This week's Compilation is about Bards. As always, references have been taken only from this
official thread and this
unofficial(?) thread.
Disclaimer: While I don't play Bard, I do have a Bard in my group. This week, I have not made a 'requests' thread because my group's Bard has no requests outside of things that were noted from the threads. This makes it harder to check for bias, but the two posters from whom many of the structure points will be taken,
@maouw and
@daveywavey, are active enough that they may comment to correct and negate any biases that slip in.
Things that Bard-interested people wanted, mostly easy to sort compared to other threads so far:
1. One Tellsword wanted ground circle buffs. Another wanted to be like Chanter from Aion. Another wanted this class.
2. One Magician wanted mobility. Another wanted to increase resistances. Another wanted wind magic.
3. One Siren wanted to buff resistances and elemental resistances. Another wanted hard CC and rhythm strikes. Another wanted damage reduction augments. Yet another wanted to actually tank a bit. Another wanted this class. Another provided considerable feedback which was used to build the schema (
@daveywavey ).
4. One Soul Weaver wanted stances. Another wanted to be off-healer. They were also willing to be a Song Warden. Two others wanted to siphon life from enemies. Another wanted to link allied health pools. Six others wanted this class.
5. One Trickster wanted some damage abilities and ventriloquism. One other trickster was not sure about secondary vs primary archetype. Two others wanted high mobility. Three others wanetd this class.
6. One Song Warden wanted damage and mobility.
7. Seven Minstrels
8. One Song Caller wanted to buff their pets.
9. One "undecided" had multiple philosophies which were used to help build the schema (
@maouw ). Another wanted to be versatile. Another doesn't want Bard to be a lame Wizard. There were fourteen others.
Bards are much less complex because they have a stronger core identity usually, and secondary archetypes are just to help them. They already do a little of everything, so they're just deciding which part they want to do a little more of. This is probably why no Minstrels had anything in particular to say. They just need Intrepid to 'hit the right notes', and all will be well. By contrast, undecided Bards just don't know yet. The schema must therefore focus on how to make things the most rhythmic, the least 'directly tied to music', and the most 'able to fit on one or two hotbars'. Simplicity was sacrificed to build this schema, so expect to have to keep track of a lot when reading it. You might want a chart...
To give Bards everything they want seems to require a lot of rhythmic mixing and matching of abilities, to make the backline ones and frontline ones both happy, to allow them to not simply 'have to take every ability', and to provide spaces for useful Augments to be attached without causing them to be very limited in situations.
Taking the philosophy of one person and the specific desires of another (the ones that also work when solo), along with the noted wish from Intrepid to not force Bards to be musical, a system is possible.
It combines the idea of Narrative Goals with Themes, mix and match to get specific buffs. Simplicity is not our friend here, because variation is more important, as mentioned. The first Tier offers the most basic abilities
Tier 1. Narrative Goal: Triumph
Tier 1. Narrative Goal: Perseverance
Tier 1. Valor (Long CD; Triumph: Attack Up, Perseverance: Defense Up) (Points strengthen the effect)
Hopefully the names are usefully clear, but tooltips might manage to describe it all. An effective bard must take at least one Narrative Goal, and probably also activate Valor, but the important thing here is that a person could get to the next tier in the currently (placeholder?) system with just one of the three. Putting one point in each, however, allows the Bard to use actual abilities. though. They must activate Valor plus one of the others (in either order), and it will cause the effect, in an area. They could skip Valor by waiting until they level a bit more and putting all points into Narratives instead, to reach Tier 2.
Tier 2. Spirit (Triumph: MP Regen, Perseverance: HP Regen)
Tier 2. Grace (Triumph: Accuracy Up, Perseverance: Evasion Up)
Tier 2. Narrative Goal: Demoralize (Valor: Slow, Spirit: Damage Over Time, Grace: Enemy Accuracy Down)
Decisions actually start here. A Bard that wants to buff more expands their repertoire by unlocking Spirit and/or Grace. Debuffers focus on Demoralize. Total debuffers got to this point using only Valor, so they have rapid access to all, and to a skill that targets enemies, for similar and related Augments. Bards are much more likely to take the 'defensive' side of any Augment options available, as a Support class, so no direct attack is available even all the way to this point, only appearing in Tier 3, but Demoralize will still apply other debuffs to enemies. In the case of Tellswords, possibly cause it to become an Attack, but this might become a problem for the Bard later?
Tier 3. Narrative Goal: Epic (Valor: Attack Speed Up, Spirit: CC Resistance, Grace: Movement Speed Up)
Tier 3. Narrative Goal: Prose (Valor: Power Stat Up, Spirit: Mentality Stat Up, Grace: Dexterity Stat Up)
Tier 3. Flourish (Short CD; Physical Attack; Applies a state to the opponent; Valor/Triumph: Enemy Defense Down, Spirit/Perseverance: Enemy Attack Down, Grace/Demoralize: Enemy Evasion Down)
More Narratives are added here, but the same flow stays. A Bard can spread themselves out or specialize by adding more points. Flourish is a physical attack that makes use of either the Narrative or the Theme to determine the effect and consumes it. Backliners don't get to use the Debuffs applied to the physical attack without closing into range to do it, but that's possibly an irreconcilable point. Either the design duplicates the debuff, or it makes the Bard's melee style debuff unnecessary. The idea would be that a melee type bard would be able to 'simulate' having Defense Up by instead applying Attack Down, though. Flourish is where most Bards would get whatever Augment they want to target the most. A Jack of All Trades style support player just puts one point in everything. They'll definitely get to Tier 4.
Tier 4. Arcane Word: (Longer CD; Triumph/Valor: does Damage, Spirit/Perseverance: Short HP shield, Grace/Demoralize: Dispel Enemy Buff)
Tier 4. Regale: (Targets Single; long Cooldown, magnifies the effect of the current Narrative-Theme combination being used)
Tier 4. Cadence: (Changes effect capriciously, the Bard's position relative to the enemy when they strike results in a specific buff, and the positions of others can also determine their buffs, resulting in the 'Formation' concept mentioned by Intrepid)
Narratives and Themes are handled by this point. These are for the Bards that want specialized methods of applying or enhancing their effects. Requests for Area effects and so on are incorporated here, while Arcane Word handles some other requests. The difficult part here is mainly that each of these still only gets one Augment, but the Augment itself can be tailored toward either the enemy or the ally. A useful 'default' for Arcane Word, though, is another complex point. If you want the 'defense' version, use Arcane Word first with no Narrative or Theme active (problem is this requires Flourish unless Narratives and Themes always disappear once combined, but that is a point for discussion). Since Arcane Word ability won't activate a Defensive Augment on its own (as it technically 'targets nothing' in this case) then you can use the Defensive Augment on the Theme or Narrative. Arcane Word can have its own offensive Augment which activates when using it as the second part of the combination.
Regale and Cadence are much easier when it comes to this, Regale has the same problem though. As example, if using an Offensive-only Augment from Ranger that only works on enemies, but you Regale with a Defensive Narrative-Theme, then you just get nothing. Cadence has the same problem with Defensive Augments.
Tier 5. Finale: A big effect, that often applies both the buff and debuff of the current Narrative-Theme at the same time, targeted on the enemy, but a reduced duration.
Tier 5. Resonance: (Targets an area on the ground and applies the current Narrative-Theme combination as an area effect)
Tier 5. Encore (Repeat last non-buff - Arcane Word, Flourish, Demoralize, etc - to strengthen effect, or repeat last buff while doing other things - for when you do want to think as little as possible or have limited time, like in a Siege)
High level abilities are based around rhythm and versatility. At this point the Bard needs 'more actions'. Cooldowns start to become limiting. Things like 'I casted a buff and then did other things and now I want to cast it again but I don't want to do all the steps'. It's likely that many would want the Resonance effect before this, but it's actually quite powerful and relatively 'raid focused' so if it must go in a sequence, probably best here.
Round of Applause if you got through all that, but it actually illuminates the issue quite well. Bards are complicated. Games either usually make them linear and simpler, causing the 'buff-bot' complaint of many, or they have massive ability and spell lists that can't reasonably go on a Hotbar, far less 'receive dynamic Augments'. It's quite helpful that most Bards didn't have very specific wishes, since the few outliers start to stretch the concept of design hard. Here's the expanded summary of their trends:
The Tellswords mainly wanted melee. The few Magicians wanted various small things. The Sirens wanted defense, though not all wanted to actually help tank. The Minstrels are easy to understand because they just want to be as Bard as possible. And the Song Caller wanted to buff their pets. Song Wardens and Tricksters mainly wanted mobility. Soul Weavers were the most Supportive of all. Unlike most classes so far, many of the undecided were moreso 'not specific'. Those that were, were undecided due to having too little information.
After running numerous simulations on this and the possible Augments, it seems impossible to give over 90% of Bards what they desire, at the same time, if using my
Reverse Engineered Augments List (new thread source since it's easier and the surrounding conversation has slightly more relevance anyway, it's halfway down page in a quote).
This doesn't seem to be an issue with the concepts of Augments or how they're applied, but rather the general difficulty of 'finding good places to put enough Offensive Bard skills'. Therefore even with the solution of 'here, use this skill repeatedly so you can get the Augment every time', there are some more specific requests that don't have any simple direct ways to achieve them. So my verdict for 'can we give all the Bards everything they want' is '
almost, but not quite there'. This is only for the current system, but even with a different skilltree, the conflicting goals will be rough.
And as always...
THIS POST IS IN NO WAY AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT INTREPID IS ACTUALLY DOING
How many innate attack skills do you need for your concept of Bard to work? Do you want to use your Lute to help your group get loot, or defeat your enemies as a Beat Poet? 90% stuffed into one schema is still pretty good, but can we go all the way?
