Will bard lose it's identity/class fantasy?

[Xieldras]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As long as the class is still fun to play, I don't personally care about "I'm called a Bard, but I'm not even remotely support anymore."

You could call the job a Plumber for all I care. I don't recall the job quests ever having much to do with music past lv50 anyway.

May I introduce you to the entire Bard Heavensward quest line : Ballad of Oblivion?

[Kalise]

May I introduce you to the Ballad of Oblivion quest line for HW Bards?

Wasn't the moral of that questline that there wasn't a Ballad of Oblivion and it was just a Siren?

With the "Real" Ballad of Oblivion being Friendship?

[Xieldras]

A Siren whose song annihilated an entire clan of Moogles. You also learn Minuet at lv52 and Warden's Paean at lv54.

My point was that all of Bard's quests in Heavensward had a lot to do with music, heck the quests themselves are named after songs.

[Raldo]

A Siren whose song annihilated an entire clan of Moogles. You also learn Minuet at lv52 and Warden's Paean at lv54.

My point was that all of Bard's quests in Heavensward had a lot to do with music, heck the quests themselves are named after songs.

Fair enough, I could've worded that better. I will concede that the quests themselves do involve music, but I don't recall the player character, the titular bard, ever actually doing any useful singing. We were on a quest to attempt to learn a song, so I guess that kind-of counts...

I fully agree with the OP, I'm just trying to say that it doesn't really matter (in my opinion). The reason we're called "Bard" is already paper-thin from a lore standpoint as it is.

[Xieldras]

Fair enough, I could've worded that better. I will concede that the quests themselves do involve music, but I don't recall the player character, the titular bard, ever actually doing any useful singing. We were on a quest to attempt to learn a song, so I guess that kind-of counts...

I fully agree with the OP, I'm just trying to say that it doesn't really matter (in my opinion). The reason we're called "Bard" is already paper-thin from a lore standpoint as it is.

Will agree that the quests involve music more than anything (I do remember seeing the ally NPCs in fights play songs too), but the fact that there is such importance dedicated to music in those quests (Heavensward quest line still has music as it's core story-wise), as well as in our skill set, does mean that Songs and Buffs do play a big part in Bard's identity. It's true that Bards in FF14 are more archer-like than the traditional Bards, but I could argue the same lore-thin argument for a few other classes in this game.

I'm okay with Archer being used as a base, what I'm not okay with is losing utility without getting anything in return and having our buffs streamlined to other rDPS classes or simply nerfed (also Battle Voice still not being applied to the player that uses it - am I deaf to my own voice?). This feels more like a regression towards our Base than more development to the Job's gameplay. That being said, this is only based on what I've seen in the Live Letter so I'll have to play the class when it comes out.

But I'm not liking what I'm seeing so far...

[bass9020]

Will agree that the quests involve music more than anything (I do remember seeing the ally NPCs in fights play songs too), but the fact that there is such importance dedicated to music in those quests (Heavensward quest line still has music as it's core story-wise), as well as in our skill set, does mean that Songs and Buffs do play a big part in Bard's identity. It's true that Bards in FF14 are more archer-like than the traditional Bards, but I could argue the same lore-thin argument for a few other classes in this game.

I'm okay with Archer being used as a base, what I'm not okay with is losing utility without getting anything in return and having our buffs streamlined to other rDPS classes or simply nerfed (also Battle Voice still not being applied to the player that uses it - am I deaf to my own voice?). This feels more like a regression towards our Base than more development to the Job's gameplay. That being said, this is only based on what I've seen in the Live Letter so I'll have to play the class when it comes out.

But I'm not liking what I'm seeing so far...

Im pretty sure the whole set of Heavensward quests also had the NPC or villains playing HP up/regen songs, I always though that was cool and was bummed when we didnt get that or any interesting song utility.

[Xieldras]

Im pretty sure the whole set of Heavensward quests also had the NPC or villains playing HP up/regen songs, I always though that was cool and was bummed when we didnt get that or any interesting song utility.

We did have a HP up song in the form of Troubadour, and I think HP regen is already widely in use by healers for Bard's to be useful if implemented. I did always want to have Haste or something similar though (Army Paeon is dead to me).