WHY ARE YOU PLAYING A BARD IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SING?!

[Elim]

People are reading this because they are insecure about their job performance, like claire above who posted several times in this thread to (unconvincingly) reassure us that they are not mad. The point of the thread should be to talk about how bad bards who don't sing are, who are bad and people who play any job and are confident in their job don't get upset over it. If there was a thread about black mages who are garbage at their job as a black mage main you'd see me there joining in. Man so many black mages are embarrassing at their job, and I enjoy having a conversation about it, and I won't start lashing out because I don't have anything to defend.

I see. Sort of. I still don't fully understand how being insecure could lead to some of the replies here. They have absolutely nothing to do with what the OP said. Oh well.

To be more on topic, I've lost track of how many BRDs I've come across who never sing.

[Gilraen]

To answer the 'why don't you sing' argument, I've had it happen where people complained at me songs and not. Like a Stone Hell run where they complained about lack of Foe's... I've never had anyone ask for Foe's before. Ever. It was so very out of the blue. I've had people complain about me playing a song, "Why are you singing, the healer has over half their mp left." Like the damage reduction from singing was the deciding factor in winning the fight. Literally, you can't win so I prefer to wait for when people ask so that there's no reason for anyone to complain, someone asked so it was clearly wanted.

[Gardes]

My favorite has to be: Get into EXDR as blm, get bard as dps partner, don't really care whether if I get songs or not, so I didn't check party list and I have other player debuffs filtered and I didnt have to look at my own status since I'm aoe-ing and don't get procs from it. Halfway through the dungeon see a song icon on the party list I've never seen. I thought it was battle voice but it was strangely very light in yellow. Mouse over and...it's paeon. I looked at my tank and he's a paladin. I start looking around across pulls and while the blm and pld is using mana, the healer is also using mana so I can only come to the conclusion he's only using paeon for himself...in the middle of battle, to prolong his weakened aoe or something.

It wasn't just one bard too.

[Riviere]

I've seen enough bards to know what/how they do what they do

So many bad tanks that started as Healer/DPS believed the same thing. Just because they watched something, they thought they could do the same. So many deaths.

[AnaviAnael]

As people have said, you have good and bad bards/players everywhere. I try to keep an eye on MP and cast ballad when necessary, or use Foe's when we're caster heavy, etc. (Plenty have told me I'm a terrible bard because I do this.)

My favorite was during an ST run when a fellow bard used literally no songs other than Paeon when their TP ran out.

[Erendis]

So Claire posted that there are bad players in every job and now every one is raging at her since there is no more point to another QQ thread?

[Tranquil]

I see this too often, guess no one got the memo that resistance down debuffs ([...] Foe's) don't affect DoTs.

It would appear you are the one who didn't get the memo about Foe Requiem increasing the damage for both the initial hit on application as well as the actual DoT -ticks.

[Mamba]

I think Bard suffers from the name they have (Bard). In FFXI Bard was all about singing (and a dps BRD was a joke). In FF14 BRD is trying to be a dps (and very often fails, unless you are actually good).
Bard doesn't have enough songs to be a proper support class so you end up just DPSing (i.e. be Archer) and forget to pay attention to things like "how low is the MP" (and be a brd). (Poor design maybe, or maybe they are holding back for the future level increase)

Should Bard ballad between pulls? Well it really depends what kind of pulls the tank is doing. If he is pulling 3 mobs at a time... maaaaaaybe not. If the whole dungeon goes in 3 pulls, then hell yeah cos you have time to do it.
WHM however on a dungeon run should not run out of MP even with HOLY spam... but that is a different topic. Imo. let the BRDs dps in dungeons while they can, in coil they are TP and MP jukeboxes anyways.

[reality_check]

WHM however on a dungeon run should not run out of MP even with HOLY spam...

...........I don't even know how to reply to this one

[reality_check]

guess no one got the memo that resistance down debuffs (Dis, DK, Foe's, Eye) don't affect DoTs...(EDIT: This is also why I don't really care if Foe's isn't up for a lone SMN with other Phys DPS in a PUG/DF

Actually, this means that you need to pay more attention to Requiem because you should have it up and on before the Summoner engages or it'll go to waste.