Anyone have bard as main?

I was wondering if the changes in 4.0 were gonna make the bard a bigger dps asset and maybe a bit easier to play? I say this cause I've only been playing about 3 months now and I'm lvl 54 so I don't have all the abilities yet and I definitely haven't mastered my rotation yet lol. I see ppl saying bard is fun I guess but haven't seen many say they main it. I just didn't know if I should look into maybe going drg or stick with bard.

I haven't lvled a drg yet for blood for blood so I will be soon. I just wanted to know what u guys thought so I'll know in mind some kind of path to to take in HS. I see cast timers are going away but I don't know the advantage or disadvantage of that as well. Sorry if I sound like a boob but I have been curious for awhile.

Well Its hard to say atm if bard will be a bigger dps asset atm without more info. I played BRD main in 2.0 and did not in 3.0 because I wasnt not a fan of the Bowmage playstyle. I figured if I was gonna be a caster, I might as well be a caster and rerolled to BLM. It is by far one of my fav classes in terms of support and what it brings to the table. In 4.0 they are going back to BRD being 100% mobile so no more standing still to cast which in turn will make it theoretically easier to play. I say theoretically because obviously from the SB actions trailer the song mechanics are changing and could be adding some nice depth to the class, but the changes have def excited me to the point of reconsidering it as a main when I was unwilling to touch it at all in 3.0

Hope this helps

Don't level dragoon unless you're interested in playing the job. Blood for blood is going away as a cross class skill in 4.0.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bounddreamer

Don't level dragoon unless you're interested in playing the job. Blood for blood is going away as a cross class skill in 4.0.

---

OH yea def, you no longer have to level other classes to get access to cross role skills in 4.0. You automatically have access to all of them just being a bard so unless you plan on doing major amounts of content in 3.0, id hold off on leveling anything else unless you just want to

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Recklessfun

I was wondering if the changes in 4.0 were gonna make the bard a bigger dps asset and maybe a bit easier to play? I say this cause I've only been playing about 3 months now and I'm lvl 54 so I don't have all the abilities yet and I definitely haven't mastered my rotation yet lol.

---

playing bard is about keeping your dots (Windbite and Venomous Bite) and straight shot up, hitting bloodletter every time you use an ability because for some reason there is no visual or audio cue a reset triggered by river of blood has occurred.

Use Eympyreal Arrow whenever it is up, pair it with Barrage any time you can. Throw down fire arrow for anything that is going to live through it or if you need to aoe stuff down fast. Everything else is pretty self explanatory.

its pretty straightforward, but if you don't stay consistent with it you can have some abysmally low numbers as bard damage per hit is actually pretty low so you have to make your hits count.

I've mained bard since 2.05 all the way through 'til now, and will probably keep it up through Stormblood. It's hard to say whether or not Bard will be any easier or more difficult to play when Stormblood comes out, but I can at least tell you one thing for certain; Bard will play completely different in 4.0 than it did in either 3.0 or even 2.0. Dragoon, on the other hand, looks like it'll simply be an upgrade to it's 3.0 counterpart.

So if you're willing to relearn your job when the new expansion comes out, might as well stick with Bard and start getting some gear ready when you reach 60. Otherwise, if you want the job to feel somewhat familiar from 60 - 70, go with Dragoon.

Lol wow I'm sooooo glad u guys said something about that blood for blood cross skill change. Would have been alot of wasted time... Well maybe not wasted but u know what I mean.

And yeah hopefully I can get use to my rotation better. It's not that it's that hard it's just that on ps4 it's a lot harder to keep track of all the buttons and cooldowns then on PC. I played WOW for 2yrs and as a hunter actually but everything was on a single long line not had it is now. And I might not be the best dps but alive dps is better then dead dps right lol?

I don't believe the bard will be easier to play.
At least not optimally.
Bard currently has one of the easiest rotation, and the cast time hardly makes it harder.
You need to keep 2 dots that you can refresh with one skill, there is no combo tree, you have 2 short cd dps burst, one buff to keep up and the bunch of 60sec+ cd.
On top of that, it's extremely forgiving. Nothing you do can screw up your dps. You didn't refresh your dots quick enough, just reapply them. You forgot to apply your buff, apply it.
Compare that to a BLM loosing enochian or failing a FireIV because AF expired 0.5sec before you finished your cast, Bard is few order of magnitude easier and forgiving.
(I'm not saying it is a bad thing, especially the forgiving part)


Anyway, going on with why I don't believe it will be the case

I believe the job will be more complex for three reasons:

1- Two of the 3 songs seem to have a ressource management. We could see some musical notes and arrows charging. Which means that on top of your actual rotation, you'll have to manage Something new. Especially the Wanderer minuet with the 3 Arrow things. I don't expect them to remove anythin from the current Bard since they're already one of the most simplistic job.

2- Song aren't aoe now, you need to target which ally and which ennemy you apply the song to. The ennemy part isn't annoying in itself as most fight will only have 1 target, but the ally one will require more management. Especially if the range isn't crazy long. On top of that songs have duration, we don't know the actual implication of this change. Do they need to "charge up"? We can expect song to be more than just "press and Watch your mana drain"

3- The removal of the cast time will technically make the job harder.
If you stand still, having or not a casting time doesn't change your rotation. Doing an instant and waiting 2.5 for the GCD is the same as casting for 2sec and waiting 0.5sec for the GCD.
Then, if you have to move, the casting time prevents you from casting, which means that for that movement period, beside your instant skills, you can't dps. You're on stand-by. And assuming you have to move for an extensive period of time, you can still remove the minuet and reapply it after. Some math can help you determine if it's Worth it or no.

However, if your skills are all isntant, you can always dps, dancing around the boss is basically NOT an excuse for lower dps. No matter what happens, you should be able to pull the same dps as if you were not moving. So every time you'll fail to use a skill while dancing around the boss, avoiding aoe and doing mechanic, you're basically not doing it right.

And you can be sure that you'll be balanced around this ability to do DPS 100% of the time no matter what.
A BLM can't do that, so they're balanced around having some down time which is why they do so much dmg when they can stay in turret mods the entire fight.

I'm not sure how this is going to make the job easier...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

...
1- Two of the 3 songs seem to have a ressource management. We could see some musical notes and arrows charging...

2- Song aren't aoe now, you need to target which ally and which ennemy you apply the song to. The ennemy part isn't annoying in itself as most fight will only have 1 target, but the ally one will require more management. Especially if the range isn't crazy long. On top of that songs have duration, we don't know the actual implication of this change. Do they need to "charge up"? We can expect song to be more than just "press and Watch your mana drain"

---

So they said that the songs aren't AoE but single target? This is interesting, it would mean that they could make them stronger and do more powerful things since you're not buffing an entire party.

I noticed they all had a 30 second timer, do you think that timer is now a solid 30 seconds or do you think it is based off of the Bards current MP?

Maybe this is wishful thinking but I see three songs and three roles. I'm wondering if they aren't individual buffs depending on which you have. Mind you I'm going off of songs not being AoE.

Things like E. Arrow could go from "only while under minuet" to using the charges.

Lots to speculate. What makes me happy and pointing me back to my bow is not loosing bloodletter procs.

Foes and The Warden's Paean I would like to know more about. I always thought that Paean would be nice if they worked like the spells in FFX-2, absorbs the first spell which would be the first debuff for most things. This way it would absorb say Petrify but not absorb stacking boss buffs that might require tank swaps. This way it doesn't solidify bard or mch into raid slots because they can delay damaging debuffs on tanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Leigaon

I noticed they all had a 30 second timer, do you think that timer is now a solid 30 seconds or do you think it is based off of the Bards current MP?

Things like E. Arrow could go from "only while under minuet" to using the charges.

Foes and The Warden's Paean I would like to know more about.

---

Well, for the 30sec duration I can't answer you as we've never seen the action bar while he was changing song. At this point no matter what I "believe" would be the case is very personal and purely based on what I would expect them to do.


First, It shouldn't be based on the Bard current mp as each time he changes to a new song, the new song has 30sec. Which suggest that 30sec is the default basic duration.
Now, do the song have cooldown? Hard if not impossible to say.
Maybe their cooldown is related to the time you used the song.
For instance, you used the song 10sec, then it has a 10sec cd. You used 30sec, it has a 30sec cd. (very unlikely tho)

The 3 song are
Wanderer Minuet: DPS
Mage Ballad: MP recovery
Army's Paeon: TP recovery

Now, army's paeon is interesting because it currently recover TP. But in the video there is a musical note ressource which isn't there for the Mage Ballad.
This highly suggest that army's Paeon and Mage Ballad have now different roles and different mechanic tied to them, one only requiring time (and probly mana) and the other one having a stacking ressource.

Now, what this ressource does is up to one's guess.

We see the Bard consumming an arrow when he cast his super laser arrow stuff. So we can safely guess that Minuet is still the dps song that you'll need to activate to do some of your highest pewpew.

Concerning Foe and Paean, they seem to be gone. (Foe at least)
But again, SE has reworked A LOT of skill and merged many together.
With the removal of Esuna as "basic skill" from healers, maybe Paean will also be reworked or removed.

Quote:

---

On top of that, it's extremely forgiving. Nothing you do can screw up your dps. You didn't refresh your dots quick enough, just reapply them. You forgot to apply your buff, apply it.

---

Obviously nothing is as unforgiving as BLM, it's not really fair to compare to it. Dropping your DoTs is still pretty brutal though. You lose 160p on the re-apply, 135p from the DoTs themselves, and about 80-90p worth of River proc odds, so something like 375p total - before the 30% WM multiplier. I'd hardly call -500 potency unforgiving. And if SS is on its last few seconds when you drop DoTs, you're even more cooked.

But more than that, what makes Bard tough right now is all the little things you can mess up that add together pretty quickly. If you don't double-weave you're losing damage, if you double-weave too much you're losing damage, using Feint too much costs damage, not using Feint enough costs damage, you need to plan your buffs but then an Optical Sight gets skipped and you get dumped on, etc. etc.

To say that playing Bard optimally will get harder in SB strikes me as insane, because River of Blood + cast times is a broken mess that demands constant pick-the-least-terrible-move decisions on a half-second reaction time basis. Playing Bard functionally will almost certainly be harder though, which is amusing in a cynical way against the backdrop of SE purportedly trying to make floor dps better / easier.

Quote:

---

However, if your skills are all isntant, you can always dps, dancing around the boss is basically NOT an excuse for lower dps. No matter what happens, you should be able to pull the same dps as if you were not moving. So every time you'll fail to use a skill while dancing around the boss, avoiding aoe and doing mechanic, you're basically not doing it right.

---

This is super real though, I remember making a similar case in 2.x as this was the main thing that really separated the good bards from the poor ones. Although we won't need to face target to maintain autos now, it was very much a gap - there was the kind of Bard that could keep its DPS going while doing Earthshaker, Shiva circles etc., and then the ones that dropped their focus from damage in order to do mechanics.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cetonis

snip

---

I agree I did pick the worst job for comparaison XD

What I mean is, other job can very easily screw up.
A mudra can easily be messed up by accident
Loosing blood of the dragon can hurt if your cooldown isn't about to come back.
Casting too many Mega Ruin can run you oom and unable to dps.
Basic mistake, as basic as dropping your dot, but mistakes many average player do.

I didn't say it doesn't have consequence, as you very well explained, it will hurt. But the fact that you can reapply the dot right off dimishes the dps loss compared to what other job might suffer from failing something. You won't be denied your proc for 1min if your DoT wears off for 1sec.

I agree that dps is more than just keeping your dots and stuff, what you pointed basically makes the difference between a good bard and a great bard. But being myself a casual bard, I answered what I thought would be relevent to the poster.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

Bard currently has one of the easiest rotation

---

i dont disagree but i'm sure a lot of people would as many bards i've played with have put up abysmally awful numbers. at ilv 240 i outdamaged a bard with a 275 relic by 30k with my kinna longbow. and i always see bards doing dps in the 1k-1.2k range. i was actually in baelsar's wall this morning and a bard was doing 800 dps (practically stationary fight) with a crafted bow lol. i'm never really excited to have a bard in group.

but with bard it is all about consistency. without it, your dps will be trash. you need to hit bloodletter off every ability use whether it's available or not. why in god's name there is no visual or audio cue for a river of blood proc is beyond me, but this is how you have to do it because of that. people drop dots a lot too because they are not focused. sometimes they do not even drop fire arrow.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

Concerning Foe and Paean, they seem to be gone. (Foe at least)
But again, SE has reworked A LOT of skill and merged many together.
With the removal of Esuna as "basic skill" from healers, maybe Paean will also be reworked or removed.

---

Nooooooooooo..... don't say that. I love Paean ;_;

We seem to have an abundance of bards on the aether server. Its not uncommon to see 3 per raid section.
That includes myself, since bard is the only job i have with all 270 gear.

i think it's still too early to make any assumptions about how bards will play until the new bard goes up on the beta. Everything is still up in the air and no one really has any clue how the class will play. (people making assumptions on the video is pointless since all the video serves is to show the new song bar and weapon animations. they give zero context for the song duration / cooldown / abilities.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shunye

i think it's still too early to make any assumptions about how bards will play until the new bard goes up on the beta. Everything is still up in the air and no one really has any clue how the class will play. (people making assumptions on the video is pointless since all the video serves is to show the new song bar and weapon animations. they give zero context for the song duration / cooldown / abilities.

---

Oh I totally agree!
My claim was just an educated guess according to what we know and saw.


The poster hoped for a more simple rotation and I made 3 claims

1- Bard being one of the easiest, the odds it get simpler with the addition of new skills are slim.
Usually new skills makes everything more complicated. (Of course, "more" has a wide range, Bard got "slightly" more complicated, BLM got "annoyingly" too complicated)
Sometime it's the opposite, like the addition of the ninja Futon refresher which made mudra management much more simple.

2- Song being reworked, we know that 2 of them will have a ressource management and require a target which, in itself, means that it will require more than simply pressing the skill.
How complicated this new ressource will be to manage remain to be seen. (I'm not expecting too much deepness as it would go against their design of reducing DPS disparsity)

3- The removal of the casting time on most of the Bard skill can, technically, only result in a higher difficulty gap as explained above. If 100% of your skills are instant, there's virutally no reason for you to not dps as long as the boss is in range. Taking A12 for example, having no cast time definitely change the way you apprehend the fight.

And regarding the question about paeon and foe, I simply suggested that with the rework and fusion of many skill and the absence of foe in the video, it could mean the skill is gone. Regarding Paeon, healer loosing their ability to remove debuff, perhaps Bard would receive the same treatement.
I can obviously be wrong on both, these are just suggestion according to the meager info we have.

I didn't make any claim regarding
- How the dps will be
- How the new song mechanic will be
- The new position of Bard in the meta, especially compared to MCH.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shunye

i think it's still too early to make any assumptions about how bards will play until the new bard goes up on the beta.

---

As far as I know, there was no beta, at least no open beta, last expansion. It is unlikely there will be one this expansion as it releases in less than a month. But yes, nobody will know until we start playing! :) I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

Snip

---

Okay so I'm going to be straight, don't listen to this gut he has no idea what he's talking about. Bard will be getting much easier most likely, cast times and the proper use of feint dramatically change bards priority system, anyone who says otherwise is probably bad at the job. They will also be removing at least 2 of our current dps cooldowns, and the other big part of the job is getting the maximum number of dot ticks under our buffs. Thirdly, bard has the widest delta between top and mid percentile of any job at the moment and is incredibly reliant on syncing your rotation to the buffs, missing a barraged Emp under trick hypercharge for example is massive. With the removal of cast times we are also free to double weave every OGCD where before we had to sacrifice DPS by either clipping, feinting, or having minuet off in order to do so, and since our OGCDs are semi random that involves a lot of on the fly decision making and judgment. Not to mention in movement heavy fights we will now be sacrificing 0 DPS in order to move where before it required mastery of slide casting in order to execute properly to minimize the number of out of minuet casts, or the number of feints you used on the way to your destination.

TL;DR bard will be objectively easier, anyone who says otherwise doesn't know how to play bard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

3- The removal of the casting time on most of the Bard skill can, technically, only result in a higher difficulty gap as explained above. If 100% of your skills are instant, there's virutally no reason for you to not dps as long as the boss is in range. Taking A12 for example, having no cast time definitely change the way you apprehend the fight.

---

There is no reason to EVER stop dealing damage as is, if you look up good bards, or hell even me, we have basically no downtime even in fights like A12S. The rule of ranged DPS is ALWAYS BE CASTING. Even under Extreme Caution in A10S if you align your casts up right you never need to stop making inputs.

I should also add ATM Bard is a top DPS so its DPS contribution getting higher is unlikely.

Those damn songs had no business being tacked on to bards in the first place. Give em to mages to manage during dead spots in their rotations, and let bards do their dps role the way people expect them to be. Hopefully 4.0 finally resolves this crap.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

Oh I totally agree!
My claim was just an educated guess according to what we know and saw.


The poster hoped for a more simple rotation and I made 3 claims

1- Bard being one of the easiest, the odds it get simpler with the addition of new skills are slim.
Usually new skills makes everything more complicated. (Of course, "more" has a wide range, Bard got "slightly" more complicated, BLM got "annoyingly" too complicated)
Sometime it's the opposite, like the addition of the ninja Futon refresher which made mudra management much more simple.

---

Bard may have low skill floor, but is considered to be one of the hardest DPS jobs to optimize within the high-end raiding community.

Here is some statistical review of the case. While the author admits that it is by no means a perfect statistic, it does give nice insight within its subset.

I would argue that the major reason why people think Bard is "easy" due to not having a fundamental understanding how the multiplicative buffs and dot clipping work. Lining up your buffs in an efficient manner as a Bard and clipping your dots to get maintain extended duration of their buffs seems something the community is largely clueless about.

With the reduction/removal of damage modifiers Bard will inherently get a lot easier than is and closer to Bard as you describe it. Lining cooldowns, understanding how they stack and dot clipping for extended durations will probably be largely a relic of HW. Adding the removal of cast times, maintaining a solid CPM and managing your timers by default will get simpler as well.

If we only discuss rotational gameplay on a very base level of play and ignore any real attempts at optimization, then I tend to agree that Bard base rotation isn't exactly complex.


Here are two quotes from the subreddit. The first one is a representation from the statistical data, the second one is an individual subredditer's comment:
(1) If we take the poll data as a accurate representation of the community opinion on the subreddit (this is arguable), then we can see that the community significantly overrates the difficulty of NIN, MCH and SMN while significantly underrating the difficulty of BLM and BRD. The perception of MNK and DRG are fairly close to the parse data

(2) Ultimately it comes down to very different definitions/criteria for "difficulty."
When I think of job difficulty I think of how difficult it is to play a job perfectly, in a realistic situation such as a raid encounter. By that metric I would put BRD and BLM at the highest. But some other people might think of difficulty as just how hard it is to play in dungeons, or how hard it is to clear the A12S SSS dummy, in which case I'd put BLM very close to the bottom.
This method matches up closer with what I perceive "difficulty" to be (though in my personal list NIN would be around the middle, not at the bottom).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

3- The removal of the casting time on most of the Bard skill can, technically, only result in a higher difficulty gap as explained above. If 100% of your skills are instant, there's virutally no reason for you to not dps as long as the boss is in range. Taking A12 for example, having no cast time definitely change the way you apprehend the fight.

---

This is something I heavily disagree with. The CPM difference between great Bards and average-to-bad Bards is abyssmal in a raid scenario. Good players will be able to maintain high CPM due to proper cast-cutting and utilizing Feint, while the weaker players often just run around without doing anything at all or just spamming their ogcds. The difference in CPM is largely the result of said cast times.

Having cast times means that you'll need to keep track of your timers ahead of time more than you would without cast times also. Especially in the scenario I described earlier, where you want to get the maximum benefit of your dot-clipped buffs.

While having no cast times definitely changes your mindset concerning certain fights, I'm absolutely confident that no cast times will even out the CPM disparity between high-end and mid-to-low-end players.


We'll have to see how the song system is going to change the Bard antics before going too in-depth into analysing whether things will be easier or harder than its Heavensward predecessor. But the removal of cast times and a large number of damage modifiers are making the Bard as we know it a lot more straight-forward and simple.

OP: it's too early to speculate whether or not the changes will affect Bard gameplay and meta-standings in a positive or a negative way. The maximum damage potential may receive a shave due to increased mobility, but we may also get ever stronger support options. If you are interested in the class thematics or ranged gameplay in general, you should probably give Bard a chance in SB.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jas710

Those damn songs had no business being tacked on to bards in the first place. Give em to mages to manage during dead spots in their rotations, and let bards do their dps role the way people expect them to be. Hopefully 4.0 finally resolves this crap.

---

Wait, you think bards shouldn't have songs? Do you know what the term Bard means? Other than a piece of bacon you put on meat of course.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KaiSunstrider

Wait, you think bards shouldn't have songs? Do you know what the term Bard means? Other than a piece of bacon you put on meat of course.

---

They most likely didn't read the 1st BRD job quest...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jas710

Those damn songs had no business being tacked on to bards in the first place. Give em to mages to manage during dead spots in their rotations, and let bards do their dps role the way people expect them to be. Hopefully 4.0 finally resolves this crap.

---

uhm wait-what? by taking the songs off you would erase the whole core of this cls... so you want SE to delete the Brd cls? .___.

I just hope they erase all traces of the debacle of epic proportion that is HW Bard.
Otherwise, it will truly be the identity crisis job:
Run and Gun up to 50.
Bow Mage 51-60.
??? 61-70.

I main bard atm and while the bow mage style has grown on me, i am pretty excited for this change. Current "bard" playstyle feels more focused on being a ranger than a bard, and the action's trailer seemed to strongly hint at the bard identity going back to being a "dps support" albeit more than likely just in a playstyle/cosmetic way. Still if they deliver on class identity and play style, I am all in :)

If anyone thought brd was difficult before... prepare yourselves. I worry that the pressure other people are going to put on brds will be crazy high. I know support is important, and I love that, BUT we'll basically be like a second healer. I fear it might be too much for me and it breaks my heart as it's currently my favorite job next to smn (which seems to get simplified and nerfed to the ground so rip).

https://gamerescape.com/2017/05/30/f...is-ranged-dps/

what makes you feel that, Anyan? most of the abilities i think you are looking at have very long cds, such as troubadour/palisade/nature's minne

Am I being too nervous you think? I'm just really worried that I'll fail to use it at the right moment and screw up on a tank buster or not apply when it's most needed. I don't want to let the others down by fumbling. I might just feel overwhelmed reading all the changes but it'll feel natural once I try them out. I hope so because it sure looks like a lot of fun.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Anyan

Snip

---

If you look at your skills the bare minimum of keeping up your dps rotation is much easier, there's only one buff to align, it's almost impossible to mess up dots, and you have tons of room now to fit in your OGCDs and no longer have to be greedy to fit in a final cast. There is more raid utility now however, but none of that is in the moment, you can plan it all in advance.

It's the in advance part that worries me. Let's say I queue for roulette, as soon as I jump into the dungeon/raid/trial I have to know straight away what kind damage the mobs/bosses do and when they do it to try and figure out what song to play first and the rest in what order so it fits in when the most damage is going out. And I need to figure it out right away or else I poo up my dps.

Now, it would be super simple if we could play the same song over and over but we can't. So if I land in a dungeon where the second boss does a heck ton of magic damage I need to figure out how long it'll take until we get there so the specific song is available then. There's a lot of dungeons, and a lot of bosses to memorize. @_@

Oh trust me the only one of those people expect even slightly competent play in is EX Trials, most people who freak out on others about rotations in dungeons are bad themselves anyway, or already in a bad mood.

Also as far as what song to play Army's will probably always be leading into minuet to take advantage of pitch.