Bard's Tiered Lutes' Flaws

#1

Bard is an amazing class. Up until I died with mine, it was a ton of fun to use and hitting that max Dex cap (magicians robe isnt on the loot tables yet so i couldnt use that one) with Tshot using Wavecrest was awesome. I got to try the snake charmer as well and it was equally amazing to use. Unfortunately I didn’t get the tomb one but considering the fact that I died, I’m not too sad either. Bard’s UT lutes are unique and fun to use.

That’s why what I want to discuss are the Tiered Lutes.

The tiered lutes are in need of a rework. As they stand, they aren’t anything amazing and the cooldown is annoying. Throughout my whole Bard journey i rarely touched on my T5 Lute after I got a Concertina and Snake Charmer and I’m pretty sure I still wouldn’t do it even if it was a T6 Lute.

The things I’d like to point out that I can’t make sense of, in a design aspect and fluid gameplay are the following:

  • Considering Bard is a Robe class and has a higher MP cap, why does his (tiered) ability have a cooldown?
    This makes it hard to use the MP pool you have to its full potential. Someone with a good enough pet doesn’t benefit from having more than 100 MP as the pet heals back that amount back during the cooldown. You could argue that it might be useful for people with a weaker pet but that doesn’t invalidate the fact that you can’t use your MP as you should, being a Magic oriented class. For it to have a limiter imposed on itself that you can’t escape from just doesn’t make sense for me. All the other Magic oriented classes can use their abilities to their full potential, whether it is by spamming or periodically pressing it (which the player has the option to choose from, since none of them have a cooldown), taking advantage of all the MP that regens during the time you aren’t using it, yet Bard is just there, with a lot of unused MP that you can’t really use for anything else unless you go for UTs.
    Having cooldowns on abilities is not my problem, that’s why UTs exist; having a cooldown / limiter on the usage of your MP on your supposed main ability, you being a Magic class, is the problem.
    (Snake Charmer has a cooldown and it is one of my favourites)

  • Since he’s a robe class, shouldn’t he support WisMod like the other robe classes? (Wizard is a special case)
    I thought that the whole point of having him use robes would be for his powers to be enhanced by using them.
    Isn’t WisMod something we want to see being more used in the game, especially on robe classes so that it gives Wisdom a reason to be sought after?

It just all seems very weird to me that the class uses a robe yet benefits nothing from having what the concept of a robe offers: more MP and Wisdom… What’s the point of giving him a robe then? Is it just for show?

  • What’s the need for a Defense buff if it has effect at the same time as your Range boost?
    This one baffles me. Aren’t you supposed to want to be tankier when you have less range and vice-versa? What’s the point of getting a defense boost if you can stay farther away from enemies and be safer? And what if you get Quiet? The DEF boost won’t help you in that case.

  • Repositioning yourself due to Inspired constantly running out / being activated becomes extremely annoying.
    Lutes having a 1 second period where your Inspired ends and you can’t activate it again causes your range to come back to normal for a few moments. Most of the times you won’t know when it is running out not just for a lack of visual signs but more because you might be focused on dodging bullets or doing something else and when it runs out, you’ll be out of range for your attacks to hit. This will cause you to notice and you will move closer but by the time all this happens, you will be able to activate your Inspired and you’ll want to back away to be safer again. This repeats many times per minute and is just very very annoying to deal with. It might not seem like much but it becomes a real nuisance the more it happens.

Gameplay wise, the UTs are very easy and satisfying to use while the Tiered ones are terrible. It’s even more strange that you completely outclass a tiered Lute with the Concertina if you have a pet that can heal you by more than 100 MP every 4 seconds (or around Lvl 92 Magic Heal) as you can perma buff yourself and your allies and you aren’t losing out that much by sacrificing the Defense boost, given that it won’t help you a lot considering the distance between you and the enemy and the effect’s duration, not to mention the DPS you will get from the Concertina.

When I was playing Bard, even if all I wanted was a range boost during a boss fight, I’d always go for concertina as I could keep my range boost up until my MP ran out, saving me the trouble of having that annoying repositioning problem and overall being a lot more simple and friendly to use. Whenever my MP was running out, I’d back away, regen, and repeat. It gives you a lot more control of how you can use your MP without it being limited usage for X time and doesn’t introduce that annoying 1 second period of not being able to hit the target.

There are a number of ways you could deal with these issues and these are the ones I came up with:

  • Idea #1: Replacing the one-time click bard ability activation with a “On Key Held” one, similar to Ninja’s Speedy.
    I don’t remember where I saw it, but I recall seeing someone mention that Bards should have a On Key Held ability. It first seemed like an odd idea but after giving it some thought I started to like it after building on it myself. Not only would this make more sense in terms of how it works (Bard playing the Lute while you hold the button) but it would also give you the freedom to use it whenever you wanted without a cooldown.
    The way I see how it would work would be the following:
    While your key would be held down, your MP would be consumed at a certain X MP/s and you + your allies would be given Inspired. Your MP heal would be disabled, in a similar fashion to the likes of the Crystal Shield.
    On Key Release you would receive a DEF boost on self to go in. It could also be put under a cooldown of 1-2 seconds just because of the DEF boost.

To get their MP/s while holding down the key you would simply divide the total MP used, by the number of seconds for each lute (from the current tiered lutes), this would be around 23.(3) MP/s for T0 and 16.(6) MP/s for T6 (maybe a bit more to account for the 1 second that the cooldown gives). Though to me this seems more like a viable option for a defense penalty to even it out (more on this very soon), granted that your Inspired buff would last very long with this method, even with MP Heal disabled.

Not only would this solve the MP usage problem but it would also remove the annoying problem of hastily repositioning yourself everytime your ability runs out / comes back up again and instead give you time to plan ahead as you would know when your MP was about to run out in case you went for the full extent. In case you would decide to release it sooner, then obviously you would know that as well.

Additionally, you wouldn’t have a (somewhat) useless DEF buff alongside your long range but instead have a DEF buff when you really needed, which would be after your long range period ended.

  • Idea #2: Bringing back the On Equip DEF boost and nullifying it whenever you use your ability
    I personally am quite a fan of this idea: you would be given an “On Equip” DEF boost (just like in PT) and have that DEF nullified whenever you used your ability by a DEF decrease penalty for as long as the duration of Inspired (or while Key Held, as stated earlier), essentially becoming a Robe class whenever you activate your ability and being a Bow class when you don’t. This would also bring back the lutes’ desirability for the added DEF bonus and would keep you protected even when Quiet which is when you need DEF the most due to not being able to increase your range.

  • Idea #3: Simply removing the Cooldown on Tiered Lutes (and changing the Stat boost ability on use to something else if it were to activate on use)
    Rather straight forward: removing the Cooldown, allowing you to use the ability to your heart’s content and maybe adding a different stat buff such as a +10 Speed Boost to self, for mobility, or something else useful on pair with more range.

I know some people won’t like the idea of not having Cooldown on Lutes because it would be broken and/or you could perma-buff everyone but look at the Untiered Lutes and that argument doesn’t hold since you can perma-buff everyone with a powerful enough pet by not even using a Tiered Lute.
At the very least you could keep the group buffed for a good while before the MP usage starts to catch up, and by the time that happens, the fight might be over already or the boss has moved to his next phase giving you time to regen MP again.
This isn’t even taking into account the fact that there could be more than 1 Bard in the group, which even using Tiered Lutes would enable the entire group to have a permanent range buff simply by having them have decent pets and alternating between who uses their ability.

#2

thankyou.gif

That’s also my principal complaint about the bard. No sense having robe-class level mana when you can’t expend it all at once without a tiered ability.

#3

yes. yes it is. it’s there to have a different weapon/armor combo purely for the sake of having it.

#4

More to the point…

…how is the bard able to play a lute and fire a bow at the same time when both of these require two hands??

Really there are so many questions over this class but the whole thing is built on the dodgiest of nonsensical foundations that the rest doesn’t really even matter. Unless…

This is actually one of the few bits that make sense if we’re saying the bard is not supposed to be a trained fighter capable of wearing actual armour which would impede their luting etc. but they are some kind of goddarmed plucking hippy wearing a flouncy shirt (robe).

But our robes are magical in Rotmg, so then maybe we can deduce that bard is a magical fella not an actual musician playing with skill, so maybe that’s how the lute gets played, by magic, not by hands and that answers the “how do they play”. And the lute giving a DEF bonus is because the bard uses it to block shots, way to mistreat your instrument dude! Or maybe it flies around him like a magical symbiotic companion tanking some of the dmg.

But yeah…

Basically in any of the threads there’s like 10 ideas that make more sense than the bard we ended up with, except for the one niche use of LH organised barding, the possible (haven’t tried it) use to cheese O2’s dance from outside, and then the future “O3 will need it”, “no it won’t because we want O3 to be public-completeable” argument.

So yeah, all your ideas (OP) go for it, they would be improvements. I’m thinking my bard would be a dagger user to benefit more from Inspire, keep the robe, make tiered lutes do a soundwave nova of dmg upon use as well, I like the hold-to-use that you talk about OP cause you have better control over your range so yep that too. Ditch the cooldown, have it a high MP drain when held.

#5

The bard is actually a hipster. They wear a stupid robe to be unique and bought their lute from a silicon valley startup that makes auto-playing lutes. Because everyone needs one of those.

At the least they should do a wis-mod radius boost. Unless they already did that and i’m blind.

#6

You mean the higher the wis stat, the longer the range? I think this might cause issues, since people are already having to adjust to the occasional range change; if you added that extra level of unpredictability, bard could become a headache for players using items like colo sword.

Okay, that makes more sense.

#7

A Bard using bows makes as much sense as Harry Potter using swords.

He also has 5 hands. He manages to use his bow, his quiver, and play his flute at the same time he dodges bullets with his 3 feet or something. He’s a fucking abomination.

Idk why flute isn’t his main weapon. Makes no sense at all really.

#8

I mean buff radius.

#9

First of all lutes broke all colossus swords.

#10

I’ve seen this argument made over and over and over again, but I’m not sure that alone justifies much of anything. sure it’s impressive, but realistically speaking that’s a pretty small niche. not everyone has one of those swords as it’s a very rare drop, the sword wielders can’t play the lute and vice versa, and there are very few things you could bring yourself to approach with a range up sword that you wouldn’t want to approach without it.

so is that one teeny tiny little niche important enough to justify an entire class? does the existence of this niche significantly alter the way people experience the game? or will it ultimately not matter in the slightest since anyone not actively using those swords won’t notice and won’t care whether it’s there or not?

I think if anyone wants to defend the bard class they’ll need to come up with something more general instead of relying on a niche so small most people aren’t going to notice or care about in practice. at least with the samurai while he had an absolutely worthless effect in expose, the raw damage output of the waki was still somewhat impressive in solo/small group gameplay. bard doesn’t even have that going for it.

#11

It’s also usable in a lot of bosses that force you get to get in close to do your damage, or not at all like

  • Tomb

  • Parasites

  • MT

  • Cult

  • Dance (side note, if you position yourself correctly, you can cheese dance on assassin with unity :))
    And to a lesser extent

  • Abyss

  • Lod

  • Cdepths

  • Wlab

  • OT

#12

But what they’ve produced is a bard who doesn’t need to go in close to do his damage, because he can take care of himself as a psuedo staff/wand class (single shot bow on inspired goes to nearly 9 range), so in most of those fights if the bard is standing face into the enemies (eg. tomb/Lod/parasite) he’s doing it wrong for long term survival.

In none of those places does an archer/huntress struggle to cope, so inspired bard is overkill. That’s why I say a daggerclass bard would’ve been better, because daggers have a harder time in those boss fights.

I’ve been on warrior and cdirk trickster a bit since bard came in, and the number of times that the bard is standing too far away for his buff to even reach me, means I have to actually back out of combat to receive the buff, and then yes the fight is safer, but it’s more reliable DPS for me to ignore the bard and just focus on hitting at the standard range.

I can see that if down to duo/trios in slower fights then a bard will become more useful to the melees because they’re at greater risk (eg. Geb rage), but the game is so fast paced now, inspired feels like an idea that would have made sense in 2012 more than now. Or potentially after the pet nerfs, but currently it’s just not so useful unless you are receiving perma-inspired in such as a Discord group.

FYI this has been a thing even on Flash since O2’s rework, with assassin and huntress able to throw in from outside using off-centre view, (necro too, also archers/ninjas). Poison/trap radius is so large you don’t even need to be careful aiming (except for ones like murky). Wizards can even with perfect careful placement on Flash spellbomb Oryx from outside, though it’s a lot trickier because you need to be closer to the tomatoes to get O2’s hitbox in view, unlike poison/trap/skull where the target radius lets you be lazier with aiming.

image of outside poisoning

image
image.png800x600 131 KB

#13

Posted my thoughts on reddit but Ill post them here as well:

Weapons:

WHY WERE BOWS CHOSEN TO BE THIS CLASSES WEAPON? Thematically, sure, that makes sense but mechanically it is by far THE WORST weapon class the bard could possibly use, and im honestly baffled by this decision. For people who don’t know, the true range of all triple bows (every tiered bow) is only 3.56 tiles, and when you get the inspired buff… it stays at 3.56 tiles.

What does this mean? Unless you enjoy doing 30% dmg, the bard with tiered bows sees literally no benefit from his own abilities . Ridiculous.

Abilities:

The inspired buff is extremely good, but in a wonky sort of way, its racist against sorcerer. The fact is that half the classes in the game don’t really care about the inspired buff. What is 1.25x range on a wand? Who cares, it can already off-screen enemies. This buff disproportionally helps melee classes and further widens the power imbalance we currently have with melees vs everyone else. Power imbalance is obviously a difficult issue to solve, and this ability is just making it harder. You may be thinking, “What about the defense buff from higher tiered lutes?”. I mean its not bad, but why would a class whos gimmick is that he can increase his range to stay out of danger possibly need defense? The buffs are not synergistic, a lot of the time when you need one you arent going to be utilizing the other.

Another problem with the ability is its cooldown, this class has 75 wis and a robe classes mana pool, but with the cooldown on the ability these stats are absolutely wasted. Doing the math with a grand sorcerer robe and t6 lute and no pet( 440 max mp, 81 wis, 100 mp cost, 7s CD) it will take 50 seconds of nonstop ability use to drain your mana. This is a class with a support focused ability, 75 wis, robes, a huge mana pool, but no wis mod(???).

It really seems like this class was rushed out the door.

#14

I was thinking somewhat the opposite to Bard having flaws

His concertina is a bit OP.

  • It does same damage as Nidaria poison for assassin
  • It cost 20 less mana
  • It has no cooldown
  • It also increases his range.

As for the Snake Charmer

  • Giving +8 def
  • Also gives +7 spd
  • With the right gear he can run faster than a ninja.

I’ve yet to pickup the 3rd Tiered loot but, honestly he rushes & clears almost too effectively.

#15

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.