Bard in the party... thoughts?

[Shurrikhan]

That or changing Rain of Death's debuff from evasion down to piercing resistance down.

Not really complaining. Glad Bard finally got something.

Prior to most healers melding to accuracy cap by themselves, I feel like that would have been a raid DPS loss, actually, not a buff. Prior to those melds, a Bard could easily pull the kind of raid DPS support that a NIN would even without a caster, just because of all the healer dps it could allow by decreasing the accuracy needed to hit enemies. If not for MCHs handling the mechanics of this tier so well, you'd likely have seen a lot more healers go only to maybe an extra 3% accuracy in melds, preferring extra healing and offensive strength through Det/Crit melds instead, and while using Rain of Death for the rest.

Bard already outperforms MCH slightly in the hands of a good player against a dummy or with minimal movement. This level of buffing just was not needed, and breaks many of the previous equivalents between them and MCH. A MCH still roughly loses 80 potency per GCD for promoting its Rook turret, or 60*enemy_count for Bishop, while BRD loses only 10% damage (typically up to 39 potency AoE or an absolute max of 150 potency ST).

I truly would not be surprised if these changes bring BRD back in line with the overpowered beast it began as...

[Empty-handed]

Se went to the extreme with the buffs. I totally agree with the songs cast time reduction. But buffing potency on everything across the board is a an overkill. The balance is broken once again.

Turrets are about 13% of our all dmg. While bard only loses 10% when singing.

Bard will be once more the favored support as of 3.3 it will be the superior job. Rip mch.

[Kelevra]

Se went to the extreme with the buffs. I totally agree with the songs cast time reduction. But buffing potency on everything across the board is a an overkill. The balance is broken once again.

Turrets are about 13% of our all dmg. While bard only loses 10% when singing.

Bard will be once more the favored support as of 3.3 it will be the superior job. Rip mch.

Maybe, maybe not. I think Mch will still have the better burst and the better option for killing things that need to die quickly. And the turrets can be toggled between auto attack and support "instantly" still. A case of gnarly burst or better sustained. And if Machinist 'sustained' dmg becomes an issue in the future...then I think SE should consider removing the rng from their 1-2-3 combo (w/o ammo, just make it so the last two hits always proc but aren't instant cast) instead of nerfing Bard again.

Brd, even though the songs got needed changes, still need time to cast. That and Foe's still uses mana when wanting/needing to buff elemental dmg. Hypercharge doesn't use mp at all when wanting/needing to buff physical dmg. That and most groups will still probably default to '2 melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster' comps anyway in endgame content they're looking to progress/clear.

[Ekko]

+silence +stun +mattack down +pattack down + gravity too and you can move freely for 6 GCDs under Reload, so no I would not say RIP MCH

[Slyqc]

MCH is not dead at all, from what I'm seeing the class should be pretty much equal now, except that going for Bard + SMN + BLM is really worth now (180 seconds CD Battle Voice)
I showed earlier on that post that MCH with same team comp usually have around 10% more DPS than bards, the buff bards had is approximatively going to fix that 10% DPS difference.
On the other hand though MCH still have a stun and a slow that Bards don't have. Mechanics wise both classes have their advantages now but at least in term of DPS they should be closer to each other.
I'm glad to see the Ninja buff too, this class needed more help than bard and seeing that 70 potency up on Katon is going to make a huge difference, shadow fang is also going to make them usefull in PvP once again.

[Shurrikhan]

MCH is not dead at all, from what I'm seeing the class should be pretty much equal now, except that going for Bard + SMN + BLM is really worth now (180 seconds CD Battle Voice)
I showed earlier on that post that MCH with same team comp usually have around 10% more DPS than bards, the buff bards had is approximately going to fix that 10% DPS difference.

But shouldn't any changes made with particular compositions in mind aim to buff the raid DPS contribution to the other members of the composition, not the ranged dps's own output? The easiest way to do that would be to simply not have so overbuffed Hypercharge as it applies to all-melee compositions in the first place. (Heck, Army, Ballad, Foe, and Hypercharge together all give significant advantages to near-pure caster or pure-physical compositions, which may just be an inherent design flaw. I'm not sure what the alternative would be—say, Ballad and Army as one, or Hypercharge affecting both physical and magic damage with the same turret at some duration loss—but there are certainly other ways to go about designing these things that wouldn't be obviously centered on trying to remove an entire song or Hypercharge type from your playlist so you can focus on the other.)

Short of that, if they wanted to bring the compositions closer, all they really needed were near-QoL changes -- the songs' cast duration decrease, to be more on par with instant oGCD placement and Promotion, and reductions to the lock-in time for Wanderer's Minuet and Gauss Barrel both (say, to 8 or 10 seconds, scaling with skill speed), the former seeming more important simply because Bard has only 2 mobile weaponskills, down from 3. Or they could allow up to two stacks of Straighter Shot (too homogenized, imo, but a totally fair solution). Decrease the song penalty to 12-14% to be in line with turret loss outside of Hypercharge. Have Foe apply to Flaming Arrow, Windbite, and perhaps even a couple more among Venomous Bite, Sidewinder, Empyreal Arrow, Bloodletter, or Iron Jaws' direct damage, to give it a similar self-boost to Hypercharge. But by no means did Bard need more pure damage. It just needed certain factors leveled out.