Bard does not make sense as a job

Bard: Should be about songs

What ffxiv did: 3 songs and 99999999 actions related to using a bow, adding a cast time to make it feel more *bard like*


Discuss

Bard is about songs. Just that half the time, bards are lazy and don't cast them. >_>

Don't feed the trolls.

Bard in ffxi was all about songs, and it worked because of how gameplay went. MP didn't refresh unless you were resting, which means the healer and black mages had to sit and rest between each fight. Bard circumvented that with ballad, eliminating the need to rest between fights and therefore increasing exp gained over time. They also increased everyone's dps with various songs, ending fights more quickly.

Mp regaining isn't nearly as much of an issue in ffxiv, therefore the reliance on songs isn't needed. Adding a good deal of dps is more effective to end fights faster.

I personally miss my pure support bard, but it will never work in ffxiv. I do feel that a "filler" song is needed, like March to increase haste or requiem as a dot. Sometimes there's just no reason to sing.

Basically right OP. Foes is the only song worthwhile to consistently use, while TP/MP songs are situational. Honestly outside raids or AoEing trash they are pretty much worthless.

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Originally Posted by LathusWHM

Bard: Should be about songs

What ffxiv did: 3 songs and 99999999 actions related to using a bow, adding a cast time to make it feel more *bard like*

Discuss

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There's not much to discuss. Our BRD is still a bard. Bards were known for being able to fight to some degree (classic DnD bard had swords, knives and bows on top of songs). Our BRD is also founded on the idea of the longbowmen of Gridania.

There's ways to add more songs and expand the lore/story aspects of the bard without messing with gameplay.

PS: the cast time is bullshit. It will always be bullshit, since the class and job were built around instant abilities. And it's not to make the job feel bard-like.

Bards cast time is ridiculous. My Bard is 52 but ever since she got Wanderer's Minuet. I feel more like a Black Mage, not a Bard.

Do I use my songs. Yes :)

Foe's rocks when in a party with a Summoner and Scholar healer. They both got to deal a lot of DPS :) Just wished my mana bar was a bit bigger so I could sing it longer :D

Mage's Ballad is useful as well. The other Bard songs I use less often. The one I always use is Swiftsong, but that isn't a Bard specific one :)

Archer should've became Ranger. Every other class matches their job to a large degree, "a Bard also fights!" isn't a good argument. They could've had a base class that fought with songs and expanded upon that with Bard instead of just tacking it on to a completely unrelated class for the sake of it. It was a poor decision and they're struggling to make up for it. OP's right.

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Originally Posted by Geardagas

Mp regaining isn't nearly as much of an issue in ffxiv, therefore the reliance on songs isn't needed. Adding a good deal of dps is more effective to end fights faster.

I personally miss my pure support bard, but it will never work in ffxiv. I do feel that a "filler" song is needed, like March to increase haste or requiem as a dot. Sometimes there's just no reason to sing.

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BRDs should sing songs, that's the entire point of being a BRD. However, I think SE should have made ARC graduate into a Ranger instead of BRD. Or make it so BRDs should play songs, like their efficiency is like 10% without singing.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Archer should've became Ranger. Every other class matches their job to a large degree, "a Bard also fights!" isn't a good argument. They could've had a base class that fought with songs and expanded upon that with Bard instead of just tacking it on to a completely unrelated class for the sake of it. It was a poor decision and they're struggling to make up for it. OP's right.

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Go look at general depictions of bards. The dude with only a harp isn't the sole depiction of a bard. Otherwise Leliana (from Dragon Age), Kana (from Pillars of Eternity) or the bard from The Bard's Tale (who was no pushover combat-wise) wouldn't exist. Hell, even the bard in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel's Song was a combat powerhouse (sure, he was a god in disguise, but still).

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Originally Posted by Lucke

Or make it so BRDs should play songs, like their efficiency is like 10% without singing.

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The problem is BRD's songs are basically auras that affect party members. You could incorporate something like a system where songs are debuffs that can be consumed/triggered using archer skills, though. I'll throw in my Invocation system since it is also an application of songs in combat.

i would love to have more "supporter" songs like TP-Reg or Reflection... for me personally Bards dont have to deal with top tier DDs or DMG-discussions. i fininshed my zeta-zodiark bow last week and after reflecting the whole relict-story... i wonder why zeta is a "real" bow again and lost every edge of an instrument. i really loved the artemis-versions of the bow... but zodiark/zeta just lost the class-definition and connection to the singers-background to me... well yeah back to basic hm... dunno just doesnt fit for me :)

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Go look at general depictions of bards. The dude with only a harp isn't the sole depiction of a bard. Otherwise Leliana (from Dragon Age), Kana (from Pillars of Eternity) or the bard from The Bard's Tale (who was no pushover combat-wise) wouldn't exist. Hell, even the bard in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel's Song was a combat powerhouse (sure, he was a god in disguise, but still).

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Bard's are storytellers and general singsongs that recount tales of adventures, like the Wandering Minstrel, they aren't pigeonholed into being Harp wielders exclusively but the general focus of a Bard is their poetry. The massive problem is that 99% of the focus of Archer is combat and combat alone - literally 0 to do with what a Bard actually does. They could've taken the Tactics route and made Bard come from Orator/Mediator, which would've been significantly more fitting than Archer. The only Bard-esque skills a Bard has is from the job itself and all that does is make the abilities feel tacked on rather than flowing smoothly with the rest of it's kit. Look at WAR, everything works in conjunction with everything else and it all flows as one entity - Bard, meanwhile, feels like 2 different classes glued together.

With Orator/Mediator you would've been able to focus more on the poetry/speech aspect that makes a Bard a Bard, while still giving it some combat abilities. It wouldn't just be 100% combat and then suddenly songs show up when you unlock the job, which is what it is now. It's just really weird and I honestly can't think of a reason that Archer couldn't have just became Ranger aside from SE trying to include a support role (dunno how BRD functioned in later 1.0) and not want to bother making a new class.

in 1.0 jobs didnt exist until later on (1.21?) , we had only classes , hell thaumaturge was the best healer (sacrifice healing) , and the archer was a good DPS. archer used to able to crossclass from conjurer. u needed archer 30 conjurer 15 to unlock bard :rolleyes: , main stat was DEX , 2nd stat was piety

SE pushed archer into bard direction and here we are ....i guess Yoshi team could have changed bard for ranger, and add Bard later on ....but they decided to keep archer >bard , since they still know that full support jobs are the most underplayed jobs (wayyy worse than lack of tanks for pugs) , and implementing a full time support is a balance nightmare.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Bard's are storytellers and general singsongs that recount tales of adventures, like the Wandering Minstrel, they aren't pigeonholed into being Harp wielders exclusively but the general focus of a Bard is their poetry. They could've taken the Tactics route and made Bard come from Orator/Mediator, which would've been significantly more fitting than Archer. (...) With Orator/Mediator you would've been able to focus more on the poetry/speech aspect that makes a Bard a Bard, while still giving it some combat abilities.

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Indeed well said - 100% on your side here =)

Supportsongs would work well and f.e. like in Ragnarok Online there should be "Grp Songs" which need more than just 1 Bard and raise effectiveness with every other Bard in your grp playing the same song at the same time (Dancer/Bard combo in RO is really nice though).

"Reflect"
f.e could throw back EVERY target-spell from the player even heal/buffs -
making you untargetable for all magic spells.

"Invincible" could be a grp lifesaver-song for 2-3 Bards, the targets TP
will freeze and wont recieve any dmg/heal, got the non-interruption effect for
skills/spells (like LB or Resurection) but wont be able to move while in song-stance.

and of course debuff songs like confusen, sleep, slow, etc... would be nice though.

Hmm... i think grp songs would be another good mechanic for another major-update 4.0/5.0. Sadly i never played ffxi so i cant say anything to the instrument-mechanic but it sounds interessting to me too :3

Hunter/Archer/Ranger used White Magic in FF3, and had a few healing abilities in FF5; additionally, in some FF games, BRDs could equip bows.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/R...Fantasy_III%29
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Animals

I've always liked both bard and ranger, so was rather disappointed to get this merged creation which doesn't do either job justice. The bard part gets barely any songs and feels more like a tacked on subjob, and the archer part gets weakened to perform the bard role.

I would have loved for them to be separate things and would have played them both, depending on what mood I was in.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Bard's are storytellers and general singsongs that recount tales of adventures, like the Wandering Minstrel, they aren't pigeonholed into being Harp wielders exclusively but the general focus of a Bard is their poetry.

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Bards are an offshoot of the rogue archetype. As I've said, they're known for being good at non-musical physical combat on top of having silver tongues. That's sort of what made them so popular in the first place.

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The massive problem is that 99% of the focus of Archer is combat and combat alone - literally 0 to do with what a Bard actually does.

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Which again hasn't much to do with this perceived issue. You can collect tales and know songs while also being proficient at shooting a bow or swinging a sword. XIV's BRD is actually following this part of the concept quite closely. The lack of the stories and songs is a bit of a concern, but as I've also said, there's ways to help fix that without messing with gameplay.

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They could've taken the Tactics route and made Bard come from Orator/Mediator, which would've been significantly more fitting than Archer. The only Bard-esque skills a Bard has is from the job itself and all that does is make the abilities feel tacked on rather than flowing smoothly with the rest of it's kit.

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SE committed to Archer => Bard back in 1.0. There was no way they would have scrapped that for the sake of pandering to the people who think Edward is the only representation of the bard to have ever existed.

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Look at WAR, everything works in conjunction with everything else and it all flows as one entity - Bard, meanwhile, feels like 2 different classes glued together.

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Because physical combat and music don't really mesh into one thing. It's not like magic and melee that can be brought together (i.e, a RDM setting their sword on fire). The best you can hope for is to have song acting as DoTs or damage modifiers of sorts when used on a mob. That I can agree with and would readily support.

Thematically Archer and Bard are obviously separated (they even explain it in the job questline), so it wouldn't make sense for Bard to leak into Archer or vice-versa. Hell, archer having Swiftsong is a huge stretch as is.

*In South Park Johnie Cochrane voice* This does not make any sense! Why would a bard, AKA a hobo with a harp, be called a job?! This does not make any sense! Bards don't work, they play all day and fool around with tavern wenches, this does not make any sense!

Because I agree with him. Bard should be about songs.

Even if they dont want bard to be about support really, because hey, support is kind of the square peg, they should still be focused on songs and performing.

You want us to be ranged and not melee, fine. But a bow? Why cant we have instruments and cast songs? Replace the bow and its animations when we get our soul crystal with an instrument that "shoots" like a musical note or staff or something. Make our shots the exact same, but make them LOOK like "music". Heck ya could even keep the names and tool tips, just give bard a musical visual theme and a weapons set thats based on instruments.

Give us a class specific "song" emote that makes us play our harp. Or better yet give us multiple instruments.

You dont got overhaul the whole ship, just for Godsakes reskin some stuff and make bards about music again.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Because I agree with him. Bard should be about songs.

Even if they dont want bard to be about support really, because hey, support is kind of the square peg, they should still be focused on songs and performing.

You want us to be ranged and not melee, fine. But a bow? Why cant we have instruments and cast songs? Replace the bow and its animations when we get our soul crystal with an instrument that "shoots" like a musical note or staff or something. Make our shots the exact same, but make them LOOK like "music". Heck ya could even keep the names and tool tips, just give bard a musical visual theme and a weapons set thats based on instruments.

Give us a class specific "song" emote that makes us play our harp. Or better yet give us multiple instruments.

You dont got overhaul the whole ship, just for Godsakes reskin some stuff and make bards about music again.

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word. =)

There are just 2 Bows which look like instruments yet or did i miss something? Relict and Eso Bow... so hmm yeah the weapon-set should be more like those 2... i hope that the new "Relict" weapon will have a more intrumental-look than the Zeta-Yochi... :)

Another thing which came into my mind was... why not giving the Bard 2 skilltrees... one more archer-related with dmg-skills which use a bow for requierment and one more supporty way with songs which use an instrument as requierment?... Therefore everyone could create his/her own Bard-Build :)

Hmm yeah sadly that will never happen ;)


so long
Neela

You know, this type of thread keeps popping up and popping up and it's time someone takes a hammer to the concept that bards in XIV are not bards because they don't ONLY sing songs.
There are a few problems with this, first, there is no such thing in XIV as a pure support class, so every support class needs to be able to deal dps as well. Secondly, look at history, the first bards on the battlefield WERE archers, that's what this is based off of, rousing your comrades IN battle, not during little breaks, not during just the marching, Bards were used IN battle, to sing songs and raise the spirits, to spur the troops and what is it WE do as bards in XIV? the exact same thing. If you are going to judge based on a preconceived notion, learn the history behind it first please.
Also, stop hating on the cast time when you're lower level, wait until you're high level with the rest of your skills to understand what it's about, you learn to hop in and out of minuet, that's the intention.

Bards? There are bards in this game?

I know we have singing Rangers, but where are these "bards" you speak of?

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Originally Posted by Cassandaria

You know, this type of thread keeps popping up and popping up and it's time someone takes a hammer to the concept that bards in XIV are not bards because they don't ONLY sing songs.
There are a few problems with this, first, there is no such thing in XIV as a pure support class, so every support class needs to be able to deal dps as well. Secondly, look at history, the first bards on the battlefield WERE archers, that's what this is based off of, rousing your comrades IN battle, not during little breaks, not during just the marching, Bards were used IN battle, to sing songs and raise the spirits, to spur the troops and what is it WE do as bards in XIV? the exact same thing. If you are going to judge based on a preconceived notion, learn the history behind it first please.

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The traditional fantasy bard has never been an archer. Nor were historical bards archers. What on Earth are you talking about?

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

The traditional fantasy bard has never been an archer. Nor were historical bards archers. What on Earth are you talking about?

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Clearly you haven't done or didn't bother to read the Bard quest line. "The first bards on the battlefield WERE archers, that's what this is based off of, rousing your comrades IN battle, not during little breaks, not during just the marching, Bards were used IN battle, to sing songs and raise the spirits, to spur the troops" pretty much sums it up, in THIS game that's the history of the Bard and that's what Cassandaria is on about.

The "traditional" versions of classes/job can be more though of as a base product to build off of at this point. If EVERY Bard (insert class here) was exactly the same in EVERY game ever it would be incredibly boring and generic.

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Originally Posted by Cassandaria

If you are going to judge based on a preconceived notion, learn the history behind it first please.

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Here's the problem: History is irrelevant. This is Final Fantasy. It's completely reasonable and logical to expect Bards to have a big focus on songs, since Bards in previous games have pretty much been all about the songs and NOT archers going "tra-la-la" in battle.

Historically, "black magic" had little to do with throwing fireballs from your fingertips and creating massive explosions with your mind. But that doesn't matter, because that's how it's established in Final Fantasy.

Historically, dragoons were mounted infantry and had absolutely nothing to do with jumping over skyscrapers to stab dragons in the face. But that doesn't matter, because that's how it's established in Final Fantasy.

I generally don't post this kind of stuff on the forum but... I'm tired of these Bards e.e so... you need to
http://i.imgur.com/DxHKHUp.png to became a better brd if you want to and stop whinning

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Originally Posted by Aiselia

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This. So much this.

Final fantasy has a history of taking names of real world things and making them mean something completely different. Dragoon is a perfect example of this. Dragoons were mounted soldiers armed with flintlock pistols that were used mainly in the 17th-18th century in mainland europe. In final fantasy dragoons are lance wielding fighters who are known for their spear diving jumps. Bards are also different in FFXIV compared to the real world.

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Originally Posted by Umbreon_skystorm

I generally don't post this kind of stuff on the forum

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Is it possibly because "git gud" is completely irrelevant to what the thread is about because "gittin' gud" won't magically make Bards have more songs?

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Originally Posted by Aiselia

Here's the problem: History is irrelevant. This is Final Fantasy. It's completely reasonable and logical to expect Bards to have a big focus on songs, since Bards in previous games have pretty much been all about the songs and NOT archers going "tra-la-la" in battle.

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This is a rather limited way of thinking. When they told me ARC was going to become BRD, I found it odd until I remembered the bards from D&D and Leliana from Dragon Age.

What you're not realizing is that certain concepts are malleable while others are not. Yes, DRGs are known for jumping on things, WHMs are known for healing things, and BLMs are known for setting things on fire. These things are hard-coded because the concepts themselves are not malleable by any stretch of the imagination. There's not much you can do to the DRG without messing up the concept (which, incidentally, is what FFXI ended up doing when they turned it into a pet job). Likewise you're not gonna have a BLM that uses the power of the void to heal or something like that.

Certain jobs are more malleable in concept. Unlike BLM or DRG, Bards and Knights can be pretty flexible. We saw knights as hardy melee powerhouses in FF Tactics, and here our Bard is more akin to the bards that predate Final Fantasy rather than a guy with nothing but a lute. There's nothing set in stone to say BRDs have to be guys that do nothing but spam songs. Songs and lore are just part of the concept of the job and there is some leeway.

Just like Blue Mage could be a guy wearing a brown potato sack and use a rubber chicken as its weapon, but will remain a blue mage so long as they use monster magic. Certain jobs don't have this leeway.

I still think Vanguard made the best BRD class. As you leveled up, you got pieces and parts of songs that had various effects. You would create your own songs by mixing the various effects. You could have a song that had a very good MP regen but nothing else, or you could make a song that gave a little MP regen, a boost to dmg, and like song haste.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20110520151733

The more powerful the effects you added, the more it would cost to sustain though, so there was a cost.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

certain concepts are malleable while others are not.

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Practically every Bard in the Final Fantasy series has been about playing songs, not shooting with a bow and doing damage.

The concept of Bard in the Final Fantasy universe was as malleable as any other class. Dragoons have historical background too, but would you have defended the change if Dragoons had instead become Chocobo-back infantry with guns and not jumping at all or wielding spears?

There is as much set in stone that says Dragoons MUST be spear-wielding jumpy guys as there is to say that Bards must be heavy on support, low on attack, with songs that are their entire identity and generally the extent of their usefulness.

The only reason you think Dragoons are "hard-coded" as concepts is because you're literally only thinking of past iterations in the Final Fantasy series. Which is the exact reason why people expect bards to be harp-players, not bow-shooters.

Oh, and this "classes are malleable" thing? How many people excited about summoners do you think were expecting to summon multiple different massive monsters to do huge and heavy attacks, but got pets that are a very minor portion of their damage while they just make people sick for the bulk of it?

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Originally Posted by Aiselia

The only reason you think Dragoons are "hard-coded" as concepts is because you're literally only thinking of past iterations in the Final Fantasy series. Which is the exact reason why people expect bards to be harp-players, not bow-shooters.

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Unlike dragoons, bards have a much broader definition and a number of interpretations, and those with the frame of reference saw the approach taken in this game made sense. Not to mention that this is one of a handful of RPG series that have a jump-oriented lance wielder, so the number of analogues of what we know as dragoon is obviously going to be limited.

Sure, Edward was not shooting bows, but as I said, other examples of bards popped into my head. If you're limiting yourself to the "it's final fantasy" thing, that's not fault of the developers or class design. This is not even getting into the whole "support won't work in a game designed around the trinity" bit, and that would prevent the Edward-like bard from existing in this game.

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Oh, and this "classes are malleable" thing? How many people excited about summoners do you think were expecting to summon multiple different massive monsters to do huge and heavy attacks, but got pets that are a very minor portion of their damage while they just make people sick for the bulk of it?

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You mean those that refused to accept that summoner as it was in the console RPGs would not work in an MMORPG? The same people who conveniently forgot that barring a few exceptions, summoner was basically a black mage with more expensive spells and prettier particle effects and artwork to accompany their nukes? I'd say those who were disappointed with SMN set themselves up for it if they were expecting it to be like in the console games. That'd leave FFXI's SMN, but that mess of a job was so fundamentally flawed that I'm glad it didn't work its way here.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Unlike dragoons, bards have a much broader definition and a number of interpretations, and those with the frame of reference saw the approach taken in this game made sense. Not to mention that this is one of a handful of RPG series that have a jump-oriented lance wielder, so the number of analogues of what we know as dragoon is obviously going to be limited.

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Bard in a fantasy situation has a pretty set in stone, genre wide reputation as a song singing, dagger using rogue type. As far as "dragoon" goes, the only place it really exists as some sort of lancer is the FF series. So no. Flawed analogy. While you can no doubt find some other type of dragoon out there somewhere bearing resemblance to the FF one, its quite likely inspired by it.

I can gurantee you with 110% certainty there are many, many MANY more instance of dagger singy guy bards than jumpy lancer dragoons in games and fantasy.

As far as FFXI's summoner goes, I see you either did not play the game much past CoP or you have a very flawed view of what smn was truly capable of, especially multiple summoners. There was nothing wrong with FFXI's summoner in the least. It merely needed proper gearing, like every job.

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Originally Posted by MentheusDreyar

Clearly you haven't done or didn't bother to read the Bard quest line. "The first bards on the battlefield WERE archers, that's what this is based off of, rousing your comrades IN battle, not during little breaks, not during just the marching, Bards were used IN battle, to sing songs and raise the spirits, to spur the troops" pretty much sums it up, in THIS game that's the history of the Bard and that's what Cassandaria is on about.

The "traditional" versions of classes/job can be more though of as a base product to build off of at this point. If EVERY Bard (insert class here) was exactly the same in EVERY game ever it would be incredibly boring and generic.

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Granted your post was intended as humor and I did get a chuckle out of it, I could not disagree more with that final part. Bards have been singing theif types in fantasy rpgs since such things existed, and never once have they ever been boring or generic. Its part of the fun having familiar classes all rpgers can instantly recognize.


When you change established fundamentals of a class too much, it comes off as "Hey look! Our "insert name of class here" is a special snowflake! Look how unique we are!"

[QUOTE=Duelle;3335416]This is a rather limited way of thinking. When they told me ARC was going to become BRD, I found it odd until I remembered the bards from D&D and Leliana from Dragon Age.

Bards in D&D are not archers. They have never been archers.

In what edition are D&D bards remotely archers? Im gonna guess if they are, its in some garbage fith+ "edition" that I, thankfully, have never been subjected to.

Certain jobs are more malleable in concept. Unlike BLM or DRG, Bards and Knights can be pretty flexible. We saw knights as hardy melee powerhouses in FF Tactics, and here our Bard is more akin to the bards that predate Final Fantasy rather than a guy with nothing but a lute.


Bards that predate FF in fantasy were song singing performers. Bards that predate RPGs in the real world... were song singing performers.

At no point did archery enter the picture.

Honestly, where are so many of you getting this alien idea that bards in real life or fantasy games have always been archers? Such nonsense.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Unlike dragoons, bards have a much broader definition and a number of interpretations

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Funny thing, I just googled Dragoon. Ignoring the Final Fantasy archetype, I came across:

In Legend of Dragoon, Dragoons were winged warriors that harnessed the spirits of Dragons. They didn't jump because they could fly. 6/7 of the dragoons do not use a spear.
In Dragon Saga, Dragoons appear to come from Paladins and use "dragon energy". Their weapons are 1H swords and shields.
In Starcraft, Dragoons are four-legged assault walkers.
In real life, Dragoons were mounted infantry that used guns.

Literally the only time Dragoons were represented as spear-wielding jumpy guys were in FF games or other SE games that were based off the FF style (Bravely Default, for example).

So no, it looks like Dragoon also has multiple interpretations.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

There's not much you can do to the DRG without messing up the concept.

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Still waiting on breath techniques though :( But there is hope that they could come in 4.0, being taught by some ancient dragon because we made peace in 3.5 or something and now they can teach us how to become FF dragoons, instead of dancing between goons and templars.

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Originally Posted by Aiselia

How many people excited about summoners do you think were expecting to summon multiple different massive monsters to do huge and heavy attacks, but got pets that are a very minor portion of their damage while they just make people sick for the bulk of it?

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FFxiv's SMN is an invoker, not an evoker. While less spectacular on useless flashy fluff, they still fulfill the role they're supposed to have. No matter what players expected (though it took an entire expansion cycle for them to get to that. 2.X's SMN wasn't THAT clear on the invoker stuff)


As for the bard, well, now it's an archer. Maybe one day they'll have more songs than archery stuff, but that's unlikely. Nothing we can really do about it.

edit : well, maybe it would already make a bit more sense (visually speaking at least) if all lv30+ bows had a little harp mounted on them like the 2.0 relic had.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

In what edition are D&D bards remotely archers? Im gonna guess if they are, its in some garbage fith+ "edition" that I, thankfully, have never been subjected to.

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Bards in D&D were built off the rogue archetype, which did include, swords, daggers, and bows. They had access to bows and you could build a bard that used them; weapons and songcraft are not mutually exclusive.

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Bards that predate FF in fantasy were song singing performers. Bards that predate RPGs in the real world... were song singing performers.

At no point did archery enter the picture.

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I never said anything about real life bards. My focus was on fantasy bards, which again were not limited to just singing songs. I guess you could bring up the bard from The Bards Tale, but that guy was also ridiculously overpowered (able to summon minions through songs, use songs for effects, good at combat, decent at landing tavern wenches). I'll also point to more modern bards (Leliana from Dragon Age used a bow, and Kana from Pillars of Eternity used the equivalent of a shotgun). The whole "bard uses a bow" thing isn't something SE just made up.

This is off-topic so I'm gonna put it here:

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

There was nothing wrong with FFXI's summoner in the least. It merely needed proper gearing, like every job.

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Actually no. For one because it had access to too many summons. In trying to mimic the console FF summoners, you ended up with utility and skills that were a lot weaker because reasons and spread all over the place. The funniest part of this is that Tanaka talked about how SMN getting buffs at full power would be overpowered, then went and gave that to SCH, despite having a similar limitation (SMN with the bloodpact timer and SCH with strategems).

Gear doesn't fix the fact that avatars also had incredibly shitty scaling (and really, the +pet stats were a band-aid on a bullet hole). Consider that SMNs were basically chopped liver until the lv70 blood pacts were introduced (because horribly sucking from lv1-69 outside of a 2-hour ability is good design, right?). Consider that the job was only useful for Astral Flow and even that didn't make them a good choice compared to your standard TP burn WAR, SAM or DRK. The only reason SMN was even relevant after WotG was because of Alexander and Perfect Defense (AKA an ability that allows people to cheese mechanics).

That's not even getting into garbage design decisions like spirits (which could have been something like elemental stances that gave you access to a handful of spells, allowing you to do something while waiting on the blood pact timer), or how poorly designed perpetuation was, or how laughable avatar favors were in trying to encourage SMNs to keep avatars out. It was a mess.

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

Still waiting on breath techniques though :( But there is hope that they could come in 4.0, being taught by some ancient dragon because we made peace in 3.5 or something and now they can teach us how to become FF dragoons, instead of dancing between goons and templars.

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Well, assuming they're sticking to BotD (which IMO needs improvements), they could probably throw in a breath attack that consumes the BotD buff. So you'd have Wheeling Thrust/Fang & Claw to maintain BotD, Geirskogull to weave in and then breath attack as a "finisher".

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Originally Posted by Aiselia

Here's the problem: History is irrelevant. This is Final Fantasy. It's completely reasonable and logical to expect Bards to have a big focus on songs, since Bards in previous games have pretty much been all about the songs and NOT archers going "tra-la-la" in battle.

Historically, "black magic" had little to do with throwing fireballs from your fingertips and creating massive explosions with your mind. But that doesn't matter, because that's how it's established in Final Fantasy.

Historically, dragoons were mounted infantry and had absolutely nothing to do with jumping over skyscrapers to stab dragons in the face. But that doesn't matter, because that's how it's established in Final Fantasy.

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And with your own example, did you bother to pay attention to the Bard story line? I was simply making the statement that the bard story and the history of the bard IN GAME is pretty much the same as the history of historical bards in our world. Just because a bard does not sing and only sing does not make them less a bard. Within the mythos of the game, the lore provided, the story presented, as you stated, Bards are Bards because they are archers who rouse their companions with songs to lift their spirits.

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Originally Posted by Cassandaria

the history of historical bards in our world.

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So, out of curiosity, could you point me to something that states that bards had anything to do with combat? Everything I find, including wikipedia and the encyclopedia, seems to point towards bards as being more towards something you keep around the home to sing of your exploits, not to use in combat.

Oh sure, music is employed in combat, but that doesn't mean they used bards. That music also seems to not be related to being archers too, as they'd play the music in the heat of battle on instruments that prevent them from fighting, after you get past the point of shooting walls of wood at your enemy's charging forces. Singing was done by soldiers, not bards.