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

[StouterTaru]

Well, paeon and ballad are crutches in most situations. A good party only needs foe (T8 excluded). That's the problem with labeling bard as support. Aside from foe, it's only support when somebody screws up. Which means if nobody screws up then no support is needed. Bard is a back up support for when things get sticky. If a healer continually needs ballad then either they're bad or other people are bad. Playing ballad frequently is encouraging/enabling people to continue being bad.

You can say very similar things about Provoke, Flare, Medica II, and many other abilities. There are still times when using them will speed up the fight more than not using them.

Imagine a blm in a dungeon saying "I don't use Flare because it enables the other dps to play poorly."

[LunarEmerald]

You can say very similar things about Provoke, Flare, Medica II, and many other abilities. There are still times when using them will speed up the fight more than not using them.

Imagine a blm in a dungeon saying "I don't use Flare because it enables the other dps to play poorly."

That analogy isn't so great. Unless you're saying dealing damage is the same as support.

Medica 2 is mandatory because there's unavoidable damage. The game isn't designed for just being medica sufficient.

Provoke is mandatory because there's tank swaps

Flare is an attack. Attacking isn't support.

Mage's Ballad is NEVER mandatory. It's only required when something goes wrong. This is what makes it support. Specifically, back up support.

[StouterTaru]

That analogy isn't so great. Unless you're saying dealing damage is the same as support.

Dealing more damage = run goes faster
Providing useful support = run goes faster

If you are refusing to do something that will speed up the run then yes, it's the same thing.

If the spell would be pointless in the situation that's one thing, but to simply say "nope, it's a crutch, learn to live without it cause I dps only" makes you a waste of a party spot.

[LunarEmerald]

Dealing more damage = run goes faster
Providing useful support = run goes faster

If you are refusing to do something that will speed up the run then yes, it's the same thing.

If the spell would be pointless in the situation that's one thing, but to simply say "nope, it's a crutch, learn to live without it cause I dps only" makes you a waste of a party spot.

Runs only go faster with foe. And nobody is saying foe isn't useful.

[skho01]

As a Bard main since launch. I cringe when I see other Bards not playing songs when they can. In 24 man runs, I rarely see Foe up, if ever. The song has ZERO negative impact to DPS, yet its not up near 100% of the time is just bad.

Songs are literally our ONLY real value add to the group (maybe the whole attack on the move, but the dps upside is marginal). Healers have to watch for aggro, dodge stuff, and WATCH your HP so you don't die. The least we can do is make sure they have enough MP to keep us alive, NOT THAT HARD. Just glance at it once in a while, pop mana song when WHM has less than 1.5K MP. Bust out Foe whenever there's a BLM or SMN. Or for 4 man, pop mana when BLM and WHM are spamming AoE. Their combined AOE dmg is much greater than our crappy TP intensive AoE anyway.

If you're a bard, and you haven't played songs in the last few dungeons you've ran. You are absolute crap PERIOD

[StouterTaru]

Runs only go faster with foe. And nobody is saying foe isn't useful.

80% of bards don't even play Foe, that's the point of this thread.

On top of that, a 15 second burst of ballad/paeon (you don't have to leave it on til you run out of mp) can speed up a run. Plus it doesn't always lower your damage. Boss uses reflect, goes invincible, temporarily vanishes from arena, between pulls, etc. When there aren't any of those, you can use it after your dots were just applied, and you have no cd's up.

That little extra that helps your tank hold hate, your dps do more damage, your healer sneak in more damage, that will speed up runs.