Charging bard skills

This is certainly one of the reasons, but personally I think the fact that bard requires no gear, nor stat, nor attunement, nor anything whatsoever to scale its effects is a big part of it. No focus costs. No reagent costs. I mean - yeah. The fact that it can be used by a geared up tamer, whose "weapon" is a pet that continues to attack and do sustainable DPS while the player is busy stacking/applying buffs puts it in its own class. And a bard/tamer can still use a weapon and whack things as well between reapplications. The concurrent activity of maintain buffs while continuing to pump out high damage makes it an effective and attractive solo combination. If bard spec did nothing at all for frenzy, bard/tamer would still be op.

 

I agree that this needs to be changed so it is comparable. The aging population is the ones who grew up on the Ultima series. Which is the predecessor of SotA.

 

Per Hour of Play...
limits of what ?

One limiting thing which has not been mentioned in all I've read here, is the amount of time it takes to gather or loot "X" number of wealth, and "X" amounts of incurred damage or reg output per hour also enters into this same limiting consideration.

But it is one of the far less button mashing skills we have, and we need more of those for diversity before this one low button demanding skill can become less pronounced.
It's been called easy for a reason, and the largest of those reasons is less button demands on the hands

"Bard Power-Up-Up-Up"

It's mind boggling TL~

 

I'll speak from info I've gathered since a while,

From the way I've understood it, bard (and the next skill tree that is supposed to come out) are supposed to be "Advanced skill trees" :

Bard's effectiveness is greatly increase via stacking, and to get the most out of it one must use the dynamic stacking method.

Meanwhile, the next skill tree is supposed to be centered around combos, and will consequently rely heavily on dynamic stacking as well (unless things change by then).


In my opinion, this is neither a design flaw nor a punishment for what you guys consider the "aging population", which I would instead call the more passive players (as young people too can dislike or not be able to dynamically stack effectively). It is a creative decision, much like how FromSoftware make their games extremely hard with no difficulty sliders, it's a "get good" situation, luckily we have alternatives, but I'm fine with some gameplay decisions having requirements that does not allow everyone to use efficiently.

Those are not the issues with the Bard tree though, the issues are it's power and lack of restrictions.

 

So do other skills need to be brought up(changes to stacking) to bard or does bard need to be brought down?

Required to use an instrument and put charges on it, like 100 or so, could help deter people playing an OP class and move to something more balanced.

 

Bard needs to be toned down, 100%.

First off, I think the instrument requirement needs to come in. Forcing an instrument to be held to get full power of the songs is already one of the main things that will tone Bard down, because someone won't be able to attack anymore in this scenario, or the songs will be much weaker. Then, the power of the songs must take into consideration that the potential output. A bard buffing must help the party, but the party can be of 12 people, if the buffs compensate for his damage by making everyone do twice as much DPS, you are basically making it a party of 23 instead of 12 (11 people buffed as 2 (or 22) people + himself).

Then, some effects cool bonuses can be introduced (or is actually already working) where your pet gets increased bonus, but with spec, instruments could have masterworks that give a certain extra bonus to certain songs, artifacts could be introduced with those effects, with imbued gems and jewels. Basically, a ton of stuff can make the instrument requirement something actually fun and unique, even if the current power of it gets reduced by a decent bit.

I'm a bard, I love it, my favorite spec combo is Light Armor + Bard, and I will absolutely love trying whatever they can throw at us that could be fun and creative!

 

I'm fundamentally ok with this principle, but it would be good to have clarity if the way to make something "advanced" is to simply make it unusable by a large demographic due to finger-dancing and motion sickness inducing gameplay requirements due to the absolute reliance, with no alternative whatsoever, on glyph whackamole stacking.

There are certainly some skills/decks/builds that are more difficult to use correctly, more difficult to gear, more awkward to play due to the need to maintain a lot of buffs, etc - I don't object to this, its part of designing a deck that suits your playstyle, strengths, and level of tolerance for annoyance.

With bard it goes beyond this, though, due to this "hold time" issue. I am simply asking for confirmation that it is actually intended for player to hold a single button down for 30 seconds, to execute a 9 second cast time skill. The cast times I'm totally ok with, they are subject to interrupt and are in line with the nature of bard's purpose as a support/buffer type character and it makes sense that they should be singing their songs. The problem is the hold time, and I'm really having difficulty believing it is intended for Player A to be able to get a dynamic stack up in a few seconds in short order with a mindlock deck and have it ready on the fly while Player B holds a button down for 30 seconds during which they cannot do anything else at all. This seems more of an oversight and I would simply like to know if this is how things are meant to be.

In every other scenario in the game, this is not the case. Dynamic stacking gets benefits for "get good" by being mindlockable and executable at will, stackable WHILE doing other skills, etc. etc. The differential in other trees in terms of "stack up time" is marginal. Only in bard is this difference so pronounced, and not only that, but the time is so long it makes use of the skills in any actual combat situation just impossible.

Oh, no dispute there at all.
Bard is far too powerful for having no costs and no gear requirements to scale its benefits. I would even go so far as to suggest that the really long hold times for stacking could be intended as the way to balance this, but this penalty disappears completely if you build a dynamic deck. Saying it another way, bard is only overpowered if used dynamically. If you do down this road, you could make an argument that bard skills shouldn't be stackable at all if that is the "intent." Otherwise, we need to even the playing field, make the skill tree more equitably usable regardless of how you choose to stack, and then adjust its power as necessary.

 

One song one durability point! Every x songs a max durability is used. Could make instrument crafting creative!

 

I personally think there is a good spot if you do both. Bard needs to be nerfed in some very obvious ways and a bunch of other trees should be amped up.

I think that's a really good idea though to make bard cost charges, so it raises the cost of use past the cost of other builds. There should be a negative to use it and I think cost is a good way to do it, cause then if you want to keep being OP you got to pay for it. Right now it's just insanely cheap to run, it really isn't fair.

 

Unfortunately, the instrument out proposal won't inhibit tamers.

 

Its even worse than that, because of how much benefit it gives all the PETS!!

I agree we need to add these instrument requirements in, and perhaps use that as a way to add some sort of actual gear reliance. There's so much you could do with this too, with different instrument "types" having different sort of boosts - one for your damage songs vs. healing songs vs. buffs, for example, and you'd have to gear appropriately. At the moment, you can runaround barding completely naked, the gear requirements are nil and this just seems wrong lol

 

Unless you made instruments (or whatever makes bard "powerful") go in the neck slot....



*prepares to duck incoming thrown produce*

 

If the Instrument requirement becomes a necessity for the full output of songs, this could possibly make it less of an issue. By being a dedicated Bard with the instrument, targeting mobs, dancing away from damage, doing all that stuff goes away, so you can place yourself somewhere, start playing the stacking game, and cast when necessary. As a solo player this would best work with a pet who tanks and gets the buffs, and in a group, the other players actually doing damage should have aggro, so this should make it a good choice, and an actually RP/Cool way of making bard unique.

Another thing could be making the cast time longer with higher stacks/charges! That would be a drawback!

 

LOL, yes.



I tried finding a pic of someone wearing a harmonica and holding a sword but nogo.

 

Sure it will, you can't hold wands or a bow or a weapon anymore. So no more being a swordsman or air mage or fire mage or anything while you run bard/tamer. That is a huge shot to all builds. Don't underestimate the power those items you can hold in your hands. They literally unlock whole trees of attacks and passives.

 

I said inhibit tamers, not inhibit swordsmen, archers or air mages.

 

That still needs a huge nerf, I am doing more single target damage as a bard/Tamer right now than any other build I did, and that was even when I had GM skills and uncommon taming arties.

 

Running and running and running...
That's where the "odd bard over power is" It's the speed of running around in a circle that is the bard's most powerful aspect. If we are to nerf barding, I would say don't touch it's power at all, and instead, nerf barding through movement, causing anyone playing or singing, to slow down.

The effects...
This would encourage bands to gather together, yet presurve the solo bard's ability to lead a less button mashing life style, yet also limiting the solo bard to lower content than what they currently are able to solo. It also encourages bards back into light armor where bard's normally should be. The heavy armor tank bard should be the SLOW exception and not the AGILE norm.

Running while playing or singing music is what doesn't fit in reality.

"Do not deminish their power, slow the bard down".
~Time Lord~

 

Not saying this is a non-issue, I'm sure someone does this, but my observations don't show the speed being an issue at all. Fire mages have been running around luring things into the fire ring for far longer before bard speed was even a thing. The bard "speed song" isn't really any faster than existing speed skills, too.

Don't see bards in heavy armor much, either, esp. since so many of them pair with tamer and the pet tanks. The only piece of gear that gives any sort of bard bonus (song duration) is the ringmaster vest (light armor) that gives song duration, and taming bonsues besides.

Given the incredible amount of threat bard songs generate, I suppose its something you could see a tank doing to supplement taunt with aria, but I don't know if I'd call that a bard build so much as a tank build using a single stack bard skill (taking advantage of Sota's ability to mix and match).

Slowing a bard down wont do much to fix its overpoweredness, I'm afraid. Might make it harder for people using aria/fire to kite, but they'd just go back to pure firemaging it or get themselves a tank pet. Unless we're talking like, forcing you to not move at all while singing. That would probably do it only in that it would make it annoying/frustrating to use and limit it to static "stand here and xp" spots which, meh. Aside from parking on a control point or airship, most scenes in the game require a fair amount of running around.

Everything else has limiters. That is part of balance.

• Taming gimps your focus, uses your necklace slot, and to have a truly powerful pet, requires a considerable investment in artifacts for nearly every gear slot, limiting your ability to be "really strong" at something else, the more you focus on the taming.
• Melee builds require being up close, and any weapon-user build will have repair costs for weapons and armor, with archers shredding bows very fast and needing to manage ammunition besides.
• Magic builds must deal with focus management and reagent management/costs, and the extreme limiter of single-element attuning and the other extreme limitation of mob resistances/immunities making many scenes no-go areas because there will be mobs you simply can't deal with. However they get great benefits in aoe, kiting, healing, and utility.

Most people mix and match and accept some of the costs/limits from each area. Its a decent system.
Then along comes bard.

Bard's like -
I'm going to do as much aoe damage as a mage,
without using any focus or reagents,
without requiring a single piece of gear to do it,
without needing to raise any stats or passives outside my own tree to improve my effectiveness.
My damage is subject to NO resistance limits whatsoever.
Oh, and the cast times are slowish, but they kind of have to be, considering.

If we're going to have that kind of power, there needs to be something to balance it.
I don't object to the power. We need the power. Ep2 mobs hit really hard and have absurd amounts of health, trying to take them down without tamers and bards is an entirely different gameplay experience lol.

But, like the tamer, who gives up a lot to boost the companion, bard too must give something up.
The instrument requirement is a decent direction to go.
There needs to be more mutual exclusivity, however.

You don't see a lot of tamer/mages because the taming both uses the neck slot (removing a powerful slot for int/attunement in mage gear) and diminishes the focus, and also relies on artis that use gear slots a mage would need to mage. And you can either use pet level gems OR attunement gems, not both. Limitations in gearing curb a LOT of nonsense. While making bard require its own weapons would certainly diminish its appeal to be mixed with magic (due to losing your wand/staff/orbs) , and hard limit its ability to be used with a weapon build, the bard/tamer problem would still remain. The only real solutions that come to mind would be making bard also require the neck slot (or be diminished) or making bard songs not give as much benefit to pets.

It would mess up a lot of people's favored build, but it would solve the problem and open up the possibility for the True Bard, the Pure Bard, to gear and spec for their craft and serve their purpose in a group (and be highly desired, since the other players would be prevented from doing this on top of everything else due to the mutual exclusivity). I think this is more what was intended.

Should also consider toning the whole tree way down and making the effects scale up off of some sort of stat. Dex could affect cast speed, strength could affect potency and int could affect duration for example. Make a bard actually gear, to bard. THAT level of decision making on how to gear and what to prioritize and needing all 3 stats, is what would make an "advanced" tree - not the forced dependence on dynamic-stack-or-bust.

 

They secretly do... Why else would they of sold 12 mill copies. That is not the one. There are multiple versions of easy mode for Elden Ring. Who else would know the internal structure enough of the game to do this. Dev's of the game of course.

https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/146