Bard - they broke my job

[AkashiXI]

Right now Bard isn't terribly behind many jobs with the current buffs. I parse with my drg friend, and even without disembowl, you can put up great numbers. The problem I see with Bard is the same problem I saw in them pre-3.0: once the party understands all mechanics, there's no reason to have a Bard (or Machinist, for that matter) in the group. Why? Because you don't need manasong, you have enough dps to usually surpass any TP issues (quicker phases means less TP consumed), and you can replace a ranged with a better ranged like Summoner. That's why I ALWAYS suggest to a hardcore, raiding Bard to level a secondary, as you're only holding your group back long term. It's a sad realization, but sometimes the truth hurts.

On another note, I do feel Bard and Machinist are in a good spot dps wise. What they really need is better long term support abilities, something to benefit optimization over security for the group.

[Xellos2099]

I want to ask... how do some bard hit 1k+ dps obn Faust on Alex 1 savage? Last night I was attempting Faust with my static and we wipe at 20%. The team have both a blm and a smn so naturally i started off with Foe + BV. I was ilvl 183 using food but no dex pot. Some say my parse is around 850 ish and the rest of the dps are around 1k.

[lordjoosie]

[QUOTE=AkashiXI;3171934] Right now Bard isn't terribly behind many jobs with the current buffs. I parse with my drg friend, and even without disembowl, you can put up great numbers. -snip-

Unless you consider doing 20-25% less damage to be "great numbers" your friend is not damaging up to his/her potential. Even if you don't do a bit of parsing, it only takes a few groups with 2 bards or machinists to realize that their DPS is more than just a little below the other jobs.

Let's do this experiment. Assume we're building a party for A1 savage. Assume everyone is between i185 and i189. Your first 2 members are bards. You can fill the rest of the party with anything you'd like. What are your odds of making it past the first boss?
Now let's do the experiment all over again, but this time replace the word bard wit ANY job other than bard or machinist. What are your odds of winning now?

You're right in that the damage numbers don't mean much. I'd be fine even if bard did half the damage of other jobs. The problem is that right now, unless the party has poor MP or TP management skills, bard is a burden to the party. I say this because if you replace that bard with ANY other DPS that is equally geared/skilled, your party will be better off.

If bard is ever going to be a job that is more than just something your friends let you play because they don't mind picking up your slack, they need to either boost the damage, or increase the usefulness of bard's utility features so that their benefit to the party offsets their lower damage.

[Darian]

@Xellos Think it depends on what you have in your group and how well you all coordinate everything. ie: NIN doing their debuff and DRG doing crit up at the right time will greatly up overall DPS.

[aabe]

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I could if this wasn't the OF. I can PM you or e-mail or something if you'd like to know how BRD looks compared to other jobs in A1.


Also, what I was talking about with Floor 1, it's extremely healing heavy so Ballad is pretty useful. TP is not an issue due to downtimes.

TP is valuable in floor 2 because you need to kill shit fast and it's a trash race, AoE costs a lot of TP, etc.

In a few months when everyone is i200-i210? Yeah it's gonna be "oh you're running out of MP in floor 1 get gud" etc. but as long as progression/early progression exists BRD will be extremely valuable.

[AkashiXI]

snip

You pretty much agreed with everything I said, and you took the quoted part out of context. A Bard dealing 1.1k damage on average in Savage is great , but I agree that other dps do more damage and (situationally) bring more to the table than our support dps does. My Dragoon friend is hitting upwards of 1.4k on good runs, that's pretty exceptional. WITH disembowl, I can manage between 1.1 to 1.2 on a 3 min fight, depending on rng in my opener. So, once again, I think Bard is doomed in a raid setting in the long term (where you no longer need their songs), but they're fine in progression. My personal solution? Give us more optimization support tools, e.g Trick Attack, so we're always in a scenario where we can always speed up the win, not prolong it.

[aabe]

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The thing is, DRG pads their DPS on Faust without realizing it. People say you need 7k party dps to clear faust, but it's realistically more like 6k, because DRG has aoe skills like DFD that they use as part of their rotation and geirskogul which both can hit the extra adds without removing any DPS from the group.

Realistically, MCH and BRD are the stars of burst and they are very even with melee in a 2-3 minute run. MNK gets the same padding from elixir wave, I can see a group clearing faust with 2BRD easily especially with a DRG.

[AkashiXI]

Lol... we were kiting our adds, he did not hit anything else other than Faust. Is it that hard to believe melee dps can hit 1.4k already? Also, yes I always am first in burst dps, but melee sustain at a much higher arc than us.

[aabe]

Lol... we were kiting our adds, he did not hit anything else other than Faust. Is it that hard to believe melee dps can hit 1.4k already? Also, yes I always am first in burst dps, but melee sustain at a much higher arc than us.

They sustain at a higher arc but faust enrages in 2 and a half minutes. I get 1200 without disembowel so 1300 with is very realistic as well. 3 minutes is about when melee start to edge out but I'm just saying it's not really prohibitive to run 2 BRD for faust.

[Warlyx]

being awesome on progression and sucking afterwards is bad design, so once u are geared with the brd.....then reroll and regear ? or gear 2 chars at the same time?

SE give BRD MCH a personal esoterics cap!!!