Bard - they broke my job

[Edellis]

Again, "they dont want" is a very broad statement. I personally have no issue with standing and casting, but this is probably because i left Bard for Black Mage months ago. The issue with the old Bard playstyle is that Square is probably just opposed to Bard having competitive DPS with the other classes while being so safe and easy to use.

Look, there's really no way to screw up the 2.0 Bard style of gameplay. There's no risk involved to the class at all, and so by design it would make no sense to give them abilities like Empyreal/Sidewinder/Iron Jaws, so that they can just run and dump them all when they come up under buffs like you would in 2.0 bard. Minuet is supposed to add that risk/reward dynamic to Bard, which simply never had it before, which is probably where all the kneejerk reactions are coming from.

So I think the issue here isn't that they're making us adopt a caster style, it's that they're making us adopt a caster style without giving us anywhere close to caster damage.


It's currently viable (relative to other bards, at least) to just not even bother with Minuet outside opening. This probably isn't a mistake, i think it's cool that the class is possibly trying to be more dynamic and allow both stances to stay useful. But ATM, for both Stance and Off-Stance users, Minuet is just more trouble than its worth, even though it does increase DPS.