Enough is Enough, bard mana Needs to be nerfed NOW!

[Genado]

Edit for Terminology: All Bard songs are based on a skill. Much Like swords are 1H slash Bard songs have thier own skill. Singing, Percussion, Stringed, Brass, and Wind. So If a Percussion song added 20 Str, it would add 20 Str Played regular, if youre using a Percussion instrument that has a 2.0 Mod. it means it doubles what you get from the song. So if the song has 20 Str when you use the instruemnt it makes it 40 str. Thats how bard bonuses work And thats tied into the essay below.......

Onto the Post.........

This has gotten to the point now where its ridicoulous and overpowered. As it stands now with singing Modifiers The level 32 bard mana song can More than DOUBLE the Mana output of our LEVEL 64 AE song. To make matters worse, this song stacks on top of itself. So 2 bards in the same group with 4 casters gives out an INSANE amount of regen. And this STACKS with chorus. So Instead of bards being relegated to using thier great new PoP Abilities, we are relegated to "Twisting" A LEVEL 32 song Over and over and over again for clerics. I thought we wanted to get Away from unlimited mana pools?

Now, having said that and looking at the data, I feel this is just a huge oversight on verants part, Becuase up until Luclin the level 32 Manasong was fine, becuase it was singing based. And Up until Luclin All we had to increase singing songs was our epic. While the epic put 32 Mana Slightly Out of Balance because of how it Pulses, it wasnt THAT much better, Because if you pulsed 32 mana, you couldnt play anything else. If you did it would just be more efficent to play the level 55 song which did 13 Mana/tick.

I would also like to Note that the 55 song was made String, and not singing like the 32 song, And the mana regen component was intentionally not able to be modified by string bonuses you can get With a lute, which at the time, was a MUCH higher bonus than you could get singing.

And then Luclin came out. At level 30 We got Amplification, which totally Blew 32 Mana out of Whack. Add singing Mastery it gets even more out of whack. At level 58 We get An AE manasong, meant to cut down on the amount of bards needed to play mana, So we can focus on other things, Good Idea, But yet again the mana regen component was Intentionally made to not go up with Instrument Modifiers. So why should 32 mana be any different? At level 60 With amplification And Singing Mastery a bard can put Almost FOUR TIMES the mana with the level 32 song, than we can with our level 58 song. Not to mention Since this level 32 song has No icon It stacks on itself, meaning 2 bards in the same group can put out 7 times the amount of mana Chorus does. Clearly, level 32 should not be as good as it gets for bards as far as mana regen goes.

On to PoP. We get new Mana regen songs (Wind And Chorus of Marr). Now were up to 21 mana/tick. Thats scaled properly compared to our previous levels, but again the Mana component is Unaffected by Instrument modifers. And Ayonae's Tutelage Raises the singing cap, which means That yes Amazingly, our level 32 song has gotten better too! with max Modifiers the 32 song can now do 54/tick, Which Stacks With Chorus And is Still a healthy 2.5 times what Chorus And Wind of Marr Can do. This is just not right, Level 32 should not be as good as it gets. The level 32 song needs to be scaled Properly with the other songs....

Here's My idea to fix the Problem with the level 32 song.
1)Make it Unnaffected By Singing modifiers, like the Stringed songs cant be affected already. The 32 song wasnt overpowered until Luclin gave us high singing Modifiers. While this helped out a good number of high level songs, It threw 32 mana out of Whack. This needs to be fixed, This is the exact same problem Clerics Have with CH, where it wasnt overpowered when they got it, but new power gains made it a blatantly overpowered spell. You fixed CH, Now fix this.
2)Give 32 Mana an icon, and make it unstackable with other bard mana regen songs, like our other ones do. This will make 32 mana Twistable in a normal twist, which makes it more useful for its level, And gives a small boost in power thats needed at the mid levels, while Not making this the end all be all Song at High levels.

As we all know its very bad to have unlimited mana pools. We saw What happened with luclin and mod Rods. Mod Rods got thier Nerf, time to fix this one too.

Thoughts?

[Melrin_Specclaster]

'You fixed CH'

I'm sorry, did I miss some tiny message in a patch message that the entire rest of the community also mised?

I will say healing overall is better, druids and shamans, as well as other new clerics heals, but to say CH is 'fixed' is a stretch.

[Furor Planedefiler]

No graphs?

Amateur

[Kjia]

That lost me about 2/3rds of the way thru and i'm a normal person.. I'm sure a Dev would give up after the word 'Bard'

[Genado]

Well, CH still has Problems, But it certainly isnt the end all be all spell it used to be, they got creative and managed to lessen the use somewhat, but ya I guess it will always be overpowered.

What?
No graphs?

Amateur

Just keeping in line of the theme of the day of "Fuckups from Kunark that Bit Verant in the ass in PoP". I think the post speaks for itself, Fuck the graphs

[monkaddict]

Thott-bot would not approve of your lack of graphical evidence, nor your complete lack of parsings with every detail accounted for and triple checked.

I believe that was what Furor was implying

[Gwenix]

Not quite sure I understand you're complaining because one of your abilities works too well?

[WarderX]

Some of us still like chalenges, is his point, i think

[Alamando]

Originally posted by Gwenix
Not quite sure I understand you're complaining because one of your abilities works too well?

Originally posted by Genado
So Instead of bards being relegated to using thier great new PoP Abilities, we are relegated to "Twisting" A LEVEL 32 song Over and over and over again for clerics.

It sounds like Mod Rods for Magicians. "I don't care if you nuke, have a pet, or can pull 7 different weapons out of your robed ass. Summon rods 'fore I have to bitch slap you."

It's always kind of insulting to have a greater emphasis put on your secondary abilities than on your main strengths. Bards aren't Bards to bust out the old school lv 32 songs. At least, I think so.

[Patricio]

Okay your post completely denies 2 important aspects of the bard class. First, we're supposed to be able to fill a lot of roles pretty well, and second our songs are supposed to scale up in usefulness over time.

Bitching about a level 32 song that rocked at level 32 scaling up for bards to rock at level 65 ignores the fact that bard songs are supposed to scale. Look at elemental rhythms. That song is level 9, and guess what? It scales up so it's often the resist song of choice up to level 63 (or its aoe version). Amplification itself is a level 30 song. I'm personally disappointed that there aren't more songs in the bard lineup that scale up instead of them giving us a newer version of the same old haste song every couple of levels.

On top of that bards are supposed to be able to fill multiple roles pretty well. Who cares if you're put in the mana group on a raid? How much different is that from being the resist buffer or atk/haste buffer or the person doing oos? It's not like the case of mages where mana was bar none the most efficient place to put them and it afforded unlimited mana. Except in very specific fights, you're not going to see bard resists, atk/haste, etc completely ditched so that all the bards are to just sing mana.

I haven't done any actual testing to see if this provides clerics the ability to nonstop CH, so I won't comment on that.

*edit*
On top of all that, not that most higher levels give a rats arse about the lower levels, but back in the days of raiding at that level before MGB, before most people had group versions of all their buffs, and before every cleric had a clicker, being able to put a couple of bards in a group to speed up the buff process or CR saved hours of time, so making it not stack with itself should be weighed against that.

[Vainne]

32 mana is Not improved by "twisting" it. Therefore, you are not talking about being relegated to pushing one key over and over again--do so if you must, but the same effect would be acheived by just letting the song play, uninterrupted by other songs while you stand Right next to the cleric.

Right next to the cleric? Yes, the song has a short range.

If you want to, on the 6th pulse hit amplification.

I think its an interesting theory that 5 bards in a group with each cleric would make an unlimited manapool, but rarely are you going to be in a situation where your guild has that resource. And this strat is hardly going to win every fight...especially as I understand it with the trend in pop being Away from 45-minutues of hacking away at one mob.

At least...well I don't know...perhaps FoH has its clerics 5-hydra bard gimps with sm3 and shei cloak? No? That would be a nice requirement...

The use is situational, and more for ending downtime than winning the war. It's a valuable tool, it's not the only one we have.

In my experience most casters don't know about it, it's a gife we can bestow when the situation warrents.

In the age of FT items, c5, aa's every other class in the game having stackable mana regen...who the hell runs out of mana anyways?

[Genado]

A few things
32 mana is Not improved by "twisting" it. Therefore, you are not talking about being relegated to pushing one key over and over again--do so if you must, but the same effect would be acheived by just letting the song play, uninterrupted by other songs while you stand Right next to the cleric.

Did you read My post? You are wrong sir..It IS made effective by twisting it....doubly so. The level 32 Song has no icon. When you cast the level 32 song, you wait 3 seconds, and with max Modifers it gives 27 mana...in 3 seconds, hit it again another 27 mana, it Pulses, every time you get the your mind clears message you get the mana, Twisting it makes it doubly effective Thats 54 Mana in 6 seconds! 54 Mana in 1 tick! Yes if your using Amplification, You have to refresh it 1 in 10 presses, that brings it down to 49 mana/tick. Do any higher level song even come CLOSE to that? Nope not by a longshot
When youre constantly Asked on raids to "play 32 mana" theres a Reason for it, becuase its overpowered as hell. Need I remind you THIS IS OUR ONLY MANASONG AFFECTED BY MODIFIERS, The 34 song isnt...the 55 song isnt, the 58 one isnt not the 62 or 64 songs either. And Our higher level songs also dont "pulse" like the 32 song does, when the icons there you only get the mana every tick, no matter if you can play it 12 times in 6 seconds. Thats why this song scales in power to Be Better Than its Higher level counterparts. As it stands Now bards are the new Mod rods, becuase of an oversight, it needs to be fixed, becuase the unlimited mana trick from bards.

and second our songs are supposed to scale up in usefulness over time.

Yes they are, but over time you also get NEW SPELLS tht are an upgrade over old ones, and they are supposed to scale way better than the old ones. The problem currently is is that the new songs are Inferior to the old one, while ou recieve an upgrade you accually recieve a downgrade, Like I said this wasnt Wholly true before luclin. But AA Abilities Has made the song WAY too out of whack to be Completely Superiror to any upgrade we got.

Bitching about a level 32 song that rocked at level 32 scaling up for bards to rock at level 65 ignores the fact that bard songs are supposed to scale. Look at elemental rhythms. That song is level 9, and guess what? It scales up so it's often the resist song of choice up to level 63 (or its aoe version). Amplification itself is a level 30 song. I'm personally disappointed that there aren't more songs in the bard lineup that scale up instead of them giving us a newer version of the same old haste song every couple of levels.

This is a very poor example. First off Psalm of Veeshan, a level 63 song OWNS Elemental Rythms and any other resist or psalm song before it. Psalm of Veeshan is a Proper scaled upgrade to our other resist songs, as it reaplces all others except for the AE ones. And even then Psalm gives superior resists across the board as its group only. And it should be this way. AE resists are very good and are meant to provide a solid resist number for the groups that dont have a bard. Notice the difference.

On top of that bards are supposed to be able to fill multiple roles pretty well. Who cares if you're put in the mana group on a raid? How much different is that from being the resist buffer or atk/haste buffer or the person doing oos? It's not like the case of mages where mana was bar none the most efficient place to put them and it afforded unlimited mana. Except in very specific fights, you're not going to see bard resists, atk/haste, etc completely ditched so that all the bards are to just sing mana

You totally missed the mark here, In fact ALL raiding bards can now Do Atk/Haste, Focus song for nuking. And on top of that you can assign each bard Either resists, mana, or OCCer, We can do ALL of that at one time. So why should we be relegated to only doing 1 thing with a song thats level 32.

I haven't done any actual testing to see if this provides clerics the ability to nonstop CH, so I won't comment on that.

Ill save you the testing, with the appropriate gear and buffs and 3 Bards, yes you can have 4 clerics chain cast CH and Never go OOM. Is that Not overpowered?

On top of all that, not that most higher levels give a rats arse about the lower levels, but back in the days of raiding at that level before MGB, before most people had group versions of all their buffs, and before every cleric had a clicker, being able to put a couple of bards in a group to speed up the buff process or CR saved hours of time, so making it not stack with itself should be weighed against that.

This wasnt An issue In Kunark, In kunark this song wasnt overpowered...it scaled properly as there was no singing bonus except for the epic, the 55 song was fine. No this wasnt an issue.

In Velious the Mod rod was born, So people used that for mana and Buffing. And again this song wasnt overpowered and bards we never really used for that. And we still only had our epic.

In Luclin we had God rods. Talk about trivializiing the buffing and CR process, and every encounter as well. However our 32 song became overpowered here, But becuase of mod rods, we were never called on to be mana bots, becuase thats what we had mages for. It sucked for the mage, and now it sucks for bards

In PoP The rods were gone. Bards are the new Mod rods. With these assrape Zerg encounters in PoP ive been called on a Lot to be a mana battery to squeeze out some extra mana. 2 bards in a group is the most efficient healing or nuking out there. Its more efficent for 2 bards to be in a group of 4 wizards singing 32 mana for Nuking than it is for 1 bard to be in a group of 5 wizards playing rizlona's for the focus effect. I dont have my l33t thottbot graphs to prove it, but try it out and youll see.

[teauvian]

The fact that a level 32 song is more efficient than higher level spells is not unique to the bard class.

I (ranger) used my lvl 9 snare and root (or is the root lvl 15? so long since then) up until the day I quit.

Many paladins still use their first stuns also.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Ah see, now we know TR used evil l33t insider bard manasongs to defeat Fennin. FoH can get the first legit serverwide kill now, without all that l33t insider bardness. Good thing too, any feel like Furor's been a little too nice lately...

[Cybsled]

People still play bards in uber guilds? Holy shit I thought they were extinct!!!