Update 56 Preview 2: Stormsinger Archetype

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Originally Posted by SpardaX

While I agree with you sort of, I also feel the need to remind you that our current system IS literally the way it is due to a VAST QOL improvement on Bard Songs. The Aria exists for this reason.

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O don't get me wrong, the system we have right now is significantly better than it used to be. I'm just saying that they went half way. And there's a reason people do the tumble animation cancel. All I'm asking is they give us a button to sing the song once and consume charges appropriately. Even if it just has to assume that 12 song charges are consumed even if you are the only person in the aoe, that'd be better than now. It's also a purely QOL thing. And lore wise it makes zero sense why I'd play 12 of the same songs in a row.

T4 Stormsinger's Inspiration doesn't work. Gave songs to a Male Aasimar Sacred Fist 20 (Level 32), and in 2 minutes of continuous attacks there was no visual indicator that it proc'd a lightning strike against the DPS Boss Kobold.

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Originally Posted by Tanky

T4 Stormsinger's Inspiration doesn't work. Gave songs to a Male Aasimar Sacred Fist 20 (Level 32), and in 2 minutes of continuous attacks there was no visual indicator that it proc'd a lightning strike against the DPS Boss Kobold.

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Same experience here. I gave the songs to one of the new punchy types, and for 5 minutest straight he hit the kobalds test dummies, and not one lightning strike. I knew the proc chance would be low, but it is either way to low, or it isn't working.

Also tried on a wolf druid, after 2 minutes of attacks, no procs.

Please look into the warchanter tree while you're working on bards.

The capstone ability should be updated - it's a CC effect (the damage may as well be removed as it doesn't scale) on a 2min cooldown that casts super slow and is super short even outside of reaper. It also costs a song per use.

The T4 Northwind costs 6 points to get 3 tiers which is ridiculous. . The T5 has some nice stuff, but since it costs so much to buy them you don't have the AP to spend on the nice to have options.

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Originally Posted by Synthetic

Please look into the warchanter tree while you're working on bards.

The capstone ability should be updated - it's a CC effect (the damage may as well be removed as it doesn't scale) on a 2min cooldown that casts super slow and is super short even outside of reaper. It also costs a song per use.

The T4 Iced Edges costs 6 points to get 3 tiers which is ridiculous. The T5 has some nice stuff, but since it costs so much to buy them you don't have the AP to spend on the nice to have options.

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I doubt doing a chanter rework is within the scope of the next update, but I agree, many parts of warchanter needs work.

Stormsinger doesn't appear to have access to soothing song. I suspect that soothing song is linked to the Inspire courage bonuses at level 8. So, the ride the lightning enhancement won't be able to trigger when soothing song is used.

In the first preview soothing song was not applying ride the lightning when soothing song was played. Technically I believe it worked one time on one target and never triggered after 10 more attempts while having about 5 mobs near my character.

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Originally Posted by Synthetic

Stormsinger doesn't appear to have access to soothing song. I suspect that soothing song is linked to the Inspire courage bonuses at level 8. So, the ride the lightning enhancement won't be able to trigger when soothing song is used.

In the first preview soothing song was not applying ride the lightning when soothing song was played. Technically I believe it worked one time on one target and never triggered after 10 more attempts while having about 5 mobs near my character.

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I really think they are opening a can of worms with the song nerfing. And I don't think there is any need for nerfing at all, in fact, I think Stormsinger needs buffs, specifically adding the cold spells to the spellbook, just simple stuff like Cold Ray, Snowball Swarm. Ice storm would be cool too. If you want all of the Blasty Bits from Stormsinger, you already have to give up a ton of buffs.

Also Songs Mass would be really cool for all bard types. Expend 4 Songs regardless of the number of players around, and everyone in your Aria gets the buffs.

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Originally Posted by Synthetic

Please look into the warchanter tree while you're working on bards.

The capstone ability should be updated - it's a CC effect (the damage may as well be removed as it doesn't scale) on a 2min cooldown that casts super slow and is super short even outside of reaper. It also costs a song per use.

The T4 Northwind costs 6 points to get 3 tiers which is ridiculous. . The T5 has some nice stuff, but since it costs so much to buy them you don't have the AP to spend on the nice to have options.

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Agreed 100%

Band aid (not good but something): capstone: instacast, its so slow and short that it should atleast be insta imho (you give up a trance so its a brutal cost), t4 northwind 1ap/tier (But the capstone really needs even more than what i said to be 50/50 vs multiclass into 1 cleric + 1 fighter for trance+feat-+4 ap cost hasteboost)

When i played 20 warchanter bard (before i understood its not an option vs 18-1-1) i didnt even bother use the capstone ability, just too slow cast for the effect.

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Originally Posted by Lynnabel

Feats and Abilities:
Stormsingers gain the following feats:

• Magical Training (1)

Stormsingers do not gain the following feats:

• Improved Inspire Courage +1
• Improved Inspire Courage +2
• Improved Inspire Courage +3
• Ballad Melody: Greatness
• Inspiration Melody: Heroics

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Good job on giving this a bit more identity.

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Originally Posted by SpardaX

While I agree with you sort of, I also feel the need to remind you that our current system IS literally the way it is due to a VAST QOL improvement on Bard Songs. The Aria exists for this reason.

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Those changes two years ago were a QoL decrease if you raid a lot. Except maybe for spellsingers, you used to sing inspire courage, inspire excellence and reckless chant and go. Now, you need to hit everyone one by one to grant the excellence. 12 songs instead of 3, not what I'd call an improvement.
Even in a group it's now 4~6 songs instead of the old 3. Only when soloing the new system is more convenient.
I wish we could go back to the system of just a couple of per-song AoE's. Or actually, I wish I would have to sing just once, but lacking that, the old system was less bad than the new.

But I digress. Stormsinger looks more interesting than in preview 1.

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Originally Posted by Rull

Those changes two years ago were a QoL decrease if you raid a lot. Except maybe for spellsingers, you used to sing inspire courage, inspire excellence and reckless chant and go. Now, you need to hit everyone one by one to grant the excellence. 12 songs instead of 3, not what I'd call an improvement.
Even in a group it's now 4~6 songs instead of the old 3. Only when soloing the new system is more convenient.
I wish we could go back to the system of just a couple of per-song AoE's. Or actually, I wish I would have to sing just once, but lacking that, the old system was less bad than the new.

But I digress. Stormsinger looks more interesting than in preview 1.

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If you had Epid Elyd Edge I guess you're right. But unless my memory is wrong, I think if you didn't have Epic EE you were singing everything per member.

So 3 songs you say? 3 x 12 is 36 songs. But I remember it being much worse. I remember Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics each being 1 song, that (without EEEdge) would target 1 character. Inspire Excellence is lv 21, so at the time in question, Cap lv 20, Inspire Excellence did not even exist.

If my memory is correct, in a raid you USED to sing

Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics

The "chance to proc lightning strike" on weapon attacks seems way too low to be wai

I built an inqui stormsinger and was shooting through multiple kobolds at the same time, barely saw any lightning procs. Sonic aoes were proccing them much more reliably. But dxb with ips should be proccing up...er, a storm...

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Originally Posted by SpardaX

If you had Epid Elyd Edge I guess you're right. But unless my memory is wrong, I think if you didn't have Epic EE you were singing everything per member.

So 3 songs you say? 3 x 12 is 36 songs. But I remember it being much worse. I remember Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics each being 1 song, that (without EEEdge) would target 1 character. Inspire Excellence is lv 21, so at the time in question, Cap lv 20, Inspire Excellence did not even exist.

If my memory is correct, in a raid you USED to sing

Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics
Inspire Courage, Inspire Greatness, and Inspire Heroics

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I don't think your memory is correct. Inspire Courage and Inspire Greatness and Inspire Excellence were AoE.

Inspire Heroics was single target, so noone I knew used that

Inpire Excellence was introduced with epic levels in 2012, 7 years before what they called a quality of life update. You could sing it for str, dex, con, int, wis, cha, for +4 each. In 2013 it was changed to give +2 to everything because although less powerful, it was much too tedious to have to sing 6 times. In 2019 it was changed to have to be sung 12 times.

So it was, for the longest of times, either:
Inspire Courage
Inspire Excellence
Inspire Recklessness or Sustaining Song

or:
Inspire Courage
Inspire Excellence
Inspire Recklessness or Sustaining Song
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
Inspire Heroics
If they really wanted to. But I don't think anyone asked for a heroics since the dodge AC change in 2013.

Ironskin Chant and Song of arcane might was also AoE. It was just vigor that was single target.

Playing a bard in a raid was much more convenient before they tried to 'improve' it. But I think they just called 'QoL change' often enough and people wanted to believe it because singing 3~6 song already was a lot.


If anything, if they wanted to make it an improvement, all the bard class songs should have been put into the ballad aura, and then Spellsinger as enhancement tree could have introduced the concept of a single target aria, to give it it's own identity. That tree has the songs that tick every 2 seconds and thereby feel different anyway.

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Originally Posted by Dandonk

I doubt doing a chanter rework is within the scope of the next update, but I agree, many parts of warchanter needs work.

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I listed two changes I wouldn't describe is as a rework, and fiddling with AP cost shouldn't be that difficult.

Hopefully we'll get an update from the devs today - the other threads were updated yesterday with expected changes.

Nice efort to make viable a Bard as damage caster, but still underpowered against immunies. If you want to make Bard a Nucker, so, he should be in any content, agains any mob.

The sonic part of his dmg is very good in heroic and low reapers, but not for high reapers and hardest endgame content.

This is the tipical designt that make a player put a lot of efort on a not usual character just to join a PUG and watch another casters blowing the mobs, then get disapointed and TR to a generic caster build.

If the designers want to balance the casters power, they should stop to keeping nerfing the strongest builds and focus evort to bring new builds to the shine. And its impossible without immunities strip. THIS is why Sorc/Alch/Druid is aways on TOP tier and another class will never be. Stop to change spells Dices and Max CL, focus on the mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Ghustor

Nice efort to make viable a Bard as damage caster, but still underpowered against immunies. If you want to make Bard a Nucker, so, he should be in any content, agains any mob.

The sonic part of his dmg is very good in heroic and low reapers, but not for high reapers and hardest endgame content.

This is the tipical designt that make a player put a lot of efort on a not usual character just to join a PUG and watch another casters blowing the mobs, then get disapointed and TR to a generic caster build.

If the designers want to balance the casters power, they should stop to keeping nerfing the strongest builds and focus evort to bring new builds to the shine. And its impossible without immunities strip. THIS is why Sorc/Alch/Druid is aways on TOP tier and another class will never be. Stop to change spells Dices and Max CL, focus on the mechanics.

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I'm curious as to what creatures have immunity to sonic damage? It's generally not an issue to my knowledge. Light damage is in a similar spot where a few monsters may have immunity but it's 90% not an issue - unlike fire or cold which have large amounts of immunity.

Personally, I wish they would remove immunity stripping and simply make some spells better in some spots - light damage is better vs undead fire/cold have more immune mobs but also have more vulnerable mobs. It would help balance sorcerers, which are out of wack given immunity stripping and super low cool downs.

The issue with sonic damage spells is they contain a component of CC - generally weak CC. So the damage wasn't scaled as well as the pure damage spells during the initial spell pass. Since, that "rule" was ignored during the second spell pass (Alignment spells have very good damage and a CC effect) the sonic spells are behind in damage at the upper levels since greater sonic blast is also a CC and was scaled based on the bard level rather than the Sorc/Wiz level. As opposed to Alchemist spells which were scaled as if they were level 9 spells even though they don't exist as level 9 spells in game.

It would be helpful to have another spell pass that standardized damage for both arcane and divine spells.

Regardless, it doesn't appear any further bard changes will happen during this update as the developers have not commented in this thread except to say why they plan on leaving the latest changes in place - which I agree is necessary to keep the subclass from being superior to the base class.

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Originally Posted by Synthetic

I'm curious as to what creatures have immunity to sonic damage? It's generally not an issue to my knowledge. Light damage is in a similar spot where a few monsters may have immunity but it's 90% not an issue - unlike fire or cold which have large amounts of immunity.

Personally, I wish they would remove immunity stripping and simply make some spells better in some spots - light damage is better vs undead fire/cold have more immune mobs but also have more vulnerable mobs. It would help balance sorcerers, which are out of wack given immunity stripping and super low cool downs.

The issue with sonic damage spells is they contain a component of CC - generally weak CC. So the damage wasn't scaled as well as the pure damage spells during the initial spell pass. Since, that "rule" was ignored during the second spell pass (Alignment spells have very good damage and a CC effect) the sonic spells are behind in damage at the upper levels since greater sonic blast is also a CC and was scaled based on the bard level rather than the Sorc/Wiz level. As opposed to Alchemist spells which were scaled as if they were level 9 spells even though they don't exist as level 9 spells in game.

It would be helpful to have another spell pass that standardized damage for both arcane and divine spells.

Regardless, it doesn't appear any further bard changes will happen during this update as the developers have not commented in this thread except to say why they plan on leaving the latest changes in place - which I agree is necessary to keep the subclass from being superior to the base class.

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It is much more nuanced than that. Generally you are correct sonic does not suffer from immunity, there are a couple of mobs (iron golems, wisps) that are highly resistant and nearly immune in higher reaper. If you solo, quests with named iron golems like raven at the door are very difficult to solo, you can blow through 5K spell points in R4 trying to kill the end golems.

The issue is actually electric immunes. If you want to be a good bard nuker then you are Dragonborn blue and you use Draconic T4 electric. If mobs are immune or are healed by electric you lose the mantle and dragon breath and half of the horn of thunder DPS, and then you are 2nd tier at best nuker with sonic only. This will be true of stormsinger as well you lose chain lightning, half of horn, and thunderstroke.

MMO's should not have immunities. They force you to specialize in an element with the epic feats, mantle and destiny.

They should use elemental absorption on mobs, where the range is 0 - 30% absorption. So an electric "immune" mob is 30%, and nothing is healed by player spells. This still rewards switching spells where you have other options, but doesn't negate the ability to contribute. They can then remove the immunity stripping stuff and the caster classes will be much better balanced. This is a much needed change that would really help with balancing out the different elements and caster classes.

I forgot to ask before:

Does the lightning proc on allies from T4 include Hirelings?

And also: what spellpower influences it, if any? Yours? The players'? None?

Cheers,
NH

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Originally Posted by Synthetic

I'm curious as to what creatures have immunity to sonic damage? It's generally not an issue to my knowledge. Light damage is in a similar spot where a few monsters may have immunity but it's 90% not an issue - unlike fire or cold which have large amounts of immunity.

Personally, I wish they would remove immunity stripping and simply make some spells better in some spots - light damage is better vs undead fire/cold have more immune mobs but also have more vulnerable mobs. It would help balance sorcerers, which are out of wack given immunity stripping and super low cool downs.

The issue with sonic damage spells is they contain a component of CC - generally weak CC. So the damage wasn't scaled as well as the pure damage spells during the initial spell pass. Since, that "rule" was ignored during the second spell pass (Alignment spells have very good damage and a CC effect) the sonic spells are behind in damage at the upper levels since greater sonic blast is also a CC and was scaled based on the bard level rather than the Sorc/Wiz level. As opposed to Alchemist spells which were scaled as if they were level 9 spells even though they don't exist as level 9 spells in game.

It would be helpful to have another spell pass that standardized damage for both arcane and divine spells.

Regardless, it doesn't appear any further bard changes will happen during this update as the developers have not commented in this thread except to say why they plan on leaving the latest changes in place - which I agree is necessary to keep the subclass from being superior to the base class.

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Only a few mobs are immune to sonic, but in this Archetype, the eletric dmg is too important, mainly if you go as Draconic Destiny eletric (since there is no sonic dragon). The sonic dmg will do the job on Eletric immunies only in heroic and low reapers. For end game content, this will be a very good build in some quests and just a suport/complementary where there is immunities to eletric.

To restrict, ppl that wants to play as nukers will still be in sorc/druid/alch.

Im other words: a new archetype to not efective change the bard role in a party.