Bard

[Panasync]

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Why would anyone stack Bards? There is no fight in this game that is harder for melee than Bards. Every coil turn for the most part Bards had far more responsibility than any melee, on top of having to deal with AoE mechanics we have to do side mechanics as to not pull a melee off of the boss. How is sitting on the boss and walking out of an AoE occasionally harder than dealing with the same dodging and having to be responsible for side mechanics while also having to do maximum DPS?

Also I'm tired of this anecdotal regurgitated 2.0 Bard crap. People were not stacking Bards because their output was better then every other job. Post the math on 2.0 Bard vs 2.0 Melee/Caster potential. I don't want to hear a I saw this, and I heard that. Prove it, don't sit there and regurgitate this crap that you have no proof for. If you're not going to prove it don't bother bringing it up.

What mechanics are you speaking of?

[Dervy]

Also I'm tired of this anecdotal regurgitated 2.0 Bard crap. People were not stacking Bards because their output was better then every other job. Post the math on 2.0 Bard vs 2.0 Melee/Caster potential. I don't want to hear a I saw this, and I heard that. Prove it, don't sit there and regurgitate this crap that you have no proof for. If you're not going to prove it don't bother bringing it up.

Clearly someone never raided Hardcore back in 2.0.

People stacked x3 Bard, x1 DoM, or x2 Bard, x1 Monk x1 DoM, or x2 Bard x2 DoM in 2.0 because:
1) Bards only dealt 5% less than a Melee in a vacuum (No songs)
2) Melees had a lot of difficulty with mechanics due to the insane animations on Jumps and Monks only had one Cap Closer every 90s
3) GL3 only increased damage by 23%, Heavy Thrust was 10%, along with other abilities being very low Potency. Their DPS on paper was extremely low and due to their lack of mobility, people only ever ran 1 Melee at max.
4) SMN was broken as hell and easily top DPS if played correctly
5) Song Rotation. You stacked x3 bards because you could rotate each bard to play Foes, keeping it up 100% of the time making SMN DPS insanely high. And each Bard is rotating their songs, the lost DPS was very, very little.
6) T4 Speed-Clearing. Made it easier to AOE burn the Packs and was impossible to do it without a composition with x2 BRD x1 BLM in i70 DL.
7) T2 Allagan Rot. Before people discovered you could brute force T2, having a lot of Range helped spread/organise Allagan Rot much easier.
8) Bards scale the worst with gear each patch, due to their low WD. So back in 2.0, this wasn't even noticeable when people were pulling 290 DPS on content.

Remember, this was at HIGH-LEVEL, where people were dealing with content in Dark Light, not i90. This was September/October 2.0 Meta. Running x2 Bards to cycle songs along with their very good DPS (They had Blood for Blood, 20% IR) trivialised a lot of Mechanics for World 1st/Server 1st groups. It was after the 2.1 buffs/nerfs to classes, where people dropped stacking and went with x1 Melee, x1 Bard, x2 Mages as an "Optimal" composition.

Pls.

[Panasync]

5) Song Rotation. You stacked x3 bards because you could rotate each bard to play Foes, keeping it up 100% of the time making SMN DPS insanely high. And each Bard is rotating their songs, the lost DPS was very, very little.

Firstly I rarely saw 3 Bards, 2 Bards was quite common, I believe BG was using 2 bards on their WF. Secondly what is quoted illustrates my point even more, Bard's weren't used because their damage was #1, just like how parties were stacking Paladins SE didn't say, hey, let's nerf PLD cooldowns so WAR has a spot, no they buffed warrior and changed how limit breaks and party compositions worked.

They could easily change song effects if more than one Bard is in the party, you know what this does? It makes stacking undesirable without compromising the job.

I just spent 5 minutes trying to find a 3 BRD 1 SMN party and couldn't do so, so they can't be as popular as you say. Maybe the groups are just so hardcore they didn't want their sick strats leaking out.

Nothx.