BRD is so meh in this patch..

why did they take away BRD identity again? BRD was a lot of fun back in stormblood, because it was meant to be a support dps class and i am sure a lot of us enjoyed the class until this patch hit and BRD became.. an ARCHER? again, am sick of the developer messing around with this class, might as well make it an ARCHER instead of a BRD at this point. :mad::mad::mad:


Please give us our utilities back.. -_-

Certain utilities I can understand... Tactician of course had to go since TP was moved away. Refresh yes that hurt but the whole goal of the MP numbers rework was to make it so that Healer were responsible for their own output, and they wanted to make it so that not any one role was required (which they ended up making it anyway with the damage boost on each role being present anyway). Palisade.... Once again making it so tanks are more responsible for their own role. And the crit Aura's on Bard made it quite OP with any real personal input from the bard. Just keep your rotation up and boost your whole team for the fight. Not very interactive, especially when you look at how Dancer has to actually put inputs in to get their boosts out to the whole party.

But removing Foe's and not compensating us back for the loss of those support abilities is really the issue. With Foe's I feel like the dev's heard BRD's talking about how clunk Foe's was to use and went "Man they really don't like Foe's, let's just remove it entirely then." No that's not what we wanted. We wanted the ability cleaned up and made a bit easier to use. Remove the cast time, make it no longer reliant on MP, turn it into an actual oGCD ability with a likewise cooldown to things like Battle Littany and Technical Finish. If they just give Foe's back in this state for this expansion and then expand more on the more song and utility aspects in 6.0 and later expansions this will work out. It gives Dancer it's time to shine, let's Bard get a bit more of it's support identity back, and also allows them to not mess with what is a very fun and solid DPS rotation next expansion.

Seems to be the same thing based on what I'm reading from the MNK posts:

Players: "I like it but this doesn't feel fun to play"
Devs: "Ok" *removes the skill entirely*

Bard plays exactly the same now as it did in stormblood. If losing a passive buff and foes was enough to ruin the class for you, feel free to play something else.

I won't say it's exactly the same... Same rotation it is, but disappearance of some skills certainly make the job less fun. Personally I really liked updating Straight Shot before songs and not having it there feels very very awkward. Foe was very fun to have, now I feel like I'm letting my MP rotting away for no reason at all. Misery gave very nice sound effect, things feel so light and boring and weak without it.

Like, okay I might get used to it after a while, but so far the first impression is definitely not really pleasant, and "just play something else" won't change the fact that my "favorite job" is no longer likeable. Picking up DNC won't make me love BRD all over again, neither will it make me love DNC and forget BRD forever, despite all the similarities. It's just different.

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Originally Posted by Siccoroa

Bard plays exactly the same now as it did in stormblood. If losing a passive buff and foes was enough to ruin the class for you, feel free to play something else.

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This, for the most part. Though I can understand wanting more utility as a bard, neither of those were really... that.

I actually feel a lot more free to bank and manage my resources with the passive buff gone, and while I'd have much preferred an oGCD Foes that doesn't pull mobs over removal, having removed it still feels better to me than what it was.

old bard with less comp restrictions would be insanely broken. Personally i think bards are fine and there are other dps that need to be looked at such as SMN, RDM, MCH, MNK, and SAM

Shame Foe's is gone, think it would have been neat to keep it and add a 'Mana shift' type ability to Bard as well.

Turning that currently useless MP bar into extra damage or extra support (for your rez mages and healers) would be nice.

Sure, ideally you'd never use the MP song, but I like these sort of niche abilities that can turn a dodgy run around.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

But removing Foe's and not compensating us back for the loss of those support abilities is really the issue. With Foe's I feel like the dev's heard BRD's talking about how clunk Foe's was to use and went "Man they really don't like Foe's, let's just remove it entirely then." No that's not what we wanted. We wanted the ability cleaned up and made a bit easier to use. Remove the cast time, make it no longer reliant on MP, turn it into an actual oGCD ability with a likewise cooldown to things like Battle Littany and Technical Finish. If they just give Foe's back in this state for this expansion and then expand more on the more song and utility aspects in 6.0 and later expansions this will work out. It gives Dancer it's time to shine, let's Bard get a bit more of it's support identity back, and also allows them to not mess with what is a very fun and solid DPS rotation next expansion.

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I'd be fine with an MP cost if it functioned like the old Sprint. Make it an oGCD where you activate Foe's to burn all your MP to increase nearby enemy damage taken by 3% with a duration of 1s per 1k MP used. Burn all your MP early on in the fight during the opener when everyone is lining up raid buffs for a full 10s of increased damage, do a mini-Foe's of ~5s to try and push past a phase change like the old Soar Skip in Zurvan Extreme, activate another mini-Foe's to line up with a later burst phase when Battle Voice is on cooldown, etc. We'd get our damage utility back which is a plus, and it would also require us to put some thought into things and be more attentive to the rest of the party for the best results. Granted you'd still get Bard's that only use it when at max MP, or Bard's that completely forget to use it altogether, but a good Bard would be able to look at a fight and the mechanics and figure out how best to use it. I think that would be interesting to see, though I imagine quite a few people would still find it annoying to use.

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Originally Posted by Siccoroa

Bard plays exactly the same now as it did in stormblood. If losing a passive buff and foes was enough to ruin the class for you, feel free to play something else.

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Yeah, basically. I main BRD since HW and I didn't feel bothered all that much. They just removed the passive buff on allies and Foe's.

To be honest, I'm sortof glad they removed Foe's. When in raid, I can't count how many time I came across bards that didn't do Foe's... it always grinded my gears lol

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Originally Posted by Siccoroa

Bard plays exactly the same now as it did in stormblood. If losing a passive buff and foes was enough to ruin the class for you, feel free to play something else.

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I agree. Legitimately the only issue with the loss of Bard support is that the class feels at odds with its lore now, mostly because you only "sing to inspire your allies" once every three minutes for a not-so-impressive party buff. Even so, songs being part of Bard's core rotation, which is Bard's identity from Stormblood, still make the class feel more like a Bard than it did in ARR or Heavensward, where you actually wanted to avoid singing as much as possible (except for Foe Requiem) because Mage's Ballad and Army's Paean actively reduced your damage.