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

[Lastelli]

It's not so much too many buttons, as too many criteria to respond to

By "too many criteria" do you mean "pitch perfect at 2-3 stacks when singing WM and bloodletter when singing ballad" during a otherwise silly and super easy priority system? Sorry but I cannot agree on this. Take these 2 things away and brd goes back to being the braindead pew pew job we had in arr. You simply need to be a little more reactive and that's it. The current brd is actually pretty easy.

so bard involves lots of buttons? but how come its considered as an easy class to play given that you have to respond to certain situation for your songs? is it because they are less punished with mechanics that makes them an easy class to play?

BRD is not punished at all by mechanics since it has total mobility. Also, "responding to situations" may sound complicated but it's not. Simply put, 2 out of 3 songs will make 2 skills proc, 1 for each song. When they proc you simply press a button to use those skills (with a little caveat for pitch perfect, but nothing complex). End of the story. Same goes for refulgent arrow. When it procs you use it and that's it.

[Talec]

so bard involves lots of buttons? but how come its considered as an easy class to play given that you have to respond to certain situation for your songs? is it because they are less punished with mechanics that makes them an easy class to play?

BRD is by far not a easy class to Play well.

Doing damage with BRD? OK, quite easy.

However, doing good dmg with bard while using all the support skills for the group and the support for the tank especially? Like target swaping to the tank to apply that 20% heal/10% less dmg-buff on the tank while the Songs procc at the same time and scream to you "USE YOUR SKILL NOOOW!!!"? maintain all the dots while check for teammates TP/Mana to Play at the right time? Casting Requim at the right time, once the others started their burst Combos? Not easy at all. At least in my opinion, playing BRD well is not an easy taks.


That said, I have been in several dungeons now with bards, that don't care for the Support skills at all. Not a single buff was put on the tank during the whole dungeon. That is no good BRD.

[chrissun]

Bard is a support-DPS class which has so many utilities. If your problem is being competitive with the other class, then you don't seen to understand the concept of the job itself.
If bard can dish out the same damage as SAM or RDM, with all their utilities intact, everyone would play bard. Bards have to have some kind of weakness (in this case less damage and non-meta job synergy).
All the thread opener suggestion are basically things that can make BRD consistently deals more damage. Maybe the consistency is fine, but no no to increase damage.

[gumas]

^pretty much

The class is called support for a reason, you help your party by giving buff and utility in the mid fight, crit up, mp regen, tp regen, cleanse, you support them and deal damage at the same time.

If brd dps is the same as core dps, the next thing i know Healer will go riot because they want their dps on the same level as blm in healer thread

[Athesto]

while I know that bards are not supposed to be better than the melee dps in game the rng makes the un consistent in the damage department, yes they have a lot of support but at the end of the day they are a dps class(unless that SE make a support role for df/pf and change the icons).

bards and mchs need more dps because with better gear the gap between the two is going to be noticeable. the only thing I ask is to have better dps without that much rng

[Merryl]

Refresh needs to be way faster. ..or are we no longer considered a support class?
One more aoe of anykind would be nice.

[Shunye]

However, doing good dmg with bard while using all the support skills for the group and the support for the tank especially? Like target swaping to the tank to apply that 20% heal/10% less dmg-buff on the tank while the Songs procc at the same time and scream to you "USE YOUR SKILL NOOOW!!!"? maintain all the dots while check for teammates TP/Mana to Play at the right time? Casting Requim at the right time, once the others started their burst Combos? Not easy at all. At least in my opinion, playing BRD well is not an easy task.

make macros for your tank supporting abilities. you can have two macros for 8man groups and 1 macro if you are just doing 4mans. in the macro you just assign the ability to the specific party slot, which should always be 2/3 for the tanks. that way you never have to change targets to instantly buff people.

[Barkit]

make macros for your tank supporting abilities. you can have two macros for 8man groups and 1 macro if you are just doing 4mans. in the macro you just assign the ability to the specific party slot, which should always be 2/3 for the tanks. that way you never have to change targets to instantly buff people.

I would love for that kind of macro. Sadly, I am sort of clueless on how to make macros in this game so a layout of this macro would be very helpful.

[stanrir]

I love playing bard just hate how the smallest mess up seems to make my dps completely irrelevant

[Shurrikhan]

All I want to see is:

Refulgent Arrow either to give +10% Critical Strike Chance and replace Straighter Shot completely upon proc
or
Straighter Shot, as a trait, is replaced by Refulgent Arrow, meaning that maintaining Straight Shot during a proc no longer wastes Refulgent Arrow. There is no longer a Straighter Shot after RA's acquisition.

As for RA, a proc, being too desirable vs. the more consistent Empyreal Arrow, I'd simply suggest that the "Additional effects added only once" clause on Barrage be removed. This would make Barrage-EA viable at low Repertoire on Army's Paean and Wanderer's Minuet.