As people have gathered, I've mostly been pulled off of Bard fixes at this point. I apologize for that -- I realize we haven't fixed nearly as much as we should have. We're hoping to do more class fixes in the future, but for the next batch we'll probably pick whichever other class looks like it needs love the most, rather than re-visiting the bard right away.
A few last things: * The anim cancelling issues are still on my plate. Those are serious enough that I don't want them to wait (well, I don't *want* any of this to wait, but if I can only pick 2 or 3 things, anim cancelling will be one of them). * The 15 target cap: yes, this is how pretty much everything works that can affect non-party members. All the Cleric heals that heal non-party members work this way, for example. There are scenarios where it can be bad, but in general it seemed like people thought the Cleric- style healing (heal all friendlies nearby, max of 15) was better than the old Bard-style healing (group only). Am I missing something here? Is there some reason the situation is different for Clerics and Bards? Or are Clerics having tons of trouble with this issue (I hadn't heard of any big problems here)? * Sheltering Etude and crit avoidance: this might be a quick fix. If it is, I will see if I can squeeze it in. * Phantasmal Concerto removing VFX has a fix working its way through the system. It got missed in the first fix of this issue (Lunge, Duet), but it's the same problem. Unfortunately it's a power-by-power thing, not a global thing. We did a more careful survey of all the bard powers and hopefully got all of them (Phantasmal Concerto being the last afaik).
Very Final (?) Update: * Anim cancelling issues should be fixed. * Any heals w/ a cap of 15 should now be player only. * I believe I've fixed crit issues on Sheltering Etude and Starstruck. It turned out to be trickier than I thought, and actually revealed some holes in how our engine works, but when Software was kind enough to repair those holes, I felt I really should do my end and use their new repairs! ** I also turned on crits for some damage songs that weren't critting (Ballad of the Hero, Ballad of the Witch, Aurora Fantasia). ** Looking at how tricky these parts of the crit system are, I suspect these issues are happening in other places. Be aware these problems are (unfortunately) power-by-power, so there's no global fix. It's a matter of identifying each crit failure and fixing it. For those willing to help us out here, be aware there are actually two issues: a power failing to crit entirely (easy to notice) and a healing power specifically that's able to crit, but is getting affected by crit avoidance (quite tricky to notice). * I don't have easy access to the console UI, so I haven't seen it directly. But the bug I filed for the missing console options was marked fixed, and I talked to the dev who did it and he said he tossed in some other options as well. So hopefully some more options will be coming to console players soon! * WARNING: We're between modules right now, so not all of these fixes will be landing as soon as one might wish. Some will arrive soon, some might be as late as with the next module (Dragonslayer).
Props for coming here to communicate with us, even if it may not be what we want to hear. The Minstrel is now playable due to your efforts, thank you! Thank you for listing out the remaining priority backlog items as well.
Songblades wont be too happy, unfortunately. Hope the dev team can fit them in to a future rework, even if they’re not the priority.
Great work and thank you again for collaborating and communicating.
* The 15 target cap: yes, this is how pretty much everything works that can affect non-party members. All the Cleric heals that heal non-party members work this way, for example. There are scenarios where it can be bad, but in general it seemed like people thought the Cleric- style healing (heal all friendlies nearby, max of 15) was better than the old Bard-style healing (group only). Am I missing something here? Is there some reason the situation is different for Clerics and Bards? Or are Clerics having tons of trouble with this issue (I hadn't heard of any big problems here)?
Clerics Healing Word and Bastion of Faith don't heal NPC's or Companions. NPC's and Companions should be excluded from the possible list of targets for Bard Songs.
Clerics Healing Word and Bastion of Faith don't heal NPC's or Companions. NPC's and Companions should be excluded from the possible list of targets for Bard Songs.
Huh, sure enough. My bad, I should have noticed that.
Would be awesome if you can do for Arpeggio in addition to Bard songs, too. Not sure if that is in scope, but the tank’s summoned companion likes to intercept heals
Sorry everyone for the silence. We're hoping to do more class fixes in the future, but for the next batch we'll probably pick whichever other class looks like it needs love the most, rather than re-visiting the bard right away.
Clerics Healing Word and Bastion of Faith don't heal NPC's or Companions. NPC's and Companions should be excluded from the possible list of targets for Bard Songs.
Huh, sure enough. My bad, I should have noticed that.
Two issues pertaining to Bard are as follows: The mirage main hand is not upgradeable. Ad libitum (quite often) and Daze (quite rarely) are being affected by a bug which prevents them from being used temporarily. Usually this occurs after too many consequetive performer procs and it renders the encounter useless until the internal cooldown is over. This is the most outstanding issue facing Bard songblades currently which is negatively impacting damage output.
The Maze Engine store transmutes are using the Rogue items for armor, as expected. Upon opening the boxes, however, the items can't be equipped by a bard.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
As people have gathered, I've mostly been pulled off of Bard fixes at this point. I apologize for that -- I realize we haven't fixed nearly as much as we should have. We're hoping to do more class fixes in the future, but for the next batch we'll probably pick whichever other class looks like it needs love the most, rather than re-visiting the bard right away.
A few last things: * The anim cancelling issues are still on my plate. Those are serious enough that I don't want them to wait (well, I don't *want* any of this to wait, but if I can only pick 2 or 3 things, anim cancelling will be one of them). * The 15 target cap: yes, this is how pretty much everything works that can affect non-party members. All the Cleric heals that heal non-party members work this way, for example. There are scenarios where it can be bad, but in general it seemed like people thought the Cleric- style healing (heal all friendlies nearby, max of 15) was better than the old Bard-style healing (group only). Am I missing something here? Is there some reason the situation is different for Clerics and Bards? Or are Clerics having tons of trouble with this issue (I hadn't heard of any big problems here)? * Sheltering Etude and crit avoidance: this might be a quick fix. If it is, I will see if I can squeeze it in. * Phantasmal Concerto removing VFX has a fix working its way through the system. It got missed in the first fix of this issue (Lunge, Duet), but it's the same problem. Unfortunately it's a power-by-power thing, not a global thing. We did a more careful survey of all the bard powers and hopefully got all of them (Phantasmal Concerto being the last afaik).
I think we have covered the most important things with these last few changes. The most important being the animation canceling for bards and clerics and the songs which should NOT be affecting NPC's and companions. You have done an amazing job.
I hate having to keep bringing this up but have you made any progress on getting the flying proc text option actually added to Console? Again, it affects every class not just Bard and we're coming up on around 9 months with no resolution.
Here's the Interface menu on console again for reference:
again, this is not a bard bug.....................................................
again, this is not a bard bug.....................................................
It is, especially as the class with the most Procs but you're half right; it's an EVERY class bug AND a Core systems bug. One that has gone ignored for nearly 9 months despite dozens of requests to get it fixed.
It's supposedly been fixed on their end now so we'll see how long that takes to go through.
@rgutscheradev Warding Carol costs 150 performance instead of the 120 in the tooltip (when used in combat). It uses performance and then it uses a bit more afterwards
Sorry everyone for the silence. ** Looking at how tricky these parts of the crit system are, I suspect these issues are happening in other places. Be aware these problems are (unfortunately) power-by-power, so there's no global fix. It's a matter of identifying each crit failure and fixing it. For those willing to help us out here, be aware there are actually two issues: a power failing to crit entirely (easy to notice) and a healing power specifically that's able to crit, but is getting affected by crit avoidance (quite tricky to notice).
The Paladin Oathkeeper's 'Hand of Divinity' Tab/specialClassPower critical heals are reduced by the target'sHEALER's Critical Avoidance.
The math works out similarly to the Sheltering Etude bug where the healer's Critical Severity is subtracted by the target'sHEALER's Critical Avoidance.
If there are more effective ways for me to report my findings, please let me know.
@rgutscheradev I'm still getting dismounted when I change loadouts in bards and when you change loadouts you have to change maps so your stats % change. Please this is really annoying and needs a fix
@rgutscheradev I'm still healing companions with bard healer songs (mostly sheltering etude). It's breaking our game all over again, this had been fixed already in the past
@rgutscheradev I'm still healing companions with bard healer songs (mostly sheltering etude). It's breaking our game all over again, this had been fixed already in the past
Short Version: Yes, this got accidentally reverted. I've just checked in a (re-)fix, so it should be better again soon (a week or two? I can't say exactly, since the fix is now in Production's hands, and the Live Producer has final say on exactly when the fix gets pushed Live).
Long Version: Probably skip this unless you're really interested in how the sausage is made.
So why does stuff like this even happen?
The answer is that each major release (like a new module) is on its own "branch". These different branches are essentially entirely separate versions of the game. Having them allows us to do things like work on the next module without totally messing up the live game.
For example, M22 was on Branch 135, and M23 was on Branch 137. The various bard fixes were made on B135. Normally, changes to one branch propagate forward to the next branch (95+% of the bard fixes did this successfully; only the Sheltering Etude change failed afaik). HOWEVER, if you make a change to B137 to a given file, and then afterwards make a change to B135 to that same file, the 135 changes will NOT propagate forward. That's because you don't generally want changes to an earlier branch to overwrite changes to a later branch.
However, the change checkin software normally warns you "for this file, the link between 135 and 137 is broken; if you want this change to move forward anyway, please do it by hand" (you have to do it by hand, so as not to clobber the 137 changes, but rather to combine the two). That warning was broken for a bit, and that threw me off. Which isn't to excuse me entirely; there were other ways I could have caught the problem, and I should still have managed to figure it out in time.
But that's why every so often newer stuff clobbers older stuff in ways it shouldn't, and also why it doesn't happen too often. Generally changes get moved forward automatically, and when they don't you (usually) get a warning. This is why it's quite possible for almost everything to move forward just fine, and for only 1 or 2 things to fail.
I mention all this mainly because some small number of people might just be interested, but also because it may clear up some confusion and clarify things for those of you who are willing to help us with bug reports (for which much thanks!).
@rgutscheradev I will keep an eye out for things that might have been reverted on bards. If I notice anything else I'll let you know. Thanks for answering. Kind regards
Hi all! Sry, late to the party...so i won't talk about the changes already made. Instead i'll focus on the 2 major issues bards have imo, before any fix can be made. Bear with me, i've learned english with neverwinter and a few kind people. I play bard as main since release, dropping my end game rogue that i've been playing since game release on ps4.
The first issue is the delay when bards enter in performance (and leave). No other class mechanic, power, being dailies, encounters, trinkets, has anything close to that delay. Here it is said it's because of a server side check (though not having divinity cause an instant denial when trying to enter performance). However, if really this is a must for whatever reason, wouldn't be it be possible to have a signal sent when the performance is enough, so the check happen before entering performance, or make the check while the song is being played? Because of that delay the class can't...improvised.
The second big issue is the gap between pc and console due to the use of macro. Any future rework or balance of the class will most likely get stomped because of this gap. Good console bard=>too good pc bard, good pc bard=>meh console bard. My idea for a future fix : make songs equipable, as if it is a class feature. Only 1 can be equiped ofc. And ofc songs can be played on top of it (1 for dps, any number for heal). Change the various passive bonuses written "when not in a shortcut" into "when is played". This way console has access to 1 macro (the current shortcut), and the equiped song makes 1 other macro useless, bringing the gap pc/console close to zero. It's also an overall boost to the class, both in quality of life, especially with a controller, and performance (the actual boost in damage won't be that high, as for heals it will be even lower*). This fix seems also easy to implement.
(*) for healer it appears that only the cleanse and rejuvanating caroll look like they can be equiped. Some will probably feel like it's op, however the real boost for heal will be about divinity cost as the equiped song cost nothing (it could reduce the divinity available though), and if my calculations aren't far off, the minstrel still won't come close to the dc in divinity efficiency.
So back when we were talking about healing and how it did or didn't affect non-party members or did or didn't affect pets, I had the thought "I'd really rather it did affect your pets, just not at the cost of affecting other players". But at the time, I didn't have the tech to do that (as a designer, I can pick from a list of targeting priority methods, like "nearest first" or "furthest first", but I can't create new targeting priority methods -- that's done in code). I requested it, though.
And the Software people have been clearing out various low-priority backlog requests, and hooray! they did my new targeting priority.
So bards will now heal (or buff) any allies up to their target cap of 15, but they will prefer players. That means if you're a bard and you're soloing or in a 5-man, you'll heal/buff everybody, including pets or NPC allies. But in a trial, you won't have pets "stealing" heals or buffs from other players. Hopefully this will be the best of both worlds!
This fix is probably not going to make the M24 module launch, but I am hoping it will land shortly thereafter (maybe in a week 1 post-launch patch or something like that).
Let me know if there are any problems with it, but (unless there is some kind of bug) it *should* just be strictly better than the previous version.
Let me know if there are any problems with it, but (unless there is some kind of bug) it *should* just be strictly better than the previous version.
So, will cleric healing word (etc.) be affecting pets now? Hopefully yes, otherwise this sounds like an unbalanced change that will make bard better than other healers.
So, will cleric healing word (etc.) be affecting pets now? Hopefully yes, otherwise this sounds like an unbalanced change that will make bard better than other healers.
For now, just the bard. We could move it to other classes if it seems like that would make sense.
But there's no reason the cleric should always get the best things first! Clerics are very strong healers in all kinds of ways. If bards have a small extra benefit, that's fine. (If it turns out to be a super-large benefit, of course we'd need to do something about that. That seems unlikely in this case.)
So back when we were talking about healing and how it did or didn't affect non-party members or did or didn't affect pets, I had the thought "I'd really rather it did affect your pets, just not at the cost of affecting other players". But at the time, I didn't have the tech to do that (as a designer, I can pick from a list of targeting priority methods, like "nearest first" or "furthest first", but I can't create new targeting priority methods -- that's done in code). I requested it, though.
And the Software people have been clearing out various low-priority backlog requests, and hooray! they did my new targeting priority.
So bards will now heal (or buff) any allies up to their target cap of 15, but they will prefer players. That means if you're a bard and you're soloing or in a 5-man, you'll heal/buff everybody, including pets or NPC allies. But in a trial, you won't have pets "stealing" heals or buffs from other players. Hopefully this will be the best of both worlds!
This fix is probably not going to make the M24 module launch, but I am hoping it will land shortly thereafter (maybe in a week 1 post-launch patch or something like that).
Let me know if there are any problems with it, but (unless there is some kind of bug) it *should* just be strictly better than the previous version.
I believe @lordmelchett#1830 's question was meant to hint at all other healers too but he picked the cleric as an example.
So in a general sense, don't you think things should happen the same for everyone? I find it odd you decide not to have mechanics consistency across all your healers.
When you leave, the new guy won't know the specifics of such mechanical changes and this is why some classes have been kept in dark for so long, until players cried enough to have the classes revised, intricacies rediscovered and powers equalized. Apologies for the salty reply but I believe the community is really fed up of things which work better in favor of some classes when there's no vice-versa.
Viperion - DragonTribe guild. Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.
Comments
It is impossible to heal on trials now.
(And please have a look at Starstruck).
Another bug to report: moving after channeling Contre may cancel the effects (at least for 2nd and 3rd effect).
I am Persona non grata in HcVOS as I cannot move through the Maze without possibly being stuck in combat and not able to move through hedges.
As people have gathered, I've mostly been pulled off of Bard fixes at this point. I apologize for that -- I realize we haven't fixed nearly as much as we should have. We're hoping to do more class fixes in the future, but for the next batch we'll probably pick whichever other class looks like it needs love the most, rather than re-visiting the bard right away.
A few last things:
* The anim cancelling issues are still on my plate. Those are serious enough that I don't want them to wait (well, I don't *want* any of this to wait, but if I can only pick 2 or 3 things, anim cancelling will be one of them).
* The 15 target cap: yes, this is how pretty much everything works that can affect non-party members. All the Cleric heals that heal non-party members work this way, for example. There are scenarios where it can be bad, but in general it seemed like people thought the Cleric- style healing (heal all friendlies nearby, max of 15) was better than the old Bard-style healing (group only). Am I missing something here? Is there some reason the situation is different for Clerics and Bards? Or are Clerics having tons of trouble with this issue (I hadn't heard of any big problems here)?
* Sheltering Etude and crit avoidance: this might be a quick fix. If it is, I will see if I can squeeze it in.
* Phantasmal Concerto removing VFX has a fix working its way through the system. It got missed in the first fix of this issue (Lunge, Duet), but it's the same problem. Unfortunately it's a power-by-power thing, not a global thing. We did a more careful survey of all the bard powers and hopefully got all of them (Phantasmal Concerto being the last afaik).
Very Final (?) Update:
* Anim cancelling issues should be fixed.
* Any heals w/ a cap of 15 should now be player only.
* I believe I've fixed crit issues on Sheltering Etude and Starstruck. It turned out to be trickier than I thought, and actually revealed some holes in how our engine works, but when Software was kind enough to repair those holes, I felt I really should do my end and use their new repairs!
** I also turned on crits for some damage songs that weren't critting (Ballad of the Hero, Ballad of the Witch, Aurora Fantasia).
** Looking at how tricky these parts of the crit system are, I suspect these issues are happening in other places. Be aware these problems are (unfortunately) power-by-power, so there's no global fix. It's a matter of identifying each crit failure and fixing it. For those willing to help us out here, be aware there are actually two issues: a power failing to crit entirely (easy to notice) and a healing power specifically that's able to crit, but is getting affected by crit avoidance (quite tricky to notice).
* I don't have easy access to the console UI, so I haven't seen it directly. But the bug I filed for the missing console options was marked fixed, and I talked to the dev who did it and he said he tossed in some other options as well. So hopefully some more options will be coming to console players soon!
* WARNING: We're between modules right now, so not all of these fixes will be landing as soon as one might wish. Some will arrive soon, some might be as late as with the next module (Dragonslayer).
Songblades wont be too happy, unfortunately. Hope the dev team can fit them in to a future rework, even if they’re not the priority.
Great work and thank you again for collaborating and communicating.
I will add the same to the Bard Songs.
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ Gankdalf The Icehole █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
The mirage main hand is not upgradeable.
Ad libitum (quite often) and Daze (quite rarely) are being affected by a bug which prevents them from being used temporarily. Usually this occurs after too many consequetive performer procs and it renders the encounter useless until the internal cooldown is over. This is the most outstanding issue facing Bard songblades currently which is negatively impacting damage output.
The next one is wizard or paladin healer?
The Paladin Oathkeeper's 'Hand of Divinity' Tab/specialClassPower critical heals are reduced by the
target'sHEALER's Critical Avoidance.The math works out similarly to the Sheltering Etude bug where the healer's Critical Severity is subtracted by the
target'sHEALER's Critical Avoidance.If there are more effective ways for me to report my findings, please let me know.
The Paladin Oathkeeper's Class Feature, Aura of Life, cannot critically strike.
Long Version:
Probably skip this unless you're really interested in how the sausage is made.
So why does stuff like this even happen?
The answer is that each major release (like a new module) is on its own "branch". These different branches are essentially entirely separate versions of the game. Having them allows us to do things like work on the next module without totally messing up the live game.
For example, M22 was on Branch 135, and M23 was on Branch 137. The various bard fixes were made on B135. Normally, changes to one branch propagate forward to the next branch (95+% of the bard fixes did this successfully; only the Sheltering Etude change failed afaik). HOWEVER, if you make a change to B137 to a given file, and then afterwards make a change to B135 to that same file, the 135 changes will NOT propagate forward. That's because you don't generally want changes to an earlier branch to overwrite changes to a later branch.
However, the change checkin software normally warns you "for this file, the link between 135 and 137 is broken; if you want this change to move forward anyway, please do it by hand" (you have to do it by hand, so as not to clobber the 137 changes, but rather to combine the two). That warning was broken for a bit, and that threw me off. Which isn't to excuse me entirely; there were other ways I could have caught the problem, and I should still have managed to figure it out in time.
But that's why every so often newer stuff clobbers older stuff in ways it shouldn't, and also why it doesn't happen too often. Generally changes get moved forward automatically, and when they don't you (usually) get a warning. This is why it's quite possible for almost everything to move forward just fine, and for only 1 or 2 things to fail.
I mention all this mainly because some small number of people might just be interested, but also because it may clear up some confusion and clarify things for those of you who are willing to help us with bug reports (for which much thanks!).
Sry, late to the party...so i won't talk about the changes already made. Instead i'll focus on the 2 major issues bards have imo, before any fix can be made. Bear with me, i've learned english with neverwinter and a few kind people. I play bard as main since release, dropping my end game rogue that i've been playing since game release on ps4.
The first issue is the delay when bards enter in performance (and leave).
No other class mechanic, power, being dailies, encounters, trinkets, has anything close to that delay. Here it is said it's because of a server side check (though not having divinity cause an instant denial when trying to enter performance).
However, if really this is a must for whatever reason, wouldn't be it be possible to have a signal sent when the performance is enough, so the check happen before entering performance, or make the check while the song is being played?
Because of that delay the class can't...improvised.
The second big issue is the gap between pc and console due to the use of macro.
Any future rework or balance of the class will most likely get stomped because of this gap. Good console bard=>too good pc bard, good pc bard=>meh console bard.
My idea for a future fix : make songs equipable, as if it is a class feature. Only 1 can be equiped ofc. And ofc songs can be played on top of it (1 for dps, any number for heal). Change the various passive bonuses written "when not in a shortcut" into "when is played".
This way console has access to 1 macro (the current shortcut), and the equiped song makes 1 other macro useless, bringing the gap pc/console close to zero. It's also an overall boost to the class, both in quality of life, especially with a controller, and performance (the actual boost in damage won't be that high, as for heals it will be even lower*). This fix seems also easy to implement.
(*) for healer it appears that only the cleanse and rejuvanating caroll look like they can be equiped. Some will probably feel like it's op, however the real boost for heal will be about divinity cost as the equiped song cost nothing (it could reduce the divinity available though), and if my calculations aren't far off, the minstrel still won't come close to the dc in divinity efficiency.
So back when we were talking about healing and how it did or didn't affect non-party members or did or didn't affect pets, I had the thought "I'd really rather it did affect your pets, just not at the cost of affecting other players". But at the time, I didn't have the tech to do that (as a designer, I can pick from a list of targeting priority methods, like "nearest first" or "furthest first", but I can't create new targeting priority methods -- that's done in code). I requested it, though.
And the Software people have been clearing out various low-priority backlog requests, and hooray! they did my new targeting priority.
So bards will now heal (or buff) any allies up to their target cap of 15, but they will prefer players. That means if you're a bard and you're soloing or in a 5-man, you'll heal/buff everybody, including pets or NPC allies. But in a trial, you won't have pets "stealing" heals or buffs from other players. Hopefully this will be the best of both worlds!
This fix is probably not going to make the M24 module launch, but I am hoping it will land shortly thereafter (maybe in a week 1 post-launch patch or something like that).
Let me know if there are any problems with it, but (unless there is some kind of bug) it *should* just be strictly better than the previous version.
But there's no reason the cleric should always get the best things first! Clerics are very strong healers in all kinds of ways. If bards have a small extra benefit, that's fine. (If it turns out to be a super-large benefit, of course we'd need to do something about that. That seems unlikely in this case.)
So in a general sense, don't you think things should happen the same for everyone?
I find it odd you decide not to have mechanics consistency across all your healers.
When you leave, the new guy won't know the specifics of such mechanical changes and this is why some classes have been kept in dark for so long, until players cried enough to have the classes revised, intricacies rediscovered and powers equalized.
Apologies for the salty reply but I believe the community is really fed up of things which work better in favor of some classes when there's no vice-versa.
Viperion - DragonTribe guild.
Playing Ranger/Paladin/Bard/Fighter.