[Slydria]

I think Performer unfortunately lacks when compared to it's other half, Dancer. Of course, that's to be expected when one identity focuses more on support and the other focuses more on damage, however I think the support aspect is also simply too weak right now. So I'll list the changes I have in mind and I'll rattle off my reasonings below:

Bard:

Aria of Agility
- Buff changed from +Rank SKI/CEL to (Rank*2)+5 Hit & Evade.
- No longer creates an aura.

Anthem of Enthusiasm
- Buff changed from +Rank WIL/GUI to (Rank*2) All Elemental ATK & (Rank*2)+5 Critical.
- No longer creates an aura.

Dawr of Defense
- Buff changed from +Rank% Elemental Resistance to (Rank*2)% All Elemental Resistance & (Rank*2)+5 Critical Evade.
- No longer creates an aura.

Samba of Strength
- Buff changed from +Rank SWA to (Rank*2)+5 SWA & +(Rank*2)% Critical Damage.
- No longer creates an aura.


Performer:

Song of Susceptibility
- Additionally may remove a random beneficial effect from each enemy. (Requires a status infliction check)

Warmonger's Drums
- Song increases allies Damage by LV (Rank*5)% until your next turn. LUC based chance for the LV to be doubled. Has a 3 Round Cooldown. (Simple idea)
or
- Deals Lightning Damage (100% SWA & 110% Lightning ATK at Rank 5) and may apply Fear to enemies within 5 Range for 3 Rounds. Additionally, there is a LUC based chance to give allies in 5 Range the Fallcall status (LV = Rank*5) until your next turn, increasing their Damage on Feared Enemies by LV%. This effect does not stack with the passive Skill of the same name. Has a 3 Round Cooldown. (More complex idea)


So the first thing I think should be adjusted are the Bard buffing Songs: Aria of Agility, Anthem of Enthusiasm, Dawr of Defense and Samba of Strength.

One thing these songs share is that they produce an aura that offers a +2 to 2 different stats. I think it's barely even a factor right now, you can't even stack them together due to how they work and they don't benefit from skills like Volume Up which increase Song range. So I'd rather we had stronger buffs themselves instead of a secondary minor aura.

Next, Aria and Anthem both provide up to +5 to 2 stats upfront for 3 Rounds. The problem is that because of how soft caps work, those effects fall off pretty hard once you have a lot of them. Aria offers SKI and CEL, both stats players run in high amounts, which means later on, this skill isn't worth using 3 Momentum for. So instead, I think we should focus on sub-stats like Accuracy and Evade which retain their usefulness all throughout.

As for Anthem, not only does it potentially run into the above issue, but the stats of WIL and GUI aren't nearly as desirable unless you have a weapon using these stats. For instance, WIL and GUI both offer additional Skill Slots, which you of course cannot access mid-fight. Furthermore WIL also increases Max FP, which is another attribute that is usually more useful outside combat as you'd have to then first recover FP mid-battle to make use of it.

As above, sub-stats are also preferred, a broad Elemental ATK increase and a critical rate buff. While GUI is tied to Critical Damage rather than Critical Chance, I think it makes more sense for Samba to offer Critical Damage (as their Performer enhancement for it already gives Critical Chance.)

Dawr of Defense is just okay but the amount is a little small considering Sayakana is an item that can do just as much as this upfront. I think the value can be safely increased while giving it a secondary defensive perk to fit in line with the above ideas. If Elemental Resistance stacking is a concern, Damage Reduction is a fine alternative.

Finally, Samba's +5 SWA is also too small. Sure, you could give your allies 5 SWA, which will probably amount to about ~10-15 more damage per ally (for most allies) per round. I don't think it's enough compared to just using a skill that can damage enemies instead.

However bumping that up to 15 SWA amounts to ~30-45 per ally, per round, which can potentially exceed the worth of a damaging skill. Further Critical Damage adds another property that synergizes with SWA and the Performer upgrade, making it much more impactful.


As for Performer, I think it has some decent options and more importantly compounds off of Bard's base songs well. Once those songs get love, it will be in a much better spot. Some effects like Music Heals would need to be changed slightly if removing auras is done but aside from that, the two Songs they have that I think could use changes are Song of Susceptibility and Warmonger's Drums.

For Song of Susceptibility, I think it just doesn't do enough compared to the other Songs. Some damage could be an easy option but rather than that, I'd recommend simply adding another effect to it. My gut says a status infliction based chance to remove one random positive effect from each enemy is a solid idea that isn't too common. Cooldown should prevent this from being too frequent.

Meanwhile Warmonger's Drums suffer from some big issues. The base effect of +15 SWA for 1 Round is pretty weak but I think it’s better to leave Samba as the SWA boosting song rather than having two Songs do basically the same thing. 

Additionally the bonus LUC% chance to provide the Charge Mind effect to allied Evokers is both too niche and too powerful. On one hand, for 3 Momentum, you could potentially give the benefit of a skill that is normally 6 Momentum to multiple allies, resulting in a huge Damage/Momentum swing to your party. But on the other hand, if you have no Evoker allies, there's no compelling reason to use this song at all.

While I personally want an entirely different song (as seen above) that fits more closely with the other Performer songs, dealing Lightning damage, applying Fear and having a LUC based chance to give allies a damage boost against Feared enemies but it'd be a lot more effort than a more simple fix and I don't expect it to undergo such a change.

As a more mild alternative, changing it to be a buff that grants a broad damage increase until your next turn and having the LUC effect boost the damage further is probably easier to implement and doesn't stray far from what the song currently does and doesn't share too closely with Samba's effect.

[Kameron8]

Agreed. In Performer's current iteration, I don't even notice the buffs that are being applied unless a random Charged Mind shows up. Thematically it's great, but it needs a little (a lot of) help mechanically.

[Joseph Jostar]

a percentage damage buff is way overcompensating on warmonger's drums, with a little more swa it'd be fine as a leftover M spender/way to prepare without approaching enemies even without its charge mind aspect - especially if it was less strict about how long that buff lasted.

aria already gets a decent amount of evade from amplified aria so increasing the cel buff instead would help it avoid hitting evade buff caps, right?

5% on all elements is honestly pretty decent on dawr if you have the stats to keep the buff going through second verse, so maybe just tack on the crit evade. sayakana got nerfed for a reason.

[FaeLenx]

You could add all of these buffs and it still probably wouldn't be anyone's first pick over dancer.

[Slydria]

a percentage damage buff is way overcompensating on warmonger's drums, with a little more swa it'd be fine as a leftover M spender/way to prepare without approaching enemies even without its charge mind aspect - especially if it was less strict about how long that buff lasted.

I think it's fair to be concerned over the nature of percentage damage increases, however, that's basically what Charge Mind is, a % damage increase but for a specific handful of spells. This mostly takes that idea, lowers that damage and makes it more broadly applicable and less punishing if you don't roll the LUC effect.

I avoided making the SWA effect better because of the changes I'd like for Samba and I don't think it would be terribly creative to have two SWA boosting songs.

That said, I'm not that attached to the first idea for the Song, more the understanding that Warmonger's Drums currently is not healthy for the game in either direction and needs change.

aria already gets a decent amount of evade from amplified aria so increasing the cel buff instead would help it avoid hitting evade buff caps, right?

I think you're right in that between this iteration of Aria, Amplified Aria and Dodging Tomatoes, a Performer could be just shy of the Evade cap and adding some other class passive would easily reach it.

That said, your own character isn't the only benefactor, Amplified Aria will fall off much faster than the base effect and the base effect should be able to stand alone so you make it a consideration for Dancers and more importantly future Bard promotions.

You certainly could increase the SKI/CEL or even make the SKI/CEL boost apply as a 'Base' increase but I personally think it's also good for it to be beholden to the Hit/Evade cap since it is an AoE.

5% on all elements is honestly pretty decent on dawr if you have the stats to keep the buff going through second verse, so maybe just tack on the crit evade. sayakana got nerfed for a reason.

It was but I'm pretty sure that reason was due to how it was the main reason omni-elemental resist strategies were so oppressive. What I want from Dawr is for it to be more impactful as a defensive buff and I think Damage Reduction is a fine alternative if 10% omni-resist would just cause problems again.

[sadbot]

I'd like to use this post to make a shameless callback to a point that I've tried to make previously. Something that makes all support classes (or at least their supportive elements) feel for the most part completely impotent. Stat buffs not being flat makes all stat buffs suck by default. The suggested changes on the base class songs at least are simply a way of getting around this fact for the most part. The worst part is that all the most useful and sought after stats are the most likely to be pretty much hard capped and have these buffs come in as an effective +1 or +2 at best.

I think that moving forwards, skills should move away from buffing stats to purely buffing what those stats provide, or better yet, just make them flat bonuses and balance the numbers around that fact.

[Shujin]

This is why I usually think stat buffs should come in two Flavours.

1.) As we have it now: from items, minor aura buffs, equipment, etc.

2.) True buffs that Curate/Bards/performers would untilize that function more like Dragon Kings set, base value/softcap increase.

Then these buffs would always have good value even if its just stat sticks.

playing support buffer in any form kinda sucks currently in SL2, Its kinda never worth using the momentum to buff instead of doing damage or healing. The ironically best buffer is Mage/evoker at the moment. I was hoping for performer songs to me much more on level of elemental encahnts, but just in their own little styles of the song.

I do not think I would trade Cel buff versus Evade buff, thanks to buff cap. A dedicated Dodger will have his 50+ dodge. So 1-2 more evade though soft cel is still better than 0 cause buff cap. I think base ture value increase would benefit all people equally and more.

[FaeLenx]

The best status effect you can induce in combat is 'dead' and any spell that doesn't directly do that needs to be worth the lost opportunity cost in momentum and focus that you're missing. Charge mind is a good example, letting you massively boost the power of invocations that can change the flow of battle or end it outright. Charge mind is also a good example of how even a hugely potent ability is not used in a lot of PVP because of how much you're probably better off dealing direct damage to the face.

Support in SL2 pretty much always sucks. The bonuses are either something that needs to be built around and so they're only good for meme compositions or they're just worthless for everyone.

[Latto]

I'd also like to add that both Dodging Tomatoes, Second Verse and Performer's Heart (which is main class for whatever reason) are both reliant on being in the Singing status- something that automatically cancels if you do anything other than song skills or basic movement/attack. That means you can't switch out bullets, use dance moves, use items, etc without cancelling it and forces you to end turns on songs which is often sub-optimal (especially because since damage is always the name of the game and the two damage songs have a... three turn cooldown. Rain-Caller Rondo I can MAYBE see for the fire attack reduction but why Snake-Calling Melody? These don't even ignore evade or anything.)

Making Singing a 3 or even 2 turn status would be infinitely better than as it is right now.