Bard: that one class

Mishgul

Bards can still stack affs they just cant kill anyone above level 3

Averi

Mizik said:

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.

Thank you! I will try this. >.< 

Iocun

Mishgul said:

Bards can still stack affs they just cant kill anyone above level 3

Just a matter of getting 30 bards to kill a level 90 person then.

Zeon

Explains why there are so many bard abilities that require multiple bards.

Avto

They say 30 bards can one shot Yudhi. True story.

Sylvance

Cool story, bro.

Velyse

Sorry for the bump, but I finally have trans voicecraft and envenom so I've been looking over my afflictions and trying to build a strategy. I noticed that, in voicecraft, I only have four afflictions that cannot be focused (excluding crippled limbs): paralysis, nausea, clumsiness, and impatience. The rest are focusable. My only means of delivering impatience is through voice balance. So, essentially, most of my voicecraft affliction is useless until I use voicecraft impatience, but voice balance is so slow that they'll have cured that affliction by the time I get voice balance back, rendering most of voicecraft useless again.

If we had a way to punish people for focusing this wouldn't be a problem, but as is there's nothing we can really do. Maybe change berceuse so that it does something when people focus? Damage, maybe, or afflicting with loki, or one of a number of random affs. All that focus does for a bard is drain mana, but we can do that better with solo (stronger than priest sap and can be joined with rapier jabs), and have no way to capitalize on low mana even if focus sucked a ton of mana.

The only problem that I can see with this is that, as is, berceuse is one of the only ways for a bard to get a kill through prismatic barrier.

Xith

A song that drains tiny mana, perhaps. But focus already consumes like 250, so. Just stack that and since they sip the health they eventually can't focus?

Velyse

I'm not sure how that would help anything, @Xith?

Zeon

If you slowly drain someones health and mana, they're just going to walk away from you or shield. Of course if you try to lock someone, they're just going to walk away from you. That'll always be a problem with a momentum based class. As of now bard is just way too slow to pressure anyone, with afflictions, potential of lock, damage, anything. A momentum based class should be able to kill or put someone on the oh-shit-defensive-i'm-about-to-die in 10 seconds or less, easy.

Zeon

Lets say you wanted to balance affliction speed around shaman/apostate which both afflict 1 non-random aff per second. Both solid classes, bypass shielding, and rebounding (1 aff per second). It might seem reasonable to say, with a good weaponry my gear based affliction class can afflict AS fast as these classes, so around 1 aff per second. With bad gear (newbie blade, normal dirk, etc) maybe they should afflict slightly slower than 1 aff per second. With godly gear, they should afflict faster than 1 aff per second. Serpent follows this pretty well, with a lvl 3 dirk afflicting faster than 1 aff per second and unartied far slower. (Actually I think completely unartied could use a slightly boost, but nonetheless it follows the above pretty closely). 

Now let us look at bard after all of its recent speed nerfs. A bard with a 255+ speed rapier and nimble, afflicts lower than 1 aff per second. Only slightly faster than an unartied serpent. Imagine how slow a bard with a just decent speed (230?) rapier is. Now imagine how slow a bard just getting into combat, who didn't feel like paying credits for a rapier afflicts. Thus your problem.

Averi

We are being classleaded next!!! I may be overly optimistic but I cannot wait to see the changes. 

Sidonia

^ This was how I felt until I looked at the bard classleads that were actually submitted. I just hope they've been reading this thread and will look at the class rather than just the classleads.

edit: of the submitted bard classleads, there are only two that would positively change bards, and only one in a relevant manner:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem:
as it stands right now, bards are too slow to decently afflict. A big problem for a very affliction
based class.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Solution #1:
decrease voicebalance time across the board (except for lay)
Solution #2:
a combination of the two above, with the contingency that manually selecting the songbirds
affliction takes slightly more voicebalance time
Solution #3:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Considering it seems like it's missing one solution entirely (combination of which two above?), I'm not terribly hopeful.

Averi

@Sidonia

At least the existing classleads weren't all about how we're OP and should be nerfed.

But I agree. I hope they have been paying attention to this thread as well. There were lots of amazing ideas in this thread. The ones on existing classleads were kind of underdeveloped.

Even if the only change they make is a decrease in voicebalance (i'm hoping it will be more drastic though), I can't wait to see what our class becomes after this classlead and the weaponry renovation sets in. 

Zeon

I got yo back

Xith

Originally Lay was my concern, but since all voicecraft operates on the same balance, I think just fixing fashion so that truefashion strips lay and adds a fashion is probably more efficient.

That being said, hopefully they've looked at the issues mentioned here and have good things in mind.

Averi

I rarely ever use lay so I don't really care about that one. I just want to be able to kill people. >.< It's annoying having like 14782914791468146738273 opportunities to do something awesome and not being able to. maybe i'm just bad at it though.

Zeon

Xith your lay suggestions are bad suggestions. You're free to pitch bad suggestions in every other thread, but not here. This here is serious business, please no more bad suggestions.

Garao

There is nothing wrong with lay. Fashion will always be quicker than voice balance, and if a bard spams lay then they will have an even more laughable offence than they already do (I sorry, I want you buffed as well ). Here's hoping the next classlead announce is super interesting

Zeon

For clarification, it's not even because lay matters, you could delete it and no one would care. It's that all your posts are filled with self entitlement and a deep-rooted lack of understanding as to how mechanics work.

Xith

Zeon said:

For clarification, it's not even because lay matters, you could delete it and no one would care. It's that all your posts are filled with self entitlement and a deep-rooted lack of understanding as to how mechanics work.

Shhhhhhhh. You have a deep-rooted lack of understanding of my understanding. And are also not god of this thread.

So it's not about the bard sacrificing their offense, it's the fact that they can stand there and do nothing but dwinnu and lay and it takes me 300% longer to make any headway without expending lots of bomb or tarot resources, plus bard slipperiness. Bard is very much the anti-jester.

Note that I didn't account for harmonic distractions either that can further disrupt fashion speed.

Averi

@Xith I feel like that'd be the most boring spar ever.....

Jacen

Who cares how long it takes to fashion, if they're not offensively advancing? As a monk, I can quad prep in like 25 seconds if I go pure offense. If I'm fighting a decent knight, or an occie, it could take me 2-3 minutes or more to prep. But idgaf, because the limb damage I'm sticking isn't going anywhere. Same thing with fashioning.

Xith

Averi said:

@Xith I feel like that'd be the most boring spar ever.....

It's happened before. What's irritating is they can do that to mess with me for like 10 minutes, at which point I should be approaching 60 fashions or so, and then just turn their offense on and be done with me. You have to have a jester/shaman's perspective to understand what fashioning actually means and why it's that disheartening to face classes that can reach full momentum in 15 seconds or even 3 minutes. And to have to walk on eggshells and avoid underhanded tricks and tactics so they don't get nerfed, which apart from fashioning is all we're built for. So anyway yes, something needs to be done about lay or about fashion.

Kyrra

I'm really baffled that Xith is sucking so much with puppetry. It has to be a Jester thing because I've been hard locked by a shaman through vodun/curses in under a minute. By someone that actually knew what they were doing.

It's quite surprising when you get hit for over 5k damage from a shaman.

Xith

Well to clear up that confusion, jesters can't hard lock. And Shamans lock possibly easier than anything in the game when they know what they're doing. If they can envenom a dagger, a shaman can truelock you (minus disrupt) with 21 fashions.

Jesters are nothing like that. There is nothing lethal we can do with 21 fashions except sneak reckless (which is the only way a Shaman hits for 5k damage). Shamans benefit greatly at the lower fashion range, while jesters generally need more than that. Even mangle and cripple to slow tumble down for the jitb is 36 fashions.

But jester is a subtle class that I could explain all day. Problem mentioned is Lay vs fashion. Any bard that can avoid a jitb is unfashionable if they choose to be. And they're too hard to pin down by jester or shaman for alternative kills. Proudly declare this issue resolved, cause I'm self-entitled.

Zeon

Xith said:

Zeon said:

For clarification, it's not even because lay matters, you could delete it and no one would care. It's that all your posts are filled with self entitlement and a deep-rooted lack of understanding as to how mechanics work.

Shhhhhhhh. You have a deep-rooted lack of understanding of my understanding. And are also not god of this thread.

So it's not about the bard sacrificing their offense, it's the fact that they can stand there and do nothing but dwinnu and lay and it takes me 300% longer to make any headway without expending lots of bomb or tarot resources, plus bard slipperiness. Bard is very much the anti-jester.

Note that I didn't account for harmonic distractions either that can further disrupt fashion speed.

This is why your opinion should not be taken seriously in this thread.

Jester has arguably the best hindering in the game, thus jester can stop any momentum based class in it's tracks. Thus the best classes for fighting a jester are prep classes, (where getting hit with a hangedman, doesn't mean starting your offense all over again). Since bard is a momentum class (the weakest one by far, at this point in time), your assumption is unfounded.

Bards can't kill you, or even begin to gain momentum, without using voice balance to afflict. Since fashioning is faster than 3 seconds, a bard that keeps using their voice balance to put lay back up is just going to prolong the time it takes you to get fashions, while doing offensive whatsoever. 

Averi

@Xith

If I played bard completely defensively, I could probably end every spar with a timeout against any class. But that's not the point of sparring.

Velyse

Can't non-bards use their offense to force Jesters to stop fashioning and hinder/retreat, anyway? I don't see why throwing hangedman at a monk/knight/BM to slow their offense is somehow intrinsically different than losing roughly every other fashion because of Lay. Actually, that's not true, there is an intrinsic difference: The prep classes can still kill you, even if you're using hangedman to slow them. A bard can't kill you to begin with, and spamming Lay makes that even less likely to occur.

Garao

Lay is as much a defence against fashion as shield is against DSL (from rapiers).