Changes to Bard I'd like to see in 5.1/overall

[Mansion]

Bring foe's requiem back as a oGCD song with no cast time, change troubadour and other similar ranged skills to more unique support skills, and give each song a little different utility (1% more damage/2% crit rate/4% more direct hit rate) and now you have a bard that has it's rdps fixed and has it's identity back.

I like this idea. Then to avoid overpowered synergies, they could make these buffs not stackable for anyone with Standard / Technical Finish debuff. But that just tricks Bard and Dancer into having to be carefully balanced against each other, and this leaves MCH in a weird spot.

[Rika007]

I like this idea. Then to avoid overpowered synergies, they could make these buffs not stackable for anyone with Standard / Technical Finish debuff. But that just tricks Bard and Dancer into having to be carefully balanced against each other, and this leaves MCH in a weird spot.

That won't be necessary. The only true overpowered synergy that existed before was Bard's damage scaling massively with crit, because Crit get's stronger as an expansion goes on. By the end of Stormblood, Bard's passive crit aura granted far more damage then Foe's Requiem ever did. And Bard itself's damage was crit reliant due to crit based procs, so because it had a self buff that boosted crit rate, you could pair it with summoner who also could boost crit, and then Dragoon who also could boost crit, and also boosted damage even more with piercing debuff, and you had the OP synergy meta.

This simply put doesn't have a chance of happening again. Bard no longer has a self crit buff, no longer has crit aura's, no longer is reliant on crits for it's proc's, both Scholar and Dragoon's crit buff's were heavily nerfed and finally they completely removed damage type debuffs from the game. So making it so that the stacking of Foe's and Technical step is not necessary, unless you plan on doing the same to other inter role party wide buffs. Aka Embolden can't stack with Devotion, or Brotherhood/Battle Littany/Trick Attack can't work together.

[HyoMinPark]

Not to mention, not allowing the two to stack would have the possibility for extremely negative consequences in pug groups. In other words, if the DNC’s Technical Finish was overwritten by a BRD buff, then the DNC loses a crap ton of rDPS contribution, not to mention the pDPS it will lose from no longer getting Esprit from the party or their Dance Partner. It’s already bad enough when I’m paired with another DNC in random groups and my Tech Finish gets overwritten by theirs—I wouldn’t want this to be a thing with BRD, too.

[Rika007]

-snip-

I'm seriously not understanding everyone's fear about Bard becoming so massively OP 'again'. Every time I ask why it's: "Look at the history, it has been present in every meta since the game started." So has freaking Ninja. DRG hasn't dropped from the meta since 3.0. Half the time Bard was meta was because it had legitimately no competition for it's spot. 2.0 Bard was the only physical ranged and source of MP regen in the game. 4.0 Bard got most of it's time in the spotlight due to a version of Machinist that no one liked. And now 5.0 Bard has had half of it's kit and identity gutted and anyone who doesn't play Bard is like, "That's fine, it was too OP so it's identity really doesn't matter." It's infuriating.

[Samsta]

I like this idea. Then to avoid overpowered synergies, they could make these buffs not stackable for anyone with Standard / Technical Finish debuff. But that just tricks Bard and Dancer into having to be carefully balanced against each other, and this leaves MCH in a weird spot.

MCH shouldn't be in a weird spot, it should be the samurai/black mage of ranged physical, nothing strange about that.

[SaitoHikari]

MCH shouldn't be in a weird spot, it should be the samurai/black mage of ranged physical, nothing strange about that.

The only reason MCH is in a weird spot is because 'ranged class' and 'high personal DPS' is a design oxymoron to the community. As long as people insist that ranged DPS need to do much lower damage relative to the other classes, MCH is going to remain a relatively disjointed class.

[Samsta]

The only reason MCH is in a weird spot is because 'ranged class' and 'high personal DPS' is a design oxymoron to the community. As long as people insist that ranged DPS need to do much lower damage relative to the other classes, MCH is going to remain a relatively disjointed class.

It doesn't necessarily need to deal as much personal dps as other personal dps jobs, but it should deal more relative to other ranged physicals, I dunno how that is so hard, make it deal as much personal dps as blm and samurai and then take the "ranged physical" tax from it, shouldn't be hard.

[Rika007]

It doesn't necessarily need to deal as much personal dps as other personal dps jobs, but it should deal more relative to other ranged physicals, I dunno how that is so hard, make it deal as much personal dps as blm and samurai and then take the "ranged physical" tax from it, shouldn't be hard.

The issue is that you're then basically still putting it in a position of "But why do I bring MCH when it offers literally nothing." Current fight design makes the Ranged mobility tax look like a joke. Melee uptime is damn near 100% in all fights, and intelligent casters pretty much never miss a cast with the amount of tools they get to afford mobility. You would need to essentially give MCH a damage level that is just a shade below Black Mage/Samurai to justify it's inclusion over BRD/Dancer (assuming they get buffed and bring back BRD's support). But then a very large portion of the player base would say it's unfair that MCH deals more personal damage then MNK, SMN or DRG while it can dance all over the field.

The issue is now is you really can't just balance the jobs within their own role anymore. That's what they have tried to do in SHB, and it has led to the most unbalanced dps state we have seen in the games history.

[Mansion]

Not to mention, not allowing the two to stack would have the possibility for extremely negative consequences in pug groups. In other words, if the DNC’s Technical Finish was overwritten by a BRD buff, then the DNC loses a crap ton of rDPS contribution, not to mention the pDPS it will lose from no longer getting Esprit from the party or their Dance Partner. It’s already bad enough when I’m paired with another DNC in random groups and my Tech Finish gets overwritten by theirs—I wouldn’t want this to be a thing with BRD, too.

I forgot this actually! I did not think about PUGs at all. My concern was that, if we are to bring Bard and Dancer to a close rDPS, with strong support tools that stack (and thus, multiply) then it would be hard to justify not having that buff bomb duo in your party. If we are to keep two melee and two ranged, with melee as strong as they currently are, and ranged as clunky as they currently are... this just shifts the problem around.
I might be going out of topic now, but I guess that bringing strong support skills to Bards implies further delicate balancing work, and the current situation kind of show how bad the balance is for DPS (especially ranged)

[Hanayumi]

Think apex is the only thing that needs change in 5.1 really, totally needs a different sound to play at max, also could use a bit more damage or quicker charge.