Summary of Issues/Suggested Tweaks for Troubs

I recently made a Troub my main for our raidforce. Our previous Troub could no longer dedicate the time to raiding and so when recruiting dragged on, I volunteered to level up a brand new troub and have it ready to raid in a month. I accomplished that (with some help), and I learned quite a few things in the process that I thought I'd share in the hopes that they might be brought into focus in a reasonable manner.

Players and Devs should be working together as a team to create the most enjoyment for the most people. There will of course always be those that one cannot make happy but sometimes you just have to throw up your hands and say well...I tried.

I'm going to go through a list of what I see as "issues" of a sort and offer some suggestions on what I think might be a reasonable tweak or direction to head. My aim is not to make the class into the next Shadowknight, as I am not a fan of 'flavor of the month classes’ as they're called.

I like the fact that it's not easy to be a great Troub. I love it when people look at a parse and see that I did well and are surprised and I get a little recognition. Underdog classes for the win
Anyway on to the meat of the discussion:

Spell Feedback:

• No out of encounter aoes. No other aspect of this class bugs me more than my inability to truly enjoy/contribute to a multi-encounter burn down. Now I know this isn't a critical class defining thing, but I have to ask; since the class employs sound as a weapon, what is the reasoning behind restricting us to encounter-based attacks? Just one or two AOE's would really go a long way to making the class a lot more fun. STILL AN ISSUE(MAJOR)

• Troubs don't buff themselves much: We have a couple nukes that are affected by Song of Magic/Aria but the majority of our damage is autoattack and ca's which we do next to nothing to help ourselves with. Someone on these forums suggested making our self buff proc damage on attack instead of being hit, which while not a bad idea per se, it doesn't address the fact that our group buffs don't really help us. STILL AN ISSUE (MAJOR)

• Breathtaking Bellow: is a very limited use(less) spell that could be repurposed to fit the bill of aoes, since the original purpose of the spell is not easy to determine. The only reason it's on my hotbar is to have something to proc more damage when Perfection of the Maestro is running. If this were to be changed to a mid-range aoe dps spell I think troubs would be thrilled. (I have to recommend that the same be done to Wail of Horror or Wail of Woe (whatever its called now) for Dirges, since while that spell is a true aoe, it also does no damage and simply has an interrupt and chance to knock down like Breathtaking Bellow. STILL AN ISSUE (MAJOR)

• Rejuvenating Celebration: Or instead of a heal, simply make it a group HP buff, which would also help keep squishies alive. FIXED

• Requiem of Reflection: is one of those spells that sounds simply awesome on paper but never really worked out too well (except in pvp) UNTIL NOW. For one, you never know who/what its going to work on and Troubs don't have enough concentration slots to run buffs that 'might do something good...maybe'. WOULD BE NICE TO BE ABLE TO PARSE, THOUGH. STILL, GOOD CHANGES.

• Graceful Avoidance: Defense as a stat is undervalued. Adding the mitigation through AA's was a great move. I'm not sure this needs changing but currently I only ever run it for mitigation. It would be nice if it had a small uncontested dodge chance added to it (and maybe a small uncontested parry chance to the Dirge one for fairness), considering all the gear/adorns with +defense and +parry I honestly don't think either of the bard avoidance buffs would ever be run if it weren't for the mitigation option that is pretty much mandatory for any kind of content. STILL AN ISSUE (MINOR)

• Allegretto: The buff is pretty small and hasn’t scaled up much over the levels. In a raid it’s pretty much useless between Illy haste, the Monk raid-wide buff and Chime of Blades. It would be nice if there was some sort of secondary effect to the buff or if it was just changed to casting haste instead, since we primarily buff casters. Then it kind of becomes a copy of Allegro, so I don’t know. More casting haste would be nice though, since the cast times on PoM and Rhythmic Overture /Victorious Concerto are so terribly long so it would buff us a little, and it would definitely make the caster’s (and more importantly our healers since we do so little for them) happy. STILL AN ISSUE(MINOR)

• Song of Magic: Debatable usefulness. I run it to minimize resists so I maxed it out as much as I could. I still see resists sometimes so I have no idea if it works or not. A resistibility reduction on this spell akin to the Illy aa Illuminate would be nice (obviously scaled down) Maybe a 5-10% reduction in resistibility would be enough for Troubs to stop calling it useless. STILL AN ISSUE (MINOR)

• Alin's Serene Serenade: Mandatory. I have to run this for the heavy artillery in my group but it does basically nothing for me. I'm not pulling aggro off a tank doing around the same dps than I am, and when a mob randomly agro-drops to me it doesn’t help either. It would be really great if there was a substantial chance (based on spell quality) for a positional deaggro reactive proc on it so that when a mob does happen to peel to me or one of my squishies, IF we manage to survive the first hit, the tank might be able to get it back a little easier. As a matter of fact, isn’t how this buff used to work way back in the day? Why was it nerfed? Also, in a discussion with a tank friend of mine, he casually mentioned that group-wide dehate never seems to work as well as +hate for him. Thus he clearly prefers a Dirge or Coercer to a Troub. I would suggest that Alin’s have a +taunt/detaunt factor added to it in order to make us a little bit more versatile in grouping. STILL AN ISSUE (MINOR)

• Raxxyl's Rousing Tune: INT+WIS - Does nothing for Troubs. I don’t even know what to do with this to make it useful for Troubs other than add agility to it which would make it a 3 stat buff and then the Dirges would likely complain that we weren’t balanced. Maybe a +ability mod portion to it based on tier and spell quality? STILL AN ISSUE (MAJOR)

• Bria’s Entrancing Sonnet: The much maligned charm. What to say about this spell? It’s not 100% useless but it’s close. At 15seconds or so it kind of sits between ‘Well everything is going to crap I’ll try this!’ and ‘Evac!’ It has some limited usefulness in pulling social mobs or soloing, but really when so many mobs have been made Charm-Immune why bother? I have a hard time offering constructive ideas regarding this spell because the only thing I can think of is “15 seconds? Really?” Obviously Enchanters were the reason why this was nerfed in the first place, due to us infringing on their role of crowd control, but the game has evolved to the point where crowd-control is rarely used anymore. And when it IS used, our slow casting, single-target mezz and charm are in no way endangering their spot in any group that is actually looking for crowd control. I’d have to suggest increasing the duration on this spell to at LEAST double to make it useful or get rid of it entirely. Also why is this the only spell we have now that can't be cast while moving? STILL AN ISSUE (MINOR)

• Countersong: This should be insta-cast as to be useful. It could then be timed to have maximum effect for both PvE & PvP. Currently it's click and pray at best. Or perhaps make it a short term debuff that reduces effects of the mob's spells by a smaller, more managable amount maybe 10%-20%? Recast is still ugly, but mostly fixed. Nice work.

• Runspeed: Both in-combat and out of combat are a bit pricey for us compared to other classes. After spending 13-15 (standard DKTM Spec + Shadows Tree) points in runspeed we should be the fastest things on two legs. Especially in combat. WOULDN'T CALL IT AN ISSUE, MORE OF A GRIPE

AA Feedback:

Bard Tree:

• Wayfarer Line: Please make Poison Concoction in the Wayfarer line an actual toggleable buff and allow the proc chance to be affected by other scout items that affect poison triggers. Either that or simply change the end-line to allow bards to actually use poisons, since group invisibility is so terribly rarely used and make Poison Concoction affect poison triggers, durations or both. ADDENDUM - Since this ability can crit and is affected by potency and crit bonus, many bards (myself included now) are of a mind that Wayfarer's Concoction is ok, the endline is of very minimal usefulness though, would be nice if it blocked one aoe or physical attack.

• Fortissimo: The 10da Troubs can gain from this ability is becoming marginalized as a lot of SF loot grants +8% da or better. Many scouts and fighters sit at 100da without this buff, so it would be nice if we had the ability to get a secondary effect on it that actually matters. A small amount of strikethrough/flurry/ AE autoattack or spell double attack to make the buff more appealing to mage groups are all sexy options and could replace some of the less interesting effects on either the SF AA's at the bottom of the EOF Troub tree or the final line of the Shadows Tree. UPDATE: Looks like this will be addressed in Velious with the removal of the MA Cap. This line may actually become very desirable indeed. WTG SOE.

• Messenger’s Letter: Needs to have a substantial amount of hate added to it to be remotely useful. Ideally adding a small target lock or positional that works if target=fighter. Since every mob that matters seems to be immune to target locks, I’d say just go with the positional. STILL LAME

• Don't Kill the Messenger: This buff is also quickly becoming marginallized as well. With single slot items having +8% crit on them this ability is nowhere near as amazing as it once was. An additional affect on the SF endline, to enhance DKTM instead of say maybe the Mezz enhancement might be ideal, granting Crit Bonus or perhaps Potency since Crit Bonus is already granted on Dextrous Sonata. STILL AN ISSUE

• Heroic Storytelling: Largely ignored. By all accounts it’s broken and every bard I’ve spoken to regards the end line with disdain. I would say that going one of two ways with this would be advisable. 1)Change it to a short-term group-wide accuracy/lowered resistibility buff or 2) make this ability allow access to unique and powerful Heroic Opportunities that ONLY a bard with this ability can start. The latter seems a bit too programming intensive to be honest but it’s a neat idea imo. STILL LAME

• Rhythmic Overture/Victorious Concerto: Some sort of information on how much longer VC could be “held back” would be nice. Some sort of countdown timer or a flat number that is always consistent. I have used Rhythmic Overture on a trash mob right before a boss fight only to have Victorious Concerto go inactive right before pull because of a minor delay. UPDATE: Look at your buff window for "Intermission" this is a temp buff that is 'holding' the RO charge.

Troub (EOF) Tree:

• Demoralization: This endline is completely underpowered for PVE. If it worked on autoattacks AND combat arts it MIGHT be worthwhile. Until then it will only be taken by the uninformed. STILL AN ISSUE

• Enhance: Bria’s Entrancing Sonnet .5 second per aa? Seriously? Wow. I thought we weren’t supposed to be doing crowd control, why do you guys keep giving us ways to dump points into destructo-nerfed abilities? STILL AN ISSUE

• Enhance: Breathtaking Bellow An increased CHANCE at knockdown? No stun. No damage…just a CHANCE at knockdown. I’m trying to stay positive here but c’mon guys, doesn’t this strike you as being forced to waste points to get to the decent endline ability? STILL LAME

New SF Endlines on EOF Tree:

• Mind Tap: Increased the damage but not the power tap effect?

• Stunning Lullaby: I thought we weren’t supposed to be doing crowd control, why do you guys keep giving us ways to dump points into destructo-nerfed abilities? STILL LAME

• Ballad of Warding: Great Idea! Love this aa. Only thing that has me concerned is that I’m not seeing the amount of cures I thought I would be from this. Like nowhere NEAR the 29% (have a Warlock in group) The proc rate needs to be checked to make sure it’s doing its job because It doesn’t look like it according to the parses I've seen.

Shadow Tree
Bard Line

• Intoxicating Notes: Procs only on Melee? Why? We're a hybrid class. Half our stuff is ranged/spell based. STILL LAME

Troub line

• Aria of Health: I guess you guys were out of ideas for us maybe? 5 points of aa’s above the 170 mark for 2.5% hp? Would it really have been game breaking to give us 1% per point? Honestly I’d rather have something else altogether. Personal hit points? Boring. Why not have this be a group buff instead? Perhaps make this add a hit points effect to Rejuvenating Celebration. STILL LAME

In closing I want to say, I enjoy this class, despite all the suggestions I may have gone into in this post. I think Troubs are the kind of class that takes a certain kind of person to play right now, the kind who’s not exclusively interested in personal glory but more in the success of the group/raid. I think it’s kind of gone to an extreme though to the point where we don’t feel very important and we can just throw UT on someone set a drinking bird on the PoM key and go watch the Golden Globes or something.

I think that’s why there’s so few of us. You might want to think about giving the rock stars some limelight you know? Because not everyone is content to play from the shadows at stageside.

well done, i hope they listen to this, as for the SF stuff i have no experience (not buying the expansion), but it sounds like a pain in the a** for VC.

Please take this as constructive criticism.......reformat that for clarity. Use bullet points or outline format or something.
It currently comes at you like a wall of text.

It was before I pasted it. I'll have to re-edit it and fix since my proxy server at work is apparently stripping off all the advanced formatting options. I'll try and knock that out tonight.

Additions:

- Countersong (lvl 80). This should be insta-cast as to be useful. It could then be timed to have maximum effect for both PvE & PvP.
- Charm. Seeing as this is now acting as a short second mez in PvP can we please have this castable on the run, as per the rest of our spells?
- Incombat runspeed. Seeing as there is now an item on the PvP merchants offerring any class +40% runspeed in-pvp-combat, can we please get a bump in this. 10 AA's for 15% seems paltry in light of the fact you can now BUY one of our class defining abilities (this I believe deserves a thread of its own).

More to come as I think of them. Great thread, deserves attention/sticky.

Hadn't thought about the pvp side of it and I didn't know you could get 40% in combat run speed from purchasable pvp gear.

Lovely.

Good points all, I'll update when I get home. And you guys are right, its a wall of text. Ugh. Must fix.

Looks very nice now.....if I was a Dev I would read it.

Very nice hope they listen
Only thing i have a problem with is what you said about RO/VC. Whoever told you they lose dps using it needs to have their heads screwed back on

I think what they meant is that the casting time of these abilities is longer than a haste-capped autattack cycle.
Missing an autoattack cycle at close to/capped dps mod assuming all hits is nothing to sneeze at. Assuming a 3k crit ( on both weapons which is low) and factoring in double attacks and NO procs thats 12k damage lost/delayed.
Now granted that damage doesn't go away per se but it does get pushed back which is a loss of DPS in that DPS is damage per second.

First of all, thank you for putting together this list. It's a great resource that I hope the dev's consider.
Additionally, I would like to throw into the ring for reconsideration two of our staple AA's, DKTM and Fortissimo. With the advent of Sentinels Fate, and high crit and DA items falling from the sky. It's trivial to acquire 100% DA and 120% Crit without a bard in the group. Now, granted, it could be argued that DKTM and Fortissimo allow group members to vary their items to include those with less Crit and DA, letting us make up the difference. It is more likely that these two AA's will be marginalized however, and within another year of itemization, completely useless.
I would like to see Fortissimo brought up to date to include a flurry, or an AE auto-attack component (or both!), and DKTM to include a crit bonus component. Neither change would be game breaking, alter the spirit of the skill, and would allow these skills to retain their usefulness under the current itemization and mechanics.

Good point. Noted and updated original post.

Try and add my own thoughts to Kiki's.

Out of encounter:
I've found that being limited to one encounter has been both a boon and a curse. I won't hit what I don't want, but if a bunch of single-mobs come after me I've got nothing to handle it. Also playing a Coercer, I like that they gave them Sonic Boom to handle that. Would it be so wrong to have some sort of equilivant?

Self Buffing:
We used to be able to have our group stat song help us out. Now? Nope. Int is now a useless stat for all scouts. Would it be so wrong to change Raxxyl's to be Agi / Int (to match the dirge Str / Agi) or Agi / Int / Wis? As is, theres very little reason for me to bother running the song solo. Sure, helps others in the group but gives me nothing while doing so.

Bellow:
Only reason I use this is for it's interrupt, and procing Aria/Maestro. This, Charm, & Mez seem like token gestures given to us to emulate chanters. And Charm and Mez are nowhere near what they used to be. Charm isn't on my bars anymore, and Mez has finally gotten enough time back to it to be useful.

Rejuvenating:
I've suggested before that this song (or an AA to apply to this song) give +max health% for the group. That would actually make it useful, in my opinion. The regen provided by it is nice, I suppose, but all it does is shorten downtime for a solo, or a group w/o a healer.

Requiem:
I *think* this helps vs some raid fights. ... But as I can't parse a darn thing from it I have no way of knowing for sure. As we have plenty of songs fighting for conc slots, there is very little reason to put something up which *should* *in theory* *help some*. Considering you have to be hit with a spell, and then you have a chance of triggering a shield. And then you have to be hit by certain types of spells in the duration for anything to even happen.

Graceful Avoidance:
If there are physical attacks being tossed around, and I'm in the squishy group, this gets thrown up. I'm pretty sure it helps, but I also rarely gave it much throught until the mitigation was added to it.

Allegretto/Allegro:
We're supposed to be chatting up the casters, right? What do they care about melee haste? Allegro is the way Allegretto should have gone. If I'm ever grouped with melee people they generally already have plenty haste so this is useless. Decent for solo work, or poorly made groups, that's about it.

Song of Magic:
I've been asked for this in one zone only, and even then the only feedback I've gotten is the casters *think* they have less resists afterwords. If someone has actually done in depth research and can say "Yes, you actually get benefit X, Y, & Z from this. I've got numbers" I'd love to see it. Beyond that it's an used song.

Runspeed:
Isn't it about time for Bardspeed to finally push up a bit more of the in-combat bit? Some strategic advantage vs jousting would be nice, esp if there already are PVP items which give that.

<Trying to generally skip the stuff I agree with Kiki on, this is getting longer then I thought>
Messengers Letter:
How about just Increases threat the target has to all fighters it has hate on (and more then currently gives)? Useful on group, useful on raid. Beats the insignifigant amount of threat it's giving to one person right now.

Posion Concoction:
Yes, a way to toggle it. I know a number of solo bards who avoid it because it conflicts with any attempt to mez.
As bards are the only scouts not able to use outside poisons, couldn't we just get the ability to emulate that from an endline somewhere? Have this, and you can apply poisons like a proper scout. Sell more poisons, bards do more personal dps (Shock!), scout-type gear built for the other scouts can have a chance of fitting in better with bards.

Aria of Health:
Pefect place to change this so it upgrades Rejuv Celebration into something worthwhile. Instead of this song of health ,which apparently only we can hear, make it allow us to boost everyone. Bards like to share, M'kay?

dont kill the messenger, and fortissmo. i do agree they need work.

Instead of double attack, and +crit change.... change those two buffs to +accuracy and +strike through. Those two stats, barely anyone has anything for it. or, change the double attack to +accuracy AND +strikethrough, then have the + crit chance change to +crit bonus.

Cylock wrote:

Fortissimo especially needs to be looked at. With the stat consolidation it has effectively become 50% less useful. It used to buff:
- DA by 1% and
- Ranged DA by 1% (which you could argue was a more valuable stat to begin with).
Now it just buffs the combined DA value by 1%. A poor return for one AA point.

This amplifies even further the effect of of these stats becoming far more freely available on SF gear at end game.
This thread really needs some attention, um PLEASE Frizznik? Timtravelling? Rothgar? mail-room guy? Anyone?

CharonDeryni wrote:

I posted this elsewhere but it's worth repeating

With the inclusion of the new command /cancel_maintained you can now create a macro that ensures non of your DoT's break mez.
Create a macro from your mez icon and add a line before the ability reading:
/cancel_maintained Poison

This will cancel the dot if its running and do nothing otherwise. Of course you can extend this idea to our class DoT as well.
Cheers,
Philamonic of Venekor.

Tip of the cap to the OP for a thoughtful post on ways to improve the Troub's fortunes. I suspect if even half the ideas were implemented the large divide between supply and demand for Troubs in raids would better balanced as EQ2 subscribers might begin to consider rolling a Troub for reasons other than a desperate need for one in a raid team.
I'll throw into the mix, changing Bria's Entrancing Sonnet into Bria's Stunning Sonnet. Make it a lengthy encounter stun that can't be broken. Make the mob do a random dance move while its in effect for entertainment value. Make an adornment that will either lengthen the stun or proc a debuff.

I used to bot my troub in T8 for my wizard main. I switched my raid main to my troub for T9 and it's pretty laughable how (outside of caster buffing) useless the class really is.
I'd be fine if our bottom-of-the-barrel DPS was offset by some hardcore awesome buffs and debuffs but our buffs and debuffs are either average or useless.
Stat debuffs?
Casting skill debuffs?
HP regen?
Junky melee haste?

Jester's Cap, Upbeat Tempo and POTM pretty much define the class.

The sheer number of worthless and/or mediocre AA skills for troubs is mindblowing.


This class needs a serious re-think.

Sephamon wrote:

Myself i would be a bit pissed if dktm and fortissimo got changed. Having these opens up the possibility to use more gear that has crit bonus, potency etc. Same goes for other classes, they can rely on at least 10% DA and 7% crit chance from a bard.

I don't think it would be ideal for the basic purpose of the spell to be changed. For one thing our concerns have a lot to do with the state of the game at lvl 90. Before level 90 10 DA is pretty decent for group content and characters that are still growing and contrary to what is sometimes taken for granted, there is a game before 90 (not for me, but for some people) I think what should be done is much like they did with DKTM and Fortissimo in TSO, ie. let us improve the buff, but make it so that those improvements are only accessible after a certain level like in the SF portion of the Troub or Bard AA trees, Lvl 81 or above. Not necessarily make it bigger in the same way (more crit for DKTM and more DA for Fortissimo are kind of pointless) but to add on additional things to make the buff desirable. Potency on DKTM and Accuracy/Strikethrough/Spell DA on Fortissimo come to mind.

Kiki@Guk wrote:

Id very much like that.