This thread is such a f****ing joke. Bard is OP as hell. It is the single one DPS you can not go without.

And comparing Goad to TP song is a joke too. Goad allow to make it so that you can wait a bit more before having to use TP song on long fight with no downtime by hitting the first tp starved person, so you can hopefully find a better time to sing, but the bard will have to sing like a canary, goad or not.

And yeah, Foe requiem is very important too. But the real deal breaker is Ballad, as the whole healing stuff is balanced currently around it. No matter how you look at it, you are not going to accomplish anything relevant without a good bard. You can go without a nin, a mnk, a drg, a blm or a smn. You can not go without a brd.

Also dps wise, they are, from my experience, 0 to 10% behind best dps in any fight that is not a dummy (so no t8). They pay almost nothing for their mandatory utility.

If anything, Brd would need a slight nerf, or the game should be balanced in a way that does not literally revolve around them.