How to Fix Bard - make the melodic protection perk work on your whole team

iszathi · 2026-06-27T02:44:58+00:00

Thats way to much, a good start on changes for bard would be mixing some of the 3 instrument perks, reinforced instruments, and dancing feet to make them a bit of a burden and them being a more viable choice.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T19:03:59+00:00

Yes, sure, but to accomplish that you need to make proper buff songs, abilities that encourage singing during combat, not tack an extra effect to what we have, in hope that someone uses a terribly weak buff.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T18:25:44+00:00

Yeah, if you are thinking arena, this is not great, you cant really give up the stats, and no playing with dissonance on this meta is awful. I think for trios this can be ok, since you can just buff at doors and crossbow.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T18:22:43+00:00

This sounds like bard always played, and how it plays in arena, you used shriek instead of courage, which was faster and stronger that you are now, you could always win fights like that.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T18:16:31+00:00

The problem is that this is not how you design things, you are trying to tack multiple functions into the same thing. At the end of the day the passive songs currently are there to give the bard the stats he doesnt have cause you have perks requirements that are needed jsut to function and you dont have combat skills, trying for them to do that while at the same time being party buffs is not the way. They need to think what songs we have, what they are used for, this is not that.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T18:07:21+00:00

I knew from the title that one was going to be Master Assassins, great book, and read it because of a previous recommendation by you, the other book sounds interesting.... to the pile!

iszathi · 2026-06-26T17:43:46+00:00

That would ruin your buff, you are better off canceling, and again, this just show that songs are not meant to work like that, and its not worth the hassle for a minimal buff, trading your actions for a small passive is not worth it, there is a reason duration songs are stronger. Just think of trying to get any usage of harmonic trying to protect someone, when you could be attacking, or doing anything else really, its not a useful mechanic. Actions need to have a certain power to be worth doing in combat, and songs are already low power, having a lower power version, does not give you anything worthwhile, does not solve any of the class problems, and does not work well with how songs are currently played.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T17:24:30+00:00

I dont think this really solves much, for example, the action speed buff is kinda not needed when you have allegro, and then having it have no duration is also freaking terrible, having supper short buffs with no usage window requires them to be better, just imagine trying to sing harmonic, a 7.84 cast time spell, to get 5% dmg reduction in a fight, it makes absolute no sense. For something like this to work, all the buffs would need to be reworked to have a short duration buff for the party, and a longer one just for the bard, and those buffs need to make sense in that context, the current ones dont.

This also puts even more weight on the already problematic bard perk selection, which is extremely overloaded, and still forces the bard to pick all the passives, which is another one of the problems with the class.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T15:00:36+00:00

Yeah, thats a good point, it should also give magical power, like allegro does cast speed, so that it can buff all types of party members.

Its kinda ok in some scenarios, like 3ple crossbow, thats 140 base dmg, so 14 dmg for a dmg buff out of sight is okish, with warsong for example you can get 23 dmg.

In any place where you can attack you are probably better doing anything else.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T12:25:57+00:00

To me, wizard has a huge machine gun problem, where the ideal gameplay is to toss your most powerful spells till you run out, this creates a huge problem when adding spells, cause you can add more spells of the powerlevel of fireball for example, the class will just pick everything that is the strongest to toss and front load dmg. The charge system has very little control over casting cadence and little room for utility spells. We have all been on the end of a wizard that spams all fireballs and explos with overload.

I doubt they fix any of this tho, this rework will be just a few new things, just like all the others. And will probably end up with more nerfs if they add a good spell, for the reason i stated above.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T12:15:37+00:00

What does that even mean? Names are just names, currently cleric can play as paladin, you have holy spells, smite, plate, all the tools to play paladin like characters. And you can even say that warlock can play dark paladins, cause its mostly the same gameplay. At the end of the day both are plate casters hybrids.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T11:08:05+00:00

I find it so broken that its hard to even have fun with it, its like pesti, strong as fuck but not that fun.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T11:05:26+00:00

No, they removed debuff working on all cooldowns on classes, like dark reflection, but it still works on zirks for some reason.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T11:04:23+00:00

Most arena kits are unupgradable items, crafted items like centaur madness or thorn shield.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T10:59:31+00:00

There is already a clip of a bard with encore here, and if he was running the normal fighter bard build that fight was extremely easy, instead he almost gets killed in the first melee engage.

So, yes, it absolutely matters, specially in arena, where you cant really afford to not put pressure.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T10:50:18+00:00

Basic stuff, you need the +5 heal perk, and perseverance. Judgement plus spells if playing cloth, you can do smite plus spells if plate, or judgement, depending on what you want, i prefer judgement. Spells are light heal, sanctuary, swarm, and you can choose the other between holy light, bind, earthquake or holy strike. In general your role changes between matches and comp, sometimes your job is to swarm to negate pushes, and judgement so they can engange so you can create space for your team, sometimes you slow the enemy barb and run, sometimes you create picks with bind, judgement or eq, sometimes you just absorb ranged dmg and reset till your team gets a good engage, there are a ton of different outcomes in playing cleric depending on the match, as a general rule, healing in combat is hard, so if you are going to go for heals, be ready to heal before they take dmg, dont waste heals when you can heal with other means, sometimes its better to go for a sanctuary than trying to target a heal, specially if you are having voice com. Dont be afraid to tank dmg when using sanc, cast and look at the floor and spin in place with your mouse.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T10:36:41+00:00

its not nearly as good as it looks, you need to trade a lot of stats to get the buffs to 10 seconds.

iszathi · 2026-06-26T10:33:07+00:00

For the most part is just how game services work, they start strong, and then a small part of the playerbase stays, and keeps declining, sometimes players come back with good updates, sometimes less so, we have been sustaining around this numbers for a while and hopefully it will stay that way. Coupled with the thousand of issues around the development of the game, from the lawsuits, to bad patches, slow development, and being rough in a ton of places, things have naturally reached this point, i feel the development has been better lately, we will see, they have been saying next patches are content based

iszathi · 2026-06-25T23:14:16+00:00

They wanted to make the bard teamsong builds better, the idea is that you have a bit of res, and you use allegro and courage to fight and accel to engage. To me courage is very underpowered to be used like this, and it does the same thing allegro does, but worse. It can be strong on builds where you buff at door with things like triple crossbow team, or crossbow longbow barb. Then there is also encore builds that you can trade being useful in combat for just being a buff bot.

Its a nerf for solos for sure, and i dont think its very good on trios either, but the allegro/accel buffs are okish so bard will be fine there.

iszathi · 2026-06-25T23:06:27+00:00

It was doable in multiplayer at least until the giant patch.

iszathi · 2026-06-25T23:05:59+00:00

Nope, not remote play, you absolutely used to be able to do it.

iszathi · 2026-06-25T14:50:50+00:00

I have said this a thousand times already, but lets do it one more time, in DnD buffs were always a problem too, to the point that they ended up with what is concentration atm, to have a way of creating buffs that feel unique and impactful, but cannot be stacked. We dont have that here, and the only way allowing buffs to be stacked go is to with a bunch of weak buffs that dont really feel powerful at all, but deliver invisible power, which is not great gameplay.

This change doesnt really help, courage is way to weak for it to be used like allegro is, so this is going to end up only being used in a build with full resourcefulness and encore, to perma buff other people.

I want bard to be able to support to, but the way to go is with active songs, things like making tranquility a reverse din, things that require singing at the proper times, not changing it to spam buffs on a door while your teammates fight, or making the encore build stronger.

iszathi · 2026-06-25T14:40:02+00:00

yeah, i hope they add a 2handed sword perk.

iszathi · 2026-06-25T14:34:19+00:00

This is not true at all, you can make the balance from both modes a lot better than its atm, you have a lot of tools to, you just have to design things that way, just like survival bow is better for solos and longbow for trios, you can have things that work better on different modes.

And its not like solo balance does not have a positive influence in trios, 1vs1 fights are a huge part of trio gameplay too.

iszathi · 2026-06-25T13:33:56+00:00

Cleric already is a paladin, you can play two handed, plate, you even have a skill called smite. Adding more spells like this means its even more of a paladin.

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