The bard talent is pretty bad. Not in terms of power, in that regard it's extremely strong, but it has two main problems as I see it. Firstly, it's not really possible to play as a bard. You spend 2 seconds playing a song and then there's no real bard gameplay for the next minute or 2. Secondly, some of the skills seem completely out of balance. Lullaby and Battlefield Overture are two main examples. There are other minor issues too like the fact that having a second bard is literally worthless since the worse bard will only ever overwrite the good bards' buffs.
Here are some changes I'd make to fix these issues and hopefully make it enjoyable to be a bard. Most of the numbers suggested here should be taken with a boulder of salt. They would require playtesting before finalisation, but they should roughly show what the changes are going for.
1 Flow (new system)
Flow is a new mechanic that applies when using a microphone or musical instruments. Whenever flow is triggered by a music skill, the duration of any music buff currently applied to the player is reset. For example, if a player uses enduring melody, waits 5 seconds then triggers flow, the effect will end 15 seconds after it started as opposed to 10. Also, when flow is triggered, the user gains a flow charge up to a maximum of 10. The charges expire if flow is not reapplied within 15 seconds.
Each bard has their own flow; it is not a party-wide system like bachram boost.
2 Battlefield Overture
Battlefield Overture now lasts for 5 seconds at all ranks and has 30 second cooldown. The aim of this is to make players actually think about when to use it and when not to.
Instead of boosting max/min damage on the character sheet, a percentage increase is applied to all damage dealt including magic/alchemy damage. This increase will be smaller than it currently is (around 15% at r1 if no other buffs are applied). Damage received will increase by the same amount.
Now adds a flow charge.
3 Enduring Melody
Enduring Melody now lasts for 10 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown. All effects from enduring melody will be reduced. Enduring melody now adds a flow charge.
4 Vivace
Vivace now lasts for 10 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown. The attack speed boost from vivace will be reduced. Now adds a flow charge.
5 March Song
March song's speed boost will be reduced. Now adds a flow charge
6 Harvest Song
Harvest song's base gathering speed increase will be reduced.
7 Playing Instrument
The playing instrument skill effect will be increased significantly (e.g. from 15% to ~45%). Playing instrument's effect will no longer apply when not playing an instrument. This should offset the reduced effects for many of the music skills, but only if an instrument or microphone is in use.
8 Deceptive Cadence (new skill)
This skill requires an instrument or microphone to use. It occurs instantly and stuns every enemy in a range of 2000 for 0.1 seconds and cancel any charged skills. This is meant to act as an interruption to many enemies rather than a "real stun". The stun + cancel applies to all enemies, but the same enemy cannot be interrupted again for 20 seconds. This adds a flow charge.
9 Crescendo (new skill)
Consumes all of a player's flow and deals damage to all enemies in a conical area in front of the player. Targets take 100 - 1000% damage and are stunned for 0.3 - 3.0 seconds based on the number of flow charges consumed.
10 Dischord
Dischord now adds a flow charge.
11 Lullaby
Lullaby now adds a flow charge.
Lullaby now needs to be maintained; once it stops being played, all monsters wake up.
Lullaby's success rate is increased to 90% but if an enemy fails to sleep, they will never sleep.
The duration of lullaby can no longer extend beyond 20 seconds under any circumstances. At this point the player stops using the skill at it goes into cooldown.
Sleep duration now takes target CP into account (the specifics of how this should scale need consideration, but higher CP enemies should wake up faster).
The cooldown is now increased to 40 seconds.
12 Musical knowledge
Musical knowledge no longer activates at random. Instead, it is linked to flow. Using a musical skill with 4-7 flow triggers an excellent performance, and 8-10 triggers an inspiring performance. If the same song is being maintained, it is automatically upgraded to the next tier when flow hits 4 or 7.
13 All skills
Once a buff has been applied, the player stops playing the song. I'm not sure why they keep playing right now since anyone who was out of range when a buff starts cannot receive it from any of the subsequent autoplays.
Any music buff skill and lullaby can now trigger magical music.
The music buff duration bonus (provided by the music talent, reforges, etc.) will have its effect reduced by 90% however, it will apply to how long a flow can be maintained.
It is now possible to be affected by multiple music buffs at once, if each buff comes from a different player. When two players give the same buff, the most recently applied buff is taken (i.e. you cannot have two battlefield overtures a once but you could have overture from bard A while bard b gives vivace to the same party).
Since many skills are now much less spammable and excellent/inspiring performances have changed, most training requirements will change to match.
Skill specific duration reforges will be adjusted so they're still proportionally about as good as they are now (i.e. a reforge that gives a 20% duration boost now would give a 20% boost if these changes were made).
The playing instrument changes and the new flow mechanic should both encourage players to be dedicated bards. This should increase the gap between someone who quickly sings overture whenever it runs out and someone who decides they want to primarily be a bard. Having players actively maintain their buffs should give bard mains something to actually do between recasts and the ability to keep an inspiring performance going or eventually lose flow for a large amount of damage acts as the reward for doing this.
Battlefield overture is made deliberately impossible for one bard to maintain by using flow. This should encourage players to use other buffs and think about when it's time to use overture. Ideally, people would be considering if it's worth using straight away of whether they should use other buffs until they have enough flow for an inspiring performance. Or maybe they try to save it to coincide with some of their party's hardest hitting moves. Beyond that, using it now carries a risk. The point is that using overture should be a decision from a bard figuring out what's best for their party, not the default state when running anything where enemies don't die instantly.
Lullaby is a mess currently. Enemies are either completely immune or can be put to sleep for upwards of 2 minutes with about a second of work from a player. A skill that is so powerful it has to be balanced by being made unusable seems like a bad idea. The goal here is to require some commitment to keep enemies asleep while limiting it's power against stronger enemies to a point where it doesn't have to be outright blocked.
Harvest song was deliberately left mostly unchanged since it works fine as is and dance of death was ignored because I'm not even sure why that skill exists.
All in all, this should make bard a reasonable primary talent, curb some of the damage creep (though not a lot to be honest) and create a few fun new mechanics to play with.
Comments
There is no consideration or mention given to: Special Upgrades, Reforge Pool, Enchantments, Weapon Upgrades, Stats used to calculate damage, and the general investment that players have already sunk into bard effects (you're pretty much saying "welp, you're screwed and everything you spent resources on building up is now moot, due to this new idea!"). The damaging skills you've presented don't provide any insight as to what any of damage is based upon in terms of stats or reforges.
This post doesn't read like it'd fit in to a Mabinogi game at all, actually. It lacks a key understanding of how the game works in terms of combat and is focused more on the superficiality of converting a supporting life talent into yet another combat talent (...just for the sake of doing so? What is the goal in doing this? It seems like the aim is to just nerf everything else for the sake of this idea of "being a bard.") It's reminding me of the healing "issue."
What if we instead focused on simply improving what we already have in bard, but keeping it in line with its intended purpose of being a support talent? It seems like your key problem is:
1. that you don't like how we can just buff-and-go.
2. how multiple "bards" in a party ends with the one with the highest boosts executing the buff and ...
3. lower buffing bards sometimes overwrite it with weaker buffs.
For #1, I don't actually know why is this a bad thing.
For #2, this is probably an issue of someone simply being a better bard due to whaling out on reforges and enchants. This "issue" likely only exists if you pride yourself on "being a bard" and literally nothing else. It's kind of like the healing "issue," where there is this expectation that a supporting talent is supposed to take lead as if it were a combat talent. I can't say I'm understanding why someone being a better bard than you and I is a cause of an entire remake of a currently functional talent concept.
For #3, this is solved by simply having the system ignore buffs from bard effect buffers who play the same buff, but with a lower buff power.
However, I do agree that magical music scrolls could see more use in various ways. They used to be very relevant to the gameplay aspect before the Macbeth update. However, I don't quite know where they can be re-inserted into relevance without breaking the delicacy of our gameplay, aside from amplifying duration or effect power of the buffs. And I don't see a need to go out of our way to force Enduring Melody to be useful in content that generally doesn't care about your defense stats at certain points (Tech Duinn, Rabbie Phantasm) or Dischord (which clearly isn't meant to be a DPS skill), but there is some merit in the idea that we could think of a way to allow multiple buffs to be active at once to allow some different "bard aspects." Even then, you'll still get outplayed in some way and at some point, by someone with deeper pockets.
Special upgrades don't affect music currently and would continue not to affect it. The playing instrument effect, normal performance effect, excellent performance effect and inspiring performance effect would go unchanged. It didn't seem relevant to mention them because of this. I should have mentioned the individual skill duration reforges (I'll add that now). My first thought is that they should scale so they still add the same amount of time proportionally (e.g. if your reforge is increasing your enduring melody time by 20% it will increase the new time by 20%) but that sounds like something that needs play testing to confirm one way or another. Lastly, damage calculation would not change at all; there's no reason for it to. I believe that's everything.
At present, music is listed as a combat talent when rebirthing. Harvest song, composing and debatably march song are aren't either a passive boost for combat or outright combat skills. No changes were made for composing, and the other two would have their numbers adjusted to account for the change in playing instrument; essentially leaving them where they started. If someone liked music but didn't care at all about combat, they would end up in exactly the same situation so I'm not sure what you mean about converting a life talent into a combat talent.
1. Someone being able to throw out a quick buff isn't a problem in and of itself, but some people like to play as dedicated supports in games, and currently a person who chose bard with that goal in mind gets to take meaningful action per minute. That can drop to 0 if someone else can spit out a better overture.
2. As I said in point 1, some people like to actively play support. I've seen people try to do it in Mabi, and find out they're not really helping anyone. This is made worse by the fact that as you said, "whaling out on reforges" tends to decide who the better bard is, and the person who "whaled out" is also likely a more effective attacker too.
3. I thought about writing that down, but it's not that simple. Let's say I have rank 5 harvest song with every available music buff effect boost while you have rank 1 harvest song and nothing else. Who's is better? Yours gives a higher gathering/production success rate but mine will give higher gathering speed. What if one person reforged for duration while the other reforged to maximise the buff's effect? The conditions for determining which buff is "better" are always going to be unclear and I assume that's why it doesn't already work this way.
A big part of this is to give lesser used skills (such as enduring melody) some usefulness. I just think it kinda sucks that the whole talent is reduced to battlefield overture or harvest song when you're crafting. I know that Dischord isn't meant to be a DPS skill; nothing here changes that. What would change about Dischord is that using it would now contribute to giving out better buffs.
You're right. I made a semantic error and forgot to change that to just say "supporting talent."
But, my other point does still stand, in that the suggestion doesn't demonstrate a key understanding in the fundamental concepts of our combat system. You didn't seem to understand what I was getting at in the passage before, so I'll try to explain better:
I'm saying that damaging skills in talents have two common things. The first thing is a stat that determine base damage values in the character info window. The second thing is a skill with an apparent damage multiplier that scales off of the aforementioned values. You can't, for example, simply say a skill has an effect where "Targets take 100-1000% damage" and not explain what the damage is drawn from or multiplying as a value. Our damage in this game is readily calculated and observed through relatively simple formula and you're not using the base aspects of the formula or establishing a property (Does it work like Death Mark? Does it work like a damage skill?). Additionally, if you understand the damage that we're already pumping out with Perseus weaponry, you don't say things like "target takes 100-1000%" damage without any context whatsoever. If damage creep is an issue for you, I don't see why you'd ever even suggest multiplying [Drop Kick/Lance Charge damage] x 100-1000%.
This is why I'm questioning your neglectfulness in addressing Special Upgrades and Reforges and overall combat: there is a very strong possibility you've overlooked a part of this system and an "unintended consequence" will occur. For example, you said "special upgrades don't affect music," when it clearly affects Dance of Death (a skill you quizzically didn't mention in your revamp post) and Dischord. If by "music" you meant "buff effects," then disregard my technicalities and semantics. But, you must understand and address what issues could arise, because music blends both buff and battle and skills in your post amplify the battle part to a degree where Special Upgrades logically should and would be an aspect involved.
1. Understandable, but they need to find a different game and one without combat and doesn't allow class changing/mixing. A common thing in MMOs with combat is that if you're allowed to change classes at will or damage is a necessity in any way to win a battle, you must be able to fight and deal damage. I understand that your intent is to rectify this by simply adding damage capabilities to bard and forcing more weight on the impact of barding, but that's not the problem. The problem is that barding in itself isn't an offensive damaging concept. It's always generally been "support the classes that do the damage." The fact that you can buff-and-go actually made bard more relevant to this game, because it's so convenient to use and doesn't involve much bloat. Lastly, there are going to be circumstances where you're doing content and not in a party. Most of that stuff you're suggesting is already made irrelevant by that reality alone.
2. Honestly, I understand their frustration. I've thrown my fair share of gold at buying ridiculously reforged bard gear and enchants and still found myself out barded by someone with a full set of Pure/Technical/etc enchants and a triple-roll gloomy + a bard effect echostone. And yet, considering how the buffs multiply our damage as opposed to simply adding it, I understand why you'd need to whale so hard on the buffs as it's practically just free extra damage. The gate matches the benefit. Generally speaking, a person who can pump out a decent Battlefield Overture buff is still relevant to barding in a party as long as their buff isn't drastically underwhelming by comparison to the highest buffer. Still, you have to accept that no matter the game, someone's going to out play you somewhere and it's better to have a backup plan and strategy instead of putting every egg in a single basket. This is not to say that we can't still improve barding, but this aspect is way too delicate to touch without breaking more things.
3. The answer here comes down to user effort. You discuss when each person applies their buff. Done. This is the common aspect of party play that goes neglected: communication.
Perhaps the answer here is one of an "Occam's Razor" type: Rework Enduring Melody to prolong status effects on enemies (Death mark, Rage Impact, Smokescreen) -- or -- extend skill durations. Now, that would get ED some combat use.