BRD 5.0 Feedback, Suggestions, and Requests

I think SideWinder and Shadowbite should be two completely different skills that don't share a recast and function akin to Fleche and Contre Sixte.

Trying not to think about the support anymore lol, so I’m curious as to what do people think they should do with Apex Arrow? Currently it’s not much of a DPS gain to use because it doesn’t proc Refulgent Arrow, which means that at maximum potency it’s lower than a Burst Shot / Refulgent Arrow combo. Anything below 70 seems to be weaker than Burst Shot, which feels strange for a level 80 ability. It feels good to use, but there’s not much interaction with the ability or the gauge because you just ignore it until it reaches 100. I’d like it to be as powerful as it feels, but they don’t seem to be able to increase Bard’s personal DPS either from the sounds of it (without breaking ranged balance), so I’m not sure if a potency gain would work on it. But at the same time, it would break balance if they gave it some kind of added effect. So I’m unsure as to what they can do besides leaving it as it is.

Also, I agree with Shadowbite feels a bit weird. It’s fun to use and feels powerful, but I can’t help but think ‘shouldn’t this have been an upgrade for Sidewinder?’. That said though, I feel the often-used suggestion of it being a ‘Bane’ skill would be too powerful for AoE because DoTs interact with the song gauge and Repetoire (whereas in Summoner for example, they only interact with Ruins and Fester, rather than the job gauges themselves)

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Originally Posted by Connor

Trying not to think about the support anymore lol, so I’m curious as to what do people think they should do with Apex Arrow? Currently it’s not much of a DPS gain to use because it doesn’t proc Refulgent Arrow, which means that at maximum potency it’s lower than a Burst Shot / Refulgent Arrow combo. Anything below 70 seems to be weaker than Burst Shot, which feels strange for a level 80 ability. It feels good to use, but there’s not much interaction with the ability or the gauge because you just ignore it until it reaches 100. I’d like it to be as powerful as it feels, but they don’t seem to be able to increase Bard’s personal DPS either from the sounds of it (without breaking ranged balance), so I’m not sure if a potency gain would work on it. But at the same time, it would break balance if they gave it some kind of added effect. So I’m unsure as to what they can do besides leaving it as it is.

Also, I agree with Shadowbite feels a bit weird. It’s fun to use and feels powerful, but I can’t help but think ‘shouldn’t this have been an upgrade for Sidewinder?’. That said though, I feel the often-used suggestion of it being a ‘Bane’ skill would be too powerful for AoE because DoTs interact with the song gauge and Repetoire (whereas in Summoner for example, they only interact with Ruins and Fester, rather than the job gauges themselves)

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Yeah I agree. Personally I find Shadowbite more underwhelming than I do Apex Arrow. I think the reason Apex Arrow isn't so grand in DPS is because it's AOE so it's single target output is basically bleh on account it's the equivalent of using Quick Knock on a single target. I kind of saw Flaming Arrow as our DoT Bane and personally wish Flaming Arrow made a return. I took a close look at the potencies and realized that we kind of still have it, it's just masked up and hidden. They took the Flaming Arrow potencies and shoved it into the DoT upgrades. (This is assuming you used Flaming Arrow on a single target). So the Dots aren't exactly even upgrades since it's just the potencies of an old existing skill lapped into it. I think what made Bard really neat was how Crit centric the job was but with that gone it feels a bit more barebones.

Also I find it kind of weird that Apex Arrow doesn't have the flashy line animation rotating around it when it reaches 100 gauge that hooks your eye's attention screaming use me USE ME!

But personally if I have to be honest, I find the most underwhelming things to be Troubadour, Nature's Minne, and The Warden's Paean.

Troubadour is basically a cross-role skill right now. Every physical range has their own version of it, so in a way, I almost kind of miss the old version of it. It's weaker than it's pervious counterpart.

Nature's Minne is a downgrade to Mantra.

The Warden's Paean is so situation I sometimes forget it even exists when the situation calls for it and only really use it on myself when I do remember it. Downgrade Esuna.

Repelling Shot is a downgrade Exclusive Jump.

Empyrean Arrow is now an oGCD Burst Arrow with a Repertoire.

With all the ways to reset Blood Letter/Rain of Death/Refulgent Arrow procs, I wished at least one thing would reduce the cool down to Sidewinder.

Battle Voice I am conflicted about because a very good point was made about it turning into a selfish DPS skill but at the same time, because it doesn't affect the user, I kind of pop it willy nilly even at questionable moments because my reaction is to just keep it on cooldown; and I know for a fact I am not the only Bard to fall into this bad habit. Sometimes I accidently forget to use it at all because the skill isn't exactly in your face to use it when it comes off cooldown 3mins later.

Since Barrage resets Refulgant Arrow, I kind of question why it just doesn't use the skill outright when activated. There are moments where I use a Burst Arrow then Barrage really quickly after and didn't catch that I had an RA proc from the BA before using Barrage. And then there are other times I wish Barrage didn't work on the dot skills cause sometimes I'm not paying attention and realized I should have used Iron Jaws instead cause my dot timers are to low, and if I could have used Iron Jaws while the buff sat there, everything would turn out fine, but since Iron Jaws consumes Barrage, I have to let them fall off. Poor decision making on my part sure, just kind of a QoL that would feel less punishing to that careless whoops moment.

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Currently it’s not much of a DPS gain to use because it doesn’t proc Refulgent Arrow, which means that at maximum potency it’s lower than a Burst Shot / Refulgent Arrow combo.

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Gotta reign this in just to keep this thread clean - it is still a 241.5 potency gain to use a full Apex, the notion of adding BS+RA doesn't really add up. What you want to do to find the avg potency of a filler GCD is to do (20 x 230 + 7 x 340) / 27 = 258.5 potency, so 500 is definitely worth. It is weaker than a filler GCD at 50 or less, usable at 20 is certainly bizarre and I think mentioned in OP. And yes, still kinda disappointing as the payoff for a new gauge and dealing with the variable timings and all that.

That said, my biggest support-aside want if I could get anything I wanted would be EA charges. The flat cooldown really does not get along with our variable GCD lengths and needing to dodge overcapping, and EA drift is one of the more frequent things I see people struggling with.

My suggestion for Sidewinder/Shadowbite is this: Either remove Sidewinder entirely and add its Fester effect into Empyreal Arrow, or have a trait that upgrades Sidewinder to Shadowbite. We already have an aoe+single target pair of skills that share a cooldown, there's no real need to have two pairs, especially when they all boil down to 'does damage off the gcd.'

When other classes have ogcd skills, they usually have a little more going on than just damage. DRG overall is a perfect example of this. BRDs have Empyreal Arrow as on ogcd that plays into their mechanics, having several more that are just different flavors of potency seems lazy and bland, especially when skill bar real estate is becoming more and more precious.

Why are we caught up on Sidewinder all of a sudden? That's the least of our issues.

I've always thought it would be neat if it applied a 15s DoT that could proc our things though

I think Natures Minne should get Palisades old effect added to it as well ('Reduces physical damage taken by a party member by 20%'). That would make it a lot more useful!

Repelling shot - can we remove the need to be targeting an enemy for this?

Agree with the sound effect change for Apex.

They need to be careful about reintroducing Foes or any other raid damage buffs, as BRD/MCH/DNC are fairly close in terms of raid DPS at the moment. If they buff one, the others will start wanting buffs too, then before we know it we'll be seeing a 3 physical ranged meta!

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Originally Posted by AxelDH

I think Natures Minne should get Palisades old effect added to it as well ('Reduces physical damage taken by a party member by 20%'). That would make it a lot more useful!

Repelling shot - can we remove the need to be targeting an enemy for this?

Agree with the sound effect change for Apex.

They need to be careful about reintroducing Foes or any other raid damage buffs, as BRD/MCH/DNC are fairly close in terms of raid DPS at the moment. If they buff one, the others will start wanting buffs too, then before we know it we'll be seeing a 3 physical ranged meta!

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As it stands now, the three physical ranged may need buffs anyways — especially if the changes in 5.08 and 5.1 to NIN and SAM are substantial. I think it’s unlikely you’d see a triple physical ranged comp considering the state BLM and MNK are in now. The physical ranged would have to be buffed A LOT to compete with those two.

Here's some changes I would suggest:
* Rework Burst Shot/Ironjaws + Refulgent Arrow into a combo that grants a guaranteed Repertoire proc. This would make single target feel more fluent due to less reliability on RNG. Barrage still gives a guaranteed Refulgent Arrow, without the need of Burst Shot/Ironjaws. Interaction with Stormbite and Caustic Bite gets removed.
* Turn Apex Arrow into an oGCD or change the way it works; it should be more flexible than it is now.
* Remove Repelling Shot's target requirement.
* Change Nature's Minne to either be group-wide or have it also reduce damage taken by the target.
* Give Bloodletter/Rain of Death 2 charges.
* Battle Voice buffing self when?

Obviously, change potency where required.

Hrm, I had a thought. Right now the camp is pretty divided, those who want bard to be what the class name states, and those who want the class to be more like how other games have a bow & arrow class (ranger). I understand that balancing is pretty tricky, but let's say that they implement changes that allow both camps to play to their liking.

For example: Most of us here are pretty well in agreement that this current "bard" is more of a selfish dps than our previous iterations. They also stated that they would have to bring down our dps slightly is we got more supportive tool-kit. These changes are just something I had flying through my head so forgive me if it is incomplete or haphazard.

Tanks have their "stances", monks have their "forms", why not give bard a "stance" that they could switch between. A "ranger" form that is more focused on dps and the "bard" form. The biggest change that would come would be that while in Bard form, our songs would function differently by adding some kind of supportive element to the party, (crit buff for example, str, etc, SOME kind on "inspiration") but at the cost of personal dps. When in the ranger form, things function as they do now with the songs, that is the songs keep proc'ing repertoire but have no supportive element tied to them. (I really don't see the need for bards to get buffed in terms of their damage output at the present considering how close they are to machinist). It's a simple idea, and one that I think would be pretty easy to implement without have to go through a massive re-working and or changing of our current tool-kit.

I would like for both camps to be happy with what is currently in game and I don't think there is any reason for us to add a ranger class when we already have some form of the class already here. It is just finding a way to balance said class that will appease to both those that want to play as a supportive range vs those who want to play as pure dps. Even though machinist is the form of range pure dps that is out there, we have players that would rather not play it because they don't like the idea of playing with a gun in a fantasy game or they just don't like its play style.

What do you guys think?

one thing i think would be a nice qol change would be when using mages ballad you can get multiple charges of blood letter it can feel a little akward to use it and have emp arrow come off cd it feels like youll waste a reset

I don't think people who enjoy the bow aesthetic are really all that offended by the notion of their job having skills like Battle Voice. And I don't think people who are sad about the reduction in support relative to Stormblood, are necessarily "we must add more dps to the raid than any other job or else we'll be offended".

Bard in FFXIV has historically been able to satisfy both camps reasonably well, given that they aren't going to have an extreme classic-Bard-like support in the trinity they've set up, and they aren't going to have some classic hunter with pets and traps and such given how much of a mess pets are etc. Bard has always been able to appeal to both, even if not reaching the ideal of either.

In short I think SE and others are overcomplicating things. Bard should be a job whose core damage kit uses bow and arrow skills, and ranger fans will live if there's a coat of music paint. And they should have some song-themed support skills that feel relevant and impactful, yet on a total scale that keeps it safe balance-wise.

That's... really not that hard to pull off, design-wise. It's mainly a matter of hashing out fine details and actually developing it.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

I don't think people who enjoy the bow aesthetic are really all that offended by the notion of their job having skills like Battle Voice. And I don't think people who are sad about the reduction in support relative to Stormblood, are necessarily "we must add more dps to the raid than any other job or else we'll be offended".

Bard in FFXIV has historically been able to satisfy both camps reasonably well, given that they aren't going to have an extreme classic-Bard-like support in the trinity they've set up, and they aren't going to have some classic hunter with pets and traps and such given how much of a mess pets are etc. Bard has always been able to appeal to both, even if not reaching the ideal of either.

In short I think SE and others are overcomplicating things. Bard should be a job whose core damage kit uses bow and arrow skills, and ranger fans will live if there's a coat of music paint. And they should have some song-themed support skills that feel relevant and impactful, yet on a total scale that keeps it safe balance-wise.

That's... really not that hard to pull off, design-wise. It's mainly a matter of hashing out fine details and actually developing it.

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What you suggest was describes what 2.0 Bard was exactly. I think the addition of WM is when Bard really started to change.

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Originally Posted by Vivi_Bushido

What you suggest was describes what 2.0 Bard was exactly. I think the addition of WM is when Bard really started to change.

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The addition of WM 1.0 was turning BRD into a caster—something it wasn’t really meant to be (though, I personally didn’t mind Bowmage). I think the most BRDs were satisfied with 4.x BRD as opposed to 2.x BRD. Especially when it came to their MP/TP resources, as they no longer cost the BRD something to use.

Why can't a bard be a bit selfish with there dps, MCH is full selfish with it's dps, and DNC is selfish too in that it can get it's own buff 100% the time while giving it to another one. I have never seen bard actually get a buff they used for themselves it's always foes for everyone not just bard, and songs are not buff it's the mechanics of the job so I will say don't include them. I just find it sad that SE has changed the bard play style 3 times already. So let's go down history path of what we call the bard today.

2.0 bard - it started off with songs that did nothing for themselves but was good for the group but at the cost of damage Mages and Paeon, while foes was a song strictly for casters (mages/healers). Also we had this wonderful skill called rain of death that actually was very nice to use when you finally reached that level to get it but sadly enough you know what happened, instead of actually changing it so it could be use less often they just replace it with a garbage evasive buff which really didn't do much but hey we still kept a buff on it. And finally we come to the battle voice oh how it sounded like a great buff but turned out to only increase Accuracy which was an issue sometimes in 2.0 but after a while you remove that issue by getting gear with more Accuracy or melding it so in the end it became a useless skill that would follow the bard into the next expansion. The main 2ndary stat that we had to live with was crit otherwise forget blood letter procs.

3.0 bard - So now we come to HW and what a great time it was to enjoy the expansion get new level cap and more, but what does the bard come with well we get screwed and our movements are locked in place and we become the one legendary bow mage that was talked about in the past, the skill was called Wander's minute. Oh and we get all the junk from 2.0 still with use songs still decreasing our dps if someone died and needed mp/tp but eh we are selfish were giving. Another skill we get that made bard play style work well finally was a skill called Iron Jaws that would reset our 18 second dot timer. This actually gave bards a break from have to reapply our dots constantly like we had to in 2.0. Also we get this new skill called sidewander that when I first start using it I thought why do we have this skill the potency on it says one thing but when I would hit sometimes the dps does less then my heavy shot but the potency was higher and this was when you had both dots on not without otherwise it should hit around same potency. Finally we come with a new support skill called Wander's Paean which was garbage at the start but by the end of HW it became very very useful with WAR which always enjoyed it.

Also about WM it seems that people said bards got a little to powerful at the end HW because of our crit was so high that it out scaled the buff they had to give bard because WM was so bad because it took out auto attacks away so we loss a big amount of dps but the other jobs never complained about them at the start so let's us move on to 4.0

4.0 bard - So finally we come to the time of Accuracy being removed as a 2ndary stat and got built into the jobs. So what came with this bard new bard, well we were able to once move freely around, we actually got songs that were usable and gave no negative effects to us finally, but they gave the party a 2% crit buff which bards would of loved but not given. Also the Archer's Raging Strike buff was nerfed to 10% but I never really looked into if they even out that with the traits since was like nothing can do about it so just kept with it. Sadly we would lose Battle Voice at the price of Accuracy being removed so now it turned into Direct Hit which was a usable stat and helped dps wise not like Accuracy yet denied to bard and most the gear bard was given had low DH. We were given a new support buff called Troubadour that would give either a p. defense, m. defense or more hp to the party based on which song was played and was very nice addition to our support, but at the start of the expansion it did not work on the bard and would have to be fixed within a patch or 2 so yeah this awesome skill off the bat having to be once again selfless but like I said it was fixed. Also that was the only change bard had in 4.0 was that minor fix. Another awesome skill bard would get was Nature Minnie which would help with healers having to heal someone up fast if they got to low and was on a great cd of 45 seconds which made it very usable and saved my party a lot of times from wipes. Another thing that changed for bard was that we finally got dots that would last longer then 5 gcds before being reapplied called stormbite and causticbite. These 2 abilities would bridge the cap and allow instead of 5gcds 9-10 gcds of ticks before resetting which allowed less hassle of dots and kept them in time with the songs. The final ability and the ability that was so annoy because it required you to proc your heave shot Refulgent Arrow. RA was so annoying because it would literally proc after you used an archer skilled called barrage that would give 3 weapon skill attacks and was a main usage for this skill but sadly probably 85% of the time it would never be used with it. Now let's move to current day bard 5.0.

5.0 bard - Now we come to the 4th iteration of bard which I find sorta for once great that I can do more dps but the job is clunky in some cases. The main clunky part is the opener itself it is so bad to get RA procs off of dots and you shouldn't waste those because 1 tick of a dot does not out way RA's potency so the end result is that you either get the normal dots up quickly or this RA proc right in between first dot and 2nd dot result in a small delay but worth it if you need to delay your opener a little. Another case of it being clunky is when you heavy shot RA procs dots about to drop and barrage comes up while in a RS window, the order should be IJ, RA, then barrage but you are having to delay barrage so much that if you come upon this 2 times in a fight your RS and barrage will come out of sync in resulting in either delaying RS or just keep going. The delay of RS is not a great thing since it could mess up with your alignment of other buffs. Another case is when barrage hits, Apex Arrow fills and Pitch Perfect hits 3 pitches, the order should be of course PP, RA then AA but the result in this is that PP might proc another pitch while doing RA which results in a lose of an AA charge and also while doing PP dot might proc 2 times with PP at 2 stacks and fills up so we loss AA charge again. The AA system was a great new way how bard can play but being on the gcd just messes up bards flow it's like this one off that you wait and wait then it comes up but something else that is higher priority has to push it to the back and is annoying. Another issue I see with AA is it will literally show you proc 2 times on blood letter in result you loss a blood letter proc just because both dots proc same time and you can't hit it quick enough. Another case which has been said earlier is the RA procs and you hit barrage by mistake because it just came off of cd and you just wasted a RA proc which you don't get back. I see DNC feather system is like a charge system that you can build up procs and spend them whenever but they are only gotten by procs, doesn't this sound like bard's bloodletter or RA yet we have no system to hold these procs but DNC does and they can explode with dps at there burst windows. Now that a few of the cases have been talk about issues with bard let's talk about what bard gets, they get upgraded Heavy shot, shadowbite and AA.

There were also changes made to the jobs support as in removal of foes, NM going to 90s with an increase of 20% from 15%, BV went from 15% to 20%, the song buffs of 2% crit were removed and they did some shuffle of skills. I still do not understand why NM is 90s when Mantra 10 times better is on same cd and hits everyone why make this design choice? BV was not given to bard I don't understand either we only have 1 buff to give us dps increase the other dps jobs have pets, a droid, multiple buffs that help increase there dps but bard only has one how could this be over looked in design, I'm not asking for it back now since there are sides for this but bard has lost a lot of utility and the result we received was being a bit stronger dps wise and yes I don't want to be top dps but the loss does not out way the gain. I now other jobs having issues but this is about bard issues and I do see a few myself while playing it and it constantly bugs me that the way bard play style changes went with a good direction but now fell back a step.

If you read this do give your opinion and do correct me if I missed anything from the history of the bard that I gave I'm not perfect and do miss a few things from time to time but this outlines the history of bard from 2.0-5.0 and I have always enjoyed the job. I don't like to compare the traditional bard with the 14's bard it is unique to the rest of the bards and would like it to stay that way. I only asked some of the designers go out and play 5.0 bard in extremes, Eden normal/savage and not just dungeons because I see no issue with bard running them it's mostly in boss battles that these issues come up. If you play it a bit you will start to notice some of these new bard cases that I mentioned above and I don't have the data that you have behind the scenes. What really hurts the most about this new bard is that a lot of people keep saying it's fine no major issues or don't even speak about it because there are issues with this bard compared to 4.0's bard. I have read some of the suggestions above and some of them are good ones but some are ones I can't agree with but you will look at this feedback and hopefully make proper changes. I would like it better that both bard and dancer can be looked at as a choice because this seemed to be the way players wanted somewhat more options and not this single support.

I know there are 4 post but couldn't fit the history of bard in 1 post.

Use. Paragraphs. Also, you can edit more characters into one post, you don't need to do four.

Honestly not going to read the history lesson, seems not relevant really to the matters at hand. But you're wrong on a number of things on the 5.0 bit:

1. Even if RA procs on your Stormbite, you should still Caustic first before using it.

2. Expiring DoTs + Barrage + RA proc doesn't happen often enough to care about this, also you usually have quite a bit of room to push Raging as needed and it can actually be a good thing to do so. See the Balance guide for details.

3. Apex being able to overcap is just normal life and times of any sort of gauge. However, it is notable that if Apex weren't so weak and/or was an oGCD, we would be able to avoid overcap by using it at 90 or 95 without that being a suboptimal play.

4. There's not really anything wrong with getting 10 gauge on a Ballad tick, sure we'd like BL charges but the gauge isn't the reason why.

5. Slow reactions to an RA proc are just a normal gameplay / skill expression dynamic for elements like that. And you really do get a fair amount of time to react, it's not like Firestarter or anything.

6. We definitely do not want self-BV for reasons outlined all over the place in these OF threads.


The Minne / Mantra comparison grinds a lot of people's gears though, so that's a thing.

And while it doesn't really really make sense to say "oh this job got a robot, that job got this, we didn't get enough for Christmas", one of the undercurrents to Bard mumbling is sort of in this vein. That for as good as the changes from SB to ShB were - most everything they removed or simplified makes sense, from a "good game design" perspective, in a vacuum - with other simplified jobs SE generally added or changed something substantive as well. Whereas Bard kind of just lost a bunch of things, with the additions being very shallow and uninteresting.

In SB it was a job that encouraged and rewarded planning and thinking about how you were going to approach things, but now in ShB it's almost entirely about execution, much less decision depth and what little there is being lower impact. That's part of the reason I and others really want to press the notion that any utility added should be flexible, and if they could add some flex into the existing kit that'd be nice too. Because flexibility breeds decisions - "when should I do this" rather than "oh the button is lit up guess I gotta press it".

And on top of that, things feel more important when you're making decisions about them, so it'd be a good way to make sure any added support really hits the mark on making players "feel" more like they're helping the party.

While I'm happy that the Apex Arrow sound is being changed, I feel compelled to provide additional feedback to the Square Enix team based on their request for it, and their comments during the Live Letter. Here's hoping they see it.

The concern they addressed during the Live Letter is that Bard had its utility niche moved to Dancer. While I understand people are upset about this, I think there are more pressing issues that, most importantly, do not need to be solved by adding additional utility to Bard. These issues were not addressed during the Live Letter, so I hope the job design team takes them into account.

* The Ranged Physical DPS classes as a whole are not up to par. They are well balanced against each other. However, when you compare to the strongest DPS classes in the game, Monk and Black Mage, all of the Ranged DPS are in the range of 15% behind among top-level players on Savage content, and that's after you account for the discrepancy in utility. The difference is so big that top speedrun groups are preparing to take a second Black Mage instead of a Ranged Physical DPS, because the difference in DPS contribution is bigger than the LB generation and the 1% party buff combined.

* Bard lost planning complexity moving from Stormblood to Shadowbringers, and didn't gain enough complexity back in other areas. Foe, Refresh, and Iron Jaws were more interesting to plan last tier, and while I understand why Refresh can't exist in the current game design, Bard didn't get anything between level 70 and 80 that improves the planning complexity of the class. You can't plan around Apex at all because it's random and the optimal use is so constrained. This is the reason why so many of my requests in the thread OP focus on Apex and giving back Foe. Design updates to those two skills can help refund some of the complexity that Bard lost in the expansion transition.

Thanks again for reading, please do leave a post if you agree with these arguments so that we can help raise awareness for the job design team.

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Originally Posted by infinitestory

Foe, Refresh, and Iron Jaws were more interesting to plan last tier,

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How was Iron Jaws more interesting to plan last tier? I didn't play Stormblood so genuinely curious.

Although I do agree about not being able to plan around using Apex Arrow much. Procs are random and it is a nice ability but in single target it comes up pretty infrequently. How do you propose they change Apex Arrow?

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Originally Posted by infinitestory

While I'm happy that the Apex Arrow sound is being changed, I feel compelled to provide additional feedback to the Square Enix team based on their request for it, and their comments during the Live Letter. Here's hoping they see it.

The concern they addressed during the Live Letter is that Bard had its utility niche moved to Dancer. While I understand people are upset about this, I think there are more pressing issues that, most importantly, do not need to be solved by adding additional utility to Bard. These issues were not addressed during the Live Letter, so I hope the job design team takes them into account.

* The Ranged Physical DPS classes as a whole are not up to par. They are well balanced against each other. However, when you compare to the strongest DPS classes in the game, Monk and Black Mage, all of the Ranged DPS are in the range of 15% behind among top-level players on Savage content, and that's after you account for the discrepancy in utility. The difference is so big that top speedrun groups are preparing to take a second Black Mage instead of a Ranged Physical DPS, because the difference in DPS contribution is bigger than the LB generation and the 1% party buff combined.

* Bard lost planning complexity moving from Stormblood to Shadowbringers, and didn't gain enough complexity back in other areas. Foe, Refresh, and Iron Jaws were more interesting to plan last tier, and while I understand why Refresh can't exist in the current game design, Bard didn't get anything between level 70 and 80 that improves the planning complexity of the class. You can't plan around Apex at all because it's random and the optimal use is so constrained. This is the reason why so many of my requests in the thread OP focus on Apex and giving back Foe. Design updates to those two skills can help refund some of the complexity that Bard lost in the expansion transition.

Thanks again for reading, please do leave a post if you agree with these arguments so that we can help raise awareness for the job design team.

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Yeah, pretty much.

Point 1: To give you an idea of how far behind ranged are compared to the upper DPS classes (mostly BLM, MNK, and DRG, though it's likely all three are super overtuned more than anything else, seeing as those three have a significant gap from the rest of the DPS), I scored a 95th percentile in E3S in my static a week and a half ago. I did 150 more rDPS than my Dragoon (who died once that run). That Dragoon earned an 18th percentile. If a top 5% Bard's contribution barely outperforms a low 20% performance from a Dragoon on the raid DPS scale - where damage gained from party buffs is subtracted from other party members and added to the caster of said buffs, something is incredibly wrong with the scaling between ranged/support and the raw DPS. And that's not going into the fact that Dragoon isn't even a raw DPS, having access to two party member damage buffs - oh, and Bard was designated as a 'hybrid' and yet only has one party member damage buff, one that doesn't even work on themselves (not that I'm advocating for Battle Voice to do that, for reasons already argued).

Imagine how much worse this kind of situation is for all the other supporty/ranged DPS too. This is only going to get worse as we get better gear later this expansion, as gaps in DPS will naturally expand as a result. Even now, when you take a look at rDPS rankings, the top performing Monks are contributing roughly 1,800 more raid DPS than the top performing Dancer. That should not be happening. There's also a massive drop off when you look at Dragoon (3rd place) VS Samurai (4th place) of about 500 rDPS, and the latter has no party utility to speak of. Then there's ANOTHER massive drop off between Samurai and Summoner (5th place) of about 600 rDPS. When you take a look between Dragoon and Summoner, that's a gap of around 1,000 raid DPS from 3rd place to 5th place. Summoner and below is when things finally start to level out, with Summoner and the remaining 5 DPS classes having rDPS contribution within 400 of each other.

(On another note, the switch from raw DPS to raid DPS on FFLogs was one of the best decisions that website owner could have done. Since padded runs are no longer obfuscating the statistics, it's opened a lot of eyes to the true state of the balance for this current expansion. Because really, such a large contribution gap between the top 3-4 DPS and the remaining 7-6 DPS is inexcusable. The ideal gap between the top DPS and lowest DPS classes IMO should only be about 700-800 rDPS, so that it's a matter of taking the player rather than taking the class for a raid, but the gap in rDPS is double that already and beyond any differences in skill that could have closed the gap otherwise.)

Point 2: Yeah, the reason why so many suggestions focus on Apex Arrow is because its design is pretty much reminiscent of the exact same problem Machinist had in Stormblood. Hell, one could say ALL of Bard's procs have that problem now. And that problem is that static RNG with no way to manipulate it does not make for compelling design at all. Stormblood Bard was well-received by the raiding community because you could make decisions with Iron Jaws and buffs from other party members to skyrocket your critical and thus your proc rates. Depending on how you used Iron Jaws in Stormblood, your proc rates could be around 35-40% (assuming end of Stormblood BiS gear), or it could be potentially increased to about 60+% during an opener if Litany and Chain Stratagem were up. There is nothing remotely rewarding to that level in ShB Bard, and our 'ultimate' level 80 skill is an uncontrollable mess that barely exists as a result.

You literally cannot plan around Apex Arrow coming into play, when I've had runs that vary wildly from having my first fully powered Apex Arrow coming in at 45 seconds into a fight, or coming in at 75 seconds instead. It's not a well designed skill when all decisions around it boil down to 'how do I use this without risking a DPS loss' instead of 'how do I use this as a DPS gain'.

(Honestly, I really wonder if Apex Arrow and Enhanced Army's Paeon should have their levels switched, so you got Apex Arrow at 78 and Enhanced Paeon/something else at 80 instead. Getting Enhanced Paeon at 80 would have actually fit the theme of the level 80 Bard job quest better than Apex Arrow, and getting that later means that it could have been designed around manipulating Apex Arrow's gauge generation/enhancing repertoire proc rates instead of its current boring design of... A mild 10 second skill speed buff.)

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Originally Posted by Roshidon1

How was Iron Jaws more interesting to plan last tier? I didn't play Stormblood so genuinely curious.

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In part because of how much we got paid off for using Iron Jaws under crit buffs, and in part because our default GCD was only ~62 potency stronger than Iron Jaws instead of ~130, optimizing Iron Jaws usage in SB Bard was a big difference maker.

If you used Iron Jaws at the start and end of Battle Litany, for instance, versus just using it once in the middle of it, you'd gain six extra +15% crit rate DoT ticks, worth some 300+ potency in Minuet, at a cost of maybe 30-50 potency lost due to the chance of using an extra IJ over the course of that uptime. Similar benefits applied to Chain Strategem, especially given that naive Jaws usage might miss Chain entirely.

And you also had regular ol' damage buffs to try and get on your DoTs, which you'd aim to do much more often than you do now because of the cheap cost of using IJ early. So you'd sit down with the timings sheet, look at the buffs your team has, when they're expected to be used, and figure out where you want all your IJs to be.


In ShB, between the buffs available being smaller, and the price of using IJ early being higher, and the lack of a proc rate bonus, the difference between just using Jaws every 28-30s vs. using it early from time to time to catch buffs, is much smaller, and in terms of gameplay feel it's a call that you make far far less often.

You can still, technically, do the sort of planning alluded to above, but instead of being something you really wanted to do to score a big payoff, it's just kind of a random micro-optimization for tryhards that improves your output on a scale much smaller than the noise of general RNG.


The loss, or drastic reduction, of similar planning dynamics surrounding Foe Requiem, Refresh, Troubadour, even song timings in relation to the potential payoffs of getting crit-buffed DoTs aligned with Minuet, is something that many SB Bard raiders mourn.

While it's probably unlikely that SE is going to make job changes for the sole purpose of re-introducing some depth, the hope is that when they're looking into common complaints like Apex disappointment or the absence of support, they might keep the issue in mind. It's very possible to aim for solutions that both address the base concern, while also introducing elements that provide players with impactful decision points / things they can explore on the planning side.

Bring back Foe's Requiem.
Bring back Refresh as a cross-class skill.
Bring back song cycling with party-wide effects, or better yet, take some sort of inspiration from Dancer.

The entire identity of Bard relies on the songs, and right now, outside of Wanderer's > Battle Voice, they might as well not even exist right now. This has always been an issue, but now it's somehow even worse.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

snip.

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Very well thought out response, ty for that Cetonis.

I've posted this elsewhere, but might as well get it in the good thread.

General example of a damage-support setup that I think would be good at producing the flavor, while also not too powerful or hard to balance:

-- Battle Voice: Increases the direct hit rate of physical damage dealt by nearby party members by 30%. Duration: 20s. Cannot be used while Foe Requiem is active. Cooldown: 180s. Maximum charges: 2.

-- Foe Requiem: Increases the direct hit rate of magical damage dealt by nearby party members by 30%. Duration: 20s. Cannot be used while Battle Voice is active. Cooldown: 180s. Maximum charges: 2.


There would be a little bit of class-specific synergy mainly with Paladin but maybe Ninja or Red Mage depending on details, so I don't know if SE would do exactly this. But said synergy seems low impact, and no more powerful than the job-specific synergy between jobs with overlapping buff/bursts, so maybe it's fine.

Numerically, if we call current BV 600 raid dps on a dummy fight, this would probably be an increase to around 1200, in a landscape where Dancer is over 2000. So firmly in the middle of the three ranged, as desired.


But most importantly, it'd be a setup that asks Bard players to think about when it's best to use which one, by nature of each having a skew on its impact and the charge system allowing for more flexible timing.

Making players engage with their support skills, rather than just yawn and press the thing that lit up, goes a long way to making a job "feel" support-y. As does increasing the frequency of using such skills from once per three minutes to once per 90s plus two bonus.

And, it's the sort of thing Bards mourning the loss of depth would like to see added, something that feels rewarding to mull over and plan out. So it'd cover all the bases. Not that this is the only way, but it's an example of the sorts of dynamics that I think should be the goal re: adding support, as well as any other QoL / feedback-reaction changes.


(aside: One of the challenges, if SE wants to re-introduce damage support, is that if you bring back Foe as an interesting skill, and leave BV boring, as a design question why didn't you just make BV interesting instead? But if you just make BV interesting and don't return Foe, will that be enough for players to be satisfied? And trying to come up with a way to have both Foe and BV present as interesting / flexible skills without feeling redundant, is quite hard. So that's how I landed on the phys/mag mirror idea)

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

Snip!

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Please take our Trick Attack away from us and place it on BRD instead.
Call it something cool like... "Last Verse"

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Originally Posted by CrashofZenki

Please take our Trick Attack away from us and place it on BRD instead.
Call it something cool like... "Last Verse"

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Before it was taken away, Foe Requiem basically was a weaker Trick Attack.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

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These are great ideas for making these abilities feel more engaging to use.

One alternative I though of was to have the three main damage songs give some kind of boost (Haste/phys up/mag up/crit up/something along those lines). Foe Requiem could return as it was in 4.0, and Battle Voice could increase the effect of whichever boost you have up, meaning you’ll have to consider timing in relation to song rotation / party composition / etc. Alternatively, it would work Troubadour does in PvP and add a damage boosting effect to the current song being sung, though this would be harder to balance because there’d end up being one ‘best’ song. Though naturally that would be quite a big chance so it’s not particularly realistic.

Foe Requiem becoming is a cooldown does feel weird to me because I loved having to manage the cast time and MP. But if there’s only ability in the whole kit that uses MP, then you just end up wondering ‘why isn’t this a cooldown’ anyway. I feel like Foe Requiem could only work in the way it did before with cast time/mp etc if we had another song that also used MP to make it a meaningful decision. But it’d be pretty strange to give us the ability back, just to say ‘you’ll get to make meaningful decisions with this spell...next expansion’, so the cooldown-type Requiem is the easiest way for them to bring it back into Bard’s ability set without breaking the balance between ranged DPS.

I wouldn't want the three songs to give different effects, because it's the most rigid part of bard's rotation and if we had to plan the songs around buffing the party as well, it would cause nightmares and force us to make large personal dps sacrifices.

At the same time, the three songs giving the same buff effect is the SB situation, where bard just provides free damage utility that requires no real skill to capitalize on.

Therefore I think it's best that the three personal songs give no party buffs.

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Originally Posted by infinitestory

I wouldn't want the three songs to give different effects, because it's the most rigid part of bard's rotation and if we had to plan the songs around buffing the party as well, it would cause nightmares and force us to make large personal dps sacrifices.

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This is true, you’d end up in a situation like 4.0 Troubadour where you want a specific effect but are in the wrong song. I think the main thing I was going for was having some kind of interaction with the damage songs and some kind of support, plus the added bonus of three support effects in one (though that’s just me being greedy lol). That said, there is the option of having some kind of ability that gives a different effect depending on song without the songs themselves giving a party buff, but that still falls into the Troubadour issue due to not really being able to vary song rotation.

Another random though while I’m throwing out ideas, but I was thinking maybe Minne and Paean could grant some Soul Voice on usage to incentivise using them while also adding some stability to how it builds. Though that would mean having to use them for the gauge and not necessarily the support, so it’s not the greatest idea.

Lastly, I was thinking about this earlier while playing random stuff as Bard (needed a change from DNC/SCH lol). But one of the points that Jehantel gives when describing Bards really stuck with me. He says that as battle wages on, the line between friend and foe becomes hazy, and the Archer is left to bear witness the horrors of battle from afar. The torrent of emotion within the Archer wells up and, with naught else left, they sing, and inspire their comrades to greater feats. The Bard’s fervent desire to protect their comrades gives the song power, and can thus turn the tides of battle.

But I’ve noticed a lot of the time, when the party really needs help there isn’t anything I can do anymore. I’ve been in parties with a Bard where the healers are empty on MP, several DPS are dead, the tanks have no HP. And all I can do as a Bard is watch and hope to god the healers can scrape the party back up. Minne and Troubadour are nice, but they work much better in parties that are coordinated and already doing well, but when you’re in a party that really needs the extra healing the cooldowns are so long that they can’t really do much to help. Sometimes I wonder if I should have just gone Summoner so I can actually help out the party with Raise / Devotion / Regen, or a Dancer so I at least have Improvisation and Curing Waltz for when we need support.

I know balancing a job around things going wrong never goes well (Red Mage), but at the same time, I hear about this Bard in the lore and always want to play it, but then play the actual job and it’s like two different entities entirely. I’m not suggesting we should have a suite of healing and raise spell because obviously that would be insanely overpowered, but it’d be nice to be able to do something to actively help the party. It would be nice to be able to ‘live that fantasy’ (for want of a better term). To sing for your comrades in the heat of battle, inspiring them to overcome the horrors of battle from which your song began.

While I am a bit of a WP apologist, I think if they do give in and rework it, some sort of (weaker ofc) Excogitation style effect would make a bunch of sense thematically and mechanically for the skill.

That's probably the furthest I'd go in terms of increasing defensive utility though, as much as Minne requires coordination it does have some value (personally I ballpark it at ~50 dps with upside), and I don't blame SE for being a bit hesitant about creating a scenario where they're trying to assign dps values to defensive skills. (Would be nice if they felt that way about Mantra too but yknow)

You can end up in a dynamic where nobody is happy because the jobs with the defense feel like they're paying too much for it, and those without feel like they aren't being taxed enough.

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Originally Posted by Connor

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Originally Posted by infinitestory

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Okay, so a lot of what going to be written down is just like my own experiences personally, but maybe it would be helpful to a lot of the design, so this will be a off-topic for a bit...

OKay, in a questionnaire, the devs did state that they removed the SS dot because it was too difficult, but the real issue may actually just be that the UI requires to much from players with limited multi-tasking/goes beyond their ability to multi-task by demanding players pay attention to too many things at once, which if they would like just use better and larger tells and consolidating information into as few points as possible would allow for information to be more easily digestible could allow players quicker reactions and allow for an increase in the skill floor of the playerbase. Such as removing tells from the the Enemy HP bar and placing it in the middle of the enemy model like they did with the giant eye thingy.

That is basically one of like several problems they may have to address because they are seriously over concerned with low-player-skill. And another is definitely solving the issues haste would possibly have due to clipping and stuff canceling actions like river of blood did and how Pitch perfect will just cancel in mid-animation.

Even if they just consolidate the onscreen information better they may feel less worried about increasing difficulty and could do something like: return foie and then change minne to activate identically by using the soul gauge and drain mp upon use, and allow MB to restore the parties MP through RoD and BL. Basically, Bards would have to manage MP to keep minne and foi up for as long as possible but designed in a way that is not too punishing while rewarding upkeep in some way.

It would also help to have a cd that could reduce song cooldowns, but needs six procs in total used in pitch perfect to reset/become usable, And, we need AM to at least give party members a 20 second haste buff to actually fit into the job's lore

Oh, and playing the cyclical songs should really be how it buffs DH and reduces damage, and similarly for DNC as well. And, all of the jobs just totally hit like wet noodles against trash mobs and really need to hit harder anyway, imo...

I feel like that sort of layout is a little too ambitious. We probably shouldn't expect to see MP re-added as a job mechanic in a patch. The most we might see is a lazy Foe re-add where they just leave it on an island.

The thing with their low-player-skill concern is, that much of what's being asked for in OP would be more low-skill friendly, not less.

Apex being usable at 20 gauge for bad damage is not low-skill friendly. Putting a charge system on EA and/or BL would be pretty low-skill friendly as accidentally delaying those skills would no longer be as consistently punished.

While such changes might also introduce certain skill expressions like aiming to 3x EA a WM or something, that kind of good-decision based skill gap is almost wholly absent from Bard right now. It's about 98% execution at the moment, and lower-skill players' struggles with that core execution is what's always been the heart of the Bard skill gap to begin with.

And in making some of these changes, SE could make that execution easier, which they should presumably want. In exchange, they'd be adding a modicum of decision points, which is what OP and I and many others want, as players who have lost that element of Bard that they really enjoyed.

Whenever people mention the apex arrow and PP sound effect
I just realize I’m just modern day version of pavlov's dog

*reads patch notes in anticipation*
....
*pulls out violin and silently weeps*
On the plus side, my main melee alt (nin) got some much needed love at least.

Joining the riot to Bring Back Foes!!

This thread so eloquently mirrors my own wants, I appreciate the well thought out post and hope that SE gives notice to our concerns soon.

Would love to see foe's requiem return and bloodletter stacks(MB would work a lot smoother). The Apex Arrow sound needs to be changed ASAP. It feels so bad to PP1 just from reflex alone.

After having the opportunity to play with Apex Arrow in high end content for the past few weeks, I have come to realize just how problematic its current design is. To the point where it'd likely be accurate to say that a lot of Bard's current design woes in the DPS department could be laid at its feet.

Apex Arrow is a 500 potency skill that, since it is tied to repertoire procs, effectively has a random cooldown of 45-70 seconds. This makes it impossible to plan around using it. Now, if it took about 70 seconds to get a full 100 gauge, that also means you lost a lot of damage due to lack of procs for OTHER skills tied to repertoire as well. 40% repertoire proc rate is still well within the realm of potentially being RNG screwed, and it's likelier to happen than not. And Apex Arrow's existence is likely why the proc rate is as it currently is.

The devs could buff Apex Arrow's gauge generation rate by buffing repertoire proc rates to, say, 50%. But that also comes with the problem of making Bloodletter/Rain of Death/Pitch Perfect proc a lot more as a result. So if the developers believe such an option would make Bard too broken, any buff to Apex Arrow would likely be centered around finding other ways to increase gauge generation rate independently of repertoire. Something we can actually control.

Time to get in that hard and fast fix suggestions, here goes;

Preface: I am not a level 80 bard yet but seems like a lot are not fans of apex arrow, so...

Make the level 80 ability a shared recast with bloodletter/rain of death that is basically just bane from smn.

Swap raging strikes for somekind of raidwide skill/spell speed buff or some kind of foe's req ability.

Let the bard apply their raid wides to themselves, I think they are the only exception for this.

Have barrage recharge faster from repitoire ticks during armys peon.

Oh yeah, and trade quicknock for wide volley. Circle AOEs are king.