BRD 5.0 Feedback, Suggestions, and Requests

[tikiwiki]

one thing i think would be a nice qol change would be when using mages ballad you can get multiple charges of blood letter it can feel a little akward to use it and have emp arrow come off cd it feels like youll waste a reset

[Cetonis]

I don't think people who enjoy the bow aesthetic are really all that offended by the notion of their job having skills like Battle Voice. And I don't think people who are sad about the reduction in support relative to Stormblood, are necessarily "we must add more dps to the raid than any other job or else we'll be offended".

Bard in FFXIV has historically been able to satisfy both camps reasonably well, given that they aren't going to have an extreme classic-Bard-like support in the trinity they've set up, and they aren't going to have some classic hunter with pets and traps and such given how much of a mess pets are etc. Bard has always been able to appeal to both, even if not reaching the ideal of either.

In short I think SE and others are overcomplicating things. Bard should be a job whose core damage kit uses bow and arrow skills, and ranger fans will live if there's a coat of music paint. And they should have some song-themed support skills that feel relevant and impactful, yet on a total scale that keeps it safe balance-wise.

That's... really not that hard to pull off, design-wise. It's mainly a matter of hashing out fine details and actually developing it.

[Vivi_Bushido]

I don't think people who enjoy the bow aesthetic are really all that offended by the notion of their job having skills like Battle Voice. And I don't think people who are sad about the reduction in support relative to Stormblood, are necessarily "we must add more dps to the raid than any other job or else we'll be offended".

Bard in FFXIV has historically been able to satisfy both camps reasonably well, given that they aren't going to have an extreme classic-Bard-like support in the trinity they've set up, and they aren't going to have some classic hunter with pets and traps and such given how much of a mess pets are etc. Bard has always been able to appeal to both, even if not reaching the ideal of either.

In short I think SE and others are overcomplicating things. Bard should be a job whose core damage kit uses bow and arrow skills, and ranger fans will live if there's a coat of music paint. And they should have some song-themed support skills that feel relevant and impactful, yet on a total scale that keeps it safe balance-wise.

That's... really not that hard to pull off, design-wise. It's mainly a matter of hashing out fine details and actually developing it.

What you suggest was describes what 2.0 Bard was exactly. I think the addition of WM is when Bard really started to change.

[HyoMinPark]

What you suggest was describes what 2.0 Bard was exactly. I think the addition of WM is when Bard really started to change.

The addition of WM 1.0 was turning BRD into a caster—something it wasn’t really meant to be (though, I personally didn’t mind Bowmage). I think the most BRDs were satisfied with 4.x BRD as opposed to 2.x BRD. Especially when it came to their MP/TP resources, as they no longer cost the BRD something to use.

[FF3Shadow]

Why can't a bard be a bit selfish with there dps, MCH is full selfish with it's dps, and DNC is selfish too in that it can get it's own buff 100% the time while giving it to another one. I have never seen bard actually get a buff they used for themselves it's always foes for everyone not just bard, and songs are not buff it's the mechanics of the job so I will say don't include them. I just find it sad that SE has changed the bard play style 3 times already. So let's go down history path of what we call the bard today.

2.0 bard - it started off with songs that did nothing for themselves but was good for the group but at the cost of damage Mages and Paeon, while foes was a song strictly for casters (mages/healers). Also we had this wonderful skill called rain of death that actually was very nice to use when you finally reached that level to get it but sadly enough you know what happened, instead of actually changing it so it could be use less often they just replace it with a garbage evasive buff which really didn't do much but hey we still kept a buff on it. And finally we come to the battle voice oh how it sounded like a great buff but turned out to only increase Accuracy which was an issue sometimes in 2.0 but after a while you remove that issue by getting gear with more Accuracy or melding it so in the end it became a useless skill that would follow the bard into the next expansion. The main 2ndary stat that we had to live with was crit otherwise forget blood letter procs.

3.0 bard - So now we come to HW and what a great time it was to enjoy the expansion get new level cap and more, but what does the bard come with well we get screwed and our movements are locked in place and we become the one legendary bow mage that was talked about in the past, the skill was called Wander's minute. Oh and we get all the junk from 2.0 still with use songs still decreasing our dps if someone died and needed mp/tp but eh we are selfish were giving. Another skill we get that made bard play style work well finally was a skill called Iron Jaws that would reset our 18 second dot timer. This actually gave bards a break from have to reapply our dots constantly like we had to in 2.0. Also we get this new skill called sidewander that when I first start using it I thought why do we have this skill the potency on it says one thing but when I would hit sometimes the dps does less then my heavy shot but the potency was higher and this was when you had both dots on not without otherwise it should hit around same potency. Finally we come with a new support skill called Wander's Paean which was garbage at the start but by the end of HW it became very very useful with WAR which always enjoyed it.

[FF3Shadow]

Also about WM it seems that people said bards got a little to powerful at the end HW because of our crit was so high that it out scaled the buff they had to give bard because WM was so bad because it took out auto attacks away so we loss a big amount of dps but the other jobs never complained about them at the start so let's us move on to 4.0

4.0 bard - So finally we come to the time of Accuracy being removed as a 2ndary stat and got built into the jobs. So what came with this bard new bard, well we were able to once move freely around, we actually got songs that were usable and gave no negative effects to us finally, but they gave the party a 2% crit buff which bards would of loved but not given. Also the Archer's Raging Strike buff was nerfed to 10% but I never really looked into if they even out that with the traits since was like nothing can do about it so just kept with it. Sadly we would lose Battle Voice at the price of Accuracy being removed so now it turned into Direct Hit which was a usable stat and helped dps wise not like Accuracy yet denied to bard and most the gear bard was given had low DH. We were given a new support buff called Troubadour that would give either a p. defense, m. defense or more hp to the party based on which song was played and was very nice addition to our support, but at the start of the expansion it did not work on the bard and would have to be fixed within a patch or 2 so yeah this awesome skill off the bat having to be once again selfless but like I said it was fixed. Also that was the only change bard had in 4.0 was that minor fix. Another awesome skill bard would get was Nature Minnie which would help with healers having to heal someone up fast if they got to low and was on a great cd of 45 seconds which made it very usable and saved my party a lot of times from wipes. Another thing that changed for bard was that we finally got dots that would last longer then 5 gcds before being reapplied called stormbite and causticbite. These 2 abilities would bridge the cap and allow instead of 5gcds 9-10 gcds of ticks before resetting which allowed less hassle of dots and kept them in time with the songs. The final ability and the ability that was so annoy because it required you to proc your heave shot Refulgent Arrow. RA was so annoying because it would literally proc after you used an archer skilled called barrage that would give 3 weapon skill attacks and was a main usage for this skill but sadly probably 85% of the time it would never be used with it. Now let's move to current day bard 5.0.

[FF3Shadow]

5.0 bard - Now we come to the 4th iteration of bard which I find sorta for once great that I can do more dps but the job is clunky in some cases. The main clunky part is the opener itself it is so bad to get RA procs off of dots and you shouldn't waste those because 1 tick of a dot does not out way RA's potency so the end result is that you either get the normal dots up quickly or this RA proc right in between first dot and 2nd dot result in a small delay but worth it if you need to delay your opener a little. Another case of it being clunky is when you heavy shot RA procs dots about to drop and barrage comes up while in a RS window, the order should be IJ, RA, then barrage but you are having to delay barrage so much that if you come upon this 2 times in a fight your RS and barrage will come out of sync in resulting in either delaying RS or just keep going. The delay of RS is not a great thing since it could mess up with your alignment of other buffs. Another case is when barrage hits, Apex Arrow fills and Pitch Perfect hits 3 pitches, the order should be of course PP, RA then AA but the result in this is that PP might proc another pitch while doing RA which results in a lose of an AA charge and also while doing PP dot might proc 2 times with PP at 2 stacks and fills up so we loss AA charge again. The AA system was a great new way how bard can play but being on the gcd just messes up bards flow it's like this one off that you wait and wait then it comes up but something else that is higher priority has to push it to the back and is annoying. Another issue I see with AA is it will literally show you proc 2 times on blood letter in result you loss a blood letter proc just because both dots proc same time and you can't hit it quick enough. Another case which has been said earlier is the RA procs and you hit barrage by mistake because it just came off of cd and you just wasted a RA proc which you don't get back. I see DNC feather system is like a charge system that you can build up procs and spend them whenever but they are only gotten by procs, doesn't this sound like bard's bloodletter or RA yet we have no system to hold these procs but DNC does and they can explode with dps at there burst windows. Now that a few of the cases have been talk about issues with bard let's talk about what bard gets, they get upgraded Heavy shot, shadowbite and AA.

[FF3Shadow]

There were also changes made to the jobs support as in removal of foes, NM going to 90s with an increase of 20% from 15%, BV went from 15% to 20%, the song buffs of 2% crit were removed and they did some shuffle of skills. I still do not understand why NM is 90s when Mantra 10 times better is on same cd and hits everyone why make this design choice? BV was not given to bard I don't understand either we only have 1 buff to give us dps increase the other dps jobs have pets, a droid, multiple buffs that help increase there dps but bard only has one how could this be over looked in design, I'm not asking for it back now since there are sides for this but bard has lost a lot of utility and the result we received was being a bit stronger dps wise and yes I don't want to be top dps but the loss does not out way the gain. I now other jobs having issues but this is about bard issues and I do see a few myself while playing it and it constantly bugs me that the way bard play style changes went with a good direction but now fell back a step.

If you read this do give your opinion and do correct me if I missed anything from the history of the bard that I gave I'm not perfect and do miss a few things from time to time but this outlines the history of bard from 2.0-5.0 and I have always enjoyed the job. I don't like to compare the traditional bard with the 14's bard it is unique to the rest of the bards and would like it to stay that way. I only asked some of the designers go out and play 5.0 bard in extremes, Eden normal/savage and not just dungeons because I see no issue with bard running them it's mostly in boss battles that these issues come up. If you play it a bit you will start to notice some of these new bard cases that I mentioned above and I don't have the data that you have behind the scenes. What really hurts the most about this new bard is that a lot of people keep saying it's fine no major issues or don't even speak about it because there are issues with this bard compared to 4.0's bard. I have read some of the suggestions above and some of them are good ones but some are ones I can't agree with but you will look at this feedback and hopefully make proper changes. I would like it better that both bard and dancer can be looked at as a choice because this seemed to be the way players wanted somewhat more options and not this single support.

I know there are 4 post but couldn't fit the history of bard in 1 post.

[Cetonis]

Use. Paragraphs. Also, you can edit more characters into one post, you don't need to do four.

Honestly not going to read the history lesson, seems not relevant really to the matters at hand. But you're wrong on a number of things on the 5.0 bit:

1. Even if RA procs on your Stormbite, you should still Caustic first before using it.

2. Expiring DoTs + Barrage + RA proc doesn't happen often enough to care about this, also you usually have quite a bit of room to push Raging as needed and it can actually be a good thing to do so. See the Balance guide for details.

3. Apex being able to overcap is just normal life and times of any sort of gauge. However, it is notable that if Apex weren't so weak and/or was an oGCD, we would be able to avoid overcap by using it at 90 or 95 without that being a suboptimal play.

4. There's not really anything wrong with getting 10 gauge on a Ballad tick, sure we'd like BL charges but the gauge isn't the reason why.

5. Slow reactions to an RA proc are just a normal gameplay / skill expression dynamic for elements like that. And you really do get a fair amount of time to react, it's not like Firestarter or anything.

6. We definitely do not want self-BV for reasons outlined all over the place in these OF threads.


The Minne / Mantra comparison grinds a lot of people's gears though, so that's a thing.

And while it doesn't really really make sense to say "oh this job got a robot, that job got this, we didn't get enough for Christmas", one of the undercurrents to Bard mumbling is sort of in this vein. That for as good as the changes from SB to ShB were - most everything they removed or simplified makes sense, from a "good game design" perspective, in a vacuum - with other simplified jobs SE generally added or changed something substantive as well. Whereas Bard kind of just lost a bunch of things, with the additions being very shallow and uninteresting.

In SB it was a job that encouraged and rewarded planning and thinking about how you were going to approach things, but now in ShB it's almost entirely about execution, much less decision depth and what little there is being lower impact. That's part of the reason I and others really want to press the notion that any utility added should be flexible, and if they could add some flex into the existing kit that'd be nice too. Because flexibility breeds decisions - "when should I do this" rather than "oh the button is lit up guess I gotta press it".

And on top of that, things feel more important when you're making decisions about them, so it'd be a good way to make sure any added support really hits the mark on making players "feel" more like they're helping the party.

[infinitestory]

While I'm happy that the Apex Arrow sound is being changed, I feel compelled to provide additional feedback to the Square Enix team based on their request for it, and their comments during the Live Letter. Here's hoping they see it.

The concern they addressed during the Live Letter is that Bard had its utility niche moved to Dancer. While I understand people are upset about this, I think there are more pressing issues that, most importantly, do not need to be solved by adding additional utility to Bard. These issues were not addressed during the Live Letter, so I hope the job design team takes them into account.

* The Ranged Physical DPS classes as a whole are not up to par. They are well balanced against each other. However, when you compare to the strongest DPS classes in the game, Monk and Black Mage, all of the Ranged DPS are in the range of 15% behind among top-level players on Savage content, and that's after you account for the discrepancy in utility. The difference is so big that top speedrun groups are preparing to take a second Black Mage instead of a Ranged Physical DPS, because the difference in DPS contribution is bigger than the LB generation and the 1% party buff combined.

* Bard lost planning complexity moving from Stormblood to Shadowbringers, and didn't gain enough complexity back in other areas. Foe, Refresh, and Iron Jaws were more interesting to plan last tier, and while I understand why Refresh can't exist in the current game design, Bard didn't get anything between level 70 and 80 that improves the planning complexity of the class. You can't plan around Apex at all because it's random and the optimal use is so constrained. This is the reason why so many of my requests in the thread OP focus on Apex and giving back Foe. Design updates to those two skills can help refund some of the complexity that Bard lost in the expansion transition.

Thanks again for reading, please do leave a post if you agree with these arguments so that we can help raise awareness for the job design team.