Bard or Samurai

Looking for those who have played both, I am trying to choose between the two for the job I will try to level to 80.

I am a relatively new player and do not consider myself a better than (at best) average player. So I am looking for the one that would be easiest to play.

If you have played both and believe one is easier to learn reasonably well, please tell me why you think so.

And yes, if you have only played one of them, but love the character, I would appreciate having your opinions as well as to why you love it.

Thank you.

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Originally Posted by qaija

Looking for those who have played both, I am trying to choose between the two for the job I will try to level to 80.

I am a relatively new player and do not consider myself a better than (at best) average player. So I am looking for the one that would be easiest to play.

If you have played both and believe one is easier to learn reasonably well, please tell me why you think so.

And yes, if you have only played one of them, but love the character, I would appreciate having your opinions as well as to why you love it.

Thank you.

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Samurai is by far the easier to play. I'm leveling up Bard right now (at 75 at the moment) and I'm finding it less than straightforward to play. With Samurai, you more or less know what your going to do next, with Bard you're waiting for abilities to randomly proc. And a lot of the bard abilities are not strightforward, this is all just for a single ability:
The Wanderer's Minuet
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100.
Additional Effect: Grants the Wanderer's Minuet to all party members within 30 yalms, increasing their critical hit rate by 2%
Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: 40％ chance to grant Repertoire when damage over time is dealt by Caustic Bite or Stormbite
Repertoire Effect: Allows execution of Pitch Perfect
Can be stacked up to 3 times.
This action does not share a recast timer with any other actions. Furthermore, the recast timer cannot be affected by other actions.

It can be a little overwhelming how much you have to juggle as a bard.

I suppose OP, one of the big questions is: do you want a rotation?

A rotation like SAM's can help guide what you're doing.
The relative lack of one with BRD is a solid go to if you don't wanna deal with one.

But, like, you can always level both up and see which you enjoy more. 14 doesn't lock you into a class.

I haven't played Bard that much, but I have several other dps at 80 (All of them except Monk, Bard and Dragoon) And samurai is the one i've ended up landing on and liking the most. I tried for the longest time to get into Ninja and get good with ninja, but its rotation is too chaotic for me. Samurai's rotation is involved and busy, but its not chaotic. It very much feels like it flows in a circle.

You basically have three combos that you do to get Sen. Each combo gives you one Sen, with a total of 3 needed, and you have a skill that changes what it does based on the number of Sen you've built up.

So the basic flow of the job is simply doing your 3 combos to collect Sen, and then spending them in a burst.. and then starting over (while spending just one Sen to apply your DoT as needed). It gets a little more complicated when you get your second job gauge because it gives you other skills to weave between your combos, but they're very basic. You have a damage dealing skill to spend your Kenki on when your gauge gets full so you can keep getting MORE kenki, and you have a skill to spend kenki on that buffs your next attack that you use right before your big burst (when you spend your 3 sen) or right before you apply your DoT.

Granted there are a few more delicate parts of the rotation, a few other skills i didnt mention, and some other buffs you get, but those all just build on the Sen building and Kenki management systems that are the base of the job, and you'll figure those extra abilities out pretty easily as you get them.

I'm like you, I don't consider myself to be the best player, but I also don't consider myself to be bad either. I'm comfortably average, sometimes maybe slightly above average. Ninja was too chaotic for me, but I liked the busyness of it. Samurai has the busyness (especially after you get your Kenki gauge) but it isnt chaotic. There's a time to use everything, and the rotation will keep you pressing buttons while also flowing nicely and feeling simple, imo.

And I also enjoy that I don't have to worry about using any support skills, or setting up a Trick Attack window to line up with the rest of the parties rotations. I just come in and do damage, that's all I have to worry about. And that's nice for me.

I personally find Bard to be easy to the point of being boring. It's mostly just keeping DoTs running and hitting procs when they become available. With Sam, on the other hand, you have a rotation to worry about and some animation locking. You also have the usual melee worries of trying to keep uptime as much as possible while still trying to keep up on your positionals. I would say that Sam is probably the easiest melee to at least get decent DPS out of but between the two, Bard is definitely easier.

I haven't played either, but I need you to consider the weeb factor.

Bard barely weebs. Samurai weebs over 9000!

The choice, I think, is clear.

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Originally Posted by Cinno

I tried for the longest time to get into Ninja and get good with ninja, but its rotation is too chaotic for me.

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"Chaotic" is an interesting word choice—the NIN rotation has no procs and is completely organized around the Trick Attack burst window in a very regular, ordered way.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

"Chaotic" is an interesting word choice—the NIN rotation has no procs and is completely organized around the Trick Attack burst window in a very regular, ordered way.

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Organized chaos...?

The most important advice I could give is to make sure you ignore stuff like this.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

I haven't played either, but I need you to consider the weeb factor.

Bard barely weebs. Samurai weebs over 9000!

The choice, I think, is clear.

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As for the jobs I'm a returning player so have limited experience on SAM, so far though it does seem fluid and somewhat intuitive. Personally I do struggle a bit more with the melee jobs than ranged when it comes to mechanics though, so in terms of mechanics difficulty BRD would be easier. Maybe thats just me though and I havent played BRD since 3.x or something like that so cant comment on how it really plays now to be honest.

Bards spend most of their time pressing the same GCD, but there is a large variety of abilities they weave between them and it can become quite complicated just to explain them. It gets 3 song attacks which each enable certain types of procs or benefits to you. These are increased by keeping your two damage-over-times ticking on the enemy, which can be a bit challenging when a lot of mechanics are distracting you.

Samurais have a rotation, where each of 3 combos grant a different symbol. You want 1 symbol for your damage-over-time, 2 for AoE and 3 for a powerful single target attack. It feels quite slow until you get gauge to spend, but then you get an ability you can press between GCDs a lot.

The names of Samurai actions look all confusing and japanese-like, but in practice I found it surprisingly easy once I'd read the tooltips. Easier than trying to keep damage-over-time attacks up on bosses.

On the other hand, melee DPS are busier with positionals and a limited attack ranged that distracts you from doing mechanics a lot more than on a ranged physical DPS like bard that can run around freely while still executing their rotation.

Neither of them are the hardest to play, but I wouldn't say either of them are the easiest to play either, so you would need to judge for yourself what is easier for you or more fun for you personally.

Personally I think bards are easier, I find the proc based system engaging and yet relatively easy to manage. Being able to run all over the place during a fight is a pretty big QoL.

I don't think Samurai are particularly difficult either but I feel Bard is easier to use. Samurai has positional (gently lol), rotation, a unique resource consumption system (dot vs aoe vs big damage single target, think a much easier version of Ninja's system), short casting times, and are melee.

Maybe the most silly way to bring them down besides imagery (keeping in mind Bard is more like a ranger who occasionally jams on their lute) is do you like BIG DAMAGE or do you like peppering the enemy while getting a sense of helping your team sometimes? Although barrage skill on bard is fun to see, as you get to see three attacks in short succession (can feel like 'big damage', but Samurai and Black Mage go on a different level of BIG DAMAGE lol).

Bard has a neat Esuna spell that is like an Esuna shield (bank an esuna if the target doesn't need it), and other team buffs. Samurai is known as a selfish DPS (still good for the team but if you wanted to have someone tip their hat to you for saving them, like if you used Paladin cover or whatever, then you wont get that really with Samurai).

Thank you all for your helpful posts. This game sure rocks with the quality and helpfulness of the players who read and post responses here.

I am not surprised to see some say one is better and someone else the other.... it really all depends on what one enjoys the most. But based on what I have read here, I am going to go with Samurai. I agree with the poster who described one of the attacks the bard has, and how there are a bunch of further possibilities and like that poster, I would become confused about when to use it.

With the Samurai it seems that there is a bit to learn how to do the procs correctly, but once you have figured them out, then the rotation becomes pretty straight forward.

None of the jobs I have played so far are "easy" at higher levels. It is necessary to get sufficient experience playing it before you will become good at it. And Samurai seems to me to be easier based on my playing style.

I’d take Bard over Samurai, but currently these are my 2 least favorite classes.

Bars is a bit of a bore at times, but it’s not the convoluted button bolted mess that samurai is.