Bard needs some love too.

[Felessan]

This thread has to be a troll thread. BRD's damage is balanced around it giving Foe's Requiem to casters to make up for its lower training dummy DPS, and its extremely high uptime on both boss and adds alike.

And what around NIN damage balanced? Or even MNK as they can buff second monk for free?
Bard can maintain Foe only 30% of time and if he needs to sing other song (eventually he'll need to play at least paeon) - it will be even lower.

Ok. Thanks for letting us know.
Ah, FYI - good bards don't need buffs to be top DPS.
You're welcome.

This is how bards really parse in final coil - http://puu.sh/cNmNU/9e2270792f.png
You'll never get a top spot if you have good MNK, DRG, NIN, BLM in your party (probably a SMN too, but I haven't seen one perfomance in fcob).

Go tell all the top teams around the worlds and your server that their healers doesn't need Ballad during progression, and if they need, they suck. They would probably give you the big middle finger.

Healers run out of mana when they a) raise a lot or b) overheal a lot and both are quite bad.
It's healers job to quickly learn a fight and optimize heal structure, same as dps should optimize their dps.
Yes, bards can make up for some healers and tank errors, but on other hand they make dps checks tighter and less room for error on dps side.

And to be clear - at start of 2.4 there was no other choice but to bring a bard as you need TP regen anyway.

[Ooshima]

Is he? Are you?

I'm pretty serious that I actually stopped reading a little when he made reference to ST/CT though.

People usually runs CT in a relaxed mode and doesn't really care too much about top performance etc. And when you want to look at numbers and make some objective conclusions about jobs and stuff, I think it is only right to look at top performing players and the kind of benchmarks they set instead of the general player base.

[LunarEmerald]

And what around NIN damage balanced? Or even MNK as they can buff second monk for free?
Bard can maintain Foe only 30% of time and if he needs to sing other song (eventually he'll need to play at least paeon) - it will be even lower.

Ninjas are op. They give everybody a 10 second 10% damage increase every minute. Dots applied during are buffed for their entire duration too.

[Eardstapa]

Ninjas are OP because they buff everyone's damage by 10%? It's not even a flat 10% like people are assuming... Like I said earlier, seems the archer mains want to do the most DPS while having everything for free.

[SarcasmMisser]

This is how bards really parse in final coil

There is no way everyone in that group has the same ilevel weapon at this point.

[Exstal]

This is how bards really parse in final coil - http://puu.sh/cNmNU/9e2270792f.png
You'll never get a top spot if you have good MNK, DRG, NIN, BLM in your party (probably a SMN too, but I haven't seen one perfomance in fcob).

I'm interested how much damage the Monk will do when she gets i130 weapons. The potential is crazy!

I firmly believe Bard should be lowest stand still DPS because they are allowed to be mobile and ranged.

There is no way everyone in that group has the same ilevel weapon at this point.

Ninja has i130 weapon, Monk has i115, Black Mage has i120, and Bard has i130.

All the screenshot proves is Bard scales poorly with gear.

[Ooshima]

And to be clear - at start of 2.4 there was no other choice but to bring a bard as you need TP regen anyway.

To be clear - I stand by my statement that even if Ninja is available before 2.4, any top progression team WILL still bring a BRD along. At this current meta, songs are still indispensable.

Until the day were I see a team that clears a newly released raid from scratch, went in blind, without a BRD, or the WHM claims that they don't need Ballad, then I shall concede that BRDs are useless in raids.

I firmly believe Bard should be lowest stand still DPS because they are allowed to be mobile and ranged.

Technically in a good group where everyone can do their job at above average or benchmark levels, yes, BRDs are typically lowest on the list. Unless the fight is so movement heavy that the melees are too often disconnected from their targets, it should be the case.

Ninja has i130 weapon, Monk has i115, Black Mage has i120, and Bard has i130.
All the screenshot proves is Bard scales poorly with gear.

Has always been. The fact that the other day I was discussing secondary stat stacking and parsing out the numbers with a fellow FC BRD, him at IL116 and me at IL106 pulling the same average number over a handful of parses shows that sec stats and DEX are almost interchangeable at the correct ratio and no matter what you do, if your WD is locked, you need a lot of gains in stats to see a significant difference. The scaling is pretty poor. Not a major concern for now, but like I said if gear progression is going to be status quo style in 3.0 and beyond, we will see a starking difference when IL hits like 150 and above.

[Eardstapa]

The only thing I can concede on is perhaps giving BRD that WD point it is missing... Outside of that, anything else may be too drastic.

[Felessan]

I'm interested how much damage the Monk will do when she gets i130 weapons. The potential is crazy!

Saw the stream other day - 580 dps with 130 weapon and 130 body with either 2 NIN or another monk in T8 (there was 2 runs with different setup but around the same dps)

Until the day were I see a team that clears a newly released raid from scratch, went in blind, without a BRD, or the WHM claims that they don't need Ballad, then I shall concede that BRDs are useless in raids.

Yep, no point to argue now. Let's wait 3.0 and see
But for clear runs emphasis on bard will become much lower for sure.

[Luvbunny]

A better solution would be to let Bard sings TWO different songs, one for mages, and one for melee DPS. Or just flat out, ANY two songs in their repertoire. Perhaps you can limit this with only last 60 seconds, and the cooldown is 2 minutes, so every other minutes, they can use two songs.