Feldon 
From the EQ2 Forums:
Hello Troubadors!
We have finally completed the first draft of our Troubador revamp and would like to get your feedback on these ideas. Our primary goal is to give Troubadors more options during combat that can have a clear effect on the fight. Viewed individually, some of the changes may be considered minor, but we hope all these small and moderate changes will add up to a much more dynamic and interesting class.
- Countersong no longer has an immunity timer. It now lasts for 12 seconds, does not dispel when an ability is used and reduces the target’s AE Auto Attack Chance by up to 100% as well as ability damage.
We really like the potential Countersong has to make an obvious difference in group and raid content, and we’re trying yet another implementation to see if it can reach that potential more often. One note: Potency is currently calculated at the beginning of the cast, so if you wait until you see a casting bar to use Countersong, it will not take effect on that ability.
- Vexing Verses now also deals minor damage and reduces the target’s casting speed by up to 32%.
- Breathtaking Bellow can no longer be resisted. Its radius has been increased to 15 meters.
- Demoralizing Processional now also reduces the target encounter’s primary attributes in addition to its offensive skills.
- Enhance: Demoralizing Processional now also improves the attribute reduction.
We made some minor changes here so that these abilities have more effect. It is difficult to tell exactly how much effect attribute debuffs have, but at least now Demoralizing Processional will always make some difference.
- Sandra’s Deafening Strike now restores some of the power it drained to the Troubador.
- Tap Essence now affects the encounter and the group. The damage have been reduced.
- Painful Lamentations has had its damage increased.
- Thunderous Overture is now a PBAoE that affects up to 8 targets. The reuse has been increased to 10 seconds.
- Perfect Shrill has had its damage increased.
We wanted to give the class a little more control over power as well as obviously mixing in new encounter and area of effect abilities. Rather than going over all the numbers here, let’s wait until they make it to test and see how they play out there. Some individual spells are going to do less DPS in some situations, but others were buffed to more than compensate.
- Enhance: Rejuvenating Celebration now also improves the maximum health granted by Rejuvenating Celebration.
- Raxxyl’s Rousing Tune now also improves agility.
- Jester’s Cap no longer has an immunity timer.
Some minor buff changes. More control with Jester’s Cap instead of having immunity timers dictate the target.
- Demoralization is now “Abhorrent Verse.” Abhorrent Verse transfers 50% of the threat from the Troubador’s group to the target for a short time. This does not transfer threat from fighters.
Hopefully this new advancement will give you another way to make a definite impact on the group or raid, should you choose to pick it up.
Your Comments
So what do you think of the changes? Will it be enough to not only level the playing field between Troubadors and Dirges, but make the Troubador more interesting to play?
Troubs are already my top two fav classes to play. This just makes it even better. Not sure if I like Abhorrent verse…but I’ll play with it for sure.
No immunity on the cap! Nice!
I have two words for you, Thank you!!!
If this is not a complete fix it looks to be a very good start. some of the individual changes need some tweaking but they always do.
I’m looking forward to testing all of this. It sounds great!
Looks great. Any chance of a troub getting a heal and/or rez since dirges have it? That playing field has been uneven for a long time now (just saying).
Good that they’re finally examining the troubador situation, but these changes are by no means amazing and incredible. It’s a START.
Now what about our pointless epic versus dirge epic?
NO, troubies dont need a heal or a rez. Make us different than a dirge
” level the playing field between Bards and Dirges”
I think you meant troubadors and dirges?
Aren’t troubs already preferred to dirges in caster dps groups? I guess I don’t see how this bubbled to the top of the todo list ahead of other imbalances.
Xelgad’s main a troub?
According to the notes on test the dirge epic is suffering a pretty bad nerf.. When I checked test it wasn’t changed yet so I’m hoping it won’t be altered.
The dirge epic may be OP but it’s the only reason a dirge can parse on par with other utility classes. (not saying that it’s so far been even between dirges and troubs)
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All forms of Intrepid Strike have been changed. The Legendary Intrepid Strike now grants 15% Flurry, Potency and PvP Potency. The Mythical and Spell versions grant 25% Flurry, Potency and PvP Potency. The ability has been changed to stack additively instead of multiplicatively with Potency, Flurry and Multi-Attack. Had this not been addressed, the advantage from Intrepid Strike would have grown indefinitely with those stats.
Also, rezzes and the one heal dirges have is something I think that troubs should not get.
Speaking as a dirge the res is becoming a historical relic. When you cast it in raid over 90% of the time it is not going to complete successfully, particularly the group res. Because of the long cast time and your disadvantage in casting speed over priests you will be interrupted by the mob or beaten by a healer. As to the heal if you look at the numbers it makes more sense in a raid setting to let healers heal and attend to your debuffs, dps and gravitas.
Speaking of which why isnt the immunity timer removed on Gravitas as well?
As to “level the playing field”, a bard in a well set up mage group will out parse a bard in a fighter group, other things being equal. As someone else said troub is the bard preferred by mages already
With how long druids and coercers can charm mobs, the seconds long troubador charm is a joke. How about putting it back to the pre-nerf DoF duration of 15 minutes so troubadors can solo worth a damn?
I’m just glad they are looking seriously at the class, it’s been a long time coming.
Troubs should simply be boycotted until SOE steps up and gives them better death saves, bigger nukes (single and AE), more buffs and debuffs, and and at least ONE hot bar of heals so we can run nothing but troubs on the server. What’s WRONG with them? Don’t those idiots know that other classes are pointless, anyway?
No one should settle until troubs can solo at LEAST x2 epics 3 levels aboves theirs. Anything less is an insult to all that is troub!
*LoL* Sorry to those not posting or preparing a whine…I just felt particularly sarcastic and wanted to share. 🙂
Cya in game! (Yes, the game is Eq2…still my time waster of choice).
Originally posted by Striinger:
I think Troub’s should get a rez,as for the heal its neither here nor there. It would just help rezzing during combat. Healers are allready taxed as they are the Dirge usually is busy doing other things a little help out would be nice.
Play a healer if you want to rez
The only reason dirges are “too busy” to rezz normally is that their rezzes cast slower than healers and EVERY time they finish casting it turns out a healer did it at the same time. Dirges just gets sick of wasting their time when so few rezzes actually lands 🙂
Sorry for going off-topic a bit.
Anyway, I have no issues with troubs getting some enhancements but it doesn’t really seems fair to me that the other bard class gets a simultaneous nerf-bat in the head.
Most troubs enhancements seem pretty nice, maybe countersong will turn out to be a bit OP but we will see how it is when it’s ready to leave test.
Good changes for the troubs. Hope it sparks more interest in the class. As for them rezzing, they can have my rezz. Like previously stated, dirge rezzes are horrible these days. You run over and get in range and cast it and 90% of the time you are 4/5 of the way through the casting only to get the message, “already cast”. Move on to the next dead person and the same, you can literally spend 1/4 of a fight running around attempting to rezz people only to never get a single rezz all the way through. Such a huge waste of time. Dirge rezzes needs a boost, maybe changing something in our aa’s that will give us more range or just a reduction in cast time? Not a massive out of balance boost, but enough to give us our job back (afterall, it’s been the job of the dirge to do the rezzing in raids for ages). Not to take anything away from the much needed changes to troubs, but there are a few issues with dirges that should be looked at down the road.
As an old trouby, I definitely DON’T want a rez or a heal. Leave that to the healers, necros, and dirges to sort out in raid. Let me keep dps’ing. At least on our server, good troubies are in high demand in raid and heroic content so these changes just make me mo’ betta’.
Besides, if you remove diversity from bards, then they might as well do what Striinger said and let us tank too 😛
fix our charm put it back to 5 mins how much could that hurt might even put it back on the spell bar
Wow. Sounds like a colossal lack of coordination in your groups/raids. Either tell your dirges not to rez so they aren’t wasting their time, or (like we do) tell your healers to let the dirges rez. With a little coordination this problem is non-existant. If each person is playing in a vacuum with no means to communicate with anyone else, then it’ll be a problem. We don’t have this problem with our healers/dirges/necros. Ours communicate with each other. Even something as simple using a macro for your rez to let the others know you’re casting it could solve that problem if the other people know to look for it. SO many ways to prevent that problem. But hey, that’s just my opinion/experience. 🙂
Well, I’m looking forward to these long needed changes. However it probably won’t be enough to be honest here is why:
What caused the problem with Troubs is very simple:
a) When +Ability was effectively removed from scout items, Troub dps went down seriously compared to dirges because our dps is split melee and spells ALOT more than any other class. Dirges being highly melee/combat based beneffitted alot more from the +agi changes and so. Also, +Ability on spells that don’t do alot of damage makes a HUGE difference % wise.
b) Bonus to casting ability was removed from scout gear,… Troubs were pretty much the only scout class affected by this.
c) Troubs have always been the middle between buffing, debuffing, melee dps and casting dps… it is in my experience the most difficult class to optimize because of this. However the changes that have occured have made it impossible since gear is now pure agi/scout/melee.
d) Troubs are like any other classes and have their own self buffs which are pretty much even with other classes. However when grouping all other players beneffit from the troub’s buffs by alot,… but there is no way in hell that the troub gets anywhere near as much from others,… so groupwise we also get the low end of the totempole. The scout dps being melee based dirges get alot more from their own buffs. Oh and don’t expect people to run a troub+dirge group.
This is pretty much the first time I make comments about my class because serious and well aimed changes are required. I’ve been playing and raiding since the beginning of EQ2 and all I can conclude is that Sony has always had serious problems balancing bards. And I do understand our fellow dirges who had it bad for a while some years ago.
So anyways this is what should be done:
1) All skill based bonuses should be casting and melee on scout gear.
2) All troub group buffs should have like a 150% effect on the troub (and dirge for that matter).
3) Bring back the +ability modifier on scout gear OR raise all our base dmg on spells.
4) Some debuffs should be instant cast or VERY fast… that way n00b troubs would actually play their class and debuff.
There ya go, hopefully people that work on game design will read this.
Kizk, Guk server
1) I don’t see them changing all scout gear for one class.. Maybe doing something like they have for SK’s but changing the gear for 5 other classes to help one utility class mrginally increase their dps is unlikely.
2) The only real benefit dirges have from their group buffs is the 10% accuracy from the BP focus.. A small amount of agility does help but it’s .. meh. (this because the dps buff dirges have is small in comparison to, for example coercers and dirges soft cap dps mod easilly because of it)
3) Scout gear have ability mod, the EM+ raid jewelry have 500 ability mod on it. There is also a bunch of ability mod procs and adorns if you want ability mod.
4) I really wouldn’t know about this one, I know that dirges get an AA endline to increase duration and casting speed of the 4 primary rebuff songs. This doesn’t really make most dirges actually use their debuffs correctly but I suppose it helps.
Ability casting speed on scout gear wouldn’t be a horrible idea however.. I think it would help all scout classes while not altering any balancing between them.
“give Troubadors more options during combat”
They used to have those, but it’s been a long time since EoF and nerfing their CC to make enchanters needed, why change now? Kiting heroics or using charm to have pairs fight each other and using mez to stop and recover during the fight was a good way to kill time, I never understood taking that away. Other than having a chance to solo a heroic in 20 minutes or so, it didn’t seem all that OP.
Then again, it was still the only toon I’ve played that soloed an epic x2 group that conned blue, admittedly back when the tag didn’t automatically mean massive damage per hit.