Could have SE unknowing set FFXIV to fail....

[Asierid]

If you honestly think that's fine and that doing substandard DPS while providing pretty much nothing else to your group, literally being completely outclassed by both other melee jobs is acceptable because "with enough gear anyone can do anything!" then I'd like to hear your thoughts on removing all of Bard's songs and how viable/important he is to a group comp anymore.

To be quite frank, the mobility at a range gives BRD a significant survival boost compared to other ranged, minus songs. Not to mention the DPS.

WAR just sucked because the abilities were bad, no amount of tuning the old abilities could have made that balanced. I'm not disagreeing with you, but you can't compare 2.0 WAR to current patch DRG. DRG just really needs some numbers tweaked and the stupid flank on Heavy thrust removed. Providing NIN with a raidwide damage buff was a mistake also, that basically seals a raid spot for a NIN. I never said it was optimal, but DRG -can- do it...you just have to be more careful.

[SpookyGhost]

but you can't compare 2.0 WAR to current patch DRG.

I can agree with that. WAR had other problems besides the gear discrepancy vs PLDs - I experienced many of them first hand. :P I do think DRG is in an unfortunate situation, which is really disappointing for me since DRG is my only DPS job I have leveled and I really enjoy playing it. DRG certainly can do it, but it's similar to WAR's situation where you had to play around their weaknesses to make it through the fight... which isn't how it should be. I think they definitely deserve a buff, I don't even care about the damage just +MDEF and +Utility would be more than enough for me. We are getting way off topic though, I think, so I'll just shut up now.

[Lord_Zlatan]

I'll just shut up now.

Im in the same boat as you. Long time DRG fan in FF series so I leveled it up and geard it out.

Conversely, id even trade in utility for more spike damage. The hallmark of DRG is jumps. They do way too little damage IMO. There is some math out there I think in this thread that states the DRG reduced CD on jumps increases DPS by 1%... why not go ahead and raise the potency on that so its up to even 3% or dare I say 5%? The tradeoff would be that they have no utility besides boosting BRD dps. I think thats fair.

MDEF needs to go up though, everyone agrees on that.