BRD Changes Are Spoiling Heavensward for Me

[Atlaworks]

Just because most of their whining is unwarranted doesn't mean this isn't unwarranted either

[Wilbow]

Just because most of their whining is unwarranted doesn't mean this isn't unwarranted either

There are legitimate complaints, and nobody minds people speaking their minds.

After a while though, it starts feeling like beating a dead horse.

A while after that, you reach the territory of the current BRD QQ.

I wouldn't even mind the complaining so much if there was any consistency about what bards want out of the class. As of now, there's little SE can do with WM where at least SOME players won't bitch and moan.

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For a more in-depth analysis:

Bards are a class that, in 2.0, had a combination of DPS, utility, and unparalleled mobility. SE considers them support DPS, but in duty finder, you don't get a separation of DPS and support DPS. If BRDs matched the DPS of casters (and god forbid melee), then they basically crowd out everything because they get so many bonus perks. So, logically, having these things means that you should be doing less DPS.

Here's the problem: What the hell is the DPS value of mobility and utility? On some fights, they're next to useless. On others, it's a MASSIVE boon. If you're trying to balance BRDs/MCHs on par with other jobs, you're boned. It CAN'T completely happen. They will be, at best, OP in some situations and UP in others. MP and TP restoring songs are great during many fights on progression, but BRDs and MCHs are often thrown out if DPS checks aren't being met. Trading a little DPS for mobility sounds AWESOME on fights where you constantly have to move, but terrible on fights where you're standing in one place for a large portion of the fight. People that love playing BRD or MCH could be at risk at facing situations where they simply ARE NOT WANTED because they are a LIABILITY. Period.

WM, I think, was designed to place a definitive value on BRD mobility (while restricting it), and (hopefully) it is SE's way of trying to make BRD somewhat balanceable. Therefore, I can see why some love it and others hate it.

I'd simply argue that, instead of going for homogenization, we might as well embrace the concept of BRDs being a support DPS. We should change WM to a cooldown reserved for burst phases with the same restrictions as now, largely return bard mobility, and tune them to having about 15-25% less DPS than pure DPS.

IN RETURN, have their core abilities (not CDs) put unique and unstackable debuffs that increase the amount of damage enemies (including raid bosses) take, so that their utility is linked to player skill in the same way that DPS is. It should be tuned such that 4-man party DPS should work out to be about the same regardless of whether a BRD/MCH or pure DPS takes the DPS slots, while 8-man party is optimized with 3 pure (BLM/SMN/MNK/DRG) DPS and 1 support (MCH/BRD) DPS. It's not really different than how things effectively turned out throughout 2.x, but it makes balancing BRD and MCH so much easier for SE while keeping the gameplay BRDs rolled the job for.