Bard: The (Nearly) Perfect Job

[Remyogic]

At this point, I think SE needs to be very careful about any changes they make to Bard. Not only is it in a REALLY, IDEAL spot for a class (basically coveted by EVERYONE); it is the "poster class" for support/dps, AND it is extremely fun to play!

The formula/balance they have found with Bard is very rare to hit the mark on, they shouldn't play with it too much.

I can agree I wouldn't mind some minor QoL changes, but leave 99.99% of the job alone, please.

[Grimoire-M]

To be honest, while BRD is a good class, I do NOT like its place currently. It's the poster child for a lot of things wrong with the meta of XIV. And a lot of it doesn't solely have to do with the class.

Main issues are obviously the following:
- Crit/RNG Reliant
- Piercing Damage
- Burst Cooldown phase does not line up with raid buffs.
- Low personal DPS if your group does not/is not skilled enough to take advantage of the above.
- Refresh & Tactician

The Piercing Debuff issue is known and not exclusive to BRD, but they're doubly reliant on having a Dragoon in their group because of Battle Litany. Crit is king on this class and they want every raid buff they can get in order to shine. AST in particular is able to inflate BRD's output with consistent Spear feeding too.

Refresh/Tactician bothers me more and more lately because it forces BRD/MCH into every group. It would be nice to see BLM/SMN/RDM get more buffs to Mana Shift to make it competitive. At the moment it takes three caster dps spamming it on cooldown to match what one ranged dps brings. I feel it should be pushed closer than that, ideally by lowering the cooldown to 90s and changing it to restore 30% of the target's MP at the cost of 10% of the caster's MP. For Tactician I don't have a good solution other than give us more role skill slots so melee can use Goad, which would also help healers/tanks a bit, or add more marginal dps loss TP restores like Purification into all melee DPS (Hyoton restores TP. Add a TP restore that only works when Dive Ready, pay 25 Kenki for it on SAM, and so on).

DPS wise I'd like BRD to get a buff to its reliable DPS sources at a cost to its procs. This is primarily to mitigate the power of Battle Litany/Chain Stratagem/Spear stacking, which reduces BRD's need for it. Just a slight boost of 10 potency to Heavy Shot while reducing Bloodletter by 10 and PP by 10/20/30, based on stack count.

Foes simply needs to be made into an actual raid buff. With a cooldown, and instant cast. Alternatively make it another song with a different proc that is geared towards single targets, while making Paeon into a much better AoE boost. For Paeon my idea was to make Quick Nock consume one of its stacks for extra potency (10) during its duration, while Foes works in a similar way. It would have 5 stacks and give Heavy Shot a 10-50 potency boost depending on stack count, but do nothing else for you.


Finally, make Raging Strikes 90 seconds. It's way better in the long run if it lines up with raid buffs/ your song rotation naturally.

[Straynge]

I'm pretty happy where my Bard is at. Granted I've only been playing since Stormblood so this current bard is all I've ever known. It's literally the only class I can play and do it half asleep lol. Okay I'm kidding a bit but it does feel pretty easy mode compared to playing a melee dps. i can stand anywhere, positioning is super easy. Most of my attacks are instant cast. I can turn my back on a mob and avoid it's gaze attack and still shoot them in the face even though gaze attacks seem to be my kryptonite but that's my fault. I'm getting better at recognizing them all. All the dying is completely my fault and not the classes lol. Usually it's bad positioning, not thinking about things well enogh in advance, just poor playing on my part when it happens hehehe. I love my bard. Armny's Peon's is pretty lame though. I love mages ballad for killing groups of mobs. Nothing like raining down arrows repeatedly When playing my Summoner I'm a total nut case. What do you mean I can't move. Interrupt...wait, grrr. More arrow to the face. Makes me appreciate all the classes that don't have the mobility I do. Very impressed by a lot of the tanks, healers and this really good ninja we had in a group yesterday. Healers especially, the difference between a poor healer and a great healer is night and day. Granted I wouldn't want to try and play a healer but I have a lot of respect for them, same with tanks that do such a good job. Don't even get me started on playing a melee dps. Bard has spoiled me into never having to get close to a boss unless the mechanics dictate I do so. I also feel we're very good for speed runs. Almost like we were designed specifically for it. So I'm pretty happy where we're at but it does make me appreciate all of the great plyers who play other classes.

[SaitoHikari]

Finally, make Raging Strikes 90 seconds. It's way better in the long run if it lines up with raid buffs/ your song rotation naturally.

I'll give more thoughts on this overall thread later, but I want to point out here that Raging Strikes actually used to be 90 seconds. One of the early SB balancing patches reduced it to 80 to better align with all of BRD's other buffs and song rotations, particularly Barrage (along with extending Straight Shot's buff from 20 to 30 seconds). It being 80 seconds also indicates that the devs actually intend for players to cut Army's Paeon during the last 10 seconds after all.

[HyoMinPark]

I'll give more thoughts on this overall thread later, but I want to point out here that Raging Strikes actually used to be 90 seconds. One of the early SB balancing patches reduced it to 80 to better align with all of BRD's other buffs and song rotations, particularly Barrage (along with extending Straight Shot's buff from 20 to 30 seconds). It being 80 seconds also indicates that the devs actually intend for players to cut Army's Paeon during the last 10 seconds after all.

Small correction—Barrage was 90 seconds when 4.0 first dropped, and Raging Strikes has always been 80 seconds since 4.0 release. They reduced the cooldown for Barrage in Patch 4.06 when they made SS 30 seconds and changed songs to actually go off even if they “missed” a target. ^^

I overall agree with the idea of a 90 second song rotation to allow for better alignment with raid buffs (especially Litany). But they would have to both increase the cooldowns of Raging Strikes and Barrage, and make Army’s Paeon have a worthwhile mechanic to it aside from a haste buff. I’m not sure Grimoire-M’s Quick Nock buff would be enough, as you would still never use it on a single target (120 potency from the “buffed” Quick Nock versus 150 of your Heavy Shot). Army’s needs to be made viable in both AOE and single-target scenarios to encourage BRDs to not clip it early, and for it to not feel lackluster compared to the other two.

[SaitoHikari]

I imagine Army's Paeon will likely receive significant buffs next expansion by way of new skills. Some ideas...

- Flaming Arrow: Uses 2 Repertoire stacks while in Army's Paeon to drop a targeted fire AoE for 30 seconds (pretty much identical to old Flaming Arrow). Cooldown of 10 seconds. Preferably I'd rather have this learned alongside Army's Paeon, as Bard currently only learns 3 skills from level 40-50, not counting role skills. Almost every other job learns 4-5 in that same range (except for MCH which only learns a grand total of 2 when not counting turret dismissal and role skills, who should get something in there too).
- Twin Bite: Uses 4 Repertoire stacks to launch two arrows that inflict 60 potency damage each. The arrows apply the Windbite and Venomous Bite debuffs. Cooldown of 5 seconds. (Admittedly, this might be slightly problematic in that in single target scenarios, spamming it means that you'll be constantly overriding any DoT snapshots. However, not many party buffs align with Army's Paeon windows in the first place.)
- Aetherial Quiver: Uses 4 Repertoire stacks to add an extra Repertoire stack to all songs for the next 120 seconds. Cooldown of 80 seconds.
(In accordance with the above, an extra Bloodletter/Rain of Death charge can be stored, and Pitch Perfect will still expend anywhere from 1-3 stacks even though the maximum is 4 with the quiver being active. This is largely a potential answer to the 'overflow' problem.)

The last one I'm particularly fond of, because it give the Bard the ability to spend stacks for some benefit when enemies are otherwise untargetable, something none of the songs currently have. You're largely still going to be cutting Army's Paeon early in single target boss fights (and there's nothing to spend stacks on if you have 3 or less Repertoire stacks and Flaming Arrow is still on cooldown aside from swapping into another song for cooldown reduction), but it's more interesting than a mini haste buff (and it's more beneficial to allow it to run for nearly all of its duration in multi-target situations instead of swapping to Wanderer's Minuet).

Although to be honest, I haven't -really- thought this through.

[Grimoire-M]

I'm aware that RS used to be 90 seconds as well. Yeah Barrage should match it if changed. However, I actually like the fact Paeon is a point of downtime in an otherwise busy class. It's actually a good thing to have when you're learning to optimize and progress through a fight to be able to rearrange Paeon to align with downtime or through a difficult section you'd like to focus on. Whether people find that utility useful is another matter, but that's the point of it. It's a breather that makes the good stuff feel even better by letting you prepare for it. SMN had that flow in HW and look what it did to the job when SE added those lockouts. MCH has elements of SMN's former HW flow, but it's too strict and clunky because of Overheat/Wildfire alignment and a strict timing on using cooldowns. What BRD has atm is a good balance of both of those things. Their problem is their cooldown alignment and numbers atm, nothing else. That downtime is necessary.

With that point of Paeon usage in downtime in mind, I'd like to keep it as a minor AoE boost/Single target filler phase. It is not supposed to be better than Minuet/Ballad on bosses, rather it's supposed to be better than Ballad in burst AoE situations (which is admittedly hard to do when Ballad/WM are both so good already). Quick Nock should not be as strong as Heavy Shot either. The Quick Nock buff I offered is intended to make spamming it better than simply multi-dotting repeatedly, but it probably needs to be closer to MCH's ammunition boost to really outstrip Stormbite (ie. 1 stack gives a 20-30 potency boost, which would be enough to beat Stormbite at 5 targets) or do something else entirely. One idea that would boost BRD's reliable single target DPS is for Paeon to guarantee a straighter shot proc whenever Heavy Shot/Quick Nock is used over its duration. Then make a trait that buffs Quick Nock's potency by 20-30 with a Straight Shot proc during that 18-30 level gap. At 24 probably.

I'd also like to avoid adding more clutter BRD's hotbar. Saito's Twin Bite idea could easily be replaced by instead making Iron Jaws apply both DoTs to a new target to save everyone a button, for example, and I'm hesitant to add Flaming Arrow in again when it really didn't add much to BRD to begin with. It'd make more sense to give that to MCH as a replacement for Flamethrower imo. They need the freedom to use GCDs/move to overheat faster when they have high skill speed more than we need a filler cooldown that gets used twice in our 90s rotation overall. If you're gonna make it busier, it needs to be a little more elegant and interesting. I believe making Paeon alter your GCDs as opposed to adding more procs is a better way to accomplish all of those things.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm aware that RS used to be 90 seconds as well. Yeah Barrage should match it if changed.

Raging Strikes was reduced from 180 seconds to 80 seconds when 4.0 first released; Barrage was the 90 second cooldown. It was changed to 80 seconds in Patch 4.06 to better line up with the rest of BRD's cooldowns.

I'd also like to avoid adding more clutter BRD's hotbar. Saito's Twin Bite idea could easily be replaced by instead making Iron Jaws apply both DoTs to a new target to save everyone a button, for example, and I'm hesitant to add Flaming Arrow in again when it really didn't add much to BRD to begin with.

Perhaps it's me, but I don't have any sort of hotbar clutter on BRD - I actually have free spaces on my hotbars, even with 2 to 3 macros for Minne/Palisade targets (one specific, and one just for <tt>, and then the naked ones if I need to pick someone other than the tanks for some reason). With regards to Flaming Arrow, it was still an overall DPS gain at virtually no cost - an oGCD with 40 potency per tick that lasted for 30 seconds (so a total of 400 potency), and could be reapplied every 60 seconds. 400 potency is 400 potency, so I think it's a bit off to say that it "didn't add much" to BRD. It gave even more in situations where there was multiple enemies inside of it. I think it would actually go along well with your idea to keep Army's Paeon as a bursty AOE song.

[Grimoire-M]

snip

My reason for saying it didn't add much was referring to its mechanics and effect on the rotation, not the damage. 400 AoE potency is nice (potentially up to 850 if we go with the exact suggestion they gave), but it's one button to press once, possibly twice. It has the ability to snapshot too which is mildly interesting in post-opener situations, but would not change the opener at all without some serious greed. My Straighter Shot proc suggestion in contrast adds up to 200/300 AoE potency to Quick Nock spam if you let DoTs/Crit drop off and ignore Emp Arrow, while adding no considerations to the AoE rotation other than beating DoT spam at 5 targets instead of 6 if they're able to tick for their full duration. However, it also gives the single target rotation a combo-like feel of alternating between Refulgent Arrow and Heavy Shot, which adds 450 potency minimum (assuming no changes to RS) and guarantees you get a Barrage Refulgent Arrow outside the opener while also offering a greedy alternative opener to guarantee that Barrage Refulgent Arrow under TA. That could be viable depending on whether the fight has an early jump phase under Ballad/Paeon.

Also Hawk's Eye/B4B was the 90s Raging Strikes equivalent in HW/ARR. My mistake on calling that combo Raging Strikes. They're tied together after all.

I don't feel the hotbar clutter either but people who play on controllers certainly do.

[HyoMinPark]

I will have to thoroughly address the numbers portion of your post tomorrow when I am awake, but for now -

I don't feel the hotbar clutter either but people who play on controllers certainly do.

I play on controller. BRD doesn't have hotbar clutter, in my opinion.