Please boost BRD to make it competitive again

[detlef]

Noone was denying that Aeonic Bard works great in melee situations, though it brings little in magic situations.

The argument the whole time has been

A) It's inferior to GEO in most situations (when you aren't talking about stacking and sometimes when you are).

B) It needs 3-4 (not so much mythic) ultimate weapons to be competitive with a job that needs 1, and still it doesn't always outperform Dunna GEO. PLD vs RUN is a similar situation but there are places where PLD is still better and PLD does just fine.

C) Bard needs something baseline to the job. Getting Honor March makes you more efficient at... doing content you've already done.

I'm aware of the new content that sounds a lot like Incursion, "Omen" but we of course don't know what stats will be necessary nor the party size permitted.

Hey now, I still agree with all of this. I made these points earlier in the thread after all. I have just come to the conclusion that because BRD compliments GEO so well in a melee situation, SE is never going to make improvements to the BRD buffs that stack with GEO bubbles. If this is the stance SE is taking (and it seems consistent with what they've said about the state of the job), then it's a tough situation.

That's why I suggested changes to debuffs. Other than Lullaby, they aren't really impacted by RMEA at all so we're talking about changes to the base job. Can you imagine if Dark Threnody let you hit 3-4 unresisted Death MBs on certain hard NMs? Or if Requiem's potency was related to skill and could be affected by Matk or could be MBed?

There's still room for certain songs to be boosted (higher potency Etudes, adding ranged accuracy to Madrigal, etc) so I hope SE does take another look at those instead of letting the job stagnate like it has. And yeah, make Threnodies great again.

[Reain]

Seems unlikely to me that they'll touch Threnodies because of Rayke/Gambit or Requiem because of +60 damage/tic from job points.

[Zhronne]

The reason they're not touching Threnodies is exactely that, they stack with everything else and making Threnodies useful would make a lot of content even more trivial than it already is, unless magic is useless for that content, but at that point threnodies become useless too so we're back to square one.

At the same time though I don't think this can be a satisfying reason and explanation for BRD's current situation. There are many ways they could solve things without going into the bad scenario we just described.
They could make so Threnodies don't stack with some of the other debuffs, for instance. Or they could simply threnodies leave as they are but at that point they'd totally need to give BRD "something else" that is 1) useful, 2) has to be used midfight and not during prebuff.

Wether this "something" is a JA, a new debuff or a new buff I don't care honestly.

[Zhronne]

Or if Requiem's potency was related to skill and could be affected by Matk or could be MBed?

Requiem can be MBed already but other than benefitting from the additional macc granted by a MB, I don't think anything else happens.
You do get the sexy MB message though! :P

And yeah, make Threnodies great again.

Again? Like... have they ever been before lol?
I remember trying to use Threnodies even during level 75 era while everybody else kept on telling me they were useless, and tbf I have to admit they hardly made a noticeable difference even during those days =/

[detlef]

Requiem can be MBed already but other than benefitting from the additional macc granted by a MB, I don't think anything else happens.
You do get the sexy MB message though! :P



Again? Like... have they ever been before lol?
I remember trying to use Threnodies even during level 75 era while everybody else kept on telling me they were useless, and tbf I have to admit they hardly made a noticeable difference even during those days =/

Obviously Threnody has never been great, I just thought the phrase was topical. The only times I've ever remembered it making a little difference was in manaburn PTs on IT++ mobs and that was probably just my imagination anyway. As for Requiem, I'm just saying it would be nice if MBing it enhanced its potency or something. Of course, just strengthening it's DOT would be even better than that. I'm spitballing here, what do you want from me lol.

[Zhronne]

Aside from Helix/Kaustra I think Requiem is the most powerful dot in game atm? Poison2 got powered up as well recently so I'm not sure about that anymore.
Although that means very little since it didn't really scale well with how huge the Health pool of monsters became these past few years =/
Requiem also has that annoying range which is shorter than all other debuff songs and I hate that ><
Noticeably raising the potency of Requiem, wether with or without MB, would surely be a nice, welcome change, but I'm not sure that alone would change a lot for BRD's current situation =/ Unless of course it was a compeltely overpowered change but I'm not too fond of stuff like that in general, they usually make someone happy (me! ) but in the long run they create more issues than they solve :x

[Shiyo]

Nerfing geo is the easiest way to make bard good.

More specifically, idris.

[Olor]

Nerfing geo is the easiest way to make bard good.

More specifically, idris.

I really don't like nerfs - because they invalidate a lot of the work put in. I quit for months after what they did to BST and I still don't like playing it anymore. It took the fun out of it for me. So I'd rather they buff bard than nerf GEO.

Things they could do - ideas taken from this thread:

-Make bard buffs undispellable
-Make bard buffs a % potency rather than a static potency
-Improve bard debuffs
-Give new songs that make it worthwhile to bring a bard

and... the job can't be balanced around Aeonic - that's just ridiculous.

[Shiyo]

Game is already easy, don't need to buff jobs.
Geo is completely broken, just like blue mage.

I agree balancing a job around having an item you get from beating the game(essentially) is really mind-boggling.

Supports shouldn't need more gear than DD's to be playable. The amount of people who enjoy and actually play support is extremely low compared to other roles, making them scale with gear is fine, but making them REQUIRE insane gear like bard does just pushes away even more support players from the extremely limited pool of them.

[OmnysValefor]

Nerfing geo is the easiest way to make bard good.

More specifically, idris.

It really isn't. That means adjusting many escha mobs, many unm.

A few tweaks to songs, a new song or too and bard could be competitive. Make it desirable to keep the bard in group.

Either route requires effort.