I think its time BRD get some loving

[Kuwagami]

4/24 men strawman

just what are you trying this time... ? dungeons and 24 men raids are designed so that any composition can clear them. No enrage so sluggish groups have a chance nevertheless (less true in WoD but still not hard to succeed there). No mechanics which require coordination (again, slight exception in WoD this time) except maybe not being braindead (people not killing skellies in LotA first boss..) but that should be a given. One could walk in a 200ish dps party and still clear everything in this game besides Coil. Your "argument" is irrelevant.

(also 20% isn't a "large" debuff. You could cancel that if you wanted by using one of your buffs. Bard is the class with the largest pool of damage buffs after all.)

snip

So you know an raid inside-outs and you don't need xxx job because you're playing perfectly already, making up for any mistake that would make said job mandatory ? well gj, that doesn't mean the job isn't necessary for pretty much everyone else, nor that it isn't able to fulfill the duty.

People have done T5 without healers, or with 4 people only. Does that mean that everyone can do it too ? I'm curious.

snip bard damage

Bard damage had been nerfed because back in 2.0 there was no reason to bring anything else in a group. They were close to top dps, huge utility, no drawbacks, etc... They nerfed the damage. ONCE.
it is NORMAL that a bard will never reach other dps's numbers. They add way more to the table on other aspects to make it fair if they had better damages. What's more, the end game encounters are designed to be made with a bard in the team. If you struggle with a bard, then your team as a whole has a problem. It's NOT because bard's damage is lower than the others, but because your whole team has a lower dps than expected by the devs.

Also, you have not been nerfed more with i115, then i135. The scaling is the same for other dps and bards. You have less at start, so you gain less at each increase. Overall, your dps stays at the same % behind the other dps, and that's (once again) normal. of course the bigger the highest numbers are, the bigger the gap will grow. It doesn't mean you're nerfed more.

And this is true story. FC mate did a pug for T10.

BAD Bard (115 Shiva bow, Ironworks Chest, Ironworks Legs - yes seriously.) - 260 DPS
Normal Monk - 450 DPS

I've already met a 200ish dps i115 dragoon. Buff dragoons please, bad players are bad.

Your DPS doesn't drop from 550 to 0... that's a terrible misconception and you're extremely wrong. What happens when your WAR TP gets low? You stagger GCDs. What happens when you don't have a Bard and you're pushing phases? You stagger your DPS, lose about 10~15k collectively, and gain over 100k from pure DPS by switching out the Bard. It's that simple.

yeah technically it won't reach 0, but just look at it.

When TP starved, you can't use any DoTs (all would require 2 ticks to use, 6 seconds lost), any combo starter also requires 2 tick but after that you can use around 3 combos before reaching 0 again. Your dps is crippled and there is nothing you can do about it until you can use invigorate again (as a melee dps) or until you gain aetherflow again for a SMN. PLDs can just stay useless until their TP refill enough. WAR have at least the benefit of having TP free GCDs actions once in a while to ease the recovery process. You'll lose more than if you had a bard, and usually in a moment when you really don't want to lose that high dps (I've already had a TP-starved party in T5 during twister phase, it's not an appreciable experience)

If you are referring to 8 man duties, then there is only Coil, which technically speaking BRDs are only technically good for progression

which is the situation for like 97-99% of the playerbase (in practice, way less as there are way less who have tackled T9 already). There are only a few people on farm status, thus only a few who can afford not bringing a bard.

snip

no it's not worse. It hasn't changed. the % you're behind has not changed by a lot, if at all.

I know it isn't really right to do so, but I'll assume you joined the game way after 2.0 (because you joined the forum around 2.4, so I'm assuming here you didn't play before 2.2 at most. Correct me if I'm wrong)

Which means you never witnessed the god-like status of the bards, when they had the same damage as any other dps, plus a god-like Rain of Death (AoE version of storm's path), high mobility, cheated burst damage with pre-nerf IR and B4B, etc etc....

Noone had any reason to bring anything but bards. Typical relic run was 1 tank (2 for garuda), 2 heals, 5 (4 for ruda) bards. Coil was 2/3 bards + BLM (and a melee for the LB if needed, else the BLM would do it). Bards were mandatory for anything (that's the reason why I levelled bard in the first place, as WAR was considered useless back then and I was locked out of many things).

If you can't see why they nerfed bard to what it is now, considering it's STILL mandatory for progression, then you simply do not know what you're talking about.