The main issue here is that Deca want to make this new content desirable to play, and with the way the game is currently, this means it will have to have good loot. Having a new top tier item which is outclassed by multiple UTs/STs doesn’t really make people want to get it, other than to show off that they have it. By making the gap between tiers larger, you eliminate this ‘problem’, but as a side effect introduce more power creep. This makes the UTs pale in comparison, but that’s what they’re trying to achieve anyway - make tiered items viable alternatives to using untiered items. How to balance this with currently existing content is an important thing to think about, so that’s a really good point you raise there.
Currently it’s a 50% range increase and 10 mp/s energize (equivalent to level 73 mheal or 167 wis). While I do agree that 50% is a lot, I am struggling to find situations where the Inspired buff will be used effectively in the current meta, because of its tiny radius (3 tiles). In a large group, many players will be outside of this area. Furthermore, I don’t think players will relocate to compensate for this larger range, unless they have a weapon which requires it.
This is because in the current meta, dps is king and anything else can be compensated for with heals. Range is really not needed, since everyone’s sitting at a ~3 tile distance from most bosses anyway - think of bosses like MBC, MBD, (Void in most phases), DDocks, CDepths, O2 etc.
I deliberately said in the current meta, as with Unity, a lot of things will change. The Bard class is not a release which should be seen as standalone, since Deca are planning to release the Bard class alongside the Unity client.
From this point, it’s mostly speculation - but it’s based off of years of experience playing this game. I’ll try to explain my thoughts as well as I can.
With Unity, we’ll have an increased field of view (by the way, the range of the Inspire ability is similar to the circle of players shown here), and with other updates on the horizon, such as IC/OOC (see this answer in the recent Q&A), the meta will adapt to these changes.
(from here on out it’s all speculation - take this with more than a few grains of salt)
Bosses won’t be facestomped as much as they are currently, since taking loads of hits and outhealing it all won’t be a viable strategy anymore, which means more focus will shift towards survivability rather than pure dps.
Staying at a larger range will mean you get to deal damage from a safer distance, this is especially noticeable on melee classes.
A small, organized group might benefit greatly from one or two bards, allowing them to focus more on survival rather than dealing damage. This would mean you need a good bard, someone who’s able to not only spam spacebar every 3 seconds, but think about their positioning (and maybe coordinate with another bard or two to make sure the entire group is covered).
I think the Bard would not be an as powerful class as some make it out to be, as it still requires quite a lot of skill to keep up the Inspired buff on a group consistently. Furthermore, most released content is balanced around the current range players have - the benefit of having an extra few tiles of range won’t be as huge for most bosses. Currently, most players don’t play at the maximum range their class allows (with the exception of melees), since the travel time of the bullets make it hard to hit moving targets that are far away.
Only the most melee unfriendly bosses (in small groups) will see a major shift in balance (i.e. Parasite Chambers, the Nest, Mountain Temple, LoD, Fungal, Crystal and probably more). Note that this is assuming that both the Bard class and IC/OOC is out. Without IC/OOC, there’s no need to shift the meta from facestomping, since almost all damage can be outhealed anyway.
All in all, I think Bard is a class which fits a niche quite nicely and will be desired due to its Energized ability. I think that initially, the community won’t find many proper uses for Inspired, other than allowing melees to stay a bit further away from the boss, but after IC/OOC changes, this’ll change, because players will be forced to focus more on survivability rather than pure damage.
Adding Armored with a certain radius (as long as it’s not tiny) would make Marble Seal pretty much obsolete, since the mseal requires players to stay close to the pillar. Adding berserk would mean it’s pretty much another warrior - not something that makes the class unique in my opinion.
There’s a lot of potential for interesting effects, why stick with existing status effects? Perhaps a buff which changes the duration of status effects (except maybe confuse/pet stasis?) would be good. Maybe a buff which gives a vit increase for the group - after the introduction of IC/OOC? For those who don’t know why - in the previous PT session for IC/OOC, vit had the effect of shortening the time you were In combat (reduced healing ability). There are other possibilities, ofcourse, but those strike me as potentially useful and different, but not necessarily borderline overpowered.
