Instrument mods+bard stuffs

Emerica

Emerica

Dalayan Elder
Hey gms/dev team,
To clear up confusion and the unknown, is it possible for some information on:

-What songs are affected by instrument mods?
-Where they(these songs) cap out at and start to give dimishing returns?
-Any spells that take 0 instrument mods into consideration?

There isnt much relating to this, and I am having a difficult time finding the small number differences on the parser. This might allow for more bards to maximize things if we have a little bit more information.

Thanks!
 
Whether or not instrument modifiers apply is on a by-Effect basis rather than a by-Song basis; a Song can have a mix of modifiable and unmodifiable Effects.

Effects multiplied by instrument modifiers: Current HP [nukes, dots, direct heals, hp regen], Poison Counters, Disease Counters, Change Hate [jolt, pure hate], Current Mana [mana nuke], Rune, Magic Rune, Harmony, Total HP, Mana Pool, AC, ATK, STR, DEX, AGI, STA, INT, WIS, CHA, Resist Magic, Resist Fire, Resist Cold, Resist Poison, Resist Disease, Resist All, Movement Speed, Hate Buff [percent aggro mod], Endurance [does nothing], Heal Over Time, Hate Over Time [as in shadowknight terrors].

Decidedly not in there: Mana regen, Attack Speed [haste, slow]

There isn't any differentiation between buffs and debuffs for things like AC and Resist Magic.

There are no diminishing returns. A 2.5 modifier multiplies by 2.5 wherever valid.
 
Zaela, to clarify:

Does "Current HP" encompass any songs that modify spellcasting damage? Like the %mod to bane damage or direct damage spells on Relic: Fiery, lets say.

My understanding of "Current HP" is the bard's personal dots (percussion, brass), nukes (wind), etc and I do not see anywhere else in your list where the (non-overhaste) effects on Fiery fit.
 
So to further investigate, whats the point of bard only instruments for some of the bigger huge deal spells? (IE fiery, mots, duet-minus the damage that parts pretty obvious, hymn)
 
Emerica said:
So to further investigate, whats the point of bard only instruments for some of the bigger huge deal spells? (IE fiery, mots, duet-minus the damage that parts pretty obvious, hymn)
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For many there is no point, for hymn it increases the counters removed if memory serves.
 
Rorne said:
For many there is no point, for hymn it increases the counters removed if memory serves.
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Hmmm interesting. The reason I asked this was because I never really started parsing again until recently, and prior to that was pre bard song changes. I had been noticing things that seemed weird for a class who has an entire set of instruments made just for them to be utilizied and not scaling. It would be weird to have every relic but the dot be unaffected by this stuff that is so saught after.

If this is the case, because I am still basing this on the theoretical, would it be too advantages to ask that they be looked at to scale in some way or fashion?

This is just some quick idea's to make use of the instrument system and having our spells actually work with them as we get higher mods, is it right? An open discussion about scaling them so they dont create something overpowered is fine and welcomed:

Mots- More spell shield absorbtion the higher the mod
Fiery- dot/dd component increase and scale with mod gain
Hymn- Healing/counter removal per higher mod gain
Runic2- increased poison counter(ac should be left) as mod gain
Murk- proc increase/damage shield
Runic1- Increased duration based on mod
Regen- Should be a faster mana gained while medding rate, while the overcap is left alone, as you gain more string mod

Resist songs, jolts, dd's dots, all otherwise work fine and scale as you get higher mods and seems gravy. The songs that really start to define the class not scaling or working with mods seems strange from my perspective.
 
Percentage effects already scale in the sense that when the damage/healing you do/take rises, the (flat) effectiveness of a % increase is going to be greater even when the % of the increase stays the same. Thus why Fiery, MotS and Hymn don't need to scale. But if you would like to see them nerfed for just about everyone for the sake of including instruments and having them doubly scale and eventually reach their current effectiveness somewhere around tier11, then we can take a look at that.

edit: just to clarify, if you want to say "Let's make the most powerful things a rather powerful class does more powerful" it would be preferable to have a more thorough argument than "It'd be more inclusive." Not that you were necessarily arguing for that. But we are definitely talking about nerfs at the lower half of the raid-tier spectrum at the very least otherwise. Not that it would necessarily be bad to knock Bards down a few pegs.
 
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Oh and the second counter-argument: things like Fiery Warcry are essentially buffs with a couple limitations (which mostly have the effect of making Bards more attractive for grouping if anything), comparable to other Relic buffs other classes get. None of which scale with Focus Effects like Damage Increment or any such thing (beyond Duration Increment, which obviously has no parallel with Bard buffs). So in that sense Bards are already ahead of the curve with what they do get (Pot4 and whatever else) so we'll need an argument why Bards should be extra extra special there.

I would rather see more in-combat, offensive things that scale with instruments rather than more buffs. Buffs are boring, set and forget, not conducive to interesting gear choices, etc.
 
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Two parts here.
First, my intention wasn't to say "Hey I think mots should be better, or fiery should be stronger!" but rather, why doesn't a specific set of ideas that were developed for a very specific class not really get the most use out of it? It would make sense to have them scale higher/lower just like a new focus effect for another class would scale the higher tier they get. So please don't think I was asking you to make mots 100x the spellshield it is now, etc.

The second part would be let us assume this idea is workable or desired by the community, would we see these mods working on more of the songs they dont seem to be working on? It seems like this would help make a more clear progression for bards, and things required for them to function at the maximum efficiency.

I edited this for your new post I didnt see, my appologies. I think this is debatable because getting a relic spell makes all classes more saught after. Bards have 2 spells that do each of what fiery does independantly, what fiery does is allows for another buff slot which is the key point from my view. The bard class was created with making raid/group buffs that give the group some kind of edge, which is thier role currently it seems, and could be seen as having a 'more ahead of the curve' than other classes perspective.

The next thing is this is all something in theory. My main reason for that is just based on utilizing something that was designed for the class and wondering why it isnt applied to all songs. If you wanted to use a sweet system that is more in combat and brings forth the use of these mods in some way/shape, that sounds beyond cool instead of just fixing buffs and values of spells yet again. Do I have any idea on what would be good for the class? No way, I never thought something like that would be implimented in a game this old but Im sure the bard community might be able to help brainstorm?
 
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summary of all of your posts about bards

Emerica said:
Do I have any idea on what would be good for the class? No way
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If you want to post suggestions/ideas is way better to actually have suggestions/ideas instead of just saying: "I dont like this thing we should change it. Here are a bunch of words that mean nothing that I'm going to pretend support my non existent suggestions/ideas"



Anyway, things that don't scale now would either be overpowered with scaling, or they are percentage based, so they inherently scale already. changing those would mean a nerf for most bards and those effects would probably cap out eventually at the numbers they are at already so there really so no point in doing this.

It would be cool to have more interaction with songs and instruments, and a while back the idea was tossed around about giving bards additional scaling or benefits for using instruments instead of a weapon. Zaela made a thread to talk about it, and I think what was discussed had a lot of potential. However revamping bards is on the back back burner since bards are already a very good class. So not sure if that is on the list of things to do, if so its probably behind a slew of other projects.
 
sheer1 said:
Anyway, things that don't scale now would either be overpowered with scaling, or they are percentage based, so they inherently scale already. changing those would mean a nerf for most bards and those effects would probably cap out eventually at the numbers they are at already so there really so no point in doing this.

It would be cool to have more interaction with songs and instruments, and a while back the idea was tossed around about giving bards additional scaling or benefits for using instruments instead of a weapon. Zaela made a thread to talk about it, and I think what was discussed had a lot of potential. However revamping bards is on the back back burner since bards are already a very good class. So not sure if that is on the list of things to do, if so its probably behind a slew of other projects.
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If the idea was convoluted I appologize. In summary it sounds like you know what Im asking about having mods on instruments scale directly and on more songs, while still capping out where they are, making it work like other classes throughout the tiers. It seemed strange to have a class cap out on certain spells before thier mods capped out. We both can say another system more involved with instruments would be better so maybe we can hope that in the future if other bards in our community think this is bad.

A varying of opinions is great. I dont expect us/everydaymanbard to agree and thanks for posting your thoughts on it.
 
Arael said:
anything to make this song less terrible would be great. id even be fine with replacing it entirely. (a mez with ancient-like resist mod and lvl 64 cap perhaps?)
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runic 1 isnt great but it definitely has its uses. a better mez would be amazing, and probably overpowered on a bard unless there was a heavy mana cost associated with it.

between the two i would prefer the charm.
 
On a related note, does control enhancement/advanced foe management actually do anything for bard charm/mez/slow?

I assumed they had no effect because most of those songs are mana free, certainly never noticed my mez duration increasing by an extra tick. And the duration of runic 1 charm is laughable
 
Arael said:
On a related note, does control enhancement/advanced foe management actually do anything for bard charm/mez/slow?
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Control enhancement never used to, probably safe to say it still does not.
 
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