Quote Originally Posted by Minorinz View Post
the WHOLE party
Correction:

Bards do not offer utility to the whole party. They offer utility to a limited subset of the party.

MP regen will not affect tanks, melee, or BLMs. At best, the healers are affected and maybe SMN if they need to res people.

TP regen will not affect casters or healers.

Foe's will not affect melee (except limited ninja) or melee or healers for the most part.
On the other hand, Battle Litany helps everybody. Mantra can help everybody. Trick Attack helps every class that hits the mob. All three melees have utility skills that help more people than Bard.

Please, people, stop forgetting that raiding is not the entire game. You will not always have a caster to make Foe's useful. You will not always run things that require TP/MP regen. You will not always have complete control over your party setup. You will not always be in a fight where you constantly need to be moving. You will not even always be in a dungeon because you *need* to run around the outside world to even unlock things. Why should it take me longer to kill something while I'm questing to go through the story because in a dungeon where I'm not, I might maybe play a song if I happen to need to?

It is bad design to "balance" things around a minority of the game. It is also bad design to give any single class "a guaranteed space" in a raid because they bring "necessary utility". If you need a Bard otherwise you'll end up running out of resources, then that's just bad design. Classes should be taken because they're all equally viable, not because they need one.