Bard in FF14 is so much like Hunter without Pet in Ragnarok Online

[RadicalPesto]

People sure love to exaggerate how much bard has changed because it lost one (boring, uninteractive) passive buff and foe requiem (which was designed in an unpleasant to use manner). Like I've seen people make wild claims such as dancer far surpassing bard in terms of DPS (dancer is inferior to bard by every raid dps metric) or machinist doing so much more dps than bard (the difference is quite small) when the only thing the class lacks now is some musical flavor it had in Stormblood, and even then, bard presses way more music-themed skills now per minute than it did in Heavensward.

[Selig07]

People sure love to exaggerate how much bard has changed because it lost one (boring, uninteractive) passive buff and foe requiem (which was designed in an unpleasant to use manner). Like I've seen people make wild claims such as dancer far surpassing bard in terms of DPS (dancer is inferior to bard by every raid dps metric) or machinist doing so much more dps than bard (the difference is quite small) when the only thing the class lacks now is some musical flavor it had in Stormblood, and even then, bard presses way more music-themed skills now per minute than it did in Heavensward.

Still stands that Machinist does more rDPS and Dancer provides more group support... Goes back to my previous post last night, what is the point of playing a Bard right now, aside from just liking the style/theme of it?

[RadicalPesto]

Still stands that Machinist does more rDPS and Dancer provides more group support... Goes back to my previous post last night, what is the point of playing a Bard right now, aside from just liking the style/theme of it?

The game is balanced enough for you to play what you like, Bard is one of the jobs with the least to complain about, given that its current problem is almost purely one of flavor (and the flavor is still better than it has been for most of the job's existence, songs being a frequent part of your rotation is superior to how much you wanted to avoid them in heavensward and a realm reborn for the most part). Both Dancer and Machinist currently have more pressing design issues than Bard does, with Dancer being a numerically underwhelming class whose support still puts it at the bottom of the raid dps hierarchy, and Machinist being atrocious to play for American East Coast players due to hypercharge windows. Would I like more flavor on bard? Sure, for example, it would've been nice if instead of simply deleting foe requiem, they instead gave its animation, name and icon to Raging Strikes (a totally non-flavorful skill where you just strike a pose to do more damage), and I would prefer it if Warden's Paean was more impactful and Battle Voice was a lot more frequent in our rotation... but otherwise, Bard doesn't have many major gameplay or balance issues.

They seriously need to change the gauge sound for Apex Arrow though.

[SaitoHikari]

The game is balanced enough for you to play what you like, Bard is one of the jobs with the least to complain about, given that its current problem is almost purely one of flavor (and the flavor is still better than it has been for most of the job's existence, songs being a frequent part of your rotation is superior to how much you wanted to avoid them in heavensward and a realm reborn for the most part). Both Dancer and Machinist currently have more pressing design issues than Bard does, with Dancer being a numerically underwhelming class whose support still puts it at the bottom of the raid dps hierarchy, and Machinist being atrocious to play for American East Coast players due to hypercharge windows. Would I like more flavor on bard? Sure, for example, it would've been nice if instead of simply deleting foe requiem, they instead gave its animation, name and icon to Raging Strikes (a totally non-flavorful skill where you just strike a pose to do more damage), and I would prefer it if Warden's Paean was more impactful and Battle Voice was a lot more frequent in our rotation... but otherwise, Bard doesn't have many major gameplay or balance issues.

They seriously need to change the gauge sound for Apex Arrow though.

Pretty much.

Like a fair amount of us expected, the teams that have already cleared this savage raid tier actually took Bards along with no Dancer in sight. Dancer isn't anywhere near as gamebreaking as the community is making it out to be.

[TcomJ]

Wrong. Your song rotation is 80 seconds: 30-30-20 with only deviating in very niche, usually fight-specific instances. Normal rotation is to clip the last 10 seconds of Army's to re-enter Minuet the moment RS comes off cooldown.



What? DNC doesn't have 3 buffs that are raid-wide. It has Standard Finish, which is 100% uptime on 1 person, and Technical Finish, which is 20s of +5% damage for the entire party every 120s. The only other party-wide they have are:
- Shield Samba, which is the same as Troubadour
- Curing Waltz, if people stack for it within the 3y radius around the DNC/their partner; it heals for 200 potency on the DNC and their partner, so 400 if stacked
- Improvisation, which is used ONLY during downtime as it requires the DNC to not move a la Meditation on SAM (and it's a healing potency buff, not a damage buff)

https://i.redd.it/gfk2chxgn7331.png

And sure, 80sec then 80. Make no difference when it's 80-90 depending on your cooldown of mage ballad anyway.

And since everyone count Trabadour as the party buff, I will do it as well. Fair is fair.

[Neela]

Yes gimme dat EDP!
And Soul Breaker while were at it, a kind of Meteor Assault i already got xD
And please some usable Katars (i cried when i saw monks having em...absolutly illfit for monks animations)

i I thought katars would be ninja weapons back in the days but... well ^^'
I really miss those days tbh : /

[HyoMinPark]

https://i.redd.it/gfk2chxgn7331.png

You were arguing party buffs a la damage buffs - because there are no other types of buffs that one would stack, outside of progression where you may have to stack mitigative buffs. DNC has 1 party-wide damage buff (Technical Finish). The other two are self and single-target (Standard Finish/Devilment). BRD has 1 party-wide buff.

Your cheat sheet mistakenly refers to Devilment as Saber Dance. Saber Dance is a weaponskill.

Stacking buff, should ask DNC about that. Because if you read the buff synergy abilities for each class, DNC has like 5-6 of them over all and 3 of them are already partywide.

DNC only has 1 that they would actively stack with other raidwide buffs. Just like BRD does. Standard Finish/Devilment only affect the DNC and one other party member, so I think it's unfair to try and compare them to raid buffs one would stack.

And sure, 80sec then 80. Make no difference when it's 80-90 depending on your cooldown of mage ballad anyway.

Your songs will always be off cooldown so that you can do an 80 second rotation. Under no circumstances will you have to do a 90s rotation to line them up. So I have no idea what you mean by "depending on your cooldown of Mage's Ballad" because it will always be off-cooldown when it comes up in your rotation unless you messed up the rotation.

And it does make a difference. 80s means you enter RS faster, which means more frequent bursts. 90s means you're delaying it, which hurts your overall damage. Especially if you end up losing a usage of RS+Minuet in a fight. So your rotation duration does matter.

And since everyone count Trabadour as the party buff, I will do it as well. Fair is fair.

You're being deliberately disingenuous by insinuating that DNC has something BRD does not in the form of Shield Samba. Troub, Samba, and Tactician are all the same, so you can't weigh one against the other as if its an inherent advantage. Improv is also a very highly situational skill that is only used when there is downtime since the DNC cannot move or perform any actions while using it. They can attempt to weave it for a brief healing buff, but doing so can also screw up their personal Esprit, so it takes careful planning on the part of the DNC to make sure they don't end up with janky Esprit (which usually happens anyways).

Curing Waltz is fairly weak even when both DNC and their partner are stacked, considering the amount of HP we have (in Savage, most have 90+ in i450 gear, with tanks inching towards 130k+). It's nifty to have, but I've yet to actually save anyone with it in Savage.


I'm as disappointed as the next BRD that BRD lost some support capabilities, but you've been going around acting as if the sky is falling on the job when it really isn't. BRD has far more consistent damage compared to DNC, and the preliminary rDPS numbers on E1S show MCH, BRD, and DNC all really close to one another in terms of rDPS. We'll see how it stacks up as more logs show up, but BRD is hardly hurting outside of an identity crisis with its support lore and some mild QoL like Apex Arrow function/tooltip/sound change.

Still stands that Machinist does more rDPS and Dancer provides more group support... Goes back to my previous post last night, what is the point of playing a Bard right now, aside from just liking the style/theme of it?

BRD has more reliable rDPS than DNC does. DNC rDPS is all dependent on how well their Dance Partner does. If their Dance Partner dies, DNC takes a huge hit to both rDPS and pDPS (less Esprit gain because their partner died). There's a reason why groups were opting to take BRD for world prog over DNC.

[RikuGx]

i I thought katars would be ninja weapons back in the days but... well ^^'
I really miss those days tbh : /

I sometimes load back to my old P-Server as i never could effort for the real thing when i was under 18,. Its still running to this day haha
But yeah, modern games could learn a hughe deal from Ragnarok in terms of balancing and fun PVP/GVG. I had field days running as "General" in WoE coordinating all dat shit xD

[Neela]

WoE was one of a kind! Stories like the all dominating Forever Love and their alliance hold their invested Bergel Castle for more than 300 days in a row - which caused a pact of the whole server to crash it before they reach the one years mark -> which later became known as the „Holy Geffen War“.

Fun times! Balanced times! :3

Technical Mass-Pvp just rocks...
FF14 „mass“ pvp or Feast are just meh in compression... :/

[RikuGx]

WoE was one of a kind! Stories like the all dominating Forever Love and their alliance hold their invested Bergel Castle for more than 300 days in a row - which caused a pact of the whole server to crash it before they reach the one years mark -> which later became known as the „Holy Geffen War“.

Fun times! Balanced times! :3

Technical Mass-Pvp just rocks...
FF14 „mass“ pvp or Feast are just meh in compression... :/

I enjoyed pvp for a while, also mained ninja there. But when i lately couldnt even kill a dancer because of the lack of any ranged attack ability whatsoever while she kited me easily i entirely gave up on pvp as well. Sure, playing tank is also quiet intresting in pvp but my main already was dead in pvp to me and in pve its also dead so i currently lost my entire intrest to play FF14. Summoner is a little bit fun but seems to have a lot of issues as well ect ect...


But i got a similar story from that p-server as i held one geffen castle with just 12 people for over 120 days. And what killed it wasnt another guild who conquered but infighting between the "main" guild and the "Secondary" guild which i led at that time. They struggled with having active people and wanted to merge again but demanded we give up our invested castle n stuff so they can be stronger. none of us agreed to it so we disbanded and gave them an empty guild back.
Since then ive never trusted german guilds ever again, they just dont work...