Bard - they broke my job

[yamochan]

Because we have mobility. We can keep 100% uptime while dodging and such.

only that we cant anymore so it makes 0 sense

[Clarkamite]

only that we cant anymore so it makes 0 sense

Don't have any numbers for you to give you a real good feel but the amount of DPS you can add with a Foe Rec more than makes up for whatever you would be missing in WD. Bard has the ability to give you an absolute monster increase of DPS just by singing a song so the tradeoff has to be that they do less. Otherwise there would be no point to running anything other than two Bards and two other DPS.

I can tell you from being a caster that with the way the game is scaling now, it's even more noticeable than it was before. What is normally a 3700 Fire IV all of a sudden becomes a 4400 Fire IV. If your group is like mine and runs two casters, that increase is made even more astronomical. Not saying it doesn't suck to feel underpowered compared to other DPS, because it does, but you can't really say too much about playing a job who's main draw was that they enhance the rest of the group. They were never meant to be a standout DPS monster by themselves.

[yamochan]

snip

well ill just say this read some pages back plz we discussed the whole support issue before we dont support the whole group with one song always just a part of it.

support from other classes is also very strong and to bring 2 BRDs makes very little sense. bring a BRD and a MCH well maybe but still not great bring a BRD and a NIN however is a very good enchance group without the LB debuff from dual classes. BRD is no support class it queues up as Dmg Dealer.

So that does still not explain the small WD cause we cant move all time anymore even with swapping in and out of WM and we are behind quite a bit in terms of dmg so closing that cap would be a start instead of making it even bigger as we can see...

[tankie]

I'm not really sure I understand what you're getting at. I don't see how that gives them any scaling they didn't have before. At least, not by my understanding of scaling.

WM is a flat 30% boost. It doesn't give a bigger boost the larger the weapon damage gap is. It's not scaled to how big the gap's going to be.

Hey, i am not really an experienced player and rather new to ff14, but wrt to scaling % usually always better after a certain attack point in any game let me give you an example

you have a base skill that does 100% weapon damage
you are currently running around with a weapon which does 50 dmg
your damage output with 1 skill is 50
if you activate WM its a 30% increase so its 50*130% = 65 Damage
wm addition is 15 dmg

Now after a long time of farming you got a base weapon which does 150 damage,
1 skill damage is 150
1 skill with wm is 195
wm addition is 45 dmg

as you can see the stronger your weapon gets the bigger the damage impact of WM becomes, ofc it will always be 30% but its 30% of a bigger base number and as such you got scaling.

the opposite would be for example a venom skill which adds a fixed amount of 35 dmg with each attack. This would deal more damage with a 50 dmg weapon but less with a 150 dmg weapon and would not scale with equipment.

Another thing i alway read in these Forum which feels a bit strange as a beginner, there is always the talk of how only 9 minute parsers are a good estimation and you have to factor out burst phases on bosses and that the bosses in the current contend die to fast to give a proper estimation.
For me that always leaves the question for what do you want to do the damage? to have some nice damge on a stawpuppet or to kill a certain boss as fast as possible.
For me it would be the 2nd so if the fights in the game are shorter than 3 minutes what point is there looking at 9 minute long parsers?

[AkashiXI]

Because we have mobility. We can keep 100% uptime while dodging and such.

I don't quite understand this argument though. Summoner has the ability to constantly dps regardless of movement, so why isn't their weapon inherently weaker to their Black Mage counterpart? Also I could see your reasoning back in maybe 2.2, but almost every ex primal, coil (except a few spots like t13 Earthshaker) and dungeons cater to turret style gameplay. Very rarely do I see a melee jump off the boss, and A1/2 savage practically begs you to play endgame like it's Striking Dummy Savage Mode.

[Warlyx]

I don't quite understand this argument though.

i dont remember but WD for bows were nerfed in 2.0 ? , because at the time titan HM and turn 1 was all the rage

titan HM being a movement heavy fight ppl wanted brds the most , and turn 1 with ADS ppl wanted 1 bard for silencing and mana song (lack of gear healers went oomp fast :P)

and SE watched how melees were neglected , blm too , SMN always have a spot because rez in combat , virus and eye for eye , not must have but nice to have.

We currently feel that the bards are a little too strong due to the amount of damage they can do without being impacted that much from the fight.

.....times have changed eh?

[AkashiXI]

snip

In 2.1 we received our first nerf, 2.2 we received another. I still feel, to this day, they were unwarranted and the only thing I agree was making cross class abilities weaker. Monk was also considered to be the worst job in early 2.0 until people realized GL was almost a 100% upkeep. But yes, times have changed, and there are many mindsets of Bard that no longer apply. I do hope Yoshida-san considers everything Bards are saying, and I just want the job to feel fluid again.

[Aiselia]

the amount of DPS you can add with a Foe Rec more than makes up for whatever you would be missing in WD.

I'd contest that on a couple levels.

Firstly, you won't always have a caster, or even a group. You will need to do quests, and the MSQ and class quests require you to solo quite a bit. If you do roulettes, you don't control your group. Even if you get a caster in roulette, you don't guarantee they're good. My last trial roulette had 2 DRG, 1 SMN, and me as a Bard. The SMN was the lowest DPS, with me only slightly behind one of the DRGs and ahead of the other. If I had my higher WD, I would have been doing even more damage, but the increase to the SMN's damage definitely wouldn't have outweighed my loss. If a BRD is beating a caster by a fair margin already, Foe's wouldn't even have the caster catch up to them, much less "more than make up for it".

Secondly, Foe's only lasts just over a minute from full MP and the MP bar takes about 2.5 minutes to refill in combat, both assuming that you don't refill your MP somehow. This is also assuming you won't have to play TP/MP song for anybody. A weapon damage increase for the Bard would be "always on". A caster will not always have time to cast during Foe's. They may have to move, they may get mechanics dumped on their head. They may be unlucky and get targeted by AOE circles a lot. A caster may not benefit from the full effect of Foe's but a Bard would always benefit from the effect of increased WD. Therefore, the benefit of Foe's is also limited to what time the caster can actually use it.

I'd also argue the main draw of it being to support people. Archers don't have support songs. Bards do. Unfortunately, we don't get the choice of staying as Archers, or being upgraded Archers. If we want to be even remotely useful, we have to be Bard. I rolled Archer because it was mobile ranged DPS. Bard was forced upon me. If there was a split like SMN/SCH where there was a mobile ranged DPS option that doesn't have the support songs, I'd swap in an instant. Also, 4/5 of the new Bard skills are for personal DPS gain only, while the last is just a mostly useless prEsuna.

ofc it will always be 30% but its 30% of a bigger base number and as such you got scaling.

The problem is that since there isn't a damage buff in the game that adds a flat X to each attack, they're all percentages, every class will have the same "scaling" with weapons getting better. But since Bard weapons have an inherently lower weapon damage than everyone else, WM does nothing to actually fill the gap. Everyone got tools to increase their DPS in some manner, not just Bards. In order for a Bard to stay at the same relative point as they were before, they MUST use WM. They could have just as easily increased Bard weapon damage and not required WM at all and given some nifty new support tool.

[Sessurea]

This game will forever be balanced around 8 man content^ Not trying to sound harsh here, but other content really doesn't matter as much. I couldn't care less what classes I get matched to in DF dungeons etc.

true, bards will feel their support is less valued once content gets overgeared, but who cares about overgeared content anyways?

Personally I wouldn't be in a static without a) a drg to boost me and b) a blm to boost. can always sing nothing but foes when stuff gets overgeared, and tbh looking at parses bard dps is still great. I really don't care that the blm, mnk and drg in my static out dps me; the boost I give our awesome blm is great and makes up for it.

Looking at a parse and judging the bards contribution by the bards dps alone is a mistake people on this forum seem to keep making.

If bard is still broken it's only due to clutter and qol changes that may or may not come, but it's dps is perfect now.

[Aiselia]

This game will forever be balanced around 8 man content^ Not trying to sound harsh here, but other content really doesn't matter as much.

Except it can be balanced around both. If TP/MP songs don't really have a place outside of progression and Foe's is situational outside of premade groups to ensure you make good use of it, why not move the base damage penalty on Bard weapons to those songs?

That doesn't harm them outside of progression and still doesn't make them OP during progression because they will need to take a hit at some point. If casters do that much damage than Bards that Foes outweighs the damage loss, put the damage reduction during Foes so it's a trade off of extra damage for casters at a temporary hit to the Bard.

Just because something gets balanced for the smallest portion of the game doesn't mean it has to ignore the majority of the game.