Bard does not make sense as a job

[Neela]

i would love to have more "supporter" songs like TP-Reg or Reflection... for me personally Bards dont have to deal with top tier DDs or DMG-discussions. i fininshed my zeta-zodiark bow last week and after reflecting the whole relict-story... i wonder why zeta is a "real" bow again and lost every edge of an instrument. i really loved the artemis-versions of the bow... but zodiark/zeta just lost the class-definition and connection to the singers-background to me... well yeah back to basic hm... dunno just doesnt fit for me

[SpookyGhost]

Go look at general depictions of bards. The dude with only a harp isn't the sole depiction of a bard. Otherwise Leliana (from Dragon Age), Kana (from Pillars of Eternity) or the bard from The Bard's Tale (who was no pushover combat-wise) wouldn't exist. Hell, even the bard in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel's Song was a combat powerhouse (sure, he was a god in disguise, but still).

Bard's are storytellers and general singsongs that recount tales of adventures, like the Wandering Minstrel, they aren't pigeonholed into being Harp wielders exclusively but the general focus of a Bard is their poetry. The massive problem is that 99% of the focus of Archer is combat and combat alone - literally 0 to do with what a Bard actually does. They could've taken the Tactics route and made Bard come from Orator/Mediator, which would've been significantly more fitting than Archer. The only Bard-esque skills a Bard has is from the job itself and all that does is make the abilities feel tacked on rather than flowing smoothly with the rest of it's kit. Look at WAR, everything works in conjunction with everything else and it all flows as one entity - Bard, meanwhile, feels like 2 different classes glued together.

With Orator/Mediator you would've been able to focus more on the poetry/speech aspect that makes a Bard a Bard, while still giving it some combat abilities. It wouldn't just be 100% combat and then suddenly songs show up when you unlock the job, which is what it is now. It's just really weird and I honestly can't think of a reason that Archer couldn't have just became Ranger aside from SE trying to include a support role (dunno how BRD functioned in later 1.0) and not want to bother making a new class.

[Warlyx]

in 1.0 jobs didnt exist until later on (1.21?) , we had only classes , hell thaumaturge was the best healer (sacrifice healing) , and the archer was a good DPS. archer used to able to crossclass from conjurer. u needed archer 30 conjurer 15 to unlock bard , main stat was DEX , 2nd stat was piety

SE pushed archer into bard direction and here we are ....i guess Yoshi team could have changed bard for ranger, and add Bard later on ....but they decided to keep archer >bard , since they still know that full support jobs are the most underplayed jobs (wayyy worse than lack of tanks for pugs) , and implementing a full time support is a balance nightmare.

[Neela]

Bard's are storytellers and general singsongs that recount tales of adventures, like the Wandering Minstrel, they aren't pigeonholed into being Harp wielders exclusively but the general focus of a Bard is their poetry. They could've taken the Tactics route and made Bard come from Orator/Mediator, which would've been significantly more fitting than Archer. (...) With Orator/Mediator you would've been able to focus more on the poetry/speech aspect that makes a Bard a Bard, while still giving it some combat abilities.

Indeed well said - 100% on your side here =)

Supportsongs would work well and f.e. like in Ragnarok Online there should be "Grp Songs" which need more than just 1 Bard and raise effectiveness with every other Bard in your grp playing the same song at the same time (Dancer/Bard combo in RO is really nice though).

"Reflect"
f.e could throw back EVERY target-spell from the player even heal/buffs -
making you untargetable for all magic spells.

"Invincible" could be a grp lifesaver-song for 2-3 Bards, the targets TP
will freeze and wont recieve any dmg/heal, got the non-interruption effect for
skills/spells (like LB or Resurection) but wont be able to move while in song-stance.

and of course debuff songs like confusen, sleep, slow, etc... would be nice though.

Hmm... i think grp songs would be another good mechanic for another major-update 4.0/5.0. Sadly i never played ffxi so i cant say anything to the instrument-mechanic but it sounds interessting to me too :3

[Jonnycbad]

Hunter/Archer/Ranger used White Magic in FF3, and had a few healing abilities in FF5; additionally, in some FF games, BRDs could equip bows.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/R...Fantasy_III%29
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Animals

[seraseth]

I've always liked both bard and ranger, so was rather disappointed to get this merged creation which doesn't do either job justice. The bard part gets barely any songs and feels more like a tacked on subjob, and the archer part gets weakened to perform the bard role.

I would have loved for them to be separate things and would have played them both, depending on what mood I was in.

[Duelle]

Bard's are storytellers and general singsongs that recount tales of adventures, like the Wandering Minstrel, they aren't pigeonholed into being Harp wielders exclusively but the general focus of a Bard is their poetry.

Bards are an offshoot of the rogue archetype. As I've said, they're known for being good at non-musical physical combat on top of having silver tongues. That's sort of what made them so popular in the first place.

The massive problem is that 99% of the focus of Archer is combat and combat alone - literally 0 to do with what a Bard actually does.

Which again hasn't much to do with this perceived issue. You can collect tales and know songs while also being proficient at shooting a bow or swinging a sword. XIV's BRD is actually following this part of the concept quite closely. The lack of the stories and songs is a bit of a concern, but as I've also said, there's ways to help fix that without messing with gameplay.

They could've taken the Tactics route and made Bard come from Orator/Mediator, which would've been significantly more fitting than Archer. The only Bard-esque skills a Bard has is from the job itself and all that does is make the abilities feel tacked on rather than flowing smoothly with the rest of it's kit.

SE committed to Archer => Bard back in 1.0. There was no way they would have scrapped that for the sake of pandering to the people who think Edward is the only representation of the bard to have ever existed.

Look at WAR, everything works in conjunction with everything else and it all flows as one entity - Bard, meanwhile, feels like 2 different classes glued together.

Because physical combat and music don't really mesh into one thing. It's not like magic and melee that can be brought together (i.e, a RDM setting their sword on fire). The best you can hope for is to have song acting as DoTs or damage modifiers of sorts when used on a mob. That I can agree with and would readily support.

Thematically Archer and Bard are obviously separated (they even explain it in the job questline), so it wouldn't make sense for Bard to leak into Archer or vice-versa. Hell, archer having Swiftsong is a huge stretch as is.

[Jamillion]

*In South Park Johnie Cochrane voice* This does not make any sense! Why would a bard, AKA a hobo with a harp, be called a job?! This does not make any sense! Bards don't work, they play all day and fool around with tavern wenches, this does not make any sense!

[Shirobi]

Because I agree with him. Bard should be about songs.

Even if they dont want bard to be about support really, because hey, support is kind of the square peg, they should still be focused on songs and performing.

You want us to be ranged and not melee, fine. But a bow? Why cant we have instruments and cast songs? Replace the bow and its animations when we get our soul crystal with an instrument that "shoots" like a musical note or staff or something. Make our shots the exact same, but make them LOOK like "music". Heck ya could even keep the names and tool tips, just give bard a musical visual theme and a weapons set thats based on instruments.

Give us a class specific "song" emote that makes us play our harp. Or better yet give us multiple instruments.

You dont got overhaul the whole ship, just for Godsakes reskin some stuff and make bards about music again.

[Neela]

Because I agree with him. Bard should be about songs.

Even if they dont want bard to be about support really, because hey, support is kind of the square peg, they should still be focused on songs and performing.

You want us to be ranged and not melee, fine. But a bow? Why cant we have instruments and cast songs? Replace the bow and its animations when we get our soul crystal with an instrument that "shoots" like a musical note or staff or something. Make our shots the exact same, but make them LOOK like "music". Heck ya could even keep the names and tool tips, just give bard a musical visual theme and a weapons set thats based on instruments.

Give us a class specific "song" emote that makes us play our harp. Or better yet give us multiple instruments.

You dont got overhaul the whole ship, just for Godsakes reskin some stuff and make bards about music again.

word. =)

There are just 2 Bows which look like instruments yet or did i miss something? Relict and Eso Bow... so hmm yeah the weapon-set should be more like those 2... i hope that the new "Relict" weapon will have a more intrumental-look than the Zeta-Yochi...

Another thing which came into my mind was... why not giving the Bard 2 skilltrees... one more archer-related with dmg-skills which use a bow for requierment and one more supporty way with songs which use an instrument as requierment?... Therefore everyone could create his/her own Bard-Build

Hmm yeah sadly that will never happen


so long
Neela