6.0 Bard complete rework please

[ty_taurus]

Also note that the idea of bard being musical at all isnt always present. Like how the harper guild may employ tale weaving, but are in reality dragonslayers.

The origin of bard as a word is actually poets. Not musicians.

Not every fantasy writer presents orcs and elves the same way. Similarly not every fantasy game needs to present each archetypal word with the exact same skillset.

The Bard has always been musical in Final Fantasy, which is the series we're playing. We also know that while designing new actions, reworks, and new jobs, the designers aren't just trying to make something that's fun and that performs effectively (even if they don't always succeed), but that they're also trying to capture the fantasy of playing that job as it's played in other Final Fantasy titles. Red Mage is a prime example of this. Why does a Caster DPS deserve to have a reliable healing spell and Resurrection spell? Why is it that they essentially have 2 versions of the same handful of attacks? It was designed because they knew people want the Red Mage to embody the identity of the Final Fantasy Red Mage, and not having their White Magic side would feel like the job wasn't complete.

Bard in all of RPG history may not always be such a heavy musician, but the Final Fantasy Bard often doesn't even have a weapon that's not an instrument. Deuce in Type-0, a Final Fantasy with a militaristic setting where these students are running into gory battlefields, literally has nothing but a flute and does a fantastic job fighting with music alone.

The fact that it's joined at the hip with Archer, though, means that this one Job is essentially trying to fill the shoes of two jobs. At the very least, it would be nice if the job gave each of those rolls an appropriate amount of spotlight to revel in. The archery has always been the dominant aspect of the Bard's toolkit, but even in Stormblood, the musical elements have always felt supplementary. The difference between that and the Ninja, for example, is that the Ninja has traditionally been seen in Final Fantasy using a combination of fast attacking as well as Ninjutsu attacks. Edge is a perfect example of this.

The truth is that Bard doesn't really capture any of the traditional Final Fantasy Bard elements right now. There's nothing that feels like the FF3 or FF5 Bard, Edward from FF4, the FF Tactics Bard or Hurdy from FFTA2, nothing that feels like Yuna as a Songstress, FF11's Bard, or Duece in Type-0. I don't think the Bard needs to change to mirror one of these examples in its entirety, but they should have at least a segment where they embody the job's history in the Final Fantasy series. That's why I propose the idea of altering the job to incorporate a phase where you shift from archery into music, and for that set of time, you're only using musical attacks--more of which could be support oriented, since a lot of Bard players want to feel more akin to what Dancer provides.

EDIT: To add an idea as to what could be added with little change to the current situation... Final Fantasy III was the first title to incorporate a Bard. There' they were restricted to Harps as a weapon type, and the harp you had equipped would actually determine what song was played when using the Song command.

What if we got an oGCD attack called "Bardsong" that had a different effect depending on whether you were playing Mage's Ballad, Army's Paeon, or Wanderer's Minuet? Mage's Ballad causes Bardsong to become Soul Etude, an AoE Regen (Which could be a nice flavor addition for people who want more support on Bard). Army's Paeon causes it to become Black Requiem, doing high burst damage. Wanderer's Minuet causes it to become Hero's March, granting a small attack buff to the party (that would probably not be stackable with Technical Finish).

Bardsong could be on a 30 second cool down so you get each effect once per song you're singing already. I think this would be the best option. You could give it a 60 second cool down and try to make it so that you always get 2 of the songs, but the 2 you get are always shifting since there are 3 30 second song phases, but I'd worry people would sit on it to ensure they're always getting Black Requiem/Hero's March.

[Shurrikhan]

The Bard has always been musical in Final Fantasy, which is the series we're playing.

If we were going by the job's franchise history alone, then Bards would still be using daggers or, more often, bows, while swapping to Harps only against enemies vulnerable to the Harp's elemental vulnerability or where the Harps' %HP damage finally exceeds the flat damage of bows, while every Bard song would just be a watered-down AoE version of another job's spell (e.g. Bravery -> Sinewy Etude, Refresh -> Mana's Paeon, Regen -> Mighty March, Stop -> Romeo's Ballad, Confuse -> Alluring Air). If you want to go truly original, it's generally a Agility/Mind/Vit > Int > Str build, and therefore inflicts more damage with physical Agi-based weapons than Harp-based attacks, though its support functions can be decently strong.

Of all its iterations, Deuce is probably the most appealing to me gameplay-wise, but I see no reason why we can't have her level of flexibility without having to go quite so all-in-with-all-guns-blazing as Type-Zero or limiting Bard to just an instrument.

I would love to start into combat with a 3-5 second flute riff of sorts. Heck, I wouldn't mind seeing a clutch moment in which a wisely pessimistic bard starts playing Song of Time on his ocarina in order to adapt their LB3 into one which reverts all players' HP and buff states to the highest they've had in the last 20 seconds. But... I really don't want to be machine-gunning enemies down with musical notes, alternating between stabbing them with sharps and smashing them with flats. I'd much rather retain an Archer base and use Bard for strictly Bard-y effects rather than turning it into a full-time weapon -- or worse, making its support effects a byproduct of music-blasting damage rotations rather than any deliberate supportive choices.

[ty_taurus]

If we were going by the job's franchise history alone, then Bards would still be using daggers or, more often, bows, while swapping to Harps only against enemies vulnerable to the Harp's elemental vulnerability or where the Harps' %HP damage finally exceeds the flat damage of bows, while every Bard song would just be a watered-down AoE version of another job's spell (e.g. Bravery -> Sinewy Etude, Refresh -> Mana's Paeon, Regen -> Mighty March, Stop -> Romeo's Ballad, Confuse -> Alluring Air). If you want to go truly original, it's generally a Agility/Mind/Vit > Int > Str build, and therefore inflicts more damage with physical Agi-based weapons than Harp-based attacks, though its support functions can be decently strong.

Of all its iterations, Deuce is probably the most appealing to me gameplay-wise, but I see no reason why we can't have her level of flexibility without having to go quite so all-in-with-all-guns-blazing as Type-Zero or limiting Bard to just an instrument.

I would love to start into combat with a 3-5 second flute riff of sorts. Heck, I wouldn't mind seeing a clutch moment in which a wisely pessimistic bard starts playing Song of Time on his ocarina in order to adapt their LB3 into one which reverts all players' HP and buff states to the highest they've had in the last 20 seconds. But... I really don't want to be machine-gunning enemies down with musical notes, alternating between stabbing them with sharps and smashing them with flats. I'd much rather retain an Archer base and use Bard for strictly Bard-y effects rather than turning it into a full-time weapon -- or worse, making its support effects a byproduct of music-blasting damage rotations rather than any deliberate supportive choices.

I feel like you're taking the idea of using the traditional Final Fantasy Bard to influence FF14's Bard to an extreme. The point was never to copy and paste Edward into the game literally as he functions in FF4. That's not how FF14 works. Again, I can reference Red Mage. In order to capture the fantasy of playing a Red Mage, the team didn't throw in a Class that can equip Paladin weapons, Ninja weapons, Black Mage weapons, etc. and give them access to half the Black Mage's and White Mage's skillsets. They used the concept of the the Red Mage to create something that harkens back to and feels like the classic Red Mage while still working within the systems of FF14's design.

Applying that to Bard doesn't mean we need to drop the bow, pick up a Harp and a Flute, and use % attacks, raid-wide buffs and debuffs and call it a day. I never even suggested throwing away the archery elements because I know that there are many players who wanted this job explicitly because it begins as Archer and would never have touched it if it were a dedicated musician. It wouldn't be fair to yank the job away from them and demand it be a musician only. It would be nice if we could just have a full on Ranger AND a Bard be separate jobs, but that's not the world we live in.

Instead, I just think both halves of Bard's job-merging should have their spotlight at times in the kit, and the musical components of Bard have never had that spotlight. They were always there to fuel the bow actions. Having a segment of your rotation be that moment where you stop shooting arrows and start to riff on the Flute could be a fun thing, depending on how it works. An effect that changes their LB3 though is far too wild for anything FF14 will ever do, and it would probably not get used as defensive LB3s are only ever used when absolutely necessary, and Healer LB3 would just do that job significantly better anyway.

[Shurrikhan]

An effect that changes their LB3 though is far too wild for anything FF14 will ever do, and it would probably not get used as defensive LB3s are only ever used when absolutely necessary, and Healer LB3 would just do that job significantly better anyway.

It was merely an example, though I do honestly wish XIV had the guts to attempt something so "wild" as having multiple LB choices, beyond merely levels thereof.