Bard: that one class

Velyse

I think pesante stripping deafness kind of has to happen if bards get faster rapiers. Being able to accentato every 1.8 seconds while still stripping deafness and building toward locks (and thus sticking sensitivity better) seems like a little too much. Then again, I'm pretty new, and maybe the lack of illusions means that we'll sort of -need- to force people to decide between damage or locks?

Averi

@Sidonia

BUT I WANT BARD TO BE A DAMAGE CLASS!!!!!

I'd totally go knight if it didn't mean I had to leave my house

If we do become a total affliction class, then maybe pulling off funeralmass should be easier?  I'm still not sure how we can kill people. I suppose we could behead!

And I totally misunderstood what you meant about acciacciatura (however you spell that word).  That would work! It would also make our class kind of like a knight class, which would be awesome. hrm. would acciacciatura be kind of like accentato then? except it can prep limbs?

Edit: Attempted to spell acciacciactura correctly! 

Also, I don't think you're trying to destroy the class or anything! I think I just misunderstood your suggestions.  I agree POES isn't really that useful (again proven in the fact that I've never actually used it). And you're right. If we were faster, we wouldn't have to be stripping deafness ALL the time like we do now. Although it would be fun if we had to decide between damage and locks! @Velyse. Don't know how our class can be altered to pull that off though....Maybe making somethings take up more than one balance and stuff. 

Sidonia

Well, I was thinking acciaccatura would double the limb damage but not the hp damage, similar to that runeblade rune except not random proc and always double.

Basically what I'd like is tunesmithing to be a tactical choice between health pressure (accentato), stripping deaf (freeing up venom use for affliction pressure), extra limb damage to hasten prep (but slightly decreasing health/affliction pressure during prep time), and knockdown (which would be more useful if limb damage were more viable for bards).

Also as for killing, this would admittedly turn bard into an affliction-oriented class, so you could go for locks, but it would also increase the viability of using limb breaks to get burst damage with tremolo/vibrato (since they'd be faster than their current 3 seconds, and it wouldn't take 2 minutes to prep a couple of limbs).

Velyse

Faster rapiers are better for damage bards, too. Accentato damage stays the same regardless of speed, so your damage-per-sip goes way up unless they have some ungodly magic resistance -- but in that case your damage is pretty much screwed even with a 3.0 speed rapier. In theory (I don't know about practice), faster rapiers should do less physical damage because they have a lower damage stat, but accentato staying the same gives us a small advantage over dsl. I don't know if tremolo/vibrato work with broken limbs or just crippled, but faster weapons are much better for breaking prepped limbs. That, plus a 1.8 second tremolo/vibrato with accentato would be a lot of damage. This is one reason why pesante should probably cure deafness. There has to be some trade off between applying afflictions and stacking damage.

But, again, I'm a noob so I may be wrong.

Sidonia

AFAIK accentato scales with the damage stat on your rapier, but that could be outdated/incorrect info, will test later.

Averi

That's true. If we can lock them. we can just jab at them forever until they die. 

((Is a combat newb))

Velyse

Sidonia said:

AFAIK accentato scales with the damage stat on your rapier, but that could be outdated/incorrect info, will test later.

Does it? If so that's silly. I know it scales with intelligence, and presumably swashbuckling, but I didn't know it scales with weapon damage. Hm... I'll have to test later. It seems counterproductive to scale with weapon damage.

Zeon

so much misinformation in this thread. will post when I get a second.

1) bard is not a damage class, it's an affliction class. They have an entire skill dedicated to afflicting people, on par with shamans and apostates.

2) accentato is magic damage that scales with int. Its damage was severely (re: overly) nerfed because a decent rapier and magic damage arties or a 250+ speed rapier made the dps absurd. This was also partly due to the playerbase overreacting to something they didn't want to take the time to learn how to avoid and party due to the fact that it was pretty insane. Now even artied/insane speed accentato jabs with prefarar can't kill anyone, considering these nerfs went in at the same time raja speed was taken away and everyone was given the ability to build tanky with mhun balance. Double nerf to bard offense and a buff to every physical defense.

3) poes/aeternam are pretty much broken, there is one good way of taking advantage of them outside of paxmusicalis. They are hardly a get out of jail free card. Part of me says remove them because they do nothing and part of me says keep them because they're kinda interesting especially as an rp mechanic, they certainly don't affect combat enough to be the kinda thing you need to give up for a more powerful offense.

4) making pesanate strip deafness has been suggested before, it's a good suggestion but it's been denied.

5) making voicecraft follow jabs like striking would be a bigger buff to the bards with quicker rapiers, thus helping the subsect of bards in the least need of help. (Obviously all bards are in need of help though, since right now a bard with a 255+ rapier afflicts slower than an unartied serpent or an unclassed person with a thoth's fang). Best thing about making voicecraft follow jabs like striking is that it makes bard as easy to play as other affliction classes and a big problem besides the fact that it's mechanically impossible to kill people, is that balancing jabs and voicecraft simultaneously is incredibly incredibly difficult.

tl;dr: See below.

Iocun

Aren't bards those people who remove gravehands?

Averi

Yay Zeon! 

Sidonia

Velyse said:

Sidonia said:

AFAIK accentato scales with the damage stat on your rapier, but that could be outdated/incorrect info, will test later.

Does it? If so that's silly. I know it scales with intelligence, and presumably swashbuckling, but I didn't know it scales with weapon damage. Hm... I'll have to test later. It seems counterproductive to scale with weapon damage.

Tested and I was wrong, seems to be the independent of damage stat.

Sidonia

Zeon said:

3) poes/aeternam are pretty much broken, there is one good way of taking advantage of them outside of paxmusicalis. They are hardly a get out of jail free card. Part of me says remove them because they do nothing and part of me says keep them because they're kinda interesting especially as an rp mechanic, they certainly don't affect combat enough to be the kinda thing you need to give up for a more powerful offense.

It just adds one more affliction you need to truly lock a bard. If you manage to truelock them outside of their hallelujah, you have to also prone to stop POES. It's a minor thing but it's still a thing.

edit: oops double post.

Velyse

@Zeon When you say that Voicecraft is as good as shaman curses or apostate deadeye, does this mean that bards are able to lock people? I think that Shamans rely somewhat on vodun to lock, but I dunno about apostates. 

Zeon

hallelujah proc time got nerfed so much a couple years ago. It's one of the slower passive curing methods iirc. It's also incredibly likely that a bard is already in harms though if you're fighting them. Needing to prone on truelocks applies to more than just bards anyway.

Years ago I once locked @sohl and he just duanathar'ed to clouds, morphed dragon, and dhealed out of it. All while paralyzed because I forgot to prone. After that I added prone to my locking setups. 

Cooper

Oh yeah. I forgot to classlead being able to use wings while paralysed last round. Thanks for the reminder.

Zeon

When I was a shaman last (2-3 rl days, i had only trans curses, also old raja speed) I could truelock people.

I recently did affliction class speed test and the only class that can afflict truelocking afflictions faster than shamans (just swiftcure + nimble)  is serpent with a T fang. This is now.

@Velyse bard is suppose to be a locking class (you can give paralysis + impatience + asthma + slickness + anorexia). They used to specialize in slower/easier to avoid locks that revolved around systems not curing properly. When I made Zeon I was a horkval bard and able to lock most people using 3 second jab + 3 second voicecraft (3 second handaxes from delos on rebounding). This was mostly because systems at the time weren't good about curing hardlocks with tree. Bards also have good riftlocking potential, though prepping limbs is absurdly slow and all systems are good about using restore these days + auto outr. Pre-zeon bard success (see Darby) revolved around using an illusion to get lvl 1 riftlocks that systems didn't cure out of, or just giving random afflictions until systems stop curing kinda like how occultist used to be.

When tricks rely on systems messing up, locking becomes a matter of afflictions per second. See all affliction classes in the present day.

Sidonia

Zeon said:

hallelujah proc time got nerfed so much a couple years ago. It's one of the slower passive curing methods iirc.

It's on a 6 second timer with a chance of proccing. I can't be bothered (right now) sitting around for an hour to test what the chance is roughly, but as a small test it cured 13 times in 2 min 48 seconds, which makes it faster than panacea and almost as fast as demon siphon (unless those two have been changed in the last two years). RNG makes it annoying though, since you can sometimes get 4 procs in a row and then none for half a minute.

Averi

btw, just to put it out there.... I was joking when I said that I wanted bard to be a damage class.... Although I think it would be sweet if we could do more things with rapiers. Cause rapiers are awesome. 

Velyse

@Zeon Oh, I know bards are supposed to be able to lock, I just don't know if they're currently able to. I knew they sort of relied on riftlocking in the past, but that's easily countered by just pre-outrifting herbs, which (as you said) most systems now do. I'm mostly wondering if pesante gives enough of an edge for bards to be able to lock currently.

Zeon

No. bard is objectively the slowest affliction class right now. Locking is not viable.

Jarrod

Obviously we shouldn't have abused bard damage as much as we did for a couple weeks, making everyone complain and getting accentato hit with a ~5% max health damage nerf (this was pre-traits that it got hit, traits then made it worse)

The way bard was setup, it was a good idea with normal rapiers, and a broken class with fast ones. Normalize weapons, reverse all bard changes!

Xith

I have questions, that also lead me to ask if someone could make a general Bard guide thread explaining things like these:

1. Do players' harmonic sets stack in the same room, and to what degree?

2. What exactly does songblessing enable? By reading the Swash file, I gather that it means both an effect and a venom are delivered at the same time?

3. I was under the impression Voice balance was independent of normal balance completely. But @Zeon made it sound like it can't follow another attack. Is that true?

Jarrod

1. No, 1 bard can have multiple sets of harmonics, if another bard walks into a room with harmonics already and calls his, any harmonics he has the original bard did not will transfer, the rest will stay where they were. If you have multiple harmonic sets up and do call harmonics, I -believe- it pulls the highest duration of every harmonic to you, and leaves the rest as it (contrary to Magi that destroys repeats)

2. Songblessing is an effect you can apply to your weapon as a bard that procs on hit, in addition to venom. One songblessing at a time on a weapon, cannot stack them on a weapon, takes no balance to songbless a weapon. It's expended on hit as well.

3. Voice balance is currently 100% independant (3 second I think) balance for songs, but I think most people were suggesting tying voicebalance to jab speed to provide an effect similar to striking for BMs.

Sena

Xith said:
2. What exactly does songblessing enable? By reading the Swash file, I gather that it means both an effect and a venom are delivered at the same time?

Jarrod said:
2. Songblessing is an effect you can apply to your weapon as a bard that procs on hit, in addition to venom. One songblessing at a time on a weapon, cannot stack them on a weapon, takes no balance to songbless a weapon. It's expended on hit as well.

You're mixing up songblessing with tunesmithing.

Songblessing is when you go to the Grotto of Song and "bathe rapier in song", to make it use swashbuckling instead of weaponry for damage/accuracy/speed and allow tunesmithing.

Tunesmithing is an effect you can apply to the jab. For example, "tunesmith rapier accentato;jab person" will make accentato (magical damage) fire after the jab.

Kenway

@Sidonia @Averi  one of you may have said something about this and I just missed it 'cause I'm tired.

Bards hit for like 1000. That's coming from someone in 104/108 full plate. If their speed gets increased to 1.7-1.8(which I agree with, they should be fast), that needs to be toned down a bit. I DSL at 1.6-1.7 and with 18str and mastery, I hit for about 900.

I see bards at like 2-1.7(based off of what I see most knights with non-ridiculous rapiers that @Xae may or may not have bought them), throwing their voicecraft to keep enemies occupied while hitting for more like 750-800 damage. Sort of like when a Runie Thuristacks(2-3 Thurisaz and a Hugalaz) you 'cept afflictions instead of damage. 

I also agree with the impale/disembowel thing. Or some variation. Most classes have something they're working towards in a combat scenario. Knights try and immobilize you so they can disembowel, Sylvans do torso damage so they can go for heartseed, etc. I feel like bards just sorta flail at ya till they you die.

I dunno if I'm making sense, if clarification's needed/desired lemme know.

EDIT: So that whole tired thing... I just realized I forgot to read the whole second page. So y'know. If I sound stupid for restating things, that would be why.

Also my IQ is 49.

Sidonia

I don't want to see a non-knight class being given impale/dsb. If bards were hitting faster, they'd be doing lower damage (because they're not using 110 damage rapiers). Also half the damage is magical so fullplate irrelevant for that, and if other tunesmithings were worth using more often, you'd see less accentato.

Zeon

Bards are suppose to be locking you, or attempting to lock you til they die. Stop comparing them to sylvans and knights they're more like serpents and apostates. I'm so sick of seeing bards get compared to knights because they both use rapiers. Bards don't need a dsb-style finisher the same reason knights don't need impatience. 

@Jarrod: I disagree with "The way bard was setup, it was a good idea with normal rapiers, and a broken class with fast ones. Normalize weapons, reverse all bard changes!"

Old bard was broken with normal rapiers because it was very difficult to afflict fast enough to ensure a lock (similar to how unartied serpent is right now). Fast rapiers (by fast I mean 245+ top of the line) weren't any more broken than a thoth's fang. The problem people had with it was the fact they didn't know how to prevent locks since touching shield against a bard isn't nearly as effective as it is against a serpent.

Aktillum

http://pastehtml.com/view/cruymwitw.html

Zeon said:

hallelujah proc time got nerfed so much a couple years ago. It's one of the slower passive curing methods iirc.

Averi

BUT RAPIERS ARE SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

and besides, even though old bard was an afflictions class... current bard is like a nothing class so why can't we have more things that use rapiers??? 

oh and @Kenway Accentato + jab only hits you for 600-700.  If i add in heartsfury, it's 700-800 ish. 

Sidonia

@Aktillum: Worthless log is worthless without timestamps.

Averi said:

BUT RAPIERS ARE SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

and besides, even though old bard was an afflictions class... current bard is like a nothing class so why can't we have more things that use rapiers???

Rapiers aren't being taken away