Bard's future

Having just started to level Bard again, I feel like the basic issue with the job fantasy is how passive the songs feel. Mage and Wanderer honestly feel like they are working the wrong way around - Rather than randomly dictating RNG procs where you are passively reacting to what is supposed to be you singing, wouldn't it make more sense if you had to actively maintain your song? Because it seriously doesn't feel like a bard job where you are actually doing the singing, the songs are just something happening beyond your control and you are just reacting to their effects.

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Originally Posted by anhaato

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With the amount of absolutes you just threw in there I have to counterpoint you here at least from my own personal standpoint. I mained BRD literally from day one of ARR, and SHB Bard forced me to drop the class. It was without a doubt the absolute worst iteration of the job I have ever seen, especially when it followed up SB Bard, which I still will hold up as literally one of the best designed jobs in the games history.

Endwalker Bard has brought me back to the class though, and I enjoy it. Does it reach the highs of Stormblood Bard? Hell no. Nothing does and if they ever wanted to go back to SB Bard I'd support it in an instant, but we know that isn't happening. But I will take it over the boring versions we had in ARR and ShB, and the janky poorly put together (albeit I will admit satisfying to master) Bard of Heavensward. Endwalker Bard still has a fun hectic burst window rotation, still is one of the highest APM's in the game due to it's high amount of oGCD's (it on average only lost one oGCD per minute from ShB Bard), has actually some level of micro macro optimizations with Apex Arrow/Blasting Arrow timings, and while none of the buffs are as engaging as Mage's Ballad/Foe's Requiem, it at least feels good to layer all those buffs together at once.

Probably helps that I've never liked Machinist's aesthetic and I REALLY disliked the changes to Flourish on Dancer to make it so there AoE's are no longer used in the single target rotation, but even then I still would have come back to Bard just because I really enjoy how the class plays again.

Still some things that I would fix with the job of the course. Full resets back on Blood letter would fix nearly half the issues I have on the job in an instant, and also cutting the cooldown times on all the songs so that we can deal with phase transitions better would be awesome too. But I'm very much completely counter to you, EW Bard brought me back to the job after Shadowbringers killed it for me. And honestly outside of these forums and one streamer, I've heard very little negative feedback on Bard in my time playing it. Heck if anything the nice thing to see is that unlike Shadowbringers, when I randomly queue into dungeons and raids now, I actually see Bards again, not just endless Dancers everywhere. People are playing the job again. That alone is a positive to the changes, after ShB when it dropped to being the lowest played job in the game not named MNK.

Tl;DR? For me Bard's future was bleak after ShB. EW BRD has actually given me hope for the job again that the dev team isn't entirely clueless on what to do with it.

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Originally Posted by XRuecian

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While i agree completely on some of the things you said, i feel like i should add somethings.

A: Straight shot is old in design, yes. But it's flavourful design and quite different from what many other jobs have. Of course having other GCD buttons would be fun, but making Straight Shot/Refulgent a OGCD without any GCD replacement would make BRD's GCD rotation extremely one-note and downright boring. Many people for different jobs don't like spamming a singular button ad nauseum and using Heavy/Burst shot more than we already are might be too excessive to the people who play BRD.

B: Sidewinder used to have more things to it in Shadowbringers (and in earlier expansions too). It feels dull and like a placeholder NOW because DoT's apparently aren't allowed to exist or be central to a jobs gameplay. It had synergy, it always has had synergy in every iteration outside of this one wherein it's damage increases on how many DoT's you have on the enemy. It wasn't much, but it was something. If every arbitrary 60s OGCD DPS button should be removed, then so many other jobs would suffer from it, not just BRD. It's a thing many jobs have just because.

C: The proposed merged ability, while an interesting idea and concept. In execution with how BRD plays currently, it would be a disaster and would only reintroduce a problem that they tried to fix in EW (overcapping on Bloodletter).

D: the DoT's have always been a part of BRD's gameplay, they influenced the songs and procs in prior expansions. I agree they're a joke now though, the Media Tour did the DoT's better than the final release (of EW) which is sad to see. I would not be surprised to see them being removed next xpac because EW made them obsolete despite no one asking for such a change in the first place.

I completely agree that BRD currently feels like it has a huge identity crisis. It's Fantasy is weak and fragile as all our offense is archer based and we have weak hits with passive buffs that aren't really felt. We need more Song based skills, be it hard-hitters or just skills we use regularly. They really need to decide not just what the job's fantasy is, but they should try to figure out if it should be a DoT proc job like in the past, a support DPS, just a proc job, or if they should try something new alltogether like in HW wherein MP was used.
I just figured i would add my thoughts here, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

If there’s two things that I’ve grown to dislike more and more since Endwalker was released. (Other then the general changes I’ve learnt about that Stormblood had, because those all sound really neat)

They completely dropped the ball on Mages ballad. They came so close to getting it right during the media tour. All they had to do was give it a third stack and nothing else. But then they did do that, but proceeded to remove the reason a third stack was needed by removing double procs, and only have the proc remove half the timer. This honestly ruined that song from the fast pace ‘random bs go!’ into nothing notable. For goodness sakes, Armies Paeon is stronger then Ballad now and that’s so fundamentally wrong.
This also leads into the other issue, how the dots are being phased out of jobs in general, especially with Bard. Sidewinder doesn’t deal extra damage against enemies with dots, and dots not affecting songs anymore. Given what happened to Summoners dots I’d be surprised if Bards dots last into the next expansion at the best. There isn’t even a need to use dots in Aoe anymore just because it’s not worth the gcds.

Bring back the need for dots, fix Ballad into the fun machine gun ability it was, give the proc chances back to the Dots, maybe keep the base proc chance that songs have just to help with moments of poor rng. And as time goes on bring back some of Bards old utility, those would be neat. Heck, maybe add in some of the pvp additions, those have a lot of potential.

Endwalker bard just feels bad. It was my main, and most favorite, job for every expac. I even loved the HW bowmage bard. For the first time ever, I started gearing up my heals before bard. It just isn't fun to be so busy, do so little damage, and feel like there is very little spontaneity about playing with it. I miss how speedy and fluid everything felt while having good damage. That is missing right now.

BRD is the first job I’ve played where something just doesn’t feel right.

Per the FF14 website, BRD is a DPS job that can “fortify the spirits of their companions.” I love hybrid DPS/support classes in other games, so I figured that it would play like a “utility” DPS. Maybe I was wrong, because as soon as I started to get to levels 50-60 I began to feel like something important was missing. I’m finding BRD’s core mechanic—the songs themselves—really underwhelming.

As I leveled, I expected my songs would be the main way I provided utility to my party. In the end though, there’s little difference between the three. It feels unimportant which stat (Damage, Direct Hit, Crit) I’m increasing because it all amounts to a flat damage boost—and they aren’t even significant. Having three songs that do the same thing is boring gameplay. All it does is make some songs clearly better than others. A focus on damage also forces a comparison between BRD and DNC, the latter of which gets to clearly see its contribution to the party due to healing + the significant buff provided by dance partner.

I’ve found no incentive to use a specific song in a specific combat situation or party composition. The three songs may as well be personal DPS cooldowns for the BRD instead of major group buffs, because the only real differences between them are how they affect which abilities -I- should be using—which runs counter to the whole notion of a support-focused DPS. My party is just along for the ride. I feel like I’m giving up personal DPS for group buffs that aren’t worth it.

I would find BRD so much more engaging if there was just a little more flavor to the individual songs. For example, why doesn’t the “Mage” Ballad do anything that helps casters? I have heard that this song used to restore mana, which makes great sense conceptually and is exactly the type of utility I want to bring to a group. Healers aside, jobs like DRK or BLM would love to have a party member that can restore a little MP. Similarly, is there really nothing else that Army’s Paeon could do? Maybe it could focus its buffs on things that melee DPS find useful (nullifying directional inputs?), while Wanderer’s Minuet could give extra damage reduction for tanks. I don’t know, I just wish they had effects that rewarded the player for using them situationally depending on what’s happening around you or who is in your group.

That’s all. I know that there are people who really like this job as-is, and I’m not trying to detract from that. Not all jobs will appeal to everyone, and that’s fine. I also know that BRD is effective in whatever type of content you want to bring it to. I’m not debating that it “works” just fine. That said, despite how much I like BRD conceptually, this is the first job I’ve played since starting this game that has felt incomplete.

I have been play bard a lot recently, trying to get a ranged dps to join groups looking for only a ranged. I just have two things to say about it.

First, bloodletter and rain of death oGCDs, I think should be the same cooldown. This would take an extra button off bard and make rain of death (RoD) an upgrade to bloodletter and turn it into an aoe. 100 potency on RoD and 110 on Bloodletter returns a tiny damage difference, sometimes a RoD deals more than bloodletter on a single target (im lvl 60 now so I know the gap will get bigger at 90 but still), that or make bloodletters potency higher. Right now the damage is so close you almost don't need to pick which to use, because either will deal nearly the same damage.

Second, DoTs, for being the "DoT job" its very difficult to get your DoTs on more than 2 targets, so I think Iron Jaw ability should also spread your dots, putting DoTs on groups takes a lot of GCDs, even if you only use one DoT per target, and with 3+ targets using quick notch is better than getting DoTs out, as the DoT job this seems a little backwards.

been playing BRD since late stormblood and as an Off class thought SHB. kinda gave up playing the class in EW generally.

the best way from here for BRD would be to simply roll back some of the post media tour changes with the class, as much as it helped to make the skill floor lower, it really did not benefit the class in the long run. DoT's went from the core backbone of the class for the longest time, to it being just there. not to mention, it was not a thing that many asked for them to remove from the class.

Mages Ballard's Repertoire effect needs to be buffed back up, no questions asked. its current version would have only been fine if the song repertoire was still based on the DoT ticks, however in its current form is very weak.

some nice general QoL would be to make songs spells again and change their CD to 90-100 seconds to ensure maintaining song rotations is no where near as punishing as it is now. (you would still need to make a full lap on songs for the full 6% party buff on the 2 mins anyways).

also perhaps to give shadowbite (and by extension sidewinder) back its former effect (replace the current one with wide volley's return as its literally basically just that) but also make a trait for it that allows it to spread DoT's to all targets hit by shadowbite.

if another phys ranged is introduced, it may be a good thing for BRD as it would allow it to lean more into its support capabilities a bit more than how it is currently.

As far as Endwalker changes go: The loss of DoTs is sad, but considering the changes to other classes, I assume it's inevitable. So I'm not going to argue about it too much, though it's a bit sad to see our DoTs go, and I'll always miss when I turned into an AoE fiend in dungeons when I could multidot in Mage's with rain of death procs.

But if the "Wanderer's Minuet button changes to Pitch Perfect" thing is indicative of a future where PP may even be removed as an assignable hotbar action like some other combo abilities have been, please stop. It was unnecessary, as I assume for most players, a 90 second CD song and a button you hit every 6-10s or so in certain parts of your rotation share entirely different parts of your hotbar anyway. If the PP button is considered too "bloaty" because it's only used in one song, then just make it a multi-use button that does different things in each song (which would let you make AP less boring by introducing an AP-specific ability, without extra buttons: maybe a small dps ability that rewards you for good timing by sacrificing a +speed stack for a small damage ability right before a new repertoire proc comes in?), and move WM back to being its own button. But mixing 90s CDs with spammed abilities is a bad idea.

As far as pre-Endwalker changes I'm sad about: I'm still really bummed about Bard's utility being relegated to almost only DPS buffs. Aside from role actions, the only real non-dps abilities we have are our esuna (which isn't really used in high end content outside of TEA) and Minne, which is super situational since it's just a single target. Dancer on the other hand has Curing Waltz + Improv, which are both potentially full-party heals+shields, and something I feel like I'd use a lot more than I use Minne. It sucks because Bard was the original support job, so much so that it even originally had healer LB3 (which I'd still much rather have than ranged LB3), yet we've had almost all semblance of that stripped over the years (either actual utility being moved to DNC, or our HW bowmage stutterstep behavior [which I actually liked] being removed and basically re-added as RDM). Heck, if SMN is almost a phys range now anyway and still gets Raise, just give BRD (and maybe DNC) raise too, and then just make MCH the phys range equivalent of BLM.


For a suggestion that I don't expect to go anywhere though: I miss when I could actually use and manage MP for support songs (mp/tp regen, or +damage). Even if not the exact same songs, it would be cool imo to have support songs that consumed MP again, as a burstable but limited resource. So that rather than just different support abilities with different CDs where you think "well I may as well use it or else it's wasted if I just let it stay off of cooldown", there's actually a decision to be made about different types of support since it all comes from the same resource pool.

Removing repertoire procs from dots and increasing their duration along with ballad duration really hurt this class. Before there was some challenge in trying to maintain/watch those, now everything is very uniform, and thus boring.