Rhapsodic
Member
Good Morning All!
I have been playing a troub for nearly 16 years. I have played the class in most expansions at a high level, and I have even done a stint as a Dirge (but everyone experiments in college right?).
The Troubs job in the raid and group as it has been, is (in general) to buff mages and debuff mobs. We offer other utility certainly but I am going to focus on our buffing and our debuffing. Currently the troub offers only one spell (Upbeat Tempo) that isn't outclassed by the buffs given by either the Dirge or a Tank class (Specifically SK or Berserker) even for Mages.
Let's get the easy part out of the way now. Upbeat Tempo is a great ability. Jester's cap is a good ability. These buff's are class defining and are really the BEST and only special thing the Troub has to offer. I do think that Upbeat Tempo could be increased to 4 or 5 ticks without it becoming totally overpowered, OR it could stay the way it is and be turned into a group buff, both are options to make it more useful. (I think the same for Battle Cry for the Dirges)
Jester's cap is fine the way it is, the change to Fervor before was enough to make it worthwhile. It could be tuned up by 15-20% depending on the other things I will get into.
I am going to break down the following into 3 sections: Temporary Buffs, Persistent Buffs, Debuffs and order from most important to fix, to least important to fix.
Temporary buffs:
Mindful Melody II - "Increases effectiveness of mage and priest elemental, magical, and noxious damage abilities by XXX.XX." This needs to be modified to the following "Increases effectiveness of mage, priest, and the caster's elemental, magical, and noxious damage abilities by XXX.XX."
To put it simply, it is asinine that part of our epic spell doesn't affect our own abilities. Every other class's spell affects their abilities as well as the groups.
Perfection of the Maestro/Maestro's Harmony - POTM used to be a class defining ability, the proc was great and the stat increase also was nice. The proc now is next to useless and the stat buff is .01% increase to the raid's potency… which is laughable at best and sad at worst. It has slipped into obscurity in favor of Maestro's Harmony which gives flat Ability Double Cast increase to the raid. At the highest level of play, there are no classes that are missing ADC checks even being ready for T5 raid mobs. It is simply an easy stat to get nowadays.
My suggestion is:
Buff Perfection of the Maestro to give (at Ancient) 150,000 Potency, and increase the damage of the proc by 50-100%
This is not exaggerated. When Potency numbers are at the place they are now, you need a buff this strong to make a difference. If Defiler's can give 150k Potency Troub's should certainly be able to give that much. This would allow for a choice between the two buffs. You can choose to buff the raids ADC in fights in which you might just be on the cusp of a check, or you can choose to buff the damage the raid is doing if your raid has already hit the ADC check.
Energizing Ballad - Once a class defining ability, now is simply a fluff spell.
My suggestion:
Increase in Potency of target should either be swapped to Crit Bonus + Crit Bonus Overcap (around 500-600 would make sense) or to tune up the potency to 30-50k
Countersong - The additional buff of this spell was a very nice change. Considering the usefulness as a damage blocker is basically nothing in the current game. 20k Pot is not nothing, but could stand to be bumped to 50k for the group, given potency numbers right now are insanely high.
Persistent Buffs:
Raxxyl’s Rousing Tune - This is a joke of a buff and needs an extreme tune up. At Ancient with max level Vampiric Requiem active the buff gives 141.9 Crit bonus, and increases mitigation to Elemental Nox and Arcane by 2.4k
Crit bonus amount needs to be multiplied by 10 (yes that means it needs to give 1.4k Crit bonus). Tanks, Coercers, and even some DPS classes give that much if not more AND even Field Medic adornments give the group 384 Crit Bonus.
Mitigation increase can either be taken away entirely, OR be increased by 10-20x to give 20k to 100k mit increase. That would be a 1% - 5% increase in our current resist numbers… Do I need to explain this?
This persistent buff is arguably THE DEFINING BUFF of the troubadour. It started as a buff to INT for the Mages in the group. As stats have changed it has had a few changes but this is a MUST FIX.
Alin’s Serene Serenade - This is another class defining ability. The ability to decrease hate for high dps mages used to be extremely important. As this has become less and less useful and other versions of hate transfer became more powerful, the addition of the Crit Bonus Overcap for Mages only was needed to make the buff even somewhat useful. At Ancient with max leveled Vampiric Requiem the amount of CBOC added is 537.5 to mages only.
This should be remedied in 2 ways, the number should be doubled (1.2k CBOC, is given by plenty of classes right now), AND the predicate of only mages should be taken off, if it MUST be a spell that splits Mages and Tanks in this way, then make the whole spell “if not fighter” Leaving the rest of the group (including the CASTER) to benefit from the buff.
Song of Magic and Allegro - These two spells give straight ADC. To keep it simple, they either need to give more than around 20 per spell, OR they need to give different stats.
My suggestion: put all of the ADC into Allegro making Allegro 40-50 ADC, and make Song of Magic into a Fervor and Fervor Overcap buff for the group. 100 Fervor Overcap and 80 Fervor would be a solid number.
Allegretto - 16 professional spell fervor is just a weird buff to have. This used to be a haste/autocentric buff. I say make it that again. Give it DPS, Haste, Weapon Damage Bonus, and Flurry.
The essence of the troub was that we had so many good buffs that we had to pick and choose in order to min/max for our raid/group. Now we are so underpowered it almost doesn't matter which concentration buffs we choose.
Requiem of Reflection - This would almost be a good buff if it wasn't a 10% chance to proc when receiving damage. Simply put, it needs to be triggered by something else. We just simply are not being hit by enough hostile spells ever to make it useful.
The following buffs I don’t know what to do with… but they need to be looked at
Rejuvenating Celebration - a once useful increase to a groups survivability, is now obscure as healing numbers are mostly based in Wards. Maybe this could be turned into a regenerating ward that helps healers with our survivability?
Bria’s Inspiring Ballad - The majority of our power feeding utility comes from Reverberations and Tap Essence and that can fill a group in a tick faster than this spell can give the group 3% of their power. Maybe this could turn into a “Makes the group consume less power by 50%” kind of spell? I am not sure…
Arcane Symphony/Elemental Concerto - Even with the wards, these are useless. Somehow the Dirge Nox version of these spells is completely overpowered and these are completely useless… I don't know how to fix it.
Debuffs: These are all roughly the same as far as priority of fixes
I recognize that changes to debuffs have a stacking effect and for that reason I have been relatively conservative with my suggestions to increase. I just want them to actually help groups and raids kill things and not just be green stacks sitting under the name of the target for the whole fight.
Disheartening Descant - “Decreases Potency of target encounter by X.X%” needs to be doubled or tripled. 10% reduction in potency for the target encounter would make this debuff useful.
The buff given to group members from the AA “Increases Str and Agi of group members” needs to be changed to “Increases all base attributes of group members by XXXXX” Number can stay the same but a 10-15% bump would also be nice.
Zander’s Choral Rebuff - “Increases arcane damage done to target encounter” should either be buffed, or changed to “Increases all damage done to target encounter”
“Decreases Combat Mitigation of target encounter by XXX.X” should be increased by 10x.
“Decreases Mitigation of target encounter vs elemental, noxious and arcane damage by xxxx” should get a slight increase.
Demoralizing Processional - “Decreases Potency of target encounter by 5.9” needs to be changed to “Decreases Potency of target encounter by 5.9%” This could use a slight bump as well, but if the Disheartening descant gets increased as well, maybe it would make sense to change this to a different stat decrease? Health? Crit Bonus? Something?!
Vexing Verses - “Decreases Combat Mitgation of target by XXX.X” should be increased by 20-30%
Let me be clear, I do also think the Combat Arts and Spells that we have are woefully underpowered, but those are not the class defining parts of the Troub. I also think RO/VC need to be reworked as well, if not reverted back to where they were before Den Challenge in VoV. I don't want the class to be necessarily better at dpsing just because it would be fun. I want the class to have a purpose outside of procing big procs from our group mates. I want us to not have buffs and debuffs that are worse than those given by tanks and DPS.
Thank you for your time looking through my suggestions.
I have been playing a troub for nearly 16 years. I have played the class in most expansions at a high level, and I have even done a stint as a Dirge (but everyone experiments in college right?).
The Troubs job in the raid and group as it has been, is (in general) to buff mages and debuff mobs. We offer other utility certainly but I am going to focus on our buffing and our debuffing. Currently the troub offers only one spell (Upbeat Tempo) that isn't outclassed by the buffs given by either the Dirge or a Tank class (Specifically SK or Berserker) even for Mages.
Let's get the easy part out of the way now. Upbeat Tempo is a great ability. Jester's cap is a good ability. These buff's are class defining and are really the BEST and only special thing the Troub has to offer. I do think that Upbeat Tempo could be increased to 4 or 5 ticks without it becoming totally overpowered, OR it could stay the way it is and be turned into a group buff, both are options to make it more useful. (I think the same for Battle Cry for the Dirges)
Jester's cap is fine the way it is, the change to Fervor before was enough to make it worthwhile. It could be tuned up by 15-20% depending on the other things I will get into.
I am going to break down the following into 3 sections: Temporary Buffs, Persistent Buffs, Debuffs and order from most important to fix, to least important to fix.
Temporary buffs:
Mindful Melody II - "Increases effectiveness of mage and priest elemental, magical, and noxious damage abilities by XXX.XX." This needs to be modified to the following "Increases effectiveness of mage, priest, and the caster's elemental, magical, and noxious damage abilities by XXX.XX."
To put it simply, it is asinine that part of our epic spell doesn't affect our own abilities. Every other class's spell affects their abilities as well as the groups.
Perfection of the Maestro/Maestro's Harmony - POTM used to be a class defining ability, the proc was great and the stat increase also was nice. The proc now is next to useless and the stat buff is .01% increase to the raid's potency… which is laughable at best and sad at worst. It has slipped into obscurity in favor of Maestro's Harmony which gives flat Ability Double Cast increase to the raid. At the highest level of play, there are no classes that are missing ADC checks even being ready for T5 raid mobs. It is simply an easy stat to get nowadays.
My suggestion is:
Buff Perfection of the Maestro to give (at Ancient) 150,000 Potency, and increase the damage of the proc by 50-100%
This is not exaggerated. When Potency numbers are at the place they are now, you need a buff this strong to make a difference. If Defiler's can give 150k Potency Troub's should certainly be able to give that much. This would allow for a choice between the two buffs. You can choose to buff the raids ADC in fights in which you might just be on the cusp of a check, or you can choose to buff the damage the raid is doing if your raid has already hit the ADC check.
Energizing Ballad - Once a class defining ability, now is simply a fluff spell.
My suggestion:
Increase in Potency of target should either be swapped to Crit Bonus + Crit Bonus Overcap (around 500-600 would make sense) or to tune up the potency to 30-50k
Countersong - The additional buff of this spell was a very nice change. Considering the usefulness as a damage blocker is basically nothing in the current game. 20k Pot is not nothing, but could stand to be bumped to 50k for the group, given potency numbers right now are insanely high.
Persistent Buffs:
Raxxyl’s Rousing Tune - This is a joke of a buff and needs an extreme tune up. At Ancient with max level Vampiric Requiem active the buff gives 141.9 Crit bonus, and increases mitigation to Elemental Nox and Arcane by 2.4k
Crit bonus amount needs to be multiplied by 10 (yes that means it needs to give 1.4k Crit bonus). Tanks, Coercers, and even some DPS classes give that much if not more AND even Field Medic adornments give the group 384 Crit Bonus.
Mitigation increase can either be taken away entirely, OR be increased by 10-20x to give 20k to 100k mit increase. That would be a 1% - 5% increase in our current resist numbers… Do I need to explain this?
This persistent buff is arguably THE DEFINING BUFF of the troubadour. It started as a buff to INT for the Mages in the group. As stats have changed it has had a few changes but this is a MUST FIX.
Alin’s Serene Serenade - This is another class defining ability. The ability to decrease hate for high dps mages used to be extremely important. As this has become less and less useful and other versions of hate transfer became more powerful, the addition of the Crit Bonus Overcap for Mages only was needed to make the buff even somewhat useful. At Ancient with max leveled Vampiric Requiem the amount of CBOC added is 537.5 to mages only.
This should be remedied in 2 ways, the number should be doubled (1.2k CBOC, is given by plenty of classes right now), AND the predicate of only mages should be taken off, if it MUST be a spell that splits Mages and Tanks in this way, then make the whole spell “if not fighter” Leaving the rest of the group (including the CASTER) to benefit from the buff.
Song of Magic and Allegro - These two spells give straight ADC. To keep it simple, they either need to give more than around 20 per spell, OR they need to give different stats.
My suggestion: put all of the ADC into Allegro making Allegro 40-50 ADC, and make Song of Magic into a Fervor and Fervor Overcap buff for the group. 100 Fervor Overcap and 80 Fervor would be a solid number.
Allegretto - 16 professional spell fervor is just a weird buff to have. This used to be a haste/autocentric buff. I say make it that again. Give it DPS, Haste, Weapon Damage Bonus, and Flurry.
The essence of the troub was that we had so many good buffs that we had to pick and choose in order to min/max for our raid/group. Now we are so underpowered it almost doesn't matter which concentration buffs we choose.
Requiem of Reflection - This would almost be a good buff if it wasn't a 10% chance to proc when receiving damage. Simply put, it needs to be triggered by something else. We just simply are not being hit by enough hostile spells ever to make it useful.
The following buffs I don’t know what to do with… but they need to be looked at
Rejuvenating Celebration - a once useful increase to a groups survivability, is now obscure as healing numbers are mostly based in Wards. Maybe this could be turned into a regenerating ward that helps healers with our survivability?
Bria’s Inspiring Ballad - The majority of our power feeding utility comes from Reverberations and Tap Essence and that can fill a group in a tick faster than this spell can give the group 3% of their power. Maybe this could turn into a “Makes the group consume less power by 50%” kind of spell? I am not sure…
Arcane Symphony/Elemental Concerto - Even with the wards, these are useless. Somehow the Dirge Nox version of these spells is completely overpowered and these are completely useless… I don't know how to fix it.
Debuffs: These are all roughly the same as far as priority of fixes
I recognize that changes to debuffs have a stacking effect and for that reason I have been relatively conservative with my suggestions to increase. I just want them to actually help groups and raids kill things and not just be green stacks sitting under the name of the target for the whole fight.
Disheartening Descant - “Decreases Potency of target encounter by X.X%” needs to be doubled or tripled. 10% reduction in potency for the target encounter would make this debuff useful.
The buff given to group members from the AA “Increases Str and Agi of group members” needs to be changed to “Increases all base attributes of group members by XXXXX” Number can stay the same but a 10-15% bump would also be nice.
Zander’s Choral Rebuff - “Increases arcane damage done to target encounter” should either be buffed, or changed to “Increases all damage done to target encounter”
“Decreases Combat Mitigation of target encounter by XXX.X” should be increased by 10x.
“Decreases Mitigation of target encounter vs elemental, noxious and arcane damage by xxxx” should get a slight increase.
Demoralizing Processional - “Decreases Potency of target encounter by 5.9” needs to be changed to “Decreases Potency of target encounter by 5.9%” This could use a slight bump as well, but if the Disheartening descant gets increased as well, maybe it would make sense to change this to a different stat decrease? Health? Crit Bonus? Something?!
Vexing Verses - “Decreases Combat Mitgation of target by XXX.X” should be increased by 20-30%
Let me be clear, I do also think the Combat Arts and Spells that we have are woefully underpowered, but those are not the class defining parts of the Troub. I also think RO/VC need to be reworked as well, if not reverted back to where they were before Den Challenge in VoV. I don't want the class to be necessarily better at dpsing just because it would be fun. I want the class to have a purpose outside of procing big procs from our group mates. I want us to not have buffs and debuffs that are worse than those given by tanks and DPS.
Thank you for your time looking through my suggestions.