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Death of the Bard

AeacusAeacus Member, Alpha Two
in Bard Archetype
One message... Slowly nerf archetypes so you don't 100% cripple them. The nerf bat wasn't used,.. Intrepid pulled out a Howitzer. Reverse the changes and incrementally use the bat to adjust appropriately the required nerfs. This should be on all archetypes.... even those nasty mages :wink:
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Comments

  • oddsterooddstero Member, Alpha Two
    A bit drastic for sure. And I still don't understand why clerics can easily solo and tank multiple mobs but imagine that balancing is coming soon enough.

    The Saga change is nice though. Can get a nice little speed buff gathering without having to recast all the buffs so its up more often.
  • SmileGurneySmileGurney Member, Alpha Two
    edited February 7
    Yes, most of the bard nerfs feel really unjustifiable. Shock stacks were clearly broken, and everyone knew that since Phase1, but nerfing Chilling Lament or Dark Lullaby doesn't make sense. Dark Lullaby WAS quite fun to use. It required from you set up, and applying negative statuses to the target, before you could do a nice burst of damage, with lets say something like spellbow finisher effects. Now all those interactions are just dead. Measly 15% extra damage from 5 negative statuses? Just remove Dark Lullaby from the game all together at this point. In group farming situations I often take something else instead. Dark L is a joke now.

    I also don't understand the direction of some of those changes, which made the class with the highest action per minute requirements even more micro intensive. I'm fine with fleshing out the support aspects of the bard, but there is enough room in that bard's kit to support different playstyles. If anything Intrepid should flesh out other archetype skill trees, so they don't feel so one dimensional in comparison.
    oddstero wrote: »
    The Saga change is nice though. Can get a nice little speed buff gathering without having to recast all the buffs so its up more often.
    That was a necessary change. The thing is that even after Intrepid's insistence to nerf the basic bard damage kit into the ground, I can barely justify to invest points to reach most of the sagas. Not to mention many of them are buggy or don't work. Saga changes would be nice, if talent point investment to reach them wasn't so steep. Both volume I and II of Sagas should be simply free after you reach the level requirements. I see no reason to spend 4 points into sagas for an ability on 1 minute cooldown, which doesn't work, is too weak or/and too situational.

    I just wish Intrepid stopped breaking those aspects of the bard which worked and made sense for sake of insisting you play only as a support bard.

    My lungs taste the air of Time,
    Blown past falling sands…
  • nanfoodlenanfoodle Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited February 7
    I personally think that the Nerf bat was needed but not done in the right way. The amount of damage was done when you are fully geared with intelligent gear. Much like a fighter that's in strength gear that is stacked to the max. Does do too much damage. So when your lower levels we're not geared in tons of intelligent gear. You do not do too much damage. So instead of nerfing the damage of the class. They need to make it so that stacking intelligence and for physical classes strength. Needs to be reduced. They need to have soft caps on those stats and hard caps.
  • GhostggGhostgg Member, Alpha Two
    The shock stacks were too much 100%, everything else felt fine. I'd revert the damage numbers on Dark L and Chilling Lament OR reduce their CD to 15s to give us more consistent dmg similar to how they did that with discordance.

    Also I feel like 5 stacks to 1 was a bit much, 2 stacks may be worth testing. Sure bards are 1 shotting people with 200 int...but so is everyone else so... :|
  • SmileGurneySmileGurney Member, Alpha Two
    edited February 7
    Ghostgg wrote: »
    The shock stacks were too much 100%, everything else felt fine. I'd revert the damage numbers on Dark L and Chilling Lament OR reduce their CD to 15s to give us more consistent dmg similar to how they did that with discordance.

    Also I feel like 5 stacks to 1 was a bit much, 2 stacks may be worth testing. Sure bards are 1 shotting people with 200 int...but so is everyone else so... :|
    NO PLEASE no more shorter cooldowns, especially for channelled abilities. Bard APM is already at silly levels. They should just revert the damage changes to ChillL and DarkL I have no interest in the snowballing the damage output with shock stacks, no idea how that went through the early testing stages unnoticed. On other hand I don't intend to continue playing as bard if its pigeonholed into the full support role. A way to ruin the only class in the game which allowed you to switch playstyles depending on the group needs or just to avoid boredom.
    My lungs taste the air of Time,
    Blown past falling sands…
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