Last edited on 11/24/2006 ProblemsBreaking when moving - All our buffs can be cast on the move except for two of the new AA buffs. These are Allegro and Harbringer's Sonnet. Magnetic Note -The text of Magnetic note says that it lasts five seconds. Reports from various Dirges have stated that yo'll be lucky to have a second on an epic mob. Making this skill totally useless in Raiding situations. The spell also apparently lasts less than two seconds on Heroic mobs. Basically enough time for the mob to turn towards the target of the skill, then the Dirge blinks and the mob is back attacking whomever it is pissed off with. Since this spell does not have a lot of use with solo mobs, this needs to be fixed. PoS, pets and getting stuck in combat - When PoS procs on a pet the bard gets stuck in combat. This issure isn't confined to Dirges other classes that have beneficial spells on pets are having the same issue. Stealth breaking - Breaks when Percussion of Stone procs, Scream of Death switches to a new cycle or when Banshee terminates. It would be nice to at least get a response saying yes this is a bug we know about it or no this is working as intended. Other Scouts with simular delay damage spells have the same issue.Scaling of Daro's and Rianna's lines-The scaling of these lines have lost a great deal of significance. Upgrades of these spells cost more power for a small improvement, this problem will get worse as the level cap is increased. This also often results in a lower level version of the buff/debuff being superior to a higher level verison. Examples of the problem(Rianna's T6 AD1 and T5 M2 do the same thing with differing power costs. Daro's T4 Master II is superior to T6 Adept III. ) No change here still a problem despite the Update note.Zander's Choral Rebuff -Zander's Choral Rebuff does not scale, so the effectiveness of the debuff become increasingly poorer as the bard levels up. Zander's Choral Rebuf, also, stops being effective on mobs level 50 and above. Instead of debuffing the mobs, it starts to buff the mob decreasing the damage they take for magical attacks instead of increasing it.IssuesRun Speed The hot topic at the moment. Bard's are no longer the King of speed. Other classes with only five Achievement Point into an EoF achievement can be as fast as if not faster than a Bard. It is really discourageing that a Ranger can increase Pathfinding from 16% to 46% with only 5 AA. For a bard to match that speed they have to spend 8AAs to go from 34% to 46%. And while it is cool that Harbringer's sonnet can stack with their Pathfinding resulting in the group out of combat speed reaching 58% going much faster than it ever could with just a bard, it is also extremely discouraging. SoW can also be upgraded to being 45% with only 5 Achievement points. This spell can be casted in or out of group on multiple people. Bard's aren't asking for these other classes to be nerfed we just would like our run speed to not cost as much to get equal or beter thanothes. The most obvious fix for this issue is to add our Selo's upgrades at level 55 and possibly 69. The reasons stated for the level 55 upgrade being removed in late DoF beta was to prevent Bards from going faster than the fastest mounts. Obviously this is not an issue anymore due to the fastest mounts being faster and since other classes are being handed run speeds significantly faster than 34%. Whysprr's thread on this topic is here. I also strongly encourage sending in /feedback on this issue on a regular basis. Breaking when moving:-There are several CAs/Spells that break if you move. Some of these make sense like our Bow CA attack but other's like Clara's make less sense.Concentration slot free buff: -Most other classes have at least one buff that does not require a concentration slot some have more than one. Yet bards do not have even one buff that is concentration slot free, and are always looking for more concentration slots. Fluff/Fun Spells:-Need to be improved or changed. See Whysprr's excellant suggestions here. There is also a whole thread discussion possible improvements here.Rez: -While some of us are evil, a lot of Dirge's are rather nice folk if a bit gloomy at times. So it is disheartening and rather aggrevating to see a non-grouped person dead and not being able to resurrect them without having to invite their group to raid with yours. Tomb's Line:-This buff rarely makes it onto people people's list of maintained buffs. It has been suggested to make this as desireable a buff as Rianna's for dps. Suggestions to do this include, increasing the proc rate, increase the damage or add an additional effect when it procs. A better explination as to how it works would also be in order, since people assume from the wording that each melee strike should have a 12% chance to proc. The Achievement enhancement in EoF helps, but still does not fully address the issue, that Tomb's does not bring as much DPS to a group that Rianna's does. Wail of Horror: This spell is not on many Dirge's hotbars, because they have little use for it besides completing HOs. There is a very large thread here, that goes on about all sorts issues, suggestions and improvements for bards. I personally don't think that the Dirge is a broken class, but there is some interesting ideas and suggestions brought up in the thread along with the rest of the stuff. Since, I try to pare down the issues section to the top universal sore points, this is a good place to go to get a more general spectrum on this and offer your own ideas to the brainstorm. Don't expect a Dev post to the thread since it is in the wrong forum and keep in mind some of the people posting to the thread want the Bard to be a different class than it currently is in EQ2. FixedBump-Stealths the mob instead of the casterCacophony of Blades:-When used there is spelling error and is lists it as Cacohpony of Blades instead of Cacophony of Blades.(Stealth fix with LU20)Cheapshot:-While the mechanics work fine the text under the description reads wrong. Jael's Line:-At this point in time, regular auto attack with a bow does more damage than this skill line and uses one arrow instead of two and does not cost power. The power drain component is minimal and with the changes to combat system that gives mobs bottomless or near bottomless power pools is not useful or worth the decreased damage and power cost. There shouldn't be a bow skill that encourages high level characters to use tin arrows.(this was previously an issue not a bug) Suggested fixesMore suggestions for this are welcome, I'll added em as i come accross them) Hymn of Horror:-This appears to not be working according to the description of the spell. There are varying reports on whether the knockdown component is working at all.Missing Masters and Adepts - a Master or adept for Disheartening Discante(lvl 61) and Bria's Inspiring Ballad(lvl 69) haven't been discovered/dropped yet. Which at this juncture seems to indicate they aren't currently in the game. Self Buff:-generaly most classes have at least one self buff that requires no concentration sometimes more. Could we pretty please have the concentration removed from our self buff line. It would make a lot of bard's smile.:smileywink: (Note: This was moved here because instead of making it a concentration slot free, they gave it a damage shield which gives it an advantage over other self buffs and more motivation to put on the maintain bar. This was previously an issue not a bug.) Oration of Sacrifice-This spell should interrupt or cancel when the target dies.-Be nice to put this spell on toggle so you can turn it off without canceling Things to watch/checkIs this still true? The two of the one sI have are nolonger usable by scouts and the other doesn't use curshng anymore. Crushing Weapons - There are some weapons around that a scout can use that utilize crushing as a skill(or at least the weapon description sez it does). Scouts do not have the crushing skill even though the game allows us to equip and use these weapons. (Note: this is different from the weapons that use slashing or piercing but does crushing damage. I'm sure there are others I can't remember right now. And if you have a more detailed way to describe the problems or some good suggestions on how to fix them I'll edit and add them to the post. As always keep the great suggestions and comments coming guys and let me know if I make a mistake.:smileywink: Message Edited by Salmastryon on 02-08-200601:56 PM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 02-24-200603:16 PM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 02-25-200610:29 AMMessage Edited by Salmastryon on 02-26-200604:28 PM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 02-28-200611:55 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 03-03-200607:06 PM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 05-04-2006 11:02 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 05-05-2006 06:27 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 05-11-2006 09:55 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 05-11-2006 01:58 PM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 06-05-2006 12:21 PM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 06-17-2006 07:26 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 06-24-2006 04:31 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 07-19-2006 01:35 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 11-11-2006 01:50 AM Message Edited by Salmastryon on 11-24-2006 05:17 AM
Several abilities that we as bards have are unable to be used on the move, unlike the rest of our abilities. Examples include: Jael's Deprivation line (2 bow shots) Chaotic Cacophony line (melee mitigation debuff) Wail of the Banshee (encounter-AE DoT with timebomb) Cacohpony of Blades (yeah spelling error when singing it, yay! Different issue, but annoys me just the same, since it was mentioned that this spelling error was there before DoF beta ended) (used-to-be-awesome-but-now-merely-neat melee proc ability) In general, I do not see any reason ANY bard ability should not be usable on the move. If we had MAD output (like ranger or wizard), why then I could understand it, but see, we don't. =) EDIT: for completeness, I think... Message Edited by Godstalk on 02-07-200602:02 PM
Sorry to reply to my own post, but more info: Jael's Deprivation bow shot line does damage that does not compare to autoattack damage (an art that costs power should AT LEAST do more damage than autoattack). While there are definite benefits to using this for the accelerated chance to proc, it doesn't make up for the cost in terms of power and arrows, unless you are using tin arrows. What is the point to encouraging the use of tin arrows on t5+ characters? Furthermore while we were seeing changes back in LU13 we almost all unanimously wanted a power drain given back to us, but after the changes to mobs, the power drain on this ability is literally useless. It has no measurable impact on any mob that we can kill solo even, and is quite literally no impact on epics or named heroics with infinite power pools. While I understand the need to give monsters the inability to be drained to death (as they were prior to LU13) this may be too far in the opposite direction. Overall, the Jael's bow line needs an overhaul.
Frankly I'd like to see our bow ca either stun or stifle. If it doesn't get some effect our time would be better spent casting something else.
Agree with all of the above. In particular Tombs is utterly worthless and Jael's needs greatly increased damage and/ or an alternative ability as mentioned stun, debuff or stifle. Preferrably not stun though as that would make our spell bow attack worthless on epics. Daro's and Riana's need to scale far better with level. I don't find Discordant Boon to have any worth, but I know others disagree with me. Our self-buff really should not require concentration. Most (maybe all?) scout classes get a comparable self-buff that doesn't require concentration. Our fun abilities need to be replaced or totally revamped so that they do... something. That said our other abilities seem to work fine and the class is fun to play. It would be nice to see our issues dealt with in one update sometime though, bard issues to seem to be left untouched in every live update.
jaels i actully liked the idea they had on this during the dof beta was still a 3 shot(curently 2) actully used arrow dmg but disease based if first one missed they all mised. but if all 3 hit the target could not attack for 8.0 secs not stun or stiffle just couldent atack only 1 of our fluf is broken real melencholy the other 2 work but melen does nothing otherwise im in agreance self buff should be no conc like pre dof to be in line with ALL other mele in the sence of buffs/stances tombs agreed worthless think rez lines casting time needs to be decreased to make it more usefull i try to rez in raids and they are rezed 90% of the time before im finsihed casting and now that it dont work outside of group dont feel it is as worthwhile boon line it does help but is not the first choice for a conc slot now that even with the higher skills it does not effect how much youll hit yellow+ would like to see this effect that would make it much more usefull when it comes to high yellow, orange and such other wise the "LIMITED" dps increase is not worth while, espeacily if SoE keeps intending on puting orange mobs in endgame raid content our sneak our benefet was to sneak faster then anyone else, now its just sneak where as other classes get group sneak without AA or the abilty to see sneaking peeps when in sneak think we need somthing back maybe like a speed increase of PF not our selos so while sneaking we are like 16% faster oh forgot hymn is actulyy not working at all the contested KD is only visual keep in mind this is also supsed to KB interupt and stun Message Edited by ravenscale on 02-08-200602:53 PM
Talan, All four of my scout's self buffs require concentration. The self buff is not a stance, nor is it meant to replicate a stance. Ravenscale, What res are you casting, single target or group? Our single-target res casts as fast as other in combat resses, but unlike priest class resses, refreshes much faster. There shouldn't ever be a time (maybe I'm wrong here) where a healer is wasting their precious 2 minute-recast in-combat res to do something you can do cheaper, and more frequently. EDIT: for completeness. Message Edited by Godstalk on 02-08-200606:56 PM
The two main concerns from me are the self buff taking concentration and CoB rarely procing now. If those two were "fixed" I would definetally be a hell of a lot happier. I'd love to see our Dark Elf spell turn us into something other than a dark elf. Perhaps an "undead" version of our own character or something. I don't know. There are other issues that effect not only us, but Troubs. For instance our opening AA ability as well as the round shield abilities...DOUBLEYOU-TEE-EF. Not going to get into it too much as they have already gotten their own thread. All I recommend is that we continue to post our issues in a mature and realistic view point, /feedback in game, and maybe every now and then PM Moorguard of Blackguard simply asking that they have a look here. Message Edited by Morganna on 02-24-200604:34 PM
With T7 master dps buff, it shows 30% on exam, but 29% on persona. Daro's line debuff has no scaling from Tier to Tier. Its more effective to use T5 debuff due to power cost, instead of additional 2% attack slow of T7. Need to people to watch, but my spells always hit on the low end of the spectrum unless i debuff the mob. I strongly think this is due to the fact we use a magical based damage and are low numbers to start with vs mob level and base resistance. Fear line needs to automatically turn off auto attack. The amount of time, you autoattack break it instantly on soloing is very high. The entire Harl's line is starting to go no where now, due to the fact its so easy to cap stats in the expansion with equipment. Stat buffs as whole need to add a max cap limit of some kind. Generally charm items from quests are starting to come close to the damage of our spells and CA's ... compare Themal Shocker off bonemire (2x 237 - 356) to Luda's at Master 1 of 600-1000. Removing our ability to rez outside of group, just stopped us being able to help people as we pass by. Self Agi, Int buff needs to lose its Conc slot, most other classes have at least one toggle ability (Mystic, Avatar example). And all of the above posts.
DPS difference is on more than T7 (T6 AD1 and T5 M2 do the same thing; may be related to the same % bug the brokers used to have).
I dont know if this is still a bug or working as intended, but our invis breaks (again) when PoS procs. I thought they fixed this earlier in the game, but now its 100% sure that invis breaks when our PoS procs. CoB: this spell was implemented with the old proc rules. The whole ability itself was based on those rules. Now that the proc-rules have changed several times, CoB is much weaker than it was planned for. Same thing counts for our Tomb line. First off all it doesn’t proc 12% of the time and second it probably only procs from mainhand now. If the proc rates on this is going to be this low we could use extra dmg for it. AP points: The first Bard AP is really a joke. Why on earth has this AP been a self buff on beta all the time and with the release they changed it to make it so we can cast HO faster. This first AP needs to be put back to the original idea or something fluffy like a nice illusion or something that fits the roleplaying part of a Dirge/Troubadour. All in all I disagree that our AP are bad overall. They are not very creative, but diversed they are for sure. I see str line for raiding, wis line for overall (group)use, agi line for roleplaying, sta line for soloing and pvp and int line for the HO-loving bard. Our weapon restrictions on the different AP-lines needs to be a bit less harsh. If I choose for wis and str line, I have to switch weapons to take full benefit of both AP lines. A solution for it could be that the restriction of the weapon is not that you have to wield it in your mainhand, but that you just have to equip it, no matter in main hand or off-hand. That would still mean you have some restrictions on weaponchoice, but as it is for now it is just to harsh and makes no common sense (Some other classes weapon restrictions also changed for the better, so there is hope) Our self only buff should take no conc. slot. There are arguments to say it actually does, but for me the main reason is that all our buffs that take conc slots are group-based, with the exception of the agro/str buff, but since the str on this buff was reduced it was made clear that this buff was meant to be cast on someone else. We are a buff class for the whole group, we have about 10 songs that take conc slots so we already have to be very selective to what songs we sing. Since our self int/agi buff is for self use only, it should not take a conc slot. The other classes that have self buffs that takes a conc slot don’t have to worry about it, cause they wont have to drop it cause they don’t have enough conc slots. Our Bow shot needs to be improved as is stated before, the powerdrain is obsolete as it is now. A power tap instead of a powerdrain would be nice, but I cant really oversee the balance of that. If not, the dmg should be increased. Hymn of Horror is broken. I pray they are going to fix this soon. And by fixing I don’t mean to change the description as how it was, but to make the spell do what the description says now . Yesterday I was fighting in KoS and I felt really good as a Dirge. Overall we are pretty much balanced. We can solo the way SoE wants their players to solo, we bring some nice boost to the group and overall we are not an unwanted class. But nevertheless, the above things could/should be improved imo to give that 100% feeling good about my Dirge.
From the AA post, for clarity: So we have a point for the consumption thread. HO's should be a valid part of the game, and our class probably should be the masters of the HO wheel. But for this to be any use, we need: a) A revamp to the current HO system to scale with level and allow devs to put in abilties that can change the way a HO progresses and also to interact with the chances on rare and uncommon HO's. Constant flips, additional flips etc. b) AA's that around are based around this system.
For Stabnes, Reason we got so pissed off with the first bard AA. Was the fact it wasn't this, and it was a stealth change between 20th on beta and the live update on the 21st. Its beta version was a scaling passive buff that at 60 was 3 parry and defence, and 130 all magic resists and 4 parry/defence and 140 magic resists at 70. There was a discussion to have the magic resists being a little higher maybe 100 at level 20 and scale up to something like 350 at 70 (5 resist per level increase)
I was totally shocked to see our opening AA changed between the 20th and 21st. It's almost like it was done stealthy because they knew we would be up in arms about it.
Updated and reformated Things that I didn't add because I needed further clarification: Need to people to watch, but my spells always hit on the low end of the spectrum unless i debuff the mob. I strongly think this is due to the fact we use a magical based damage and are low numbers to start with vs mob level and base resistance. - I haven't been having issues with this. HAve other people? Let me know and give me some numbers and I'll add it to issues. Fear line needs to automatically turn off auto attack. The amount of time, you autoattack break it instantly on soloing is very high.-Generally this is not anissue for me, because of the casting time of the spell. Also a lot of times by the time the fear spell is cast I'm not even targeting that mob with my auto attack so it would be undesirable to have my autoattack automatically turned off. If there are other's who disagree with me and want the auto turn off of auto attack on the fear line speak up and let me know and I'll move this to Issues. The entire Harl's line is starting to go no where now, due to the fact its so easy to cap stats in the expansion with equipment. Stat buffs as whole need to add a max cap limit of some kind.-While this is definately the case with a lot of raid dirges are casual dirges having the same problem? This might more be the case of a line not being useful for raiding situations. I'd like some feedback from other dirges before I add this to the issues list. Besides where would you suggest going with this line instead? Generally charm items from quests are starting to come close to the damage of our spells and CA's ... compare Themal Shocker off bonemire (2x 237 - 356) to Luda's at Master 1 of 600-1000. - I'd like some more hard numbers on this before I add this to issues. Our weapon restrictions on the different AP-lines needs to be a bit less harsh. If I choose for wis and str line, I have to switch weapons to take full benefit of both AP lines. A solution for it could be that the restriction of the weapon is not that you have to wield it in your mainhand, but that you just have to equip it, no matter in main hand or off-hand. That would still mean you have some restrictions on weaponchoice, but as it is for now it is just to harsh and makes no common sense (Some other classes weapon restrictions also changed for the better, so there is hope) - I'm probably being obtuse here but isn't wis a bow and str a dagger... I can use both at the same time. Also, are ours unreasonable harsh compared to other classes? I was under the impression that all classes had to deal with equipment restrictions some even worse than ours.
Something else, tho. From what Ben said, they are going to be putting instruments into the game. Now these do have to be BARD ONLY charm/ranged items and "enchance our buffs, debuffs, procs etc" or something unique. This could mean an entire overhaul of the class if instruments are due to come in. Message Edited by Marillion on 02-28-200605:44 PM
