Bards viability now?

[zcrash970]

Guys, Brd is dead and MCH is a still birth. They can't even put up numbers as good as a WAR. When your DPS class is out damaged by the off tank, there is something wrong. SE's official response indicates that they may make some adjustments such as make WM quicker to apply. Great, now we will stance dance, putting WM on only to use abilities that require it only to take it off immediately thereafter. However, they also say that they will NOT make changes to increase the DPS of brd.

It's dead.

I love to see a WAR do this alleged high dps in an actual battle rather than a training dummy or a quick burst in Ravana Ex scorpion stance.

[Catwho]

Bard is still king in fights where dodging is the #1 mechanic, but that assumes the bard is running and shooting at the same time, and it seems a lot of them... don't.

[SpiritMuse]

I don't really mind that bard and machinist do less damage than the other "pure" dps classes. It's a trade off since they can enable other classes to go longer and hit harder. But they still need to be able to pull their weight as a dps class, which currently they do not. So a 4-man party with only bard/machinist as dps can really struggle. And at levels below 40 machinists have it particularly bad because they're lacking their turret which makes up a significant percentage of their total dps.

[Lillia]

Guys, Brd is dead and MCH is a still birth. They can't even put up numbers as good as a WAR. When your DPS class is out damaged by the off tank, there is something wrong. SE's official response indicates that they may make some adjustments such as make WM quicker to apply. Great, now we will stance dance, putting WM on only to use abilities that require it only to take it off immediately thereafter. However, they also say that they will NOT make changes to increase the DPS of brd.

It's dead.

They never said they will not increase the dps, they said they will not make further changes until Alexander. If something seems offsetting or is unbalanced SE will take notice. I do agree that SE will not increase bard to do as much DPS as jobs like DRG/MNK but if it's a problem to where they do less than a tank then I believe SE will fix it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen..._bards_minuet/

[Garan]

I don't really mind that bard and machinist do less damage than the other "pure" dps classes. It's a trade off since they can enable other classes to go longer and hit harder. But they still need to be able to pull their weight as a dps class, which currently they do not. So a 4-man party with only bard/machinist as dps can really struggle. And at levels below 40 machinists have it particularly bad because they're lacking their turret which makes up a significant percentage of their total dps.

I keep seeing this reasoning come up for why Bards do less damage. Does everyone not know that any time a Bard sings paeon or ballad we ALREADY receive a 15% DPS loss? Our penalty for supporting the party is already built in. There is absolutely no reason for Bards to have significantly lower DPS when not supporting the party with songs.

[Mikedizzy]

Yes...I have never agreed with this reasoning. We should still have comparable dps as the other other jobs. I think they are worried about that in fights with movement we would destroy the other jobs but that is just a balancing issue...they didn't have to gimp us this bad.

[JayCommon]

I keep seeing this reasoning come up for why Bards do less damage. Does everyone not know that any time a Bard sings paeon or ballad we ALREADY receive a 15% DPS loss? Our penalty for supporting the party is already built in. There is absolutely no reason for Bards to have significantly lower DPS when not supporting the party with songs.

Yes there is, because Bard's songs are not necessary to beat anything. All they do is help you win when you're not good at the fight yet. For the last 3 months all I sang in every single turn of FCoB was Foe. Healers never need mana when they know how to stop over-healing the fights, and no one ever needs TP when they know how to manage their Invigs. So if BRD damage wasn't lower than everything else, you would see the same thing that happened in 2.0. Full BRD parties in Titan HM. DRG/MNKs getting kicked out of parties for dungeon runs if they couldn't switch to BRD.

We aren't going to be singing 100% of the time ever. To hit like a Monk and have free mobility is absolutely absurd on every level. No one would play anything else. Again, this happened. This was a reality. It would be again if our WD was returned.

It obviously wouldn't help everyone be better though...not when 2yrs later there are still people out there that think BRD's songs don't affect themselves? SMH

[Waeksyn]

They never said they will not increase the dps, they said they will not make further changes until Alexander. If something seems offsetting or is unbalanced SE will take notice. I do agree that SE will not increase bard to do as much DPS as jobs like DRG/MNK but if it's a problem to where they do less than a tank then I believe SE will fix it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen..._bards_minuet/

Um, yes they did actually. Here is the relevant part:

In addition to making adjustments so that the effect of this ability is fitting right after you learn it, we will be making it easier to switch into and out of Wanderer's Minuet and eliminating the current aspects that make it difficult to use. At the same time we will be paying close attention to the balance of each skill so the damage output at level 60 does not largely increase.

Waiting for a few weeks of Alexander experience is also too late. SE should realize this from their experience with FFXI. There, they introduced a new job "puppet master" that was a disaster. They made lots of changes later on to improve the job but it was way too late - almost everyone had abandoned the job and those who played it got no respect at all, no party invites, etc. It's clear that BRD and MCH have serious problems and waiting will only ingrain the issue.

[Waeksyn]

The problem is probably this perception that Brd is a "DPS+Support" class. There is no such class in the game. There is: Tank, DPS, Heal. That's it!

Maybe the solution is to give the other DPS jobs some additional "support" abilities so that they are perceived the same as bard in that area (many believe they already are but perception is reality to most). Then, increase the dmg from BRD to be on par with the other DPS jobs and there will be complete parity.

As far as the loss of mobility is concerned, that's not a big issue IMO (as long as the dmg is balanced, which it currently isn't), except that you are forcing players to change their fundamental play style when they hit the level at which they get WM. No other job has such a dramatic shift.

[Catwho]

Waiting for a few weeks of Alexander experience is also too late. SE should realize this from their experience with FFXI. There, they introduced a new job "puppet master" that was a disaster. They made lots of changes later on to improve the job but it was way too late - almost everyone had abandoned the job and those who played it got no respect at all, no party invites, etc. It's clear that BRD and MCH have serious problems and waiting will only ingrain the issue.

By the time they'd finished tuning it, though PUP was overpowered in the hands of a skilled player. They were also really useful on content where magic damic was good - we had one guy bring his PUP/SAM to Jailor of Love, and it did hate free nukes every 30 seconds, then he'd buddy up with one of the other melee to run in and WS then magic burst off it. Pretty amusing to watch.