I chose BRD for swift gameplay, if I wanted to cast I would have chosen a Mage.

[Vespar]

Exactly my point, people have taken this playstyle preference and used my argument as a "learn2play" issue or a "min/max dps" issue... when that's FAR from the case. Fact is, Square gave us a class and then completely changed its playstyle... that's not fair.

I agree, there are countless bards out there who liked the 2.X Vanilla bard and never wanted to play a caster. Myself included. It's not about the dps, and its not that many of us dont understand how to play a caster (ie the L2P fallacy). It's the fact that our playstyle didn't "evolve", it was flat-out changed entirely. In the view of the majority of bard posts I have read over the last few weeks, most bards feel their original playstyle was ripped out from under them w/o any warning.

At any rate, the folks in here refuse to see our reasoning and spit off claims that we shouldn't be allowed to be mobile. Bards were always mobile and yet in 2.X I barely heard a peep from anyone on the forums expressing displeasure that we were mobile. In fact, back then everyone seemed to enjoy the fact that Bard was mobile. It drew many to the role and became part of Bard's fun factor. Now that we have this stigma on our mobility, it feels like a good chunk of folks just came here to belittle us even further just to make themselves feel good. Whether or not that's there intent or that they dont want to see us changed, because it will make their class feel more inferior I can't rightly say....

Personally, I don't think I can main this new Bard with the changes they have made to it. While Im fine with playing a caster class, this isnt the bard I signed up for, nor is it the class I grew to love. If SE refuses to change us back to something more akin to 2.X Bard I will likely pick a new class.

[Shurrikhan]

I agree, there are countless bards out there who liked the 2.X Vanilla bard and never wanted to play a caster. Myself included. It's not about the dps, and its not that many of us dont understand how to play a caster (ie the L2P fallacy). It's the fact that our playstyle didn't "evolve".

This. Just as there's a difference between an enjoyable progression of a movie's plot and a cheap twist (or falling into preexisting tropes, cliches, etc.), I feel like we got the latter.

And this is, again, coming from someone who prefers WM over non-WM. Doesn't really have anything to do with that alone, but more of how we (or even "what") got here. It could have been better.

...just really getting annoyed that people take 'massive buff' as not what it always ends up to be after balancing, a cutting of options. The most powerful choice will always end up in line, according to job parameters, with every other 'most powerful choice'. The only issue is when there used to be, say, 3 of them, and now there's just the one.

[Vespar]

Snip

I agree, While I can use WM and effectively I might add, I very much dislike it. It feels cheap and not thought out in the least. It makes me not want to play Bard anymore. Which is upsetting because I loved maining Bard.
It feels like the devs didnt have the time to really consider how to shape Bard into something and so they just gave it the same stuff as the Machinist abilities and called it a day. (or vice versa) Now neither class feels unique and the mobility that we came to know and love has been tossed to the wind.

I still say: keep bard the way it was in 2.0 with more support abilities and some DPS abilities.
Have MCH have this stance dance BS and let them be the more DPS thing.

Bard: Support DPS.
Machinist: Pure Physical Range DPS.

Wouldn't this make people a bit happier?

At the very least it may add some class uniqueness.