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

[TcomJ]

Calling you out for making mistakes in your analysis is a far cry from blatant ad hominem, my dude.

Calling your nonsense straw man victim blaming other people ideas too. And when you feel attacked, you call other people attacking you first? What a snowflake.

[HyoMinPark]

Calling your nonsense straw man victim blaming other people ideas too. And when you feel attacked, you call other people attacking you first? What a snowflake.

Where did I victim blame or strawman. I'll wait for you to quote it for me.

At least I attack arguments. Not the people making them.

[RoseBnargin]

I agree with Genji/TcomJ. Bard became the easiest and laziest thing with shb. They literally took the actual bard feature and killed it. I think this is the biggest disappointment related to job changes i've ever seen. Smack your face across your keyboard and you're good to go.

[TcomJ]

I agree with Genji/TcomJ. Bard became the easiest and laziest thing with shb. They literally took the actual bard feature and killed it. I think this is the biggest disappointment related to job changes i've ever seen. Smack your face across your keyboard and you're good to go.

Exactly! Clearly to make way for DNC at the same time with the nonsense doomed linear homogenization mentality Square has done before with 3 installments of ff13, which was a bore fest.

[Connor]

Well, the ideas you had for songs gave me pause to consider either how much BRD's personal damage would have to be nerfed to compensate (I'm thinking of RDM here, as the developer's main argument for it doing the lowest damage of the casters is "It has Verraise", but we all know how useful Verraise becomes when fights shift from progression to farm territory); or how weak they would have to be (I'm thinking of DNC's Curing Waltz - individually you get maybe ~5,000 HP restore, so stacked you'll maybe be lucky to see ~10,000 restored; and, while nice, consider how large our HP pools are right now and how little of an impact it can have being a 60-second ability that actually requires everyone stacked in a 3y radius to be used effectively).

I want more support, I just don't want the tools to feel... lackluster or like they lose value once you shift from prog to farming. With MP, at least, it always had a use (back in the day, and back in SB - it actually had a more versatile use in SB compared to ARR/HW, imo). Now, if they could give us some tools that would be useful in all stages of content, that would be lovely. I think it would be nice for Minne to be AOE - but I suppose they want that to be exclusive to MNK's Mantra and our Minne to have the single-target effect only.

Perhaps they can bring Foe's back at some point and rework it into something. A gauge ability or an oGCD on a CD. Personally, I'd love for it to still use MP, because then our MP bar would have a use at least. As it is now, it just sits there doing nothing.

Yeah, I get what you mean about utility (specifically healing/raise) comes with a damage tax that can’t easily be refunded in rDPS. That said, in terms of balancing I do think the shielding effect on Paean is a good way to get around having to take a heavy DPS tax. Shields are more versatile than direct healing generally, so there’d be loads of applications for the ability to support the party in any kind of content. And while a HP shield can definitely be powerful, I think if the potency was low enough (though not too), it wouldn’t require too much of a DPS tax, since it’s not going to bringing an invaluable contribution in raids like with old Refresh

In terms of MP, I think having to manage how it’s used could maybe also act of a sort of balance. If we got say, Requiem, a Shield Paean, and say AoE Minne, just having them on cooldowns might not be enough to limit how much they bring to the party. If they all shared a resource though (and possibly shared cooldowns in some places), I think it could possibly be easier to balance. The implementation wasn’t great, but I liked the idea of having to decide between ‘should I maximise Burst DPS?’ or ‘should I support party’ thing that the original songs had, though the DPS loss was excessive. Basically, creating a situation where Bards can be the great damage dealers they are now, but sacrificing that great DPS to support the party when they need to (sacrifice would potentially be regained in rDPS maybe). If not MP, then the Soul Voice gauge could act as a way to give Bards more support options without having to either cut too much into DPS or make the support too weak

Lastly, I totally get the concern about support being actually worthwhile. Having lots of support options is great, but if’s all too weak or situational to be impactful then it can feel just as bad as having none. Curing Waltz is an example of a great idea that ended up in the situation. Having to stack with the dance partner to get the full strength heal is fun and makes you want to consider timing for using it. But the even when you get the full heal it’s like ‘was there really much point?’ I mean, at ilvl441 I thing I get around 8Kish with a normal Curing Waltz stacked with Dance Partner lol, which is less than 10% of some players Hp pools lol. But then there’s the issue of if they make it scale fully so that it’s a 400 potency heal, it could end up a bit broken. So I feel like these kinds of abilities, particularly in the example of Curing Waltz, do tend to run into issues where it’s too weak if it’s balanced but too unbalanced if it’s powerful.

As an addendum, I was considering the idea of ‘Refresh’ type of song that required heavy resource usage (high MP / long cast time / like 50 Soul Gauge or something like that. Being the ‘resource healer’ meant that the support never felt like it wasn’t worthwhile no matter what you were doing. Though, the issue with giving Bard a form of Refresh song would naturally be that it’d be extremely valuable, so it’s difficult to balance.

[SaitoHikari]

You really don't know how to read that data, do you? Oh well, here's another point for how data can be misused/badly interpreted.

Literally the entire point of the raid DPS display is to show that even though Dancer has party utility, the actual effect of the utility bonuses are so weak + Dancer personal DPS is so low that their total contribution can't really compare to just taking other classes along. You can argue how Dancer provides more damage buffs to other party members than any other class in the game. 10k personal damage + 1k given to other party members is still lower than 12k personal damage + 300 given to other party members, in a game where the raid scene is focused around beating enrage timers.

Though again, that is less about Bard VS Dancer, and more about the poor state of the balance between support and raw DPS classes in general.

(My interest in this topic is mostly from a design standpoint rather than anything selfish. I don't mean to argue to any lurking Dancers that your class is useless. My personal raid team runs both Bard and Dancer, after all, and I'd like to think we're doing alright since we're nearing the end of E3S right now.)

---

Regarding Apex Arrow, we are in agreement that it is a bad skill, just not how to actually address it. But rather than delete it, I'd rather have it changed - if only because you're going to be very disappointed for the next two years if you expect otherwise.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5127424

The developers straight up won't delete and replace it with a new skill mid-expansion. I don't recall that ever happening for any class in the history of this game - the closest thing might have been Warrior's Shake It Off, but that was because it was formerly a defensive skill that was entirely useless in 99% of situations (being a self-debuff cleanse that IIRC only worked on esuna-able debuffs, just like Warden's Paean).

[HyoMinPark]

You don't get it at all, do you. It doesn't matter that BRD's aDPS and rDPS have less of a difference than DNC's aDPS and rDPS. aDPS is not an important factor here; it's not an important number. The number you want to look at is rDPS, because that is the number that matters. BRD's rDPS is higher than DNC's rDPS. BRD's rDPS is more consistent than DNC's rDPS. BRD's rDPS is more reliable than DNC's rDPS. Regardless of how much you want to ignore that because it hurts your whinging, DNC, even with the 1,500+ rDPS it can bring, is still below BRD's total rDPS contribution.

Where are we arguing that we want BRD to have less utility and more personal damage? Do you actually read things before you respond to them? I've said repeatedly I want it to have more support brought back, but, of course, you blatantly ignore my posts because they defeat your arguments. Where is Saito arguing that they want BRD to remain a more "selfish physical ranged"? Nowhere. They're saying to be careful about asking for more utility, simply because the developers design utility jobs with a heavy damage tax in mind - something that plagues the job you are blinded by hatred by (DNC) and NIN. And DNC is in far more trouble than BRD because of that. We've already explained why repeatedly, but BRD is definitely the most comfy of the two and the most reliable in terms of raid contribution. DNC is more reliant on their dance partner than BRD ever was on something like piercing.

How in the heck is Saito attacking you? Attacking the flaws in your argument is absolutely not the same as attacking you as a poster. It's pointing out that your argument is flawed and weak. Perhaps because you keep cherry-picking and ignoring the data right in front of you, insisting instead that posters are lying because they won't risk linking to FFLogs - by the way, you haven't been banned because no one has reported you. ForteNightshade already brought up Dervy, who is a well-known theorycrafter and who did stat weights back in HW. They were banned for linking to the site, not once, but 4 times. Their post was reported enough to earn them 4 bans at the same time.

[TcomJ]

You don't get it at all, do you. It doesn't matter that BRD's aDPS and rDPS have less of a difference than DNC's aDPS and rDPS. aDPS is not an important factor here; it's not an important number. The number you want to look at is rDPS, because that is the number that matters. BRD's rDPS is higher than DNC's rDPS. BRD's rDPS is more consistent than DNC's rDPS. BRD's rDPS is more reliable than DNC's rDPS. Regardless of how much you want to ignore that because it hurts your whinging, DNC, even with the 1,500+ rDPS it can bring, is still below BRD's total rDPS contribution.

Where are we arguing that we want BRD to have less utility and more personal damage? Do you actually read things before you respond to them? I've said repeatedly I want it to have more support brought back, but, of course, you blatantly ignore my posts because they defeat your arguments. Where is Saito arguing that they want BRD to remain a more "selfish physical ranged"? Nowhere. They're saying to be careful about asking for more utility, simply because the developers design utility jobs with a heavy damage tax in mind - something that plagues the job you are blinded by hatred by (DNC) and NIN. And DNC is in far more trouble than BRD because of that. We've already explained why repeatedly, but BRD is definitely the most comfy of the two and the most reliable in terms of raid contribution. DNC is more reliant on their dance partner than BRD ever was on something like piercing.

How in the heck is Saito attacking you? Attacking the flaws in your argument is absolutely not the same as attacking you as a poster. It's pointing out that your argument is flawed and weak. Perhaps because you keep cherry-picking and ignoring the data right in front of you, insisting instead that posters are lying because they won't risk linking to FFLogs - by the way, you haven't been banned because no one has reported you. ForteNightshade already brought up Dervy, who is a well-known theorycrafter and who did stat weights back in HW. They were banned for linking to the site, not once, but 4 times. Their post was reported enough to earn them 4 bans at the same time.

https://www.fflogs.com/help/rdps

You are the one that don't get it. The rank of rDPS for DNC even if in dead last, the score is 89 compare to its aDPS at 77.
Bard on another hand, it's rDPS is ranked at 90 from its aDPS at 88. Therefore Bard gives minimal raid party buff damage, while all the buff clearly mostly go through DNC instead. Hence SE stole identity just for DNC to have its place like in Q/A.

Look at the definition, and you can still say that difference in scores mean nothing and DNC do not give dmg buffs more than bard. You are the one who is unable to interpret the data.

[HyoMinPark]

https://www.fflogs.com/help/rdps

You are the one that don't get it. The rank of rDPS for DNC even if in dead last, the score is 89 compare to its aDPS at 77.
Bard on another hand, it's rDPS is ranked at 90 from its aDPS at 88. Therefore Bard gives minimal raid party buff damage, while all the buff clearly mostly go through DNC instead. Hence SE stole identity just for DNC to have its place like in Q/A.

Look at the definition, and you can still say that difference in scores mean nothing and DNC do not give dmg buffs more than bard. You are the one who is unable to interpret the data.

No, I understand perfectly well what rDPS and aDPS are. You are the one who does not understand that the discrepancy in aDPS is irrelevant when the only metric that matters is rDPS. Which is why FFLogs defaults to rDPS values over any other numerical value now.

I never said otherwise - I'm well aware that DNC provides more buffs than BRD. HOWEVER, this is irrelevant when BRD gives more rDPS overall even with DNC's buffs. If you would actually read what people say before replying, you would realize this. The last part of your comment is unneeded because I've already said that DNC provides more than BRD in buffs. Try reading first before you post.

This is a strange hill for you to want to die with your argument on.

[TcomJ]

No, I understand perfectly well what rDPS and aDPS are. You are the one who does not understand that the discrepancy in aDPS is irrelevant when the only metric that matters is rDPS. Which is why FFLogs defaults to rDPS values over any other numerical value now.

This is a strange hill for you to want to die with your argument on.

You clearly don't read formula they calculate.
Let me show abit of basic high school calculus.

rDPS = DPS - (damage gained from others' external buffs) + (damage given to others by your own external buffs) - (aDPS = DPS - (damage gained from others' single target external buffs))

you get .....damage give to others by your own external buffs.

That DNC difference between aDPS and rDPS is literally that. Don't come and tell me DNC don't give more buffs than Bard when the math, the data, the formula are all there and you insist to fail math.