ShB bard has turned me into a ball of rage and depression

Ranger/Archer classes have always been my to go to in any RPG. I found it funny that I was going to become a Bard in FF14. It actually turned me off a little when I first started playing ff14. But the strange thing was, I ended up loving the job. Everytime I helped a party member I felt like I was important to the end goal. While I never did the best damage, it was an amazing support job.
Everyone keeps asking me how I am enjoying my bard now with the release of ShB. And all I can say is that it is a giant ball of depression. Right now, I'm only lvl 75 and keep hoping that it gets better. But I no longer feel like I am helping the party out with songs and my dps is still the same as it was at the end of SB. I feel like I am just an archer again with the loss of most of my party buffs. It feels bad. The job just feels boring and lackluster. Like I am the last person you would want to be in a dungeon with.
And now for the rage. I was excited to try dancer. A new support job. But when I get in queue with one, all I can see is all the things that bard lost. And to top it off, dancer is doing big damage like my beloved machinist. I played bard to be useful and machinist to do big damage. Why does the new job get the best of both world? Meanwhile I am flinging toothpicks at the enemies and have barely any utility.
I'm so angry about dancer being everything that I don't see myself playing the job. It makes my heart ache for my bard. I was so excited that it was going to be another physical ranged dps. But now I have the urge to leave any queue I get into with a dancer just because it reminds me of how much the bard is lacking.
People keep telling me to play another job but Bard is my main. The job before ShB that I loved most. I'm the type to fix a broken and cherished toy rather than throw it away. I can only hope that lvl 80 feels better or that SE fixes the job that I love.

I sympathize with you. I've been joking with my FC that Sqeenix's history with brd is to change it's role give us an identity crisis every other expansion.

In Heavensward, we became bow mages.
In Shadowbringers, we are now rangers.

It's pretty funny/sad all at once.

I job in a video game should never make you "a giant ball of depression". You taking that waaaaay too seriously.

Anyway, I to was a BRD main for years now and felt they gutted a lot of it's utility to where it just feels like FFXI Ranger now and then gave DNC a lot of utility. I saw this coming a mile away and knew I was changing jobs in 5.0 anyway and I've been a BRD main for 4 years now. I also just needed to revitilize my experience in this game so in ShB I was first leveling other jobs.

While I understand what you mean about losing BRD's supportive ability through their songs, their damage is actually pretty good when played properly. A friend was a BRD main back in SB and stuck to it in ShB and I see him dishing out some insane damage without much effort. Heck, people I know are saying that bard might actually be a bit TOO powerful since it still contributes their DH buff through Battle Voice. It does have a slightly different playstyle now than it did back in SB, though.

As for Dancer, it has the lowest personal damage out of all ranged DPS by a pretty big margin, I have no idea how you could tell the dancer you partied with was doing the same amount of damage as your machinist, but Dancer's far from a damage powerhouse. I've yet to see any dancer contributing the same amount of damage a well-played MCH can dish out.

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Originally Posted by AncientCrystal

I job in a video game should never make you "a giant ball of depression". You taking that waaaaay too seriously.

Anyway, I to was a BRD main for years now and felt they gutted a lot of it's utility to where it just feels like FFXI Ranger now and then gave DNC a lot of utility. I saw this coming a mile away and knew I was changing jobs in 5.0 anyway and I've been a BRD main for 4 years now. I also just needed to revitilize my experience in this game so in ShB I was first leveling other jobs.

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If a person only really plays one job because it’s the only one they enjoy and the job ends up being neutered as a result, I can understand the frustration behind it. Even if the phrasing borders on hyperbolic. I’ve mained BRD since I started this game. I left it when I heard it was losing the things about it I enjoyed the most. I’ll still level it eventually, but I don’t think it will be the same.

EDIT because stupid posting limits:

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Originally Posted by Gallus

BRD may have lost utility, but from what I've noticed it does very solid damage.

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It did solid damage back in Stormblood—it was actually far stronger than it was supposed to be. But that was never the reason why BRD mains mained the job. They mained it for the support aspect. At least for me, I didn’t want some Big D DPS when it came to BRD; I wanted the support and the raid contribution aspect of it. If I wanted the former, then I would have played something like BLM.

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Originally Posted by AncientCrystal

I job in a video game should never make you "a giant ball of depression". You taking that waaaaay too seriously.

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It's a hyperbole, stop taking everything on the internet literally.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

If a person only really plays one job because it’s the only one they enjoy and the job ends up being neutered as a result, I can understand the frustration behind it. Even if the phrasing borders on hyperbolic. I’ve mained BRD since I started this game. I left it when I heard it was losing the things about it I enjoyed the most. I’ll still level it eventually, but I don’t think it will be the same.

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:fistbumpsinMNKmain:

I don't even main Bard but used it enough to understand the contexts of the frustration. The changes to Straight Shot threw me off completely. It felt unnecessarily and for a job that felt really easy and straightforward to begin with to have a noticeable dumbing down was a bit disheartening, not going to lie. And it really does feel like a neutering/dumbing down, instead of a streamlining. That's across the board with all the jobs :criesinMNK: but the DPSes seem to have it the worst, with a lot of forced simplification rather than streamlining for upward evolution. At level 80 a bunch of them don't seem to "evolve," instead they sort of devolved them at 70 and at 80 they do a half-baked catch-up to where they were before, like the 70 stuff was too hard for casual players to understand so they dumbed everything down. The result is not only that the skill ceiling gets lowered while the skill floor doesn't get raised, but the jobs in end-game just become more boring across the board and the fun factor is lost.

BRD may have lost utility, but from what I've noticed it does very solid damage.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

BRD may have lost utility, but from what I've noticed it does very solid damage.

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Well that's kind of what happens when now you're all about spamming that Heavy Shot since Straight Shot was changed.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

BRD may have lost utility, but from what I've noticed it does very solid damage.

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A lot, (not all), but A LOT of people that played bard did so because of the util kit they had. I've been brd since 2.0, I NEVER have EVER wanted or even expected my class to do comparable dps to a dragoon or mnk, now sam, ninja, etc. People that decided to play brd and then complain that they weren't doing as good as dmg as the melee classes clearly didn't/don't understand what brd was supposed to be, imho.

And arguments such as yours that are implying that we should be okay with the trade off of our util for increased dmg is going to make me assume you've never gotten a brd to 70.
(I checked, you haven't.)

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

It did solid damage back in Stormblood—it was actually far stronger than it was supposed to be. But that was never the reason why BRD mains mained the job. They mained it for the support aspect. At least for me, I didn’t want some Big D DPS when it came to BRD; I wanted the support and the raid contribution aspect of it. If I wanted the former, then I would have played something like BLM.

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I don't think it's fair that you speak for everyone here. BRDs could've mained BRD for different reasons, be it the mobility, the job appeal, the rotation, etc. Not everyone necessarily mained BRD because it had support capabilities. The only difference between jobs isn't if they have support skills or not, even if you take away every support aspect of BRD, the rotation and flavour will still be completely different from the one of a BLM, so I couldn't disagree more with you.

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Originally Posted by Suniva

A lot, (not all), but A LOT of people that played bard did so because of the util kit they had. I've been brd since 2.0, I NEVER have EVER wanted or even expected my class to do comparable dps to a dragoon or mnk, now sam, ninja, etc. People that decided to play brd and then complain that they weren't doing as good as dmg as the melee classes clearly didn't/don't understand what brd was supposed to be, imho.

And arguments such as yours that are implying that we should be okay with the trade off of our util for increased dmg is going to make me assume you've never gotten a brd to 70.
(I checked, you haven't.)

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So you don't care about how your job plays? You don't care about your rotation? You'd swallow an inedible rotation as long as they gave you a support kit? Also, I didn't even imply anything, all I said is that the BRDs I've come across seemed to be doing very good DPS. I didn't say you had to be content with it or whatever, just thought I'd share what I've seen so far. I'm not sure why you are getting this defensive over my first post which was totally harmless.

Stormbloods Bard at the end was nearly perfect so what happened?
I have not levelled it yet as Dancer is my first but heard from a friend and he is not happy with Bard changes

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Originally Posted by Gallus

I don't think it's fair that you speak for everyone here. BRDs could've mained BRD for different reasons, be it the mobility, the job appeal, the rotation, etc. Not everyone necessarily mained BRD because it had support capabilities. The only difference between jobs isn't if they have support skills or not, even if you take away every support aspect of BRD, the rotation and flavour will still be completely different from the one of a BLM, so I couldn't disagree more with you.

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I don’t think it’s fair that you should imply we should be satisfied with our losses in utility for “solid damage”—because that is what your post comes off as, whether it is your intention or not. As I said prior, BRD was already doing solid damage. In Alphascape, we were actually out DPSing both NIN and DRG in personal damage (in Deltascape and Sigmascape, it out-damaged NIN and RDM), and our raid contribution was monstrous between passive crit, proper Foe’s usage, and BV. This isn’t including our other support, like Refresh, Palisade, and 4.0 Troubadour (the latter was godly in UwU for mitigation—especially during the primal roulette, because you could cover 2 primal Ultimates with it and I believe at least 1, if not 2, Viscous detonations with proper timing).

In the vast majority of posts I have seen from career BRDs, they have lamented the very things I spoke about in my post: their job lost the utility aspect they loved so much about it and that’s why they jumped ship (or are still playing it but feel like its lacking that certain something that pulled them in initially). They mention nothing about ever being in the job for strictly damage dealing capabilities—which, honestly, it never struggled with (outside of the dark days of early 3.0 BRD, but we don’t talk about those days). 4.0 BRD actually had massive issues with power creep, so it was stronger than intended by the end of the expansion. I don’t think it doing solid damage is really a comforting thing. It isn’t for me, anyways; because I was never concerned with my damage not being solid.

I’m not asking you to agree with me; I am merely explaining my perspective and relaying what I have seen from other BRD mains. If I wanted to play a Big D job, I would have played something like BLM, which exists to do nothing but deal high damage. I was speaking for myself in that part of my post. No one else.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

So you don't care about how your job plays? You don't care about your rotation? You'd swallow an inedible rotation as long as they gave you a support kit?

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You’re strawmanning.

4.0 BRD had the smoothest rotation of any of the job’s incarnations—from ARR to HW to SB. It was universally loved by just about anyone who played it—I honestly can’t recall seeing anything negative about its play during 4.0. Bringing up an “inedible rotation” is irrelevant here simply because it was never a thing BRD suffered from in 4.0.

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Originally Posted by Maero

Stormbloods Bard at the end was nearly perfect so what happened?
I have not levelled it yet as Dancer is my first but heard from a friend and he is not happy with Bard changes

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They’ve removed most of our utility and raid contributions. We lost the passive crit buff from our songs and Foe Requiem. In addition to this, Refresh was removed, so MP support is also gone. Palisade was removed, so we no longer have a free tank cooldown for physical damage (something that was useful in raids and Ultimates). All we have now is Nature’s Minne (which is still decent—it seems to affect healing abilities AND weaponskills now, but is on a 90s CD) and Troubadour for support (Troubadour is basically -10% all damage for 15s on an 180s cooldown—it’s actually 15s shorter now, so it gets less mileage per use), and Battle Voice for raid contribution (20% D.Hit every 180s—I don’t think they’ve determined how impactful it is yet).

In terms of rotation, it’s mostly unchanged aside from the removal of Straight Shot management: however I’ve seen many BRDs equate the current state of the job as a glorified ranger. AOE is supposedly pretty decent now with the additions of Shadowbite and Apex Arrow, but single-target wants for complexity. The new Army’s Paeon trait has been described as “technically not nothing, because it still gives 10s of your Haste Repertoire to your next song...but not really hype either”.

Apex Arrow is also a very underwhelming level 80 ability. It scales up to 500 potency, meaning that you will press it at 95+ gauge and no sooner. Which kind of makes the Soul Gauge relatively worthless as a mechanic. They could have at least made it something like NIN’s Ninki skills or DNC’s Saber where it procs at 50 Gauge and has AOE dropoff as a trade off for more frequent usages. Instead its a button you press at max gauge and ignore otherwise due to the damage loss. I’m guessing you probably also try to hold on to it for bursts, but I haven’t been in the BRD Balance lately due to paying more attention to DNC’s channel.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

BRD may have lost utility, but from what I've noticed it does very solid damage.

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But Bard has never been about damage. It was always a utility/support based class in the Red part of the job trio.

I agree with Suniva that quite a few Bard players decided to play the class because it was easy to get into and then proceed to complain that the job was too hard (or you know, make the effort to learn it) or that they don't do enough damage (are people really expecting all classes from a similar role to fulfill the exact amount of damage despite the different gameplay styles?). From what I've read both on forums and Discord, it seems those who are happy with the changes are usually those that never played Bard to its full potential.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

So you don't care about how your job plays? You don't care about your rotation? You'd swallow an inedible rotation as long as they gave you a support kit? Also, I didn't even imply anything, all I said is that the BRDs I've come across seemed to be doing very good DPS. I didn't say you had to be content with it or whatever, just thought I'd share what I've seen so far. I'm not sure why you are getting this defensive over my first post which was totally harmless.

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You are both strawmanniing and missing the fundamental point of people's ire towards BRD changes. Its core identity was never about doing high damage despite it creeping up the damage meters. What attracted a large number of players to the job was its focus on utility and support alongside its damage. This was completely abandoned now. A comparable example is if they were to abruptly nerf BLM because they slapped a bunch of utility. I sincerely doubt many BLM mains would find much solace in being told "well, you have good utility now!" That wasn't what interested them in the job to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Xieldras

But Bard has never been about damage. It was always a utility/support based class in the Red part of the job trio.

I agree with Suniva that quite a few Bard players decided to play the class because it was easy to get into and then proceed to complain that the job was too hard (or you know, make the effort to learn it) or that they don't do enough damage (are people really expecting all classes from a similar role to fulfill the exact amount of damage despite the different gameplay styles?). From what I've read both on forums and Discord, it seems those who are happy with the changes are usually those that never played Bard to its full potential.

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Unfortunately, this is likely the case with a lot of jobs. People who didn't play them or played them poorly and were too lazy to learn whined. The devs have a tendency listen to those players, prompting the changes we've seen. Plenty are good. Others? Far less so.

It is unfortunate that you didn't like the changes but you have to remember plenty of people didnt take the bard because they didnt really want to play support but would rather have it as a pure DPS class. ( Now if they changed the Bard job name to ranger or a hunter that be even better)

I stopped playing my Ranger when I had to change the class to a Bard at 30, now I for one will definitely pick it up again and I am sure many other players will as well.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

4.0 BRD had the smoothest rotation of any of the job’s incarnations—from ARR to HW to SB. It was universally loved by just about anyone who played it—I honestly can’t recall seeing anything negative about its play during 4.0. Bringing up an “inedible rotation” is irrelevant here simply because it was never a thing BRD suffered from in 4.0.

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And perhaps, just perhaps, that was one of the reasons why people liked BRD in 4.0 and not only because it was a support role?

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

You are both strawmanniing and missing the fundamental point of people's ire towards BRD changes. Its core identity was never about doing high damage despite it creeping up the damage meters. What attracted a large number of players to the job was its focus on utility and support alongside its damage. This was completely abandoned now. A comparable example is if they were to abruptly nerf BLM because they slapped a bunch of utility. I sincerely doubt many BLM mains would find much solace in being told "well, you have good utility now!" That wasn't what interested them in the job to begin with.

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Is that so? I thought one of BRD's flavours too was how mobile and fluid it was. I recall a lot of people complaining how their job was utterly destroyed in Heavensward when the autos were removed and you were given hardcasted GCDs with Minuette. Oh but you were still supports right? So where was the problem again?

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Originally Posted by Gallus

And perhaps, just perhaps, that was one of the reasons why people liked BRD in 4.0 and not only because it was a support role?

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But we are not ONLY a support role. We are a support/dps/hybrid role. Due to the nature of the class, we were not going to excel in damage like melee, nor SHOULD we have been excelling in dmg against a machinist.


Let's be clear here, YOU are the one that came to this forum and have already admitted that your opinion is based on what you've SEEN rather than EXPERIENCED. When those players that have lived and breathed their bard's for years came out and politely expressed their opinions as to why they feel the way they feel, you cry foul. Now we don't care about how our job plays...? I mean, we wouldn't be posting here discussing why we feel the way we feel if we didn't care.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Is that so? I thought one of BRD's flavours too was how mobile and fluid it was. I recall a lot of people complaining how their job was utterly destroyed in Heavensward when the autos were removed and you were given hardcasted GCDs with Minuette. Oh but you were still supports right? So where was the problem again?

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We, ahem, still had our utility tool kit in Heavensward, despite being bow mages...So while yes being a bow mage sucked, we were still able to provide support to our groups, which a lot of feel is the heart and soul the class.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

I don't think it's fair that you speak for everyone here. BRDs could've mained BRD for different reasons, be it the mobility, the job appeal, the rotation, etc. Not everyone necessarily mained BRD because it had support capabilities. The only difference between jobs isn't if they have support skills or not, even if you take away every support aspect of BRD, the rotation and flavour will still be completely different from the one of a BLM, so I couldn't disagree more with you.

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I'm just going to say it, and sorry if it's a bit strong; But if you (generalized, not personal) were playing a class that then became your main and were not utilizing the ENTIRETY of the classes available tool kit, then you were not playing that class to its fullest potential, plain and simple.

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Originally Posted by Kreahk

It is unfortunate that you didn't like the changes but you have to remember plenty of people didnt take the bard because they didnt really want to play support but would rather have it as a pure DPS class. ( Now if they changed the Bard job name to ranger or a hunter that be even better)

I stopped playing my Ranger when I had to change the class to a Bard at 30, now I for one will definitely pick it up again and I am sure many other players will as well.

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Haha, I can understand that perfectly. I started out as an Archer because I always liked that type of ranged class and it took me quite a while before equipping my Soul Crystal (think, lv 50 Archer). Unfortunately, if people wanted a mobile class focused on DPS, they could've gone for Machinist (granted the class itself was busted and clunky to play) since that class was all about DPS.

The way I see bard is the in between of Dancer and Machinist. They have more utility than machinist and a bit more damage than dancer. I think the reason we are seeing so many dancers doing more damage than their counterparts is because the complexity of the job is very low. It is very easy to perform dancer at 100% compared to performing bard or machinist at 100%. People should remember skill curves effect damages numbers too. Bards still have Nature's Minne, !Battle Voice!, Warden's Paen, and !Troubadour!. Id say stick with it, square enix will tweek numbers as needed and people will get better after they practice rotations more.

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Originally Posted by Suniva

I'm curious, why you yourself are getting so worked up the matter, especially considering it is a class you don't even main.

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I cannot tell for Gallus, but i looked at the topic because to me, the Bard, prior to be a support class, is a DoT and proc class and what's why my friends are playing it (the other was being SUM). While i can get some complain about the utility loss, i'm a bit baffled when people claim all bard identity has been riped away. The core concept of DoT and proc class is still intact, and i could say it has been reinforced.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Is that so? I thought one of BRD's flavours too was how mobile and fluid it was. I recall a lot of people complaining how their job was utterly destroyed in Heavensward when the autos were removed and you were given hardcasted GCDs with Minuette. Oh but you were still supports right? So where was the problem again?

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You are strawmanning again. We are not discussing mobility or fluidity or rotations here, but the removal of BRD’s support identity, which has been its identity for the entirety of FFXIV’s life cycle dating back to 1.0 (where, if I recall, it was pure support and actually didn’t deal much damage at all). Did you read the topic of the thread? Do you understand the nature of the complaints career BRDs are voicing?

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Originally Posted by Gallus

And perhaps, just perhaps, that was one of the reasons why people liked BRD in 4.0 and not only because it was a support role?

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You are still failing to see the complaints here and choosing to cherry pick and strawman about damage dealing capability, mobility, rotations, and fluidity when that is not the main issue presented in this thread or in most complaints about 5.0 BRD (I invite you to go read some of them so you can hopefully understand what we are talking about here).

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Originally Posted by Sparkthor

I cannot tell for Gallus, but i looked at the topic because to me, the Bard, prior to be a support class, is a DoT and proc class and what's why my friends are playing it (the other was being SUM). While i can get some complain about the utility loss, i'm a bit baffled when people claim all bard identity has been riped away. The core concept of DoT and proc class is still intact, and i could say it has been reinforced.

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BRDs past iterations still had DoTs to manage/optimize, but the only procs they really managed up to Stormblood were Bloodletter/Rain of Death procs—most of their other skills were basically use on CD (e.g., Empyreal Arrow, Flaming Arrow, Sidewinder) and the songs functioned vastly different from how they do now. Pitch Perfect and Repertoire were not a thing prior to 4.0. Support was overwhelmingly the largest and most core part of their job, and it predates any of the DoT optimization and proc management they deal with now. I don’t find it fair to really call DoT management a niche to the job in the 2.0 and 3.0 incarnations because most jobs had DoTs that they were responsible for managing back then—they just didn’t get procs from them in the way BRD did.


In 2.0, BRD was the only job that could provide resource management to its party members in the form of MP and TP refresh until the release of NIN in 2.4 with Goad (which was only single-target and on an 180s CD—Army’s was party-wide and limited only by your MP pool). It also provided a +10% damage buff to magic users. From what I can recall of 2.x jobs, the only other job that provided a damage buff like this was NIN with Trick Attack. I don’t recall reading about any raid buff like Foe’s or TA from the other jobs.

In 3.0, MCH was added and it shared the support niche with BRD in the form of resource management and a party buff—to combat BRD’s magic damage buff, Hypercharge was +10% physical damage. But BRD’s core function of supporting and buffing its party was still there. More so than proc management, since River of Blood was still the only proc you managed.

In 4.0, BRD saw the influx of more procs in the form of Pitch Perfect and Refulgent Arrow, but the support aspect was still there and expanded upon immensely. Refresh and Tactician replaced Mage’s Ballad and Army’s Paeon for MP/TP refresh. Foe’s was +3% flat damage for all damage types (and could be manipulated with smart Refresh usage for more casts during an encounter). Utilizing your songs gave your party a +2% passive crit buff, whose contribution scaled even higher as the amount of crit increased on gear. Battle Voice provided +15% Direct Hit rate every 180s, and Troubadour provided 30s +10% magical or physical mitigation, or +15% HP, depending on which song you paired it with (really good for phases with extended AOE damage like O12S or UwU). Nature’s Minne was a +20% buff to healing spells on a target for 15s on a 45s cooldown (amazing for spread Adlos), and Palisade was the physical equivalent of Apocatastasis every 150s (great for assisting with tankbusters in raids or for dungeon pulls with lots of mobs that deal physical damage—literally a free tank cooldown). BRD was still heavily support oriented in Stormblood despite the DoTs and procs it had to manage. Any BRD who didn’t see that was more than like a BRD that never utilized their support tools—which honestly made them less valuable to their party since BRD’s personal damage was low (even with its power creep, it was no selfish DPS).

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Strawman here, strawman there, strawman everywhere!

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Just calling them as I see them. You’re bring up irrelevant points to the discussion and failing to actually discuss the main topic of concern.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

No but seriously.

3.0 - BRD loses its mobility: Complete and total outrage. Dozens of threads. Hundreds if not thousands of people complaining. The amount of complaints was so brutal SE gave BRD full mobility in 4.0 and 5.0.

5.0 - BRD loses part of its support skills: a couple threads with the same 5 people complaining.

Wanna talk again about what the majority think BRD's core is?

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If you think it’s just 5 people complaining, that just proves you aren’t actually reading the complaints. It’s far more than five people. And anyone who ever thought BRD’s core was anything other than support clearly never paid attention to the job. It certainly wasn’t damage—BRD has never been a selfish damage dealer, nor was it ever brought to parties because of its Big D DPS. Sorry to say that that was never the niche BRD was designed to fill.

Try to make your arguments without logical fallacies next time. They’ll probably make more sense.

Strawman here, strawman there, strawman everywhere!

No but seriously.

3.0 - BRD loses its mobility: Complete and total outrage. Dozens of threads. Hundreds if not thousands of people complaining. The amount of complaints was so brutal SE gave BRD full mobility in 4.0 and 5.0.

5.0 - BRD loses part of its support skills: a couple threads with the same 5 people complaining.

Wanna talk again about what the majority think BRD's core is?

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

-snip-

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It's kinda silly that they expanded on our utility so much during Stormblood only to immediately take it all away at the very next expansion. :'(

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Strawman here, strawman there, strawman everywhere!

No but seriously.

3.0 - BRD loses its mobility: Complete and total outrage. Dozens of threads. Hundreds if not thousands of people complaining. The amount of complaints was so brutal SE gave BRD full mobility in 4.0 and 5.0.

5.0 - BRD loses part of its support skills: a couple threads with the same 5 people complaining.

Wanna talk again about what the majority think BRD's core is?

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Haha, honestly. Why are you so against us "few" voicing our concerns about a class you do not even main? I mean, should I go over and start saying that I feel that there is nothing wrong with the 5.0 summoner because of what I have seen and in the same breath also state that I never played the class?

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Originally Posted by Nobuyuki_Sanada

The way I see bard is the in between of Dancer and Machinist. They have more utility than machinist and a bit more damage than dancer. I think the reason we are seeing so many dancers doing more damage than their counterparts is because the complexity of the job is very low. It is very easy to perform dancer at 100% compared to performing bard or machinist at 100%. People should remember skill curves effect damages numbers too. Bards still have Nature's Minne, !Battle Voice!, Warden's Paen, and !Troubadour!. Id say stick with it, square enix will tweek numbers as needed and people will get better after they practice rotations more.

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People might get better, but the soul of the class has been gutted, which is what so many of us career Bard players are so against. It doesn't really matter if Square tweaks the numbers because we still lost so much.
I doubt Bards will get anything back until 6.0, and that's a good 2 years away.

Wow, I didn't expect much complaining about BRD. It's the job I'm leveling to 80 first (currently 76), and personally, I find the job has changed very little (though my fingers still itch to press Misery's End from time to time), but I never really gave two shits about the support aspect.

Lost passive crit buff: I mean, on a certain level, I knew it was there, but it's not something you had to pay attention to. I don't know why anyone cares that it's gone. They tempered down on a LOT of +crit skills across the board. I sure as hell wasn't pushing my song buttons because it gave my party a buff.

Lost refresh: I don't do Savage, but I didn't find the MP aspect of this to be useful very often unless somebody died. Usually just used it to extend Foe.

Lost Foe Requiem: The cast time made this clunky to use mid-battle. I would've preferred they just remove the cast time and detached it from MP (just give it a static duration), but whatever, I don't miss it.

Lost Palisade: I do miss this. An active skill that I actually had to think about when to use. RIP Palisade.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Strawman here, strawman there, strawman everywhere!

No but seriously.

3.0 - BRD loses its mobility: Complete and total outrage. Dozens of threads. Hundreds if not thousands of people complaining. The amount of complaints was so brutal SE gave BRD full mobility in 4.0 and 5.0.

5.0 - BRD loses half of its support skills: a couple threads with the same 5 people complaining.

Wanna talk again about what the majority think BRD's core is?

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So first off, ShB releases for everyone today and I expect much more discussion regarding Bard's changes in forums. And those "5 people complaining" (it's much more than that) are people that actually learned and played their class at its highest level of skill, as well as playing Bard for a few years (I personally started in 3.4). We know what we're talking about.

Second, forums are not the only place where people complain. People get banned here all the time, if you follow Reddit discourse. There has been a few threads here and on the FF14 Reddit, but the most discussion I've seen are actually in the Discord channels where the skilled players (and those that want to learn) usually hang out.

Third, the class is very popular. It's easy to get into, but hard to master. The fact that the class is so easy to get into means that there is A LOT of bad Bards out there and I mean the type to just spam the DPS rotation without using half of Bard's kit. Those people are rarely the type that want to get better at the game and complain when they're not as skilled as the top players (while not putting in the effort).

Most class mains are reasonable and do give out feedback if the skill curve is too high or if something in the class doesn't play quite as smoothly. We want the class to have an identity, be somewhat complex but not as complex as it turns off people from getting into the class.

So even if somehow career Bards were to be outnumbered when it comes to discussion, answer me this: Should Square listen to the lazy players that complain about difficulty while not striving to get better or should they listen to the players that actually experienced and skillfully played their class for years?

I'd like to thank everyone that understands why I am so disheartened about losing my support skills. To me it was the essence of the bard. I can tell there are a number of you that are just as passionate about playing a support bard as I am. It is deeply moving and comforting to know that I am not alone. Hopefully I can find a job that gives me as much joy in ShB. I have all but warrior at 70 and yet I was always a bard at heart no matter what job I tried.

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Originally Posted by LunaFaelyn

I'd like to thank everyone that understands why I am so disheartened about losing my support skills. To me it was the essence of the bard. I can tell there are a number of you that are just as passionate about playing a support bard as I am. It is deeply moving and comforting to know that I am not alone. Hopefully I can find a job that gives me as much joy in ShB. I have all but warrior at 70 and yet I was always a bard at heart no matter what job I tried.

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The way I see bard is the in between of Dancer and Machinist. They have more utility than machinist and a bit more damage than dancer. I think the reason we are seeing so many dancers doing more damage than their counterparts is because the complexity of the job is very low. It is very easy to perform dancer at 100% compared to performing bard or machinist at 100%. People should remember skill curves effect damages numbers too. Bards still have Nature's Minne, !Battle Voice!, Warden's Paen, and !Troubadour!. Id say stick with it, square enix will tweek numbers as needed and people will get better after they practice rotations more.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

They’ve removed most of our utility and raid contributions. We lost the passive crit buff from our songs and Foe Requiem. In addition to this, Refresh was removed, so MP support is also gone. Palisade was removed, so we no longer have a free tank cooldown for physical damage (something that was useful in raids and Ultimates). All we have now is Nature’s Minne (which is still decent—it seems to affect healing abilities AND weaponskills now, but is on a 90s CD) and Troubadour for support (Troubadour is basically -10% all damage for 15s on an 180s cooldown—it’s actually 15s shorter now, so it gets less mileage per use), and Battle Voice for raid contribution (20% D.Hit every 180s—I don’t think they’ve determined how impactful it is yet).

In terms of rotation, it’s mostly unchanged aside from the removal of Straight Shot management: however I’ve seen many BRDs equate the current state of the job as a glorified ranger. AOE is supposedly pretty decent now with the additions of Shadowbite and Apex Arrow, but single-target wants for complexity. The new Army’s Paeon trait has been described as “technically not nothing, because it still gives 10s of your Haste Repertoire to your next song...but not really hype either”.

Apex Arrow is also a very underwhelming level 80 ability. It scales up to 500 potency, meaning that you will press it at 95+ gauge and no sooner. Which kind of makes the Soul Gauge relatively worthless as a mechanic. They could have at least made it something like NIN’s Ninki skills or DNC’s Saber where it procs at 50 Gauge and has AOE dropoff as a trade off for more frequent usages. Instead its a button you press at max gauge and ignore otherwise due to the damage loss. I’m guessing you probably also try to hold on to it for bursts, but I haven’t been in the BRD Balance lately due to paying more attention to DNC’s channel.

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Ouch that really does sound bad actually. SB Bard was so good why did they need to change it so drastically

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Originally Posted by Maero

Ouch that really does sound bad actually. SB Bard was so good why did they need to change it so drastically

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Probably in an attempt to make it more enticing to newer players. As stated, it's easy to pick up, fun to play, but was difficult to master. I supposed they figured the less the bard had to manage the easier it would be. Thing is, I still get into groups where bards just refuse to use their battle voice, simply because they don't receive the benefits from doing so, so why bother? At this point, with all the changes and there is no reason why we shouldn't be under its effect as well. Plus, it might encourage the bards that never think to use it because it doesn't buff them a reason to actually used the darned thing.

Monk gives out brotherhood
Dragoon gives out battle litany
Machinist has the new re worked tactician
Dancer gives out technical finish

Bards are the only ones at the present that give out party wide buff and still DOESN'T benefit themselves from casting it. This needs to be looked into.
EDIT: Mistakes were made

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Originally Posted by Suniva

Probably in an attempt to make it more enticing to newer players. As stated, it's easy to pick up, fun to play, but difficult to master. I supposed they figured the less the bard had to manage the easier it would be. Thing is, I still get into groups where bards just refuse to use their battle voice, simply because they don't receive the benefits from doing so, so why bother? At this point, there is no reason why we shouldn't be under its effect as well. Plus, it might encourage the bards that never think to use it because it doesn't buff them a reason to actually used the darned thing.

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To add to that: they probably changed it so drastically so that their new class, that fulfills a similar niche, would be better and thus more popular in team comps.

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Originally Posted by Xieldras

To add to that: they probably changed it so drastically so that their new class, that fulfills a similar niche, would be better and thus more popular in team comps.

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Oh yea, that's a given. I've already resolved myself to being a main dnc in this xpack since it brings more utility than the current bard, but I am not going to give up on my first love. I'm curious to know how our Eastern friends feel about the changes that have been made to bard as well, but alas. Still far too early I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Suniva

Oh yea, that's a given. I've already resolved myself to being a main dnc in this xpack since it brings more utility than the current bard, but I am not going to give up on my first love. I'm curious to know how our Eastern friends feel about the changes that have been made to bard as well, but alas. Still far too early I suppose.

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Pretty sure I've mentioned it elsewhere but I noticed Bard mains being very unhappy with the changes while those simply having Bard leveled up being happy with the changes. Am curious as well about Japan's view on things as it seems their voice is usually heard over ours, alas I do not speak Japanese.
Still undecided as my go-to class for this expac (that is not Fisher) as Bard was my first love too.

I'm not especially attached to being a "support job" either way, and I think Minne and Warden's are neat for what it's worth - "support" does not have to solely mean damage boosts.

The passive song buff had minimal gameplay impact / wasn't interactive at all, so it's really just the loss of Foe that stings in terms of function, but I can't wholly disagree with SE wanting to get rid of something as wonky as it was (and unlikely to rework into anything interesting).

However, (a) Battle Voice itself isn't very interesting, and (b) I do think it's very strange and inconsistent for all the lore and quests to harp on the notion of Bards invigorating their party through song, when for the first 20 levels they don't do that at all, and for the rest they're rather bad at it - BV is roughly tied for the second-weakest raidwide buff with Brotherhood, beating out only Devotion.

What I would like to have seen would have been for BV to be a bit more of a premier lynchpin skill, i.e. if it were available at level 30, and then at level 50 got a second charge, you'd have something cleanly sitting at second-best raidwide buff after Trick, which would be fine, and also make BV usage at least a tad interesting.

It would be tough to do make that sort of change now, but if SE does feel pushed to shift Bard back into a little more raid damage mode I'd be pretty okay with just playing up BV in some form or another, rather than adding random weird stuff.

You're welcome to your opinion, but the fact is that bard was created to be a support type class, originally. It seems like a lot of people picked up bard hoping it would play more like a ranger/dps and became displeased when they found out that that wasn't the case. I mean, machinist was introduced as the go to for range dps, but people want bard to play like ranger because they get to use a bow rather than a gun. RP and all I suppose. Like, I understand, you want to play how you want and that is fine. But for those of us who did in fact pick up the class to fully utilize what it had and what it is capable of, stripping that away and barely offering us anything in return, after what we had the capability to bring in SB, is disheartening. I mean, even Apex Arrow is legit garbage in it's current state. The only really good improvement is that our repertoire is now is a flat % chance base rather than being % based off crits.

Our AoE is just downright weird from what I've experienced. There's going to be a lot of tweaks coming to fix it as is usually the case after every release, but I am in the camp that bard isn't the same. If you played the class wanting to be top damage, then you were playing it incorrectly. Anyone that is trying to justify it because you (generalized) didn't want to manage and or deal with it is basically your admitting that you were playing the class at half capacity. Imagine if a warrior, or really, any other class available in the game decided that they wanted to play their way without using a little under half of their available abilities just because they didn't like to use them? We would call them bad -insert role here- and tell them to learn their class. It's why you would frequently hear the community talk about how many "bad" bards were out there and how it is rare to find one that would actually use their skills at the fullest.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

I'm not especially attached to being a "support job" either way, and I think Minne and Warden's are neat for what it's worth - "support" does not have to solely mean damage boosts.

The passive song buff had minimal gameplay impact / wasn't interactive at all, so it's really just the loss of Foe that stings in terms of function, but I can't wholly disagree with SE wanting to get rid of something as wonky as it was (and unlikely to rework into anything interesting).

However, (a) Battle Voice itself isn't very interesting, and (b) I do think it's very strange and inconsistent for all the lore and quests to harp on the notion of Bards invigorating their party through song, when for the first 20 levels they don't do that at all, and for the rest they're rather bad at it - BV is roughly tied for the second-weakest raidwide buff with Brotherhood, beating out only Devotion.

What I would like to have seen would have been for BV to be a bit more of a premier lynchpin skill, i.e. if it were available at level 30, and then at level 50 got a second charge, you'd have something cleanly sitting at second-best raidwide buff after Trick, which would be fine, and also make BV usage at least a tad interesting.

It would be tough to do make that sort of change now, but if SE does feel pushed to shift Bard back into a little more raid damage mode I'd be pretty okay with just playing up BV in some form or another, rather than adding random weird stuff.

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SE's own description of bard class is as follows:

"The word "bard" ordinarily puts folk in mind of those itinerant minstrels, fair of voice and nimble of finger, who earn their coin performing in taverns and the halls of great lords. Few know, however, that bards in fact trace their origins back to the bowmen of eld, who sang in the heat of battle to fortify the spirits of their companions. In time, their impassioned songs came to hold sway over the hearts of men, inspiring their comrades to great feats and granting peace unto those who lay upon the precipice of death."

As we currently stand, we hardly match our own job description.

Warden's is fine, Nature's Minne WAS fine, until now, where it's CD time has increased from 45s to 90s. I'm also very happy they kept troubadour, though I personally wish it still functioned as it did in SB.