Bard Runic 2!

Thade

Thade

DINOSAUR THADE
So, I acquired the bard runic2 last night! And after to talking to two different devs who basic response was "bards get a runic2?!?!" I was told to try to come up with ideas for something not overpowered and bardy.

First I want to talk about the current placeholder just in case it ends up staying in existence.
http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Spell:_Runic:_Dirge_of_the_Stalwart
For those of you who don't know what this actually does
Slot 1: Is a rune effect scales with mod
Slot 2: Is an hp regen effect that scales with mod. Basically the same thing as lceas. Except this effect is huge so it's less like lceas and more like a hot. It's about 400 hp/tick which is pretty strong.
Slot 10: +ac scales with mod

When I first saw this spell I was really excited thinking it'd be a buff type (an actual rune)I Could use as a mana dump when I needed it but after getting it I was severely disappointed.

The issues are: It costs mana to start it but is a song and not a buff. This is unlike any other bard song and makes no sense. I'm assuming whoever designed it intended to suck down mana every tick. As it stands, it doesn't and if it did it'd be bad and not fit the bard class at all.

Two it takes a song slot. Holy crap I have seven!!!!!!! useful beneficial songs. Literally in any situation ever any one of them is better than this. Bards have no use for more beneficial songs at all please! stop giving me them. (Except you slaariel song of the murk is awesome, TAKE ME TO THE BUBBLE SHOW)

What bards really need is more detrimental songs. And I Don't mean OMG GIVE ME MOAR DPS!!!! I mean really other than the chant line there is one detrimental song worth playing unless you need to slow (denon's agonizing discord.) or a mob is mega resistant (occlusion of sound). Denons craps all over any sort of mezzing and occlusion doesn't stack with druid archaic. Bards also have massive issues with not having spell gems so songs that could combine other effects to save them would be awesome. Also bards need some stringed/brass mod songs that are worth casting to make these mods more worthwhile!

Here are the two ideas I came up with.

Runic: Denon's Dissonant Duet
Stringed Instruments
Duration: 3 Ticks
Resist Type: Poison
Resist Adjust: -25
Slot 1: Decrease Hit points by 100
Slot 2: Decrease Resist Poison by 40
Slot 3: Decrease Armor by 150

This is a mash up of Denon's Bereavement and Denon's Agonizing discord sans the AE effect and stun from Bereavement. A tiny dps boost over the other two options (probably to the tune of 10-15 dps) The important part is it lets you decrease a mobs ac without breaking mezzes in xp groups and gives a raid another way to decrease pr (The only other options being tuyen's chant of venom and scent of the murk, this would basically replace chant of venom and denon's agonizing discord in most situations, while stacking with them in the event of multiple bards so that your second bard's isn't quite as terrible)

Runic: Ervaj's Nonsensical Nocturne
Brass Instruments
Resist Type: Unresistable
Duration: Instant
Recast Time: 2 Ticks
Slot 1: Auto-cast Spell 1 (Decrease Hate by 250)
Slot 2: Auto-cast Spell 2 (Decrease Current Mana by 100)

This spell fixes a few issues. One is the fact jolt takes up a detrimental song slot; if you have to slow something and need to play chant to get it to stick you basically cannot jolt; even with - aggro aa's and floating around 0 aggression if I get a couple of lucky procs I still rip aggro and die sometimes because of that. This would also help streamline a bard dps rotation, giving you a button to press while you are waiting for brusco's bombastic bellow to come off cool down before reapplying detrimentals.

The second effect is supposed to be a mana tap. This means you can contribute to mana draining mobs when needed (there are a handful of times in ikisith I have seen this be useful and bard mana drain doesn't stack with the enchanter one) and also help manage the fact that bard mana regen is terrible.

And before someone says something silly about bard mana usage/regen; Unless I am doing something stupid on purpose or spamming my targeted ae/refuge song on cooldown, I can't use an entire mana bard in less than 30 minutes. But the second I Do run out of mana it takes me 10-15 minutes to med back my 7.5k mana pool. This would alleviate the need to med a bit and curb the mana suck down that exists. And don't get me wrong I actually like the medding mechanic, I just don't like the fact it takes me like twice as long to med back my bards 7.5k mana pool as it does my shamans 9.1k mana pool.

All numbers would probably needed tested and played around with for obvious reasons.

Will probably be more added as I think of them but yeah that's all for now.
 
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After doing more testing of the runic in it's current existence I basically become a god against anything that does <150 dps (they literally can't out dps my rune/regen) it's retarded and broken and oh god remove this spell make it something else.
 
So I have had this spell for 5 months now, and have used it a handful of times now that it works.

Two it takes a song slot. Holy crap I have seven!!!!!!! useful beneficial songs. Literally in any situation ever any one of them is better than this. Bards have no use for more beneficial songs at all please! stop giving me them.
Click to expand...

This is still true. The only use I have found for this was as a super expensive hot if there is not a healer around.

It puts up a 1 tick rune for my entire group (technically three ticks but it is refreshed every tick) that costs 500 mana. If you get hit you lose the ac/hp regen until it is reapplied. With 7.9k mana I can play it for 15 Ticks (90 seconds) before I am totally oom if I do -nothing- else that costs mana. Basically, for 500 mana you get 4200 points of rune; or a 2400 points of group healing (if no one is getting hit).

Comparing those to the things other classes can do:
Dilated Shelter: 850 mana for 18,000 points of rune. 21.176 Rune/Mana.
Ethereal Elixir: 640 mana for 9000 points of hot. 14.0625 Health/Mana
Dirge of the Stalwart: 500 mana for 4200 points of rune or 2400 points of a group hot (or some combination of the two) . 8.4 Rune/Mana or 4.8 health/mana

Essentially the spell is a terrible version of things other classes can already do in a land where there is no room to play it. A single bard would never use it (every other useful beneficial song a bard has would probably be more useful, except maybe song of the murk for a group of casters).

I'd like to re-suggest the idea of replacing it with a bellow style jolt (totally rebalanced because my original version was holy crap insane)

Runic: TBD
Wind Mod
Mana cost: 125
Resist Type: Unresistable
Duration: Instant
Recast Time: 12 seconds
Slot 1: Decrease Hate by 300

This would essentially give bards a way to reduce/drop aggro without having to stop debuffing a mob as well as to jolt while mezzing just like the old version. However; by adding the mana cost it will actually require some level of decision on when to use it versus a bellow (you could use that mana on a bellow instead; as well as the time you took to cast it.)
 
I don't play a bard anymore, but I am glad someone else took the time to figure out the bard class. Beneficial songs have always been an issue with bards (more so when PoT4 was a god mode song) and it seems having another beneficial song is unappealing and boring.

As Thade pointed out, this song is very inefficient and will rarely be used (because we have options that are better). A new way to jolt would be a great way for bards to keep up two detrimental songs while dumping aggro. With the proposed recast and mana cost, I think it also forces the bard to decide which jolt he wants to use. I think the mana cost could actually be raised a bit since this would be a nice addition to the bard arsenal, but obviously Thade's numbers are used strictly as a skeleton for the spell.

Going back to his OP, I think a new poison debuff/dot/etc would be nice as well. Due to bards dots (still) not stacking, having multiple bards in groups or raids is really pretty bad (from a DPS standpoint). This has everything to do with the bard's lack of useful detrimental spells.

Another song I always used to ask for was a +aggro jolt similar to Song of Dawn. This would give bards the ability to get unresistable aggro in pinch situations. It would obviously be worse than Terrors, but it would be a nice option in case the bard needed to pull a mob off of a healer or other squishy DPS.

I think there are a lot of other options for the bard Runic2, but another beneficial song is not one of them.
 
bumping this old thread

Thade said the important things and I support either alternative runic2s that were suggested.
 
This doesn't seem to be getting much feedback on altering this runic2, so maybe a dev can comment on what the intention for the song is in its current state, so we can just make it actually useful.

Emergency group saving rune/heal?

-the rune/heal is too low for this to be a good usage
-takes up beneficial song spot

Additional pad healing on a group throughout certain parts of a fight?

-mana cost too high to keep up for any amount of time that would make a difference
-we have a long thread about how to make druid's (group) heals more competitive, why would a bard need anything as inefficient as this
-takes up beneficial song spot




Also here is where i plug the idea of a Jolt that does not count as a detrimental spell, just a zero damage DD that has a decrease hate component (or whatever magic it takes to make the jolt not count as a detrimental spell). Not a ground breaking change but something very simple to make a difficult to obtain quested song useful.
 
In its current state i almost never use my runic 2, it just isnt powerful enough for how much mana it costs. it probably wouldnt even be worth it if it were raidwide.

Thade said:
What bards really need is more detrimental songs....

Runic: Denon's Dissonant Duet
Stringed Instruments
Duration: 3 Ticks
Resist Type: Poison
Resist Adjust: -25
Slot 1: Decrease Hit points by 100
Slot 2: Decrease Resist Poison by 40
Slot 3: Decrease Armor by 150
Click to expand...

I love this idea. A single target version of denon's agonizing discord would be SO useful, moreso than a jolt (song of dawn works just fine when its needed)
 
Arael said:
A single target version of denon's agonizing discord would be SO useful, moreso than a jolt (song of dawn works just fine when its needed)
Click to expand...


yes i agree that would be better than a jolt, maybe too good considering the type of songs bards have received in ikisith thus far, or also maybe not I'm not a dev.

but yea that would be a pretty great alternative as well and make bards happy.
 
I'm all for changing the bard runic 2. These spells are not easy to obtain, and should be something useful when they are completed.

Either of the posted ideas would work. Maybe something more fun?

Change the current spell to be:

Runic: Melody of Maestro
Beneficial Self Only Song
500 mana
Increase all spell damage by 30%
Increase attack by 600
Overcap Haste 50%
Illusion: Fanatic

Currently, bards put in a flute to max dps and burn mana. This would give them a meele option for max-burn situations. Numbers might need tweaking, ideally it would be a bit better dps/mana efficiency than flute nuke spam, but not by a huge margin.
 
that sounds fun, maybe have it last a few ticks with a bit longer reuse, so you couldn't just keep it up for the entirety of a quick fight.
 
yea that is actually a really good idea solo, i would also propose have that song work as a buff (the whole taking up a beneficial song slot is pretty hard to work with) and also trigger the blademaster bard class tome.
 
That could work, have it cost 1500 mana and be a 6-8 tic buff with a 5 min recast maybe?

I think the illusion is my favorite part, I can imagine a scarecrow Reehs wreaking some havoc during a burn phase.
 
Not feeling much impetus toward things still but I guess when it comes down to it any really interesting idea is inevitably going to be too powerful or too dumb for bards, so maybe a small upgrade is the best way to go.

On a completely different note and as someone who doesn't do bards and who also put in the instrument-only song code, I'd like it if there were more intsrument-only songs, like enough for each instrument type to actually make "caster mode" a real option for bards, with each instrument specializing in something at least occasionally useful (enough so to forego melee dps for more than a few seconds at a time) on top of various styles of spell damage etc. Not that I have anything in mind, other than maybe various splurt-like debuffs that grow the longer you play them on a given target, but instantly fade if you switch out your instrument.

But then no one wants a class overhaul and I don't find bards very interesting as they are so! Maybe someone will get an itch to change this thing some day but until then!
 
Runic: Omnipotent Chant
Requires use of drum
Costs 100 mana/tic
-50 resist adjust
Decrease hp by 400 per tic. (Affected by mod)
Target takes 5% more spell damage.
Lowers all resists by 25

Pretty sure that would still be less dps than bard meele, but it would give them a caster mode that benefited all other caster, so maybe you would have the bard use it when you need more caster dps for a specific fight or phase.

edit: there is also the issue that there just aren't many endgame instruments implemented.
 
Thanks for looking at this Zaela, anything done with the runic 2 would be a change in the right direction, so even a small upgrade to something for that song would be greatly appreciated.

The two initial ideas thrown around are minor changes and wouldn't really make waves for the bard class overall. Either would be good candidates for a small upgrade.

Solo's idea is interesting and may alter bards slightly more during certain situations, but overall I don't think it would too overpowered if the recast was high.
Maybe a 5 tick buff for 900 mana with a 5 min recast would ensure you wouldn't be able to abuse it in shorter fights, and even in longer fights the recast/mana cost would ensure it gets saved for those burn situations.


Either way hopefully a change can get implemented for this!
 
sheer1 said:
This doesn't seem to be getting much feedback on altering this runic2, so maybe a dev can comment on what the intention for the song is in its current state, so we can just make it actually useful.

Emergency group saving rune/heal?

-the rune/heal is too low for this to be a good usage
-takes up beneficial song spot
Click to expand...
Out of curiosity why are the numbers considered to be too low? Is that relative to the mana cost? Given a tier appropriate mod + AAs wouldn't this be roughly a 900 point rune + 300 point HoT per tick? Is it just that physical damage is never thrown around an entire group enough to warrant using it? Because when I think of it in terms of just mitigating damage it doesn't sound bad in my head.
 
Oh I should say the mana cost is ridiculous though and probably was assigned as a kneejerk reaction with little forethought.
 
i always liked the idea of having runic2 or even jolt lines not pulse,
and just be casted like Ervaj's. This would save alot of unneeded song twisting,
as well an make the current runic2 more desirable to use.
 
Silosobi said:
edit: there is also the issue that there just aren't many endgame instruments implemented.
Click to expand...

Well that's kind of a cart before the horse issue, there'd be more if they weren't completely pointless outside of flutes and maybe drums when you're still low-tier enough that duoing with a healer bot isn't infinitely better than soloing.

Even beyond the lack of usefulness comes the annoying restrictions of instruments in general. A small overhaul to make true instruments only take up the secondary slot so you could still at least melee with your primary hand might be worthwhile, would make intrument-only songs much more doable without radically changing how bards play, making them real (potentially interesting!) options rather than mostly just toys, and making it much easier to itemize them so that non-bards could equip them as wands or whatever without running into the caster 2-hander problem.

And of course maybe more offensive/detrimental stuff could be made to scale with mods, or at least resist modifiers and shit (unless I already did that with a tome..?)
 
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