And once again.... NO Avatar!

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

There's probably no good fix for a job which spends its time doing AoE buffs almost constantly.

I'm not claiming my idea is the ultimate or the best, but I think it addressed the basic problems that cause repetition:
1) All BRD buffs are "permanent" (they can be kept up perpetually) so BRD buffing is purely passive and has absolutely nothing to do with the current battle situation. This is essentially what reduces the buffing part of the job to an infinite, unbroken loop.
2) Some songs never see the light of day.

By making some of the songs last only temporarily (and have them not take up a buff slot) then you make buffing partially dependent on what's going. More buffs would be used and the extra songs would require a certain degree of timing so that they're active when they're most needed.

[Ketaru]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Well not really...

They can make a new ability whee you can have any avatar perpetuation "free" for like 20 mins or someting... and you can only activate that ability once per hour or something like that.

How about..."one" avatar perpetuation-free for 20 minutes, provided you don't dismiss it? If you're so intent on stepping on other pet job's toes, you should play by their rules too.

[Karinya]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

I'm not claiming my idea is the ultimate or the best, but I think it addressed the basic problems that cause repetition:
1) All BRD buffs are "permanent" (they can be kept up perpetually) so BRD buffing is purely passive and has absolutely nothing to do with the current battle situation. This is essentially what reduces the buffing part of the job to an infinite, unbroken loop.

I think you're misdiagnosing the cause of this. BRDs repeat the same songs because their usefulness doesn't depend on the "current battle situation". This is because players choose which mobs to pull, so they pull the same ones over and over because they're the ones best suited to the party's gear, food - and songs.

If you had to fight a high eva, low def mob and then a high def, low eva mob, you might want different songs for those fights (because you can't change food that often and you may or may not have enough gear to change). But in exp, players would probably just not pull one of them. (In other words, this is yet another consequence that falls out of the players' optimum-seeking behavior.)

BRD can do a lot of things - but if they don't do the thing that gets the party the most exp/hr, other party members are going to be unhappy with that BRD.

Theoretically, BRDs could use one set of songs for players gaining TP and another when they're ready to WS, but that would be really hard to pull off in practice. Maybe in a party that was coordinating skillchains, you could have the bard change songs right before skillchain (in addition to threnody for the SC/MB itself, which *good* bards used to do, back when there were SCs to do it for). But that whole combination of tactics isn't worth the hassle in a massacre-of-the-only-nominally-VTs party.

2) Some songs never see the light of day.

I think resist spells and songs need to be reworked into something more reliable, otherwise players are not going to see them as worthwhile. Why bother with Barparalyzra or the resist paralyze song when most of the party is still going to be paralyzed by that tiger/wyvern/chariot every time it does the relevant TP move? (Note that most of those mobs aren't fought at all in exp, because it's easier and more profitable to deal with those moves by *fighting something else*. But nobody bothers with resist silence on imps, either, because it just isn't strong enough to count on.) You still need just as many paralynas regardless of the resist spell.

If SE doesn't want players to be able to *actually prevent* harmful status from exp and other "ordinary" mobs (leaving aside HNMs for the moment), then there's no point in having resist spells/songs that aren't effective. Why prepare for a specific form of attack in advance if the preparation doesn't do anything? Are those spells/songs really intended for fighting easy prey?

Similar remarks apply to element resists. Even if you know what element is coming, specific resist buffs may not do enough to be worthwhile - especially in the case of BRD where they displace another buff, which is a very significant cost.

Players won't choose to fight (for exp) mobs that might kill them, and under the current exp system, it's more profitable to fight mobs too weak to even cause significant damage, so reducing the dangerousness of mobs isn't very profitable because they're not that dangerous to start with. That's why BRDs and other support jobs tend to focus on ways to kill faster, and defense-oriented buffs are neglected (unless you put them specifically on the tank, which COR can't do but BRD can, if they choose. But if mobs already aren't dangerous to the tank, then treating the tank as another DD might produce more exp/hr than trying to make them harder to damage. You can't reduce downtime if you're already at 0 downtime.)

By making some of the songs last only temporarily (and have them not take up a buff slot) then you make buffing partially dependent on what's going. More buffs would be used and the extra songs would require a certain degree of timing so that they're active when they're most needed.

All songs last only temporarily - I guess you mean having recast substantially longer than their duration, like Warcry. You can't have Warcry on all the time so theoretically you could choose when to have it on for greatest effect.

That is an interesting idea, but I don't see how to get there from here. If you just add those "spike" songs in addition to BRD's current repertoire you will overpower it, and if you eliminate or nerf the steadily maintainable songs you might end up overnerfing the job if the spike songs aren't strong enough to make up the difference.

Furthermore, like Warcry, if you use a hypothetical long-recast song as soon as it is up, you get to use it more often overall than if you delay it for the "right" time, which may or may not be more effective than trying to respond to changing conditions when conditions don't actually change that much.

Come to think of it, don't etudes already work this way? They're just (apparently) not strong enough for anyone to bother to use them.

I think the underlying reason BRDs keep using the same songs is not that BRD doesn't respond to what's going on in the fight, but that in most fights there isn't that much going on to respond to. Most ordinary mobs have the same stats and set of moves from their first HP to their last, so what you want to do to be effective against them doesn't change. If you're pulling the same kind of mob repeatedly throughout the party, then what you want to do doesn't change from mob to mob, either. Well, that and how broken Haste is - anyone who has Haste buffs is going to prioritize them over everything else because it's just too good a stat to pass up for almost anything else.


Meanwhile, it looks like Mal's main gripe about BRD is an interface issue - there's not enough different tunes played by the client for different songs. I wouldn't mind seeing this changed either, but if that's all you can find to bitch about I'd say the job is working pretty well.

[Elwynn]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

How about..."one" avatar perpetuation-free for 20 minutes, provided you don't dismiss it? If you're so intent on stepping on other pet job's toes, you should play by their rules too.

In other words, Familiar for SMN?

[Ketaru]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

In other words, Familiar for SMN?

Only without those pesky little disadvantages like inability to give your pet even the simplest commands like "Don't use Area of Effect abilities"...

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

I think you're misdiagnosing the cause of this. BRDs repeat the same songs because their usefulness doesn't depend on the "current battle situation". This is because players choose which mobs to pull, so they pull the same ones over and over because they're the ones best suited to the party's gear, food - and songs.

If you had to fight a high eva, low def mob and then a high def, low eva mob, you might want different songs for those fights (because you can't change food that often and you may or may not have enough gear to change). But in exp, players would probably just not pull one of them. (In other words, this is yet another consequence that falls out of the players' optimum-seeking behavior.)

That doesn't change the fact that Minne, Minuet, and Mambo will perpetually be eclipsed by March and Madrigal in all but the most obscure and situational settings. Haste is the ultimate offensive AND defensive stat because of affecting spell recast timers, and Accuracy increases your damage in a non-linear manner as well so a lack of it is downright crippling to the point that even PLDs and NINs will probably see more benefit from a fat Acc boost than a fat Defense/Evasion Boost. The answer is always "Need Acc? OK, let's trade off a Haste song for an Acc song." If the mob's Eva isn't a problem, the answer is invariably Haste, not Attack.

Moreover, there is not a wide enough variance in stats across mobs. The only way to get a high Defense mob is to pull one of the few PLD mobs in the game - but their Evasion isn't proportionately lower. The only way to get a high Evasion mob is to pull a THF or PUP, to a lesser extent NIN, but those are only available as Beastmen!...and their Defense isn't proportionately lower. Aside from that there is only one other category, those that are somewhat sub-par in all melee categories (mage mobs...)

Because 90% of mobs are based strictly on a job, unless the job has 2-4 tiers of a Stat Bonus Trait, you never run into an extreme. But when you do, they don't have corresponding penalties. These polar opposite High Def/Low Eva and Low Def/High Eva mobs don't really exist in Vana'diel's common fauna, only their High Def/Average Eva and Average Def/High Eva counterparts.

Furthermore, like Warcry, if you use a hypothetical long-recast song as soon as it is up, you get to use it more often overall than if you delay it for the "right" time, which may or may not be more effective than trying to respond to changing conditions when conditions don't actually change that much.

Come to think of it, don't etudes already work this way? They're just (apparently) not strong enough for anyone to bother to use them.

You forget that my idea also implies having the situational songs not require that you sacrifice another buff. Etudes aren't strong enough to warrant replacing another buff with them. If you could Etude on top of other buffs, it would be feasable.

Likewise, if the change was applied to a defensive song (say, Carol) then although you wouldn't be keeping the Carol up 24/7 like before, you would still be getting back an extra song on top of the Carol. And like I said, in many cases you don't really need the Carol up 24/7, you only need it when certain attacks are going to happen.

[Aksannyi]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Etudes aren't strong enough to warrant replacing another buff with them. If you could Etude on top of other buffs, it would be feasable.

God, this. Give Bards another song slot, but only for certain songs. This would add just a little bit of spice and strategy into the song. If a Bard had a third song slot, they could choose to use that for Etudes (as said) which are single-target. I'm no longer just sitting with my thumb up my ass on the job waiting for recasts.

[Takelli]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

God, this. Give Bards another song slot, but only for certain songs. This would add just a little bit of spice and strategy into the song. If a Bard had a third song slot, they could choose to use that for Etudes (as said) which are single-target. I'm no longer just sitting with my thumb up my ass on the job waiting for recasts.

Yes that would be nice. Why bother having stat based songs, when they aren't even used. Mind boost? Str Boost? Chr Boost? It would be so nice. I was actually in a party with a Bard that would give me a Carnage Etude (Str boost), right before I would use a weapon skill on Sam, and I did more damage than I was doing with just the Acc, and Atk spells.

But what about "Job" songs like Cors have? It can only target the current job that the song is, and it doesnt take up a spell "Slot". Like Rng will increase Agi, and RACC. Sam would be STP, and STR. Drg would be Jump, and Dex (I think thats the mod for Penta), Thf would be Dex, and Agi. Nin would be Str, and Agi. and so on.

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

But what about "Job" songs like Cors have? It can only target the current job that the song is, and it doesnt take up a spell "Slot". Like Rng will increase Agi, and RACC. Sam would be STP, and STR. Drg would be Jump, and Dex (I think thats the mod for Penta), Thf would be Dex, and Agi. Nin would be Str, and Agi. and so on.

Let's not rip off other jobs here more than is necessary.

[Malacite]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Or they could just buff up Herculean Etude and the others (removing the decay effect would be a good start) so that a BRD can give a SAM +20 or more STR.

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Yes! Let's increase song redundancy and improve SAM!

Strike 2.

[Raydeus]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

I still want 4 slots for songs, 2 for the usual battle related stuff (acc, att, march, mambo, ballad, paeon, etude, etc.) and 2 for others (Reraise, Carol, etc.)


Edit > Or at least 1 additional slot.

[Takelli]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Let's not rip off other jobs here more than is necessary.

;>.> It was just something that popped into my head. >.<

I thought it was a good idea for a second while I was typing it. Of course they would have to change it a lot, but it wont be ripping off Cor.

The song can only be played on the specific job. Like a Sams song can only be played on Sam, Cor on cor, Brd on Brd, Whm on Whm, and so on. Not AoE like Cors.

[Aksannyi]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

I can just imagine the bitching when certain jobs get a STR boost and others don't.

[Takelli]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

The official Bitching thread for Bards new songs! Why not all jobs get Str bonus!!!