#NerfBRD

Hey everyone. I know this has been the outcry of MCH as of late, but even a BRD Main such as myself can see where balance is off kilter. Ever since I saw Troubadour get added with Nature’s Minne, I thought: “This Job is going to be broken sooner or later.”

Turns out the worst has come to pass. In 4.5 they’ll need to do something about BRD’s potencies in general to bring them in line with other jobs.

Pitch Perfect - BRD’s Burst Damage on proc. 420 potency every 3 Stacks. Crit-based proc with 3s CD.

Refulgent Arrow - 20% Proc Chance on Heavy Arrow. 300 potency. BRD’s strongest weaponskill.

These two abilities are what caused the spike in BRD’s damage. Barrage+Refulgent Arrow I can get behind, but BRD’s burst phase is too strong, despite the Feast or Famine. +20% Raging Strikes pushes their Damage to 504 for 3 stacks in Pitch Perfect, and Refulgent + Barrage becomes 1,080 Potency along with being able to snap Raid Buffs through DoTs.

Raging Strikes is not +20% anymore - it's +10% and has been since Stormblood launched when they lowered its cooldown from 120s to 80s. So your potency calculations are incorrect.

BRD is so strong because the developers continue to balance it (and MCH) without a DRG in mind (for piercing), in addition to Crit scaling being far higher than any other substat this tier - just as its been the last two expansions. From what I understand, no job is balanced with any sort of party or buff synergy in mind, which just adds to the problem.

Nerfing BRD won't fix jobs that are struggling (like MCH).

noooooooöo, no nerfs to bard please. i like my class just fine

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Nerfing BRD won't fix jobs that are struggling (like MCH).

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Sometimes you have to nerf things.

Buffing things tends to just lead to other things requiring buffs. It's called circle buffing. Why buff 1 job, then 10 other jobs, when you can just nerf 1 to bring it back in line?

Crit scaling should be fixed. Job mechanics should not scale with gear stats when they don't for most other jobs. That just leads to growing balance problems as gear levels rise.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Sometimes you have to nerf things.

Buffing things tends to just lead to other things requiring buffs. It's called circle buffing. Why buff 1 job, then 10 other jobs, when you can just nerf 1 to bring it back in line?

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Nerfing BRD’s potencies on the two skills that Hyperius (incorrectly) listed won’t suddenly make MCH desireable. It’s not the answer to fixing the job, no matter how much people want it to be. The only thing that will fix MCH will be the developers seriously considering its gameplay and design, and taking steps to actually rectify them when 5.0 comes along. Along with actually balancing jobs with party buffs in mind, something I doubt they do now.

I also think substat scaling should be looked at when each raid tier is released, so that the issue with critical hit always scaling to be the best can be addressed.

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

Crit scaling should be fixed. Job mechanics should not scale with gear stats when they don't for most other jobs. That just leads to growing balance problems as gear levels rise.

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They could have just replaced belts with sphere scroll or something similar like materia slots for greater materia just feeding basic materia untill it gets to 100% crit which would be affected by ilv which would revitalize the usefulness of a lot of junk materia and spirit bounders

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

noooooooöo, no nerfs to bard please. i like my class just fine

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Yes, and right after they fixed everthing too!

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Hey everyone. I know this has been the outcry of MCH as of late, but even a BRD Main such as myself can see where balance is off kilter. Ever since I saw Troubadour get added with Nature’s Minne, I thought: “This Job is going to be broken sooner or later.”

Turns out the worst has come to pass. In 4.5 they’ll need to do something about BRD’s potencies in general to bring them in line with other jobs.

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No. BRD does not need its abilities nerfed. This was done before and it was terrible. Instead, they need to rework MCH into something that serves a purpose to the party and whose actions feel like something other than just shoving whatever players can in the gun and firing it. Like progressively increasing auto-attack drones, Fall saves, defensive barriers, barracades drones, healing potency-up buff feilds, et-cetera for the party and making the bullet types actually mean something like slug shot interrupting attacks. There is absolutely no reason to nerf bardwhen the job just need to do something that isn't just button-mashing a controller with the player's fist and not paying attention.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I also think substat scaling should be looked at when each raid tier is released, so that the issue with critical hit always scaling to be the best can be addressed.

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This is an important factor I think too many people underestimate. If Bard were straight nerfed damage wise, it will struggled far more noticeably out the gate next expansion since back in Deltascape, Bards were dead last in DPS despite Crit still being the best stat. Their power spite comes only because Crit goes from being good to utterly dominate. And no other job benefits so much from a secondary stat like Bard does.

The point with BRD nerf and crit nerf is that their procs should be a set %, not something that scales with crit. That would make their damage fall back in line and stay balanced throughout the expansions. There's nothing really wrong with BRD skillset that would warrant other nerfs, the crit scaling just needs to be taken away from their procs and they'll back into the balance we had in Deltascape, instead of becoming the overpowered mess we have now.

Fixing general stat scaling at the start of each expansion is not going to solve anything until the proc% is changed, the same problem will keep coming back as the gear progresses again.

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

The point with BRD nerf and crit nerf is that their procs should be a set %, not something that scales with crit. That would make their damage fall back in line and stay balanced throughout the expansions. There's nothing really wrong with BRD skillset that would warrant other nerfs, the crit scaling just needs to be taken away from their procs and they'll back into the balance we had in Deltascape, instead of becoming the overpowered mess we have now.

Fixing general stat scaling at the start of each expansion is not going to solve anything until the proc% is changed, the same problem will keep coming back as the gear progresses again.

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Scaling with crit sets an incentive for players to play other content like extreme trials and raids to keep up their performance. BRD is just too good at what it does compared to the nothing-at-all-to-not-nearly-enough, incentivizing the jobs function organically, and how it's perks always earns them a permanent spot in parties. Bard needed nerfs in 2.0 that made it harder to play the solo content, 3.0's changes was way too drastic of a change from 2.0 to 3.0 content, and 4.0 has been totally great and only really need to be changed around to make early content interesting like every other job.