Bard still seems really good (and media tour info seems incomplete and will change)

[Jonnycbad]

I didn't see the Job Gauge strum a note when Bloodletter proc'd. I hope they fix that.

[MiruWest]

I didn't see the Job Gauge strum a note when Bloodletter proc'd. I hope they fix that.

No, hope that that BL wasn't a proc and instead was BL being on a charge system.

[SaitoHikari]

No, hope that that BL wasn't a proc and instead was BL being on a charge system.

Yeah, this is what the assumption is, since the other two songs still had their visual effect apply when gaining a repertoire stack.

If Bloodletter/Rain of Death doesn't have a stack system with all these changes, we'd end up with so many lost procs due to resets happening before we're able to use them. Hell, we risk losing procs already with the current system once we dot enough mobs/whenever Empyreal Arrow is available for use.

[MOZZYSTAR]

I'm a little concerned about this:

Bard
We streamlined many mechanics of bard in order to simplify the job’s management elements.
Its overall playstyle hasn’t changed drastically, but the adjustments make it easier to move around while using actions.

If Bard gets anymore simplified, I'll be bored to tears. It's literally the only DPS class I can play to date because of how one can manage the skills. It's pretty flexible (and I can still move while using my skills), and I like that. I really dislike the changes to the songs. They made DNC a ranged/support DPS because there's only two (MCH/BRD) and that was basically their main reason for not making a fourth healer instead, and yet they go ahead remove some of BRD's (didn't check MCH) support skills like palisade and the various effects of the songs. Does this even make any sense?

Honestly, I thought bard was fine as it was. We just needed another AoE/DoT or two. (Like a flaming arrow AoE with a burn DoT would've been great. Something like that.) Why are they "fixing" and overcomplicating things that don't need to be fixed? They've gone in and "simplified" all the classes, and for what? I think they're digging themselves a grave.

[Cetonis]

Some classes definitely needed to be made more accessible, because not everybody has been maining them for years. And let's not kid ourselves, Bard was one of them. 4.x Bard is not very approachable at all, there's just too much for newbies to worry about on top of getting accustomed to the procs-and-DoTs priority system.

The real issue isn't that they made those accessibility changes; it's that they didn't really fill the void for the people who have been maining it and enjoy having optimization stuff to chew on. Other jobs got stuff like Further Ruin management, stance dancing, etc. to give them something to think about beyond the basics of their kits, but with Bard we haven't really seen anything like that.

Pending, of course, Bloodletter charges (though two isn't really that meaty in practice) and the exact tuning of Apex, but as I said before I also think making Raging Strikes a fulcrum to optimize around by buffing it up to 20% for 15s or the like would also be a good change.

[SaitoHikari]

It's also important to note that a lot of Bard's DPS performance was heavily reliant on party comp as well. That's not the type of complexity that makes for compelling game design, and the developers are ultimately right in striking that out for the sake of future design.

Beyond that, they stabilized our RNG. From a pure self-performance standpoint, the complexity hasn't really been simplified on that front. If anything, with Apex Arrow thrown into the mix, there's a bit more complexity in managing that too, depending on how it's actually supposed to work. The loss of support sucks though, but that's a different issue.

(To be honest, I think the confusion over Apex Arrow probably stems from a few design changes that we probably haven't seen from earlier builds. Like I think Shadowbite was an AoE dot in earlier builds, but got changed to AoE Sidewinder later. Apex Arrow was probably a single target skill at first and worked with Barrage as a result, but got changed to AoE so it wouldn't work with Barrage later. And they didn't make the potential scaling changes by the media tour build yet.)

[MiruWest]

Idk how folk feel like the skill ceiling of BRD has dropped. Yes, the floor has risen up for lesser skilled players but the ceiling still remains the same. The only thing that truly changed for BRD was snapshotting DOTs for more rep procs (which wasn't big brain to begin with) which we still will do, it just will not be for procs. I'm a believer that not every class needs to constantly had new and intricate ways of playing the job, simply refine what works ad keep on going.

Losing utility is a tad sad but warranted. BRD shouldn't of had Foes, Passive Crit, DH buff, MP/TP regen, Palisades, Troubadour, and Nature’s Minne, with the amount of DPS it was able to push out vs other jobs who have way less utility with even lower numbers.

[Cetonis]

And idk how you can say that, I think you're turning a blind eye to reality for the sake of being positive. Which is great, but I'm trying to give honest feedback here. Official forums and all that.

Double snapping (or choosing not to) is gone, Foe optimization is gone, 30s APs for alignment is gone, 2PP is gone, Troub decisions are gone, Palisade planning is gone, Barrage fishing / holding at end of fight is gone, little SS management tricks are gone... pretty much everything you did to improve on the baseline of just pressing your buttons when they light up is gone. The ceiling and the floor, as things stand, are about an inch apart.

Stuff doesn't have to be "big brain", it just ought to exist at all and count for something. DNC optimizations aren't particularly big brain, but they're there and they matter, and they allow someone to feel like getting practice and experience with the job is worth something. Same goes for i.e. ShB Samurai.

Media tour / job trailer Bard doesn't allow for that, outside of adds (hopefully there are lots of adds). There's little you can do to play better than any other Bard that presses buttons, which is the floor. And no substantive means to improve upon your first few kills of a single target fight. You can get +5-10% on a few more Iron Jaws which is very low impact (sub-1%), and then not much else.

So I'm sitting here actually hoping that Bard is not very good re: meta, because farming / speedrunning on it sounds awful right now. You'd just sit there helpless while your party gets to have fun optimizing stuff, and pray for better RNG because that's all you can do.

Which is why I'm on here bringing this up now, instead of waiting for ten weeks into 5.05 when it's far too late, in hopes that it gets some thought while they can still i.e. decide how exactly to tune Apex Arrow or fiddle with Raging Strikes or something else.

I'm not crying over spilt milk, all the cleaning up they did was fine and largely welcome. The core skeleton left over will still be fun on a prog/dungeon/PF rando basis, moreso than now really. But even so, that skeleton ought to have at least a little bit of meat on its bones, is all. Doesn't have to be as much as before or even close, just enough to matter.

[Singularity]

30s APs for alignment is gone, 2PP is gone, Troub decisions are gone, ... little SS management tricks are gone...

Could you elaborate on these things a little? It seems to me you can still play Paeon for 30s if you want to, but I'm also not a speed runner so maybe there's more to it than I'm familiar with.

[Elandir]

Could you elaborate on these things a little? It seems to me you can still play Paeon for 30s if you want to, but I'm also not a speed runner so maybe there's more to it than I'm familiar with.

Once you unlock Wanderer's Minuet, it's overall a damage loss to stay in Army's Paeon. The standard is 30 seconds in Minuet, 30 seconds in Ballad, and then 20 seconds in Paeon, because Barrage and Raging Strikes are on an 80 second cooldown. Depending on group comp, it can be a better idea to wait because most raid buffs are on 30 second increments, 60, 90, 120, etc. You also might want to delay because of trying to use Troubadour at specific times.

The two pitch perfect is when you have a lot of crit up at the moment, like Spear card, Battle Litany, and/or Chain Stratagem and you're getting a lot of DOT crits. You want to use Pitch Perfect at 3 stacks or 2 stacks. The reason for 2 stacks is both DOT ticks are likely to be a crit, generating 2 stacks of repertoire. If you waited for 3 every time, you will often lose an unknown number of stacks during that period which overall is a dps loss.

If you need explanation for the rest, I'll leave it to someone else.