#NerfBRD

[Connor]

I don't feel BRD needs GCD songs at all either. I'd rather remove them than buff them. It would be healthier for the game overall to not push BRD's utility further too (They're running out of nifty things to add that don't explicitly beat MCH further into the ground). Instead give it personal cooldown boosts that buff its spike DPS to match what it was capable of with 2 crit rate buffs while retuning its core kit to not function on crit at all anymore, undoing what makes it broken. MCH should get all of the love it frankly needs and deserves on top of pushing ahead of what BRD is currently capable of.

Wouldn’t everything stay the exact same as it is now with these changes? Unless Machinist got some ridiculous buff to compensate for Bard getting even more DPS boosts. Or some amazing raid DPS buffs?

Idk personally I feel like pushing Bard’s utility is exactly what it needs, but only under the condition that personal damage naturally suffers as a result.

It’s also worth considering that a job can have utility without it necessarily affecting raid DPS (like Red Mage with Cure/Raise). I’m assuming that in future they’ll continue to develop Machinist’s DPS mechanics (eventually lol) and continue to have it lower on the utility side. But if it balances that with better personal DPS, or maybe even better raid DPS, surely that’s enough?

I think anything that changes Bards DPS isn’t really going to address the problem. Especially if the changes just make it equivalent to what it was now but with different mechanics. I mean, the whole point of a Bard is to support the party, so I can’t see much good coming from them gutting its utility and turning it into an even more generic Archer job that has a harp out of sheer coincidence (I know this is what everyone wants but plz no lol).

Personally I think the developers imagine Bard as this support class that people take for their utility and not their DPS. Hence why it keeps being considered such a mess at each expansion release. Then, to address feedback, they make its DPS stronger and easier. And then we end up in this situation where Machinist is left crying in the corner because the developers don’t see it as the same kind of ‘support class’.

I understand that piercing buff and crit scaling are super important for balancing the jobs but I believe that doing so only addresses the symptoms of the main problem. Two jobs in the same slot can’t have two different roles when you have a trinity role system. They’re either both DPS or they don’t exist. But SE keeps trying (and not doing very well) to squish Bard into the traditional support role it had in every previous Final Fantasy, while keeping it a fast paced high APM Archer DPS. And as you can imagine, a high APM Archer with very high crit rate squished together with a song-based support class (*cough* which is a caster in literally every other FF except in this one, probably for a reason *cough*), it makes sense there’d be balancing issues

These two competing roles, a DPS and a support, are being fused to create a completely different concept of a Bard’s role than Machinist. Part of the different concepts comes from the fact that only one of the two jobs is a fusion of two pre-existing jobs. If you ask me, they can never balance a job that’s already a fusion of two previously existing FF jobs. If they make it just DPS, it’s not a Bard and they’ve failed at the job concept. If it just focuses on support, why is it a DPS in the first place? If it fuses the two, well, look where we are now.

Last but not least I’d honestly support them renaming Bard to ‘Archer’, change songs to be Forest Friends like FFV or something. Then Archers can be Archers and they can release Bard as a real job . I also imagine it’s significantly easier to balance an Archer vs Machinist than Archer + Bard vs Machinist. I mean, Machinist loses on numbers alone, because it doesn’t have a ‘second job’ to pull interesting abilities from conceptually. And of course there’s the expectation of what a job should do/be. I don’t think anyone would expect an Archer to output heavy utility whilst dealing damage, because it’s an Archer. They deal ranged damage, there’s only so many things an arrow can do lol. Easy to balance to against a job that also deals ranged damage.

Now imagine that Archer mysteriously upgrades into a singer with a bow but no restrictions on their songs. Balance is entirely the same, except now the Archer can buff the party with no mechanic hoops to jump through, no mp costs, no cast times, no gcd usage, and generally short cooldowns. Suddenly it starts to seem a little much in comparison to its competitors, right? Especially for a role that’s supposed to be dedicated to dealing damage.