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Bard as Non-Healing Support - What does that mean to you?
Rand118
Member
Hi all!
Long time follower of the game, first time posting here. I've always been a lover of bards in mmo's, especially from back in my EQ days. The idea of a character whose sole role is to make everyone else around them better is super cool to me. DPS'ers want to blow stuff up, tanks want to be unkillable, healers want to save the day, but what does "non-healing support" mean to other players out there?
The AoC wiki describes Bards as "a non-healing support role that makes a party better as a whole through a range of buff-oriented and proximity based abilities."
I enjoy playing a character whose buffs are wanted by the whole party, but it's been so long since we've seen a good Bard in an MMO that I am super psyched to see what Intrepid comes up with...especially after blowing us all away with the fighter showcase.
I think an interesting way for Bards to be more than just a "buffbot" or "mana battery" would be to make use of the combo system in AoC. In the Fighter showcase, we saw that certain abilities would cause "shaken" which could then trigger "tripped" status, which could then be capitalized with Maim (I think that was the combo). What if the Bard was the premier "setup" character who specialized in setting up status effects for other classes to "proc?"
For example:
Fighter needs shaken status to trip but his ability is on cooldown, Bard can apply shaken with "Horn of Terror".
Mage needs burning or frozen to "shatter" an ability, Bard has an "Elemental Invocation" that causes all 3 elemental status effects.
Tank needs snare to setup his "knockdown" ability, Bard uses "Chains of Dissonance" to apply a snare.
The idea would be that the Bard has little ability to "finish" combos, but has the most varied ways to "setup" most combos for other classes. Would that be a unique way of giving Bards more "non-healing support" abilities?
I'm curious what other people think Bards should be, and I CANNOT WAIT for the Bard showcase, whenever that happens!
Rand.
Long time follower of the game, first time posting here. I've always been a lover of bards in mmo's, especially from back in my EQ days. The idea of a character whose sole role is to make everyone else around them better is super cool to me. DPS'ers want to blow stuff up, tanks want to be unkillable, healers want to save the day, but what does "non-healing support" mean to other players out there?
The AoC wiki describes Bards as "a non-healing support role that makes a party better as a whole through a range of buff-oriented and proximity based abilities."
I enjoy playing a character whose buffs are wanted by the whole party, but it's been so long since we've seen a good Bard in an MMO that I am super psyched to see what Intrepid comes up with...especially after blowing us all away with the fighter showcase.
I think an interesting way for Bards to be more than just a "buffbot" or "mana battery" would be to make use of the combo system in AoC. In the Fighter showcase, we saw that certain abilities would cause "shaken" which could then trigger "tripped" status, which could then be capitalized with Maim (I think that was the combo). What if the Bard was the premier "setup" character who specialized in setting up status effects for other classes to "proc?"
For example:
Fighter needs shaken status to trip but his ability is on cooldown, Bard can apply shaken with "Horn of Terror".
Mage needs burning or frozen to "shatter" an ability, Bard has an "Elemental Invocation" that causes all 3 elemental status effects.
Tank needs snare to setup his "knockdown" ability, Bard uses "Chains of Dissonance" to apply a snare.
The idea would be that the Bard has little ability to "finish" combos, but has the most varied ways to "setup" most combos for other classes. Would that be a unique way of giving Bards more "non-healing support" abilities?
I'm curious what other people think Bards should be, and I CANNOT WAIT for the Bard showcase, whenever that happens!
Rand.
4
Comments
Welcome, Rand. Agree on the potential for bard being a driver for synergy in a group, like a conductor for 7 different musicians. I’m also super curious to see whether the bard can hold its own too.
I think we'll see the classic song buffing Bard the name would suggest. I'd also like to see variants that can focus on things like:
- Illusion
- Confusion
- Fear
- Hallucinations
Stuff like that. It'd be great to see the old support classes come back. "Support" didn't used to mean healing. That's just what people started using, interchangeably with "Healing", since actual support classes disappeared from MMOs.
That's actually a good point. As A2 goes on they can spot pain points and let support classes handle them
When I heard of it, the first thing that I thought of was the Paragon from Guild Wars 1. It has the option to do damage, but also has a series of proximity-based skills that improve the actions of the party members close by. These took the forms of health buffs, damage mitigation, increased damage, adding status effects to attacks, etc.
I don't recall playing Bard anywhere else.
Despite for Example Druid and Paladin in WoW being able to cast Heals,
plus Shaman able to do the same if my Memory is correct,
i liked how in WoW Vanilla for Example, all of these Classes could provide some Support Buffs and Effects that had nothing to do with Healing.
The Paladin could cast Blessings which increased certain Stats and Effects,
the Druid also had some Buff.
The Shaman could put Totems nearby and they gave some AoE-Advantage in their Range,
and the best is/was : neither of them had to be in a Party with Players of the same Faction to cast the Support-Effects on them. Well okay, MAAAYBE the Shaman with the Totems.
The most stupid and kinda "Magic-Immersion-breaking thing" in MMO's like World of WoW-Token Craft was, that since a few Expansions You can not be "BUFFED" anymore by certain Classes, when the Characters concerned of these Classes are not Members of your own Group.
This just took a bit of Freedom and Fun of Everyone away. And for whom was that to please the Players, i wonder. For People without Friends who never get buffed by complete Strangers because they have the Friendliness of a wild Honeybadger ?
Bards are usually a jack of all trades. So some ranged/melee abilities since they have to be able to solo level to some degree and some roguish/magical things. All that on top of the "musical stuff"
IMO Bards could be a class that is very versatile, depending on the secondary, but not to the degree that the summoner is. IE, taking a secondary would improve the base bard abilities to be as good as those of secondary class as well as focusing the musical abilities in that direction. Examples:
A bard/tank would get access to threat redirection, improved defensive buffs/chants, as well as better self defense. Possibly some tank based soft-cc like damage reduction debuffs or snare/root.
The various DPS classes (fighter, rogue, mage, ranger) would give much improved DPS abilities that are secondary specific, along with better damage buffs/chants. Some secondary class flavor, like bard/mage having a damage buff that adds fire to all attacks, or bard/rogues having group stealth. Mage would be the CC-heaviest spec of these 4 classes IMO, with access to AE sleep and snare.
A Bard/cleric could go in a lot of directions. Chants that are group HoTs, adding lifetap to attacks, improved mana regen. Possibly CC heavy? I'd guess this one would be the closest to the no-attacks-just-support version of the bard. To keep groups from making this the "mandatory bard secondary", the Bard/DPS classes should have (much) better damage buffs/chants
Bard/summoner is a real wild card, so I'll keep saying that I'd like this to be a lot like the GW2 mesmer, with short duration summons/illusions and trickery
This is on top of the baseline bard stuff like mana battery, speed song, damage buffs, debuffs?, etc...as well as the bard mechanic
This idea from Spif I LOVE and is one I have had similar thoughts on:
"A bard/tank would get access to threat redirection, improved defensive buffs/chants, as well as better self defense. Possibly some tank based soft-cc like damage reduction debuffs or snare/root."
I agree that every class should have some solo ability, but the idea that the Bard's SECONDARY archetype would increase certain "schools" of buffs/debuffs seems so interesting. Bard/tank gives better tanking buffs/debuffs, Bard/Mage gives better caster DPS buffs/debuffs, etc. That could lead to interesting things in a raid setting where you want a tank group with one Bard/tank to buff the tanks, a melee dps group with one Bard/rogue, a healer group with one Bard/Cleric, and so on. One bard per group that amplifies the abilities of everyone in that group seems like such a cool mechanic.
I also like McShave's example of a bard from Pillars of Eternity giving short term buffs through songs that you can combo together. This sounds similar to the old EQ bard where you had to "twist" songs to keep 3-5 buffs/debuffs up at a time and even though it caused many players to deal with carpal tunnels, I enjoyed it so much because of how active, dynamic, and versatile it made the class. I loved my Kunark era Bard so much that I did the ridiculous grind to get my Singing Steel Shortword epic weapon, hah!
Cheers to all you bards out there with awesome ideas, keep 'em coming!
This is why I have long said Bard and summoner will be last developed.
Bard for the reason you stated here, and summoner because it is likely to be essentially a poor man's version of each class - and you can't make a shit version of a class until you have the good version.
I don't get it.
Nobody else can " summon " Beings to fight for oneself, right ?
How is the Summoner supposed to be a poorer Version of all the other Classes ?
And it would be cool if it was similar to this.
I believe it was also mentioned in the last stream when Stieven was running out of mana that a bard would be able to increase the mana regen of the party.
Other than this, it would be fun if you keep up the buffs on your allies by keeping up your songs.
But I also think the bard would need some DPS skills as they will also need to be able to function when they are running solo.
Roles in Ashes are tank, DPS, healer and support. An argument can be made for DPS being broken down in to a few other roles (ranged DPS vs melee DPS, physical DPS vs magical PDS etc), but the roles is essentially the same.
Summoners, as a class, are intended to be able to fulfil any of these roles if a group is missing someone of that role - or if they feel they need two people in that role.
The means by which they fulfil these roles is by summoning other beings.
To me, a buff-but is a class that has long lasting passive buffs that are the most valuable part of the class to a group.
I've not seen an actual buff bot class since the original EQ.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/50357/bard-desires-compilation-and-analysis-conversion
Thoughts like that gets me excited for A2. That's something I want to test. I love that we can goto town and switch things up. I'm so gonna play that to death.
That makes me wonder about augments (like everyone else, I'm sure), what would a Summoner with a Bard secondary DO? Would it be a watered down Bard Support role?
In my head, I can understand that a Summoner/Tank would summon tanky pets, a Summoner/Cleric would summon healing or life stealing pets, a Summoner/DPS (whatever flavor) would summon damaging pets, and a Summoner/Bard would summon...support pets? I'm not sure how that would work, and I'm intrigued on how Intrepid would interpret these 2 more unique roles (Bard Support Role and Summoner "flex" Role).
We have only gleaned just a little of what sub classes will do and we have not even seen the Summoner. The Fighters Dash making mage combo will make dash a blink. But does that make him immune to damage and targeting while dashing? That's not just a flavor, that would be meaningful. Will skill augments be the end? Will it morph damage type? Fighters damage type go from Phy to Magic damage? Summoner / Bard may not change pet types, maybe they will change the skills the summoner casts. Maybe AoE damage spell now also buffs allies in the target area. Really need to see both the Summoner and the Bard to get some real speculation.
I never really played a Bard, but I'd love for them to be a strong support class with some AoE CC but MOSTLY just having strong AoE buffs that MAYBE could get even stronger for the party if the bard plays a tune and hits the right keys at the right timing or some shit like that.
In the past "one of each archetype" was said to be the direction of the "optimal" design for a party setup. I dunno if that has changed since or not, but it's quite likely that we'll have synergistic abilities or good effects if we have all 8 archetypes in a party, so those who think that they can dualbox w/o software will try to do that.
It'll be fun killing such people with normal groups, so I'm looking forward to that.
Won't every group need a tank and a cleric to optimal? I don't see the problem with adding a Bard to that list of "needed to be optimal." The reason I don't see a problem with that is you don't NEED an optimal group to do content. We've seen Steven and the dev's using only 1 tank, 1 healer, and 1 or 2 dps to do events and group quests with few issues (like in the commissions showcase and the fighter showcase). Honestly, I LIKE the idea of certain classes being needed to be optimal...it gives players a reason to play those classes. If no classes were needed to be optimal, we'd have another BDO where everyone is basically a DPS class that can solo everything, and I got bored of that super fast.
I agree with you that having afk buff bots is bad, I played plenty of EQ where people would 2/3/4 box shamans and enchanters just to give the best buffs to their main characters and solo content. I think that's pretty lame and takes the "Multiplayer" out of MMO, but I also feel like that's a hard thing to combat. What I will say is that making support buffs a more active mechanic (like you have to hit an attack to apply a buff or make buffs last shorter time periods so you can't just "apply buff every 30 minutes then afk") sounds interesting to me. I loved EQ bard because it was an active class that required you to constantly twist your songs to keep your buffs active on your party...can't really afk if each buff only last 4-5 seconds (this is an extreme, of course).
I really like this design choice and I hope it's still what they're going for. Class and role diversity is one of my favorite things about good MMO's.
What if bard songs/buffs (whatever vessel the benefits are delivered) could be applied in a specific order to create an improved "combined" buff?
There could be different combinations of abilities to create different combined buffs, or even a different order of the same ability to change the combined buff slightly. This would, in my opinion, have to be a minimum of 3 or 4 buffs in a certain order
Example:
Lets say the bards HoT ability heals a small amount every 6 seconds. Their weapon enchant ability imbues the weapons of their party with a small DD proc. Their attack speed ability buffs the party's attack speed, probably a small amount. But when combined in a certain order, it builds into a different buff.
Heal over time --> Weapon Enchant --> Attack Speed = Heal proc on your party's weapons.
Really cool idea! Anything to make the buffing more interesting than "cast buff, buff applies" would be very fun to me. It could get super complicated if there were too many combinations of buffs, but combos like this would be a cool mechanic to learn and create interesting interactions. Nice Suggestion!
I think its to far ahead in development for this, but its a cool freaking idea! Investing in certain abilties could make good sense here. Also, bards could have different buffs in the same raid, making them more viable in numbers. Good idea dude.
Probably could take a small step further. Say there is buffs that are always on, like the HoT, and abilities that are on for lke 10 secs, with using an ability. Say there is 3 things that could buff the HoT. Using one move will turn it into lifetab, as you suggested, for 10 secs. One will make an armor buff for 10 secs, and another will give you a dmg shield. After 10 secs, it turns into the regular HoT buff. Just spitballin