A wish for a Bard Update

[Karinya]

The main problem with resist songs is that they count against the total song limit. A WHM can cast Protectra, Shellra, Baraera and Barsilencera and have them all in effect at once - and then cast Regen and Haste on top of that. If a Bard wants to increase your resistance he has to give up increasing your attack or accuracy or MP regen... not very popular, to say the least.

The other problem is that negative status attacks are random - they're generally only one of a bunch of TP moves that mob has - and that they are very rarely fully resisted even with resist spells/songs, so someone still often has to cast a -na spell, at which point it doesn't matter that it would have worn off earlier than normal.

Resistance songs should have their own dedicated slots - one carol, one status resist (the same way bar spells already work) - plus the two general purpose buff song slots, then they'd be used a lot more. And status resist effects should have a decent chance of 100% resist, not just a few seconds less duration on something you're going to -na or echo drop away anyway.

That, and some better soloing ability for bards, I think would be good. Improving the things they're already good at would be going too far, though.

[Genso]

Savage Blade !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[x1ang]

Considering how it sounds that SE is unsure on how to change BRD so that we aren't singing generally the same songs from 0-75 (excluding extremely special situations), it would be interesting - however - if they promote a "3rd song" to make it more dynamic. It wouldn't be another slot to fit a 3rd song exactly, but lets say there's an additional effect when two types of songs are combined (and these additional effects being worthwhile to give up 1/2 song slots for a less used song). How would that sound? Oo

Probably though, if there was such a thing like this, there would still end up being a single song combination that would outperform the rest xD.

[Balodoth]

That would be an interesting way to encourage song variety, but it would be difficult to impliment. How many different combinations are there? Right now more than 3,000. That's a lot of combinations. Even if you take out 2 Preludes, 2 Ballads, 2 Madrigals, 4 Minuets, and Hymnus, you still have about 2,000 combinations to choose bonuses for. At first I thought secret combinations would be awesome, but the work behind it. . . Sorry, It's just to difficult to do.

On the other hand, allowing a 3rd song for certain, lesser-used songs sounds good. The only problem is that BRD can keep pretty busy at mid to high levels with what they do now. Perhaps if there were to allow a 3rd limited-type song that boosted the other two songs when in effect would give bards motivation to try fitting it in.