Ballads

This is the first place where the changes will be felt by the Minstrels. No longer will the Minstrel need to use a previous tier of ballad to gain access to the next. Ballads have been consolidated into three types: Major, Minor and Perfect. This terminology is rooted firmly in music and not in progression. Minor refers to the minor intervals or chords that make diminished or dissonant sounds; major to the intervals and chords that make bold and pleasing sounds; perfect refers to chord progressions and intervals that are in perfect sound alignment striking resonant and whole sounding tones.

Each ballad still provides buffs to the Minstrel, but these buffs are tied more closely to the goal of the stances that the Minstrel employs. The stances, discussed in the next section, roughly equal healing, damage and power conservation. Each ballad provides buffs that enhance healing, power reduction or damage. Unlike the previous system, the buffs provided do not wear off over a short period of time; nor do these buffs enhance the Minstrel as greatly as they did before. Instead, these buffs apply themselves to the Minstrel and will stay active on the Minstrel until they actively leave combat for a short period or they use other skills that remove them. In addition to providing buffs each ballad also deals damage to a target or, in the case of the Major Ballad, serves a dual purpose to heal or deal damage dependent on stance.

Minor Ballad

This is the icon for Minor Ballad.

The Minor Ballad is the primary damage-dealing ballad. This is a direct damage skill that acquires bonuses from the tactical value of your weapon. It can be used to initiate combat or at any time in combat. The skill will apply a buff to you that increases the damage output of tactical skills by 3%, increases outgoing healing by 1% and decreases the cost of all non-anthem skills by 1%.

This is the icon for Minor Ballad Bluff.

Perfect Ballad

This is the icon for the Perfect Ballad.

The Perfect Ballad is the secondary damage-dealing ballad. This is a direct damage skill that acquires bonuses from the tactical value of your weapon. It can be used to initiate combat or at any time in combat. The Perfect Ballad will apply a buff to you that decreases the cost of non- Anthem skills by 3%, increases the damage of tactical skills by 1% and increases the outgoing healing by 1%.

This is the icon for the Perfect Ballad Buff.

Major Ballad

This is the icon for the healing version of the Major Ballad.

This is the icon for the damage-dealing version of the Major Ballad.

The Major Ballad is a morphing skill. When the Minstrel has no stance selected, the skill will heal their fellowship for a flat value enhanced by the tactical value of their weapon and the bonus of their outgoing healing. This can only be used in combat.

When the Minstrel is in Harmony stance or War-speech stance, the Major Ballad will become the tertiary damage ballad. Again, the damage is increased by the tactical value of your weapon and can be used to initiate or throughout combat.

The major ballad will apply a buff to the Minstrel that increases their outgoing healing by 3%, increases the damage of tactical skills by 1% and decreases the cost of all non-Anthem skills by 1%.

This is the icon for the Major Ballad Buff.

Ballad Buff Rotation

Ballad buffs will apply to the character in a rotational way, each stacking their bonus onto all other existing ballad buffs. This rotation will allow the Minstrel to support three ballad buffs active at any given time and will overwrite each other in a first in, first out rotation.

This is a little difficult to understand with just words, so let me provide you with some visual aid:

A Minstrel, healing a six-man group, wants to have some flexibility to heal well and maintain a little power. This Minstrel opens the fight with a Major Ballad, Perfect Ballad and finally another Major Ballad. His buffs look like this:

As the fight progresses, the Minstrel realizes that his power is disappearing quickly and so they want to increase their power savings. They play another perfect ballad:

As you can see, the oldest Major Ballad buff was bumped for the newly played Perfect Ballad. The next ballad to be played will bump the oldest buff off and move into the newest location. This is the new ballad buff rotation.

An important piece of the ballad buff rotation is that it is extraordinarily flexible allowing the Minstrel the ability to fine tune the buffs to the situation that they are facing. If they are in for a long DPS fight and not required to heal they can lower their overall damage output by utilizing the power reduction Perfect Ballad buffs. For moments when they want to burn hot, they can switch their ballads to all damage. Perhaps they want to remain balanced in their approach and apply one of each ballad. Or maybe heals need to be very, very strong and they can switch to all Major Ballad buffs. The transition is fairly quick and can be shifted as needed.