Early Look: Bard Changes

[GramercyRiff]

This is sorta something on the side we figured we could squeeze in. I wouldn't put this anywhere on the timeline of greater archetype balance. We have a lot of new bandwidth to tackle some big and needed systems projects, but sometimes little things like this one can make the cut

Good to know, thanks. Also thanks for your overall amazing communication with everyone.

[TheGuyYouKnow]

as someone who plays a bit more like a bardbarian than a support i like the changes but the class seems to slowly improve bit by bit every few levels you put in so i feel it could use a few power spikes for nice multiclassing potential

also a suggestion for a couple multiselector feats maybe at level 8 and 16 to push caster support or melee play style.

[HuneyMunster]

Hello! We're here today to give you a first look at plans for significant changes to Bard coming up soon! This is pretty early in the process, so things are still subject to change; we'd love to know what you think![COLOR=#ff8c00]

THE FEATS:
There is now a new general feat, available to Bards level 12 and above (must have 15 trained ranks in Perform):

Improved Bardic Music: Inspire Greatness now grants an additional +1 to all Skills, and Inspire Heroics now grants an additional +1 to Armor Class, Dodge, and all Saves.

Lasting Inspiration (the Bard epic feat) will remain unchanged.

Why not add Inspiring Echoes into either Improved Bardic Music or Lasting Inspiration?

[apep1412]

Gonna be real, though, the Bardic Aria's area is already so big and lingers for so long that any increase - even doubling the radius - is kinda unnoticeable. It's passable for just the core, and I like where it's at for that ability, but Inspiring Echoes does need something else... exciting. I'm open to suggestions, unless that suggestion is "the old version of Inspiring Echoes."

You have said that the Aria is reapplied every 10 seconds, but I haven't seen how long it lasts. Assuming it doesn't last as long as the current AoE songs, Inspiring Echoes could increase the lingering duration for the cases when parties need to split up.

[Vanhooger]

Imho a good start would be to allow Spellsingers to bypass CC immunity of targets that they can fascinate.
* Daze undead with Sonic Blast - check
* Use Suggestion SLA on that Mummy - check
* Hold Monster that Warforged Titan - check
* Soundburst that pool of Ooze - check

Or give bards other spells to do that, but as we heard, spells are expensive.

Something like that, but I'm open to anything since spellsinger can't be any worse than it is atm.

[ThomasMink]

This is nice and all.. but what about merging Enthrallment into Fascinate?
Always seemed odd to me that the two were separate for whatever reason.

[Hipparan]

Since you guys are looking at bard, please, please, do something to make a spellsinger worth is weight in party & raid. Give it something unique & desired. Spellsinger is so far and behind anything else in this game. Thank you.

Thank you! I can't help but feel like Warchanter is getting a nice boost from this, but Spellsinger is getting a nerf. Yes Bardic Inspiration has almost every song included in it, but If I only wanted to buff a raid with the spellsinger songs, I had only two songs to play (Arcane Might and Spell Song Trance). Instead of including them in the Aria, they've been added to the single-target song which means if I get into a raid with mostly warlocks or other spellcasters, I have to single target every one of them like an Artificer passing out Deadly Weapons. Despite what may have been said before, I really see Spellsinger as the type of Bard who is good at buffing multiple people at once.

I was under the impression that Spellsinger Bards were the type that focused on songs and magic, while Warchanters were the type focused on weapon damage. With these changes though, its grants a huge boost to Warchanters because they never have to play another song again (because honestly, how many Warchanters are going to be using a single target ability on every single party/raid member for +2 to skills, +4 to dodge, and +4 to saves?).

Spellsingers are getting kicked to the curb because all of their enhancements are changed to single-target. I'd rather see Spellsingers at level 18 or so get Bardic Inspiration as a mass effect. At least give them something interesting to make them more interesting than Warchanters in terms of buffing allies. Alternatively, if the upcoming Arcane pass gives some bonuses to Spellsingers as well, that would be good. As a side note, one of the Spellsinger songs (I am pretty sure it's Spell Song Trance) currently doesn't work on Palemasters in undead form. It shows up with "Immune" when played at them.

[Kerthyn]

I'd prefer one mass song that hits everyone in aura range, and fewer bard songs.

[silinteresting]

as a spellsinger player i cant help but see this at the moment as a huge buff to warchanter
and a huge nerf to spellsinger. at present i dont spend a single point in warchanter but alas
with these changes i guess i will have to, maybe im reading this wrong, i hope so.

your friend sil

[SpartanKiller13]

I'm really liking this. Great job devs

The only time I could see the 12x songs being an issues is rebuffing mid-raid. At the start of raid we're all waiting for that one AFK guy anyway, so perfect time to buff. Also if you really hate singing 12x just shortman.

Outside of raids the most you'll be singing is 5-6x (5 if you have Inspiring Echoes as currently shown) which is like 25 seconds which IMO is totally fine - especially since you can buff while moving through the front part of quests. Or you can just not buff anyone who runs off lol.

And then there's plenty of times where you don't have a full party, so it's like 2-4 songs to give 20 minute buffs = win.

-----

Not going to say Bard is a must-have for raids etc, but it will be very nice to have one vs currently where it's just "oh neat I guess."

[Sebastrd]

Inspiring Echoes in its current state is far too volatile to re-introduce. It made making new Bard Songs basically unfeasible. This implementation still saves you songs, but it's much less likely to break the game.

I'd be happy if you got rid of it all together. It can go hang out with the sigils from that chain.

I'm open to suggestions, unless that suggestion is "the old version of Inspiring Echoes."

What about making it a sort of Quicken metamagic for songs and just have it speed up the song "casting"? It seems like the biggest gripe everyone has is that it'll take too long to buff a raid group now that you only ever have to sing a maximum of 12 songs. If Inspiring Echoes cut singing time in half, for example, total buff time would be ~30s instead of a whole rage inducing minute.

Also, while you're at it, can we get a "twiddling thumbs" emote? My raids already take roughly five, excruciating minutes to kick off while we wait for the one guy that had to walk the dog and now needs to grab ship buffs that he'll promptly lose because he's usually the one killed within seconds of stepping into the raid, but if my bard takes even less time to buff everyone during that waiting period, I'll need something to do with my valuable standing around time!

[Kza]

I only play bards - have done for years.

The warchanter cap - how is the DC worked out? That detail is really important. Duration? Cooldown?

I like any reduction in song time/application - it's a killer and not fun. I might be misunderstanding how all this works, but can we have an aoe version of the songs that has any problematic songs stripped out (so only one sing for whole raid/group) and a single target version?

I feel like the buffs needs buffing. Mathematically I feel a group with a bard should be slightly better than a group filled with dps, offsetting the fact that the bard may be a weaker in terms of individual dps. This was the case years ago, maybe around the old epic system, where people had worked out that once you had 'x' additional members in a party, it was more beneficial to have a bard than another pure dps due to their buffs applying to each member.

Generally:

SWASHBUCKER
Are in a good place - they are very playable. However, when they were introduced it was stated that they were to be what the rest of the class passes would be balanced against. Well, they now lag behind as everything got significantly buffed. Perhaps incidental increases in bards buffing will help improve them some. I'm actually loath to improve Swashbuckler, because I actually think they were developed as OP, but since then everything has become OP from my perspective.

WARCHANTER
Are they basically a CC tree now. Hopefully this new capstone will make their CC topline. They should also provide topline buffs- this is where I would like to see buff improvements.

SPELLSINGER
My main was a CC/Heal spellsinger for literally 10ish years. I gave up on it this year. The dps and CC is too limited in epic Reaper play - basically a joke to play. They need significant work. Remove the selectors, allow all the SLAs to be chosen. Improve Reverberate. Improve dps massively. People are complaining about sorc dps and there is no comparison. Improve the CC casting options - allow them to CC a variety of mobs. Basically have a Spellsinger bring: OK dps, decent buffing, decent CC, decent healing to a party. Not topline, but works in all those roles if geared/speced.

FATESINGER
Needs a massive improvement. Don't necessarily improve the bard's dps with this - other trees do that. Improve the buffing/debuffing/CC - make it really bardie. Change the capstone to buffing/debuffing. More flavour than a dps capstone.

.

More or less what i want to say also. Plz consider, well thought imho.

[LT218]

The Healing/Repair/Negative amp is part of Inspire Greatness, which automatically hits all of your party members in a large AoE around you every 10 seconds. The Heal over Time component of Sustaining Song is what needs special attention to avoid sticking the wrong heal over time in the wrong place.

Leave the multi-amp buff on the AoE song/aura and split the heal out to it's own, single-target, non-aura song?

If you really wanted to throw bards a bone, split the heal to it's own heal-over-time and make it a bit stronger, like Druid's vigor or renewal line. Since the number of casts would be limited by the number of song charges the bard has, it doesn't seem like increasing it's power a decent bit would be unreasonable. That would also give bards a reason to consider taking feats and destiny stuff that increased the number of songs, and thus encourage them to be more bardy.

[elvesunited]

If the spellsinger was given a multi-selector for sustaining song. 1) Positive healing only, but area effect 2) single target, but positive on fleshy, negative on pale, repair on warforged .....

I can't help to think the pale masters would be left out in the cold.

Though it seems odd this is a problem. Groups aren't getting damaged by palemaster death auras and Palemaster's aren't getting killed by friendly mass heals.

Personally I almost never do individual bard song buffs only group ones.

Since songs are being updated can enthrallment be fixed so it effects everything that fascinate does?

[Requiro]

Hello! <snip>

Hello.
Great work Devs - it's huge changes. Great idea overall. IMO it's require some adjustment but, again, it's move to good direction.

Some question:
- Tick on Aria (AOE) buff is 10 second. And for how long buff will stay on characters?
- What about songs that are not mention in first post?
- What about Enhancements tree?
- Bonus to Inspire Courage from Warchanter are from cores or Tier 1?

Because it's huge changes, I need some time to get this all right, and need information above to get big picture about it.

[Rull]

I'd prefer singing different songs (all of them AoE).
The limiting factor should be songs/rest, not singing time.
I'd like to see bards actively choosing which songs they have up (for everyone) depending on the challenge they face.
If I were to implement it it would be something along the lines of a self-only buff with a duration of a couple of minutes, which radiates an aura. Instead of an either an always-active aura or an AoE buff where everyone has to be present at that time. And I would apply this to every song to increase consistency.

Buy yeah, "most songs as an aura instead and some targeted songs" will work slightly better than what we have now.

Though the only change I really care about is the fear part of the GH-song getting fixed. It was useless since you had to cast GH 12 times anyway, so yay!

--edit-- upon reading better, I change my mind 180 degrees.
This is just a huge nerf to spell song trance and song of arcane might!

Personly I just sing 3 songs, Inspire Courage, Trance and Might, and be done with it.
I didn't bother with ANY of the single target songs because, well, they were single target.

Now I have to sing 12 times to achieve the same result? I thought this was to be a QoL improvement :-(

Why include Trance and Might in Bardic Inspiration instead of in the Aria?
I don't understand this at all.

[Lynnabel]

Hey guys! We've heard you loud and clear about the loss of Sustaining Song as a directional heal, and are just going to give you the best of both worlds. Boast, the not so memorable temp HP single shot song from Warchanter has been revamped into the following:

Soothing Song: Sing a brief song to apply a small positive heal to your target and nearby party members.

This will play exactly like the old Sustaining Song did, but with no lingering heal over time. It's also only T2 in Warchanter, so not completely out of reach in the earliest portions of the game. If you'd still like that tasty tasty super long heal over time, it's right where Sustaining Song used to be, and if you want the same utility in a pinch Sustaining Song used to have you can sing this song instead

Behind the scenes, I'm swiping the actual effect and scaling 1:1, as well as its directional targeting and range, so your numbers and gameplay feel should be exactly the same before and after this shuffle. It's in Warchanter because there isn't room in Spellsinger and Boast is kinda dumb so we're just gonna bend some rules so you guys can get the best of both worlds.



Completely unrelated, when you use Bardic Inspiration it now randomly picks one of the available bardic music sound loops to play, so expect a little bit more musical variety when you're passing out buffs

[SpartanKiller13]

Hey guys! We've heard you loud and clear about the loss of Sustaining Song as a directional heal, and are just going to give you the best of both worlds. Boast, the not so memorable temp HP single shot song from Warchanter has been revamped into the following:

Soothing Song: Sing a brief song to apply a small positive heal to your target and nearby party members.

Completely unrelated, when you use Bardic Inspiration it now randomly picks one of the available bardic music sound loops to play, so expect a little bit more musical variety when you're passing out buffs

Sweet, thanks! Both of those things are awesome, and hopefully should make the rest of the naysayers happy

Is Soothing Song going to cost a song, or just a cooldown, or some Spell Points etc?

[Lynnabel]

Sweet, thanks! Both of those things are awesome, and hopefully should make the rest of the naysayers happy

Is Soothing Song going to cost a song, or just a cooldown, or some Spell Points etc?

It's a really hacky copy and paste of the back end of Sustaining Song, so whatever Sustaining Song used to cost, this will cost :P

[elvesunited]

This will play exactly like the old Sustaining Song did, but with no lingering heal over time. It's also only T2 in Warchanter, so not completely out of reach in the earliest portions of the game. If you'd still like that tasty tasty super long heal over time, it's right where Sustaining Song used to be, and if you want the same utility in a pinch Sustaining Song used to have you can sing this song instead

Sweet, thanks! Both of those things are awesome, and hopefully should make the rest of the naysayers happy

Is Soothing Song going to cost a song, or just a cooldown, or some Spell Points etc?

43 AP Swashbuckler
31 AP Spellsinger
6 AP Dragonborn

Sigh .......