same or very similar skills or spells making the bards aren't as useful(though it's been awhile).
i I don't have much to say about this suggestion. It falls into my first criteria that I was trying to avoid: "A completely novel idea to solve a perceived issue".
Sir, bards are arguably the most desired class in groups and raids, with really good ADPS, ok dps, and a wonderful toolbox. A bard just doing /melody is totally worth a group slot, add a skilled player main bard is ten times better. There is always things that could be better with any class, but few classes are as coveted as bards, IMO.
Beastlords can be just as strong as melee adps. I think many people don't realize that. Bards are still a great addition to a group though. I think the changes to bellow and shout added some play-ability to the class that was sorely lacking. The revival of non-knockback insults in eok was also a good change for the class. Adps has stagnated and could use some boosts to give bards the edge they should have.
someone ran a post here about how our song caps dont benefit from the increased off hand instrument mods they did some number crunches and you loose damage and dont increase the groups damage because our mods are capped. why i said we need weapon instrument hybrids for bards. Other classes got their own ADPS abilites both self and group that are in some cases better then ours so yeah. We need help...
I don't like instruments. Means I've got to haul around more stuff. After 1.0 the annoyance of having to mess with instruments went away. Song and sword without having to sacrifice self dps. I don't really get any "play value fun factor" giving up a weapon slot. I don't like instruments, nor am I fan of "weapons that are instruments" either because of it just comes down to chasing more stuff around. You're basically asking for 5 instrument slots in bandolier :/. I think your idea is neat, but in terms of bag space and player output I'd find it annoying.
Gotta agree here, I also miss something, and this is not just this one, but a lot of suggestions in general, the people behind does not stop up for a second to think, does this suggestion have a chance to get through, and have I heard some other about it and what do they think about it. The person who writes a suggestion bcomes rather focused on it, and cannot see things against it, 1: Devs dont have to resources to build up a class around instruments, 2: If those 5 items becomes the "standard" for bards, then they would have to make 5 items for bards, and they not making class specific weapons anymore, except 1 for rogue. 3: As a bard, I would not like to swap between weapons as my songs are sung, and I dont want to key spamming for that, I really dont want playing a bard to be a chore. 4: Devs are more or less standard Things, which mean, they dont wanna do Things differenly. 5: Balancing up against this is not good.
Once of the reasons I tried to stick to the two criteria mentioned in my first post was to avoid discussions like this. For many of the reasons that others have pointed out, trying to give bards instrument/weapons is not the type of think that I feel is worth discussing. It's a novel idea with no roots in reality. Let's go back to my suggestion and why I think it is meaningful: 8.More instruments and consider giving bards a reason to equip them. It’s been suggested many times, but one drum every expansion that fits in the range slot and give bards Percussion Fineness and Bard Melee Damage Focus would be amazing, but I’m sure players would be pleased with a bunch of options First of all, this suggestion is full of assumptions which are fair to challenge. For example, I think that bard players are often collectors and they like to get unique items. The instruments introduced in TBM are a good example of introducing instruments with flavor and minor function: instaclick songs. As far as I know, most bards are happy that these items exist, but they are certainly completely optional items There are also assumptions embedded in suggesting that a drum would be a good idea. Because I have seen it suggested more than once over several years that bard instruments should be able to go in the range slot, I assume it is something most bards would like. To me, the most iconic bard instrument is by far the drum, so a drum in every loot tier seems like something bards would enjoy. Due to having a bard melee focus item equipped, it will also slightly boost a bard's damage. Lastly, an upgraded percussion finesse would further improve DoT viability without having to deal with the instrument modifier caps. One thing I am not suggesting is bringing back the days when a bard could equip an instrument in their offhand and it would be a viable option for something. It isn't because I hate the idea. It is because I think it is unlikely that there would be any way to actually balance this option and make it viable, and that is without even considering how it could just turn into a terrible bandolier swapping nightmare.
With the other classes having great adps and fast horses, I'd like to boost our abilities above theirs, incl speed. It's either that, or we are middleground/worse on everything and deathly boring and are stuck with bad melee dps.
Ecchicon thank you for this thread and what is clearly a genuine desire to help an excellent class. However, I think there is a fundamental disagreement that I have with this filter: My opinion is that bards, while balanced to a pretty good state overall right now, have deteriorated in class distinction and general capability relative to where they were when many of us fell in love with them early in EQ's time period. I won't describe my opinion on what can change that because it's already covered in this thread: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ideas-for-next-expansion.251416/#post-3700402 We can only infer from developer actions over the last decade or so that they intend for that to happen. Adjustments like improving selo's speed, buffing our spells, streamlining melody / epic etc would all be welcome changes, but I think any discussion worth having involves meaningful changes that bard's want that violate recent precedence either to go back to how bards used to be or how bards could be.
As is stated, this is a deeply subjective concept that might differ to a great degree between people. We can't know what the developers are thinking and can only barely guess. That being said, I don't agree that the bard class has deteriorated greatly from the original form. I would agree, however, that other classes have been encroaching on the bard's identity for many years now. Bards are in a great place right now despite their weaknesses. Minor improvements would solidify that place through quality of life improvements and baseline improvements that would reduce the inconsistencies related to bard outcomes. None of that means that I don't want to see new and unique alterations to the class. No. What it means to me is that I just don't think that developers are scrounging through the forums looking for novel ideas. I think they are most interested in implementing their own creations and I want us all to understand that. To best help them, we should continuously point out where the ideas fall short, what we like, and what we avoid.
hmm I few things of note. 1. fix the epic to instance so we can avoid the silly song bar lock. by far number 1 2. in combat use of rally line.. both for us and targeted vic 3. Aura dual use or option to would be nice to match our sisters enc use. 4. A mod or song to twin cast.. maybe 2 different songs.. 1 for self only and 1 to others only.. as dual maybe too OP.. but a choice could increase the % mod and add to sitiuational choice. 5. Unlock some of benefition buffs to work for bards. Why do we get hit with double cap limits and non benefit of buffs? what other class pays double? -- addressing a speed change maybe nice.. but would only be icing on cake. -- Aura to xp mod similar to enc learner eck maybe
