Let's discuss some problems Bard has, despite being incredibly fun

[Pomelo]

I really really loathe Refulgent. Pitch perfect is nice I kinda like it, but I wish straight shot just turned into Refulgent with the proc and also gave us the critical buff...Pitch Perfect is at least OGCD so it's easier to get your head around...but no matter how hard i try when I see the SS proc...I just use SS...its muscle memory, I need training...operant conditioning xD

[Exterium]

This is a personal problem, but one of the things that keeps me from getting into bard is the sheer number of buttons that I have to have on my bar and use fairly regularly. Heavy Shot, Split Shot, Bloodletter, both DoTs, Empyreal Arrow, Pitch Perfect, all three song attacks, Iron Jaws...And that's just at 60. Granted, at 64, the DoTs and Iron Jaws will see less regular usage, but they still get used regularly. Add in Rain of Death and Quick Knock, plus Refulgent Arrow at 70, and...it's just too many different buttons I have to use. I don't mind having to monitor multiple things at once, it can be fun, but it just feels so bloated.

People said the same about MCH in 3.0 (my main), and here I am now playing BRD because MCH feels EXTREMELLY boring to me. Please, don't want every class to be 1-2-3. please.

[ShaneDawn]

Our class is very RNG songwise atm, but like many classes in other MMOs that have crit based mechanics, it's gear dependent. Early expac when stats are low, the procs are unreliable and sometimes cause major dps swings. Later expac, if left untouched, those mechanics become monsters and we have procs pouring out of our ears. I've noticed major changes going from 1500 crit raiting to 1800+ in terms of procs, especially with CS.

This is a good point. In the long run, the RNG is going to even out to a degree, alleviating the fluctuation as our procs get more consistent. However, the current design of Refulgent Arrow would keep it kind of a hit-or-miss type of a proc that can not be affected by external means or actions aside from the number of GCDs spent "fishing" for it. Whether or not it's within the boundaries of healthy RNG is arguable, but I wouldn't mind having more meaningful options for player interactions with the Refulgent proc.

In order to fix piercing debuff, you would want to avoid trivializing it - giving it to BRD and MCH is -not- an option because then the debuff might as well not exist, in other words.

Thanks for bringing this up, it is something I overlooked as I was on the on the fastlane of mindflow during writing my opening post. I agree with the sentiment that if we add Piercing Debuff to ranged, it should bring a new flavor to add somehow - either via a rotational sense or by affecting in a somewhat different manner than the Dragoon variant of it, like possibly being slightly stronger to emphasize the synergy from another, more lenient aspect in terms of class-pairing.

I don't think the RNG is a super real problem, it's fine to have a job that's like that imo. My mostly-QoL wishlist (after of course the piercing debuff being dumb) would be:

1) Make Refulgent proc quicker. Having it occur at the tail end of the HS animation makes it difficult to impossible to react properly if you need to shuffle your oGCDs in reaction to a proc, i.e. you were expecting to Bar-EA, then RA procs and now you'd much rather EA-Bar - but because you didn't react in time to avoid pressing Bar first, you have to leave EA sitting there until the next GCD because you can't use it before RA once Barrage is up.

2) Change Pitch Perfect to a 1s cooldown. The gripe here is that at the end of WM, if you have ~2 GCDs left and use a 3PP in the first, the 3s cooldown prevents you from using a follow-up proc before WM expires. And even when it doesn't, it prevents you from being able to PP-MB in that oGCD as desired and you either clip into a GCD, forfeit the PP, or drop song for a second or so, a dilemma that exists for no actually good reason.

3) Make Army's Paeon less sad. This would invariably be a buff of some kind, so any MCH buffs would need to be enlargened to compensate. As for the nature of the buff, I think AP could go as high as 8% and it wouldn't be a problem of any significance. That'd at least make it better than MB in non-crit-buffed situations. Alternately or additionally, the stacks could increase your RA proc odds, if we're digging for a way to get BarRA more reliably. I'd kind of rather not see the pvp version where stacks add % damage, because IJ snapshotting math is convoluted enough as it is.

Never had a problem with the RA procs when they *do* show up, but aside from that, I agree with all of this. Army's Paeon definitely needs some kind of work, as currently it doesn't really even have its own niché where it's consistently better than the two other songs under specific circumstances, it is simply used as a filler song in-between lining up your better songs. Not to even mention it's (in my opinion) pretty much of a snoozefest to be stuck on. The effect is too small to make a significant difference, the song just feels too slow and doesn't really have meaningful interactions going on for it.

I'm fine with them giving the piercing debuff to rdm. but the real question is why is this still a mechanic? Why are bards and MCH still the only physical dps classes that rely on another class to provide our "vulnerability" debuff. It feels like at this point, that SE should just change the debuff to "physical vulnerability" and get rid of blunt / piercing / slashing resistance downs altogether. It would make it MUCH simpler to balance the classes.

This is something I've been trying to get my mind around. They give all the other DPS classes meaningful ways to apply their flavor debuffs, but pigeonhole ranged classes to synergize with Dragoons only. It is a silly, restricting design that not only hurts us but the Dragoons also as Cetonis outlined earlier. It makes balancing dumb, synergy options limited and playing on high-level feel very unrewarding if you don't happen to have a Goon friend in your raid team to enable your damage potential. Obviously having support options should cost you in personal DPS, but gating a very significant portion of it behind arbitrary debuffs handed out by a single other class is not the kind of design we want to be encouraging. Especially when no other class really has to struggle with synergy-options being so limited or having an effect to as drastic a degree.

[KalinOrthos]

People said the same about MCH in 3.0 (my main), and here I am now playing BRD because MCH feels EXTREMELLY boring to me. Please, don't want every class to be 1-2-3. please.

Oh, no one wants an extremely dull class to play, that's why I dropped monk and dragoon, they just weren't fun. And bard shouldn't be like that either. MCH in SB feels actually a lot more dynamic because of heat management, necessitating the need for proper Cooldown usage and far more regular use of Wildfire, plus of course the lower cooldown of Reload makes it feel a lot more engaging.

What I don't like about bards in SB, and the only thing I don't like about them, is that there is too much that I have to do.

[FateAudax]

Wished they made Army's Paeon stacked crit chances like 1/2/3/4% or 2/4/6/8% increment instead of the current skill speed. Since we Bards are so reliant on crit procs.

[Bardo]

I wish straight shot just turned into Refulgent with the proc and also gave us the critical buff...

Yea, I think Bard currently suffers from a bit of Button Bloat for sure.
Have you played Bard in PvP at all?
It's so streamlined compared to PvE. (even more-so for MCH, which is insanely fun and actually seems well thought out in PvP)

It would be amazing if they simply took a couple of the concepts from PvP mechanics and applied them to PvE skills.
For example:
As you suggested, Straight Shot could turn into Refulgent upon Straighter Shot proc and Refulgent could refresh Straight Shot buff. Bam, one button gone and the functionality doesn't change at all.
Stormbite/Caustic Bite could function like a combo where Stormbite turns into Caustic Bite after it's used, then reverts to Stormbite after Caustic Bite or when changing targets. Bam, another button gone.
There's probably a lot more that could be streamlined with all the short cooldown situational skills we have that depend on a certain song or proc, but even just these two changes above would be a huge QoL improvement I think.

[KDSilver]

I totally agree with the fact that, despite bards being today really awesome with its rework, some little adjustement should be done due to its random dps output.
The difference is far more important than before. While I don't mind the RNG system, bard had always been like this with Blodletter procs, having now pitch perfect, bloodletter and more importantly Reful Arrow, you sometime end up having no chance at all and get a lower dps while it's not your fault at all. The most frustrating part is of course the opener when you don't have Reful Arrow that make a big difference.

[Akonyl]

Wished they made Army's Paeon stacked crit chances like 1/2/3/4% or 2/4/6/8% increment instead of the current skill speed. Since we Bards are so reliant on crit procs.

This would be kind of a weird change, imo. Bards are reliant on crit procs, but that's mostly due to the effects of the songs being triggered by dot crits, and if Army's gave us extra crit chance, it wouldn't be able to actually help us out with Mages/WM since the songs are mutually exclusive, it'd only help its own stacks (which can max out pretty quickly regardless). Its only usage would be if the bonus crit could snapshot onto our DoTs as we transition into other songs, but afaik the extra SKS we get from Army's doesn't actually snapshot onto our dots so I wouldn't expect Army-crit to either.

[Cetonis]

Army's Paeon doesn't increase your Skill Speed statistic, so of course it wouldn't affect DoTs. It just affects your recast time and auto-attack delay.

The crit chance stacking becomes an interesting idea in the sense that it'd make you want even more to stick with a (WM -> MB -> AP -> repeat) cycle, but I don't know if pushing a clear best cycle like that is a good decision. I'd rather they just make AP stand on its own better, and make Bards feel less-bad about alternate song arrangements (to line up AoE phases, or Troubadour etc) instead of more-bad.

[ChloeGrace]

I think the change to Raging Strikes adding crit instead of damage would have a grossly OP snowball effect. Combined with Battle Voice, straight shot and innately high crit, the number of procs would virtually guarantee 3 stack pitch perfect spam for the duration of the Wanderer's, or Rain procs for Ballad.

I can hear it now. You say that like it's a bad thing!
Well, it is. If bard can push out spike dps, as a support job, that shames pure dps in comparable gear, then it becomes a serious balancing issue.

As for the Empyreal auto proc-ing Straighter/Refulgent, I would add a condition that it only happens when you're under the effects of Troubadour. Having it tied to a 3 minute cooldown timer forces you to pick and choose when to use it.