SB Bard Changes: Good or Bad? Thoughts?

The class seems incomplete atm until you get to 68 (i think thats the right level) to make empyreal arrow guarantee stacks on SP and WP songs. once you get there, it should be fine. it does feel like songs don't last long enough though, maybe they should have been 40 seconds each with 110 cooldowns.

It's nice to be able to move around again, but difficult to remember I'm not bow-casting after two years of muscle memory. The songs are great -- I use them in the open world. The procs seem fairly ok at level 60.

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Originally Posted by Jilliebeans

idk about about BRD being good or bad but BRD is holding the one of the MOST player based right now, all my ques are been with 3-4 BRD now..

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Bard has always been the most player base Job in FF14 since 2.0 due to how mindless it can be with gameplay.

Easiest Job to pick up and requires the least effort to play in this game due to always being at range and mobile with very little consequence, well except in 3.0, thus less stress and less mental requirements to play

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Bard has always been the most player base Job in FF14 since 2.0 due to how mindless it can be with gameplay.

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That has never been the case. BRD in ARR was among the least played classes if not the very bottom as they had extremely subpar DPS due to being designed to be a support class. This led to pretty much every raid static needing to find a BRD above all else.

In HW they regained some popularity once they had better DPS, but have always been somewhat around the middle of the pack in terms of popularity.

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

That has never been the case. BRD in ARR was among the least played classes if not the very bottom as they had extremely subpar DPS due to being designed to be a support class. This led to pretty much every raid static needing to find a BRD above all else.

In HW they regained some popularity once they had better DPS, but have always been somewhat around the middle of the pack in terms of popularity.

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In raid tier yes but for casual content is was quite frequent to run into Bards if not often both DPS slots are Bards.

Heck back in 2014 and 2015 Bards population rival summoner and Dragoon
http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/Eorze...N_Census_S.png

i hardly call that the least played Job in FF14 when Monk is the least played Job back in 2.X

bard was NEVER ever a least play job lol, YES people hated BRD in HW at 1st and it did drops the population for just a "tiny" bit but then people got used to the class play style so it goes back up fast. compare to all the DPS classes out there beside RDM/SAM (seem they still new) BRD holds the most dps class population lol. IMO it was never a fair
comparision between MCH and BRD, seem so many people favor BRD over MCH and yet MCH barely gets any "buff" from SE but BRD tend to get buff whenever somebody "complain" about it L O L.

Only got to play for about 2 hours last night, but I'm having a hell of a time wrapping my head around how the new skills and songs work together. Hoping some more experience helps it to click.

Level 64 right now, and I'm feeling extremelly weak, BRD damage seems extremelly low (270 ilvl).

Is intended that our buffs don't work for ourselves? I mean, we don't get the song buff (2% crit) thus not battle voice nor trobadour work for us. I feel like I have a ton of stuff I just don't use because it doesn't work, and it doesn't feel good.

Also, the job feels heavy rng based now, may be a bit better when we get the empowered empyreal arrow, but atm I've had a lot of combats where I just can't get a 3 stacks pitch perfect because it just doesn't proc for the whole 30 secs.

EDIT: Just did the first trial, and if I weren't into a raid group where I'm the ranged, I'd reroll right now.

It just feels bad, boring, I was pressing 1 for 70% of the fight, I almost died twice because I was just staring at the screen like an idiot while pressing one button waiting for something to proc. If this is where square wants to go, I'm out.

Also, the fact that ALL OF OUR BUFFS don't work for the bard itself, is just plain stupid.

We can't give TP between pulls in a duty btw, that change makes me feel... uneasy.

I played with it a couple runs in DF and...
Its amazing, simply amazing, its fun as hell!!
And Im only at lvl 60 D:!!

It adds one interesting concept, but overall I find my experience worsened compared to HW Bard.

The song-based personal mechanics are good. It's a welcome addition. I doubt it was the most appropriate place to put them or area to tie them into, but it works well enough, and a full stacked Paeon or back to back instant-fill Perfect Pitch oGCDs when multi-DoTing feels great.

However, I'd like to have actual differences between the raid benefits of my songs and control over when to use them. At this point their just 23.3-30 second mechanics cycles, entirely on the Bard's side alone.

I can live without Flaming Arrow, but feel that Wide Volley would have made more sense to keep than Quick Nock especially now that Repelling Shot has no damage. I also miss it and Blunt Arrow's part in rotation.