SingleTra
02-09-2005, 11:46 PM
<DIV>Seven days have come and seven days have passed. The effects of the patch on February first are still present. I honostly dont see them being changed. I am assuming that this is what the devs at Sony believe their "Vision(tm)" to be. It is their game after all. They have upset a large base of their community, spawned a vast number of angry, yet futile, posts in their forums. The reason I say this is due to a lack of response to anyone within the Troubadour forums. Now the obvious question is, where do we stand now?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Is the bard class any better for having posted so many threads with so many shortcomings being pointed out? I don't believe so. The people who we would like to have taken note of these posts, have either not looked or even thought it would be in their best interest to make a comment. Instead, we, as the bard class, have only informed the playing community of all that is wrong with the bard, and given them a biased opinion on what we cannot give them in a group setting. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I may not have the best experience, due to the fact that I am not sure of what the true impact has been on the mid level bards. I do not see many changes at post 45, it has changed a little, but not too much. I run basically the same lines, and still get asked to multiple groups directly upon logging in. This may also be due to the fact that the AB server has a very, very, small bard population. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The things that have changed, that have made a serious impact, is the ability to buff within combat, the amount of healing I require, and how much the guardians really want me to join their group. Now that the avoidance skill has been all but removed for all classes, those precious tanks require healing. Healing requires power. I can increase that power pool. I can increase those hitpoints, I can adjust the offensive abilities of everyone in the group by a marginal 3 levels. Why would anyone in their right mind, pass up this opportunity? Because they are only aware of what we cannot do. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This patch changed the entire combat system, it has placed the troubadour and dirge into a group utility role, which we should have been from the very beginning. I will agree there are a multitude of things within the class that need to be revised and a few others that should be left alone. My compiled list is as follows. The ideas behind these are great, they just need some tweaking.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1. Stealth attacks. Although these attacks do some ok damage, we lose 3 seconds of dps, which at my level comes out to be approximately 180 to 200 points of damage from straight melee. So now that wonderful stealth attack that I just completed, may have inflicted 580 points of damage and debuffed intelligence in my damage window, but after the basic math, it really only did 400. The average damage I see from that skill is usually around 300, so is it worth me dropping out of combat with this tier 1, 3 second cast sneak? I don't think so. Especially in the cases when the ability only does minimum damage of 124 damage. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2. Spell cast times in general. 3 seconds for a song. Refer to topic 1. 3 seconds for a song and I am out of melee. The damage on an app IV is about 230. The math just doesnt compute into being a worthwhile song. I can understand the songs that require a concentration slot to take me out of combat, but a direct damage? I disagree. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3. Arcane/Elemental mitigations. I seriously couldnt stop laughing when a solo, green, siren in Zek was able to cast on me with this song on. Mitigation, what does this mean, absorb damage, correct? Change it. RESIST is what is needed. I can't mitigate myself out of a paper bag in melee, I now have a buff that says I can mitigate spell damage, I have yet to see it. 300+ damage even after the song is put up? Laughable, at best.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>4. Options, options, options. I run basically the same exact song line no matter the group makeup. Back in EQ1, I had many options. I would twist 4 to 5 songs and still not have enough fingers to run all that I wanted. We could have roles in a raid environment to be filled for dps, mana, regen, you name it, we did it. Maybe it wasnt the best, but it sure did help.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>5. Power drains from mob to caster. I dont see this working. It doesnt drain enough power to even bother with at the 45+ level. I am talking not just one song, Purloin Escence, I am talking all of them. I can hit a mob with every single power draining ability I have, and it still dies before the power bar is gone. A mage in combination with me, can usually drain the mob pretty well, still not oop.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I shall stop now. I have plenty more issues I could bring up but they are not very important. As a class, I still love my bard. I have been able to adapt. Now is the time to inform the ignorant of what we can actually do. I think all of our advantages we still do bring to the table, are worth every moment of the groups time. I had a guardian make a comment to the group last night as I was headed to bed. He was speaking to the remaining group members. He said, "please be patient guys, Hex (me) is going to be difficult to replace, hard to find a class that is that useful."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thanks for your time, if you actually read this, feel free to make comments, reactions, additions. I didnt write this for the devs, I wrote this in hopes we may be able to come out of this with something to look forward and give others an idea of what it is like post 40. I have to get back to work!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>