BRD song rework proposal

Please consider these changes as they will make BRD less punishing to play -- especially in cases where the BRD is KO’d, diversify BRD’s utility, and afford BRD’s personal damage to be increased by decreasing its reliance on party damage buffs. While these changes will simplify BRD’s song rotation, the tradeoff is that all proc mechanics will be active all the time, and they will give BRD a wider variety utility buffs which might be worth the cost.

First of all, remove the coda system. Change Battle Voice from a 20% direct hit buff to a 5% damage buff, and have it upgrade to Radiant Finale at level 90, and make it a flat 6% buff as it will no longer increase with Coda. The potency of Radiant Encore should have its potency standardized as it will no longer increase with Coda as well. The loss of the 20% DH buff should be compensated with increasing BRD’s personal damage.

Change the duration, and cool down of The Wanderer’s Minuet to something like a 15 second cool down with a 30 second duration. Move the haste buff off The Army’s Paeon on to Wanderer’s Minuet. The haste buff is a flat 10% reduction on cast, and recast times on weapons skills. Change the party buff from 2% crit to a flat 1% buff. Pitch Perfect mechanic remains the same, however WM button should no longer be replaced with Pitch Perfect for this to work. Soul Voice gauge remains the same. This will be the only damage song that BRD will need to maintain throughout its rotation. The shorter song duration means BRD players will get to press a song button more often to maintain the buff.

Remove the Heartbreak Shot reduction proc off Mage’s Ballad, and move the proc effect to Burst Shot. Rework Mage’s Ballad so that it reduces magic damage taken by 10% for your party with like 10-20 second duration. Upon using Mage’s Ballad, the action turns into an action that is a targeted action that grants a party member a buff that removes the MP cost of GCD spells for a short duration.

As stated before, move the haste buff from Army’s Paeon to The Wanderer’s Minuet. Rework Army’s Paeon to that is a party buff that reduces physical damage taken by 10% with a 10-20 second duration. Upon using Army’s Paeon, the action turns into an action that is another party buff that increases movement speed.

Hey sure, let's make jobs even less punishing and remove all friction when people mess up and die.

- Condensing Coda into a one button to press during buffs every 2 minutes, because having even slightly more involved that this is apparently bad to play with?
- Increasing BRD's personal damage versus party damage utility, after so many people complained that 5.0 BRD didn't feel like a buffer anymore without the song buffs?
- Turning every stat based buff into a generic flat damage buff?
- Making BRD maintaining a single song instead of rotating between different songs? So we play minuet forever? I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of Mage and Army, but isn't that a little bland and all samey?
- Turning the two other songs into... party utility? Like we used to have with mana song and tp song except yet more mitigation that nobody wants?

I don't get it, that version of the job feels so homogenized to the current system, is this the point?

I like the overall concept of songs being their own support abilities and not glorified dps stances that just so happen to have a party buff attached. It could definitely be interesting to see Bard go for more of a ‘free-form’ gameplay style than the extremely rigid and rotational gameplay we have now, while giving songs a reason to exist outside personal dps.

Honestly, I do think personally that I’d rather see them keep Finale/Battle Voice as mostly the same as they are now and just leave the personal DPS as it is. Coda is literally just a copy-paste of old Divination so I don’t think Bard would lose much without it. Plus it’s annoying having 0 at the start of the fight lol.

And I do appreciate trying to give Bard more interesting support capabilities than just ‘damage up’ and ‘damage down’, like the effect that reduces MP costs for the target.

One thing I’d say for the songs is rather than having them as standard buffs, I think the ‘1.5s cast and MP drain’ style we had before would work best. It’s more in line with how traditional Bard songs work in previous Final Fantasies (not that it really matters lol), but it also means has two benefits.

Firstly, it necessitates planning out song usage and MP management which can give Bards much more to consider when they’re standing around waiting for procs to happen. Like putting up a damage reduction song for a repeated AoE like Harrowing Hell or it’s many variations for a couple ticks, then changing to a Regen song until the party is back to full, and using the remaining MP on a ‘filler song’ like Requiem.

Secondly, it means the songs can go the GCD without having a major effect on overall APM. Though personally it wouldn’t bother me if it did (as long as there was meaningful thought/decision added in its place)
They could even argue that having to cast songs means Bard should be ‘higher ranked’ because they can finally justify buffs by saying ‘but they have to stop moving like one per fight for a fraction of a second!’ lol. I mean, it’d probably be casting more than a Summoner anyway, though that’s a low bar.

Lastly as a quick thought, I think for Bloodletter / Heartbreak Shot, it’s maybe better to tie them to DoT ticks and Iron Jaw use than Burst Shot itself. Currently Bard’s DoTs are just kinda ‘there’, so restoring that interaction between the damage over time and Bloodletter procs would make the DoTs feel more valuable to maintain too. Though I guess it’d maybe cause problems in ultimates or savage if adds appear because so much AoE damage would come from all the procs caused by multiple ‘dotted’ enemies.

Can't we go opposite? ;_; Make a pure buffer again?

Go back to EQ1 Bard or DAoC Paladin, remove most abilities, instead have ~10-15 songs that are 1 GCDs to start singing. Until you hit another song you'll keep singing them, which is not a GCD to refresh. However, the active buff doesn't last 1 GCD, but 3! Meaning that if you use a different song while already singing one, you briefly run two at once! Or even three, if you get good at swapping songs around!

Burst would then simply be an ability that increases song duration from 7.5s to 12.5s, allowing five songs simultaneously for a short time!

Personal damage comes from specific songs that deal direct damage every "tick" like a very strong DoT, or even one that deals a lot of damage on the fourth tick, but 0 before that. Etc.

Reason: It's called Bard, not Archer. If you're an Archer, you forgot to equip the job stone. Take that bow and feed it into the woodchipper please and give me more music instead.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Hey sure, let's make jobs even less punishing and remove all friction when people mess up and die.

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BRD is an outlier in this case, like no other job has, or should have the same level of death recovery issues as BRD. There aren't really any good ways to fix your songs if anything bad happens to them which is just janky, and toxic, and actually limits skill expression. It genuinely needs to be fixed for the health of the job. This version wouldn't just be 'Minuet' forever, it would be more like all three songs at the same time all the time. You would have Pitch Perfect, Heartbreak reductions, and haste all the time, and would actually make it quite a bit busier. I think you underestimate how strong mitigation is.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Can't we go opposite? ;_; Make a pure buffer again?

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I feel like that is, and should be DNC. I think BRD needs to do its own thing, and diversifying what its song buffs can do could be just that. Only focusing on damage buffs is kinda one note (get it).

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Originally Posted by Carighan

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I mean, I do totally agree personally. If Bard was a pure ‘supporter’ that just supported the party in various ways without the dps trapping I’d never play anything else. I would give my left kidney and probably my spleen (do I need that?) just to get Bards that use harps as their main weapon instead of bows lol.

I think this ultimately goes back to the root problem of Bard being a combination of two ‘traditional ff jobs’, which no other job in the game (I think?) has ever had to deal with. Because it’s not just Bard, it’s also Ranger, and this ultimately cause these dual aspects of the job to end up in a ‘tug of war’, where either the job is so Bard-y that Ranger players are extremely dissatisfied, or so Ranger-y that the musical elements feel almost entirely pointless. It’s tinfoil hat theory level of navel gazing but I honestly think one of the reasons people have generally cared so little about Bards outside of their actual dps performance is because they either want to be Rangers, or they want to be Bards, and so nobody is ever really satisfied with it; they endure it because it’s (usually) brought something fairly valuable before now.

I’d even go so far as to say that my crystal ball (it’s a magic 8-ball) that clearly shows me the future says Bards and Rangers would be more popular separately than the job could ever hope to achieve as a hybrid. Should they separate Bard and Ranger, crystal ball? ‘Better not tell you now’ it says….

Ultimately I think the only actual solution that could ever remedy this is splitting Bard and Ranger into two separate jobs that can both do justice to their respective job identities, both in terms of ffxiv and relative to how the jobs appear traditionally in FF. Bard could be a healer or caster dps focusing on support and utility, while Ranger could maintain the high-APM proc-heavy dps playstyle. It’d maybe even make it easier to balance Machinist since it’s not competing with two supports anymore (though that might cause its own problems for Dancer). Plus, there’s issue of ‘players who like the specific identity of being a Barcher (Rangard? lol)’. I’m not sure how many of them there are actually are, but I imagine people who like the job now wouldn’t be happy to hear it was split into two. Or, maybe they’d all be like ‘finally!’ lol. Wishful thinking maybe.

Unfortunately though, this would be a massive amount of work for the devs, so it’s unlikely we’d ever see anything like it in XIV’s lifespan. I’ve been trying to convince pretty much anyone that this is probably the only forward for the jobs, the devs apparently disagree lol. I couldn’t even imagine the what kind of unprecedented insanity would have to ensue for them to take that path. But I can at least dream though, right? Right?! lol

Yeah, I'm a someone who would rather be playing ranger, but is forced to play BRD because it is the only job that uses a bow, and it's why I'm pretty invested in making sure BRD's bow-play is good. I generally do agree that the actual solution is to split the jobs, and have Archer upgrade to Ranger a generalist ranged DPS, and make BRD its own job that uses harps that could be a healer or heavy support caster, but that's a lot of of dev work so our second best solution is to find compromises.

A concept I've proposed in the past is to treat BRD like a rock star as an attempt to bridge the gap between 'bard,' and 'ranger.' Like the musical aspect should make a player feel like a rock star, and the archery should also make them feel like a rock star. Like bards are just fantasy rock stars, and like Robin Hood, Hawkeye, and Hanzo kind kinda have 'rock star' vibes to them. It's a bit of a coloring outside the lines approach, but I think it works, and I think the devs are aware of this idea considering how the level 100 AF set looks, and that 'Heartbreak Shot' seems to be a reference to like Cupid, Pat Benatar, Bon Jovi, and maybe even Nine Inch Nails.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

BRD is an outlier in this case, like no other job has, or should have the same level of death recovery issues as BRD. There aren't really any good ways to fix your songs if anything bad happens to them which is just janky, and toxic, and actually limits skill expression. It genuinely needs to be fixed for the health of the job. This version wouldn't just be 'Minuet' forever, it would be more like all three songs at the same time all the time. You would have Pitch Perfect, Heartbreak reductions, and haste all the time, and would actually make it quite a bit busier. I think you underestimate how strong mitigation is.

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I do agree on one thing with dying on BRD and it's that having no song running after a death means being locked out from the repertoire gameplay, which is bad. It used to be a lot less of a problem when songs were only 30s long, because even in the case you died just after starting one, you'd have only to wait at best 15sec before going back into repertoire gameplay. Right now, it goes up to 30s of nothing.

If it's about resource loss, I think MCH has it equally bad if you die with gauges full, which is a LOT of potency stored, probably more than a lot of DPS jobs.

In the rphys role department, it's DNC that gets it the less harsh when it comes to death punishment.