I'd like to talk about a topic that has been bothering me for a while now, and that is the succession of IMHO unwarranted skald nerfs that the game has seen in the latest years.
The latest one of which is the change done to castanets so that they cannot be played with one hand anymore:
1) I can play castanets RL with one hand. I've actually done this. They are designed to be played with one hand. You can play two, but that's not necessary.
2) It was a cool mechanical niche and a cool fantasy to be able to buff while fighting. The instrument was already weaker. Now it's a no option. This kind of change only removes and adds nothing except mechanical hurdles.
NOTE: to buff effectively, you have to use an instrument. Pure voice singing dramatically nerfs the song's output.
After this change, castanets (and percussion in general) have become a no option since it offers no advantages over a lyre. In fact, no instrument is as good as the lyre. What castanets did, was allow the character to be a battlebard (a Skald) by providing song support while still being able to attack and contribute with damage in combat. Now you cannot hold a weapon and play, which means you do all your buffing ahead of time before combat. This just increases the amount of time required to prepare/prebuff for combat, which is already unnecessarily long and not really any fun at all.
Another change done to the skalds in the recent years that hurt the guild mechanically was the introduction of the magic water, which punishes ex-Skalds in ways that no other guild does. This change was unnecessary and uncalled for and adds nothing to the guild.
Combine this with the fact that there is only two songs worth buffing with and there is no actual advantage to doing it during combat because you can make them linger (the regeneration songs are too weak to make a difference in combat). What you get is a dynamic where skalds don't actually sing in combat (singing also blocks a number of combat specials), and prebuffing a lingering war or magician song adds a good 1-2 minutes of boredom.
Some suggestions on what to improve (beyond the obvious "change back castanets and remove the magic water"):
- Make all instruments usable in combat. How?
[-] Make them not disable the limb they're used with. Instead, you just carry them over your back on a sling. During combat, you simply play them even if you're wielding weapons. This is a mechanical simplification away from realism, because this is a game after all and the current vision for instruments has gone too far down the realism antifun rabbit hole. - Remove singing blocking combat specials.
- Make songs more powerful. Both with and without instruments.
[-] Make song effect ticks have a larger impact than they do now. Specially when played with an instrument. E.g. the angry song could dispel all darkness every tick.
[-] Make out of combat buffing easier to accumulate. E.g. it takes less singing to achieve 10 minutes of bufftime and songs linger for more than 10 minutes. In general, buffing is boring and buffing that takes minutes to do is just distasteful!
[-] Simply ramp up the ceiling of how powerful the effects can be. Even the most potent war song is weaker than a single Taniel bless.
[-] Make the journey song worth using for combat purposes. The stamina regen ticks are basically non-existent. They have to be huge (I'm talking almost complete recovery of stamina every tick) to be worth using at all. - Add new songs. Comparing the array of powers you get from Alchemist and from Scribe... Skalds get very little. There is a ton of space for thematic, party buff oriented and music/charm oriented songs! E.g.:
[-] A song that "lifts the spirits" by making everyone's equipment feel lighter.
[-] A song that "inspires" by improving the listener's skills.
[-] A song that summons protective faeries to protect the team against arrows (coz we all know that missile can take a nerf or ten).
[-] A song that makes your weapons "dance" and animates them to fight for you. When played with an instrument, it makes all enemy weapons "dance" out of their hands.
[-] A song that "charms" an enemy to fight for you or makes them "dance" and unable to fight your team.
[-] A song that "reminisces" or a particular person's heroic deeds, which alerts them of the Skald's presence and eventually allows the hero to be summoned (teleport) to the skald.