Ceruline
03-24-2005, 09:54 PM
<DIV>I would like to make a request that the durations of concentration based bard songs be seriously looked at.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Bard song buffs are limited by both group and concentration slots already. Additionally, at the moment concentration using songs also have a 10 minute duration. Generally this means that every six or seven minutes I'm recasting everything I have (six or seven because I want to avoid cutting it close).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Frankly, I fail to see what this recast requirement adds to the game experience. I see no reason why bard song buffs can't act like most other concentration buffs I've seen - ie a 12 hourish timer given that they're already limited by your available concentration.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I don't see what purpose the design decision to have bard songs be such short duration achieves. Trust me, refreshing buffs is not an integral part of my game experience, and were it removed I should not miss it for a second. (And I've only been a bard for 10 levels... I can only imagine how fed up a player who has been playing one for 40 levels must be with refreshing!)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The bottom line, as I see it, is that there is no perceivable benefit to the short duration, and a huge amount to be gained in terms of reduction of frustration level by removing them.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As an addendum, a few other things which I've noticed or read about which seem buggy for Bard type classes or Dirge's in specific: (Consolidating)</DIV> <DIV>1. Dirges are Bards too! Why did only Troubs get buff stacking in this patch when Moorgard mentioned Bards being allowed to buff stack if they so chose?</DIV> <DIV>2. AoE damage scaling doesn't seem to be right at higher levels (Reports that level 40ish AoE skill is less damaging than the one from level 20ish skill)</DIV> <DIV>3. Power song needs some serious improvement. Enchanters rightfully have a much better power regen, but the Bard ones should at least provide a noticeable benefit. (On a side note, upgrading the power song skills also seems to result in minimal/no benefit to regen rate)</DIV> <DIV>4. The effectiveness of our skill buff lines could use some revisiting. I read that they were significantly downgraded a few months ago - the skills could probably use reevaluating with emphasis on whether they may have been downgraded slightly too much.</DIV> <DIV>5. There seem to be numerous complaints about the utility of our haste songs, especially considering that they use 2 concentration slots. Perhaps these should either be increased in effectiveness or made to only fill 1 slot?</DIV> <DIV>6. Avoidance may be too low. Reports are that plate based tanks are sporting higher avoidance scores than us, in addition to incredibly higher mitigation. We should probably fall midway between mitigation tanks and avoidance tanks on the avoidance scale, while having worse mitigation (and health) than either. This probably stems from Agi changes (Alas, I started after those changes, so I don't have a basis for comparison myself) </DIV>