A Bard Thought

[HyoMinPark]

I don't know why, but when I read "happy middle ground for both sides," I thought of something interesting. It's an unrefined idea, and would need a lot of talk, but what if Bard got their own "Diurnal Sect" and "Nocturnal Sect"? I'm going to call them: "Hunter's Rhyme" and "Minstrel's Rhyme."

Hunter's Rhyme is basically what we have now: Has you using actions like Apex Arrow, Refulgent Arrow, Empyreal Arrow, and Pitch Perfect to do higher selfish DPS like an Archer.

Minstrel's Rhyme changes these actions to musical abilities that support like how Dancer functions. You lose out on a large chunk of selfish DPS, but you gain a lot of additional DPS through padding.

I can immediately see this being a tightrope of a balancing act as you would want them both to essentially contribute an equal amount of DPS ultimately, but this strategy could be done without needing to add another job. Just make Bard able to flex between a bow-focused fighter and a song-focused fighter.

The issue with you advocating for AST-like Sects on BRD is that they would never be balanced. That is something AST has struggled with since it was released in 3.0: Diurnal is always better than Nocturnal unless one is solo-healing Savage/Ultimate, where shields would be needed. Your idea would likely leave BRD in a similar state, where one stance is always preferred and the other is blatantly underpowered by comparison (Noct Sect is essentially a trash, less MP-efficient SCH; where as Diurnal is as decent as a WHM).

You can’t have a heavily support-oriented “Sect” without risking it affecting the balance currently between the physical ranged—which has been an issue in the past. MCH wasn’t terrible in SB, but it didn’t offer nearly the same kind of rDPS contributions that BRD could. Coupled with how god-awful it could be to play at higher latencies, BRD was blatantly favored because it could do everything a MCH could and more. And it had the bow & arrow aesthetic people love while not feeling horrible to play at higher ping. Giving BRD an rDPS buffing/padding stance risks upsetting this balance and tilting the scales in favor of the job while leaving the other two sort of hanging out on the sidelines. Conversely, if they don’t make the rDPS stance “worth it enough”, then it becomes the useless stance (Nocturnal), and you will be required to use your damage stance more often than not.

You could also end up with the DNC situation: where your personal damage is much lower to compensate your rDPS contributions. DNC can provide 1,600+ in rDPS buffs compared to BRD’s ~400 with Battle Voice, but their personal damage is much lower. Almost to the point where some players are dissatisfied because they feel weak, and others harbor misconceptions that the job cannot clear content and begin locking them out of Party Finders (unfortunately, I have seen instances of this already on Aether in E3S and E4S PFs—they’re doing the same thing with NIN, as well). Trick Attack is directly hurting NIN right now because of “how much it can give”, and it’s to the point where a lot of NINs are asking for it to be removed entirely.

In short, there is a huge balancing act required for this sort of idea. And, unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it seems. Given the way developers want to tax high rDPS with lower pDPS, I would hate to see them push BRD into a position like what DNC and NIN are in currrently: where their utility is either bordering on or actively hurting the jobs (in other words: DNC could stand potency buffs to bring it up a bit and NIN is just in a right state at the moment). I think this design philosophy is flawed—because I think you can find better ways to balance; and I think one can have decent rDPS contributions without taxing pDPS too heavily. But I’m not a game designer. I also know that AST has struggled with these two different stances/identities since its inception, and I don’t feel confident that your BRD wouldn’t undergo the same struggle.



Your declarations of wanting an “actual BRD” are unlikely to happen—because I’m interpreting “actual BRD” as something similar to XI, where they were closer to pure support as opposed to the hybrid that they have been in XIV. This game could not fit in a pure support-type role, nor would I want it to.

I’d be more than happy with an iteration of BRD similar to 4.x BRD: bring back Foe’s, allow it to be flexible in terms of function; and I’d honestly be happy with a bit more resource management on BRD as they had in the past (e.g., MP recovery a la Refresh) but I know that that’s unlikely to happen given how most jobs seem to be responsible for their own resource management now. Add in some QoL adjustments like charges on BL and maybe EA, as well as a functionality change on Apex, and I’d be fairly happy. I don’t have any desire to be 100% support.