Yoshi-P Sanpo comments re: Bard

[Eloah]

adjusting armys paeon so cutting it short isn't desired would only mean you would cut mages ballad short instead. Only way to really make you "want" a 90 second rotation with the songs would be if the recast cooldown on them were 90s each, but that would
a)be a straight up nerf even with perfect gameplay
b)punish accidental cutting of other songs even harder than it allready does

How does adjusting things so that cutting Armys Paean isn't desired, translate into a desire in cutting Mages Ballad. The main reason for the cutting isnt the songs CD, it's the affect. Armys Paean has the least desired affect so it gets clipped. SE would need to adjust things so that players want their song to play out for the full duration. The 80s CD is just a way to ensure that a song is always available when cycling through the songs.

[Kabooa]

adjusting armys paeon so cutting it short isn't desired would only mean you would cut mages ballad short instead. Only way to really make you "want" a 90 second rotation with the songs would be if the recast cooldown on them were 90s each, but that would

a)be a straight up nerf even with perfect gameplay
b)punish accidental cutting of other songs even harder than it allready does


from the things proposed here i will just say that while i like basically all the points you mentioned, the biggest by far for me would be
1/2. (tie)buffing sidewinder (its simply too weak for the cooldown, especially with EA as comparison)
1/2. (tie)stacks for EA and BL, its simply overly punishing right now aswell as more or less forces you to just spam BL during mages ballad which well, "doesn't feel nice" to say it nicely
3. pitch perfect cooldown of 1 second, its bad enough getting the skill out when the server tick happens at 1~ second left, really no need to make it worse by also having to watch out that you use it early enough so the cooldown is even ready.

btw, one point you didn't specifically mention about a second EA charge is the more flexible timing this would offer would actually allow us to keep an extra charge for wanderers instead of using it during armys paeon when its not needed, which would be great because that would actually be a small way to optimize a bit more, instead of simply "more/bigger" number

I'll preface this with I've only leveled it and haven't had much interest in doing more with it.

It's really odd to me that the GCD upgrades are baseline instead of baked into Soldier's Paen. I'm generally not a fan of straight upgrades, but it seemed a missed opportunity to me.

I also mentioned this in another thread, but I'll throw the "Apex Arrow should be based on Songs" back in here. Rather than have Soldier's Paen being your song modulator, Apex Arrow does it instead. I'm sure some might disagree with me, but Apex Arrow doesn't feel good to me. It's a gauge i have very little control over, and the feast or famine associated with procs means I can't really use it when I want to either.

As far as this thread goes though, I'll give it a generic "thumbs up" because they know bard better and none of the changes seem unreasonable.

[Akiudo]

How does adjusting things so that cutting Armys Paean isn't desired, translate into a desire in cutting Mages Ballad. The main reason for the cutting isnt the songs CD, it's the affect. Armys Paean has the least desired affect so it gets clipped. SE would need to adjust things so that players want their song to play out for the full duration. The 80s CD is just a way to ensure that a song is always available when cycling through the songs.

you gave the reason yourself, the problem isn't the cooldown, its the effect. one song will allways be the weakest, unless all 3 are identical thats inevitable so if you make the effect of armys better so it isn't the worst song anymore something else (mages ballad in that case) will be the worst song instead and you would cut that.

the only real way to get away from that is to literally force you to use all three songs for their full duration, in that case they could aswell turn their cooldown up to 90s and be done with it, that would be a nerf though, buffing armys paeon so its better than mages would indeed be a buff, it would however simply shift the problem to the next weakest song.

[Eloah]

you gave the reason yourself, the problem isn't the cooldown, its the effect. one song will allways be the weakest, unless all 3 are identical thats inevitable so if you make the effect of armys better so it isn't the worst song anymore something else (mages ballad in that case) will be the worst song instead and you would cut that.

the only real way to get away from that is to literally force you to use all three songs for their full duration, in that case they could aswell turn their cooldown up to 90s and be done with it, that would be a nerf though, buffing armys paeon so its better than mages would indeed be a buff, it would however simply shift the problem to the next weakest song.

That does make sense in theory, but it would also depend on what possible changes are done to Armys Paean. Ideally, SE would adjust things so that there are two song rotations, one for AoE and one for single target. That way the song that is "weakest" changes. It's a conundrum, as you have indicated, because you dont want to shift the weakest song. Maybe shifting the additional effects that the party receives is a possible solution. If Armys Paean has the strongest party effect, it would warrant the full 30 seconds.

[Cetonis]

btw, one point you didn't specifically mention about a second EA charge is the more flexible timing this would offer would actually allow us to keep an extra charge for wanderers instead of using it during armys paeon when its not needed, which would be great because that would actually be a small way to optimize a bit more, instead of simply "more/bigger" number

Yes, that would be an upside as well, and really the main way in which that change would serve as a overall "buff", yet it also helps with both QoL and downtime weakness.

I was doing some scribbles this morning to visualize the MB GCD timeline a bit better, and it really is laughable how ugly the BL/EA interaction is there. A common-sense GCD->BL+EA->GCD->BL weave is almost certain to waste a proc opportunity when you consider the safe zone's prior GCD alignment, and even EA+BL is spooky without a good prior-tick timing read. BL+EA+BL is usually safe, but of course it's a triple, which is not only a -51p clip, but also bonus taxes you having to move up IJ a lot of the time. It's a lose-lose where you almost hope to fail the 64% proc chance, just so you can use EA without getting punished for it.

BL charges would do more to fix that situation directly, but EA charges additionally help with WM things, so it really would be nice to just get both. I think back to the ShB skill reveal video, which "showed off" BL charges if you watched carefully, and would love to know if that was ever on the table, and why they nixed it if so.


As for the 90s topic, as laid out before you really don't need to worry about forcing the songs to be a 90s cycle when the real burst is detached anyway.

And even then, the raid buffs on that timeline aren't all that exciting? As-is right now, we get Raging+Barrage onto every other 2m cooldown, as well as any 3m that might be held for a 4m usage due to fight length.

Shifting to a hard-locked 90s cycle would give that up in order to align with Monk, the only job that's less popular than Bard, plus hitting Trick Attack a little more often. We'd mainly get to line up with SMN and DRG more often than we do the 2m stuff, but not in a 4m-hold situation.

And that true-2m stuff we'd now be missing half or more of the time? Both healer raid buffs (therefore the most common ones to see), as well as RDM, the largest buff for our purposes since we mainly care about Barrage.

And again, it's not like we can't voluntarily move to a 90s cycle right now. We just don't, because it's a bad tradeoff. But it's not a bad tradeoff because of AP, per se. Back in SB, slotting in 30s APs for alignment's sake, so long as it didn't cost you any WM uptime, was a potent optimization. The relatively low cost of that tradeoff hasn't changed that much; the problem is that the benefits just aren't worth it. Aligning better with usually one or two 5% party buffs is just a big shrug when our burst is as tame as it is.

[gumas]

a guild member jokingly said to make song a permanent effect (basically you turn it on and its on until you turn it off again) and the song will auto rotate by itself between all three songs, and while on it reduce your movement speed by xx%

he said that it just ridiculous that a brd was shooting with their bow + back flipping + singing/playing their instrument + under heavy fire and bombardment from enemy, WHILE still maintaining their top speed and top of their lungs lol

the more i imagine it the more funny it get

[Vogue]

I agree with about everything you said, it would be nice if SE found a way to make Bard a viable dps for savage/ultimate content, right now I think the only people that still play bard on Savage are because they like the class and play it well, or because they cannot play something else (because of gear or dont have it leveled).

While I don't think it is logical to have bard at the same level as some classes, it should at least be able to work really well in savage content, when the party is trying to maximize dps and line up abilities for stronger bursts.

So I was looking at some things that could be improved to allow this type of burst sync between players.

Raging Strikes+Barrage (since they are meant to be used together) cooldowns are 80s, 80s means that it is really hard to line it up with trick attack and some other party buffs, 80s means that every 4th trick attack those abilities will line up, if both players use them on cooldown after a proper line up at the start of the fight. Which in a 10-15minutes fight is 2 or 3 synced bursts, on fights with no intermissions...

I think it would be an advantage to make that cooldown either 120s or reduce it to 60s, of course, changing this might mean having to adjust the buff potency, which is fine so on solo/light party content the effect will remain the same as now, but on Savage/Ultimate content where people are trying to maximize dps, it would be less troublesome to the bard itself, and it would also have a bigger damage boost on parties that are using buffer class, rather than "selfish" non buffing classes.

But well this is the only annoying thing I have found so far while playing BRD on Savage, seeing that 2nd trick attack show up and raging+barrage still on cooldown to come out of cooldown just as trick attack ends.. it is kinda annoying

[Vogue]

How does adjusting things so that cutting Armys Paean isn't desired, translate into a desire in cutting Mages Ballad. The main reason for the cutting isnt the songs CD, it's the affect. Armys Paean has the least desired affect so it gets clipped. SE would need to adjust things so that players want their song to play out for the full duration. The 80s CD is just a way to ensure that a song is always available when cycling through the songs.

I agree with this, having a tight cooldown rotation for the songs can be bad and stressful. The 80s gives a room to clip songs shorter (normally Army's Paean) if needed to avoid having to pay attention to the song timer while doing complex mechanics, or to lineup songs with party buffs burst times. If there was no extra time, then clipping any song would mean songless periods.

[Sparkthor]

About the 80s rotation, it's not only songs, but also barrage and raging strikes which are also on 80s. I think bard is really in an odd places because of this. 80s align with no other jobs, which is really a big downsite considering how buffs works in FFXIV in general. Maybe it's the biggest issue here ?

I also think it's odd that bard is not impacted by it's own Pang Voice, and i don't think such a long cd would ever have a second charge. on EA and Blood/RoD it would make a lot Qol change and lot of stress less when going Mage Ballad.

I think put the bard on a 90s rotation would make him better fit with raid buffs, the easiest way to do so would make songs on 35s duration, while having a 90s cd. While 35s is odd, i think it would greatly help.

[Rika007]

In the Yoshi-P sanpo the other day, he made a passing comment along the lines that they're getting a lot of requests to "fix Bard", but with a lack of concrete suggestions as to what/how.

Note: This is not a flavor thread. If you want to talk about rangers and job splits and identity polls and etc., there are all too many threads about that already. Please search up one of those for such topics.

This is a thread to talk about raw performance, numerical issues, reasons why Bard is providing less damage than the other ranged, and perhaps less than SE expects it to in their internal simulations.

While I thank you for trying to be succinct in what you're trying to address, I think part of the problem is Bard's 'Flavor/Identity' is intrinsically tied into it's numbers and low damage, and trying to just give bandaid buffs won't really make anyone happy. My personal belief based on the criticisms that have been made on Bard since day one of Shadowbringers is they could tune Bard's damage to same point as Machinist or even Red Mage and it would solve nothing about those criticisms and how it is turning into one of the lowest played jobs in the game outside of Monk.

I do also have to echo Ramura_Sono's post, their has been PLENTY of discussion on what the player base would like to see out of Bard, not just here on the NA boards, the JP boards, Reddit, and the various social media outlets, and while low damage is occasionally brought up, the loss of Bard's support identity to Dancer and the lack luster replacement for that loss, the simplification of Bard's already simple rotation and removal of the double Iron Jaws Refresh in buff window absolutely destroying the skill ceiling of the job, and just overall loss of party support and utility in general have been discussed ad nauseam since the launch of Shadowbringers. If the dev team says they are not getting concrete suggestions, then they are not listening.

My personal request would be very simple for a short term fix. Bring back Foe's Requiem as a 12 second cool down ability on a 2 minute GCD with no cast time and then scale Bard's damage adequately (while I doubt any damage scaling would be necessary, all three ranged DPS are very underwhelming and the fallacy of 100% uptime being the reasoning why has been proven wrong time and time again). This would up Bard's rDPS contribution which will help satisfy those who just simply feel Bard is underpowered, give it back more of it's support kit that was absolutely gutted from Stormblood which will satisfy those who feel Bard has lost it's support identity, and would satisfy those who feel the dev team hasn't been listening to feedback, as most Bard mains did say that Foe's was a clunky ability to use that didn't mean we wanted it axed completely (meanwhile they removed then added back the passive songs, which was the one utility part I remember most Bard's wanting gone, as it's a passive ability that changes absolutely nothing about what the Bard does in the fight and may as well not even be there).


Long term I would say 6.0 Bard needs to have it's support and utility role entirely relooked at. From a rotational standpoint Bard is perfectly functional in terms of it's own DPS, if just a little bit boring, and only minor changes really would feel good (qol like blood letter and empyreal arrow stacks being big ones, to shortening or lengthening the song rotation or even adding a fourth super song have all been good ideas brought up in this and other threads). What Bard lost though over the years in its support kit though has not been replaced, and as a job who's entire theme and identity revolves around empowering allies, this does not feel good at all. Battle voice used to supercharge your songs and really felt like it had an impact in what you are doing. Foe's Requiem was THE premier Bard ability that every other member of the party even if they didn't play Bard knew about (like wings on Paladin, cards on AST or trick attack on NIN). Nature's Minne was a buff that you used consistently throughout the fight that has now had it's uptime cut in half. Trobadour was an ability that no other DPS could replicate that actually had different uses and could be planned out over a fight is now just a generic defensive buff that is essentially a glorified role action. And Warden's Paen is an ability that in any upper level (or heck even lower level content) see's a pathetically low use on.

You compare this to Dancer, who brings the same defensive ability, an every minute Medica level aoe Cure on cool down, a cure potency booster during down time that also helps fuel it's signature attack, and also and most importantly, damage utility that is intrinsically tied into it's DPS rotation. All of this when Bard had that ripped away and also turned into one of the lowest dealing damage dealers in the game. In 6.0 and beyond that is what needs to be looked into. The song rotation is perfect and a very generic rotation that has plenty of space to allow for a soft rework of Bard's utility.


Anyway, this is why I say simple potency Bandaid buffs are not enough and will not 'Fix Bard' in the eyes of those who have dropped the job. Bard was one of the most loved and played jobs in the game, and now, it barely sits above Monk in satisfaction. That doesn't come from simply being weak numbers wise, and I do hope the devs to take feedback like this and the numerous other ones given over the last year into account.