Suggestions: Quality of Life Stuff and other suggestions

[Raka]

Yeah, like I said. SquareEnix is afraid of it happening again. So I cannot say why.
I thought it was cool personally, but my biggest worry right now is making sure that my Aegis is relevant.

Like it was mentioned before, we parry more than we block with Aegis now. lol

[Aeron]

I think the flawed design of ochain lead to this honestly. I think it should have been more along the lines that ochain 99 afterglow has a 100% blockrate not the 90 version but instead of correcting that mistake they just want to settle with no upgrade. the blockrate should have scaled with the lvl of the ochain.

[Catmato]

And yeah, it's not fair that Aegis blocks about as often as Vivid Strap now.

I love it.

[Olor]

the Instruments, or at the very least, BRD, is hurting from what I can see.

yeah I haven't seen a shout for BRD in ages... GEO or go home.

[OmnysValefor]

yeah I haven't seen a shout for BRD in ages... GEO or go home.

Bard's "problem", isn't in the equipment available to it, so much as, where they overlap, geo does it better.

Bard can improve your defense against an element or damage on target for an element. Geo can do so doubly, for every element. (Vex/Attune vs Carols and Focus/Languor vs Threnodies) which is a better boon to casters and since so many bosses favor non-melee damage, so melees aren't taking damage, this is huge.

Further, so many jobs are capable of self-skillchaining that you frequently don't have more than one melee on a boss, besides the tank.

Geo's only weakness is that the pet "frequently" die, high mp costs, and sometimes mp management is rough. I'm not saying SE shouldn't ilvl instruments as well, I just don't particularly know what they'd be. Nothing short of absurdity will make bard compete with geo in a lot of areas that matter.

Now when it comes to melee setups, relic/empy or just empy bards are probably superior to (non-idris) geo and bard definitely can help heal/erase/-na, something geo's don't always have the mp for.

GEO is also a lot easier to build. None of the trouble that comes with upgrading from old gear. Aside from +skill/+duration, geo jse gear (aside from bells/idris) also doesn't enhance the effect of the bubbles, whereas a few pieces of bard gear do.

[Olor]

Yeah, I don't have relic/empy instrument for bard anyway but I have a hard time seeing how upgrading either of them would hurt game balance with GEO destroying all other buffers currently.

[machini]

Do you understand how they even work? 'cause that might go a long way to understanding why they don't think it'd be a good idea to do so.

[OmnysValefor]

[comment deleted]

[machini]

And as to "GEO destroying Game Balance", what exactly changed? The content, or the playerbase? I've seen people complain that no one wants to take BRD for Capacity Point parties, and demand COR instead, overlooking the reason for why that is.

I feel that way, way, way too much of the feedback I read on this forum and on others is created in a vacuum.

[OmnysValefor]

And as to "GEO destroying Game Balance", what exactly changed? The content, or the playerbase? I've seen people complain that no one wants to take BRD for Capacity Point parties, and demand COR instead, overlooking the reason for why that is.

I feel that way, way, way too much of the feedback I read on this forum and on others is created in a vacuum.

The content creates it. Vex/Attune is ridiculously powerful when it's needed, and when it's not, other buffsets (focus/languor, acumen/malaise) are just as powerful and as I was saying before, geo buffs/debuffs apply to every element. Though weaker, geo can also entrust a third bubble to someone for a while.

I see this argument all the time, that it's the players' fault for not trying alternative strategies. No, it's nice when the tank doesn't get debuffed at all and every nuke of any element lands at the best potency it could and it was easy to land debuffs/nukes on a resistant boss. I think it basically boils down bard being from a different era. The game has changed, some of bard's fundamentals have not.

Places where bard does exceed GEO, GEO still performs well and so in less-hard content, people would rather shout for GEO because they see it work, know how it works, and see enough players playing the job.