Best Of

Played bard throughout phase 1 and 2, just gonna drop some feedback.

Ill start by saying that right now, bards damage is too high. Its very fun to have healing, cc, mobility AND a lot of damage, but its obviously very unballanced. An overall nerf of damage on some of the abilities, especially resonant weapon menacing melody proc is very needed.

Melodies:
One aspect of bard that i really like is the idea of switching melodies based on what the group needs at the time. Sadly this is never a viable playstyle right now in my opinion, as you simply cannot justify to spend more than at MAX 2 skillpoints into melodies (i understand this is subjective). All the other abilities are simply way way more important to take compared to more melodies. This, and the fact that if you get as much as breathed on the melody gets cancelled, make them not very good to spec. I think this is a shame. I wish the melodies were more integrated into the base kit of the bard. There are like 2 more skills/mechanics that interface with what melody you are playing, those being resonant weapon and song mastery. Neither of these will ever be used to their full potential if youre locked into just having 1 or at most 2 melodies, you just spec them to only have that 1 proc or buff, instead of actually using the multiple different synergies.
I understand that there should be specialization and I fully agree with that, i just dont think it should be within the melodies.

Theres 1 skill i really wish was added to the bard. A skill called something like "Amplify", that will (significantly) boost the effect of your active melodies x % for x amount of time. I think this would be a fun skill that requires timing and a good overview of the fight to use. Its basically turning crescendo from a passive into an active.
I know that some of the themes have the effect that your melody is boosted, but this doesnt work for all of them and doesnt feel the same.
I think adding a skill like this, removing crescendo as a spec option and making counterpoint default behavior would be more fun.

Sagas:
Next up sagas. Currently i dont even have tier 1 sagas specced. They feel pretty underwhelming for them being the bard "utlimate ability" type of deal. The gravity and pantheon sagas have some use in PvE (and pvp if you are good enough to time your engage with picking up pantheon buffs), but its just not worth investing 3 skillpoints into it for you to have it specced at all times. Its just a spec into it real quick and back out untill you need it again, this goes for all sagas.

Others have already posted this, but il reiterate that in combination with the sagas themselves being underwhelming, its just not worth spending your themes on them. Its much better to keep the themes for their invididual buffs. And once again, its hard to justify having more than 1 theme specced with how good all other abilities are.

Another factor contributing to sagas feeling underwhelming is that fights will never last 1.5 minutes. I hope this changes in the future, but right now best u can do is just build up a saga before a fight, but by the time you would be in a position to press it (you have to press other better abilities first), the fight is over and its just useless.

The same issue that melodies have also applies to sagas. You have this interesting mechanic that has different outcomes based on the actions you take, but at the moment i cant justify to take 1 of each theme, as its just a waste, resulting in the saga ability becomming quite static, instead of dynamic which i think its meant to be.

Im not entirely sure how to fix this in the case of the sagas.

Resonant weapon:
Im a bit torn on resonant weapon. Its one of the main contributers to bards damage beeing ridiculous right now, so the menacing melody proc needs to get nerfed 100%. It feels good to proc the stacks regardless of which melody is active, but as ive stated above, youre only ever really gonna have 1 or at MOST 2 melodies available to you, so most of the time youre only utilizing 20% of the mechanic at once and theres no real room for decision making. If you could justify having all melodies speced at all times (or if they were just integrated into the base kit) i think resonant weapon would be more fun.

General bard abilities
I absolutely love all the other bard abilities and passives. They all feel great to press and use, can have huge impact on fights and really allow bard to be a super fun support class. Im excited to see what additional skills and passives we will get further down the line, and how the augments will change them!

Main takeaways:

1. Overall im super happy with the bards kit, most abilities are great and im having a lot of fun playing the class!
2. I dont find it fun that im being forced to specialize into melodies. There are many mechanics and abilities that interface with your active melody, and if youre pretty much locked into only having 1 or 2 specced at a time, youre turning these very fun and interesting abilities and mechanics that should allow you to make choices WITHIN the mechanic, into a static skillpoint spec that does 1 thing only for you, instead of letting you make use of the dynamic nature of the mechanic.
   Give access to all melodies in the base kit without having to spend skillpoints
3. I think specialization within the kit should be moved away from themes and (especially) melodies, to other things like cc, healing, mobility etc by adding a couple more abilities and passives, and integrating melodies and themes into the base kit more.