BRD Rework in Final Endwalker Patch Notes!

Huge BRD changes, including:

• DoT's no longer triggering song procs (tooltip is vague on the new system).
• Songs affecting the BRD, too (including battle voice).
• 3 bloodletter charges.
• Quick Knock now resets shadow bite instead of bloodletter/rain of death.
• Barrage now ups the potency of shadowbite.
• Sidewinder is not affected by DoTs on target.
• Shadowbite is only available if triggered by quick nock; now a weaponskill.

Now I'm tempted to stay with BRD instead of going MNK...

Looks pretty nice.

• Repertoire is no longer tied to DoTs it seems, just a flat 80% chance every 3s with no chance of getting a double proc is my guess. Although the French version says that the Wanderer's Minuet Repertoire proc is still tied to DoTs, so this will need testing once the game is live
• Bloodletter is no longer a reset, just a 7.5s recast reduction and we get three charges. Looks pretty nice, now we aren't gonna lose DPS due to double procs, although I imagine the amount of Bloodletters we fire will go down anyways. Popping off another Bloodletter will require two procs because of the recast reduction change so I imagine Mage's Ballad won't be as busy, and the charges means we'll probably play around 60s/120s bursts more
• BRD now gets buffed by their own Songs, woooo
• Radiant Finale recast got increased to 110s so that whole "do we use it at 90s or 120s" optimization got pitched in the bin. Pretty unfortunate, I thought it would've been cool to play around with depending on the fight
• Shadowbite is now a Weaponskill followup to Quick Nock/Ladonsbite which is...whatever. I dislike the animation for Shadowbite so seeing it more often is honestly probably a downside. If they called it Wide Volley and gave it the Wide Volley animation then I'd be screaming it's a 10/10 change

So yeah, I am happy with BRD overall. The Repertoire changes could be hit or miss, testing will need to be done there. I imagine the Job will feel smoother when it comes to Repertoire procs and Soul Voice generation just because it's now one big chance every 3s rather than two small chances meaning less randomness overall. Will be neat to see how BRD performs once Endwalker is live, and I'm glad I can go back to BRD since my static didn't mind recruiting a Tank.

You're forgetting a massive one

Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100.
Additional Effect: Grants Mage's Ballad to self and all party members within 30 yalms, increasing damage dealt by 1%
Duration: 45s
Additional Effect: 80% chance to grant Repertoire
Repertoire Effect: Reduces the recast time of both Bloodletter and Rain of Death by 7.5s
Additional Effect: Grants Mage's Coda

This functionally makes the Bloodletter charges pointless as the main reason people wanted them was to avoid overcapping procs. That isn't a thing anymore. Furthermore, DoTs are now 80% flat in terms of prog rate. We don't yet know if that is on 3s intervals like everything else or per GCD. Either way, this severely guts a big portion of Bard's gameplay. DoTs, for all intent and purposes, have no reason to exist. They're just fluff damage.

Oh man...they are prepping to remove dots off bard next

They are probably getting ready to remove dots from the game

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Originally Posted by zcrash970

Oh man...they are prepping to remove dots off bard next

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I'm all but positive they wanted to but feared the backlash. Endwalker will be a litmus test to see how players react. If few seem to care, Caustic Bite, Stormbite and Iron Jaws will be joining SMN's Resurrection in the 7.0 bin.

Plenty of great changes for BRD but I'm bummed they're decoupling everything from dots.

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Originally Posted by Alluneth

They are probably getting ready to remove dots from the game

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I just don't understand their hatred of dots in this game. Everyone use to have one or two then to only one then none.

I understand that some needed to go like Fracture, Phlebotomize, Touch of Death, Mutilate or Lead Shot. But seriously SE, a lot of people love DoTs and you're making so those people have no job that interest them.

It's the same thing with pet classes. We all know Yoshi hates them but just because he does doesn't mean we shouldn't have one in the game

A criticism of DoTs I often see towards healer DoTs are that the DoTs don't really do anything and have no interaction with the kits that they're in - and the people saying this are right. So what's up with taking the one job that has meaningful interaction with DoTs in it's kit and removing that entirely?

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Originally Posted by zcrash970

I just don't understand their hatred of dots in this game. Everyone use to have one or two then to only one then none.

I understand that some needed to go like Fracture, Phlebotomize, Touch of Death, Mutilate or Lead Shot. But seriously SE, a lot of people love DoTs and you're making so those people have no job that interest them.

It's the same thing with pet classes. We all know Yoshi hates them but just because he does doesn't mean we shouldn't have one in the game

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Lets head this off here. They do not hate DoTs or Pet classes. The problem is tech, not a like or dislike problem. They mentioned multiple times they had MANY issues with the amount of debuffs that were loading up on bosses in the game, even now with the amount that have been cut out, in 24 mans and hunts there still is a chance the bosses debuff bar will get so overloaded your debuffs will barely even show, which can cause tech issues and not get benefits from them. I wanna stress I do not want to see BRD DoTs ever be cut, but lets not be hyperbolic and perpetuate falsities about the dev team.

Pet classes are even worse tech wise, Summoner's pets have been reworked each expansion and sometimes during major patches. They have literally been trying to fix Summoner pets for 8 years. You don't do that if you hate Pet jobs. Them making Pet's basically glorified stand ins is the result of them realizing they were just unable to fix it to players wants and just relenting to the many Summoner players who wanted them gone. I feel bad for those who really like Pet jobs, but at a certain point if you can't fix a problem right, the best way to deal with it is to remove the problem.

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Originally Posted by zcrash970

I just don't understand their hatred of dots in this game. Everyone use to have one or two then to only one then none.

I understand that some needed to go like Fracture, Phlebotomize, Touch of Death, Mutilate or Lead Shot. But seriously SE, a lot of people love DoTs and you're making so those people have no job that interest them.

It's the same thing with pet classes. We all know Yoshi hates them but just because he does doesn't mean we shouldn't have one in the game

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It's probably two things:
1) FFXIV lacks the DoT interface management tools of other MMOs.
2) (Partially due to 1) DoTs may be considered too much for FFXIV's target audience to handle.

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Originally Posted by zcrash970

Oh man...they are prepping to remove dots off bard next

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My prediction is that come 7.0, BRD will have one or both DoTs removed and a new DPS job based around DoTs.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

Lets head this off here. They do not hate DoTs or Pet classes. The problem is tech, not a like or dislike problem. They mentioned multiple times they had MANY issues with the amount of debuffs that were loading up on bosses in the game, even now with the amount that have been cut out, in 24 mans and hunts there still is a chance the bosses debuff bar will get so overloaded your debuffs will barely even show, which can cause tech issues and not get benefits from them. I wanna stress I do not want to see BRD DoTs ever be cut, but lets not be hyperbolic and perpetuate falsities about the dev team.

Pet classes are even worse tech wise, Summoner's pets have been reworked each expansion and sometimes during major patches. They have literally been trying to fix Summoner pets for 8 years. You don't do that if you hate Pet jobs. Them making Pet's basically glorified stand ins is the result of them realizing they were just unable to fix it to players wants and just relenting to the many Summoner players who wanted them gone. I feel bad for those who really like Pet jobs, but at a certain point if you can't fix a problem right, the best way to deal with it is to remove the problem.

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Yoshi-p has literally said he hates pet classes in the past. It's was pretty much a meme when he did.

But the whole debuff cap was fixed when they reduced the amount of debuffs we can apply in 4.0.

These changes are either saying we believe these kind of job Mechanics are too hard for the general player base or them saying " hey we can't get this to work so we are giving up on making it work and will be gutting then out of the game"

Now I want to say this. I don't like bard. Never care for it but when you see a negative trend, you have to say it

I hope they don't get rid of DoTs on Bard. That's my favorite part about Bard. They already removed my other favorite part which was DoT procs in songs.

The only other thing I want is, if you're capped on Repertoire in Army's, any other procs grant "Straight Shot Ready" or "Shadowbite Ready".

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Originally Posted by Rika007

Lets head this off here. They do not hate DoTs or Pet classes. The problem is tech, not a like or dislike problem. They mentioned multiple times they had MANY issues with the amount of debuffs that were loading up on bosses in the game, even now with the amount that have been cut out, in 24 mans and hunts there still is a chance the bosses debuff bar will get so overloaded your debuffs will barely even show, which can cause tech issues and not get benefits from them. I wanna stress I do not want to see BRD DoTs ever be cut, but lets not be hyperbolic and perpetuate falsities about the dev team.

Pet classes are even worse tech wise, Summoner's pets have been reworked each expansion and sometimes during major patches. They have literally been trying to fix Summoner pets for 8 years. You don't do that if you hate Pet jobs. Them making Pet's basically glorified stand ins is the result of them realizing they were just unable to fix it to players wants and just relenting to the many Summoner players who wanted them gone. I feel bad for those who really like Pet jobs, but at a certain point if you can't fix a problem right, the best way to deal with it is to remove the problem.

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I truly hate how many times tech issues leads to things like unfavorable class changes or other designs in this game. I really wish they would take some time to fix the backend so we don't have to deal with it...

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

I truly hate how many times tech issues leads to things like unfavorable class changes or other designs in this game. I really wish they would take some time to fix the backend so we don't have to deal with it...

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Srsly such "tech issues" is an easy excuse for everything even if it isn´t a thing. So many games can handle a bunch of debuffs, DoTs on any classes, mass PvP, 1,5s GCDs and so on. Just FF14 can´t do it? Do you really trust all the excuses in favor of homogenization and dumb downs, when the game, classes and players had even more skills and possibilities back in the days?

If you told me three months ago that they were going to take away DoT-based procs, I would have readily believed it. It makes sense, if only for AoE-related reasons, and falls in line with SE's tendency to make a chainsaw to job's identity when they get a lot of complaints about it being too difficult.


What *is* a shock, is that they seemingly made the decision to do this in the 11th hour before the expac launch. Not only leaving behind changes that no longer make sense - halved MB proc value, 3x BL stacks - but resulting in a kit that can't be justified.


For better or for worse, DoT-based procs were Bard's entire identity. They were the only thing the job had to separate it design-wise. You don't just rip something like that out of a kit on a whim. You do it early on in development when you have the time to figure out what else should change and how, in order to ensure the job still feels unique and interesting.


Instead, Bard is a job with -

:: A simpler version of Dancer's GCD system (solo and AoE)

:: A simpler version of Dancer's fan procs

:: A more boring version of Dancer's Standard Step upkeep

:: A slower version of Dancer's Espirit gauge

:: A more boring version of Dancer's 2-minute buff execution

:: A DoT upkeep mechanic that's just left sitting there for no reason


Other than bow aesthetics and possibly power level, what is the reason to play Bard, gameplay-wise? What's the defining feature, what's the signature mechanic or unique play style? What part of the job is better-designed than the equivalent aspect of Dancer?

None of it is. No part of it at all.

And people were happy with the media tour setup. They were excited. Still some gripes about self-song and Bane, sure - but the former didn't force any of this, and the AoE situation could have been handled in some other way (i.e. they could have, if they wanted, put a cooldown on Storm and Caustic).

It just doesn't make sense. Going to have to hope that the DoT decouple just isn't actually there, but that too would be kind of wild if there's a per-DoT 80% rate. Or maybe it's based on something else DoT-related. Something something copium.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

If you told me three months ago that they were going to take away DoT-based procs, I would have readily believed it. It makes sense, if only for AoE-related reasons, and falls in line with SE's tendency to make a chainsaw to job's identity when they get a lot of complaints about it being too difficult.


What *is* a shock, is that they seemingly made the decision to do this in the 11th hour before the expac launch. Not only leaving behind changes that no longer make sense - halved MB proc value, 3x BL stacks - but resulting in a kit that can't be justified.


For better or for worse, DoT-based procs were Bard's entire identity. They were the only thing the job had to separate it design-wise. You don't just rip something like that out of a kit on a whim. You do it early on in development when you have the time to figure out what else should change and how, in order to ensure the job still feels unique and interesting.


Instead, Bard is a job with -

:: A simpler version of Dancer's GCD system (solo and AoE)

:: A simpler version of Dancer's fan procs

:: A more boring version of Dancer's Standard Step upkeep

:: A slower version of Dancer's Espirit gauge

:: A more boring version of Dancer's 2-minute buff execution

:: A DoT upkeep mechanic that's just left sitting there for no reason


Other than bow aesthetics and possibly power level, what is the reason to play Bard, gameplay-wise? What's the defining feature, what's the signature mechanic or unique play style? What part of the job is better-designed than the equivalent aspect of Dancer?

None of it is. No part of it at all.

And people were happy with the media tour setup. They were excited. Still some gripes about self-song and Bane, sure - but the former didn't force any of this, and the AoE situation could have been handled in some other way (i.e. they could have, if they wanted, put a cooldown on Storm and Caustic).

It just doesn't make sense. Going to have to hope that the DoT decouple just isn't actually there, but that too would be kind of wild if there's a per-DoT 80% rate. Or maybe it's based on something else DoT-related. Something something copium.

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Yeah it's an odd call. While I don't agree with the idea that Bard has no identity now and am REALLY excited for the other changes, the change on how procs now occur seems like one where they were fixing the job then thought "Lets keep fixing it, even though we don't need too." If anything I felt the only changes to the procs that were needed was to up them to 45 or 50% rate to get some more speed back to the job.

It's gonna all depend on how the job feels now. I really am eager to play it through the MSQ so I can give feedback. Despite the negative aspects of this change it really does feel like the team was very much listening to the post media tour feedback. Songs being able to now be heard, battlevoice affecting us, 3rd blood letter charge, increase to the 3rd coda, heck even the proc rates now on the songs addressing the leveling experience on bard being too slow all in some way address concerns we had in the post media tour. The dev team DID listen, it just looks like they took it one step further with this last change. Need to try it out now. If it works it works, if it doesn't we give that feedback just like we did before.

For better or worse, I'm exciting to try the changes out and see how they feel.

Sitting around and theorizing's never done much. I want to see how it 'feels' to play. And all the changes there seem to promote 'having something to do while minimizing how much you 'waste' on rep procs sometimes'.
The BL change is probably gonna even out to the same amount of BLs going out, but with less of a 'oh I wasted like 2 repetoir procs because they just keep ticking while I'm doing other stuff'. Now it's just "Lets keep my BL stock healthy. And maybe a few extra when MB ends"

Most people didn't like how shadowbite worked, so trying something different with it makes sense.

I'm optimistic at the very least.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

Yeah it's an odd call. While I don't agree with the idea that Bard has no identity now and am REALLY excited for the other changes, the change on how procs now occur seems like one where they were fixing the job then thought "Lets keep fixing it, even though we don't need too." If anything I felt the only changes to the procs that were needed was to up them to 45 or 50% rate to get some more speed back to the job.

It's gonna all depend on how the job feels now. I really am eager to play it through the MSQ so I can give feedback. Despite the negative aspects of this change it really does feel like the team was very much listening to the post media tour feedback. Songs being able to now be heard, battlevoice affecting us, 3rd blood letter charge, increase to the 3rd coda, heck even the proc rates now on the songs addressing the leveling experience on bard being too slow all in some way address concerns we had in the post media tour. The dev team DID listen, it just looks like they took it one step further with this last change. Need to try it out now. If it works it works, if it doesn't we give that feedback just like we did before.

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In the end the only thing they really badly need to do for 6.01 is to revert the MB half-proc thing. Then it will feel more like an rng smooth-over than spending 30-45s in slow motion. And the remaining kit will still be a 2 minute cycle, and still generally improved for the average player.

It would still be a "bad design" in light of Dancer juxtaposition, and in need of some 6.1 work most likely re: what are the DoTs for etc. And players like me who were looking forward to deleted elements of the MT kit will still be sad, and we'll still miss ShB Bard's AoE.

But with full BL resets they could run with this kit with a straight face, at least for a little while.

JESUS CHRIST I have no clue how to feel about these changes

One hand Shadowbite being straight damage and barrag-able is something I really wanted in SHB as spraying the horde with dots was chaotic and often died too fast due to under tuning

Straight shot ready being 30s is a amazing change as the 10s proc as a utter joke that I’m
Surpassed was fixed

Bloodletter getting 2 charges then a third in 80+ is probably my favorite change…but

Dots are literally useless….yea yea it’s still damage but with the stupid change to Sidewinder which was always a reminder to have dots on now change to a generic fleche, drill, jump generic GCD which I thought we’d outgrown by now seeing as it’s skill fodder and all songs being percentages based now which taints the job a lot.

Also wtf 7.5 second reset on ballad? This seems really freaking clunky and is why I really hate when MCH did this with its “we reset but not quite” affair and the fact it’s on a 45s song just seems inorganic compared to a complete reset, and since it’s raw percentages theirs zero incentive to have dots on mobs now
That they don’t effect your ballad. MASSIVE oversight here no more big soul gains

I suppose I won’t know how to feel about this until launch day, the percentages might be good for synced down but can’t stand how they are essentially killed Dot interplay for no reason (Sidewinder is overkill) and basically casualizing a already casual job

Some of the changes sound good (the new Shadowbite for example) but I am crestfallen about DoTs getting decoupled from song procs. Big dungeon pulls and multi-target bosses were my favorite parts of playing BRD. I realize we still can DoT multiple targets while the tank is sprinting down the hall, but it's going to be a lot less rewarding. Least favorite BRD change since losing Refresh.

Just say it, the mages change is terrible. They had literally no reason to neuter our damage like that. As much as I'm also upset about losing dot interactions, it would've been FINE if they had kept mages procs the same. But now we have less dot interaction, 0 chance of double proc, and the procs don't even fully reset bloodletter which therefore begs the question of why on earth did they add charges to it? This change just makes it very hard to be excited about the other good changes we got. Our aoe is nerfed to the ground now, and we have a lot less apm in mages. This might even make army's stronger than mages which is just sad.

The dots thing... that's just depressing. We were happy being a dot job because our dots actually mattered, now they're nerfed into the ground and serve no purpose anymore. If they want us to no longer get procs from them, why not give us bane? At least let us spread our dots if it won't make our procs go insane anymore. But no, it's obvious that they're gearing up to remove them in 7.0. I hate it. Hate hate hate it. At that point of ruining the job's design why don't they just fully decouple bard from archer?

Well I think it will only be possible to evaluate the class playing and seeing how is the generation of procs in combat , but one thing is already clear yoship does not want dots in final fantasy anymore

Also the song buffs effect bard is nice but BV I dislike now since it’s just “aoe devilment” and rather than aligning it as I see fit not I have to force it down my kit because my DPS is on the line. Hate that change hate that request BRD is looking to suck EW

I’m Running out of freaking mains here

They killed bard and left it to rot

thank you square enix you hacks

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Also the song buffs effect bard is nice but BV I dislike now since it’s just “aoe devilment” and rather than aligning it as I see fit not I have to force it down my kit because my DPS is on the line. Hate that change hate that request BRD is looking to suck EW

I’m Running out of freaking mains here

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I still have blm, but if Yoshi get a new main, I'm scared

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Also the song buffs effect bard is nice but BV I dislike now since it’s just “aoe devilment” and rather than aligning it as I see fit not I have to force it down my kit because my DPS is on the line. Hate that change hate that request BRD is looking to suck EW

I’m Running out of freaking mains here

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I mean you can blame the rest of us Bards for that, cause SE didn't want that, we did.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

I mean you can blame the rest of us Bards for that, cause SE didn't want that, we did.

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You mean those people that don’t even play the job and want everything to be like DNC? Of course. Half of their complaints don’t even make sense

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Originally Posted by Jirah

You mean those people that don’t even play the job and want everything to be like DNC? Of course. Half of their complaints don’t even make sense

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Oh yes it was only those players. Yep. Not at all career Bard mains who've been playing since 2.0 through all the rough spots of Heavensward and Shadowbringers, and just wanted to see the job improve. Nah it was just those guys.

Come on dude you make good arguments on here quite often, don't go around acting like your opinion is the only informed one.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

Oh yes it was only those players. Yep. Not at all career Bard mains who've been playing since 2.0 through all the rough spots of Heavensward and Shadowbringers, and just wanted to see the job improve. Nah it was just those guys.

Come on dude you make good arguments on here quite often, don't go around acting like your opinion is the only informed one.

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my bad im just severly bitter about these changes . all i ever anted was the jobs i loved to improve and advance thier themes to thier zenith not water it down and devoid them toa homgenized pile of mush to appeal to everyone and thier chidlren. Im ripe with emotion right now so my logic is severed to a extent. I refuse to let another main die like i did with MCH

So one nice positive out of the procs being based on the song itself that I've noticed while playing, you actually get a slight benefit out of downtime now, as the soul gauge can keep filling even when there is no target to hit, and with the extra length to the songs, this means there is often times during a transition or time between trash pack pulls that your next Apex Arrow will be pretty well built up by the time you go into it. While I don't doubt you wouldn't want to throw out your Wanderers minuet song out when a transition is only a few seconds away, it is nice to have something building up in the downtime.

Don't think it makes up for me anyway the loss of how good AoE felt under the dots based procs system, but its definitely a nice feeling watching that gauge grow so consistently.

Man guys, I just want our DoT procs back. The media tour Bard looked so good, I miss the feeling of making snap decisions due to procs. I really don't want our class to become too static! I think it really messes with the fact that we could have been AoE king! We already do pretty low single target damage. I honestly really like a lot of the changes we have, but if they need to lower the pot of BL and just give us double dot procs back that would be a-okay with me! I see a lot of the changes seem to be very last minute because even Barrage doesn't make SB ready and things like Pitch Perfect being on an almost instant cooldown even though it's not really possible to get a triple charge of PP with the new 80% server tick system even with RA.

I think giving us more things coming up with that DoT randomness made the class feel really dynamic and it was really fun having that thought process of "oh do I hold this Apex to line up with RS? Do I wait a GCD for my Sidewinder to get a raid-wide buff?" especially now that we have our own raid buffs it makes things even cooler to think about lining stuff up depending on the fight! If the feedback team reads this, I just really hope they just give us back DoT procs even if they need to tweak a bit of potency...

Been playing BRD to get a gripe on it and gotta say, changes aren’t terrible

Sidewinder loosing its dot enhancement is utterly stupid as BRD has one too many shallow GCDs as is, the song procs are consistent thru and thru and you can screw your DPS if you don’t pay attention to your dots even more so as the songs continue without it. Not getting procs was a big reminder to keep dots up, no more warning and your DPS will faulter

My one issue is AOE has been screwed up, outside of ballad, it’s very boring. Not as boring as say MCH or Lv50 DRG but it’s underwhelming. The other songs don’t have any aoe capabilities and feels inorganic, and of course 2 stacks is perfectly fine as is 3 is overkill and feels like “MCH has 3 per skill” type of compromise even more so that double procing doesn’t exist so they can remove it entirely and adjust DPS across the board. But now it’s just fatty.

Opinions on 90s Bard with its 3rd “Raging strikes but” skill is pending