Hello! So here are a few issues I have with bards, their abilities, and some of the general things about them that I think needs to be looked at. Bards in General: We need more gear that is specifically focused for us. We are listed on healer chain (raid gear that has mystic, defiler, troubador, dirge...huh?) Instead of adding us to armor that does not help us at all (unless you are a healing dirdge!), please add effects to scout gear that would benefit us. There are a few boots out there or other items that have a % to poison proc, please add something for bards (I know that you do this on a pair of raid boots, but we have to trade them in using shards/plat, this should be something default). there are other items I can think of that also have % to poison procs. Allow bards to use poison, they are a scout, why not? This would solve the above issue. Please make our single target buffs castable to more than one person in the raid. For dirges this would be the hate buff, and battle cry. For Troubadors this would be Upbeat tempo. If we could put these buffs on one person per group in a raid it would make things alot easier for raid leaders to invite other classes. (I know the idea with the expansion was to make "ALL" buffs like this and it had issues. That would be nice, but in the end I think the single target ones would be good to reduce the amount of bards needed). Individual Classes: Dirge: I do not play a dirge, so I do not know what they may or may not want. Troubador: Please give us a specialty spell that is useful in a raid (besides jesters). Dirges have rez and a heal. Troubadors have charm and a mez (neither used on a raid really). If we could have a cure or something to that effect, that would be awsome. Please make Jesters cap group wide. Could even be a separate spell with a longer recast. Much like Hearts/Shards for necro/conj (single vs group/raid). Have one jesters thats 30 second single target and have group jesters that perhaps is on the same timer as PotM or even slightly longer. Maybe not as potent. Please give us a stat buff that helps us solo, wis/int is great, but it would be nice if we had one for agility like a dirge. Please make Requiem of Reflection useable against regular spells not just personal or racial spells. As it is it is very useless on the raid/group scene. Most mobs do not cast racials, and the % is so low, if they did cast 1, more than likely it wouldn't work anyways. A better way to make this spell would just be a 12% chance to block a hostile spell. If that is too powerful then make it be of a certain element. Troubs buff arcane and elemental, so have the effects they block be arcane and elemental. Could even split it into two buffs, one for arcane, one for elemental much like our resist buffs. That way poison would still hit their group fully and they have a small chance of having arcane or elemental blocked. Each member in the group has a separate chance, so while half the group may hit the 12% mark, the other half did not so the healer would still have to cure. Starseeker * Arendul * Ristan * Kyraine * Saewyn * Lyiana * Kicx * Elegi * Anomandaris My Houses: Starseeker's Suite--The Tinkerdome 1.0-- The Tinkerdome 2.0
As far as buffs are concerned, there was a time on the beta that our buffs could be cast on other groups. For example Riana's could be cast both on Group 1 and Group 2 (using up 2 concentration slots of course). This was scratched because the UI wasn't working very well with it, but at least it was a step in the right direction, and hopefully they are still looking at implementing something like this. Just making our group buffs raid wide like CoB is with the mythical/enervated mythical would help with not needing so many bards in a raid. Dirges do have a heal, but it isn't very good. It's more like an 'oh crap' heal that's just enough to keep the tank alive while the real healers are still in the middle of casting their heals (and even then it doesn't always work). In combat rez totally rules though. I haven't been very impressed with the itemzation of the gear in this expansion, everything is so much more generic now. If you can get some raid gear and red adornments, then you can get some very nice specialty gear, but I haven't seen anything outside of the raid armor that would fit that description. Would love some new T9 gear like the Twelve-Tone we got out of Shard of Hate.
People are so close to capped on casting speed and reuse anyway that jesters on it's own is pretty much useless as usually about half of it is all that can be used on the squishies that we give it to. Without JC, what else does a troub really have? A make shift mana battery spell that is less effective than bringing a chanter along. Hell, a chanter's in combat power regen is double our power regen song, and that song is about the only thing we do to give power. Troub's get an incombat health regen song, but thats pretty worthless; even the crusader's wisdom line pre-change early tso regened more incombat health than ours and that was considered mostly worthless. Ours at half that effectiveness is twice as "mostly worthless" and thats our counterpart to the dirges "oh crap" heal. Don't forget gravitas versus countersong. Thats painfully obvious which class got the better unique level 80 ability. Buffs that the bard can use on themselves? Troubs can't use hardly anything they buff themselves while dirges get to use pretty much everything they buff themselves. Seems a bit unfair there. I don't want to see dirges nerfed, I just want to see a developer say something along the lines of "holy crap, after looking at it, we're seeing just how much of a disparity there is and just how long the troub went completely neglected on every level not to mention the changes totally shafted their ability to benefit from their own abilities."
Trust me, you do not want a server merge. If they merged you with the next lowest population non RP, non overseas server (Oasis) you'd be very, very close to AB's population--and we obviously don't have good enough hardware to support our population. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE for there to be another option for folks wanting to transfer someplace with a high population, but that doesn't make it a good idea!
I'm not sure where the server merge comment is coming from. o.o This is mostly the bards just asking for our outdated and increasingly moot benefits to be relooked at. Even our gear screams copy paste from a predator or rogue piece thats how neglected the bards are, and the dirge gets 10 fold more attention than the troub. *cry* I just depressed myself by reminding myself how little my troub is desired or cared about.
Don't feel to bad, it's at least more attention than the bard threads usually get. That statement in itself though I think is what speaks the loudest about the bard threads/boards.
