I truly hope they buff BRD...

[Shinklet]

Bard isn't as bad as you think, it's about average, balanced almost. But people don't realise it because bard has been meta-defining top tier range for 4 years.

I'd wholly expect a buff to summoner, ninja, gunbreaker and scholar before brd is even considered, even then I'd expect mch and pld to be touched on dirst

[DioK]

Bard isn't as bad as you think, it's about average, balanced almost. But people don't realise it because bard has been meta-defining top tier range for 4 years.

I'd wholly expect a buff to summoner, ninja, gunbreaker and scholar before brd is even considered, even then I'd expect mch and pld to be touched on dirst

I'll agree that bard is balanced when taken by itself (i.e. bard versus bard combat), but it doesn’t feel balanced to me when placed in the context of everything else that other classes do. Bard has less damage, no mitigation, no self-healing, no viable escape mechanisms (we have an escape skill; it just doesn't work well enough compared to the gap closers melee classes have), and negligible party utility compared to other classes. That's not a balanced situation, in my opinion, and none of these issues used to be the case. Bards are basically the first targets because we're such easy kills and an easy way to rank up battle high quickly, precisely because once an opponent is on us, we're just dead. About the only thing we can fight is another bard.

Basically, bard has just been over-nerfed and then left behind.