Sustaining/Soothing Song

What happened? I thought Sustaining was being granted as a class feat at L8? Because "all bards should be able to heal"?

Soothing Song is cr-p, to put it bluntly. Its a tiny heal, with a super long animation, that consumes a song. Anytime I need the heal, odds are I'm taking damage (or my tank is), and will likely take more damage during the animation than it actually heals when it finishes. It doesnt seem to benefit from Positive SP. At L8 bards will have access to CSW, which will likely give way more healing, with an instant cast. Even though Soothing is AOE, I can probably heal up everyone faster just with Cure Wounds spells.

Soothing needs to be instant cast, right off the bat. And it needs to be more than a trivial amount of HP (it was around 100 hp on my 12 Bard dojo char with ~400 Pos SP). Even Sustaining Song isnt that impressive ticking for ~30-40 HP every few seconds, but at least its long-term.

I'd suggest that Soothing Song go back to the original design intent, and be a HOT rider on Inspire. Then the Sustaining Song enhancement could improve that with something like "applies your Positive SP to Soothing Song", or maybe let it scale the healing by (Perform * 10)%, or maybe have it tick for a % of your max health in addition to the flat rate - I really wonder if it will be one of those things that's useless in endgame reaper because it doesnt scale, so its not OP in heroic hard. But I dont know how to scale it so its useful but not god mode from L8-30.

Honestly the temp HP from Inspire is more useful than Soothing, its like Warlock Lite. I suspect that Swash Auralocks are going to be enjoying the combo of Inspire and Brilliance ticking for temp HP, at least in Heroic.

I think it's fine, as-is, except the power of soothing song needs to be boosted. I was healing maybe 90-120 or so on nearby people while spamming it in the test dojo, at level 30 with decent gear. It's not worth a bard song use, especially in the low levels where bard songs are very limited and don't regenerate.

It is doing the same action with the same animation and same heal as the original Sustaining Song people were very passionate about. I basically pointed the level 8 free feat for Bards at the old effect, and that's kinda it. Worth nothing that it should already be scaling with Positive Spell Power.

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Originally Posted by Lynnabel

It is doing the same action with the same animation and same heal as the original Sustaining Song people were very passionate about. I basically pointed the level 8 free feat for Bards at the old effect, and that's kinda it. Worth nothing that it should already be scaling with Positive Spell Power.

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The issue isn't the fact that it's scaling but that it's not scaling enough. It's a weak heal that uses a limited resource. *shrug*

I probably won't be using it, but I guess it's okay for bards that aren't healers.

Players asked that the AoE version burst heal of that song be kept because they managed to put it to good use.
That request was generously granted.

If you're not one of those people that did use the song for burst healing (I've traveled with bards that solely used it to keep parties alive, so those guys DO exist), you lose literally nothing. Just don't set the feat to your action bars, lìke I don't set "sunder" to mine on just about any character :)

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Originally Posted by Lynnabel

It is doing the same action with the same animation and same heal as the original Sustaining Song people were very passionate about. I basically pointed the level 8 free feat for Bards at the old effect, and that's kinda it. Worth nothing that it should already be scaling with Positive Spell Power.

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Maybe I'm just confused about what Sustaining Song does on Live right now?

"Expend a use of Bardic Music to apply a temporary fast-healing effect to all nearby allies. It lasts for 24 seconds plus 6 seconds per bard level."

That's not what Soothing Song is doing right now. Its just an AOE burst heal. No HOT component, and that was something you discussed in the Bard changes theorycraft thread before. I thought the final plan was to just move Sustaining as-is to the new Soothing feat. Maybe my expectations were off though. I was really excited about /8 Bard being a useful threshold for a nice long term little HOT...

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Originally Posted by droid327

Maybe I'm just confused about what Sustaining Song does on Live right now?

"Expend a use of Bardic Music to apply a temporary fast-healing effect to all nearby allies. It lasts for 24 seconds plus 6 seconds per bard level."

That's not what Soothing Song is doing right now. Its just an AOE burst heal. No HOT component, and that was something you discussed in the Bard changes theorycraft thread before. I thought the final plan was to just move Sustaining as-is to the new Soothing feat. Maybe my expectations were off though. I was really excited about /8 Bard being a useful threshold for a nice long term little HOT...

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Sustaining Song's AoE Heal was given to everyone as a free feat, and the long term heal over time stays in Spellsinger where the AoE heal was before, as per the release notes. Effectively, we split it in half, and then gave half to everyone and half to where the ability was before. If you were using this ability before, there is no effective change in gameplay, except that the Heal over Time lasts for a very long time via your Bardic Inspiration instead of tied to actually pressing the active Soothing Song button via a feat.

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Originally Posted by Lynnabel

Sustaining Song's AoE Heal was given to everyone as a free feat, and the long term heal over time stays in Spellsinger where the AoE heal was before, as per the release notes. Effectively, we split it in half, and then gave half to everyone and half to where the ability was before. If you were using this ability before, there is no effective change in gameplay, except that the Heal over Time lasts for a very long time via your Bardic Inspiration instead of tied to actually pressing the active Soothing Song button via a feat.

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Eh...ok. I get where I was reading it wrong though. Considerably less excited about Bard changes now though as a soloist...:P My vote would still be to give "half" to everyone, as in both effects but reduced effectiveneess, then the other "half" in Spellsinger as an improvement to scaling, which would keep it relevant in endgame party support - but probably not worth the time to code it that way if you were just using the original code already.

Side note, I'm also now permadead. Died in a quest, insta-died after eating a cake, released to tavern and died again. Logged in and out, still dead.

Dunno what its tied to (only testing bard changes on that char, did have Epic Def Fighting on too) but probably dont want that going Live :)

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Originally Posted by droid327

Eh...ok. I get where I was reading it wrong though. Considerably less excited about Bard changes now though as a soloist...:P My vote would still be to give "half" to everyone, as in both effects but reduced effectiveneess, then the other "half" in Spellsinger as an improvement to scaling, which would keep it relevant in endgame party support - but probably not worth the time to code it that way if you were just using the original code already.

Side note, I'm also now permadead. Died in a quest, insta-died after eating a cake, released to tavern and died again. Logged in and out, still dead.

Dunno what its tied to (only testing bard changes on that char, did have Epic Def Fighting on too) but probably dont want that going Live :)

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As a soloist, you should be pretty amazed that the HoT now lasts much, MUCH longer than it did before - just apply it once and you're okay for (2+Bardlevel)*30seconds (or 1 minute + 30s per bard level), as oppose to the original 24 seconds + 6 per bard level.

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Originally Posted by Xgya

As a soloist, you should be pretty amazed that the HoT now lasts much, MUCH longer than it did before - just apply it once and you're okay for (2+Bardlevel)*30seconds (or 1 minute + 30s per bard level), as oppose to the original 24 seconds + 6 per bard level.

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As a soloist, I'm not going to invest up to T4 in Spellsinger just for a HOT though. My bards are a Swash Vanguard and a Swash Auralock...there's not much else in Spellsinger that's useful for them.

I was excited (though mistakenly so) about a long-term HOT being added to Bard core feats so that my non-caster Bards could still have some Bardic self-healing. I was hoping to do just what you said, be able to fire one off with the rest of my long-duration buffs and go through the quest with the HOT keeping my health topped off, offsetting attrition damage. Having something for Heroic that even vaguely resembled Cocoon spam in Epic :)

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Originally Posted by droid327

Side note, I'm also now permadead. Died in a quest, insta-died after eating a cake, released to tavern and died again. Logged in and out, still dead.

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hey, they didn't tell you? they're testing a new feature aimed at the PD crowd... enforced permadeath. when you die.. its permanent... for real~!