Early Look: Bard Changes

[Lynnabel]

This looks great! Thank you Lynnabel for all the bard quality of life changes in general!

However, how will the Duration Scaling affect Turn of the Tide in Fatesinger? Right now you can get it to last about 50 seconds to a minute with Lasting Inspiration and other modifiers. Oh and what about Fascinate and Enthrall as well?

Great questions - Turn of the Tide is just gonna get a static 40s duration rather than scale, and Fascinate and Enthrallment will scale duration-wise with the new system (but with much shorter initial duration compared to Inspiration! no 45 minute fascinates for you - sorry!!!).

Turn of the Tide also lost its bizarre 10s global cooldown shift as a part of this, so hopefully it'll be a little easier to use.

[cru121]

Sustaining Song:

We're going to give it to every Bard as a feat at level 8, regardless of tree. There is a lot of gameplay difference between a Spellsinger and a Warchanter and a Swashbuckler, but all Bards can heal. Gating a very simple area heal to a specific tree cuts a lot of legitimate party playing Bards out from access to scaling area healing, and making it globally accessible makes it a lot easier for Bards to stay on top of group HP values.

Nice. This also makes room in tier 4 of spellsinger for some tasty new overpowered ability.

[Hipparan]

Sustaining Song:

We're going to give it to every Bard as a feat at level 8, regardless of tree. There is a lot of gameplay difference between a Spellsinger and a Warchanter and a Swashbuckler, but all Bards can heal. Gating a very simple area heal to a specific tree cuts a lot of legitimate party playing Bards out from access to scaling area healing, and making it globally accessible makes it a lot easier for Bards to stay on top of group HP values.

I mean, Bards all have access to Cure Light Wounds, Mass and Cure Moderate Wounds, Mass, but I guess I can see where you're coming from. It would just be nice if Spellsingers got a boost since every Bard will now get one of their most interesting features.

Other people have mentioned similar things, but what about allowing the SLA multiselectors to work like Evocation IV: Fire Shield from Archmage? You select the one enhancement from the tree, but in your list of enhancements you get both SLAs. Spellsinger just feels like a very underpowered tree now.

Just to clarify though, are we talking about the ability that's in the Spellsinger tree or are we talking about the Soothing Song variant that was mentioned for Warchanters?

Duration Scaling:

As of this revamp, Bard songs will last 5 minutes, plus 30 seconds per Bard level. Abilities that gave a percentage increase to the duration of your Bard songs will now add 1 effective Bard level for song duration per 10% the ability used to give. For example, a 20% increase will work out to be an extra minute of time, and a 60% increase will shake out to 3 minutes. We're also going to tag the new feat Improved Bardic Music to grant you an extra minute (2 effective levels) to your Songs, and sprinkle some more duration modification around Spellsinger and Fatesinger to bring up the duration for dedicated party players. Furthermore, anything that adds something to Bardic Inspiration from your trees (So Frolic, Prodigy rank 3, Spell Song Vigor) will add 1 effective Bard level.

We're going to aim it so that a Bard split will still have some buffer time (it's possible to get to 9.5 minutes of duration with just 3 levels of Bard with this system (5 minute base + 1.5 minutes from bard levels + 3 minutes from Lingering Songs in Spellsinger)) but a pure Bard that really shoots for the moon will end up comparable where they are right now in duration (5 minutes base + 10 minutes bard level + 3 minutes Lingering Songs + 1 minute Virtuoso + 1 minute Improved Bardic Music + 2.5 minutes Lasting Inspiration + 1 minute Echoes stance + 6 minutes from Spellsinger Cores (new) (not including the previously added 1m from Virtuoso) + 6 minutes from Fatesinger Cores (new) + 5.5 minutes from each Spellsinger ability that adds to Inspiration) means that you'll end up at 41 minutes in Fatesinger, 34 minutes in any other Destiny assuming no twists.

Please let us know what you think, but keep in mind that the duration scaling (whatever it ends up being) will likely not return to a percentage modifier. Percentage modifiers in DDO are messy, unintuitive, technically crunchy, and hard to display to a player. We're willing to push the numbers around in most directions, as long as Bard splits don't end up with no duration at all and pure Bards end up with more than enough to keep them happy

I like the duration changes. I appreciate throwing Spellsinger a little love by allowing their abilities to add onto the duration.

[InfraRiot]

Great questions - Turn of the Tide is just gonna get a static 40s duration rather than scale, and Fascinate and Enthrallment will scale duration-wise with the new system (but with much shorter initial duration compared to Inspiration! no 45 minute fascinates for you - sorry!!!).

Turn of the Tide also lost its bizarre 10s global cooldown shift as a part of this, so hopefully it'll be a little easier to use.

Thanks for clarifying and yes 45 min fascinate would be a bit over the top.

Could you please buff Turn of the Tide to last 1 minute which would give it a de facto cooldown of 5 minutes? It is quite a limited ability so some extra duration would be nice. Thanks for getting rid of the global cooldown!

Appreciate if you could comment Lasting Inspiration. With the changes it will be +3 songs and +2.5 minutes song duration, which probably won't be worth it because the ED feats are quite tight. Maybe something fun/useful could be added to it?

[HastyPudding]

Hey guys! This is gonna be a long post so bear with me~

Sustaining Song:

We're going to give it to every Bard as a feat at level 8, regardless of tree. There is a lot of gameplay difference between a Spellsinger and a Warchanter and a Swashbuckler, but all Bards can heal. Gating a very simple area heal to a specific tree cuts a lot of legitimate party playing Bards out from access to scaling area healing, and making it globally accessible makes it a lot easier for Bards to stay on top of group HP values.

Boast:

Fine, fine, you guys like it so it won't go away. It's back to what it was, no changes at all

Duration Scaling:

As of this revamp, Bard songs will last 5 minutes, plus 30 seconds per Bard level. Abilities that gave a percentage increase to the duration of your Bard songs will now add 1 effective Bard level for song duration per 10% the ability used to give. For example, a 20% increase will work out to be an extra minute of time, and a 60% increase will shake out to 3 minutes. We're also going to tag the new feat Improved Bardic Music to grant you an extra minute (2 effective levels) to your Songs, and sprinkle some more duration modification around Spellsinger and Fatesinger to bring up the duration for dedicated party players. Furthermore, anything that adds something to Bardic Inspiration from your trees (So Frolic, Prodigy rank 3, Spell Song Vigor) will add 1 effective Bard level.

We're going to aim it so that a Bard split will still have some buffer time (it's possible to get to 9.5 minutes of duration with just 3 levels of Bard with this system (5 minute base + 1.5 minutes from bard levels + 3 minutes from Lingering Songs in Spellsinger)) but a pure Bard that really shoots for the moon will end up comparable where they are right now in duration (5 minutes base + 10 minutes bard level + 3 minutes Lingering Songs + 1 minute Virtuoso + 1 minute Improved Bardic Music + 2.5 minutes Lasting Inspiration + 1 minute Echoes stance + 6 minutes from Spellsinger Cores (new) (not including the previously added 1m from Virtuoso) + 6 minutes from Fatesinger Cores (new) + 5.5 minutes from each Spellsinger ability that adds to Inspiration) means that you'll end up at 41 minutes in Fatesinger, 34 minutes in any other Destiny assuming no twists.

Please let us know what you think, but keep in mind that the duration scaling (whatever it ends up being) will likely not return to a percentage modifier. Percentage modifiers in DDO are messy, unintuitive, technically crunchy, and hard to display to a player. We're willing to push the numbers around in most directions, as long as Bard splits don't end up with no duration at all and pure Bards end up with more than enough to keep them happy

Why are we keeping boast, again? I thought the low temp HP didn't stack with the new stuff?

Also, now that sustaining song is a granted feat, what goes in the spellsinger tree now that there's a hole?

[Lynnabel]

Why are we keeping boast, again? I thought the low temp HP didn't stack with the new stuff?

Also, now that sustaining song is a granted feat, what goes in the spellsinger tree now that there's a hole?

People like Boast as-is, and a lot of people made their voice heard on that. I don't want to mess with a good thing

Spellsinger T4 is already the heal over time Bardic Inspiration melody.

[SerPounce]

This right here demonstrates more clearly than anything I've ever seen just how clueless the DDO developers are. There are only a few hundred people left playing DDO, all of which are the hardest of the hard core hamster wheel grinders. The people who just want to run the same circles the same way as fast as they can go with as little friction as possible. The people that rarely even stop at a shrine, let alone wait around for any kind of buff, yet for a bard to buff a raid it will take nearly an entire minute! A dungeon party 30 seconds. It truly makes one wonder if the devs have ever seen how this game is played? How their endless XP grind necessitates it to be played. Do they seriously believe people in a party are going to stand around for 30 seconds waiting on bard buffs?

I read this stuff on the forums and I wonder what game you guys are playing. I pug quite a bit and I rarely run into this stuff. Sure people want to run the quest in a pretty timely manner. But this "must zerg, zerg, zerg!!!"?? Most people are pretty understanding and go at a comfortable pace.

I usually have plenty of time to buff before raids as we wait for the last people to show up. Sometimes I'll even start passing low priority stuff because I've got nothing else to do.

Also, you can buff on the go you know, right? Just because someone is starting to clear the first room doesn't mean you have to stop casting buffs. There's just no reason for them to be standing around for buffs when they could be getting things rolling.

[zehnvhex]

Yeah, I like dumping on the devs as much as the next person but the time it takes to buff is really not an issue. I mean I feel that buffs should be inherent and you just get them by being in the same party/group as someone who can cast them (I also feel buffs should use a mana/resource reserve system and not be a resource use, but that's a rant for another time).

I don't know if Lynn has addressed it, but the only big change I'd like to still see is the naming convention of things. Aria sounds cool, sure...but this is not what an aria is. You might as well call it 'Guitar Solo' it makes about as much sense.

[Hipparan]

Yeah, I like dumping on the devs as much as the next person but the time it takes to buff is really not an issue. I mean I feel that buffs should be inherent and you just get them by being in the same party/group as someone who can cast them (I also feel buffs should use a mana/resource reserve system and not be a resource use, but that's a rant for another time).

The time it takes to buff is an issue because if you are expected to buff the party, you might be spending the first room or two of a dungeon making sure every has their buffs while everyone else gets to cast spells/attack enemies/etc. It's the biggest issue with Spellsinger because all of their cool buffing is attached to Bardic Inspiration. I'm willing to bet that on live not many Warchanters will be using Bardic Inspiration except maybe on themselves. A Warchanter can rush into battle with the rest of the melee party members because their strongest buffs are all inherent and affect everyone nearby. A spellsinger has their play time cut short because if they want to use their major enhancement tree features, they have to play a song for each individual member of the party instead of being able to jump into a room with the melees and hold everything.

Sure you could just cast spells at the start and not use your buffs until later, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of having them?

I'll have to see how things go on Lamannia, but my experiences there have only once included actually running with a full raid party. Also, a raid group full of Bards might not be the best place to test how well your character can do as a support character.

[Gratch]

Great questions - Turn of the Tide is just gonna get a static 40s duration rather than scale, and Fascinate and Enthrallment will scale duration-wise with the new system (but with much shorter initial duration compared to Inspiration! no 45 minute fascinates for you - sorry!!!).

Turn of the Tide also lost its bizarre 10s global cooldown shift as a part of this, so hopefully it'll be a little easier to use.

I understand that you're only touching Turn the Tide as it is affected by the bard changes. Sad that bards don't get more uptime out of their own destiny's epic moment anymore. (yes yes I know that Fatesinger doesn't technically belong to bards.)

Hopefully during the upcoming spell damage pass (which is really a high-epic/reaper spell damage pass - spell damage being fine to best-in-show in heroics) - there's also some touching on all of the mostly unused destinies in the arcane sphere.

[Windaar]

Turn of the Tide also lost its bizarre 10s global cooldown shift as a part of this, so hopefully it'll be a little easier to use.

Not sure if anyone asked this already, but is it possible to shorten the cooldown on Turn of the Tide? Considering it is a 40 second buff, I think even half of the current cooldown would be worth it. It is a boost that gives extra damage types, but only against non-bosses (never could figure out why that is).

[Propane]

Hey guys! This is gonna be a long post so bear with me~

Sustaining Song:

We're going to give it to every Bard as a feat at level 8, regardless of tree.

Great idea - 8 is plenty high - I would consider 6 open up some more multiclass splits (12/6/2, 14/6. 8,/6/6, etc//_) I am fine with 8 but any higher and I would be concerned.

[FoliumSakura]

People like Boast as-is, and a lot of people made their voice heard on that. I don't want to mess with a good thing

Spellsinger T4 is already the heal over time Bardic Inspiration melody.

Could we perhaps have bards hide there weapon when singing songs? Looks super funky when your duel swords are sticking through your lute

[Silverleafeon]

Hey guys! This is gonna be a long post so bear with me~

Looking good!

[LrdSlvrhnd]

Could we perhaps have bards hide there weapon when singing songs? Looks super funky when your duel swords are sticking through your lute

Hence the term "shredding with an axe"!

[Paulsrs]

I'm not entirely convinced the SSG development team even plays DDO. If they do, they certainly aren't running high reapers. As so many others pointed out, nobody is going to wait around for an entire minute for a bard to play his/her single-target buffs, especially not when they're this inconsequential (and nobody wants to target a party member, click a single button, wait 5 seconds, click another party member, repeat). I thought that the point of this update was to make bards viable in end-game content. If not, then there's no point to even update them, since end-game (what little this game has to offer) is what players are focusing on. The community is running high reapers regularly. Remember when reaper came out in the not so distant past? They said we wouldn't be running r10 for perhaps YEARS to come. I regularly and routinely run r10s now. House J chain, Ravenloft, Memoirs, Grim. And something I never see in our group? Bards. Sorry, but they're basically useless.

Buffs are a VERY minor part of the game. If you want buffs, you get into a guild with an airship, you click 1 button every few hours, and there, you have your buffs. The only buffs I regularly see getting thrown around are Death Ward, Mass (which now everyone and their sister can cast thanks to WPM loot), and uh... yeah that's about it. Everyone has haste (speed) slotted somewhere, most people got a FOM item, most people have a deathblock item (making Death Ward even less useful), we all got energy resistance from ship buffs. In a game where buffs are nearly extinct, why in the world would I waste a party slot on a buff-based bard?

DPS is highly sought after in high reapers - but bards don't hold a candle to rangers/monks. Killing mobs before they kill the group is important, but more important is getting stuff done in as little time as possible. Few groups use shrines, most people blow through doors and rooms... this is a speed game. "How can I do this with the least amount of effort in the least amount of time." High reaper parties usually look like: 1 tank (usually fighter/arty variant), 1 CC (usually a wizard, sometimes a warlock), 1 healer (a cleric or a FvS. I can't recall the last time a bard healed a r10), and 3 DPS (almost exclusively monks or rangers, cause nearly everything else pales in comparison). There's no room for a bard. What can they offer? +8 damage, and small overtime heals I guess? Even with the passive percentage bonus to damage, it's much more prudent to just grab another melee.

Healing is very important in high reapers (THANK YOU), but what can bards offer that clerics and favored souls cannot? In fact, sustaining song, which is something that's being highly debated here, isn't even useful in high reapers. In that environment, players are getting one or two-shot. Keeping people alive takes quick reflexes and massive heals. Over-time healing is great for Hard and Elite (maybe low reapers, too), but *hint hint* people aren't running those as much anymore. I guess we can take a bard in a raid (out of pity), but certainly not in a 6-man party.

Bard buffs won't be viable until either 1) they are a HECK of a lot better than what was proposed, or 2) you massively nerf the buffing abilities of other classes and guild ships. Honestly, I'd be totally cool with either or both. I rather enjoyed the days where we would buff up at the start of a dungeon in anticipation for what was to come. Anything that adds another layer to the all-too-simplistic and dated framework of DDO is welcome indeed.

What about large boosts to dodge, attack speed, movement speed, weapon damage, melee/ranged/spell power, base damage, to-hit, critical chance, critical multiplier...? No, not +8 damage. Like 15%+. Some new forms of damage mitigation? Better DCs to make them more viable at CC? Extremely powerful, short-duration songs for those boss fights? Better heals to make them more competitive with - yet not equal to - clerics and favored souls. Maybe a song that regenerates party members' Action Boosts? Or a song that reduced all cool-downs by some percentage? Bottom-line: bards need to be able to bring something to the table that no other class can. It has to be something that makes the game more enjoyable. Something that groups will crave. And it can be no small thing. It must be worth giving up a precious melee slot in a party.

They aren't the preferred healers, they aren't the preferred DPS, they aren't the preferred CC, and nobody needs buffs. They truly are the jack-of-all-trades (barely) and master of none. But in a game of min/maxing and party optimization, they just don't fit. The changes proposed are not going to make bards useful. They need to be a heck of a lot more drastic. I do hope that bards make a come-back; I'd love to see something other than monks and rangers filling up groups. We're just not quite there yet.

[Damian]

Great questions - Turn of the Tide is just gonna get a static 40s duration rather than scale, and Fascinate and Enthrallment will scale duration-wise with the new system (but with much shorter initial duration compared to Inspiration! no 45 minute fascinates for you - sorry!!!).

Turn of the Tide also lost its bizarre 10s global cooldown shift as a part of this, so hopefully it'll be a little easier to use.

Don't want to beat a dead horse but will you fix Enthrallment as well? (so it fascinates oozes, undead, consctructs and vermin if we invested in the skills)?

[shinsirhc]

Completely unrelated but I'm fixing that stupid 10 second global cooldown bug right now.

Not sure if anyone asked this already, but is it possible to shorten the cooldown on Turn of the Tide? Considering it is a 40 second buff, I think even half of the current cooldown would be worth it. It is a boost that gives extra damage types, but only against non-bosses (never could figure out why that is).

This please reduce the cooldown of Turn The Tide please

[SerPounce]

I'm not entirely convinced the SSG development team even plays DDO. If they do, they certainly aren't running high reapers. As so many others pointed out, nobody is going to wait around for an entire minute for a bard to play his/her single-target buffs, especially not when they're this inconsequential (and nobody wants to target a party member, click a single button, wait 5 seconds, click another party member, repeat). I thought that the point of this update was to make bards viable in end-game content. If not, then there's no point to even update them, since end-game (what little this game has to offer) is what players are focusing on. The community is running high reapers regularly. Remember when reaper came out in the not so distant past? They said we wouldn't be running r10 for perhaps YEARS to come. I regularly and routinely run r10s now. House J chain, Ravenloft, Memoirs, Grim. And something I never see in our group? Bards. Sorry, but they're basically useless.

Buffs are a VERY minor part of the game. If you want buffs, you get into a guild with an airship, you click 1 button every few hours, and there, you have your buffs. The only buffs I regularly see getting thrown around are Death Ward, Mass (which now everyone and their sister can cast thanks to WPM loot), and uh... yeah that's about it. Everyone has haste (speed) slotted somewhere, most people got a FOM item, most people have a deathblock item (making Death Ward even less useful), we all got energy resistance from ship buffs. In a game where buffs are nearly extinct, why in the world would I waste a party slot on a buff-based bard?

DPS is highly sought after in high reapers - but bards don't hold a candle to rangers/monks. Killing mobs before they kill the group is important, but more important is getting stuff done in as little time as possible. Few groups use shrines, most people blow through doors and rooms... this is a speed game. "How can I do this with the least amount of effort in the least amount of time." High reaper parties usually look like: 1 tank (usually fighter/arty variant), 1 CC (usually a wizard, sometimes a warlock), 1 healer (a cleric or a FvS. I can't recall the last time a bard healed a r10), and 3 DPS (almost exclusively monks or rangers, cause nearly everything else pales in comparison). There's no room for a bard. What can they offer? +8 damage, and small overtime heals I guess? Even with the passive percentage bonus to damage, it's much more prudent to just grab another melee.

Healing is very important in high reapers (THANK YOU), but what can bards offer that clerics and favored souls cannot? In fact, sustaining song, which is something that's being highly debated here, isn't even useful in high reapers. In that environment, players are getting one or two-shot. Keeping people alive takes quick reflexes and massive heals. Over-time healing is great for Hard and Elite (maybe low reapers, too), but *hint hint* people aren't running those as much anymore. I guess we can take a bard in a raid (out of pity), but certainly not in a 6-man party.

.

Dang, I'm glad I don't play whatever game you're playing, it doesn't sound fun at all.

[Ralmeth]

Dang, I'm glad I don't play whatever game you're playing, it doesn't sound fun at all.

/Agreed.