Bardmage 3.0

[Classikmage]

brd dps is pretty low and it's a hassle to play. if you like the "style" of casting, smn and blm do way more dmg, and smn is way more mobile. MCH so far is way more fun then brd imo and is what their idea for WM was, but it doesn't work on brd.

After reading some posts on the OF last week about people talking about GB flowing a lot better on MCH than WM on BRD, I actually had this exact same thought.

It sounded like they came up with the idea of casting WS's when they devloped GB for MCH, than some dumbass in the testing department had the idea to duplicate that same ability for BRD thinking it would be an awesome idea.

Whoever that asshole was really needs to get fired.... quickly...

[Spider-Dan]

that isn't even remotely logical

Is the challenge in tracking 15 different cooldowns, or in using BL between each GCD?

[Jem]

There are more oGCDs to hit on MCH than there are on BRD.

BRD has B4B/HE/RS/Medi, Barrage, IR, BL, ME, Blunt, Repelling, Flaming, Empyreal, Sidewinder (13)
MCH has B4B/HE/RS/Medi, Reassemble, Reload, QR, Rapid, Heartbreak, Blank, Suppressive, Wildfire, Gauss Round, Ricochet, Hypercharge (15)

I actually had far more problems on MCH than I did on 50BRD because while you can just use B4B/HE/RS/IR/oldBarrage on CD (and therefore, all on a one button macro if you don't need to queue more than one at a time), the only button consolidation I can do with MCH is B4B+HE+RS and QR+Heartbreak. I had to end up getting an Orbweaver because I didn't have enough buttons.

Empyreal isn't oGCD and I don't know why people keep thinking it is. People keep saying it is on the OF too.

I haven't played MCH so I don't know how that functions with oGCD. For BRD though it boils down to this

No Miserys End - 54% of GCD's require an oGCD to be used
Miserys End in play - 75% of GCD's require an oGCD to be used

This does not account for Bloodletter resets or singing or mobs becoming untargettable etc. This also doesn't account for trying to sync up timers. So those %s are in practice higher than that.

Some oGCDs are also unwieldly in WM mode. Repelling Shot is hard to slot in. And it may just be me but I find that placing Flaming Circle slightly slows down my GCD as the circle won't appear until your cast is complete so you have a very short period of time to place it.


How you view that playstyle is going to vary from person to person but for a lot of us its not fun. Allowing us to use oGCDs whilst casting would solve the issue but I doubt SE allows that.

[Judai]

He just doesn't get it, don't bother.

Flaming Arrow is a pain to use as well for me, as you can't target it, until the cast is done and by the time you hit it, find a spot, etc, the 1s is definitely up and you have delayed your next GCD. Just admitting they were dumb, getting rid of WM all together and moving on with something else to boost our dmg would be far better but that takes some serious balls to admit it was a bad idea. Using oGCDs while casting doesn't make any sense tbh and would prolly takes some serious code re-working, and would prolly create more problems for them as they break smn/blm for awhile when they start using oGCDs while casting.

[Spider-Dan]

Empyreal isn't oGCD and I don't know why people keep thinking it is.

The tooltip says "This weaponskill does not share a recast timer with any other actions" which (for a weaponskill) implies that it's not on GCD. But my BRD is still 50, as I looked at the 3.0 patch notes and immediately decided I had no interest in playing BRD any more.

No Miserys End - 54% of GCD's require an oGCD to be used
Miserys End in play - 75% of GCD's require an oGCD to be used

This does not account for Bloodletter resets or singing or mobs becoming untargettable etc.

How did you arrive at these numbers?

[Judai]

But my BRD is still 50, as I looked at the 3.0 patch notes and immediately decided I had no interest in playing BRD any more.

Yet is in BRD thread arguing about how BRD works and how it is easier than MCH.

[Spider-Dan]

Doesn't seem to stop you from declaring that MCH is easier to play!

This game is not rocket science. The idea that you must personally play a job in order to be able to grasp its complexities is not valid.

The irony is that you seem to think I'm arguing that BRD has nothing to do between GCDs, or something. You said you like MCH because "its 100x easier, as there aren't 1000 oGCDs to hit after every shot" and I correctly pointed out that MCH has more oGCDs than BRD.

[Jem]

It's definitely on GCD.


For those numbers I worked out the recast of all oGCD abilities. I worked out how many times they would be used in a 2 min cycle (since our longest oGCD ability recast is 2 minutes). Then I worked out how many GCDs occurred in that time period. I can't remember the exact numbers but it was something like:

48-49 GCDs
36 oGCDs to use if Miserys in play
26 oGCDs to use if no Miserys

For simplicity I didn't count BL resets or singing/BV or mobs disappearing etc. I even assumed this was mid cycle and everything started on CD rather than being available at start fight (So for example Raging Strikes would be used once in 120 seconds, not twice). So realistically those numbers should be higher than what I stated. Anything that ended with a fraction I left as it was with no rounding.

They're flawed numbers but they were lowballing and just to give an idea of how bad it was for BRD compared to before when you could double slot oGCDs between each GCD

[Raldo]

Not going to get into all of this "why WM sucks" stuff, I think we all agree it sucks, so you're all just arguing how much it sucks and whether or not MCH is worse. I can't chime in, because my MCH is 31.

Empyreal isn't oGCD and I don't know why people keep thinking it is. People keep saying it is on the OF too.

I'm trying to figure out if you're mixing up Empyreal Arrow with some other skill, or you don't know what oGCD means. Since the only person who chimed in on this has admitted to not having leveled up enough to use the ability, I'll jump in here. Empy Arrow is most definitely oGCD. It has a cast time, yes, but its timer is 100% not shared with the GCD. You can start charging Empyreal Arrow while your GCD is still ticking (for example, immediately after firing a proc'd Straight Shot), and your GCD will be ready and waiting by the time you get your Empy Arrow off.

Now, it is most certainly an annoying as fuck oGCD because of its cast time, but oGCD does not mean "this casts instantly" (though that's certainly what we've grown accustomed to), oGCD just means that its timer is not the global cooldown.

[Jem]

Fair enough, I stand corrected. I had assumed from the cast time it was on GCD and of course it isn't available in non-WM mode to see otherwise. I just mash my next up GCD when it's down so it never dawned on me that Empy was actually oGCD (I.e. if Heavy is next up I just hammer that with one hand whilst hitting the oGCD ability to be used with another). I'll have to move Empy on my macro bar because of this.

With the cast time of it, is it even possible to slot it in between GCDs without losing time on your GCD? Or does it effectively become a slightly quicker GCD because of the cast time?


Empyreal being oGCD inflates those percentages by even more then since it's up 8 times in a 120 second cycle.

[Niiro]

What Raldo said.

Empyreal is a unique WS that, despite being a WS and costing TP, has its own cooldown separate from the GCD.

The only real reason for this is so it will work with Barrage.

[Raldo]

With the cast time of it, is it even possible to slot it in between GCDs without losing time on your GCD? Or does it effectively become a slightly quicker GCD because of the cast time?

No, and yes. Using Empy Arrow guarantees that you'll be spending at least some amount of time with your GCD ready, but unable to use it because you're still using Empy.

I personally find this skill to be SUPER annoying because of Barrage. If you stack Barrage with it, you're spending even more time sitting on an unused GCD.

[Jem]

So basically if Miserys End is up, we have 44 oGCDs and 48 GCDs to use in a given 2 minute buff cycle. That does not include Bloodletter resets.

Even with Miserys End out of play we're at 34 oGCDs and 48 GCDs to use not including resets and assuming a mob we can just wail on without a worry about anything else.

No wonder when I went from doing Alex on BRD to levelling PLD up it felt slow as molasses.

[Spider-Dan]

For those numbers I worked out the recast of all oGCD abilities. I worked out how many times they would be used in a 2 min cycle (since our longest oGCD ability recast is 2 minutes). Then I worked out how many GCDs occurred in that time period. I can't remember the exact numbers but it was something like:

48-49 GCDs
36 oGCDs to use if Miserys in play
26 oGCDs to use if no Miserys

For simplicity I didn't count BL resets or singing/BV or mobs disappearing etc.

Fair enough.

It looks like you used 2.5s as the GCD. MCH's longest CD is Raging Strikes at 180s, which puts MCH at 72 GCDs for one "rotation." Of those 72 GCDs, you'd be doing 48 oGCDs (66%) without Heartbreak and 54 oGCDs (75%) with it. Compare to your numbers of 54% and 75% (respectively) for BRD.

Obviously, as you said, that doesn't include BL resets. The math for Misery's is easy; any reset and BRD pulls ahead in oGCD actions. Without Misery's, BRD would need 6 BL resets in 120s (40 ticks), which works out to a 15% crit rate. I haven't seen any i180+ BRD parses, so I don't know what a reasonable crit rate is.

I think it's fair to say both jobs have a lot of oGCDs to spam and one isn't going to be a huge relief over the other.

edit: Turns out Empy is not on GCD so I guess it probably should affect these numbers, but as it has a cast time and cannot be "weaved" I don't really see how to do so.

[Judai]

Doesn't seem to stop you from declaring that MCH is easier to play!

uh, I have MCH leveled to 55 already, I have all but 2 oGCD and you have no fucking clue what we are even talking about. It's not HOW many oGCDs you have, it's getting oGCDs off in 1s of no cast time, where MCH gets ammo, rapid fire and combo procs that make their casts instant so they can use oGCDs while their GCD counts down, which makes it a fuck ton easier and yes, it's a huge relief. I have played both jobs, you have not, MCH flows, BRD is a shitfest of smashing buttons.

[Jem]

Yeah I used 2.5 secs for simplicity as I was at work at the time so couldn't check what my GCD timer was. I knew what it was before expansion but not anymore.

Every 0.05 seconds you trim off GCD is another GCD you get in a 2 minute cycle.

Having not played MCH myself it's hard to judge but from what Seravi said earlier, MCH has the ability to weave in 2 oGCDs sometimes? Which would give them an advantage over BRD

The cast time skip of proc123 lets you more freely do double oGCD though.

[Spider-Dan]

uh, I have MCH leveled to 55 already, I have all but 2 oGCD and you have no fucking clue what we are even talking about. It's not HOW many oGCDs you have, it's getting oGCDs off in 1s of no cast time, where MCH gets ammo, rapid fire and combo procs that make their casts instant so they can use oGCDs while their GCD counts down, which makes it a fuck ton easier.

Your original complaint was directly about the NUMBER of oGCDs you had to spam. That was precisely what I was responding to when I said that MCH has more than BRD.

Since you do play 60BRD, what's your parsed crit rate? I'd just like to know so I can see if the following was totally BS:

MCH only has more oGCD actions if you don't count the Bloodletter procs BRD has to use.

Which would be stupid.

[Jem]

Just noticed yet another unique thing/abnormality about Empyreal Arrow when checking my GCD timer (It's 2.45 seconds so 49 GCDs in 2 mins). Unlike other oGCD abilities Skill Speed affects the recast timer

[Judai]

Your original complaint was directly about the NUMBER of oGCDs you had to spam. That was precisely what I was responding to when I said that MCH has more than BRD.

maybe read it again and then maybe read the rest of the topic to see what I have been complaining about the entire time.

yea I'm leveling it now too. They clearly made MCH with the intention to use Gauss/Cast times and such and it flows nicely(procs,ammo,rapic fire, all sorts of easy ways to move) and it looks like they just tossed the same thing on BRD without any thought, thinking it would work the same. It's also 100x easier, as there aren't 1000 oGCDs to hit after every shot

My complaint is clearly about getting oGCDs, MEANING BL procs+ other shit, in between casts, because clearly BRD doesn't have 1000 oGCDs, w/ 1s and I specifically mentioned how nice Ammo, Combo Procs and Rapid Fire make MCH flow so you can move and get oGCDs off in between(I clarified this later and Seravi clearly stated it after your post). If you had read the rest of the topic and seen the actual conversation and not just read one post, you may have understood. BRD doesn't get instant casts moves that let us fire off Gauss+Blank at the same time, or Hawk's+B4B.

I don't care if MCH has 2 extra oGCDs, which btw disappears the second BL double procs during the CD and BRD instantly pulls ahead when it does it again, and again, and again. It's about BRD NEEDING, to get 2 oGCDs off between casts but now having 1s to do so, which is impossible. So I either hit BL, or I hit the oGCD I needed to hit and delay BL, or I delay my GCD to hit both.

So either level BRD and understand how it works or shut up. I'm not going to conitue with you because you have no idea what we are talking about.

[Spider-Dan]

maybe read it again and then maybe read the rest of the topic to see what I have been complaining about the entire time.

Or maybe just read what I said (MCH has more oGCD actions than BRD) and stop trying to extrapolate it into me saying MCH is harder than BRD.

I wasn't commenting on how stressful BRD is or how button smashy BRD is or how restrictive BRD movement is; I was pointing out that MCH also has a ton of oGCD attacks (more than BRD, in fact).

So what's your crit rate at 60BRD? (include item level)