Bard - they broke my job

[aabe]

I wonder if/how many times this has been brought up but my biggest problem with BRD has been the fact that barrage negates crits.
It's two more hits, so I've never understood why the first can't crit.

[Kaeoni]

most dps jobs now bring at least one very useful "utility" to a party but still only penalize Brd for their's, also not cool

Mage's Ballad, Army's Paeon, Foe's Requiem.

3 of the most powerful.. No. The only 3 actual perpetual utility buffs in the entire game that last for extended periods of time.

If not for you, your party would run out of TP in boss battles
Your mages and Nin's Ninjutsu would do Less damage.
Your healers Might run out of Mana causing a wipe.

Your usefulness far outweighs a singular straight up dps in every single long winded fight in the entire game. Essentially any damage a Tank and DPS does outside of their own TP pool, and the 10% dmg increase from all magic dmg you give with Foe's is dmg YOU are creating, It's not their dmg because they wouldn't have done that dmg WITHOUT YOU.

Now I don't do Savage Alex, and my brd is only 52. But unless things radically changed from Coil days, you have nothing to complain about.

[RiceisNice]

Now I don't do Savage Alex, and my brd is only 52. But unless things radically changed from Coil days, you have nothing to complain about.

None of the fights require a TP regen due to the amount of downtime inbetween, as well as the overall better TP effiency that all combat jobs received post level 50. The execption is if someone dies...but NIN goad can cover that better than paeon since it doesn;t come with damage penalty.

Ballad isn't absolutely nessescary for fights post-progression. I hardly ever see my self needing to play ballad unless something has come wrong (and in the context of something like A3s, if it's gotten that bad then chances are it's unrecoverable)

Foe Requiem is in the similar circumstances of disembowel boosting BRD/MCH dps, and storm's eye allowing ninjas to use more AE.

[Kaeoni]

Well then I guess there is a problem >_> I just assumed utility based class still had a use for its utility.
Ninjas utility is marginal in comparison to a bards what with shade walker, smokescreen and goad. But we still take a hit in the dmg department for it. If Bards kind of support isn't required, which is a shame tbh.. Then yeah I agree the class needs to be re-worked.

That's a real shame... I really like support classes... =/ I wanted more to be added in the future.

[RiceisNice]

That's a real shame... I really like support classes... =/ I wanted more to be added in the future.

It's not that they're severely far behind other dps jobs (unlike 3.0), and ballad still has a place in progression. But other than that, it's not something that bothers me. What bothers me is their stance/justifaciton on the "dps tax" and the reasoning(s) behind it.

[Kelevra]

Mage's Ballad, Army's Paeon, Foe's Requiem.

3 of the most powerful.. No. The only 3 actual perpetual utility buffs in the entire game that last for extended periods of time.

If not for you, your party would run out of TP in boss battles
Your mages and Nin's Ninjutsu would do Less damage.
Your healers Might run out of Mana causing a wipe.

Your usefulness far outweighs a singular straight up dps in every single long winded fight in the entire game. Essentially any damage a Tank and DPS does outside of their own TP pool, and the 10% dmg increase from all magic dmg you give with Foe's is dmg YOU are creating, It's not their dmg because they wouldn't have done that dmg WITHOUT YOU.

Now I don't do Savage Alex, and my brd is only 52. But unless things radically changed from Coil days, you have nothing to complain about.

...that's just it tho, no party in there right mind would want a Bard to sing Ballad/Paeon for 'extended periods of time'

For Mp regen, the healers have gotten more tools to help with that. For tp regen, even with a good bit of the end game content having a fair bit of downtime at certain phases...most of the melee also have tools for restoring chunks of the tp when needed.

When those aren't needed, yeah I'd be running Requiem...unless I already am or have been (and have emptied out my mp doing so and waiting for it to build back up). Requiem more or less is a given tho and is mostly beneficial when a caster is present. Somewhat when healers are dps'n (I say somewhat cause healers sometimes have Acc issues, even with RoD debuff). A Brd playin requiem is like a Mnk keeping Dragon Kick applied, a Drg keepin Disembowel on the target, or a Nin not forgetting to reapply Dancing Edge.

But you wanna know something funny about Foe's....Brd doesn't benefit from it. Has Windbite and Flaming Arrow and neither of the two see enhancements to dmg when Requiem is active. Dragonfire Dive gets increased dmg when Requiem is running....u say a Nin's Ninjitsu does more damage when Foe's is running....and those two jobs already get increased dmg when there respective debuffs are applied to the target for most of the other moves in their arsenal.

So in a long fight, in a sitiuation...where the dps composition doesn't include a Drg, Brd dmg receives no enhancements when their 'debuff' song is playing.

Also...with groups doing end game content:

2 casters, 1 melee, and 1 ranged seems ok for a dps composition

2 melee, 1 caster, and 1 ranged seems ok for a dps composition

2 ranged, 1 melee, and 1 caster.....ppl shy away from

Reason being...cuz our 'usefulness CURRENTLY DOES NOT far outweigh a singular straight up dps in every single long winded fight' and dmg wise, Bard (and Mch) needs to be removed from the isolated box they are currently in. IMHO

[Warlyx]

NIN felt like this to me as well, they didn't get much change in terms of gameplay or new abilties. I can't comment on MCH since they had no 2.0, but it still irks me to no end that they're taking so many abilities from BRD, and that GB ends up homogenizing the two so much without MCH having it's own identity (which could have come from a more innovative ammo mechanic, attachments, or turret interaction)

yeah but NIN was a job released later on and it really feels like NIN was created with HW on mind , looks how complete the job is....SW tosses morw utility (agro transfers) and some DPS cds (DwD and Duality) plus Armor crash a QOL skill that changed the job ....oh dont forget how mudras work now :3 i love it !

MP/TP is rarerly needed now

ppl say foe is utility , so its slashing debuff from NIN/WAR , piercing from DRG...

NIN has slashing , goad , +10% dmg taken
drg has piercing and Crit buff.
War has slashing debuff, is a tank , -10% dmg taken , and good dps
SMN , still has virus , eye for eye and is the only dps that can rez.
MNK int debuff , mantra and Top dps
bard has mp / tp regen that no1 needs outside wipefest nights , and Foe for the lonely mage and healer dpsing...
Mch has mp/tp regen and -5% debuf for magic or physical.
BLM......has ..... cool spells i guess :P /comfort


The point is that if SE balances jobs around support/dps they are doing it WRONG. (look at tanks too...the balance is way off)

[Connor]

I think it says a lot that the Warden's Paean doesn't even come into the equation when considering Bard utility lol.

Personally, the idea of Bards having relatively low dps has never bothered me personally. What does bother me is when this dps is justified by being assumedly high utility when that utility feels relatively lacklustre in most content. Outside of Savage and maybe Thordan EX you won't see much use of the Mage's Ballad and the Army's Paeon, and even in that content you may not need either a lot of the time. This only leaves Foe Requiem to use, which is at least very powerful and almost always worth using since even if you don't have casters healers will often be nuking. And the Warden's Paean is still pretty much useless outside of negating Warrior's pacify debuff.

I think it says a lot that the Warden's Paean doesn't even come into the equation when considering Bard utility lol.

Personally, the idea of Bards having relatively low dps has never bothered me personally. What does bother me is when this dps is justified by being assumedly high utility when that utility feels relatively lacklustre in most content. Outside of Savage and maybe Thordan EX you won't see much use of the Mage's Ballad and the Army's Paeon, and even in that content you may not need either a lot of the time. This only leaves Foe Requiem to use, which is at least very powerful and almost always worth using since even if you don't have casters healers will often be nuking. And the Warden's Paean is still pretty much useless outside of negating Warrior's pacify debuff.

The whole 'dpssssss' meta kinda makes things tough for Bard as well, I think. Every job is expected to push up huge amounts of damage yet Bards are still at the bottom end of the scale, and this gets even lower if they actually have to sing Ballad / Paeon. Bard dps is always going to be at the bottom end of the spectrum because it's a 'support'. But it's never going to have essential or specifically powerful support because it's a dps.
Tbh, I feel like they should kinda just choose one role and focus on that because clearly trying to do both isn't working out for them. They're developing job with roles that don't even actually exist. That's how they broke Bard, if you ask me.

[Shurrikhan]

If not for you, your party would run out of TP in boss battles
Your mages and Nin's Ninjutsu would do Less damage.
Your healers Might run out of Mana causing a wipe.

Your usefulness far outweighs a singular straight up dps in every single long winded fight in the entire game. Essentially any damage a Tank and DPS does outside of their own TP pool, and the 10% dmg increase from all magic dmg you give with Foe's is dmg YOU are creating, It's not their dmg because they wouldn't have done that dmg WITHOUT YOU.

Now I don't do Savage Alex, and my brd is only 52. But unless things radically changed from Coil days, you have nothing to complain about.

That's just it, though. Things have changed since them. Could you imagine a more TP-intensive fight than A2S? And yet I've never seen Paean dropped in there, only Foe, and, if a snowball really starts tumbling, Ballad. (DRG is now able to do AoE dps without spending extensive TP amounts on it (Geirskogul) and Monk can get half an Invigorate for 2.5 GCDs. And in the meantime, Bard AoE dps is pretty damn good, and the NIN usually never escaped the Gobwalker, poor bastard.) TP concerns are on average far less significant than they were in T8 or Final Coil. Ballad is usually played only during phases where enemies are not targetable rather than rotationally between CDs (at the 1:30/2:00-3:00 minute mark or 6-7:30 minutes, etc., when the most possible CDs will be on cooldown simultaneously).

[Sleigh]

I'm not sure why people are mentioning Savage as an example of no TP played. A3S, unless you clear REALLY fast AND have a NIN AND have your MCH/BRD LB3, you need some TP restorations from BRD/MCH. A4S, even with Quarantine you will still go dry without a BRD/MCH occasionally boosting up the party ... unless you're saccing the melee for some reason.