I actually like the Bard. I would however like to make the following suggestions:
- Introduce "Composition" into the Professions to allow players to compose songs for the Bard to use from the consumables slot. Depending on the quality of the crafted item, this could be for single-use on self or single-use on party. - Have some of the attacks employ the use of the Lute in an over-head strike or a back-hand strike. (Okay, I confess: I am a Quickdraw McGraw fan.) - Introduce a sonic damage weapon enchantment to compliment the Bard... something that could either deafen or mute enemy magic users to prevent them from casting for a few seconds. - Consider adding other musical instruments for the Bard to use with varying effects: Harp, Horn, Drum, Bagpipes. Perhaps certain enemies/allies would be affected differently based on the chosen instrument?
In any case, I like this new class!
"Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire." - Sir Bernard Williams
Just a follow-up to explain myself regarding adding "Composition" to Professions...
With levels being reduced to 20, Professions have likewise been reduced to 20 and as a result, we have lost a ton of stuff that we could craft. But by enabling players to craft music for Bards to use, this not only keeps Professions viable and useful in Mod 21. but it gives players something that can be bought and sold on the Auction House that is of practical use for Bards.
Just a thought.
"Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire." - Sir Bernard Williams
Just finished the Vellosk Adventure, my thoughts so far:
Bug 1 - lvl 4 shirt has survivability stats + offence slot, lvl 4 pants have combat stats + defence slot. Have the stats been muddled up?
Bug 2 - lvl 7 reward rings were 2 identical assault rings giving Crit sev + accuracy. Previous reward rings were 1 assault ring Crit sev + accuracy & 1 ruined ring giving Crit Strike + Combat Advantage. Should the rings be different?
Bug 3 - in Performance mode the stave the notes appear on should have 5 lines not 4
Feedback
I love that you can see which cut scenes are skipable.
I love the new adventures guild quest hub.
I love that you can see in the journal at which point you are in the chain of quests that make up the adventure you are in.
I think the acquisition of starter kit and abilities as quest rewards is working well.
I found Vellosk to be pleasantly more challenging than Neverdeath, and the Grey Wolf Den to be pleasantly more challenging than the map fights.
Apologies for not using the colour coding, I haven't found a way to apply in a mobile browser
Bug There seems to be some Bug when switching between the Minstrel and Songblade Paragon.
I started by testing Fleche on my Songblade, here is my combat log:
And then I switched to the minstrel paragon, and then back to the same songblade paragon and got:
So there seems to be something effecting the output in BaseDamage just by switching paragons.
During the test I made sure have no gear which would cause any additional proccs that would out throw the damage.
Bug With further testing; The "Sniper's Perk" isn't proccing after changing loadout between different paragons and the same goes for the "Swordman's Perk"!
Feedback: Songs and damage buffs to certain damage types
I'm not sure this is good or bad, but with the Bard being able to buff certain damage types, it seems like the endgame will become less inclusive. If that meta is good enough, people will start running dungeons with only magical damage dealers, or projectile, etc., which may or may not make it harder for certain classes to find runs. Although there are differences in potency, I feel currently that a DPS is a DPS. Some fight are better for melees, some better for ranged, but generally it's not that much of a difference.
Damage types however have the ability to really make it necessary to run with certain classes. So while I think it's great to add a little extra theory to group compilation, it may backfire. I think the thought of it was so that the Bard is able to look at the group and buff what makes the most sense. But in reality we all know that groups will be assembled in a way so that you can benefit from the buffs the most.
Bug There seems to be some Bug when switching between the Minstrel and Songblade Paragon.
I started by testing Fleche on my Songblade, here is my combat log:
And then I switched to the minstrel paragon, and then back to the same songblade paragon and got:
So there seems to be something effecting the output in BaseDamage just by switching paragons.
Did you considered the DPS and healer role bonuses to base damage, or the passive that grants a 10% damage buff (DPS)/10% more outgoing healing (healer) after playing a song?
From the screenshots, assuming you did not change your gear, there seems to be a ~4400 base damage difference between the worst Fleche procs of the healer/DPS paths. That 4400 difference seems to approximate a difference of 10%.
Feedback: Songs and damage buffs to certain damage types
I'm not sure this is good or bad, but with the Bard being able to buff certain damage types, it seems like the endgame will become less inclusive. If that meta is good enough, people will start running dungeons with only magical damage dealers, or projectile, etc., which may or may not make it harder for certain classes to find runs. Although there are differences in potency, I feel currently that a DPS is a DPS. Some fight are better for melees, some better for ranged, but generally it's not that much of a difference.
Damage types however have the ability to really make it necessary to run with certain classes. So while I think it's great to add a little extra theory to group compilation, it may backfire. I think the thought of it was so that the Bard is able to look at the group and buff what makes the most sense. But in reality we all know that groups will be assembled in a way so that you can benefit from the buffs the most.
The ease of fights between being melee/ranged existed before the Bard was announced.
The matching damage buff from Blazing Flamenco, Tailwind Mambo, and Steel March is 2%, in addition to the general 2% damage buff for everyone in the party if you play the song. 2% will not make or break runs.
If people care that much about excluding Hunters or Assassins over Wizards (lol) because they aren't magic damage, you may not want to run with those people on principle.
I think the concept you have for the bard is great, especially with the free play option you give it, sort of like LOTRO. I admit I'm not a huge hybrid (melee/spell/healing) class user, but this one on the surface looks like it could be useful.
That said the biggest problem is the flow of the animations, and the animations themselves. Bards are about singing, dancing, poetry. Everything they do should have a flow, a beat, a rhythm about it, especially in combat. Here it just feels clunky. Nothing flows. There isn't a certain rhythm you can get into with the combat. Too many pauses and wind-ups in their animations.
So it seems like in the process of editing my post it somehow got deleted... Feedback on Minstrel.
Bugs:
The Sheltering Etude song does not apply the heal when cast on a target that already has it despite the tooltip saying it should do so.
Starstruck, despite saying "you or a teammate", does not seem to apply to yourself. There is no indicator of it activating, no "Starstruck!" like "Vamp!" or "Gambler's Delight!" popping up, so I'm unsure if it's proccing, but it doesn't seem to be healing me when I crit-heal even if it is proccing.
Feedback:
Song Difficulty I agree with Gild earlier about the songs. Some like the one that cleanses are much too difficult to input, while others such as Defender's Minuet and Blazing are pretty simple, though entering them in combat is still difficult, especially as a healer when you have so many other things to keep track of. I agree that the songs could be simplified a little more, but stuff like the cleansing song and the Hero song from the DPS spec are just much too long and tricky, and the cleansing one's worse, because usually if you're cleansing something it needs cleansing quickly, so the song being so long means you either quick-slot it or don't really use it at all.
Song Strength Some songs, especially Rejuvenating Carol, are simply too weak to really work. Rejuv for example, heals only about 2% of your health from what I can tell. Yes it's a long duration, but it seems almost entirely useless because of its low healing without the Starstruck passive, and I haven't been able to test how useful that is or how often it procs, so for all I know Starstruck could be what makes Rejuv work at all, or it could be just as bad. Starstruck's tooltip doesn't say if activating its healing removes it or if for that full duration you're healed when you satisfy the criteria. What's the chance for it to activate since it says there is a "chance" for them to become Starstruck?
Aurora Fantasia Feedback:Aurora's passive 'healing on hit' also seems incredibly low, even lower than Rejuv, only being useful at all if you're using multi-hit attacks such as Reprise or Fleche, and even then not great since it heals for way less than even Rejuv so in the time you hit those attacks you could just...have it bound to a quick slot and fire it off again for a much stronger heal and some AoE damage, though that's also kind of clunky since you need to enter perform, cast / quick-slot it, the hit perform again to fire it off, and sometimes you get locked into the animation of singing. It's just not really worth the cost or time to keep it channeled, plus the fact it locks out your other songs makes channeling it clunky at best and actively getting in the way at worst.
Serenade: The fact Defensive Minuet hard-locks to the Serenade target just makes it not worth using at all. There could be someone heavily injured, meanwhile your attempts to desperately get them up just get dumped into the tank or whoever else you have marked instead. It's just better not to slot the heal mark period so you have an emergency heal that will actually function properly.
Talents: Some of the talents seem...kind of pointless for a healer. 1% more damage dealt and less damage taken seems...not great. Sure we can theoretically keep up a bunch of songs, but usually not more than a few unless song-spam is all we do. Art of War seems more like a DPS talent than a healer one, since it does nothing to enhance our healing, but is still better than the other one, rendering that level either a meh / borderline useless talent, or a talent that you might get some use out of but if you don't then it's not doing anything.
Crescendo ramps up much too slowly. The other first-talent is useful since it starts strong and is usable as a burst-heal that you can still channel if necessary, but Crescendo, because of the performance cost and how it takes multiple seconds to ramp up per tick, means you might be close to running out of performance by the time it hits maximum power.
Also, the passive that makes the healing at-will into an AoE horribly conflicts with the beginning talent that makes it stronger. So either you have the talent...or you use a passive and waste the talent pick entirely because the decrease of the magnitude over-writes the talent pick. It might be better if it didn't mess with the potency, or at least decreased it instead of hard-setting it, that way you could make use of the boosted potency the talents provide instead, even if the passive reduced them. Or maybe let it stay a single-target beam with the talent letting it have an additional AoE pulses. Like the target gets healed for the brunt of it as the talent, but they additionally pulse weaker AoE healing around them. That would let the passive be useful without completely messing up the talent pick.
Gambler's: The gambler's songs seem kind of...lackluster. As a healer you have to pay attention to mechanics, boss health, your health and team mates, dodge ground patches, and cast songs, but then with Gamblers' you have to additionally build up charges, then upon casting the song you can't quick-slot or store in the Delayed encounter power because it wipes your stacks due to a bug upon activation, have to hope RNG blesses you...when you could just get a passive bonus for skipping the charge and RNG and just get a bonus that benefits everyone for doing what they're already doing for casting songs you're already casting anyway, that works on any song, not just specific ones. Plus, if none of the effects are applied, you get a crazy weak Heal over Time, like Rejuv but it can't proc Starstruck or anything to make it better ontop of lasting less time.
Bassline : The Bassline encounter power seems...weak. 10 second cast time to restore performance meter less than what you can passively regenerate in less time on a 30 second cooldown is pretty weak. When the ability is weaker than your passive regeneration it's not worth slotting ever, and even if it didn't that cast time is just unpleasant. When you're drained of performance you're probably in a rough situation due to, say, Defender's Minuet spam, which means you likely can't afford to channel for 10 solid seconds to recover so little performance meter with such a long cooldown if fully channeled.
Performance Mode: Speaking of performance meter. Do you think it'd be possible to have an optional thing where you can set performance mode to a toggle? It can be frustrating for recasting buff songs to enter perform mode, fire off an ability, enter it again, fire off another song, enter it again... I understand Aurora doing it since it transforms the Perform button into an AoE burst, but it would be nice if we had the option to set it into a toggle-type mode if necessary.
Daily Powers: Curtain Call should affect the bard as well as allies. Unsure if it's working at all since I haven't teamed yet. Inspiration only applying to a single ally within 15' is also pretty weak for a daily power, especially since you can't select who gets it, though it's at least useful when soloing. Not sure about Encore. Would be nice if it wasn't just "last song used", since most of them are very long-duration buffs you don't want to cast more than once every minute or so, but that we could store a song in it like Delayed Play or something. Maybe let it fire off Gamblers songs at full 3-charge power when stored in it?
Over all it seems that Minstrel bards don't have very good daily powers except for maybe Curtain Call if you have the right songs running as you fire it.
For those saying "press 7 keys is too difficult!" it's all relative to the power of the song. Playing a song is like a casting time, maybe should be shorter? i don't know. But I'd like to see this game not as simple as it is now.
BIG PROBLEM: A lot of users are now using macros for songs. What Devs will do? Ban? A possible solution could be to randomize keys to press when you go on performance, or use key sequences from a pool. For example: i press tab, i see my song pinned, randomly is picked from a pool of possible key sequences (686686 - 797797 - 565565...)
For those saying "press 7 keys is too difficult!" it's all relative to the power of the song. Playing a song is like a casting time, maybe should be shorter? i don't know. But I'd like to see this game not as simple as it is now.
BIG PROBLEM: A lot of users are now using macros for songs. What Devs will do? Ban? A possible solution could be to randomize keys to press when you go on performance, or use key sequences from a pool. For example: i press tab, i see my song pinned, randomly is picked from a pool of possible key sequences (686686 - 797797 - 565565...)
Reading this I realized there is a pretty interesting conceptual flaw in the Bard design, because you can build yourself infinite "Quickplay Slots" for your songs using ingame console commands:
This is how you bind an entire song to the F5 key. Just enter Performance Mode, hit F5 and your song is played instantly with all benefits that come with "manual" play. I haven't been able to enter Performance Mode and play a song using a single key, because the console command for the Performance Mode only seems to activate the Freeplay Mode.
Reading this I realized there is a pretty interesting conceptual flaw in the Bard design, because you can build yourself infinite "Quickplay Slots" for your songs using ingame console commands:
This is how you bind an entire song to the F5 key. Just enter Performance Mode, hit F5 and your song is played instantly with all benefits that come with "manual" play. I haven't been able to enter Performance Mode and play a song using a single key, because the console command for the Performance Mode only seems to activate the Freeplay Mode.
Huh. What 'exec numbers' equate to what notes? It kind of says something about how flawed the playing in combat system is when people are actively looking for ways to bypass it just to make it tolerable.
It's 7-14 for the eight notes. You can btw. look this up yourself using the keybinds menu in the options. Hovering over an action shows the corresponding console command as tooltip.
I've been trying out the bard since the preview release and I must say it's quite enjoyable. Although still needs some polishing.
Feedback: The class is pretty fun to use and the combat style/ mix between songs and rapier is quite fun. May it be either the Dps or the healer paragons , it's quite nice.
As for the core mechanic being Performance , it's clever but a bit hard to use in later areas where ennemies get more aggressive. Although I managed to learn a few of the dps songs such as Steel march and Tailwind Mambo , I find myself using songs in quickplay rather than typing them out unless I know I have mostly won the fight. Others have explained this a bit more in detail than me though. As for the rapier encounters and others , I find that the style is charming and quite good when dealing with ennemies. Some powers however should need re-polishing : [Reprise], since the patch of 12/06/2021 is slower than normal. I guess it may be a bug from trying to make it so players do not get stuck while doing the animation ? In any case , the speed of it is definitely lower and is a shame as it was a really decent starting at-will that introduced players to the quick-flashy/fancy nature of the bard class (along with Fleche , which I must note has a nice ending animation with the little spin the character does) [Staccato] is , in my eyes , not a great single target at-will. It remains kinda slow. Damage is nice but still a bit slow. [Ad Libitum] as of the patch of the 12/06/2021 has been rendered kinda useless... I understand that a fix might have been done to respect more the 50% chance of a follow-up attack. However , it's now a bit underwhelming and not reliable as it was before the patch where it was quite useful to finish off ennemies or deal a few good hits to a strong ennemy. And because of that , the effect of redoublement is pretty much useless now since the chance of a follow up is not that often as before (unless players use Volti Subito , I guess). As for the songs , perhaps enhance the duration of both Ballads to 20 ? that way it gives a bit more time to be able to use the magnitude enhancing effect of both ballads and still be able to use the finale. It can help as well when ennemies knock you out/daze you mid casting the finale , rendering the final effect useless as the time runs out while the character recovers from the stun.
As for appearence. I've seen that a few rapier designs are available now and I find it quite nice , although still narrow in terms of choice. The luthes ,however, still are kinda lacking in diversity. Not that the existing designs are bad , but things like the Demogorgon Luthe ,for example , would be quite nice if it was some sort of demonic inspired instrument/harp/etc or perhaps a luthe with demogorgon's twin faces as the main part with strings between. BUT , It figures that making a class now and making several designs for each existing campaigns and the various alternatives must be quite hard , as it means to go back into the kind of "mood"/theme the weapons had and suceeding in making another as if it was alawys there. (being an drawer/ digital artist on the side , I can understand the enormous task ahead of you all. I have faith though that you'll make wonders )
Overall , it still needs some polishing and some re-vision. But I can understand that such a task is a lot seeing all the content already in game as well as the new mod you are making . I remain pleasantly surprised and charmed at how you made the bard so much fun though. Good luck to you all in charge of this enormous project !
PS: Although I underline a few aspects to review , I've seen that a few animations and bugs as well as modifications on certains powers have already been made. Good job !
Reading this I realized there is a pretty interesting conceptual flaw in the Bard design, because you can build yourself infinite "Quickplay Slots" for your songs using ingame console commands:
This is how you bind an entire song to the F5 key. Just enter Performance Mode, hit F5 and your song is played instantly with all benefits that come with "manual" play. I haven't been able to enter Performance Mode and play a song using a single key, because the console command for the Performance Mode only seems to activate the Freeplay Mode.
Huh. What 'exec numbers' equate to what notes? It kind of says something about how flawed the playing in combat system is when people are actively looking for ways to bypass it just to make it tolerable.
People will always look for ways to do this the easiest way, if not inside the game, it will be using something outside of it. This worries me a lot, because as you mentioned, if there is such a need then there is a problem with it all.
Manually casting songs gives an large increase of some songs' effects over using quick casted songs. Typing manually the notes to cast a song power is from my point of view the only difficulty of the shiny new bard class, but ...
Using keybinds just nullifies that difficulty : the song is instantly casted (like the so called "quick casted" ones), and you get the full maximum effect of the power ! The slots provided for quick casting songs are no more required : who will prefer the less powerful version of the song's effect ?
Indeed it's a so poorly designed class mechanic. And there we are.
Question :
Will that be a bug or a feature ? What about you devs, do you plan something to deal with it before this comes to live ?
I know it has been said many times before, but song input in battles is cumbersome and breaks the flow of combat when alone. This could be solved by making the inputs Q E R, for combat, and leaving the number keys for performance. Q E R could be chords and those 3 cords are strung together quickly to make a combat effect. the flame flamenco could be QQR, the next song EEQ ETC. given the combinations capable from 3 letter there are more than enough for the power songs. And this gives you a way to implement them on console, when encounter buttons just become cords, that is easier to map to a controller.
Ego etiam cupo recrari et amari diu post mortem meam I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
I know it has been said many times before, but song input in battles is cumbersome and breaks the flow of combat when alone. This could be solved by making the inputs Q E R, for combat, and leaving the number keys for performance. Q E R could be chords and those 3 cords are strung together quickly to make a combat effect. the flame flamenco could be QQR, the next song EEQ ETC. given the combinations capable from 3 letter there are more than enough for the power songs. And this gives you a way to implement them on console, when encounter buttons just become cords, that is easier to map to a controller.
I agree. You don't even have to change the current system. Just let songs use three different notes only. Players can then map these three notes to their encounter keys.
Bug - The infernal machine does not work properly. It keeps showing animation entering and exiting the machine and it is impossible to "exit" the machine. Whenever we enter in combat it stops thou, but as soon as we leave combat it starts to happen again Here is a video uploaded to youtube showing it https://youtube.com/watch?v=bggnummLe4E
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
Just downloaded the most recent patch (06/17/2021) and I noticed a few things. Some things are new (like the increased Performance Regen), while many of the bugs/problems I found are old, such as the shielding from Reprised Carol Recovery being non-existent no matter your stacks of Gambler.
I don't know if these bugs are internally fixed or not, but I'm repeating the bugs in the event they were not being worked on.
Bugs: Minstrel
Bug 1: Reprised Carol Recovery: The Shielding from this song is still non-existent, no matter how many stacks of Gambler you have.
Feedback: Minstrel
Feedback 1: Gambler: I am disappointed by the nerf to Reprised Carol: Enhance. I think you guys should put back in the original values for Reprise Carol Enhance.
Before the changes, Gambler was already the underdog choice because of how reliable Storyteller was (play songs and grant people in the party fantastic bonuses), not to mention that Storyteller did not cost any extra Performance on a role governed by resource conservation.
Even so, at least Gambler had a really interesting claim to fame of having high impact effects (from what I remember, Reprised Carol Enhanced gave +8% Crit Sev/+10% Recharge Speed Increase/unknown damage resistance per stack of Gambler), offset by the extra resource cost, less pinned songs available, and random nature of Gambler.
After the changes (which reduced most Gambler bonuses to 1/4th to 1/5th of their prepatch values), I don't see any reason to pick Gambler, since all of the downsides are still present with an even weaker reward for fishing for specific Gambler procs.
Bugs: Songblade
Bug 1: Loremaster's Ready to Exploit damage buff did not work on the following: Dancing Lights Contre Blazing Flamenco (Initial hit) Steel March (initial hit) Tailwind Mambo (initial hit)
Bug 2: Contre: While the displayed name is correct, Contre's description still wrong and referring to Contre Sixte as the single target attack (where it is really Contre Septime and the 3 hit AoE as Contre Septime (where it is really Contre Niuvembre)
Bug 3: Steel March (initial hit) hits using projectile damage and not for physical damage. The regular attack conversion part worked as far as I tried.
Feedback: Songblade
Feedback 1: Boost to Performance Regen: I just wanted to say that I liked that you guys boosted the passive Performance regen for the Songblade to approximately triple that of prepatch. Now I can actually play songs mid combat, rather than having to wait 34 seconds between songs.
Feedback 2: Staccato: Please lower the cast times of Staccato hits 1/2/3/4 down to 0.3/0.4/0.4/0.4 seconds, respectively.
Staccato is still not worth using over Fleche due to Fleche hitting 3x as hard, being a ranged attack, and having the same cast time as Staccato. If Staccato had its cast time halved on all attacks, it would be slightly better as an at-will for fishing for song procs.
Questions:
Question 1: Cross Class Transmutes: While I understand the Bard's primary weapon is supposed to be the rapier, is there any chance the dev team could make some of these rapiers available as transmutes for other classes (whatever would theoretically work with the model like Rogue, Fighter, and/or Paladin)?
I really like the looks of these rapiers and would like them on other classes.
Hello everyone! This is the continue of my first feedback about the bard. With the help by my guild and some friends we did some ToMM runs in preview to tested bard both healer and dps. Im focus only on healer path and maybe someone can work on dps side. I tried Tomm in both healer role, pure healer and "shielder".
1° FEEDBACK- Arpeggio Arpeggio is literally the only one heal skill in our Power tabs and it is a single target healing power. I like it, have a nice magnitude, the heals are really good even if you choose "Arpeggio Fortissimo" as class feat; it reduces the magnitude of Arpeggio to 100, increase the performance cost to 60 but u CAN HEAL ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE PARTY within 40'. The only thing in disappointment: arpeggio also heals companions. This has created problems in healing ( some dps uses their stone of health when with the other healers hardly happened), because the maximum target is 15 entities. My Feedback: I think, since it is the only skill that actually heals, it is necessary that it does not heal the companions following the same path made for Healing word and Divine shelter, which I suggested in another post about the heals from players goes to companions and mirage clones.
2° FEEDBACK- Rejuvenating carol this is the most song used to heal other players. Apply heal over time to self and all nearbly allies. Heal Magnitude 100
This song have two problems: 1)the healing commin from it is affected by critical avoidance players, 2) his hot is basically close to 27k/34k every 3 sec and it is to LOW compared for example cleric Healing Word (heal magnitude 450; then hot 300 magnitude heal that means 130-230k every 3 sec).
For what I look from ACT parses, and how the dps felt on some situations, MY FEEDBACK is to increase the heal magnitude of this song, at least, to 200/250.
More feedback will come in this days when we will testing zariel master! @sgrantdev@lassor AsteR#9941 my discord nick if someone wanna see parses and others stuffs I did for bard healer.
Post edited by aster#8001 on
"The more I care for life, the more everything around me dies."
I tried this song in dungeon (VoS) and in a trial (ToMM). This song need to be totally reworked. In both situations, I rarely used it for three reasons: 1) it is really useless ( it did really a LOW heal, always close to 10/12k, doesnt matter if I increase or decrease my stats; I attach a parses did in training room)
2) Why I rarely use it? because this song dont help me, like healer, to heals my teammates. 3)There are two better songs than this. Rejuvenating carol and Defender's Minuet are so good for healing members (especially if You can do the changes I suggested in the other my comment.)
So I like to try to give a feedback, that maybe can help a lot bard and make it more good. Basically bard healer buff are:
-thx to Storyteller feat: 5% of Damage decrease for tank; 5% damage increase for dps; 5% OGH increase for healers; all this stacks 3 times, so we have 15% total from this feat. -thx to Blazed Flamengo (song) 2% more dmg to all party members. -If i use my daily (Inspiration) only one of the party 15% more dmg and 15% dmg decrease taken.
that means totale buffs are: 17% (additive) for dps; 15% (multiplicative) for tank; 15%(additive) for healers.
To make Aurora Fantasia a viable song, to use in every situation, and that can help much better the party I suggest to change his effect in "increase dmg resistance for all members by 5%." In this way it will be, imo, a really good song that helps a lot my party (especially dps) because the tank, in this moment of the game and especially near to the endgame, really dont need this huge ammount of "Dmg decrease taken"; on the contrary, dps would actually benefit out of it.
"The more I care for life, the more everything around me dies."
Ok maybe I am missing something. First I do understand this is preview and things are subject to change. But for the Bard as a healer I dont see any songs that would be a good AOE heal 1. Rejuv Carol - This does an regen to people in the AOE range. But the heal is so minor it isnt worth the time. 2. Defenders Minuet - Very nice single target heal. Nice but does not help when you have multiple people needing a heal. 3. Sheltering Etude - Provides a heal when a party member drops below 50%. Only occurs when they drop below 50% and then it doesnt do much.
Heya , So , writing this feedback for the 24th of June's changes.
Bug: I can't seem to be able to change loadouts , despite attempting several methods such as dying , re-logging in and out , changing location and/or instance etc. Another bug is [Fleche] 's animation. Sometimes , the character distorts itself (and the animation is a bit too fast I believe , but may be because of the broken animation) the female character seems "unaffected" by the bug sometimes (but keeps a slight bizarre speed ? Not really sure).
Feedback: At wills :
[Reprise] isn't really fixed , the speed is still a bit slow compared to the original speed.
[Staccato] remains a "not so great" single target at-will , damage is okay but the animation is quite slow.
[Phantasmal Concerto]'s sound effect when in use (not when hitting a target) is kinda bizarre and un-enjoyable.
Encounters :
[Delayed Play] 's sound effect when the character uses it , being the character loudly screaming , is kinda off-putting and not really nice to hear when using the encounter.
[Ad Libitum] remains a pretty bad encounter due to it's random nature. Although I understand the changes were made so it was more true to it's effect , it renders [Redoublement]'s feat effect quite unreliable and somewhat useless (unless used for a singular other encounter , [Volti Subito] which doesn't really give much diversity].
[Contre] 's slight change so it shows the effect that will occur if released is quite nice and helpful.
Mechanics :
[Quickstep]'s changed animation to the dodge roll of the performance mode isn't great . I'd rather keep the dash in a direction that fit a bit more into the whole "rapier-wielding" theme.
Others:
Noticed the logo of bard changed from cyan to light purple/pink with a few design changes. Looks good.
Questions : Will there be different appearences for the luthe or will it remain mostly the same ?
Overall , still a lot to polish and fix. However , i do hope the feedback I and others write helps out in that task. If you read this report to the end , thank you and good luck in the work ahead of you.
A workaround I've found sometimes works on loadout glitches is to mark all gear, companion & mount setups on the current profile as 'copy to all loadouts'. Of course on gear you'll have to do it one item at a time.
It's worth a try.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
They could stop with the pride and just copy GW2's loadout system, I mean, changing is instant with zero issues and lets you hold sets of gear within the loadouts (could be another worthwhile reason for people to buy more loadouts). The one we currently have is and has been very flawed, forcing us to play guessing games and mess up our builds.
Bug 1: Harmonize: Harmonize does not increase the Action Point generation of player powers at all.
Character Used:
I have an Action Pint Gain of 3.5%.
Action Points are generated at a rate of (Ability Cast Time * 22.00), where you need 1000 Action Points to generate a full daily attack.
The first hit of Fleche has a cast time of 0.6 seconds. When I attack with my Bard with the first hit of Fleche, I generate 13.662 AP.
0.6 * 22.00 * (1.035) = 13.662, exactly as described, no Harmonize extra Action Points generated.
According to the ACT parse, is Harmonize supposed to be "Action Point generation"? If so, there is no bonus Action Point generated by the passive, aside from the general (Cast Time * 22.00) thing you guys set up in the background.
Bug 2: The party member Performance bar in the HUD will always show the Bard at 100 Performance, even if the player has more than that.
I clearly have 1000/full Minstrel Performance in the screenshot, but the HUD in the party section only shows me at 100 Performance.
Bug 3: The Grandstand daily (Encore with 30 Playing to the Crowd Stacks) does not confer the listed "song deals double damage/ double healing" bonus to any of the songs.
Rejuvinating Carol Blazing Flamenco Steel March Tailwind Mambo Ballad of the Hero. Ballad of the Witch
Bug 4: When playing Ballad of the Hero/Witch through the Grandstand daily, you don't get the Finale of the song.
In this screenshot, I had 30 stacks of Playing to the Audience, had previously played Ballad of the Hero, then Grandstand.
Notice that I have Ballad of the Hero up, but no Finale in the tab bar. You can tell I didn't use regular Encore with Ballad of the Hero, as regular Encore with Ballad of the Hero would place Hero's Finale in my performance bar.
Same goes for Ballad of the Witch: no finale appears when I use Grandstand.
Bug 5: Redoublement: If you use either Ad Libitum/Volti Subito, then cast any other encounter power during the Redoublement window, the rest of your Ad Libitum/Volti Subito hits are automatically converted into Inspirational Ad Libitum/Volti Subito, even if you do not have the Performer feat.
Bug 7: List of Contre Bugs (?): Not sure if the first two are bugs, but Contre has its own list of things I noticed: -You can move while casting Contre Neuvieme -You generate 22.00 Action Points for every second you hold the block (this behavior exists on the various Blocks of tank classes) -Improvised Contre lacks the helpful "Contre Seconde/Septime/Neuvieme" identification text near the charge up bar.
Bug 8: Backup Performer does not seem to increase Rejuvinating Carol's healing to 1200 magnitude. If anything, it seems to reduce the healing magnitude.
Bug 9: Ready to Exploit (5 stacks of Battle Lore) does not affect Dancing Lights and the initial Hits of Blazing Flamenco/Steel March/Tailwind Mambo
Bug 10: Hero's Finale, Witch's Finale, and Aurora Finale all state that they deal 680 magnitude damage when hovering over their ability text.
Bug 11: Ad Libitum with Performer will sometimes get stuck when attacking: as in, you press Ad Libitum, the animation plays, but no attack comes out. Maybe this has to do with how the system is putting/taking out the Inspirational/regular versions of Ad Libitum in the powers tray?
Bug 12: Dancing Lights is not being affected by Recharge Speed Increase.
Bug 13: The initial hits of Steel March, Blazing Flamenco, and Tailwind Mambo are not being buffed by the general 2% damage buff/2%, even if you had Battle Harmony/the song buff running in the background before playing the song.
Bug 14: Steel March's initial hit is using Projectile damage when it should be using physical damage.
Feedback:
Feedback 1: Performer: Reduce stacks needed to trigger Grandstand down to 20.
Performer is already a strong feat thanks to the Inspirational attacks, but I'd like to point out that nobody is going to get to use the second part of the feat, as 30 stacks takes roughly 2 minutes of constant attacking (120+ seconds) to get.
I would advise lowering it down to 20 stacks, but I am not sure this is necessary when the first part of the feat makes Performer really really strong.
Feedback 2: Ballad Colla Voce: Increase the duration of this buff to 20 seconds please.
Ballad Colla Voce has a 15 second duration to match the original duration of Ballad of the Hero/Witch. With Ballad of the Hero/Witch having its duration upped to 20 seconds, I think that Ballad Colla Voce should have its duration increased to match.
Feedback 3: Staccato: Reduce the cast times of Staccato hits 1/2/3/4 to 0.3/0.4/0.4/0.4 seconds respectively.
I have mentioned this a few times and others have commented on how bad Staccato feels, but as it stands, Staccato is less than half the base damage of Fleche, but with approximately the same cast time. Why should I bother with Staccato if Fleche has the inherent ranged advantage, hits twice as hard, and casts as fast?
I have noticed you guys shaved off ... 1/20th of a second (0.05 seconds) off the cast times of Staccato hits 2/3/4. It is an improvement, but not a big enough improvement to make it worth using over Fleche.
By reducing the Staccato's hits to be twice as fast as Fleche, you make it a better option for combat in general: slightly weaker mathematically compared to Fleche, but allowing you to get in twice as many Ballad of the Hero/Witch procs in the same amount of time.
Feedback 3: Redoublement: When it is fixed can you guys please put the buff on the buffbar? Just so I know when I have the buff and when I don't.
Feedback 4: Harmonize: When Harmonize gets fixed to whatever you guys plan, please be specific with the extra Action Points generated by the passive, such as "all powers will generate an extra 20 Action Points per hit", or "increases Action Point Gain by 10%". It would be very nice if players were just told how exactly it works, instead of having to open combatlogs to figure out what's going on.
Feedback 5: Musician's Flow: Can you guys change Musician's Flow guaranteed after the first song you cast in combat (or the first song you cast after the buff re-appears), but give it a 36 second internal cooldown?
I find Musician's Flow to be a nice passive for using Ballad of the Hero, but its random nature means I can't reliably count on it for planning out what I want to do. By giving Musician's Flow a guaranteed proc with an ICD, this method gives players more say in how they want to plan out their song useage, rather than praying for Musician Flow procs at the right time.
At the moment, Musician's Flow is supposed to be a 50% chance, or, in theory 1 out of every 2 songs played. Giving Musician's Flow a 36 second internal cooldown roughly approximates the half chance to proc: the first song we play when we have the buff gives Musician's Flow, the second has the normal cost due to ICD on Musician's Flow (resembling that we "failed" to proc the Musician's Flow).
I just hope that the devs are not using this forum as its only source of issues. There are a few folks here that do a thorough job at describing issues but there does not seem to be much activity here by the player base or the devs. Which would not be that big of a deal in itself but given the state of the bard I have some big concerns about how they will look when they go live.
I don't have a lot of time to test but what I have seen of the Minstrel doesn't give me much comfort that my hope of replacing my warlock healer will come to fruition.
Comments
I actually like the Bard. I would however like to make the following suggestions:
- Introduce "Composition" into the Professions to allow players to compose songs for the Bard to use from the consumables slot. Depending on the quality of the crafted item, this could be for single-use on self or single-use on party.
- Have some of the attacks employ the use of the Lute in an over-head strike or a back-hand strike. (Okay, I confess: I am a Quickdraw McGraw fan.)
- Introduce a sonic damage weapon enchantment to compliment the Bard... something that could either deafen or mute enemy magic users to prevent them from casting for a few seconds.
- Consider adding other musical instruments for the Bard to use with varying effects: Harp, Horn, Drum, Bagpipes. Perhaps certain enemies/allies would be affected differently based on the chosen instrument?
In any case, I like this new class!
Just a follow-up to explain myself regarding adding "Composition" to Professions...
With levels being reduced to 20, Professions have likewise been reduced to 20 and as a result, we have lost a ton of stuff that we could craft. But by enabling players to craft music for Bards to use, this not only keeps Professions viable and useful in Mod 21. but it gives players something that can be bought and sold on the Auction House that is of practical use for Bards.
Just a thought.
Bug 1 - lvl 4 shirt has survivability stats + offence slot, lvl 4 pants have combat stats + defence slot. Have the stats been muddled up?
Bug 2 - lvl 7 reward rings were 2 identical assault rings giving Crit sev + accuracy. Previous reward rings were 1 assault ring Crit sev + accuracy & 1 ruined ring giving Crit Strike + Combat Advantage. Should the rings be different?
Bug 3 - in Performance mode the stave the notes appear on should have 5 lines not 4
Feedback
I love that you can see which cut scenes are skipable.
I love the new adventures guild quest hub.
I love that you can see in the journal at which point you are in the chain of quests that make up the adventure you are in.
I think the acquisition of starter kit and abilities as quest rewards is working well.
I found Vellosk to be pleasantly more challenging than Neverdeath, and the Grey Wolf Den to be pleasantly more challenging than the map fights.
Apologies for not using the colour coding, I haven't found a way to apply in a mobile browser
There seems to be some Bug when switching between the Minstrel and Songblade Paragon.
I started by testing Fleche on my Songblade, here is my combat log:
And then I switched to the minstrel paragon, and then back to the same songblade paragon and got:
So there seems to be something effecting the output in BaseDamage just by switching paragons.
During the test I made sure have no gear which would cause any additional proccs that would out throw the damage.
Bug
With further testing; The "Sniper's Perk" isn't proccing after changing loadout between different paragons and the same goes for the "Swordman's Perk"!
I'm not sure this is good or bad, but with the Bard being able to buff certain damage types, it seems like the endgame will become less inclusive. If that meta is good enough, people will start running dungeons with only magical damage dealers, or projectile, etc., which may or may not make it harder for certain classes to find runs. Although there are differences in potency, I feel currently that a DPS is a DPS. Some fight are better for melees, some better for ranged, but generally it's not that much of a difference.
Damage types however have the ability to really make it necessary to run with certain classes. So while I think it's great to add a little extra theory to group compilation, it may backfire. I think the thought of it was so that the Bard is able to look at the group and buff what makes the most sense. But in reality we all know that groups will be assembled in a way so that you can benefit from the buffs the most.
From the screenshots, assuming you did not change your gear, there seems to be a ~4400 base damage difference between the worst Fleche procs of the healer/DPS paths. That 4400 difference seems to approximate a difference of 10%. The ease of fights between being melee/ranged existed before the Bard was announced.
The matching damage buff from Blazing Flamenco, Tailwind Mambo, and Steel March is 2%, in addition to the general 2% damage buff for everyone in the party if you play the song. 2% will not make or break runs.
If people care that much about excluding Hunters or Assassins over Wizards (lol) because they aren't magic damage, you may not want to run with those people on principle.
That said the biggest problem is the flow of the animations, and the animations themselves. Bards are about singing, dancing, poetry. Everything they do should have a flow, a beat, a rhythm about it, especially in combat. Here it just feels clunky. Nothing flows. There isn't a certain rhythm you can get into with the combat. Too many pauses and wind-ups in their animations.
Bugs:
The Sheltering Etude song does not apply the heal when cast on a target that already has it despite the tooltip saying it should do so.
Starstruck, despite saying "you or a teammate", does not seem to apply to yourself. There is no indicator of it activating, no "Starstruck!" like "Vamp!" or "Gambler's Delight!" popping up, so I'm unsure if it's proccing, but it doesn't seem to be healing me when I crit-heal even if it is proccing.
Feedback:
Song Difficulty I agree with Gild earlier about the songs. Some like the one that cleanses are much too difficult to input, while others such as Defender's Minuet and Blazing are pretty simple, though entering them in combat is still difficult, especially as a healer when you have so many other things to keep track of. I agree that the songs could be simplified a little more, but stuff like the cleansing song and the Hero song from the DPS spec are just much too long and tricky, and the cleansing one's worse, because usually if you're cleansing something it needs cleansing quickly, so the song being so long means you either quick-slot it or don't really use it at all.
Song Strength Some songs, especially Rejuvenating Carol, are simply too weak to really work. Rejuv for example, heals only about 2% of your health from what I can tell. Yes it's a long duration, but it seems almost entirely useless because of its low healing without the Starstruck passive, and I haven't been able to test how useful that is or how often it procs, so for all I know Starstruck could be what makes Rejuv work at all, or it could be just as bad. Starstruck's tooltip doesn't say if activating its healing removes it or if for that full duration you're healed when you satisfy the criteria. What's the chance for it to activate since it says there is a "chance" for them to become Starstruck?
Aurora Fantasia Feedback:Aurora's passive 'healing on hit' also seems incredibly low, even lower than Rejuv, only being useful at all if you're using multi-hit attacks such as Reprise or Fleche, and even then not great since it heals for way less than even Rejuv so in the time you hit those attacks you could just...have it bound to a quick slot and fire it off again for a much stronger heal and some AoE damage, though that's also kind of clunky since you need to enter perform, cast / quick-slot it, the hit perform again to fire it off, and sometimes you get locked into the animation of singing. It's just not really worth the cost or time to keep it channeled, plus the fact it locks out your other songs makes channeling it clunky at best and actively getting in the way at worst.
Serenade: The fact Defensive Minuet hard-locks to the Serenade target just makes it not worth using at all. There could be someone heavily injured, meanwhile your attempts to desperately get them up just get dumped into the tank or whoever else you have marked instead. It's just better not to slot the heal mark period so you have an emergency heal that will actually function properly.
Talents: Some of the talents seem...kind of pointless for a healer. 1% more damage dealt and less damage taken seems...not great. Sure we can theoretically keep up a bunch of songs, but usually not more than a few unless song-spam is all we do. Art of War seems more like a DPS talent than a healer one, since it does nothing to enhance our healing, but is still better than the other one, rendering that level either a meh / borderline useless talent, or a talent that you might get some use out of but if you don't then it's not doing anything.
Crescendo ramps up much too slowly. The other first-talent is useful since it starts strong and is usable as a burst-heal that you can still channel if necessary, but Crescendo, because of the performance cost and how it takes multiple seconds to ramp up per tick, means you might be close to running out of performance by the time it hits maximum power.
Also, the passive that makes the healing at-will into an AoE horribly conflicts with the beginning talent that makes it stronger. So either you have the talent...or you use a passive and waste the talent pick entirely because the decrease of the magnitude over-writes the talent pick. It might be better if it didn't mess with the potency, or at least decreased it instead of hard-setting it, that way you could make use of the boosted potency the talents provide instead, even if the passive reduced them. Or maybe let it stay a single-target beam with the talent letting it have an additional AoE pulses. Like the target gets healed for the brunt of it as the talent, but they additionally pulse weaker AoE healing around them. That would let the passive be useful without completely messing up the talent pick.
Gambler's: The gambler's songs seem kind of...lackluster. As a healer you have to pay attention to mechanics, boss health, your health and team mates, dodge ground patches, and cast songs, but then with Gamblers' you have to additionally build up charges, then upon casting the song you can't quick-slot or store in the Delayed encounter power because it wipes your stacks due to a bug upon activation, have to hope RNG blesses you...when you could just get a passive bonus for skipping the charge and RNG and just get a bonus that benefits everyone for doing what they're already doing for casting songs you're already casting anyway, that works on any song, not just specific ones. Plus, if none of the effects are applied, you get a crazy weak Heal over Time, like Rejuv but it can't proc Starstruck or anything to make it better ontop of lasting less time.
Bassline : The Bassline encounter power seems...weak. 10 second cast time to restore performance meter less than what you can passively regenerate in less time on a 30 second cooldown is pretty weak. When the ability is weaker than your passive regeneration it's not worth slotting ever, and even if it didn't that cast time is just unpleasant. When you're drained of performance you're probably in a rough situation due to, say, Defender's Minuet spam, which means you likely can't afford to channel for 10 solid seconds to recover so little performance meter with such a long cooldown if fully channeled.
Performance Mode: Speaking of performance meter. Do you think it'd be possible to have an optional thing where you can set performance mode to a toggle? It can be frustrating for recasting buff songs to enter perform mode, fire off an ability, enter it again, fire off another song, enter it again... I understand Aurora doing it since it transforms the Perform button into an AoE burst, but it would be nice if we had the option to set it into a toggle-type mode if necessary.
Daily Powers: Curtain Call should affect the bard as well as allies. Unsure if it's working at all since I haven't teamed yet. Inspiration only applying to a single ally within 15' is also pretty weak for a daily power, especially since you can't select who gets it, though it's at least useful when soloing. Not sure about Encore. Would be nice if it wasn't just "last song used", since most of them are very long-duration buffs you don't want to cast more than once every minute or so, but that we could store a song in it like Delayed Play or something. Maybe let it fire off Gamblers songs at full 3-charge power when stored in it?
Over all it seems that Minstrel bards don't have very good daily powers except for maybe Curtain Call if you have the right songs running as you fire it.
BIG PROBLEM: A lot of users are now using macros for songs. What Devs will do? Ban?
A possible solution could be to randomize keys to press when you go on performance, or use key sequences from a pool.
For example: i press tab, i see my song pinned, randomly is picked from a pool of possible key sequences (686686 - 797797 - 565565...)
/bind F5 "+PowerMusicNoteExec 12 $$ +PowerMusicNoteExec 14 $$ +PowerMusicNoteExec 12 $$ +PowerMusicNoteExec 12 $$ +PowerMusicNoteExec 14 $$ +PowerMusicNoteExec 12"This is how you bind an entire song to the F5 key. Just enter Performance Mode, hit F5 and your song is played instantly with all benefits that come with "manual" play. I haven't been able to enter Performance Mode and play a song using a single key, because the console command for the Performance Mode only seems to activate the Freeplay Mode.
I've been trying out the bard since the preview release and I must say it's quite enjoyable. Although still needs some polishing.
Feedback:
The class is pretty fun to use and the combat style/ mix between songs and rapier is quite fun. May it be either the Dps or the healer paragons , it's quite nice.
As for the core mechanic being Performance , it's clever but a bit hard to use in later areas where ennemies get more aggressive. Although I managed to learn a few of the dps songs such as Steel march and Tailwind Mambo , I find myself using songs in quickplay rather than typing them out unless I know I have mostly won the fight. Others have explained this a bit more in detail than me though.
As for the rapier encounters and others , I find that the style is charming and quite good when dealing with ennemies. Some powers however should need re-polishing :
[Reprise], since the patch of 12/06/2021 is slower than normal. I guess it may be a bug from trying to make it so players do not get stuck while doing the animation ? In any case , the speed of it is definitely lower and is a shame as it was a really decent starting at-will that introduced players to the quick-flashy/fancy nature of the bard class (along with Fleche , which I must note has a nice ending animation with the little spin the character does)
[Staccato] is , in my eyes , not a great single target at-will. It remains kinda slow. Damage is nice but still a bit slow.
[Ad Libitum] as of the patch of the 12/06/2021 has been rendered kinda useless... I understand that a fix might have been done to respect more the 50% chance of a follow-up attack. However , it's now a bit underwhelming and not reliable as it was before the patch where it was quite useful to finish off ennemies or deal a few good hits to a strong ennemy. And because of that , the effect of redoublement is pretty much useless now since the chance of a follow up is not that often as before (unless players use Volti Subito , I guess).
As for the songs , perhaps enhance the duration of both Ballads to 20 ? that way it gives a bit more time to be able to use the magnitude enhancing effect of both ballads and still be able to use the finale. It can help as well when ennemies knock you out/daze you mid casting the finale , rendering the final effect useless as the time runs out while the character recovers from the stun.
As for appearence. I've seen that a few rapier designs are available now and I find it quite nice , although still narrow in terms of choice. The luthes ,however, still are kinda lacking in diversity. Not that the existing designs are bad , but things like the Demogorgon Luthe ,for example , would be quite nice if it was some sort of demonic inspired instrument/harp/etc or perhaps a luthe with demogorgon's twin faces as the main part with strings between. BUT , It figures that making a class now and making several designs for each existing campaigns and the various alternatives must be quite hard , as it means to go back into the kind of "mood"/theme the weapons had and suceeding in making another as if it was alawys there. (being an drawer/ digital artist on the side , I can understand the enormous task ahead of you all. I have faith though that you'll make wonders
Overall , it still needs some polishing and some re-vision. But I can understand that such a task is a lot seeing all the content already in game as well as the new mod you are making . I remain pleasantly surprised and charmed at how you made the bard so much fun though. Good luck to you all in charge of this enormous project !
PS: Although I underline a few aspects to review , I've seen that a few animations and bugs as well as modifications on certains powers have already been made. Good job !
Feedback :
Manually casting songs gives an large increase of some songs' effects over using quick casted songs. Typing manually the notes to cast a song power is from my point of view the only difficulty of the shiny new bard class, but ...
Using keybinds just nullifies that difficulty : the song is instantly casted (like the so called "quick casted" ones), and you get the full maximum effect of the power ! The slots provided for quick casting songs are no more required : who will prefer the less powerful version of the song's effect ?
Indeed it's a so poorly designed class mechanic. And there we are.
Question :
Will that be a bug or a feature ? What about you devs, do you plan something to deal with it before this comes to live ?
I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
- The infernal machine does not work properly. It keeps showing animation entering and exiting the machine and it is impossible to "exit" the machine. Whenever we enter in combat it stops thou, but as soon as we leave combat it starts to happen again
Here is a video uploaded to youtube showing it https://youtube.com/watch?v=bggnummLe4E
PVP Rogue,
--[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin)
Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
Some things are new (like the increased Performance Regen), while many of the bugs/problems I found are old, such as the shielding from Reprised Carol Recovery being non-existent no matter your stacks of Gambler.
I don't know if these bugs are internally fixed or not, but I'm repeating the bugs in the event they were not being worked on.
Bugs: Minstrel
- Bug 1: Reprised Carol Recovery: The Shielding from this song is still non-existent, no matter how many stacks of Gambler you have.
Feedback: Minstrel- Feedback 1: Gambler: I am disappointed by the nerf to Reprised Carol: Enhance. I think you guys should put back in the original values for Reprise Carol Enhance.
Bugs: SongbladeBefore the changes, Gambler was already the underdog choice because of how reliable Storyteller was (play songs and grant people in the party fantastic bonuses), not to mention that Storyteller did not cost any extra Performance on a role governed by resource conservation.
Even so, at least Gambler had a really interesting claim to fame of having high impact effects (from what I remember, Reprised Carol Enhanced gave +8% Crit Sev/+10% Recharge Speed Increase/unknown damage resistance per stack of Gambler), offset by the extra resource cost, less pinned songs available, and random nature of Gambler.
After the changes (which reduced most Gambler bonuses to 1/4th to 1/5th of their prepatch values), I don't see any reason to pick Gambler, since all of the downsides are still present with an even weaker reward for fishing for specific Gambler procs.
- Bug 1: Loremaster's Ready to Exploit damage buff did not work on the following:
- Bug 2: Contre: While the displayed name is correct, Contre's description still wrong and referring to Contre Sixte as the single target attack (where it is really Contre Septime and the 3 hit AoE as Contre Septime (where it is really Contre Niuvembre)
- Bug 3: Steel March (initial hit) hits using projectile damage and not for physical damage. The regular attack conversion part worked as far as I tried.
Feedback: SongbladeDancing Lights
Contre
Blazing Flamenco (Initial hit)
Steel March (initial hit)
Tailwind Mambo (initial hit)
- Feedback 1: Boost to Performance Regen: I just wanted to say that I liked that you guys boosted the passive Performance regen for the Songblade to approximately triple that of prepatch. Now I can actually play songs mid combat, rather than having to wait 34 seconds between songs.
- Feedback 2: Staccato: Please lower the cast times of Staccato hits 1/2/3/4 down to 0.3/0.4/0.4/0.4 seconds, respectively.
Questions:Staccato is still not worth using over Fleche due to Fleche hitting 3x as hard, being a ranged attack, and having the same cast time as Staccato. If Staccato had its cast time halved on all attacks, it would be slightly better as an at-will for fishing for song procs.
I really like the looks of these rapiers and would like them on other classes.
Dancing Lights does not appear to be effected by the "Ready to Exploit" from the Loremaster feat.
Hello everyone! This is the continue of my first feedback about the bard. With the help by my guild and some friends we did some ToMM runs in preview to tested bard both healer and dps. Im focus only on healer path and maybe someone can work on dps side.
I tried Tomm in both healer role, pure healer and "shielder".
1° FEEDBACK- Arpeggio
Arpeggio is literally the only one heal skill in our Power tabs and it is a single target healing power. I like it, have a nice magnitude, the heals are really good even if you choose "Arpeggio Fortissimo" as class feat; it reduces the magnitude of Arpeggio to 100, increase the performance cost to 60 but u CAN HEAL ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE PARTY within 40'.
The only thing in disappointment: arpeggio also heals companions. This has created problems in healing ( some dps uses their stone of health when with the other healers hardly happened), because the maximum target is 15 entities.
My Feedback: I think, since it is the only skill that actually heals, it is necessary that it does not heal the companions following the same path made for Healing word and Divine shelter, which I suggested in another post about the heals from players goes to companions and mirage clones.
2° FEEDBACK- Rejuvenating carol
this is the most song used to heal other players. Apply heal over time to self and all nearbly allies. Heal Magnitude 100
This song have two problems: 1)the healing commin from it is affected by critical avoidance players, 2) his hot is basically close to 27k/34k every 3 sec and it is to LOW compared for example cleric Healing Word (heal magnitude 450; then hot 300 magnitude heal that means 130-230k every 3 sec).
For what I look from ACT parses, and how the dps felt on some situations, MY FEEDBACK is to increase the heal magnitude of this song, at least, to 200/250.
More feedback will come in this days when we will testing zariel master! @sgrantdev @lassor
AsteR#9941 my discord nick if someone wanna see parses and others stuffs I did for bard healer.
I tried this song in dungeon (VoS) and in a trial (ToMM). This song need to be totally reworked.
In both situations, I rarely used it for three reasons:
1) it is really useless ( it did really a LOW heal, always close to 10/12k, doesnt matter if I increase or decrease my stats; I attach a parses did in training room)
2) Why I rarely use it? because this song dont help me, like healer, to heals my teammates.
3)There are two better songs than this. Rejuvenating carol and Defender's Minuet are so good for healing members (especially if You can do the changes I suggested in the other my comment.)
So I like to try to give a feedback, that maybe can help a lot bard and make it more good.
Basically bard healer buff are:
-thx to Storyteller feat: 5% of Damage decrease for tank; 5% damage increase for dps; 5% OGH increase for healers; all this stacks 3 times, so we have 15% total from this feat.
-thx to Blazed Flamengo (song) 2% more dmg to all party members.
-If i use my daily (Inspiration) only one of the party 15% more dmg and 15% dmg decrease taken.
that means totale buffs are: 17% (additive) for dps; 15% (multiplicative) for tank; 15%(additive) for healers.
To make Aurora Fantasia a viable song, to use in every situation, and that can help much better the party I suggest to change his effect in "increase dmg resistance for all members by 5%." In this way it will be, imo, a really good song that helps a lot my party (especially dps) because the tank, in this moment of the game and especially near to the endgame, really dont need this huge ammount of "Dmg decrease taken"; on the contrary, dps would actually benefit out of it.
1. Rejuv Carol - This does an regen to people in the AOE range. But the heal is so minor it isnt worth the time.
2. Defenders Minuet - Very nice single target heal. Nice but does not help when you have multiple people needing a heal.
3. Sheltering Etude - Provides a heal when a party member drops below 50%. Only occurs when they drop below 50% and then it doesnt do much.
What am I missing?
So , writing this feedback for the 24th of June's changes.
Bug:
I can't seem to be able to change loadouts , despite attempting several methods such as dying , re-logging in and out , changing location and/or instance etc.
Another bug is [Fleche] 's animation. Sometimes , the character distorts itself (and the animation is a bit too fast I believe , but may be because of the broken animation) the female character seems "unaffected" by the bug sometimes (but keeps a slight bizarre speed ? Not really sure).
Feedback:
At wills :
- [Reprise] isn't really fixed , the speed is still a bit slow compared to the original speed.
- [Staccato] remains a "not so great" single target at-will , damage is okay but the animation is quite slow.
- [Phantasmal Concerto]'s sound effect when in use (not when hitting a target) is kinda bizarre and un-enjoyable.
Encounters :- [Delayed Play] 's sound effect when the character uses it , being the character loudly screaming , is kinda off-putting and not really nice to hear when using the encounter.
- [Ad Libitum] remains a pretty bad encounter due to it's random nature. Although I understand the changes were made so it was more true to it's effect , it renders [Redoublement]'s feat effect quite unreliable and somewhat useless (unless used for a singular other encounter , [Volti Subito] which doesn't really give much diversity].
- [Contre] 's slight change so it shows the effect that will occur if released is quite nice and helpful.
Mechanics :- [Quickstep]'s changed animation to the dodge roll of the performance mode isn't great . I'd rather keep the dash in a direction that fit a bit more into the whole "rapier-wielding" theme.
Others:- Noticed the logo of bard changed from cyan to light purple/pink with a few design changes. Looks good.
Questions :Will there be different appearences for the luthe or will it remain mostly the same ?
Overall , still a lot to polish and fix. However , i do hope the feedback I and others write helps out in that task. If you read this report to the end , thank you and good luck in the work ahead of you.
It's worth a try.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
- Bug 1: Harmonize: Harmonize does not increase the Action Point generation of player powers at all.
Character Used:
- Bug 2: The party member Performance bar in the HUD will always show the Bard at 100 Performance, even if the player has more than that.
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- Bug 3: The Grandstand daily (Encore with 30 Playing to the Crowd Stacks) does not confer the listed "song deals double damage/ double healing" bonus to any of the songs.
- Bug 4: When playing Ballad of the Hero/Witch through the Grandstand daily, you don't get the Finale of the song.
- Bug 5: Redoublement: If you use either Ad Libitum/Volti Subito, then cast any other encounter power during the Redoublement window, the rest of your Ad Libitum/Volti Subito hits are automatically converted into Inspirational Ad Libitum/Volti Subito, even if you do not have the Performer feat.
- Bug 7: List of Contre Bugs (?): Not sure if the first two are bugs, but Contre has its own list of things I noticed:
- Bug 8: Backup Performer does not seem to increase Rejuvinating Carol's healing to 1200 magnitude. If anything, it seems to reduce the healing magnitude.
- Bug 9: Ready to Exploit (5 stacks of Battle Lore) does not affect Dancing Lights and the initial Hits of Blazing Flamenco/Steel March/Tailwind Mambo
- Bug 10: Hero's Finale, Witch's Finale, and Aurora Finale all state that they deal 680 magnitude damage when hovering over their ability text.
- Bug 11: Ad Libitum with Performer will sometimes get stuck when attacking: as in, you press Ad Libitum, the animation plays, but no attack comes out. Maybe this has to do with how the system is putting/taking out the Inspirational/regular versions of Ad Libitum in the powers tray?
- Bug 12: Dancing Lights is not being affected by Recharge Speed Increase.
- Bug 13: The initial hits of Steel March, Blazing Flamenco, and Tailwind Mambo are not being buffed by the general 2% damage buff/2%, even if you had Battle Harmony/the song buff running in the background before playing the song.
- Bug 14: Steel March's initial hit is using Projectile damage when it should be using physical damage.
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Feedback:I have an Action Pint Gain of 3.5%.
Action Points are generated at a rate of (Ability Cast Time * 22.00), where you need 1000 Action Points to generate a full daily attack.
The first hit of Fleche has a cast time of 0.6 seconds.
When I attack with my Bard with the first hit of Fleche, I generate 13.662 AP.
0.6 * 22.00 * (1.035) = 13.662, exactly as described, no Harmonize extra Action Points generated.
According to the ACT parse, is Harmonize supposed to be "Action Point generation"? If so, there is no bonus Action Point generated by the passive, aside from the general (Cast Time * 22.00) thing you guys set up in the background.
I clearly have 1000/full Minstrel Performance in the screenshot, but the HUD in the party section only shows me at 100 Performance.
Rejuvinating Carol
Blazing Flamenco
Steel March
Tailwind Mambo
Ballad of the Hero.
Ballad of the Witch
In this screenshot, I had 30 stacks of Playing to the Audience, had previously played Ballad of the Hero, then Grandstand.
Notice that I have Ballad of the Hero up, but no Finale in the tab bar.
You can tell I didn't use regular Encore with Ballad of the Hero, as regular Encore with Ballad of the Hero would place Hero's Finale in my performance bar.
Same goes for Ballad of the Witch: no finale appears when I use Grandstand.
-You can move while casting Contre Neuvieme
-You generate 22.00 Action Points for every second you hold the block (this behavior exists on the various Blocks of tank classes)
-Improvised Contre lacks the helpful "Contre Seconde/Septime/Neuvieme" identification text near the charge up bar.
Performer is already a strong feat thanks to the Inspirational attacks, but I'd like to point out that nobody is going to get to use the second part of the feat, as 30 stacks takes roughly 2 minutes of constant attacking (120+ seconds) to get.
I would advise lowering it down to 20 stacks, but I am not sure this is necessary when the first part of the feat makes Performer really really strong.
Ballad Colla Voce has a 15 second duration to match the original duration of Ballad of the Hero/Witch.
With Ballad of the Hero/Witch having its duration upped to 20 seconds, I think that Ballad Colla Voce should have its duration increased to match.
I have mentioned this a few times and others have commented on how bad Staccato feels, but as it stands, Staccato is less than half the base damage of Fleche, but with approximately the same cast time. Why should I bother with Staccato if Fleche has the inherent ranged advantage, hits twice as hard, and casts as fast?
I have noticed you guys shaved off ... 1/20th of a second (0.05 seconds) off the cast times of Staccato hits 2/3/4. It is an improvement, but not a big enough improvement to make it worth using over Fleche.
By reducing the Staccato's hits to be twice as fast as Fleche, you make it a better option for combat in general: slightly weaker mathematically compared to Fleche, but allowing you to get in twice as many Ballad of the Hero/Witch procs in the same amount of time.
Just so I know when I have the buff and when I don't.
I find Musician's Flow to be a nice passive for using Ballad of the Hero, but its random nature means I can't reliably count on it for planning out what I want to do. By giving Musician's Flow a guaranteed proc with an ICD, this method gives players more say in how they want to plan out their song useage, rather than praying for Musician Flow procs at the right time.
At the moment, Musician's Flow is supposed to be a 50% chance, or, in theory 1 out of every 2 songs played. Giving Musician's Flow a 36 second internal cooldown roughly approximates the half chance to proc: the first song we play when we have the buff gives Musician's Flow, the second has the normal cost due to ICD on Musician's Flow (resembling that we "failed" to proc the Musician's Flow).
I don't have a lot of time to test but what I have seen of the Minstrel doesn't give me much comfort that my hope of replacing my warlock healer will come to fruition.
Co-Guild Leader
Ghost Templars L20
Alliance: Tyrs Paladium
Main: Cleric (Heals|DPS)
Alt: Warlock