Devs: Please give caster bards some love

[Lynnabel]

To flesh out shores11 comment, Bards get level 6 spells and 15 BAB. By the rules they should be roughly 2/3 of a full caster class and 3/4 of a martial class. The problem is the way DDO has them implemented they end up seriously gimped at closer to 1/5 caster (dps) and 1/2 martial (dps).

Then there's their buffs. The +4 damage from Inspire Courage was crazy awesome when the max level was 20 and finding an item with +6 Constitution was good. Nowadays their buffs aren't even icing on the cake though. That +4 damage from Inspire Courage isn't even on the radar when classes already have over +300 damage. The whole class needs a serious overhaul to be brought up to par for modern times.

I slightly disagree with the second part of this. I'm more inclined to believe that any hypothetical problem with Bard's current buffs is not their current numbers, but the hypothetical +300 damage it's competing against.

[Fivetigers33]

I slightly disagree with the second part of this. I'm more inclined to believe that any hypothetical problem with Bard's current buffs is not their current numbers, but the hypothetical +300 damage it's competing against.

There's nothing hypothecitcal about +300 Damage. This pic is from months ago and could have broken 300 if my only goal was +300 damage.



And according to this guy's build, he's at +313.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...Kensei-Fighter

[Lynnabel]

There's nothing hypothecitcal about +300 Damage. This pic is from months ago and could have broken 300 if my only goal was +300 damage.

Mind PMing me your breakdown? I'm stuck in on an unrelated implementation problem and could use the distraction :/

[Grace_ana]

Mind PMing me your breakdown? I'm stuck in on an unrelated implementation problem and could use the distraction :/

You know what would be an awesome distraction?









Making caster bards better

[apocaladle]

Mind PMing me your breakdown? I'm stuck in on an unrelated implementation problem and could use the distraction :/

It seems like you are a bit out of touch when it comes to the hyper inflation of player power in the game.

People casually solo r10 quests and its not just a few people doing it anymore.

I am sad to see that the player council has not really done it's job. I am not trying to attack them as I'm sure they did their best but although a lot of playstyles are closer to being balanced to each other, some are still super trash but the biggest 2 issues in the game currently in my opinion is the collosal power difference between new players and ones with past lives/reaper and the second is the split player base between so many levels, difficulties and servers.

Heres hoping things will get better in the future.

[Soulfurnace]

Mind PMing me your breakdown? I'm stuck in on an unrelated implementation problem and could use the distraction :/

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...Kensei-Fighter

Nothing fancy - pure fighter, 310-313 damage with an additional twist. Breaks down every point of strength, and every point of damage, and then the base Baz damage.

People don't often share their splits because anything good, even not top-tier, will get nerfed by SSG. Long standing problem that leads to more secretive builds.

[losian2]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...Kensei-Fighter

Nothing fancy - pure fighter, 310-313 damage with an additional twist. Breaks down every point of strength, and every point of damage, and then the base Baz damage.

People don't often share their splits because anything good, even not top-tier, will get nerfed by SSG. Long standing problem that leads to more secretive builds.

See, this is the problem with MMO communities now. Making any change that makes players less powerful is always a "nerf." If a skill was bugged and one-shotted any mob people would still whine about "nerfing it," because people are more worried about personal progress and some sense of made up "power" than for the game itself. Things that are too good should be adjusted, that's balancing and not nerfing. This whole "wah wah nerf" mantra just makes playerbases kinda feel childish and acts like devs are "out to get them." It's kinda silly.

The "long standing problem" is that people abuse obviously broken combinations and builds and hide it for personal gain because they don't care about the game or game experience, only about getting a bigger number faster. Many of these "good" builds use obvious bugs and mechanics that clearly don't work as read or intended - that's called exploiting in my book, but maybe that's just me. The whole "they made it work that way so it's not my fault for abusing it" is just a lame attempt to hand wave away the fact of obviously cheating, whether or not most will admit it.

[LT218]

There's nothing hypothecitcal about +300 Damage. This pic is from months ago and could have broken 300 if my only goal was +300 damage.



And according to this guy's build, he's at +313.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...Kensei-Fighter

Mind PMing me your breakdown? I'm stuck in on an unrelated implementation problem and could use the distraction :/

@Fivetigers33 Wouldn't recommend doing that if you don't want 2HF builds nerfed. As a reminder, SSG are grandmaster level corrupters of wishes.

[peng]

• Give bards a way to sing their bardic inspiration as an aoe. Maybe make it part of the Improved Bardic Inspiration feat, taking 4 song uses in a party, or 8 in a raid. If no aoe, make it 2-3 times faster. As someone who regularly raids with my spellsinger, I can *feel* people champing at the bit to get the raid started while I sing to everyone... one. by. one. You can say it only takes 6 seconds per person all you want, but when you have groups that complete quests in 5-10 minutes (or less) and raids in under 20, that's a not insignificant fraction of the time spent there. In zerg groups, I will often still be singing to people after they've killed the first few groups of mobs.
• Make fascinate take less time to sing, and have a clearer auditory cue when it goes off and clearer visuals on the fascinated mobs. I have pretty much stopped using fascinate, despite its ability to get a higher DC than spells. It feels like half the time I try to use it, I die before I finish singing, or someone aoes the mobs and breaks fascinate as soon as I do finish. (Incidentally, there is 1 single-target damage sla in spellsinger. There are no other single-target sources of spell damage for a bard, while they do have 4 aoe damage spells, in addition to another 2 aoe damage slas in spellsinger. And all the buffs to fascinate, an aoe mesmerize that's broken on damage, are in the spellsinger tree, a tree which seems to specialize in aoe spell damage. Food for thought.)
• On the topic of fascinate, make Enthrallment add to fascinate instead of being something separate, or have all the things that work with fascinate also work with enthrallment (like the extra possible targets from spellsinger cores, or sharp note damage bonus).
• Lower AP costs in *all* bard trees, particularly having multiple multitier enhancements in any tier, but especially t5 (warchanter, spellsinger), or anything with 2-3 tiers that costs 2 ap per tier (horn of thunder/mass hold in spellsinger; sword dance, action boost, resonant arms, on the mark, battering barrage, and second skin from swashbuckler; northwind in warchanter). To compare: aside from the cores, all 3 alchemist trees have 50 or 52 total ap each, 7 or 8 of which are in t5. The bard trees have 70 or 73 ap each, 11-16 of which are in t5.
• Give sonic spells better scaling, comparable to other sorc/wiz/alch spells.
• Give sonic bonuses comparable to LGS and/or ravenloft belts, or lower those bonuses/change their type.
• Lower the cooldown on mass hold sla to *at most* 12 seconds, preferably 6-10.
• Move horn of thunder to spellsinger capstone, replacing it with greater shout sla in t5. Give horn of thunder lvl 9 spell scaling and be either entirely sonic damage, or add elec crit bonuses to cores as well..
• Fix arcane augmentation to stack with items (it's currently overwritten by any item that boosts spell levels, whether or not you have spells that item affects).
• Let sustaining song scale with level (maybe 1d2 plus 1d2 per 5 bard+epic levels or 6 character levels) and lock in its spellpower values when you sing. It's currently 2d3 and rechecks your spellpower before every tick.
• Give soothing song a much faster sing time.
• Some sort of aoe cc option besides fascinate for mobs immune to charm/hold/stun (eg undead, constructs, etc)

[Lynnabel]

@Fivetigers33 Wouldn't recommend doing that if you don't want 2HF builds nerfed. As a reminder, SSG are grandmaster level corrupters of wishes.

I was just trying to make conversation, I've been rewriting tooltip code since 11AM and needed the break. This kind of mentality puts us designers at an adversarial relationship when we need to all be on the same team.

[nokowi]

I was just trying to make conversation, I've been rewriting tooltip code since 11AM and needed the break. This kind of mentality puts us designers at an adversarial relationship when we need to all be on the same team.

It's tough when you drop builds without a single conversation.

Doesn't seem like you care much.

[Lynnabel]

It's tough when you drop builds without a single conversation.

Doesn't seem like you care much.

I care a lot about DDO. More than I can really express. I'm hurt that you'd say this and I'm done with this thread now.

[Fivetigers33]

@Fivetigers33 Wouldn't recommend doing that if you don't want 2HF builds nerfed. As a reminder, SSG are grandmaster level corrupters of wishes.

I will sacrifice OP 2H Damage numbers in the name of gimpy bards everywhere. Sorry. There was no secret sauce in that 300 damage though, mostly just 2HF feats.

[Soulfurnace]

See, this is the problem with MMO communities now. Making any change that makes players less powerful is always a "nerf." If a skill was bugged and one-shotted any mob people would still whine about "nerfing it," because people are more worried about personal progress and some sense of made up "power" than for the game itself. Things that are too good should be adjusted, that's balancing and not nerfing. This whole "wah wah nerf" mantra just makes playerbases kinda feel childish and acts like devs are "out to get them." It's kinda silly.

The "long standing problem" is that people abuse obviously broken combinations and builds and hide it for personal gain because they don't care about the game or game experience, only about getting a bigger number faster. Many of these "good" builds use obvious bugs and mechanics that clearly don't work as read or intended - that's called exploiting in my book, but maybe that's just me. The whole "they made it work that way so it's not my fault for abusing it" is just a lame attempt to hand wave away the fact of obviously cheating, whether or not most will admit it.

Welcome to DDO, you must be new.

If they wanted to fix things that are overpowered, they'd fix alchs. They don't, because that's not what they're after. Melees aren't even overpowered, but that'll get another nerf anyway because they're more popular than no-skilled gameplay like alchs, sorcs, etc.

[ggmarquez]

I will sacrifice OP 2H Damage numbers in the name of gimpy bards everywhere.

the hero we need. not the hero we deserve.

[nokowi]

Welcome to DDO, you must be new.

If they wanted to fix things that are overpowered, they'd fix alchs. They don't, because that's not what they're after. Melees aren't even overpowered, but that'll get another nerf anyway because they're more popular than no-skilled gameplay like alchs, sorcs, etc.

More importantly, they've designed an entire game around picking winners and losers by adjusting damage all over the place, while ignoring every player that says "this is what actually makes playing the game fun for me". It's a toxic design process that will continue until SSG focuses on what makes playing the game fun, and how to create systems that are sustainable.

New players playing the same amount should be able to reasonably catch up to vets in 1-3 years of play, and and endgame needs becomes about player skill and gameplay choices. Each new system should be a race based on players ability to achieve the new (not old) things, and to find best builds. Giving vets a car 5x faster than new players is unsustainable design, and totally unnecessary. Good players will outperform just fine in a fair race.

DDO's player vs enemy match up is weak (poor AI, easy to game the system, bugs), and supporting player vs player competition (who actually makes better choices) will make the game much more interesting and sustainable in the long term. This means more equal footing, more unique play styles, more unique things for each class, and much less forcing one way to play the game - meta monstrosity.

D&D is about finding items, questing and gaining power. It's not about having your build constantly buffed or nerfed and "winning" by switching to the easiest thing, or having players bicker over who has it easiest. We can all be on the same team in the former design, but not the latter.

What could a bard do that does not involve higher dps that would make their play more unique and interesting?
- sonic ability that forces enemy casters to make concentration checks to cast spells
- force effects that are used defensively, providing total cover (wall, shield) with tactical and real time placement

- please someone that plays bard list a hundred more.

They need to create play choices, instead of inflating stats. Adding damage should be the last resort in class balance, not the first and only choice. Making their systems scale is important, as it reduces their workload and allows much better game balance. That's where I would be look at dps - how it scales moving forward.

[Chacka_DDO]

• Give bards a way to sing their bardic inspiration as an aoe. Maybe make it part of the Improved Bardic Inspiration feat, taking 4 song uses in a party, or 8 in a raid. If no aoe, make it 2-3 times faster. As someone who regularly raids with my spellsinger, I can *feel* people champing at the bit to get the raid started while I sing to everyone... one. by. one. You can say it only takes 6 seconds per person all you want, but when you have groups that complete quests in 5-10 minutes (or less) and raids in under 20, that's a not insignificant fraction of the time spent there. In zerg groups, I will often still be singing to people after they've killed the first few groups of mobs.
• Make fascinate take less time to sing, and have a clearer auditory cue when it goes off and clearer visuals on the fascinated mobs. I have pretty much stopped using fascinate, despite its ability to get a higher DC than spells. It feels like half the time I try to use it, I die before I finish singing, or someone aoes the mobs and breaks fascinate as soon as I do finish. (Incidentally, there is 1 single-target damage sla in spellsinger. There are no other single-target sources of spell damage for a bard, while they do have 4 aoe damage spells, in addition to another 2 aoe damage slas in spellsinger. And all the buffs to fascinate, an aoe mesmerize that's broken on damage, are in the spellsinger tree, a tree which seems to specialize in aoe spell damage. Food for thought.)
• On the topic of fascinate, make Enthrallment add to fascinate instead of being something separate, or have all the things that work with fascinate also work with enthrallment (like the extra possible targets from spellsinger cores, or sharp note damage bonus).
• Lower AP costs in *all* bard trees, particularly having multiple multitier enhancements in any tier, but especially t5 (warchanter, spellsinger), or anything with 2-3 tiers that costs 2 ap per tier (horn of thunder/mass hold in spellsinger; sword dance, action boost, resonant arms, on the mark, battering barrage, and second skin from swashbuckler; northwind in warchanter). To compare: aside from the cores, all 3 alchemist trees have 50 or 52 total ap each, 7 or 8 of which are in t5. The bard trees have 70 or 73 ap each, 11-16 of which are in t5.
• Give sonic spells better scaling, comparable to other sorc/wiz/alch spells.
• Give sonic bonuses comparable to LGS and/or ravenloft belts, or lower those bonuses/change their type.
• Lower the cooldown on mass hold sla to *at most* 12 seconds, preferably 6-10.
• Move horn of thunder to spellsinger capstone, replacing it with greater shout sla in t5. Give horn of thunder lvl 9 spell scaling and be either entirely sonic damage, or add elec crit bonuses to cores as well..
• Fix arcane augmentation to stack with items (it's currently overwritten by any item that boosts spell levels, whether or not you have spells that item affects).
• Let sustaining song scale with level (maybe 1d2 plus 1d2 per 5 bard+epic levels or 6 character levels) and lock in its spellpower values when you sing. It's currently 2d3 and rechecks your spellpower before every tick.
• Give soothing song a much faster sing time.
• Some sort of aoe cc option besides fascinate for mobs immune to charm/hold/stun (eg undead, constructs, etc)

Very good suggestions IMO and many things I also thought already.
And I want to add some thoughts.

The inspiration should be indeed a mass buff like it was before, from my perspective I wish I had a group version and a single version (so bards can buff each other wich his important in reaper)
But it might have technical reasons that it is not a group song anymore maybe too many effects at once cause lag and the developers dont want such a lag spike.
But if such technical reasons are no issue, please an additional mass version of that song!

With fascination, I'm technically satisfied, IMO if you know-how, a skilled player can make good use of it BUT...
What annoys me often is when the quest designer do a quest there first thought often seems to be how they can make fascination useless by giving monsters orange miniboss status or make them even immune to that effect for no reason (the race and class should not provide such an immunity),
In addition, fascination lasts not long enough especially for a splash bard in reaper, the duration should be based on the perform skill (IMO)
This and the problems you describe show that fascination needs a lot of player skill to use it effectively and for this reason, I foremost wish that the developers would stop to make it often enough even totally useless or nerf it (in reaper).

My idea for making fascination a bit better and also add a fun factor to this ability is that monsters could get sleep traits when they are fascinated.
I would really love it when I lay a bunch of monsters to sleep because it would be great fun for me.
The next point is that it is visually much more noticeable on most monsters if they appear as sleeping on your screen rather than only standing around with musical notes flying around the head.
And last but not least, if a monster sleeps the first hit on it adds helpless damage so a bard knows at least his fascination has actually an effect even if the party members are not skilled enough or too careless to make use of it.

Personally, I dislike Spell-Like Abilities and in my opinion, it needs to find another way to improve certainly spells like the real spells could get less cooldown or faster casting or a spell point discount instead of adding the same spell as SLA.
And if you want to give a new spell to a bard (or other class) add this spell to the spellbook as a real spell instead of having an enhancement for it (aka SLA).
Therefore bards should get e.g. mass hold as the real spell and cast it with the same speed as a wizard.

The spell singer songs could provide like 25 spell power and if it increases the caster level it should also increase the maximum caster level to ensure this effect actually does something (and not only increasing the duration of buff spells by one minute).
This would be still not enough to actually notice increased damage but at least you know this song does something good for you.

Actually, I think sustaining song is very good if not too good all I wish here is that all classes with the heal spell have a regeneration effect available with similar power (not stacking with sustaining song) e.g. clerics have the Divine Healing enhancement but it is by FAR not powerful enough and also lasts by far not long enough.
Druids have the vigor spells with the same problem.
Favored Souls should get something like Divine Healing but if possible thematically different.

[Chacka_DDO]

I care a lot about DDO. More than I can really express. I'm hurt that you'd say this and I'm done with this thread now.

At first, I'm not even sure you have personally attacked unfortunately the word you can mean you as a person or you to address a group.
In German, we have different words for these different cases which can be very helpful to prevent miscommunication.
But if it helps I have from you (as a person) very high respect and my impression is you care a lot if not already too much for DDO.

But I have often the feeling the developers (not Lynnabel in this case) dont respect players enough and dont see that players have in some questions even more competence and expertise for DDO than developers already for the reason that they see the game from another perspective.

[fatherpirate]

Mind PMing me your breakdown? I'm stuck in on an unrelated implementation problem and could use the distraction :/

Welcome to what the game is REALLY like since you unleashed the unstoppable power creep (creep? more like a full run)
monster called 'Reapers'.

it has elevated a few builds making anything else - trash.

Don't worry, with the new expansion, certain builds will be doing +1000 Damage easy.

have fun trying to stuff that demon back into a bottle.

[Bacab]

To flesh out shores11 comment, Bards get level 6 spells and 15 BAB. By the rules they should be roughly 2/3 of a full caster class and 3/4 of a martial class. The problem is the way DDO has them implemented they end up seriously gimped at closer to 1/5 caster (dps) and 1/2 martial (dps).

Then there's their buffs. The +4 damage from Inspire Courage was crazy awesome when the max level was 20 and finding an item with +6 Constitution was good. Nowadays their buffs aren't even icing on the cake though. That +4 damage from Inspire Courage isn't even on the radar when classes already have over +300 damage. The whole class needs a serious overhaul to be brought up to par for modern times.

I agree with this.
I wish that Bard songs gave melee power andd more double strike or fortification bypass.
Not meaning to derail thread about caster bards.
I have enjoyed a bunch of bard lives (old school Warchanter, Spellsinger, Swashbuckler etc)