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Official: Bard fixes coming to Preview
rgutscheradev
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 188Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Hello everyone!
In the next few days, Currently live on Preview, you should be seeing a bunch of fixes to the bard appearing on Preview. Apologies for the long delay; I realize these are changes that really should have happened some time ago.
Current State of the Bard
The bard on Live now is, well, buggy. Some of these are bugs that have a big impact on the overall power of the class, to the point where it's hard to say if the bard would be underpowered or overpowered once things get fixed. So my focus right now is to get as much stuff fixed as possible, with the highest priority going to bugs that hurt the bard's power level (which is low overall) or that are just really painful.
Once things are basically working, further balance adjustments are definitely a possibility. But it's hard to balance around bugs, so fixing the bugs comes first. Note that these bug fixes should improve the bard's power a lot.
I'm not looking to change the core design of the class. I realize the bard isn't for everyone, but I think that's OK. But for people who do find the class appealing, it should be possible to play it without constantly encountering frustrating bugs, and it should be possible to contribute to a group at roughly the same level as other classes.
The Changes
See next post for the list.
How You Can Help
Current State of the Bard
The bard on Live now is, well, buggy. Some of these are bugs that have a big impact on the overall power of the class, to the point where it's hard to say if the bard would be underpowered or overpowered once things get fixed. So my focus right now is to get as much stuff fixed as possible, with the highest priority going to bugs that hurt the bard's power level (which is low overall) or that are just really painful.
Once things are basically working, further balance adjustments are definitely a possibility. But it's hard to balance around bugs, so fixing the bugs comes first. Note that these bug fixes should improve the bard's power a lot.
I'm not looking to change the core design of the class. I realize the bard isn't for everyone, but I think that's OK. But for people who do find the class appealing, it should be possible to play it without constantly encountering frustrating bugs, and it should be possible to contribute to a group at roughly the same level as other classes.
The Changes
See next post for the list.
How You Can Help
- Check out the changes. Any issues? Any fixes that fail (maybe in some special case), or changes that have caused some kind of broken behavior?
- Any bugs (especially high-priority bugs, as described above) that haven't been addressed?
- (optional) Power level thoughts -- once the bugs are fixed, will the bard be in a reasonable place? (If you can be concrete, that helps!)
Post edited by rgutscheradev on
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Comments
A few comments:
- These are all bug fixes, except for bard AP generation for songs, which is a new feature.
- All these changes are pure buffs, except for the Encore Aurora Fantasia fix, which is a mix (see discussion below).
- Some of these changes should have pretty big balance impacts. A few highlights:
- Loremaster did almost nothing before. Hopefully it's usable now.
- Flourish and Loremaster applying to songs should be a pretty big dps buff for Songblades. There are a few other fixes that should help overall dps as well.
- Between the Sheltering Etude bug and the Rejuvenating Carol bug, Minstrel healing was in a bad place. It's been almost doubled. Hopefully this means Minstrels are reasonable group healers now.
- Having songs generate AP should be a solid buff for all bards. Given that bards (naturally enough) spend a lot of time playing songs, having them generate AP while performing should be a big help. Overall rate of AP generation playing songs should be (very roughly) the same amount of AP/second as other classes get from using encounters and at-wills. This is presumably a pretty decent buff to overall bard power, although it's hard to say exactly how much.
List of Changes- Songs now generate AP.
- Some encounter powers that didn't generate AP now do.
- Bard's class skill, "Harmonize", now does actually help generate AP. (This is a small effect. The encounters and especially the songs are the big upgrade.)
Overall, Bard AP generation should now be comparable to that of other classes.Not in the current build, but coming soon:These should be up on Preview now as well.
Last time you headed any changes was back with Mod 11's Weapon Enchantment changes! How soon can we expect these changes coming to preview?
On the Friday that happens to be April Fools? Can you outright state what the Amount of Action Points generated from songs are?
Ie, if you play 1 song, generates 50 Action Points (5% of total)?
We can always run around and test things when the patch comes to preview, but having a developer outright tell us what things are supposed to be cuts out a lot of the guesswork. Does this mean that the Ready to Exploit buff is now a multiplicative buff?
Currently, the buff is 50% on the encounters that it works on, but it gets added together with other general damage buffs. I am legitimately surprised people were using the infinite Aurora Finales ... for purposes of AoE DPS?
The DPS paragon has stronger AoE damage thanks to the various magnitude buffs, Volti Subito, and Duet.
If you wanted to use Aurora Finale to constantly spam it for Action Points, you can't even use your dailies for Curtain Call since the bug locks out your ability to play other songs.
And even if you wanted to play "Bard DPS that's Masquerading as a Healer", there are much, *much* better ways of doing it that snap the game in half.
Ie things that are not working/programmed correctly, but are beneficial to the class?
Because some of them range from snapping the game in half, while others are helpful/amusing but not that gamebreaking.
The stronger "features" are overcentralizing to the point where you can't really discuss class balance unless you address them.
If we talk about them, we can better discuss balance, but talking about these "features" is also very likely to cause people to start using them before they're fixed.
It's also worth noting that many people are hesitant to report "features" due to the way NW's previous lead developers' (noworries/asterdahl) handled "features": the devs would find out about the "features", fix them in a flash, then leave people out to dry for many months, if not years because those features were carrying the class.
The ap gain sounds nice on paper but the actual dailies are problematic and I doubt it will bring healthy balance to bard. Having a daily for only buffs would be nice as a team buff instead of you and the nearest person. Inspiration has been the best viable option but it feels bad to use in trials while moving around red. Adjusting to help the entire party would create smoother and more useful gameplay. Loremaster I am completely biased against. Even with that buff I dislike the rng debuff it has. It ranges from useless to barely useful for some of the party. The odd specifics of the buffs feel really bad and impossible to min max to be most effective. I understand why there is no daily with magnitude but the balance of that choice is harder than the current solution.
Mystifying strikes is and will continue to be problematic with those buffs. Currently it does around 30-40% of overall damage. I feel it is unclear where the damage is intended to be coming from in the bards kit.
Bard healer is not as bad as people say. It could be better. I have made do in all content despite the trouble. I don't have any ideas here honestly.
Timed delay between performance mode feels really bad in a tight spot throwing off dps rotations or taking away that last second heal to save someone.
Contre generates massive ap even out of combat.
The absolute MUST for bard to be usable is fixing the two encounters and one at-will (that I am aware of) that REMOVES VISUALS FROM MECHANICS DURING TRIALS. Viable options are limited on both healer and dps since you will remove hypo and lined mechanics ect.
The main issue I don't see discussed here is that Bard songs only hit people you're in a group with. This is a big issue in Heroic Encounters because nothing you do effects anyone. For example, on Clerics Healing Word just hits everyone in range.
Can Bards AOE songs please be changed to just hit everyone in range?
Secondly, Bassline channels then only gives mana when you release the button, with a bonus if you complete it. The problem is, it endlessly gets interrupted by knocks and other unavoidable effects.
Can this be changed so that it gives mana while you channel it, with a bonus if you finish it?
Again, to use Cleric as an example, they get bonus mana regen by simply not casting for 3 seconds with a stacking bonus. Bard regen is significantly more difficult to use.
It would be very helpful if Bassline was made a bit more user friendly.
In general, AP is given to you on encounters and at-wills based on the number of seconds it takes to use the power, times a constant (which is 22). So if you keep using encounters and at-wills, you should be able to earn (base value, b4 adjustments) 22 AP/second. That's in theory. In practice, timing is tricky stuff, and actual numbers will vary, but that's the underlying structure.
Bard songs are built similarly, but they do account for time played (up to a limit, to prevent silliness). So again *in theory* you should be able to earn around 22 AP/second playing songs. The design goal here is that you as a bard can play songs, or use at-wills and encounters, based on what you actually want to do, without having to worry too much about the AP-generating part of it. The AP is basically just a reward for active play, and a thing that lets you use your dailies every so often (but not too often). No, nothing has changed in terms of how the buff works. It's just a "size of buff" thing. The buff had been mistakenly set to 5% (just a typo). I set it to 50%, which was what was intended.
I can understand why people are hesitant to mention such things given the history. All I can say is I'll try to be fair, and that now is a good time to try to handle these sorts of issues: I have some time budgeted to balancing the bard, so if some crazy OP thing needs to get fixed, I'm not in a situation where I have to drop in a fix and run -- I can take a look and make a compensating buff if it makes sense. Well, ideally this is always how it would work, but what I mean to say is the odds are better now.
To be fair, I should say that sometimes players' ideas of what's reasonable and balanced will differ, from one another and from the devs.
But we're certainly not in a situation right now of "omg bards out of control must nerf everywhere". The opposite, really. I'd like to have the bard in a good place because everything's working properly, though, and not because 2 or 3 crucial bugs got missed and provide the power they need to be competitive -- they should be getting that power from their regular stuff, not from bugs!
However, I agree that in the presence of lag, the feedback is bad. You hit Tab, and when the Perf Mode doesn't pop up right away, you aren't sure if you hit it, because there's no immediate feedback. Maybe you hit it again. Then, a second later, the Perf UI pops up and immediately disappears and you are not happy. That's something we should be able to do something about. It involves UI work, so I can't do it myself, but I have a request out to our UI engineer to see if we can make some kind of improvement here (example: you hit Tab, a harp icon immediately takes the place of your regular UI, then after a half second or so, whatever your lag is, you see the Perf UI). Note I can't promise anything here, but I agree it's not great and I would like to improve it.
This is a list of every Bard bug I have found and recorded to date. There are probably more that exists that I have not found.
There are some known "features", but I am not talking about them until rgutcheradev is willing to hear us out on fixing them, then making necessary adjustments.
If a text has strikethrough, then that means said bug was addressed in these patch notes.
Universal:
-Performance and Transmutes: If you somehow get an empty transmute into the Lute visual, you can’t play any music (both in combat songs and Free Play).
-
Harmonize: Does nothing to increase your Action Point generation.Fixed!-Pinned Song Cooldown: If you did not have a song pinned, pinning a song mid combat imposes a 10 second cooldown on the song.
-Playing Notes and Transferring Instances: If you are playing any notes/custom songs while loading a new map, the game instantly crashes.*
-Swapping Loadouts: Swapping between the Healer (Minstrel) and DPS (Songblade) paragons will cause you to be dismounted exactly 3 times.
-Swapping Loadouts: Swapping paragons will also sometimes cause your Forte, Companion Stats, and feats to not load in correctly. Killing yourself or swapping instances fixes these bugs.
-Lunge: Using Lunge while targeted by a dungeon mechanic (hypothermia, “move (x) red circles away from party”, etc) will have the mechanic’s visual disappear. You will still be hit by the mechanic as usual despite the missing visual.
-
Flourish: Damage/healing buff does not work on: Dancing Lights, initial hit of Steel March, initial hit of Blaze Flamenco, and initial hit of Tailwind MamboFixed!-Duet: Using Duet while targeted by a dungeon mechanic (hypothermia, “move (x) red circles away from party”, etc) will have the mechanic’s visual disappear. You will still be hit by the mechanic as usual despite the missing visual.
-Encore: Songs played manually, then played through Encore will visually stack (such as Ballad of the Hero), but have no mathematical effect on number of procs or damage.
Songblade Exclusive Bugs:
-Blaze Flamenco: The initial hit of Blaze Flamenco receives no bonus damage from Battle Harmony or the general 2% damage buff from songs.
-Steel March: Steel March will sometimes take an additional 50 Performance from you.
-Improvised Dancing Lights: Improvised Dancing Lights is 250 magnitude and not 350 magnitude.
-Steel March’s initial hit does projectile damage, not physical damage and the initial hit of Steel March receives no bonus damage from Battle Harmony or the general 2% damage buff from songs.
-Tailwind Mambo: The initial hit of Tailwind Mambo receives no bonus damage from Battle Harmony or the general 2% damage buff from songs.
-
Tailwind Mambo: If you play Ballad of the Hero/Witch/Backup Performer Rejeuvenating Carol while Tailwind Mambo is active, Tailwind Mambo is cleared (Con Moto turns back into Con Elemento, lose the projectile damage swap, lose attack magnitude bonus).Fixed!-Ballad of the Hero: The procs of Ballad of the Hero are unable to score Critical Hits.
-Ballad of the Witch: The procs of Ballad of the Witch are unable to score Critical Hits.
-Ballad of the Witch: Ballad of the Witch procs only strike one target (the nearest target to you), rather than hitting all targets hit (being an AoE) as implied by the tooltip.
-Psychic Damage Problems: Mystifying Strikes, normal damage Fleche, and normal damage Dancing Lights are not buffed by Magic Lore or Magic Battle Harmony. This is contrary to the these attacks being considered magic for the purposes of the Intelligence ability score.
-Musician’s Flow: Does not work on Rejuvenating Carol or Steel March.
-Backup Performer: Backup Performer can’t be used out of combat.
-Ballad Colla Voce: Does not proc off of Encore Ballad of the Hero/Witch, even if you previously played these songs through Manual Play.
-Redoublement: If you hit any encounter power during the Redoublement window, your Ad Libitum or Volti Subito are automatically converted into the half damage Improvised versions. This occurs even if you picked Loremaster or no final feat.
-Redoublement: Ad Libitum and Volti Subito cannot benefit from Redoublement, even if you use the other encounter power to set up the Redoublement window (Volti Subito in between Ad Libitum hits, or Ad Libitum in between Volti Subito hits).
-Phantom Performer Hits: If you press the Improvised encounter powers too fast, you will get phantom encounters that play the animation but deal no damage. This bug occurs the most often on Ad Libitum and Duet, but can also occur on Improvised Lunge or Improvised Flourish.
-Grandstand Ballads lacking Finale: Playing Ballad of the Witch or Ballad of the Hero through Grandstand (Performer Encore) will give you no Hero’s/Witch’s Finale (this doesn’t occur with playing those songs through regular Encore).
-Grandstand Ballads Damage: Grandstand does result in any change in damage on Ballad of the Hero or Ballad of the Witch.
-More than 30 Stacks of Playing to the Audience: If you (somehow) get more than 30 stacks of Playing to the Audience, Encore can’t be used.
-Ready to Exploit: Rejuvenating Carol and Backup Performer Rejuvenating Carol will clear any Battle Lore stacks, despite the tooltip stating it only works on *damaging* songs or encounters. (Ready to Exploit also provides no healing bonus to either Rejuvenating Carol variant, for those curious).
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Ready to Exploit: Damage buff does not work on the following attacks: Dancing Lights, initial hit of Steel March, initial hit of Blaze Flamenco, and initial hit of Tailwind Mambo.Fixed!Minstrel Exclusive Bugs:
-
Rejuvenating Carol: The base healing is 100 magnitude (80 with Pianissimo), not the stated 200 magnitude.Fixed!-
Sheltering Etude: Applying a new Sheltering Etude when a target has an existing Etude will not cause the existing Etude to heal targets and storing the new Etude. Instead, you merely just refresh the generous 60 second timer on the pre-existing Etude. The only way to get Sheltering Etude to heal is by having targets hit 50% or less of their HP, or for the 60 second duration to naturally expire.Fixed!-Starstruck: Only procs on the initial cast of Rejuvenating Carol, rather than (what I assume to be) every tick.
-Starstruck: Starstruck cannot score critical hits.
-
Encore: Playing Aurora Fantasia through Encore, you will get unlimited Aurora Finales, but you also get locked out of playing songs. The only way to clear this is to die or to exit combat.Fixed!-Art of War & Vistani Set: Fleche’s final hit does not count as an AOE for purposes of the Vistani set, despite the feat making a big deal out of turning your last Fleche hit into an AoE.
-Healer's Muse (Sudden Muse): Healer’s Muse does not apply its bonus to a stored Sheltering Etude. In order to proc the bonus on Sheltering Etude, Sheltering Etude must expire during the 20 second duration of Healer’s Muse.
-Vamp: Cannot proc off of Quick Played songs.
- Gambler Stacks: When playing any song or any encounter power besides Bassline, or storing any song with Delayed Play, all Gambler stacks instantly clear.
NON COMBAT RELATED, PC ONLY*
Numberpad Bugs: If using the NUMBER PAD to input songs, you are unable to input certain notes while holding flat and an octave change.
-Low Octave+Flat: If done through the numberpad, you cannot play 1 (C), 4 (F), or 7 (B) when holding this combo when holding this combo of semitone and octave change. .
-High Octave+Flat: If done through the numberpad, you cannot play 1 (C), 2 (D), 4 (F), 5 (G), 7 (B), or 8 (C one octave higher ) when holding this combo of semitone and octave change.
*Unsure if this bug is a problem just on my end or with other people. I do have the developer console commands enabled, if that helps you diagnose a problem.
Entering Performance mode is still a problem, but there may be little that can be done about it?
Use Lunge, Duet, or Phantasmal Concerto (I remember seeing Phantasmal Concerto clearing visuals, but have not confirmed it).
The Red Arrow mechanic visuals will disappear, but the mechanic will play as normal.
Can sometimes lead to wipes if you/your team isn't prepared for it. Play any song, like Ballad of the Hero.
Then try to press any buttons, like your atwills or encounters.
You will see this popup occur for a second or two before the game lets you use any of your normal powers.
If you try pressing the Perform button instead, you will get this popup.
If you use Quick Played versions of the songs or songs played through aliases, you bypass the delay.
I want to say this delay is caused by the actual cast animation of some songs and/or a delay imposed by the game loading the powers into your tray (like how the Barbarian/GWF Rage At wills isn't applying a multiplier on the animation speed, it's just putting a faster animating version of the Atwill into the player's power tray).
But I'm not a software developer and don't know the details about how you guys are dealing with this in the programming.
So Warding Carol (with a cast time of 1 second) would generate 22.00 (2.2%?) of total Action Points before factoring in AP Gain (the stat)?
----
On a related question: how does Action Point Gain (the stat) work for increasing your Action Point gain?
Is it a multiplier on the base formula?
Ie: (Ability Cast Time) * (22.00) * (1+ Sum of Action Point Gain %) = Action Points Generated?
> By "timed delay", do you mean the delay between when you press Tab and when the Performance Mode UI comes up? If so, that's just netlag (testing on my desktop, I get the Perf Mode UI right away, but on Live I've definitely seen it take longer). I can't actually make that shorter.
>
> However, I agree that in the presence of lag, the feedback is bad. You hit Tab, and when the Perf Mode doesn't pop up right away, you aren't sure if you hit it, because there's no immediate feedback. Maybe you hit it again. Then, a second later, the Perf UI pops up and immediately disappears and you are not happy. That's something we should be able to do something about. It involves UI work, so I can't do it myself, but I have a request out to our UI engineer to see if we can make some kind of improvement here (example: you hit Tab, a harp icon immediately takes the place of your regular UI, then after a half second or so, whatever your lag is, you see the Perf UI). Note I can't promise anything here, but I agree it's not great and I would like to improve it.
Thank you very much for your time and effort. I understand this is a challenging task. Rjc responded accurately to both of your replies. I've spoken with him on bard theory before and he is very helpful. All end game players that tried bard echoed the same concerns. Regardless of cause the effect just doesn't feel good at the moment.
I forgot to add and I'm not sure if I missed it mentioned but fleche needs fixed as well.
Thank you for your time
The feat becomes often useless in content like Tiamat (where you often team up with people outside of your group) and any solo content (e.g. BHE). This is also the case for basically every trial.
A maximum of 3 stacks (current implementation) is totally fine, just make it apply to people outside of your group would really help.
Also is it really necessary for bassline to have a 10 seconds cast time?
- While not strictly related to just the Bard, there is something MASSIVELY IMPORTANT that needs to be fixed for a large number of the changes to actually matter: The missing flying Proc. text On/Off option.
At the release of Mod 21, the proc text for Powers and Feats was defaulted to Off and the option to turn it back on was put in the Options menu according to the Launch Patch Notes. EXCEPT, that option was never added and to this day continues to be completely ignored every time it is brought up.
Without it, Procs have to be manually checked and I shouldn't have to explain how disruptive and unrealistic it is to have to do so in the middle of a fight. Since Mod 21 released, every single Class has suffered because of this.
Bard has a particularly high number of Procs tied to it's Powers and Feats that are central to making the most out of them or indeed making ANY use of them at all. So even if all the bug fixes are successful it honestly means a lot less if the Class (and all Classes) remain marginally functional at best without it.
Frankly, it NEEDS to be fixed.
Secondly, In regards to the Powers that @rjc9000 mentioned, they are:
- Lunge
- Duet
I cannot confirm that any other Powers have the same issue however.
At best guess through testing, I believe the listed Powers are acting as a toggle for the visual state of certain things. To explain:
When using the effected Powers while you have an Ioun Stone as your active companion (Black Dragon Ioun Stone works best for visual effect), it disables the visual and makes it invisible. However, if you summon your mount or sit on a summoned throne; both circumstances in which your Ioun Stone would normally be invisible, the visual for the Ioun stone is instead visible.
This can be "fixed" only by re-summoning the Ioun Stone or by moving through a loading screen. In theory it is switching the On/Off states of the visuals and this does in certain content also apply to AoE markers, making them invisible by default.
A similar long-standing issue applies to certain visual effects being disabled when performing any action while mounted that causes you to dismount other than actually just dismounting normally. ie. Attacking, using a Class Power like Seethe (Fighter) or Sprinting (Barbarian) etc. while mounted.
This disables Weapon visuals for all Vorpal types and used to and might still do so for the Soulforged Armor visual; which interestingly corrects itself a few seconds later. The Vorpal visuals can be re-enabled by repeating the same action (performing Attack/Class Power/Sprint) while mounted or by summoning then de-summoning a throne.
i get 0,001 sec delay after play a song not a huge deal when you play manual the songs.
Crescendo - Minstrel
Please, for the love of god, give it the treatment as with Diminuendo. Everyone uses Diminuendo because realistically you only need to tap the tank, you don't need to channel it for 3+s, maximum I have channeled it for in combat is... well, maybe 2 seconds? Even with Arpegio Fortissimo active, I have no issues of simply tapping it, maybe channeling for 2s because it just heals the party enough. Crescendo simply needs to have a period of persistence like Diminuendo.
Unless it does but is not in the tooltip.
Art of War - Minstrel
Why. Just why? Nobody, absolutely nobody uses healer loadout to deal damage. In solo content it's faster to use DPS loadout even if you don't have the gear for it. It should have been on DPS paragon from the beginning. Maybe swap it with A Due from DPS paragon and remove performance cost?
Sudden Muse - Minstrel
As said above we need to see procs.
Minstrel's Sudden Muse is basically an RNG every time I play a song since I can't just stand still, go to my buffs bar and check what muse I have manually. It reduces the performance of feat from "opportunistic" to "nearly useless". It can do good, but it does so so very rarily because I just can't know what I can use to benefit the most out of it.
Pianissimo - Minstrel
May I ask why is that a thing? There is literally no benefit from using this feat over Desperate Finale. If you play well you don't ever go out of performance and if your team mates are straining your healing then Desperate Finale procs. If they still have issues afterwards, well, too bad. I've done every content in game with Minstrel, there is no issue keeping up performance, unless I am the one to make a huge mistake. And then again, if I make a huge mistake... which usually results in party not being properly healed up... why would I want less healing to correct myself?
Gambler - Minstrel
This is probably only chosen by those who want to see that EXTRA THICC shield proc. Seriously. I understand you wanted RNG based effects, but realistically speaking no one will take it over Storyteller in serious play.
My suggested change here is that for one every effect should become a 5% increase and the shield to become a maximum of 20% of player's HP.
Remove Critical Severity completely from Reprised Carol: Enhance, replace with Action Point Gain from Reprised Carol: Recovery. There is too many things that give Critical Severity at the moment, I am capping it with very little to no effort.
Move Mitigation over to Reprised Carol: Recovery.
For the last missing effect I'd recommend also moving Stamina Gain Bonus from Recovery to Enhance and removing the chance to not proc any of those effects and give a heal instead with a 150 magnitude heal over time.
Lastly, the core of Gambler itself - it should not stop gaining stacks, still up to 5, maybe reduce to 4. Only consume 1 stack per cast of a Reprised Carol and give one of the effects. Only one effect from each Reprised Carol may be active and it is immediately replaced once you play the Reprised Carol active with whatever was rolled. That way both carols would have their own time to shine, while Enhance not being overpowered it would still feel nice to use. Great buff for tanks, decent for DPS. Recovery on the other hand would be good regardless, less damage taken, a shield to mitigate incoming damage or somewhat reliable heal.
Next up is class features, here is only one thing that I'd like changed:
Make Starstruck 25 magnitude heal for DPS, 100 for tanks and I have no idea why you put it on healers. Imo healers should just have their own powers' healing further increased by 2.5%.
ETA ... especially when the game automatically adds a song to that slot when you are leveling up.
Art of war - agreed, maybe make is so you regenerate and not lose Performance, as a healer you never want to lose performance.
Sudden Muse - You can actually see the proc. You can enable combat texts in your settings so this is fine.
Pianissimo - It actually makes sense because if you see the math they reduce the healing by 20% but they reduce the cost by 25%. So it makes healing more efficient. And also 2000 healing magnutide on Defender's minute is a bit of overhealing most of time.
Gambler - You only use it for the shield, I think you should only have like 2 options for each song, one defensive and one offensive. Like: One gives you a shield or AP gain. The other gives you a heal or damage bonus.