Bard: that one class

Averi

hrm. that's weird. it's never done a counterattacky thing for me... maybe i should try to use it more and see what happens.

Aerek

A Voicecraft song to "take their breath away" and give asthma would make hard-locking much easier. Would that be too much of a buff?

Xith

Aerek said:

A Voicecraft song to "take their breath away" and give asthma would make hard-locking much easier. Would that be too much of a buff?

Meh. I guess when it's fixed/rearranged anything could work. But the trend with lockers is your class can give every lock affliction by your primary means of attack except for one.

For apostate/shaman, it's slickness. For serpent, it's impatience.

Bard can sing-stab paralyse and anorexia, but can only sing impatience and only stab asthma and slickness. So it comes up short on the traditional speed aspect of afflicters: dstab, deadeyes, swiftcurse.

The way I was approaching it is that their slew of salve-based attacks serve as a temporary stack on the salve side without actually giving them anything that needs to be smoked, meaning that open smoking is okay. Then ideally you'd need to finish with stab kalmia + sing quesadilla and then still beat the salve balance with a gecko stab.

It'd be unique to have a lock class approach the lock from the other side and finish with asthma, but since asthma has no balance and can instantly cure slickness, wouldn't work. Could possibly add the phlegmatic effect into voicecraft, like what Alchemists have.

I know venoms aren't hidden by blackout, but I imagine voicecraft is, so DFA's potential could be looked into.

Zeon

Aerek said:

A Voicecraft song to "take their breath away" and give asthma would make hard-locking much easier. Would that be too much of a buff?

Yes, if the affliction per second problem were addressed.

Aerek

Xith said:

Bard can sing-stab paralyse and anorexia, but can only sing impatience and only stab asthma and slickness. So it comes up short on the traditional speed aspect of afflicters: dstab, deadeyes, swiftcurse.

The way I was approaching it is that their slew of salve-based attacks serve as a temporary stack on the salve side without actually giving them anything that needs to be smoked, meaning that open smoking is okay. Then ideally you'd need to finish with stab kalmia + sing quesadilla and then still beat the salve balance with a gecko stab.

It'd be unique to have a lock class approach the lock from the other side and finish with asthma, but since asthma has no balance and can instantly cure slickness, wouldn't work. Could possibly add the phlegmatic effect into voicecraft, like what Alchemists have.

The difference between Bards and those other classes is the fact that Bards can take advantage of limb damage. Right now, I don't see a good way for a Bard to lock without some pretty impressive Percussia chains, because they have to jab separately with gecko and kalmia, and can't kelp stack to hide asthma. Even with Bards' current slow speed, though, it would be pretty easy to use limb breaks and impatience to hide anorexia, lock with jab gecko/sing asthma, and seal it with jab weariness/sing paralysis.

If Bards get an overhaul and a speed buff, I can see where that might be extreme, but it might be reasonable with their current setup, and smaller, easier classleads have a better chance to go through than grand, sweeping ones.

Mishgul

Or we can reimagine bards and create a new dimension of singing someone to death. We dont need another serpent or apostate class. Lets get some diveesity. Sing an affliction twist the words change the affliction.

That sounds cool a harmonic that can turn one affliction into another. Give them stpuidity impatience and confusion and clumsiness. Harmonic changes a static set of afflictions to another every 5 minutes. A whole new strat and opening new ways to exploit defences.

Brb need to finish this pee.

Mishgul

By 5 minutes i meant 20 seconds

Darklyre

Mishgul said:

Or we can reimagine bards and create a new dimension of singing someone to death. We dont need another serpent or apostate class. Lets get some diveesity. Sing an affliction twist the words change the affliction. That sounds cool a harmonic that can turn one affliction into another. Give them stpuidity impatience and confusion and clumsiness. Harmonic changes a static set of afflictions to another every 5 minutes. A whole new strat and opening new ways to exploit defences. Brb need to finish this pee.

I really, really like this. Instead of having to always stick a specific set of afflictions, now many different ones can be a threat if any of them can be turned into lock afflictions.

Xith

Mishgul said:

 That sounds cool a harmonic that can turn one affliction into another. Give them stpuidity impatience and confusion and clumsiness. Harmonic changes a static set of afflictions to another every 5 minutes. 

If by that you mean each affliction correlates to another affliction that'd work. Otherwise the Bard would lose track of what the other person had. And 3rd person message on the harmonic's tick. That's kinda a neat idea.

Plus one, admins.

Plus one.

Aerek

That does sound pretty cool, but I have to hope there's something that could be done for the Bard class in the short term.

Velyse

I don't think that's likely, considering how much is currently broken about the class. I kind of love it because it's like someone preserved mechanics from Achaea 5 years ago, but at the same time I can just go down my skill list and tick off things that need to be changed because they're terribly imbalanced one way or another, or are bugged. I'd imagine that bards are one of the classes most likely to be dramatically changed by the upcoming class tweaks. 

Mishgul

If there is one thing a bard can do it's rub mental affs on you. On their own they cant do much because its hard to capitalise on a bunch of non leyhal low priority afflictions. But have them correspond to another affliction and make it worse by increasing the effect based on mana level. If mana is low enough another affliction is generated. If mana is below 25% you will get softlocked when the harmonic ticks or below 75% it gives gecko anorexia on tick, plus converting x aff to y aff at all levels.

Lyr

@Velyse

Mizik

Carmain, that's brilliant.

Tvistor

Not only is it brilliant, but I bet it will be broken by Mizik/Zeon in five minutes to the detriment of everyone else.

Darklyre

Just call it "changing keys" or something musically-oriented.

Velyse

Mishgul said:

If there is one thing a bard can do it's rub mental affs on you. On their own they cant do much because its hard to capitalise on a bunch of non leyhal low priority afflictions. But have them correspond to another affliction and make it worse by increasing the effect based on mana level. If mana is low enough another affliction is generated. If mana is below 25% you will get softlocked when the harmonic ticks or below 75% it gives gecko anorexia on tick, plus converting x aff to y aff at all levels.

I think bard affs can get pretty lethal. Passively we can give masochism, recklessness, confusion, stupidity, and epilepsy. We can give impatience, stupidity, anorexia, and confusion on voice balance, in addition to a number of less useful mental affs. We can combine them with venom jabs, too. The problem is that the rate of affliction is soooo slow, for both passives and bard active afflicting, that trying to stack mental affs is a losing battle. We can barely keep pace with herb balance. Throw focusing into it, and now we're relying heavily on impatience not getting cured. If impatience is cured, everything can be focused away pretty easily at no real risk. If they took damage when they focused because of a harmonic, that might be more interesting and punish people for focusing, and make them decide whether they want to whittle down their health or deal with mental affs.

@Lyr It's not power creep so much as it is a difference in design focus, and occasionally just forgetting to fix bards when they fix everyone else. It's most evident in abilities like Minuet or Percussia, which either just don't reflect game reality (I need TWO bards to use an ability? Are there even two?) or utilize a mechanic that hasn't been updated in line with other classes that use this mechanic. Not to mention random bugginess like Riposte/Heartsfury, or the Swashbuckling skill in general :P

Mizik

Well, no, since you can just do like..

 curare/auralbless/impatience then go into a curare loop on rapier jab while piling the entire AB VOICECRAFT (starting with goldenseal affs) list swapping kalmia on goldenseal eat, refreshing impatience, etc.

Problem I had when I did that that one week I was Bard is dudes go 'o shit diag' and leave.

Velyse

Isn't herb balance 1s-1.6s, randomly? You're tied to 3s attack balance because of auralbless/voicecraft (and to a lesser degree, buggy swashbuckling speed). Unless they have goldenseal prioritized below hawthorn, they should get that impatience right away. Assuming pesante, they herb bloodroot at .3s in, and then 1.6s later they herb goldenseal to cure the impatience. Even if they get another 1.6 balance, they're going to herb bloodroot about .6 .9 .5 into your next attack. If you impatience them again, and assuming they're terribly unlucky and get another 1.6 second balance, they're still curing it 2.2 2.5 2.1 seconds in. If it's a regular mental aff, they'll just focus it. 

Jab, curare, pesante - 0.0

Tunesmith - 0.0

Auralbless - 0.0

Voicecraft, impatience - 0.0

Eat herb, Bloodroot - .3

Eat herb, Goldenseal - 1.9

Jab, curare, pesante - 3.0

Auralbless - 3.0

Voicecraft, mental aff - 3.0

Focus, mental aff - 3.1

Eat herb, bloodroot - 3.5 

Eat herb, hawthorn - 5.1

etc.

It seems like this relies on them prioritizing hawthorn above goldenseal, which is easily fixed by just prioritizing goldenseal above hawthorn when dueling/sparring against a bard. Eventually you MIGHT be able to outpace herb balance if they keep getting 1.6 each time, and if they don't hinder, shield, or flee at all... But I don't see that as likely. I guess if they're prioritizing goldenseal above hawthorn you can switch it on the fly so that you jab with prefarar and sing maqam to build a kelp stack, but now you're not really touching their mana at all. Edit: Plus you'll still suffer from the same problem as before. As long as they can eat 2 herbs before your next jab (kelp/kelp, kelp/bloodroot, etc.) you can't take advantage of the fact that they're not deafening themselves. /edit

I also don't see how you'll ever force someone to focus themselves down to 75% like that, as per the prior suggestion. What's more probable is that bards will become priests without piety/demons, who just accentato jab while singing solo to gradually drain mana. Solo is about the same, or maybe a little better mana drained than sap. But now they have all of the problems of priests, with few of the advantages (piety, demons, cleansing, healing skill, etc.)

I feel like I'm missing something crucial, here

Edit: Math is hard.

Sena

Velyse said:

Isn't herb balance 1s-1.6s, randomly?

It's just 1.6s, not random (at least not more than all balances/timers are).

Velyse

Thank you @Sena So eventually you can outpace herb balance as a bard if you don't hit them with anything that can be smoked/focused/applied away until they have a decent stack going, and as long as they don't hinder or leave. Is that right?

Sidonia

Or as long as they don't use tree or have passive curing or you hit rebounding or have to raze or hit parry or miss.

Mizik

Let's assume 1.8 sec jab and .3 sec stun. The .3 stun makes it so that jab speed + ping will initially beat herb balance on the same timeline.

curare/aural/limerick impatience stun .3 (bloodroot)
1.9 (goldenseal)
3.0 curare 3.5 (bloodroot)
4.8 curare 5.1 (bloodroot) 6.0 limerick
6.6 curare stun 6.9 (bloodroot)
8.4 curare stun 8.7 (bloodroot)
9.0 passion stupidity
10.2 curare stun 10.5 (bloodroot)

But really, raze at 10.2... I see...

Voicecraft needs to bypass deafness. I remember why I quit. It was shield + rebounding + deafness as counters. Frustrated the shit out of me.

Even then, man, screw all that work. Voice too slow. I'd be able to handle slow Voice if the initial Auralbless were faster. Even so, rebounding restarts you, then shield or running undoes everything.

Velyse

I can't get to 1.8 second jabs because bard rapier speed is currently 100% based on weaponry, even though damage/accuracy are primarily from swashbuckling Which I guess is my fault for not having more weaponry, but it's also a bug so... I'm not sure if that's a reasonable excuse or not.

Zeon

Pretty sure ranks aren't suppose to affect speeds, only accuracy thus you stop missing (without very very low to-hit) once you trans swashbuckling. What did happen was the songblessed speed buff got taken away (around the same time race changes went in). Songblessed rapiers used to function at +10% to all stats. So a bard would always jab faster than a non-bard with the same speed rapier and rapier proficiency. Now that that's been removed the only thing songblessing does is make a rapier tunesmithable and only usable by bards until it decays. Possibly a 10% bonus to damage and to-hit still, but seriously who cares.

Sidonia

Swashbuckling is supposed to replace weaponry for songblessed rapiers, but is currently not doing so for speed, so you're jabbing a second or so slower than you should be ( @Sena knows these numbers better than me) unless you invest in weaponry.

Zeon

Bard needs to average 1 non random aff every .9-1.1 seconds to be brought in line with other affliction classes. The same needs to be done with base dstab.

Xith

Oh I thought it was 1.5.

Bard is totally doable then. :P

The thing is that each jab does damage too, which other afflicters don't do with their afflictions. So if they add speed they need to lower damage.

They also can't lower voice bal speed unless they give each ability a different voice cost. Cause Dwinnu is annoying enough at 3.

Zeon

Nevermind. Bard is totally doable.

Iocun

Only the hot ones.