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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Bard Feedback and Suggestions (Songs and Sagas) - 90hrs Played
glugmonger
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
To begin, I do enjoy the resonance change you added. It's currently a tad awkward due to the lack of non-song abilities, but it has potential - especially for dance bards.
Song weaving - it's so slow and clunky. There was a comment last week suggesting that the effectiveness be reduced by 85% and set the cd to 2 seconds. I feel like that is along the right track, but it could be changed based on what music mastery you take:
Music Mastery Crescendo: keep everything as is - it promotes a game play more oriented around resonance/dances. I would suggest lowering the effectiveness of the mystery buff while doing this though
Music Mastery Counterpoint: apply the following changes to the song system so it focuses less on resonance:
Crescendo songs (for current songs):
Crescendo saga buffs:
Sagas:
the actual values of everythingdepend on balance testing
As for the melodies, I'm assuming that you're wanting them to last 20 seconds, but it is lasting a random amount until it stops. Bumping it up to 30s until you refresh would probably make feel a bit better. I do really like that you can cast melodies while you are doing the saga songs though.
To align with Sagas, up the duration of of melodies to 30s, and keep it so you can cast melodies and songs at the same time
Hope this helps!
shout out to @Warlogic for all the feedback! His final points are also a wonderful addition to this:
Song weaving - it's so slow and clunky. There was a comment last week suggesting that the effectiveness be reduced by 85% and set the cd to 2 seconds. I feel like that is along the right track, but it could be changed based on what music mastery you take:
Music Mastery Crescendo: keep everything as is - it promotes a game play more oriented around resonance/dances. I would suggest lowering the effectiveness of the mystery buff while doing this though
Music Mastery Counterpoint: apply the following changes to the song system so it focuses less on resonance:
- Songs 2 second cd with a 2 second base cast and last 15-20 seconds
- Songs 1 second base cast with 5 second cd. The buff would last 20 seconds
- lvl 25 or 40-50 talent that, for Counterpoint bards, reduces song cd by base 0.75s + another 1.25s that scales with haste at the cost of adding 0.5s-1s to your cast time on songs
- More songs of each color (we need some debuffing)
Crescendo songs (for current songs):
- Conflict/Wonder: 60% extra power over 110% extra power
- Chaos/Destiny: 7% crit
- Triumph: 3-5% max health with 20% stamina regen
- Joy: 2% temp health every 2 seconds with a max of 10%
- Conflict/Wonder: 35-40% extra power over 110% extra power
- Chaos/Destiny: 3.5-4% crit
- Triumph: 3%-3.5% max health with 10% stamina regen
- Joy: 1% temp health every 2 seconds with a max of 10%
Crescendo saga buffs:
- make tragedy/wonder/comedy buffs only apply effects after a saga is used. Each buff would apply a stack of the buff for 30 seconds
- Tragedy buff per stack: 5% personal dmg skills and 1% party dmg
- Wonder: 30% more mana regen for yourself, mana regen abilities are 2.5% more effective
- Joy: Increase personal health by 3% and increase healing skills are 2-3% more effective
- Counterpoint and Crescendo saga buffs both last for 30-32s (+2s to account for cast time), with the Counterpoint buffs being 33-50% weaker
Sagas:
- with counterpoint, sagas would have 8-10s cd
- The Silent Pantheon: orbs apply buff and - 1.5%-2% mana for counterpoint, 7% for crescendo - per orb
- Apocolypes: a bit more dmg or cc effect
- The Return to Vera: with Counterpoint, reduce the heal by 50-60%
- More Sagas (debuffing)
the actual values of everythingdepend on balance testing
As for the melodies, I'm assuming that you're wanting them to last 20 seconds, but it is lasting a random amount until it stops. Bumping it up to 30s until you refresh would probably make feel a bit better. I do really like that you can cast melodies while you are doing the saga songs though.
To align with Sagas, up the duration of of melodies to 30s, and keep it so you can cast melodies and songs at the same time
Hope this helps!
shout out to @Warlogic for all the feedback! His final points are also a wonderful addition to this:
With all of that said, I would expand on your original idea and propose the following changes/additions:
1) Create a third song option for red, blue and yellow that people can spec into. This could even be something like a damage-focused song for red, mana-focused song for blue and healing focused song for yellow. It doesn't have to be a buff necessarily and could just as easily be an active effect or debuff that still generates tragedy/mystery/joy stacks.
2) Allow the minor buffs while running Counterpoint to stack. This would allow for build variety in the sense that someone could spec into and stack just the crit % buff 3x to create an Apocalypse saga effect. Or you could spec all 3 red buffs and run lesser versions of each to reach the same effect. Same with the other colors, which would create a LOT more build diversity in the end.
3) Create a unique saga effect for every color combination instead of only the 6 we have available currently. (I strongly suspect they already plan to do this looking at the current design, but only time will tell). Again though, this would increase build diversity and options immensely.
4) Optional - make "saga builder" buffs, or songs, instant cast while specced into Counterpoint to increase the fluidity of the class and allow for other actions to be performed while building your sagas, instead of your playtime and combat effectiveness being eaten up by casting the same songs over and over all day. This also very much aligns with the theme of counterpoint being that you can play multiple melodies at once.
With this framework you could adjust any numbers and values as needed to make it balanced with its Crescendo counterpart, but the concept itself I believe would be more healthy, rewarding, and fun to play.
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Comments
But then, the counterpoint isn't for me and maybe these changes appeal to counterpoint players. I will probably always run crescendo.
During the bard showcase, they said they wanted to have a dance specialization and a song specialization. The resonance change feels like it's more aimed towards dance gameplay, so I feel using Crescendo is good to focus on dances.
Now onto counterpoint. Everquest, in my opinion, has the best song based bard, so these changes to counterpoint would lean towards that. The numbers would have to be adjusted so it's powerful enough, but the goal is to be a jack of all trades support. When you get access to more songs, you could weave songs as the situation changes. With these changes to counterpoint, it allows saga to be more useful with my suggested changes.
I use counterpoint, multiple melodies and dances frequently and find the playstyle extremely active and rewarding to use since you can keep 2 melodies' passives up permanently as well as using the most recently played for resonance procs. If you couldn't use other skills while actively casting a melody I could see this holding more weight, but maybe I'm missing or not thinking of something.
I'm also curious to hear your reasoning for not liking counterpoint Shiva? What do you find off about it? I don't think it's perfect in its current state or anything, but as a counterpoint enjoyer I'd love to hear your...counterpoint *da dum tsh*
You are a true bard lol
What are your thoughts on the direction I suggested as we wait for Shiva?
One main problem I would see with it as it's suggested is, if I'm using Destiny as a Counterpoint bard and getting 7% crit from it, but we have a crescendo bard hitting their buff for 15%, does it just overwrite mine? Does mine overwrite theirs, but only after I stack it 3 times? Either way, that doesn't feel good for either bard. I think it works in theory with 1 bard in a group, but with 2 bards in a group I could see this becoming very messy and confusing if not implemented with clear parameters.
With that said, it would be cool to produce more apocalypse triggers with higher damage, it would be useful to your party to provide Silent Pantheon buffs more often, and I would say make Return to Verra maybe 50% weaker, but I would definitely want to feel that the juice is worth the APM squeeze given that most of what I'd be doing is casting songs and producing sagas. I would also want to feel like I could still have the option of frontlining or using range, but if I'm constantly casting songs I don't see how that would be possible, hence the instant cast suggestion. I hope that makes sense and that I fully understood what you're proposing.
With having a Crescendo and Counterpoint bard, I don't see too much of an issue stacking the songs.
Would capping the concurrent song count to 3 alleviate the busy work feeling? It would still play into supporting Saga as well as giving you some downtime to do other abilities (6 seconds of song upkeep, 12-14 seconds of downtime for other abilities if they lasted 20s).
The problem I see with this is if my focus is on sagas and let's say I am gunning to produce apocalypse sagas as often as I can for example, then I'm casting 7% crit buff 3 times in 10 seconds, and in the end for casting 3 spells I'm still only getting just a 7% crit buff. Or say I do 7% crit buff, 6% damage buff and then....there's no third red song so I'm wasting a whole cast just to be able to use my apocalypse saga since they don't stack. That just doesn't feel good to me. I would need to actually get some benefit from each cast for playing a red song 3x if it still has a 2s cast time.
I don't think that it would. Sure you get to keep the buffs for 20s but if my goal is to build sagas at 10s intervals then in reality I only get 3-4s of downtime for other abilities and then start over casting songs again to get to another saga as quickly as I can. Or, I can just ignore sagas, swap to the other spec and get a 30s more powerful version of the same buff for one 2s cast and be able to perform any other actions during that time instead.
From my point of view, if your goal is to make a saga happen as often as possible, but you do that by continually casting buffs that are all of the following:
-weaker than crescendo bard
-do not stack
-still have the same cast time
-at the very least you have to repeat 1 of them only to refresh the duration by a max of 4s
-the sagas for counterpoint are also weaker, even if you can use them more often
Then it doesn't feel good imo, you're effectively wasting 2s cast actions and your overall effectiveness goes way down in comparison to the Crescendo alternative.
The only ways I could see this being truly viable are by allowing the lesser buffs to stack, creating a 3rd red/blue/yellow song you can spec into, or if there was a unique saga effect for every possible color combination such as blue/blue/red, which doesn't exist at all currently, or yellow/yellow/blue or yellow/blue/yellow, red/blue/yellow, etc.
FYI - this is the exact concept that runekeeper from LE or warden from lotro are built off of: "unique saga effect for every possible color combination such as blue/blue/red, yellow/yellow/blue, yellow/blue/yellow, red/blue/yellow, etc."
I would actually love to see this happen, as I think that classes with this design are complex and rewarding to play/master. However, even with every combo implemented you still would want each "saga builder" cast to be meaningful and not just refresh a duration, which goes back to my "busy work" point. I think adding a 3rd red/blue/yellow song to spec into, or allowing a single buff to stack could accomplish this, or both so that you have strong options by going either route. Making the songs instant cast would help with fluidity, but by itself this change is still not effectively gaining anything other than a less painful duration refresh from using the skill, especially when you're already going to refresh its duration by building up to another saga before the buff(s) were going to expire anyway, assuming they do last for 20s like you proposed.
This is the core problem to solve. Repeatedly casting the same spell just to refresh its duration is a totally redundant action which produces no real benefit in terms of combat or group effectiveness. Whether this is accomplished by implementing one or more of my suggestions above, or by some other means that someone smarter than me comes up with doesn't matter. Somehow, though, this would have to be avoided in the design to make it feel good to play and worth the opportunity cost to execute.
I agree with you - my suggestion would only be good if there were a lot more songs added for both buffing and debuffing (add 1 debuff per color for current skill tree)
Taking your feedback into consideration, how does this sound. I think addresses your concerns and pleases song goblins like myself:
- Saga to be a 2 second cast, 30s cd and provide the buffs for 30-32s (Crescendo would also have 30-32s on its saga buff)
- the saga and its buffs would be 40-66% weaker (depending on how strong dance is) than the saga and its buff you get from Crescendo because you'd have 100% uptime rather than 33% uptime every 1.5m
- More songs and sagas - it's pretty much needed for this route (enemy debuffs!)
- Song buffs to last 20 seconds, have a 1 second cast time with a 5 second cd because instant casts as a ranged class with lots of cc are strong in pvp
- lvl 25 or 40-50 talent that, for Counterpoint bards, reduces song cd by base 0.75s + another 1.25s that scales with haste at the cost of adding 0.5s or 1s to your cast time on songs
- at high enough spell haste, you are nullifying that penalty and now have a 3s cd for your songs with 2s of filler in between (channeling spells should be at <=3s cast time by then)
- at 0 spell haste you are left with 2.25s-2.75s time for filler, so that's a tad awkward, but allows enough time to add a 5th song to weave
- having more songs that scale with your magic or healing power (so base + power) because base +x stat is kinda boring
- song would stack with Crescendo bard song, but not other Counterpoint bards
To prep for saga and nothing else, it is a total of a max of 7 seconds of casting for 5 songs+saga and 23s for the filler. Having the song buff last 20s rather than 30s just adds a level of decision for the last 2 songs
For a heavy weaving play style, it allows us up to 4 songs at lower level and up to 6 songs at a higher level/gear and have to really focus on what order to play songs in.
The songs themselves are weaker because you're getting 3-6x more songs than crescendo.
1) Create a third song option for red, blue and yellow that people can spec into. This could even be something like a damage-focused song for red, mana-focused song for blue and healing focused song for yellow. It doesn't have to be a buff necessarily and could just as easily be an active effect or debuff that still generates tragedy/mystery/joy stacks.
2) Allow the minor buffs while running Counterpoint to stack. This would allow for build variety in the sense that someone could spec into and stack just the crit % buff 3x to create an Apocalypse saga effect. Or you could spec all 3 red buffs and run lesser versions of each to reach the same effect. Same with the other colors, which would create a LOT more build diversity in the end.
3) Create a unique saga effect for every color combination instead of only the 6 we have available currently. (I strongly suspect they already plan to do this looking at the current design, but only time will tell). Again though, this would increase build diversity and options immensely.
4) Optional - make "saga builder" buffs, or songs, instant cast while specced into Counterpoint to increase the fluidity of the class and allow for other actions to be performed while building your sagas, instead of your playtime and combat effectiveness being eaten up by casting the same songs over and over all day. This also very much aligns with the theme of counterpoint being that you can play multiple melodies at once.
With this framework you could adjust any numbers and values as needed to make it balanced with its Crescendo counterpart, but the concept itself I believe would be more healthy, rewarding, and fun to play.
Without getting into actual numbers and balancing, I will say that this overall direction definitely lines up much better with how I personally view the prospect of a song and saga focused bard. I strongly agree that 30s cd sagas are much more reasonable compared to trying to pump one out every 10s and doing nothing but playing songs the whole time since I don't think the current framework supports it in a healthy way without major overarching changes to the class and skill tree.
Compared to 1:30s sagas from a Crescendo bard, this gives a lot of incentive for the mechanic, but with less "busy work" than the original. I actually like the reduced cast speed idea as a "songs" bard benefit even better than an instant cast option, as it's probably healthier for the game as a whole. The idea of counterpoint buffs stacking with crescendo bard buffs is solid too. Gives that extra edge and incentive for having both types of bards in the group without crossing the line into crazy % inflated numbers. Kudos, I think something like this could be a good start.
I get more out of crescendo, when travelling using Epic Melody and when running Menacing Melody. I'm too busy watching cast bars and juggling dancing and positioning to pre-empt what the enemies are going to do to remember to swap back and forth between two melodies.
GW1 Mesmer is my favourite class from any mmo until now - and no game has done anything similar playstyle wise before now (Guild Wars 2 was disappointing for what I want out of Mesmer). I like being able to pre-emptively counter spells or drop down shields or group heals when the enemy is about to do something nasty. I'm usually healing as the damage is being dealt, rather than reacting to health bars the way the clerics tend to.
One of the problems with crescendo is I have to juggle when to attack in the right melody. You only get the resonance from the most recent melody, and when you are on the front lines hitting the mobs and focusing on positioning and dancing that's just another thing that will get lost in the chaos.