Bard's Thematic Future

[Connor]

snip.

Honestly I’d love to see this happen. If there was a traditional style ‘Bard’ job in the game that used a Harp as it’s main weapon I don’t think I’d ever look at another job. If it was a caster DPS/healer I’d turn into the ultimate Yoshi-P White Knight.

It would ultimately mean everyone wins; Rangers can have their Arrow stuff, Bards can have their song stuff. It feels like they backed themselves into a design corner by arbitrarily squishing these two jobs together purely because ‘Ranger’ was considered too similar to ‘Archer’ (though couldn’t you say the same about Pugilist and Monk?)A Ranger job could easily keep the exact same playstyle ‘Bard’ has now so that nobody has to lose out on what they like.

Sadly though with the amount of work it would require would be astronomical, since they’d be designing two new jobs, and then having to look at the design of every other job in the respective role to accommodate the new jobs and (try) to keep balance. New job quests, new job gear, new animations for both jobs, etc.

Still though, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever come across someone who liked Bard for what it actually is. It’s seems to be either, ‘I like playing Archer type jobs / using a bow’ or ‘I like playing Bard type jobs / the musical theme’. I’ve not encountered anyone who’s said ‘i like the way they combined Bard and Ranger into a single job’. Not that I want to demean the opinion of those who do like the combination, but I feel like I’m general it’s not this combination that brings people to the job to start with

So I mean, I feel like the Bard community is already split between two different jobs; the musical ‘Bard’ and the bow wielding ‘Archer’.

I’d also like to add a disclaimer that this is all for discussion’s sake and I’m not seriously expecting it to somehow change their stance on Bard/Archer being a shared job. Just wanted to say that I think if there was some way they could do something like it could resolve the whole ‘identity’ issues the job has

[Idolon]

I’ve not encountered anyone who’s said ‘i like the way they combined Bard and Ranger into a single job’. Not that I want to demean the opinion of those who do like the combination, but I feel like I’m general it’s not this combination that brings people to the job to start with

I like the way they combined Bard and Ranger into a single job.

Or at least I liked it before its support got nerfed to the point where Monk is arguably a better support job. I still like the way the job plays, but I'd much rather have stronger and/or more frequently-usable support abilities.

[MartaDemireux]

Honestly, I believe it was a mistake to melt the concept of a Bard with the Archer.

I totally agree that they made a mistake in merging the two together. And I totally agree they should work toward separating them. However, I feel like the amount of work involved would be a major hindrance.

An idea I've thrown around over at Reddit would be a job glamour of sorts - toggle with a command like /jobglamour BRD or /jobglamour RNG. This would keep the gameplay exactly the same between BRD and RNG and just change the look of the abilities. So, BRD gets all sorts of song animations while RNG gets arrow animations. The 3 song stance rotation could turn into 3 different poisons. The Animals command from FFV could make a reappearance of sorts for some of the support abilities. They could even skip commands and make a Harp weapon to change to BRD glamours, having it function similarly to ACN jobs while not having to worry about balancing a new job.

This would considerably lessen the workload for a sooner implementation and could even be a stepping stone for total separation.

[Atamis]

I honestly have zero problem with bard using bows to do their thing. I just dislike bards thematically and feel they are wasting my beloved Ranger job by prancing around like an idiot with a flute. Bards can keep the archer class, they can keep the 1-80 quest line. I just want them to add a ranger job. Call their bows greatbows, or short bows, or whatever, It just needs to do general ranger things and none of this musical nonsense.

[Connor]

I honestly have zero problem with bard using bows to do their thing. I just dislike bards thematically and feel they are wasting my beloved Ranger job by prancing around like an idiot with a flute. Bards can keep the archer class, they can keep the 1-80 quest line. I just want them to add a ranger job. Call their bows greatbows, or short bows, or whatever, It just needs to do general ranger things and none of this musical nonsense.

I think there are lots of people who feel this way about the job too; they’re drawn to the bow/archer style of the job but get the music aspects thrust on them. That’s why I think maybe one day in like 7.0 expansion or whatever they should maybe consider trying to make a separation work. Right now it’s a balancing act they just don’t seem to get right. There’s definitely the argument that the current design decision means that both ‘Bard’ lovers and ‘Ranger’ lovers lose out. I mean, there are only so many abilities one job can have. And Bard is the only job in the game that is still pulling from two different ‘traditional jobs, meaning that realistically it can only ever be 50/50 or weighted towards one identity more than the other.

Like, imagine if Black Mage and Monk just got randomly mashed together? Neither Black Mages nor Monks would be happy. It might be fun to play, but it’s neither one nor the other at that point.

And of course liking the mix of the two into one job is something people that people feel too. That said, I think there is the argument for people who like it is now, that changing it to Ranger but removing the musical aspects would change extremely little in terms of the jobs actual playstyle. Just replace songs with arrow coatings for proc activations and there’s really little else that needs done to make it a ‘pure Ranger’ job.

At the very least, maybe they could rename the current Bard to something else, leave it exactly how it is and add another musical job that’s more like a real traditional Bard? Having one class split into two different jobs doesn’t work as we’ve seen with Summoner and Scholar, so a real ‘Bard’ would need to be an entirely different job anyway (it could never have Archer as a starting class)

I mean, I always see people saying hybrids can’t exist for ffxiv. Yet Bard is, for all intents and purposes, an attempt at a hybrid class that’s support and DPS together despite the game clearly not supporting such a playstyle. In my opinion it’s ultimately failed at providing a satisfying hybridisation of the two jobs. Either there’s too much singing, or there’s too much archery; singing is clunky and gets in the way of archery, or the archery is getting in the way of the songs. I find it hard to have faith that they’ll ever find a satisfying combination of these two jobs.

My only wish is that someone was around at the time they finalised the job design and said ‘hey, this isn’t gonna work’ lol

[MPNZ]

IMO, they need to realize that there is no "inbetween" and just DPS-Support hybrid or selfish. DNC is way too weak, and BRD needs to feel like it's doing more support / interaction with songs, buffs, synergy et cetera. And they need to complete the merged BRD/RNG job concept. MCH looks great, please

[LunaFaelyn]

I like the way they combined Bard and Ranger into a single job.

Or at least I liked it before its support got nerfed to the point where Monk is arguably a better support job. I still like the way the job plays, but I'd much rather have stronger and/or more frequently-usable support abilities.

I loved the combination too. But in D&D I always played ranger or bard and I could have them together in ffxiv. I also love support jobs and never cared about doing the most dps, it was all about pushing my team to see them get big numbers. Now I sadly sing songs to myself. The "ranger" aspect of the job feels good. But the bard side just feels empty. Overall the job is boring and way too simple. I don't even call myself a bard main anymore and have stopped raiding. I left my static in fear of being told that I have to master a new job with better support (looking at you monk and dragoon) to be in the new meta, which does not include any physical dps. And as much as I love dancer, it is being locked out by narrow minded speedrunners/harsh dps checks. But at least I feel like I am supporting my friends as a dancer in regular content.
Another bard thread had an idea for a stance button that sounded like a lot of fun to me. There were so many bards that I came across while leveling other jobs that just refused to use songs. It made me so angry. But they have been trying to over simplify the jobs and I don't see SE doing giving us stances. Just like they will never give it the arcanist treatment of splitting into 2 jobs.
At this point neither side, team bard or team ranger, is going to be happy. I have never seen the forums this bad about the identity crisis. My guess is that we are stuck with a ranger that mumbles to itself for the next 2 years.

[ty_taurus]

I totally agree that they made a mistake in merging the two together. And I totally agree they should work toward separating them. However, I feel like the amount of work involved would be a major hindrance.

An idea I've thrown around over at Reddit would be a job glamour of sorts - toggle with a command like /jobglamour BRD or /jobglamour RNG. This would keep the gameplay exactly the same between BRD and RNG and just change the look of the abilities. So, BRD gets all sorts of song animations while RNG gets arrow animations. The 3 song stance rotation could turn into 3 different poisons. The Animals command from FFV could make a reappearance of sorts for some of the support abilities. They could even skip commands and make a Harp weapon to change to BRD glamours, having it function similarly to ACN jobs while not having to worry about balancing a new job.

This would considerably lessen the workload for a sooner implementation and could even be a stepping stone for total separation.

Honestly, the only real work it would take is just making 1 new job for the most part, so it's really not unreasonable for a 6.0 scenario.

Ranger as a concept is essentially the same as the current Bard, just with new names and animations for Bard's current song abilities, which is only a fraction of the overall kit anyway. All you're changing is Mage's Ballad, Army's Paeon, Warden's Paeon, Wonderer's Minuet, Nature's Minne, Battle Voice, and Troubadour i.e. 7 abilities, which is less work than the Machinist rework since those abilities can still function identically. The only other thing would be creating a new set of job quests from level 30+ which is a bit more work than is put into a typical new job per expansion, but not alarmingly so.

New Bard is essentially just one of the new jobs, except it would start at level 30 and would just inherit the current Bard job quest line, so the only change would be to the NPC weapons associated with the Bard Quest Line, and whatever new Job quests got added.

So basically: 1 New Job by design, 1 new Job Quest Line. Not that much more work than adding in any other new job.

[DPZ2]

Honestly, the only real work it would take is just making 1 new job for the most part, so it's really not unreasonable for a 6.0 scenario.

It will never happen. For one thing, it would mean the creation of Yet Another Ranged DPS ... something that simply won't happen after the brouhaha of "5.0 ignored healers".

[ty_taurus]

It will never happen. For one thing, it would mean the creation of Yet Another Ranged DPS ... something that simply won't happen after the brouhaha of "5.0 ignored healers".

So what about a Ranged DPS AND a Healer? Bard and Geomancer?