The argument"MCH/Bard have utility so their damage should be lower"

[Ryaz]

Well, the community does not have an hive mind. You can't call hypocrisy because the people that say that MCN is fine are not the same that the people that say otherwise

I've seen opinions on both sides personally, to unreasonable extremes at times like people tend to do. The problem I see is that one group says our damage sucks based on parses. Then someone posts a parse that's actually pretty good and it's all "You got lucky crits!" Or "You had someone else buffing you!" No one wants to believe anything the other side says. It's as bad as politics. One side says we're completely fine, another side says we're completely broken when in truth, it's probably somewhere in between.

[Jaegerkrantz]

If SE want the bard to be support/utility with lower dmg then the rest then perhaps change Foe Requiem from -10% enemy magic resistance to giving the rest of the grp 5-10% increased dmg instead, perhaps give it 20% bard dmg reduction in order to balance it out while its turned on, we can already increase your MP and TP Regen, might aswell give us the ability to buff the grps dmg.

[Panasync]

I've seen opinions on both sides personally, to unreasonable extremes at times like people tend to do. The problem I see is that one group says our damage sucks based on parses. Then someone posts a parse that's actually pretty good and it's all "You got lucky crits!" Or "You had someone else buffing you!" No one wants to believe anything the other side says. It's as bad as politics. One side says we're completely fine, another side says we're completely broken when in truth, it's probably somewhere in between.

I think the main issue is people are posting parses that are close to what bard (obviously no machinist at the time) were prior to 3.0 (comparatively), we've now been given a stance that enables the ability to supposedly be a DPS (redundant and bad imo, but not the point), yet with that stance at maximum we still fall below every other DPS and damn near on par with tanks.

If they added a stance and gated abilities simply to be able to do what we were doing prior to 3.0, no thanks. With 0 support abilities up, and GB/WM on, we should be able to compete with every other DPS.