So what do we want from our might be, possibly, Soon(tm) revamp?

Discussion in 'Dirge' started by ARCHIVED-Jalek, Dec 13, 2006.

  1. ARCHIVED-Jalek Guest

    As a whole class of soloers, groupers and raiders what do we want from any possible revamp to make the class better for all of us no matter what play style we choose? There has been alot of discussion on the boards already but to consolidate it what would you REALISTICALLY like to see change with the bard class.

    Overall role
    -------------
    I enjoy being the group buffer and wouldn't want this to change, i also like focusing more on debuffing in raids and groups to make things easier. I would however like us to have a more active role, limited time non concentration buffs in addition to our maintained buffs would be a good way of making us more valuable players rather than being seen as simple buffbots. CoB is already a good example of this type of spell as it ups the speed and damage of a group for a brief period of time so group makeup and choosing when to use it is important in making it effective.

    Buffs and abiltiies
    -------------------
    Runspeed - Selo's need to equal at least the fastest pre-eof horse (48%) if the line progresses with our AA's taking us into the lead even if its only by a small margin (50% with 4 AA's 52% with 8 AA's), making the AA line a limited time group speed buff (like fury Cheetah) would also work if selo's itself was improved beyond its current point. J-boots should never be a factor in working out max runspeed.

    Shroud runspeed - I believe (haven't checked for a while) our shroud spell still says we can move faster while stealthed yet as with all other classes our runspeed buffs are removed. Any chance of removing the wording or making it true?

    Self buff - Please give us stances, for soloing a defensive stance would be very nice and to help our currently meager DPS an offensive stance in group/raid situations would also help also make them non concentration based please as we shouldnt have to sacrefice our own abilities to help others.

    Fluff
    -----
    Please give us a decent fluff spell(s) (i remember talk of a fun spell revamp a while back). We are musicians, poets and entertainers as well as fighters so please let us use our singing and instrument animations out of combat for fun/RP purposes.
  2. ARCHIVED-Hazeroth Guest

    This maybe something useful for all bards. It would be a very small change but will continue to make bards a more viable selection for items that proc.

    Change it so that for bards spell and combat arts are one and the same when considering proc chances.

    Basically all the other scout classes get poisons and stances but us bards will be the masters of all proc items.
  3. ARCHIVED-Hazeroth Guest

    Here's a fix for Garsin's and the Troubs mez song (can't remember the name off hand).

    Turn Garsin's into a "Highsun" song. This is what it should do.

    6 second cast.
    3 minute recast.

    Target encounter will be teleported back to their spawn point and all agro lists will be wiped. This spell will only work on unattributed encounters, broken encounters or encounters attributed to your group.

    This will in effect reset the encounter. Making this a viable way to seperate difficult pulls, as a panic button if you get unwanted adds or if you your group has bitten off more then they can chew (or if someone importent like the MT or healer goes LD).

    In PvP this ablity will shadowstep your targets group and deselect everyone targets in that group and blur vision for 2 seconds

    The Troubs mez (from what I've heard) has been nerft to uselessness.

    They should get a "Lull" type spell to take it's place

    1 second cast.
    25 second recast.
    60 second Duration

    Target encounter faction will be set to indifferent. Their current hate list remains, as well as social agro tendancies. This spell can be cast while in sneak.

    In PvP the troubs group will be untargetable for 2 seconds.

    ======

    These two abilties shouldn't break the game and give bards a shot in the arm with, in-and out-of-combat crowd control. (And not step into the realm of the enchanter classes)
    Message Edited by Hazeroth on 12-13-2006 06:15 AM
  4. ARCHIVED-Tomanak Guest

    Run speed: Give us back our place as the fastest runners on Norath. We should have the best run speed buffs (w/o items) in the game. Its not unbalancing in the least. Personally I catergorize Selos with the fluff spells, but it should be OUR fluff spell.
    Take away the concentration slot requirement for Death Bearer line. I should be able to buff the group without nerfing myself.
    I do like the idea of defensive and offensive stances. Again, no conc slot requirement...we are already drowning as it is.
    Increase the number of Conc slots bards get, maybe give us 2 more?
    Let us use poisons. (A pipe dream I know) but we get an AA that adds poison dmage, so why not let us buy and use them, we are scouts you know.
  5. ARCHIVED-SourChikn Guest

    The dirge song you desribe would be neat but i would see problems with it, like fighting an encounter killing the adds, reseting it and repulling to make it easier to kill a named. Also troub mez isnt 2 ****'d can still keep 2 targets mez'd (non-epic) but the charm is going the way of the dinosaur.

    We should not need a conc slot for out self-buff, every single class have a self buff and eve single target buffs that do not require a conc slot.

    DW bards get the shaft on poison/adornments, sometimes i have found myself out of power, and i DW and have a Bow... yet i cannot use Mental Breach and cannot get adornment power proc for my DW or my bow, but if i had a 1Hndr and a steath i could? favortism to rogues?

    I dont care about an offensive and defensive stance... i dont DPS and i dont Tank... but another conc sot would be a class +. esp since we have more gorup buffs then any class.
  6. ARCHIVED-Rijacki Guest

    1. Concentration removed from any single target buff that can only be cast on one target (that means the self-buff and Hyran's in its present form).

    2. An increase in the proc rate or damage per proc of Tombs (and not just from AA).

    3. Scaling issues on our spells/CAs corrected (so that a level 44 master is not significantly better than a level 58 adept 3).

    4. An increase on our debuffs, single and multiple target, so they actually have a noticable impact.

    5. Zander's not acting as a buff for level 55+ targets.

    6. An additional song (or 2) of Selo's. The increase for the Harbringer's Sonnata to be the same or higher increase as the EoF runspeed achievement increases for other classes. Bardsong speed (and bardsong only) provide speed increase while stealthed or invis (even if only 1/2 or 1/4 regular speed increase).

    7. More INT added to "bard" armor pieces (even at the sacrifice of lowering other stats). Recognition that a large portion of what we do is spell related and not just melee, both for damage and debuffs.

    8. Mage only jewelry items designated "Bard", too. There are many scout items which are not bard equipable, even if a bard wanted them, but many mage jewelry items are bard ideal.
  7. ARCHIVED-Krooner Guest

    Well said Rijacki . Couldnt really add anything there.
  8. ARCHIVED-Hazeroth Guest

    There is that possiblity. Not sure if this is substantiated or not but I have heard that breaking an encounter like the can bring the nerf bat to the drop rates just like having someone outside of the group doing the majority of the damage to an encounter.

    People do that anyway by having the person who currently has agro run away until the encounter breaks, monks with their FD when they solo. So on and so forth.

    Plus, some encounters have protection from that exploit. If you kill one mob and break the encounter they despawn and completely reset. Of course people exploit that too if there are mobs in the encounter they need for a kill quest =-P.

    The trick is to have the casting time long enough that the group would have to stay standing for 6 seconds before the ability to work. And have the recast time long enough that it can't be used more then once during the average fight but short enough that it can be used again and again for tricky pulls.

    Plus that ability should be useable on the run for seperating two encounters while running back to the group. Some of my fondest memories of EQ1 was the time I pulled a named from the opposite side of the Walls of Slaughter and ran all the way back to my groups camp, and used Highsun and Fading memories to get rid of the adds.

    So for Troubs charm is the main issue? Ok, then let that ability be replaced.

    Basically Dirges will perminant crowd control with unwanted Adds and Troubs have crowd control before the adds become an issue.

    ***Edit***
    Come to think about it, when you do cut an encounter up like what you discribe the encounter will reset after 3 minutes or so (don't know the exact time) unless you reengauge the encounter before the timer expires and re-engauging only suspends the timer not resets it. So maybe have the reuse timer for the "Highsun" set at just pass the the reset timers.
    Message Edited by Hazeroth on 12-13-2006 09:21 AM
  9. ARCHIVED-SourChikn Guest

    /agree... very well put.
  10. ARCHIVED-Danterus Guest

    1. An offensive stance so my hit % doesn't suck in raids compared to other melee classes.
    2. More temp buffs like Cacophony, but with a shorter casting time.
    3. A flat out increase of Dissonant Boon. +28 at Master 1 is a joke.
    4. Instruments used in the ranged slot that are Bard only. There's no reason to use a bow in 90% of the fights out there, so a symbol type instrument that procs off hostile spells or melee attacks would be extremely useful. Also, these could be activatables that provide a group buff for a limited duration.
    -Kalll, 70 Dirge of Impulse on Mistmoore
  11. ARCHIVED-FatedByChance Guest

    Ok lets look at the Stance idea. 90% of the stances in the game are essentially for 2 things: Offensively increases melee skills such as slashing, crushing, etc. Defensively raises skills such as parry to increase our avoidance. We already have dissonant boon and screeching elusion. We pretty much DO have stances, and in theory we have GROUP stances. Even if you are wanting a stance that increases dps with procs and whatnot, we have buffs for that too, also group wide. That being said, I don't ever see SOE giving us stances without getting rid of these buffs. For us to be able to get +30 defense from a defensive stance and then another 40 parry from Schreeching illusion is something SOE would never do, and I don't expect them to. If they were to give us stances, they would surely get rid of these two group buffs, and I would much rather buff a group than buff myself.

    Next, the runspeed: Since EoF came out I've had countless people laugh, YES laugh at me for getting left in the dust. I've actually been in groups where the group druid would SoW everyone but me so they could purposely leave me in the dust just to make a mockery of what Sony has done to us. NOT COOL. give us more runspeed SOE. quit piddling around worrying about balance when it's so blatantly obvious how to fix this problem.

    Fluff spells: In guild wars, the dance macro loops...meaning if you press it, you keep dancing until you take an action. AND they get cool dance macros such as headbanging and breakdancing. guilds would even actually sync up pressing the button so they would all do the same dance moves at the same time and perform for the crowd. I WOULD LOVE TO BE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS. A group fluff spell that made everyone dance till they took action would straight up blow me out of the chair. Tears of joy would be involved, and dev's would receive presents via mail.

    For group situations: I'm pretty happy with group play. The only thing I could request is a point blank AOE, for instance make banshee affect all targets in a radius. Alot of tanks these days pull multiple groups as a habit now, and us bards have a bit of a hard time working in that situation.
  12. ARCHIVED-Laromor Guest

    With the late and comming changes to Hyran's, then I'd like to see the concentration slot requirement removed. We should not pay with concentration for a maintained buff that we'd never (or atleast very rarely) use on ourselves... plus practically any other single target maintained buff in the game does not require a concentration slot.
    I dont see a need to remove the concentration slot requirement on our self buff (Death Bearer line). It works ok as it is... and the fact that other class (scout) self buffs also require concentration does not speak well for us to have the requirement removed.
    I would like us to get both Defensive and Offensive Stances.
    Defensive Stance should work similar to the Swashy Defensive Stance (Agile Slashing), adding 29 to Defense and Parry, 15% mitigation and deducing melee skills by 23 (Master 1)
    Offensive Stance could increase our melee and casting skills by 20, lower our defense by 16.5 (in line with other scouts) and a proc (2 ppm, modifiable by Luck of the Dirge) which increase our casting speed by 25% and lower reuse timers by 10% for 20 secs (Master 1)
    Just like alot of others, I'd like to see us get upgrades to Selo's at appropriate levels (55 and 69), once again making us.. perhaps not the fastest people in game, but atleast able to keep up with most.. both horses and other non-bard players. Perhaps let Selo's allow us (and the group) to move at a faster rate while stealthed or invisible .. 15% for the level 69 version perhaps.
  13. ARCHIVED-Salmastryon Guest

    I have to admit I've long been a fan of giving us stances, but I agree with FatedbyChance here, I don't see them giving us a defensive stance on top of what we have. Most of use already run Elusion by default anyway. However from what I've gathered from the numerous threads on the topic, what people really want is the offensive stance. So, this got me thinking and tinkering.

    I quickly came to the realization that while I would like a stance that buffed both melee and spells was probably going to end up being over powered or having severe penalty. Also, I was still stuck on the unlikeliness of a defensive stance being given to bards. Then an idea implanted itself in my head and the more I think about it the more I like it. Have a caster and a melee stance.

    I went through three different models as I thought this through, so I figured I'd share each of them with you see what you think.

    First off I basically just had two offensive stances. I used the Master end of line Rogue stances as models when I came up with these.
    Caster
    % on hostile spell to proc # disease damage
    Increase Ordination, Ministration, Disruption and Subjugation by 50
    Decrease Defense by 21

    Melee
    % on physical attack to proc # disease damage
    Increase Slashing, Piercing and Ranged by 50
    Decrease Defense by 21

    So then as I looked at these I was think, this is just two offensive stances and the point of the other classes stances is that they are the opposites of each other. So then I came up with this.

    Caster
    % on hostile spell to proc power tap
    Increase Ordination, Ministration, Disruption, Subjugation by 50
    Decrease Slashing, Piercing and ranged by 21

    Melee
    % on physical attack to proc # disease damage
    Increase Slashing, Piercing and Ranged by 50
    Decrease Ordination, Ministration, Disruption and Subjugation by 21

    I was much happier with this, but I still had the issue of that I wanted something that buffed both my caster and melee skills. So then I thought about the brawlers split stance and ended up with this.
    Caster
    % on hostile spell to proc power tap
    Increase Ordination, Ministration, Disruption, Subjugation by 50
    Decrease Slashing, Piercing and ranged by 21

    Hybrid
    much lower % on hostile spell to proc lower power tap
    much lower % on physical attack to proc lower # disease damage
    Increase Ordination, Ministration, Disruption, Subjugation, Slashing, Piercing and Ranged by 17
    Decrease Defense and Parry by 5

    Melee
    % on physical attack to proc # disease damage
    Increase Slashing, Piercing and Ranged by 50
    Decrease Ordination, Ministration, Disruption and Subjugation by 21


    I know my procs are a little unoriginal and I'm still not entirely sure that, that hybrid stance isn't too powerful. But, I think something along this model, fits us much better than a offensive/stance. The whole reason we want stances in the first place is we get compared to other classes on buffs to help our offensive skill set. This has become even more problematic with the changes and increased importance of skills in EoF.
  14. ARCHIVED-Salmastryon Guest

    Heh your much faster at composing post than I am. :smileyvery-happy: I like you idea for the offensive stance, but I still honestly don't see them giving us a defensive stance with the near perminant residence of are parry buff on people maintained spells along with the feaqueant addition of PoS on that line up as well. If we did get one I think it probably should just buff defense and mitigation. On the other had I really see a need for offensive buff despite having boons. Boons almost never makes it onto the buff bar unless the other melee classes who have stances are having trouble hitting the mobs. Which puts us behind the curve to start with.
  15. ARCHIVED-Lindar Phamoncry Guest

    Most of my desired changes are stated above... runspeed, Tombs proc, conc off of Hyrans, etc

    Against the argument for stances as I dont want our DPS or Parry buffs touched negativley... AT ALL

    /cough instruments /cough (lets face it.. if your going to make an active attempt at a Bard revamp do it right)

    I am also really interested in a method of attributing a group debuff to our group buffs... but then strengthening the buff factor... for those that desire stances, make them group STAT stances... buffs groups STR/INT at the cost of a group STA/WIS Debuff(or vice versa), lower our groups Divine resistance for a better Magic Resist, Provide a group ward for 200 x the number of members in the group that applied after a self inflicted 225 Group AoE. things that would force us into decisions that would seperate the good from the mediocre Dirge

    Might not be a good idea but simply throwing it out there
    Message Edited by Lindar Phamoncry on 12-14-2006 03:17 PM
  16. ARCHIVED-thecynic315 Guest

    What I would like to see:

    Remove con-slot requirement from our self buff, also remove the damage shield from it.

    our ranged CA needs work, the damage is too low compared to a ranged auto attack uising propper tier arrows.

    our EoF Control line seems more suited for the PVP game if we were to say tweak it so that it was just as useful to the PVE game.

    SOE I cant run 55, errrrr 6... since the speed limit seems to have been removed since the DOF beta where you said any upgrades to Selo's would be game breaking I think its time we got this spell line continued with propper upgrades.

    Stances, the current combat mechanics require us to have skill buffs if we want to be effictive during combat. Heck the devs stated as such. And Stances should NOT mean that other buffs get reduced. Just because we can buff other things for the group does not mean we will all of a sudden be over powered if we can buff dps, parry, have a proc AND have a stance where we buff our skills so we can hit the mob. Heck if having stances AND buffs would make us over powered, doesnt that make everyone else overpowered since they can already do this?

    What I dont want to see in any way shape or form
    Buffs and debuffs removed from all other classes
    Buffs and debuffs that other classes have being reduced so we look better by comparison
    More Combat tweaks so that we stay the same but the system now requires us to be in every group

    Androw Music'Mast
    Anejan - Satinav Ainmo fo Egrid 07
  17. ARCHIVED-Rijacki Guest

    Thinking on it more. They could make improvements to various songs be entirely situational by having instruments enhance them. If they could be placed in the secondary, ranged, or charm slot and enhance either a line of songs or a specific song (not in the same way as the achievements, though). Having an instrument equipped for a particular song could even remove the concentration from that one song (that could even be reserved for an instrument which has to be in a weapon slot like secondary or ranged).
  18. ARCHIVED-Azreal Guest

    From what i understand some classess especially bruisers dont use all of their conc slots thusly they are wasted. why not allow these classess to be able to pass the unused conc slots onto other classess allowing them to do more. even if it is 1 conc slot passed on it would be a welcome adition.
  19. ARCHIVED-Hazeroth Guest

    Instruments!
    Instruments!
    Instruments!
    Give our Buffs and Debuffs Instrument mods. Not like in EQ1 were it changes the over all power but add effects.

    Like Clara's. Without an instrument equip it just takes away physical Mit.
    But have exta effects. Like;
    If a Lute is equip it will add an extra 500 to physical Mit debuffage.
    If a Drum is equip it will add an a 500 Noxious debuff.
    If a Flute is equip it will debuff 100 Wisdom.
    If a Horn is equip it will debuff 100 STR.
    Daro's:
    If a Lute is equip it will add an extra 10% to slow and Snare.
    If a Drum is equip it will add a decrease combat ability and spell casting range by 25%.
    If a Flute is equip it will decrease Combat Art and Spell damage by 10%
    If a Horn is equip it will decrease DPS by 20%

    Discante:
    If a Lute is equipt add debuffs Int and Wis by same numbers as the STR and AGI
    If a Drum is equip it will add feedback damage to attacker every time is successfully deals damage.
    If a flute is equip it will remove one benefical spell every 6 seconds.
    If a Horn is equip it will slow reuse timers by 40%.

    Then there are mods to Group buffs.
    Come on, now is the time to get creative. They haveshown that they aren't afraid to make new and complex debuffs and buffs, for instance:

    [IMG]

    Make Bards the kings of debuffs again, and give a raid a reason to have more then one bard keeping debuffs running (currently the debuffs don't stack). Like If I have a Lute equip, then some other bard should have a Drum. The base effect wont stack but the added effects of the lute and drum will.
  20. ARCHIVED-munos Guest

    Dam fine idea Silentchord ***clapps***