Firstof, I really do enjoy the bard. However, there are a few bugs that make playing him in endgame content frustating at times. I have now made quite a few ingame tickets on bugs on the bard class, but nothing has changed and they always said I can also report this on the forums. So here goes a few, maybe some people want to join listing other things they encountered that are really annoying.
Edit: Updated the post with some important
bugs and
feedback Minstrel Sheltering Etude The description states players would be healed when the song is reapplied. This is not the case.
Aurora Fantasia When using "Encore" after Aurora Fantasia in combat, Tab becomes Aurora's Finale until combat ends. This makes you basically useless in ToMM and so on if you accidently hit Encore. (Thank god this never happend to me)
Vamp not triggering As described below, sometimes one has to spam delayed play because the song doesn't go through.
Delayed play with "Vamp" is also really buggy, sometimes when Vamp gets to trigger, using "Delayed play" will not play the song, pressing it a second time will instantly play both of the same song at once, wasting the "Vamp" proc
Tab Delay While the delay is annoying on the dps too, sometimes lag and the delay together makes you swap in and out of performance mode a few times accidentaly. With good connection the delay is just annoying and causes a few deaths in the team from time to time but with some lag on top of it it can be really frustrating.
Rejuvinating Carol MagnitudeIt was sometimes mentioned that this actually ticks for lower than the description suggests? I havent tested this myself. But being pretty much maxed on what I could max besides collars, it hits for 60kish on a crit for me. Is it supposed to be less than half of Warlocks and Clerics? And ticking slower?
Edit: rjc9000 stated this:
Songblade Tailwind Mambo & other songs Currently tailwind mambo gets cancelled by other songs. This makes one major rotation (tailwind mambo into Ballade of the Hero) unusable.
Song costs being bugged DPS songs are supposed to cost 100 performance. The Bard Songblade has 150 performance. Nevertheless certain songs (looking at you Steelmarch) cost 150 performance.
No symbols for DPS songsFor some reason, they were removed a couple of months after the update.
Performer not working with Ballade of the Hero Its supposed to increase the songs played by encore, but this doesn't work on certain songs, even though the description states that this doesnt work only on the Ballade's finale.
Several encounters not casting Several of the bard encountes can sometimes play their animation but there is no damage and no cooldown (Ad Libitum and Duet in particular).
Voice Throw? The description states 50% of my aggro is transferred to the tank. However, while being low in dps compared to my fellow Rogues and HRs and SWs, I sometimes take aggro. Might it be that this feat actually makes you generate more aggro and part of this is transferred to the tank, but only at certain times? I haven't done any testing on this, but I have heard this from others too, I feel like something weird is going on there.
General Loadout Bug When swapping from DPS to heal or the other way around, sometimes you get thrown off your mount several times.
Bard DPS after removal of songstacking In general I feel like that the Bard requires a lot of work & preparation during each Artifact call but the pay-off is too small. Especially with song-stacking removed, the resulting DPS in single-target fights isn't high enough. This may be compensated by the buff the bard provides, but I think a small buff to the pay-off of the songs would make sense.
Comments
I've returned to the game after a 2 years break, specifically for the bard, and it's currently the class I exclusively play (currently at 48k IL). I'm also feeling frustrated by the bugs, although I adore the class.
A bug the OP didn't also mention is the use of dailies, which is really glitched. "Curtain call" being your "emergency healing button" will sometimes play the animation, and not trigger the daily, having to press it again and again until it works (by that time, your mates are most likely already dead). Delayed play with "Vamp" is also really buggy, sometimes when Vamp gets to trigger, using "Delayed play" will not play the song, pressing it a second time will instantly play both of the same song at once, wasting the "Vamp" proc
Bugs apart, the randomness on "Gambler" can also be annoying. To make most of the feat, you already have to use a good portion of your performance (5 stacks, roughly half of your performance), the fact that the best of it, the shield, from Reprise carol : Recovery, is gated behind rng is super annoying (the other Reprise being super useless with effects that make no sense).
These only concern the Minstrel, which is imo an awesome healer class with a great learning curve, and as someone who's solely been playing it since its release, these are major issues that should have been fixed before the class release.
I won't mention the Songblade paragon, as it has even more bugs than the Minstrel one (encounters not working, Ballads not working, wrong.numbers displayed, etc...) but it deserves a whole thread on its own
Sheltering Etude being bugged it's a real pain. But you can work around it with without losing that much Performance. And in emergencies the rest of the party can use healing items to give you time to regain Performance or Tab the next power.
The tab mechanic it's really infurating and more if you can't keep your calm when it's needed. You need around 2 seconds between Tabs + Songs, and if you have vamp you need again to wait around 2 seconds before using it. And while i would love that they make it so the tab stays up until you wan't to cancel it, i know that can't happen due to keybinders. Also, we don't need to aim so it kinda feels fair.
About gamblers, i see no problem with it. It's name it's telling you what it is. Using it it's the same as using re-roll tokens or AD on chests.
My problems with minstrel is that idk if these are bugs or wai so:
AP gain is almost null. You either need to use Aurora Fantasia or Phantasmal Concerto on hordes and hope you will have it filled for a boss fight.
That rejuvenating carol could have an increase of 50-100mag or at least an added buff like "increase incoming healing" or "reduce dmg taken". And it could be 2% like Blaze Flamenco.
That you can't enter performance mode if you have Aurora Fantasia up. Since we are tabbing, we should be able to end the effect and instantly access the performance mode.
That Arpegio sometimes cut's itself if someone walks in front of the target.
Soulweaver: The Lovely Red
Minstrel: The Rose Troubadour
It clearly states that some songs do not get cancelled by others, yet now they do. It clearly states that Sheltering Etude applies a heal, yet it doesn't. This has even raised awareness on the social media outside of the forums with new players expressing their shock about how a feature so central to bard healing is not fixed within months. This sheltering etude bug was on preview before the release of the bard and reported already, so someone should be aware of it. Again, I understand that you guys have a lot to do and you are fixing major other issues (such as CR bugs yesterday, which we appreciate!). But at least a message that you are aware of this and worki on a solution or even that the feature wasnt supposed to be there and you intend to change the description in the future-or anything, would be really helpful.
All the bard healers I know are wondering whats WAI and whats not. Furthermore, I know a few bard healers who said they "shelved" their bard for now, until bugs central to the bard's healing are fixed.
EDIT: Double stacking of songs seems to work, the symbols for the songs just vanish.
And the delay on performance is very bad for the gameplay, as the bard can't react fast enough (when the lag allow to properly go in and out performance)...To the point that the dps is better with the song on shortcut than playing it to get all the buffs from playing manually.
Well, all this was on preview before the bard release, players gave their feedback long ago, with from what i know no reply from any dev ...
Edit: I did some more testing and I found out that only tailwind mambo gets overwritten by rejuvenating Carol (I've been using tailwind mambo) it doesn't matter if it is in the quick slot or played
Edit 2: just found out that steel march after using 100 performance, completely depletes all the performance you have left a second after you've used the song, leaving you with no performance at all
The only difference is that the macro will not mess up the input, if you're prone to HAMSTER up under pressure.
If you use Aliases, you bypass the song delay.
I believe Quick Play also bypasses the song delay. The low AP Gain is a design Oversight, albeit technically WAI in the system.
Songs themselves generate no Action Points when cast.
And since all you do in combat is play songs to heal... you can see why you generate next to no AP.
A fix for this design oversight would be for Harmonize to generate, say, 5% of your total Action Points on song use.
As for why your AP Gain skyrockets when you hit multiple targets with Aurora Finale/Phantasmal Concerto, it's due to how the AP Gain formulae works (tl;dr is that your attacks generate AP proportional to their cast time, longer stated anim = more AP generate).
Since Aurora Finale and Phantasmal Concerto have fairly long cast times, they have high base AP Gain rates.
Combine that with the fact they hit multiple targets, and you can quickly see why hitting whole packs of mobs with Aurora Finale generates dailies stupidly quick. This one is due to a bug.
Rejuvenating Carol on the healer path is actually 100 magnitude (80 with Pianissimo) due to a programming error/oversight, not the stated 200 magnitude. This bug is likely due to how powers are designed in the background.
I am no designer, but the half damage Improvised encounters seem to be separate encounters that get dropped into your power tray when you get the Improvised encounter proc (something similar was said about how the Barbarian (GWF) At-will powers are handled behind the scenes).
I want to say that the bug has to do with the improvised encounters actually being on cooldown, or that the Improvised encounter powers are being procc'd faster than the game can load them into your power tray, but we don't know what's really going on behind the scenes.
(lassor/Misa/Avathar/sgrantdev, if you're reading this: to reproduce, pick Performer, then just spam attacks, using any Improvised encounters as they come up. The bug will occur when your attack will play, but no damage is applied to the enemy. The bug is most noticeable with Ad Libitum and Duet).
I dont know how I missed that one!
Songblade
Tailwind Mambo & other songs
Currently tailwind mambo gets cancelled by other songs. This makes one major rotation (tailwind mambo into Ballade of the Hero) unusable.
This is the only reason I stopped playing Bard. As soon as Ballad of the Witch was unlocked, I noticed that it was cancelling out Tailwind Mambo. The Tailwind Mambo and it's associated at-will perfectly fit my play style, and the other songs do not. So, I will wait for it to be fixed before continuing my Bard's journey.
On that note, has anyone caught wind of ANY imminent effort to fix this issue?
Rejuvenating Carol it's not healing like it should
https://ibb.co/1v4NdjR
https://ibb.co/gjWywk6
@nitocris83
> Cleric Healer 46k vs Bard Healer 81k
> Rejuvenating Carol it's not healing like it should
>
> https://ibb.co/1v4NdjR
> https://ibb.co/gjWywk6
honestly I'm getting really tired of this situation, bard is my favorite class but I'm sick of playing it under these conditions