melee dps buffs + bard nerf = cumulative effect too much?

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Originally Posted by Auburn

Take into consideration that BRD will likely lose one of it's DPS cooldowns in 2.1 and Archer becomes even more enticing as it shouldn't lose anything due to it being a class. Of course, making this work won't be extremely common as you won't be able to use any BRD specific myth gear you had purchased. Any concerns about the weapon won't likely matter as long as the Extreme Primal i90 bow is usable by both Archer and Bard.

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The problem with not using Jobs is that you get a clear and significant drop in your stats. Although it may sound enticing to be able to use cross class abilities from all classes, it may not be worth the amount of stats you lose when you unequip the job crystal, not to mention you lose out on the job specific gear which further augments your stats.

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Originally Posted by glen7187

The problem with not using Jobs is that you get a clear and significant drop in your stats. Although it may sound enticing to be able to use cross class abilities from all classes, it may not be worth the amount of stats you lose when you unequip the job crystal, not to mention you lose out on the job specific gear which further augments your stats.

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He talked about those concerns specifically and suggested that it might be viable to trade away some DPS (Fracture would help, but it wouldn't get you back to the same point) in order to pick up some extra support skills instead.

Obviously there aren't many other DPS cooldowns that Archer has access to, so grabbing a few more support skills seems like it might be viable.
But the problem with that is you have to give up Ballad, Requiem, Paeon, and Rain of Death which are better support skills than the few you could pick up on Archer (Virus, Eye for and Eye, Stoneskin).
So you're trading away damage, and you're also trading away support.
It's just not going to work with the cross class skill selection we have.

Now if they added more DD abilities/cooldowns to Archer's available cross class skills, then it might start to become viable.
For instance if you could pick up a positional attack with higher potency like Impulse Drive, or if you could grab several more dots such as Thunder/Aero/Bio/Touch of Death/Phlebotomize to go along with VenomousBite/WindBite/Fracture, or if you could pick up a few more DD cooldowns such as Fight or Flight/Berserk/Lifesurge.... THEN you might be able to make a case for Archer.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

"If" they did cross class Bard with CNJ, it really wouldn't be hard to imagine them adding a bard trait or something where their spells scaled off their dexterity.
That would still only make Cure, Aero and Stoneskin more useful but it's better than nothing.

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It wouldn't do anything for Stoneskin. It would boost Aero, but not enough to make it useful, except maybe as a filler GCD to regen TP. I'd rather have 150 potency at 41 Weapon Damage than 200 Potency at 35 Magic Damage. It would also boost Cure, but our low Magic Damage on our weapons would still make it much weaker than any cures an actual caster can throw out.

EDIT: Also, I just don't see them adding in a trait for a class that only affects cross-class skills just to make the cross-class skills one Job has available to it actually work.

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Originally Posted by Bardo

He talked about those concerns specifically and suggested that it might be viable to trade away some DPS (Fracture would help, but it wouldn't get you back to the same point) in order to pick up some extra support skills instead.

Obviously there aren't many other DPS cooldowns that Archer has access to, so grabbing a few more support skills seems like it might be viable.
But the problem with that is you have to give up Ballad, Requiem, Paeon, and Rain of Death which are better support skills than the few you could pick up on Archer (Virus, Eye for and Eye, Stoneskin).
So you're trading away damage, and you're also trading away support.
It's just not going to work with the cross class skill selection we have.

Now if they added more DD abilities/cooldowns to Archer's available cross class skills, then it might start to become viable.
For instance if you could pick up a positional attack with higher potency like Impulse Drive, or if you could grab several more dots such as Thunder/Aero/Bio/Touch of Death/Phlebotomize to go along with VenomousBite/WindBite/Fracture, or if you could pick up a few more DD cooldowns such as Fight or Flight/Berserk/Lifesurge.... THEN you might be able to make a case for Archer.

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From what I've tested so far, Archer isn't that far behind Bard, if at all, depending on the fight. As far as things like Paeon, Ballad, Requiem, and Rain of Death; most of those become useless at a point with the exception of Requiem. I might do some more testing later this week, but Archer definitely doesn't seem bad at all. Going Archer will likely be a way to regain whatever skill that Bard will be losing in 2.1. Now, we'll see how much of a deal that's going to make once we find out exactly what it is. Again, this isn't going to be something that everybody will be able to do as most Bards rely on left-side myth gear to fill out their slots; but it may be an option for some.

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Originally Posted by Auburn

From what I've tested so far... snip

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Have you tested to see if Fracture works with River of Blood?
I've wondered about this for a while but just never tested it.
I know the tooltip says "Windbite and Venomous Bite" specifically, but tooltips say a lot of things that don't turn out to be true.

Even if it does work, and even if they remove Blood for Blood completely from Bard while leaving it available to Archer (unlikely as there are no other examples of this ingame), then you'd still be left with the gear problem because the majority of Allagan gear for Bard is so poorly itemized. If the iLvL80 gear has a lot of crit/det on it, then maybe you could make a case for it.

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Originally Posted by Bardo

Have you tested to see if Fracture works with River of Blood?
I've wondered about this for a while but just never tested it.
I know the tooltip says "Windbite and Venomous Bite" specifically, but tooltips say a lot of things that don't turn out to be true.

Even if it does work, and even if they remove Blood for Blood completely from Bard while leaving it available to Archer (unlikely as there are no other examples of this ingame), then you'd still be left with the gear problem because the majority of Allagan gear for Bard is so poorly itemized. If the iLvL80 gear has a lot of crit/det on it, then maybe you could make a case for it.

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Fracture does not seem to work with River of Blood; if it did, that would be amazing. As far as Allagan gear goes, I feel most of it is optimized very well with the exception of the hands. i80 gear will sadly most likely only be used by the Bard job and not Archer.

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Originally Posted by Auburn

Fracture does not seem to work with River of Blood; if it did, that would be amazing. As far as Allagan gear goes, I feel most of it is optimized very well with the exception of the hands. i80 gear will sadly most likely only be used by the Bard job and not Archer.

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I'm not sure if we're looking at the same allagan gear o.O

I would argue Bard's Head, Body, Hand, and Legs are all superior to the allagan versions, as well as Hero's Belt and Earrings. Add to that the 20 dex and 250 hp just for equipping the soul crystal and I can't see archer every being more viable than bard.

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Originally Posted by Taban

I'm not sure if we're looking at the same allagan gear o.O

I would argue Bard's Head, Body, Hand, and Legs are all superior to the allagan versions, as well as Hero's Belt and Earrings. Add to that the 20 dex and 250 hp just for equipping the soul crystal and I can't see archer every being more viable than bard.

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I actually prefer using most of this Allagan gear to the Bard Myth set; the hands are by far better, though. Otherwise, I use Head/Body/Legs/Feet on my Bard. The trade-off from "Best in Slot" to my goal setup is about 26 Crit and 9 Determination for 50 Skill Speed. Hero's Belt and Earrings don't matter as you can use those on either Archer or Bard.

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Originally Posted by Dyne_Fellpool

I realize we'll just have to wait and see, but...

With DRG and PGL buffs coming (10%?) AND a BRD nerf, I'm worried that the cumulative effect from both of these will result in BRDs really being outperformed badly
by other classes in their key role, which is DPS in this game.

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I think it is obvious SE wants MNK and SMN to be FotM class this time.

BRD has a straight group damage buff, right? 10%?

What you need to consider, is that when in a group, 10% of everyone's damage is actually your damage. So you ask the question: We have 7 people, we need to bring an 8th. Do we bring a bard? Well, if the BRD does 40% the damage of a normal DPS, but his buff increases the other DPS classes to the point where that buff brings his group contribution up to 100% what a normal DPS would do, that makes him break even. This usually isn't the case. Usually, BRD classes will scale harder with group size (aka an 8 man group will get more from the BRD than a 4 man group). As such, you'll probably always want a BRD in 8 man groups, and they may or may not be strong in 4 man groups.

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Originally Posted by JustGenus

BRD has a straight group damage buff, right? 10%?

What you need to consider, is that when in a group, 10% of everyone's damage is actually your damage. So you ask the question: We have 7 people, we need to bring an 8th. Do we bring a bard? Well, if the BRD does 40% the damage of a normal DPS, but his buff increases the other DPS classes to the point where that buff brings his group contribution up to 100% what a normal DPS would do, that makes him break even. This usually isn't the case. Usually, BRD classes will scale harder with group size (aka an 8 man group will get more from the BRD than a 4 man group). As such, you'll probably always want a BRD in 8 man groups, and they may or may not be strong in 4 man groups.

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Foe Requiem only increases elemental magic damage and you cant keep it up maybe 15-20% of the time.

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Originally Posted by Lunavi

I think it is obvious SE wants MNK and SMN to be FotM class this time.

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I don't see what that has to do with SMN. People play the job shitty now, they'll still play it shitty 2 weeks from now.

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Originally Posted by Zer0mr

I don't see what that has to do with SMN. People play the job shitty now, they'll still play it shitty 2 weeks from now.

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Pet management will be much easier in 2.1 due to several new pet macros.

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Originally Posted by Oblit

Foe Requiem only increases elemental magic damage and you cant keep it up maybe 15-20% of the time.

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Yes, the only ones taking advantage of this are BLM and ACN

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Originally Posted by Leon_Stormrage

Yes, the only ones taking advantage of this are BLM and ACN

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SCH and WHM do too if they toss up DoT's while it's active or the WHM is Holy spamming. (think you mean SMN too?)

Have you ever had to tank turn 2 wthout bards? Sure its perfectly possible but annoying when you have to worry about agro swapping and silence rotations at the same time. I cant count how many times the mp song has made the dif between a sucessful run and a wipe all thoughout coil.

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Originally Posted by o3o

Have you ever had to tank turn 2 wthout bards? Sure its perfectly possible but annoying when you have to worry about agro swapping and silence rotations at the same time. I cant count how many times the mp song has made the dif between a sucessful run and a wipe all thoughout coil.

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Bard songs are a wonderful way to bridge gaps in gear and familiarity of a fight for sure. However, at some point in time, Ballad and Paeon become next to useless.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

SCH and WHM do too if they toss up DoT's while it's active or the WHM is Holy spamming. (think you mean SMN too?)

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I don't know about whm but it makes sense.
And yes, SCH and SMN get the buff from Foe

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Originally Posted by Leon_Stormrage

I don't know about whm but it makes sense.
And yes, SCH and SMN get the buff from Foe

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Aero DoTs if nothing else. Every point counts still, I think, so Whms should keep these up if/when they can(always) anyway.

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Originally Posted by Oblit

Foe Requiem only increases elemental magic damage and you cant keep it up maybe 15-20% of the time.

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Foe requiem affects non-elemental spells too.

The correct tool-tip should be: +15% magic bonus. (+30% with battle-shout)
It does not work on elemental attacks specifically.

All the mage classes get a buff from foe requiem. Those 1.2k+ holy crits are pretty nice :3

What I wanted to see was not a buff to melee or a hard-nerf to bards; what I really wanted was to make changes in mechanics or ranged-classes that would make the mechanics as equally punishing for both dps types. Making things easier for melee would just be dumbing down the content so the solution I wanted was making things harder for range. The changes I wanted to see in bard was to make them more challenging and complicated to play, as they are currently retardedly simple.

In terms of dps, yes, this change will almost certainly make an optimal melee better in single-target dps (though they already are); however, bards and range are still the safer choice. That extra damage often do not make the difference between winning and losing, but staying alive and not sucking the attention and MP of the healers often DO make a difference. They are also the safer choice in terms of dps; with a melee it's less uncertain what you're gonna get.

My last point: songs. If bards are gonna be doing comparable dps, then they need to give other dps something to offer the party/raid, or else make bard a dps/support hybrd. Again, the little bit of extra damage rarely makes a difference but songs can and do make a difference; just the fact that the option is there is big plus.

FYI, the "nerf" to bard is not even that significant; they're losing 1 or 2 cross-abilities (one's that they shouldn't even have to begin with) and that's about it. However, I can see why the 10% buff to melee (especially monk) might be too much. Guess we'll see.

Who the hell cares about a silly nerf, just really..
Play whatever you like to play, stop crying over nerfs and buffs. It's not like bard will be 100% useless just because it'll get nerfed a little.
Bards will always be needed for dungeons like coil and the nerf won't change anything major.

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Originally Posted by Sayori

Who the hell cares about a silly nerf, just really...

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Bard's maybe?

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Originally Posted by Sayori

Who the hell cares about a silly nerf, just really..
Play whatever you like to play, stop crying over nerfs and buffs. It's not like bard will be 100% useless just because it'll get nerfed a little.
Bards will always be needed for dungeons like coil and the nerf won't change anything major.

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Turn 1: Not needed.
Turn 2: Arguable, but we're not the only silencers by a long shot
Turn 3: Lol
Turn 4: . . .not really seeing it, but I don't have much experience in T4
Turn 5: The world first video shows 2x BRD. . .and they barely sing at all. To be clear, Carraway sings Ballad for ~20 seconds towards the start, then doesn't sing at all again until one of the healers nearly OOMs because 3 people died to Twister. They've since made Twister more forgiving, so I don't foresee this being an issue in the future. The other BRD doesn't sing at all until the second Ballad starts, when he picks up Requiem.

Yep, we're so totally needed all throughout coil. . .

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

snip

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This was my major concern, once players start to learn how to manage things such as tp and mana better as well as a silence rotation without bard, than the use for bards drops because if they cannot offer a decent amount a dps why bring them. On turn 4 I find myself playing some songs but only for a duration of about 10-15 sec to burn things faster, such as army's so the monk and warrior can just aoe burn after the first dread, but that is really not needed if every1 can do their proper dps for the turn.

Peanut Butter, bards are the easiest dps to play on purpose. They wont make the job harder because its obviously intended to be a job with a low skill required. Games make classes like bard so that you dont have to be the best in the world to experience the game. Just do it the user friendly way. It will never be the best for its role but it will be less stressful.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

Turn 5: The world first video shows 2x BRD. . .and they barely sing at all. To be clear, Carraway sings Ballad for ~20 seconds towards the start, then doesn't sing at all again until one of the healers nearly OOMs because 3 people died to Twister. They've since made Twister more forgiving, so I don't foresee this being an issue in the future. The other BRD doesn't sing at all until the second Ballad starts, when he picks up Requiem.

Yep, we're so totally needed all throughout coil. . .

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Bard is only needed on Turn 5 if something goes wrong; otherwise, we never sing ballad. We only run 2 Bards because that just happens to be the way we leveled.

There are 8 slots.
There are 9 jobs.

There are 4 slots (usually) for DPS.
There are 5 DPS jobs.

Which means it comes down to Bard vs Someone else for the slot.

Which means that unless it's some FC that's pushing content so hard that they clear it on the PBE, uber optimizing isn't needed. Isn't required. Isn't something to worried about. That one slot is not going to break you. Especially if Melee is getting an average 10% buff. It means the DPS brought by a Bard may lower through lack of CDs, but is made up by melee who don't die.

It means the only reason a raid group will stop bringing you as a Bard is because they don't like you. Plain and simple. Solution: Be a likeable player.
If they stop bringing you on sole account of being a Bard, well, now you know how X job felt, which would be that one DPS, Tank, or Healer that got excluded because mechanics dictated it.

In short: Always look on the bright side of life.

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Originally Posted by Cynric

Peanut Butter, bards are the easiest dps to play on purpose. They wont make the job harder because its obviously intended to be a job with a low skill required.

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Low skill? That's really a matter of the player them self, not the class/job. All classes would seem easy to anyone who doesn't know how to use them properly.

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Originally Posted by Black91CRX

Low skill? That's really a matter of the player them self, not the class/job. All classes would seem easy to anyone who doesn't know how to use them properly.

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Black, you shouldn't be so hard on the guy - some folks really do think that having to move behind the mob from time to time is hard and "requires skill".

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Originally Posted by Zellata

Black, you shouldn't be so hard on the guy - some folks really do think that having to move behind the mob from time to time is hard and "requires skill".

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every single class in the game except bard must halt everything to dodge an aoe. Bard keeps on pewin, pressing one button and buffs most of the time, throwing a dot here or there, then going back to heavy shot. How is this hard? Is the button you have heavy shot mapped to broken? Every job regardless of being what I would consider difficult is still harder than bard .

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Originally Posted by WiseWolfHolo

This was my major concern, once players start to learn how to manage things such as tp and mana better as well as a silence rotation without bard, than the use for bards drops because if they cannot offer a decent amount a dps why bring them. On turn 4 I find myself playing some songs but only for a duration of about 10-15 sec to burn things faster, such as army's so the monk and warrior can just aoe burn after the first dread, but that is really not needed if every1 can do their proper dps for the turn.

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My coil group has two bards and I will not be replacing them for anyone jsut because we don't need their songs anymore. Play quality is far more important than job. I have also found very few people that only want to play one class. My coil group of 8 has over 25 relic weapons...

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Originally Posted by Cynric

every single class in the game except bard must halt everything to dodge an aoe.

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This doesn't require any extra skill - every single class has to hit movement button in order to dodge, the fact that some can't shoot on the run doesn't make them any harder to play. It just changes how they do damage (in bursts vs. continuous).

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Bard keeps on pewin, pressing one button and buffs most of the time, throwing a dot here or there, then going back to heavy shot. How is this hard?

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All classes have roughly the same number of buttons to press, bard is no exception. I never said that it's hard, on the contrary, all classes/jobs in FFXIV are extremely easy. Saying that some job in this game "requires skill" is akin to saying that using a spoon requires some skill aside from not being "slow and special".

Playing both DRG and BRD, I have noticed a difference with AoEs, but honestly, it's not a huge difference. The only ones you get interrupted on are the circle AoEs, and for those you're generally only losing one attack - which can interrupt dps if it's the second or third attack in a chain, but it's not a huge dps drop. Given that the dps is ahead of BRD to begin with, you still come out on top in the end with the interrupted attack chains, but requires just a bit more attention to stay alive.

IMO, DRG (and MNK for that matter) aren't as challenging as some would make it think, but BRD by the same token isn't as brain-dead as those same people would have you believe. They both require attention to maximise dps - melee to avoid AoEs and keep their self-buffs/enemy debuffs up, and complete their attack chains; and archer to watch for procs, keep DoTs up, play songs when needed, etc.
Neither one requires a brain surgeon level of intellect to play properly.

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Originally Posted by Cynric

every single class in the game except bard must halt everything to dodge an aoe.

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That's patently false. BLM has Scathe, Firestarter, and Thundercloud; SMN has Bio, Ruin II, Fester, Energy Drain, Bane, and all of their pet DPS. Not to mention both those classes can Swiftcast 1/minute anything they want to.

As far as melee, even the Titan fight, which is held as basically the standard pro-BRD fight, has large swathes of time in which melee can maintain 100% uptime while dodging AOEs. The only times I can think of where a melee has to fully break contact with Titan are when Weight completely covers his hit box, and certain bomb configurations.

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Originally Posted by Cynric

every single class in the game except bard must halt everything to dodge an aoe. Bard keeps on pewin, pressing one button and buffs most of the time, throwing a dot here or there, then going back to heavy shot. How is this hard? Is the button you have heavy shot mapped to broken? Every job regardless of being what I would consider difficult is still harder than bard .

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Its nice to see stupid has a face :-)
Ur cute tho, now go play whit the other kids and let the adults speak for a bit ^^}

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

That's patently false. BLM has Scathe, Firestarter, and Thundercloud; SMN has Bio, Ruin II, Fester, Energy Drain, Bane, and all of

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No one is saying the other classes cant keep up their dps if they try to do so as you noted. Bard just has a much easier time doing so, I always see Bard mains get so defensive for saying Bard is easy. Being an easy class isnt a bad thing. Bard cant top the damage the other dps classes do, but those classes generally do more work than bard to attain that damage. Bard has the benefits of both melee and ranged. Its a pretty stress free job.

There isnt a lot most classes have to deal with here and that is true. Melees worry about positioning and dodging more often, tanks worry about well yeah, healers worry about the party, summoner worries about a bigger dot upkeep than the other classes and proper timing of said dots, blm has a few tools to use but not enough for movement heavy things without pre planning,

Bard worries about normal stuff, buff upkeep ,debuff upkeep, a few DoTs, and if they need to dodge well, they just move and dont need to stop doing what they were doing, its safe to just continue attacking, the real kicker is the one thing they cant control is probably where their actual dps strength comes from which is purely based off of rng, and while that kinda sucks it doesnt add anything stressful you can control other than playing normally and making sure your dots are buffed by IR when you can.

I know this may not be a desirable answer, but I feel like these changes were largely because of pvp. Just because pvp isn't the focus of this game, doesn't mean SE can just ignore it. The way bards are, they would have been incredibly OP in the Wolves' Den. The buff to pug and drg were just for good measure because even with a nerf, the fact that brds can attack and move will make them incredibly useful in pvp.

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Originally Posted by Cynric

No one is saying the other classes cant keep up their dps if they try to do so as you noted. Bard just has a much easier time doing so, I always see Bard mains get so defensive for saying Bard is easy. Being an easy class isnt a bad thing.

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I'm not going to argue that we're a difficult class. Honestly, I'm not sure which classes I'd argue *are* difficult, but that's beside the point. I just don't want people getting the idea that somehow BRD is the single, solitary class that can DPS while moving, because we aren't. The fact is, the only time that a dodgeable AOE affects the dps of a melee is when there's no safe spot near the enemy to stand.