Come up with ideas to fix Ranged Physical Dps please.

[Aomine1992]

Why y’all trying to compete with SMN, a much more complicated job and from the outside we are moving machines but in real time your Demi summons won’t attack if your running around like an idiot. Your competition is with other physical range not a caster that seems objectively easier to play but in no way is.

[Cetonis]

Why y’all trying to compete with SMN

Because groups can go 2x caster, 2x melee if they want. The price of that is -1% damage party-wide though, so provided ranged are in the same zip code as the fourth-best non-ranged then it's fine.

The problem is that only Dancer makes it into that zip code, and only barely, and only when heavily optimized in a top rate team doing some rng farming. And frankly even that's debatable, on paper it's still not quite worth it. Charitably, Waltz/Samba probably eke it over the edge in the minds of the speed crowd. More likely they still want their personal parses so you need the 1% for that.

Not enough groups bother going for speed-optimal comps for it to really super matter on the ground, but by that measure all effort to balance jobs is irrelevant, so if we're going to think about balance we should accept that it's on academic terms.

And academically, all three ranged should be close enough to the other roles (still clearly behind, but close enough) that there isn't a shadow of a doubt whether or not the 1% party buff makes them worth bringing. That has not been true at any point this expac.

[Akiudo]

Why y’all trying to compete with SMN, a much more complicated job and from the outside we are moving machines but in real time your Demi summons won’t attack if your running around like an idiot. Your competition is with other physical range not a caster that seems objectively easier to play but in no way is.

switched from brd (for like the last half year of stormblood+first 4 months of shb) to summoner, took me all of 2,5 weeks of practice and getting gear (started basically naked while bard was nearly BiS) to parse on the same percentile as smn than on bard, and while i'm not the best on either of them that was still the "clearly purple" club, smn IS NOT HARD, i should be a way better bard than i am smn, i am not, even with way less practice, it simply isn't true, at least in no way shape or form it would need a 1000 dps buffer on bard for it.

[SaitoHikari]

A couple quality of life things would go a long way for Bards, I suppose.

1) Shadowbite: Completely changed. No longer an AoE attack, it is now a 100 potency oGCD that immediately applies both of Bard’s DoTs. Good for openers, though still linked to Sidewinder which would be used later in a fight.

2) New skill with similar effects to old Shadowbite, though reduced in potency as it’s a GCD in comparison. Hail of Arrows, linked to Straighter Shot procs, and learned at level 24. Potency begins at 100 with the target not being afflicted with DoTs, 175 with 1, and guaranteed critical hit with both (can be upgraded to direct critical based on your direct hit rate). Neat in dungeons when you are refreshing DoT in mob packs.

3) Enhanced Army’s Paeon gains a new effect that, when you switch to another song, it extends the currently existing skill/spell speed boost to the party as well. The duration of the buff is also increased from 10 to 15 seconds. Additionally, each Bard GCD performed during Army’s Paeon guarantees a Repertoire stack, so Bards can charge the later party effect without worrying about potential RNG screwage. This also results in greater control over having the Soul Voice gauge ready for a burst phase later, being guaranteed to charge it by 40 minimum.

(To be honest, I haven’t really thought this third one through.)

4) Raging Strikes now adds an additional 20 soul voice gauge upon use. The reason why should be apparent below.

5) New ability, Song of Storms, learned at level 60. (Sidewinder is moved earlier to level 58, as the new proposed skill would fit better at 60 for job quest/thematic reasons.) This introduces the Soul Voice gauge 20 levels earlier in the game. 3 second cool down oGCD with 20 soul voice gauge cost, adding a repertoire stack to the current active song and guaranteed critical hit to the next oGCD ability used within 5 seconds. (Like Hail of Arrows, direct crit is still possible and based on your direct hit rate.)

The above means the gauge will now actually play a role in Bard openers at the start of a fight, reliably powering up repeated Pitch Perfect uses beyond the gamble that Apex Arrow would be. Saving up for Apex is theoretically stronger outside of Minuet windows, however - though Apex potency/gauge cost could need tweaking for this to hold true.

The new skill ideas definitely won’t happen this expansion, but they were out of the box ideas that I think could be fun.

[Lambdafish]

A couple quality of life things would go a long way for Bards, I suppose.

1) Shadowbite: Completely changed. No longer an AoE attack, it is now a 100 potency oGCD that immediately applies both of Bard’s DoTs. Good for openers, though still linked to Sidewinder which would be used later in a fight.

2) New skill with similar effects to old Shadowbite, though reduced in potency as it’s a GCD in comparison. Hail of Arrows, linked to Straighter Shot procs, and learned at level 24. Potency begins at 100 with the target not being afflicted with DoTs, 175 with 1, and guaranteed critical hit with both (can be upgraded to direct critical based on your direct hit rate). Neat in dungeons when you are refreshing DoT in mob packs.

3) Enhanced Army’s Paeon gains a new effect that, when you switch to another song, it extends the currently existing skill/spell speed boost to the party as well. The duration of the buff is also increased from 10 to 15 seconds. Additionally, each Bard GCD performed during Army’s Paeon guarantees a Repertoire stack, so Bards can charge the later party effect without worrying about potential RNG screwage. This also results in greater control over having the Soul Voice gauge ready for a burst phase later, being guaranteed to charge it by 40 minimum.

(To be honest, I haven’t really thought this third one through.)

4) Raging Strikes now adds an additional 20 soul voice gauge upon use. The reason why should be apparent below.

5) New ability, Song of Storms, learned at level 60. (Sidewinder is moved earlier to level 58, as the new proposed skill would fit better at 60 for job quest/thematic reasons.) This introduces the Soul Voice gauge 20 levels earlier in the game. 3 second cool down oGCD with 20 soul voice gauge cost, adding a repertoire stack to the current active song and guaranteed critical hit to the next oGCD ability used within 5 seconds. (Like Hail of Arrows, direct crit is still possible and based on your direct hit rate.)

The above means the gauge will now actually play a role in Bard openers at the start of a fight, reliably powering up repeated Pitch Perfect uses beyond the gamble that Apex Arrow would be. Saving up for Apex is theoretically stronger outside of Minuet windows, however - though Apex potency/gauge cost could need tweaking for this to hold true.

The new skill ideas definitely won’t happen this expansion, but they were out of the box ideas that I think could be fun.

The one I always wanted to see: wide volley - deals minor damage in an AOE and applies a windbite dot to each enemy hit. This dot overwrites stormbite.

This would bring back one of my favourite BRD animations and give BRD an AOE proc for its songs. It always frustrated me that I had to single target apply dots for my songs to even do anything in dungeons

[SaitoHikari]

The one I always wanted to see: wide volley - deals minor damage in an AOE and applies a windbite dot to each enemy hit. This dot overwrites stormbite.

This would bring back one of my favourite BRD animations and give BRD an AOE proc for its songs. It always frustrated me that I had to single target apply dots for my songs to even do anything in dungeons

I want an AoE DoT too, but I refrained from suggesting that since it’s probably crossing the line into actually broken, now that Apex Arrow is a thing. My suggestion has more to do about how straighter shot procs are basically unused during dungeon mass pulls because it’s a DPS loss to be using them in a multi target situation, so giving Straight Shot/Refulgent an AoE counterpart addresses that obvious hole.

That said, Hail of Arrows could just reuse Wide Volley’s animation (or an upgraded version of it), yeah. I think it’d be cool if we got an attack animation that consisted of the bard doing a quick horizontal flip into the air while firing high velocity arrows, the actual firing having a sharp distinctive sound not unlike Monster Hunter World’s bow spread shot attack. Looks and sounds like it has impact, rather than a shower of red that the old Wide Volley had.

[Burningskull]

I would suggest removing all support abilities and just making each job focus on maximizing their damage and playing differently.

[Rasikko]

I should decide to switch to a melee job, because all this fuss for nothing about ranged dps, I can see SE really messing it up because they can't understand what yall even want.

[SaitoHikari]

I should decide to switch to a melee job, because all this fuss for nothing about ranged dps, I can see SE really messing it up because they can't understand what yall even want.

If you or they can't figure it out, then that's kind of a you problem.

These are all just really convoluted ways of saying that people want ranged rDPS contribution to be bumped up to the point where our contribution isn't literally at the same level as someone in a different role dying once. We really shouldn't be having week 1-2 clears with ranged DPS being behind the other two roles by 8-10%/1.5k+ DPS when melee/caster are at their most unoptimized. We're on week 4 and we're literally at a point where at 95th percentile, the gap between the top and bottom DPS is on average a whole whopping 1.7-2k. New strategies aimed at increasing caster/melee uptime are still being ironed out, and the gap will only widen once everyone gets access to better gear on top of that. Even in Ramuh the gap between the top Bard and the top Black Mage is 2.5k.

How much is the 'ranged DPS uptime' penalty actually worth when casters and melee are still managing to be within ~1% uptime of the ranged on every fight? Hell, I've just gone and checked most of the speedkill logs and found something that would be a bit unexpected given the arguments on these forums: The melee/casters have the same uptime as the ranged in most clears.

[Vendalwind]

Even in Ramuh the gap between the top Bard and the top Black Mage is 2.5k.

First off there may be something of note given gear funneling still very much exists at this point, and week 4 most people are still just clearing content and nowhere near BiS.

Second, 2.5k is significant (incorrect tho the max gap is actually only 2k in ramuh) but throwing out those numbers does nothing without contextual relativity. and you are citing the gap at high end percentiles with BLM the MOST varied output class. This is disingenuous. Generally speaking its best to speak in averages rather than outliers. I can do the same thing. The gap between BLM and BRD at lowest percentile in ramuh is: 13k to 12.4k thus only a 600 damage gap. See the problem with that statement? Furthermore raw numbers aren't effective. Percentages speak far more. For instance at synced level 50 content BLM is possibly only ahead of BRD by 100dps. BUT since BLM is doing 700dps and BRD is doing 600 that 100dps gap is 14.3%. In fact more significant than 17.8k (top blm) 15.8 (top BRD) which is 11.3%.

Note I'm still one of those people that thinks ranged do in fact need a buff. But throwing out false and contextless numbers like you did isn't helping this conversation.