Charging bard skills

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Adam Crow, Apr 7, 2022.

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  1. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    Running around in a circle is what bards do to avoid, or corral creatures. Without or with less of this circle running ability, then the bard would drop back into the support role.

    Running away from creatures is a bard's "thing", so I'm not sure what you are talking about, saying it's not something done with bard skills. As long as the bard is not taking damage, then the bard skill becomes "unchecked power", a stand off weapon capable of damage without being touched except from other ranged attacks.

    Artillery isn't called "the king of battle" for nothing, while the Infantry is called "the queen of battle" for it's diversity in power laying in it's movement ability.

    The bard is a mid ranged weapon, requiring it to move out of danger, thus slowing this ability even a tiny bit, then requires the bard to use more of it's slowing song in combo with it's harmful and healing songs.

    These are just the cause and effects of bard skills when using them solo, to imply that bards do not run around in a circle is leaning into barding becoming more of a utility damage skill rather than as a primary damage skill.

    Raise your hand if you don't run around in a circle when using bard power as the primary weapon ;) it's a solo bard's thing to do.

    A bard should dance around, yet running isn't something that should be well accomplished without deminishing the song due to swiftness of directional movement.
    ~TL~
     
    Last edited: Apr 9, 2022
  2. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    I'm saying exactly what I said - I don't see a lot of bards running in circles unless they are doing some sort of firemage/bard routine. I see it paired most often with taming, and the bard stands next to the pet and keeps it buffed and hits the mob with their weapon of choice between songs. If you're talking about trying to prevent kiting, its done with fire magic and archery as much as with bard, and no bard skills are required to do it since you get more speed from other sources (dash, sprint,wolfspeed, etc). Additionally, the speed that the bard moves is a lot less relevant than the amount their slow song can actually slow things down. But before bards even existed, people simply used ice fields. This is not new behavior and has nothing to do with bards and everything to do with the ability to use any skill that sits on the ground or persist in damage over time on the mob while the player runs around. This is only useful against monsters with no shooting/magic ability.

    My point is that bard will remain overpowered unless many other issues are addressed. They could completely remove the slow song and speed song and bard would still be overpowered, because those aren't the things that make it overpowered.

    "Kiting" is not a bard specific activity.
     
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  3. Time Lord

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    Exactly, yet having a pet, is still the bard serving in a support role as a stand off weapon. Pair anything with a pet and the pet is a shield.

    So is the problem with bards having pets? Archer + Pet = the same.

    So what you are saying, is that using bard skill in solo as the primary solitary weapon shouldn't happen?

    ~TL~

     
  4. Coswald_Dirthmire

    Coswald_Dirthmire Bug Hunter

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    Not super familiar with Elden Ring so I might be missing something, but it looks like that mod has about 21k unique downloads, which would be only 0.18% of 12m copies sold? Maybe the other versions amount to something much more significant?
     
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  5. Violet Ronso

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    Not even close. Coswalds crocodile could 1400+ DPS by having Coswald just sit beside it singing songs and using debuffs like Fireflies.

    I've only seen single target dps numbers similar to that with Chaotic Feedback builds back when potions had no dynamic restrictions.

    An Archer + Pet will be able to reach, in optimal scenarios, a combined DPS of maybe 500-600? My red snarler currently does 700 or so, I'm not using the best pet, my taming skills are about GM except for Frenzy, and my artifacts are rare at best, so there is still tons of progression left for me. Ohh, and that is with 0 movement inputs on my part!

    Ohh I don't know, maybe their marketing strategy, maybe the current social media amplifying the hype around the game (#EldenRing on Tiktok has over 3.5 BILLION views!) Tiktok and Twitch had a much larger role to play in Elden Rings success than mods, I can say without hesitation.

    I doubt that statement is true. People are smart, modders are crazy good at what they do, and I'm fairly certain mods like that one are made by the community, not by the devs, especially not devs who have gone on the record saying they are not considering difficulty modes for the game, as they have built a unique difficulty tailored around their game.
     
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  6. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    community includes game developers of that game who know the internals. Or at least share the internals to other people. Simple.
     
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  7. Time Lord

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    Here is another consideration which has yet to be mentioned in our thread here...

    In the spirit of Ultima, this is what our game is made of:
    https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Caddellite_helm


    One solution to this bard over power problem could be addressed through equipment, either nessesary specialized equipment or limiting equipment.

    Take the mentioned, Caddellite Helmet mentioned above for instance. If such a helm were required "so the bard would not damage themselves (or many other ways of modifying bard circumstance).
    ~TL~
     
  8. Time Lord

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    You missunderstand my meaning;

    Bard skill + any skill = more skill damage, which is the same as saying that fire damage + blades damage is at fault here. No skill is the stepchild to be blamed for the over empowerment. A pet and a stand off weapon = over powered. Pet + anything = over powered...

    Are we saying here that the pet is to blame or the bard, when both stand equal to be judged here at their exicution hearing?
    ~TL~
     
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  9. Violet Ronso

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    Taming by itself is fine, Taming + weapons is strong, but Taming and bard together is a whole different beast, that is what I'm saying. I understood what you were saying, I'm simply trying to get the point across that bards are too strong, and due to what others have reported to be a bug, the synergy between bard and Taming is amplified to a level beyond any other pair. I'm sure most tamers don't feel that they are too strong, or don't feel like their pet is the one thing changing the tides of battle, but in my case, with my build, I 100% feel like my pet has become too strong, stronger than anything else I could pair him with.
     
  10. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

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    At level 90 my bard/tamer spec character was out damaging my main character (heavy/tactics spec blades) who I've used since persistence, by a large margin. And the bard tamer did not have anything else trained other than life magic skills to 80. Literally nothing else trained, I was just holding life wands at the time.
     
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  11. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    What I am understanding from this thread is:

    An hour doing the ultra strong bard keystroke dance I am out of commission for hours with sore hands. So for me the bard is ultra weak due to the horrible mechanics implemented for us cripples aka Dallas mode. we should be punished for daring to play. And it won’t change in fact it will get worse by other players saying that bard is too strong. So another need will hit that will only punish the players who cannot do the mystic finger rapid fire dance with our keyboards.

    And I am understanding from this thread is that tamers are too strong with the game mechanics The SotA Devs have put out ( pet balls, artifact gems and jewels), yet we sacrifice a necklace slot that actually weakens us tamers.

    plus if you one of the older players who paid a lot of money in 2013 for a pledge , other younger players are saying too bad boomer suck an egg.

    got it. :D

    and people are wondering why SotA is losing players. Lol. Thank goodness I have offline play to remember the glory days of SotA that is obviously behind us in the year 2022.
     
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  12. Enfo

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    I read this and really think that it's not bard that's weak, it's most the other specs don't have that synergy and several skills probably need an overhaul first.

    Where my subterfuge mains at?
     
  13. Time Lord

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    Now I'll be asking again...

    "Just who are we saying the murderous bastard skill is here, taming or barding or whatever other skill?"

    We have already seen Archery get murderously nurfed for the sake of Taming. I bought two very brightly lit accounts due to that from trusted trader I'll have you know. Paid a very pretty penny for both as well because their owners rage quit after Archery was nurfed due to it's link with Taming.

    Taming or Barding or any other single skill is not the villian here, the myth of balance is! Balance makes us no money! If something is fun, then we should not nurf it until it's not, for the sake of the Technolian Elite who through squatter's rights attempt to taken over what was once :eek:
    "a game for everyone" :confused:!

    I ask the same on another level as well, "development funding & selling Ep2"... o_O And So... "what sells Ep2?" And the answer to that is "Barding Skills" because there's no way to have them unless you have that!

    :rolleyes: I keep saying this to remind you technolian data bags that we still must find ways to fund our game :D:thumbs up: Or... for god sakes stop stomping on those things which could or do make us money o_O..

    ("Technolian Data Bags" :confused: I liked that one :D a jim dandy of a good zinger that one is :D)

    My Advice: :eek:
    "Balance the SOTA Development's Check Book" :confused:!

    [​IMG]
    "We still need to explain fun & funding to them" :D~TL~

     
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  14. Violet Ronso

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    So you are trading one of the 3 weakest pieces of gear for one of the strongest damaging tools in the game, which also in itself adds 3 extra pieces of gear. If you read most proposed changes, most are aiming at the exponential power of barding, and it's gameplay mechanics that are being used very differently from what was originally intended (support class vs just another buff to add to your rotation).

    We are also not saying Tamers are overpowered, not at all, we are saying that, and my gosh it's the third time I'm writing this bit in the same thread, "DUE TO A SYNERGY BETWEEN BARD AND TAMING (read : potential bug), BARD AND TAMING GET IMMENSELY AMPLIFIED COMPARED TO OTHER TREES".

    To put it in other words, Taming + weapon = strong, weapon + Bard = Strong, but Taming + Bard = SUPER STRONG. Not only that, but currently, if you want, you can even use all 3 at the same time, how strong is that?

    BARD

    Bard is too strong, Bard is currently built to compensate for the loss of a player, but it overcompensates, a ton, it's literally someone showing up in a monster truck cause his F150 didn't compensate enough...

    And once again, Bard + Taming have a special something coded behind (or bugged behind) that makes it so that instead of compensating for the loss of 1 player, it compensates for 3 or 4 or even 5 good players when paired with a pet...

    You need to explain to us what fun is? Why? Because your version of fun is more important than mine?

    My version of fun is a game that offers challenge, and involves skill. A game like Elden ring? That is a shitload of fun, I've spent 100+ hours on it since release, didn't even finish it, and I'm not planning to be done once I finish it, every single fight is a challenge, I can even get killed by the easiest enemies if I go in with my brain turned off. In Shroud, it's rare that I do not have my brain turned off, the challenge in Shroud is long gone, the only thing that remains on the combat side is hours of endless grinding for diminishing returns progression, loot that will never make me go wow, that will barely ever sell, and doesn't even challenge me.

    If you're having fun, good for you, I am not (and my hours online are direct proof if that).


    As for the players who sold their accounts because of the ranged nerf... Yeah, they lost their fun element, sure, but what was that? Was it breezing through mobs as if they were a lawnmower over a field of grass? Because surprisingly enough, Archers are still plenty, they still pump out numbers, and the strongest archers only dropped down 1 spit on the tier list, being outclassed only by tamer bards now...
     
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  15. Enfo

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    So what metric should tamer bards be brought down to?
     
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  16. Violet Ronso

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    Somewhere closer to what other players can output, the stronger players I know in most physical dps classes can output 500 or so DPS with buffs, so a strong, heavily invested tamer bard should be about that strong, but never 1.4k dps strong.
     
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  17. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    Other trees will eventually get other things, or they could remain the same, yet there is no competition between trees in a no class restriction game as SOTA is. If a player does not like barding, or using bard skills at a great power level, they are not forced to do this. YET, when things are nurfed/adjusted to a mythical balance when compared to other skills, then players are forced to a single "multi-style" of play due to dominance in power balance being the only objective allowed.
    You are one of our top talented and thoughtful players, your search for fun is upward only, instead of style in play.

    As a game, we have lured players into the builds they enjoy playing, then take the legs out of what fun we lead them into through such nurfing/disempowering balance develoment.

    Why lead players into disapointment, just so that the top of our envelope players, our technolians, can support their own strive for more power, or a mythical balance when they wish to stand beside other players and compare themselves?

    We stand in quicksand "by design" following such ways as we have, which is to misslead players into builds they enjoy, just to change them because a technolian wants some data balanced for ego sake. or the seach of the few for more than we have and more than our development can keep up with, with less income from pleasing those with Data-Balance-OCD

    ~Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common, chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and/or behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over~

    A player can choose to use or not use whatever our game has to offer and should be able to rely on that product they find enjoyable not becoming intentionally deminished.

    I have yet to enjoy taming, so therefore I don't, "no matter if it would make my characters more powerful". It's a choice we individually make for happiness in the play style we enjoy.
    Yet... through the myth of balance, we are forced out of what we enjoy, so that a few at the top, can feel they have challenge to overcome. Once that challenge is over, they leave.

    Challenge vs Contentment

    Contentment means keeping players playing, while Challenge means attracting those that only seek to "win" (in whatever that means to them) and then leave due to lack of challenge.

    Contentment means I want to move in and remain, while Challenge means I want to conqure and then leave.

    Yet we sell things so players can make roots here in our game, which then pays for all the development of our game.

    We need to expand "contentment, not challenge" and allow challenge to drift on as they always do, because we are not funded by EA Games, FromSoftware Inc or Bandai Namco Entertainment as Elden Ring is and other games are.

    Our game is totally funded by individual players and thus a micro-budget when compared with such gaming companies as those mentioned above.
    ~TL~

     
    Last edited: Apr 9, 2022
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  18. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    I will answer this with your quote:
     
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  19. Violet Ronso

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    You know what, I totally agree with this, and explained this way kinda opens it up in my mind. Now although I agree with you, let me just explain to you why I still feel like these nerfs "should" help contentment all while helping the challenge. I am not looking for the next big bad guy that will be tough, because as the way this game is balanced, its only a matter of time before it simply becomes a question of "How much faster can we kill him" (which is the stage where the giant is now). I am not opposed to power in builds, most top end players reach numbers that are quite high (like I said, 500 or so single target dps, and around 2k dps for strong aoe builds). What I do think is there needs to be a line that is drawn somewhere, when is high DPS too much?

    What you see in a game like Shroud of the Avatar is the fact that some builds out perform others by so much, that a lot of players will feel the pressure (or requirement) to play those outperforming builds to actually be able to "compete" with others.

    Now compete is a very strong word, so let me explain what I mean by that. The richer players get, the pricier actually valuable things get, and the cheaper the more common things get. The more valuable things tend to be things that are rarer, or specially crafted things by high level crafters. This results in players with a build that just manages, builds that I actually enjoy playing, can barely make it out of T5 zones unless you start investing heavily into them, that means your exp gains are low, your money gains are low, and your valuable item gains are low. Meanwhile, those top tier builds can easily breeze through most of the high tier content. In my current taming build, I can sit in the K'rul Clockwork dragon room with my wolf, kill it in under 2 minutes, and wait for it to respawn. Meanwhile, someone who enjoys their build, as an example, Elgarion back when he was a player/streamer, struggled with a party of multiple players. I show up in their party, show them what my build can do, and a portion of those guys will go : "Man, I wish I could do that" problem is, some of those builds will never be able to come anywhere near that level of power, and at some point, that person will go from playing a build they enjoy, to a build that actually allows them to progress. By nerfing the outliers, you are helping class diversity in this classless system, because you are shortening the gap between playstyles. Good games usually have classes that perform relatively similar, but do have their specialties when the time comes. The game of the moment, Elden Ring, has this. It is classless, you invest your experience where you want, to use the weapons, spells and skills that you want, and right now, people are making videos, tiktoks and posts about how x build is OP, but literally every single build shows up in those videos, because the different options are so balanced, that it is the skill of the player or the use of those options in the right moment that makes them outshine others, but only in those specific cases. That is not the case for Shroud, you have Fire/Bard/Moon for AoE, Blades/Taming/Ranged for single target, and everything else is in the realm of "Those guys" that won't do much. If everything was balanced to a point where some things out perform others in certain scenarios, but everything is viable, and things that are supposed to be a challenge were challenging (like the clockwork dragon, that should be some sort of challenge at least), challenge and contentment could go hand in hand in a universe where classless could really mean classless.

    As the self proclaimed (as I have never heard an official stat on this) most Greater Unlearning scroll user, I disagree with this statement. I have tried every style of play I could think of myself + builds people recommended that I had never thought of. I have been in the search of pushing builds to their limits, and try to find fun things to do with each, and without a doubt can say that there are some styles of play that offer no fun at all if you want to progress in this universe. If you are content with low level zones, cool, pretty much every build should be fine, but if you want to start exploring dungeons, or hunting down bosses, or even trying Episode 2 content, you need specific minimal requirements that are very high, or builds that will make it more accessible, all while some of these builds will breeze through even the toughest content as if you were in Solace Bridge Outskirts... When I'm playing a build that offers no challenge, I get bored out of my mind, but the more stuff gets added to the game, the more builds get added to this category, and Bard has been the main culprit, bard made everything too easy, because it is strong to compensate for the planned lack of combat presence, but it was made too strong, and has nothing to compensate for currently.

    Yup, and players should be able to help make the game better. I heard something that made a lot of sense one day in regards to a competitive game. The professional player said "Low rank players complain that nerfs happen because of high tier players, saying we make things overpowered, but what those people don't understand is that we we're at your level one day, we had the same knowledge and skill as you, but we progressed, we've discovered things, and now that we are better, we better understand the synergies and intricacies of the games systems. What this means is that when we find out that something is overpowered, it is because we've discovered it's optimal use, and the day everyone discovers it, everyone will agree with us, but until then, it only looks as if we are trying to slow others down, or ask for nerfs that will ruin your enjoyment. Well, those OP things ruin OUR enjoyment, and if we say nothing about it, one day, they will ruin yours as well."
     
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  20. Violet Ronso

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    I'll just respond with the details I have concerning my statement.

    Best DPS I could reach with blades, paired with bard, was about 500 or so. That is including top quality weapons and armor.

    Meanwhile the best DPS I have reached personally with Taming and Bard is about 700 or so on a razorback destroyer (that was in that one fight, not sustained DPS). I think I have 1 legendary artifact, my ringmaster vest, everything else is uncommon or rare.

    Coswald had been tracking numbers, he showed me 1400+ DPS with his spawn of sobek with legendary/rare arties, still place for progression there... Tell me, is there any other build, to your knowledge, that reaches 1400 DPS?
     
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