I think its time BRD get some loving

[Miitan]

You are a support class.

There are no support jobs in this game and Yoshi P has confirmed they're not going to be added any time soon. Thanks for playing.

[CYoung187]

/snip random arguing of buff definition

To me anyone who is arguing for the continued debuff is selfish, they benefit from the bards songs yet want to keep punishing the bard for helping and boosting your survivability and DPS. It comes across to me like "help boost and buff us bard but haha, f*** you bard for doing so." I personally am not asking for a buff, I am asking to decrease or remove the debuff, there is a big difference between those two things but the impact of that difference is not on everyone else or the current state of the game, it only really impacts the bard him or herself.

Punishing you for helping others? Last I checked this is a team game and nobody is getting punished for helping the group. It's PvE, not some competition with the rest of your party members for which job is best.

[Dwill]

Snip

Decreasing the damage debuff from songs is very much so a buff. A buff is anything anychanges that makes your class perform better, whether it's through a direct damage increase or removal/decrease of certain penalties.

[KitanaiKoneko]

It's not a buff when asking for a debuff to be reduced or removed. A buff is going above and beyond a baseline, a debuff is forcing something below that baseline. All the removal of the debuff or lowering of the consequences for the debuff does is merely bring something back up to the baseline and not boosting it above aka not a buff. Lets not forget the songs themselves buff everyone else above that baseline, there is no reason to debuff the caster/user for giving everyone else that advantage when even without it our DPS would rarely be near the top of the DPS charts for (most) BRD's.

It would not make them more or less mandatory in any sense whatsoever by removal of the debuff as they are brought along not for their DPS overall but for the boost to everyone else's DPS and survivability. If it was for the DPS as a major factor then that spot would not be filled with a BRD with or without that debuff, it is for the songs and as it stands currently the only person who suffers from the songs is the BRD and no-one else because they are being punished for helping everyone else whom they are boosting.

To me anyone who is arguing for the continued debuff is selfish, they benefit from the bards songs yet want to keep punishing the bard for helping and boosting your survivability and DPS. It comes across to me like "help boost and buff us bard but haha, f*** you bard for doing so." I personally am not asking for a buff, I am asking to decrease or remove the debuff, there is a big difference between those two things but the impact of that difference is not on everyone else or the current state of the game, it only really impacts the bard him or herself.

Your first paragraph, what??
When you buff a class you make it stronger. When you nerf a class you make it weaker. Since the damage penalty on paeon/ballad are not removeable while singing, removing the damage penalty is a buff. No amount of fancy talking will change that.

Second/third paragraph, what??
You don't win a fight by magically having a certain amount of DPS. You win a fight by working together as a team. And for some reason every FCoB team brings a Bard. There is no class that is wanted as much as Bard. Warrior and Paladin are nearly equal after their buff in 2.1, Monk, Dragoon, Ninja and Black Mage are all very close when it comes to dps. But why do people bring a bard? Because without a Bard, in the long fights that FCoB has, dps (with the exception of Black Mage) can and most likely will run out of TP, or MP for healers if things get dangerous. Bard's role in the team, no matter how much you may argue that they are not a "support" class since the "support" class doesn't exist, is to support the group. Otherwise they would not have penalties on paeon/ballad and they would do just as much damage as everyone else. And when all the classes do the same dps in 95% of situations, why bother having more than one class to begin with?

No no no no just NO. For gods sake, I dont know what schmuck started saying this but it needs to stop... period. We play a song for casters that increases their damage, that damage is not ours, it is still very much theirs. This is like saying the ballad we play for healers, which allows them to keep the dps alive longer and continue to dps.. so a part of that damage should be ours AMIRIGHT?>???

...

That ~15% bonus damage casters deal during foe's requiem is theirs? But what happens when you stop singing? That ~15% extra damage they were doing suddenly disappears. Sing again and it comes back. You are causing that damage to happen. It is your damage. You performing an action causes that damage to appear.

[Snugglebutt]

Decreasing the damage debuff from songs is very much so a buff. A buff is anything anychanges that makes your class perform better, whether it's through a direct damage increase or removal/decrease of certain penalties.

To buff a debuff means boosting/increasing the 'negative' consequences of that debuff if want to get deeper into the semantics and logic of it. To boost the the positive without increasing the negative such buffs would have to be applied to a baseline and not a debuff. To buff is to increase or to enhance, when applied to a negative it increases that negativity. Which was my earlier point which I was trying to make.

[Tiggy]

No no no no just NO. For gods sake, I dont know what schmuck started saying this but it needs to stop... period.

Bard is the only hybrid support/dps class we have and for support classes this is exactly how it works. That extra damage is only there because of the support class. Acting like they aren't a part of that equation is ignorant to where it came from.
I disagree with the OP. Our static bard does amazing damage and still does songs the whole time. If this change was made our bard would be doing similar damage to other normal DPS classes. This is not how balance works.

[PArcher]

To buff a debuff means boosting/increasing the 'negative' consequences of that debuff if want to get deeper into the semantics and logic of the term.

Except you're not buffing the debuff here, you're buffing the class...

[Snugglebutt]

...And when all the classes do the same dps in 95% of situations, why bother having more than one class to begin with?

It is the opposite of what you claim, when classes are more equal in DPS then more people are willing to play other classes. If for example monk and ninja had equal damage output then not so many people would pick monk over ninja, if summoners and black mages had equal damage output as another example then the players who play those would be more equally spread out. If paladin and warriors had equal survivability the quantity of players on each would be more equal.

If one class has a statistical/numerical advantage like with DPS over another that leads to more people picking that class with the advantage because not many people want to play something which they know puts them at a disadvantage. So I very much disagree with your claim above. Your confusing class variety coming from appearance, skill sets animations, gear style, lore and other such things with if go by your example in which you claim variety based on DPS then it is the opposite effect to what you claim.

That ~15% bonus damage casters deal during foe's requiem is theirs? But what happens when you stop singing? That ~15% extra damage they were doing suddenly disappears. Sing again and it comes back. You are causing that damage to happen. It is your damage. You performing an action causes that damage to appear.

There is not a single player I have EVER come across who has ever said the boosted damage they did shown in their parsers and such was the bards DPS or damage. So I'm sorry but no-one ever says the increase in damage they do on their alternative class because of a bard song was the bards damage, they all claim it is their DPS and damage output. They might possibly say they did (x) amount of damage while a bard played something but they will always say that damage was theirs and never the bards.

[Snugglebutt]

Except you're not buffing the debuff here, you're buffing the class...

I am talking about the debuff on the skills. You can decrease that debuff, you can remove that debuff but to buff that debuff would be to increase the negative consequences of it. Which is why I made the distinction of saying I am not asking for a buff, I am asking to decrease or remove the debuff.

[Kiara1]

Just remove the %damage debuff that comes with songs, their removal will not turn BRD's into DPS kings, it will not even have that great an effect overall and other classes will still have their DPS boosted by our songs while ours are not boosted but also not debuffed while boosting everyone else's. Quite frankly there is no good reason to debuff our DPS even more so than the low end DPS we have in general just because we play songs that boost other peoples DPS.

If they removed the damage debuff there wouldn't be any point in using mana or tp since the bard can just keep the songs up as often as possible, and healers can spam cures all day. It's part of the mechanics with bard to know when to play what song. Popping a song during the hardest dps check in the game isn't a good strategy, but doing it in between the dps checks is.
But if they removed it bard would feel like a mindless class keeping up 2 dots and some cd management