Idea for Hate Management Songs

[Siven]

Name: Malice Coranto
Level: TBD
Effect: Increases the target monster's hate toward whoever it is attacking.

Name: Nightingale Nocturne
Level: TBD
Effect: Decreases the target monster's hate toward whoever it is attacking.

The idea here is to spice up the bard's life, and give us something that more visibly and immediately contributes to the PT. Melees have to time their renkeis and abilities, while mages can look forward to MBs and healing, which all give a sense of satisfaction when pulled off successfully. We on the other hand pretty much do everything on a routine that rarely changes from fight to fight. Giving us some control over hate management will go a long way toward keeping us awake in those hours on nonstop pulling marathons.

The two songs should each take 2-sec to cast like all offensive songs, and have a 24-sec recycle time. They cancel each other out, and work by applying a multiplier to the hate value of whoever is on the top of the monster's hate list at any given moment, which is usually whoever the mob is attacking. Exactly how much they lessen or add is a matter of fine tuning, but their effects should stay constant until worn off, unlike Provoke which diminishes over a very short time. For example:

PLD 'vokes mob, generates 50 hate points; the mob starts hitting the PLD; you sing Coranto so now the PLD has 100 hate points on the list (assuming x2 modifier and barring other factors).

DRK piles on Berserk/Last Resort/etc. and uses Guilottine, generating 200 hate points; mob uses DRK as chew toy; you sing Nocturne and immediately cuts the hate value to 100.


P.S.
Nocturne: a calm, reflective piece of music.
Coranto: an Italian dance of rapid tempo in simple triple time.

[Xelios]

Wow. That sounds like a great idea to me :cool:

[Teffie]

Yea... then BRD's would be wanted so badly haha

How about giving us a Job Ability too -.-'
Something like Elemental Seal but for Songs would be nice.

[SyNapSe]

Something like Elemental Seal but for Songs would be nice.

Unfortunately that's our hour two hour.. lol. :/

It's a nice idea, but I'm already busy enough. It seems like since I've made the 40 levels I've barely broke out the trusty dagger/sword. Part of this is due to a lot of fighting in CN.. where they like to Cocoon multiple times.

What I would like is a song that gave ME hate, and then of course one to release it also :) As a Hume, i'm generally standing around w/ basically 650+ worthless HPs most of the time.

The other day we we're on chain 4, so rather low on MP, and our BLM got DC while we had already pulled another Soldier Crawler. So, it wasn't going well, WHM, myself and PLD out of MP, but the crawler was almost down. The PLD got into Red Hps and I tried everything I could to pull it off him.. I used Sleep, and then I tried to look around to see if it was clear to use Horde it finished eating our poor PLD. If I could have just drawn aggro I could have safely tanked it for 4 rounds easily.. enough to save a life. :/

[_Revere_]

I think these are great ideas but I don’t think they will work out for the best.

I’ve played an Enchanter on Everquest for 6 years and I’ll state this now, I know this isn’t EQ, but certain mechanics between FFXI and EQ work very similarly.

I remember the Luclin expansion when they release Enchanter spells that worked closely to what you described. The best ones gave 10% more agro to your target for a short duration while another decreased agro by 10%, being excited by these new spells I eagerly acquired them and tested them out for months. They turned out to be useless in my opinion and this was also the consensus the Enchanter community (Casters Realm). We all realized that SoE couldn’t make these spells stronger without unbalancing the game, so they ended up in the last page of our spell books.

The problem is, agro control is an art, which EQ and FFXI have balanced out pretty well. If your DPS does too much damage, the DPS dies the WHM runs oom and the Party is a wipe. If your Tank receives too much damage, the WHM gets heal agro and dies and the party is a wipe. It’s balance, its control and it’s learned through knowing your character and through experience.

So Square isn’t going to give Bards a couple songs that allow you control the agro of a battle, they will throw us a bone that might make a bad tank hold agro minimally better or allow a DRK who can’t control agro die a few seconds later. And at that point we have to ask ourselves, are these songs really worth the effort, or am I better off playing other songs that do affect the battle more effectively.

Anyways these songs were always requested by the worst players in pick-up groups that wanted every buff and handed out to the lowest enchanters on raids too make them feel useful.

Sorry to be a downer on this idea, but on a side note, I think we already affect agro in a positive way with our songs.

[Leri]

I'd much rather have some job abilities. How bout one that reduces cast time to zero for a few songs? Hell. Even ONE song. I'd be happy with.

You can't really use SV if people are dieing and the healer is OOM. You are healing..

If i could use that and then SV abd Ballad 2 the healer ... :cool:

[kilfrg7864]

can you cast those songs on just 1 person?

[Sylvanis]

it'd be nice for an ability or if they made our 2 hour make it so there is no recast time for our songs. would help a lot of if sleep got resisted or something. it would still have the regular casting time of songs though. maybe...