Will bard lose it's identity/class fantasy?

[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...