Yoshi-P Sanpo comments re: Bard

[Soldier_Zero]

I think people are unhappy with BRD because of its low damage contribution. BRD would be in a better spot if it was a selfish dps like MCH and had its songs changed from party-wide to self-buffs.

[MPNZ]

I think people are unhappy with BRD because of its low damage contribution. BRD would be in a better spot if it was a selfish dps like MCH and had its songs changed from party-wide to self-buffs.

It's partially its overall damage contribution and that of the entire ranged physical category as a whole. But, shifting the whole role into being selfish-DPS classes would just end up circling like back to its issues at launch: Lore deletion, false advertising, and being too selfish and lacking in party support

[Akiudo]

It's partially its overall damage contribution and that of the entire ranged physical category as a whole. But, shifting the whole role into being selfish-DPS classes would just end up circling like back to its issues at launch: Lore deletion, false advertising, and being too selfish and lacking in party support

it also wouldn't change the problem as long as overall dps is not raised, i know some people are big on the whole "selfish classes" topping the meter, but there is no real reason why selfish classes should have both the highest personal and highest raid dps contribution, at best there is nothing that necessites as much, at worst it just ends up in "supporting clasess" allways being worse.

of course things like actual utility support (so things like curing waltz, armys paeon, useless as it is..., maybe give bard the regen song our teacher used in a class quest with the next addon?) should count somewhat against total dps, but talking purely on a "has dps buffs" level theres zero reason why total raid contribution should be lower than on a "pure" class.

so no, bard would not be in a better spot if it was a selfish dps, bard would be in a better spot if its dps was raised, doesn't matter if through personal damage or group buffs.

[gumas]

I think people are unhappy with BRD because of its low damage contribution. BRD would be in a better spot if it was a selfish dps like MCH and had its songs changed from party-wide to self-buffs.

my wish take on brd is to have selfish DPS like MCH BUT....

when they start tuning their song, their potency DPS will drop by xx% because now they are in "support" mode. so basically you can be a selfish DPS like MCH or you can be a supportive BRD by keep applying song buff to your party.

this way everyone happy with archer class, you want pure dps? just go full ham dont use song buff, you want the usual supportive brd? just keep rotating your song, easy.

[Rika007]

my wish take on brd is to have selfish DPS like MCH BUT....

when they start tuning their song, their potency DPS will drop by xx% because now they are in "support" mode. so basically you can be a selfish DPS like MCH or you can be a supportive BRD by keep applying song buff to your party.

this way everyone happy with archer class, you want pure dps? just go full ham dont use song buff, you want the usual supportive brd? just keep rotating your song, easy.

That was literally how Bard was used in A Realm Reborn, didn't go over well with the player base.

[gumas]

That was literally how Bard was used in A Realm Reborn, didn't go over well with the player base.

i though people hate brd backthen because the "stationary" mode? yeah the skill increase your dps but it literally make you more turret than BLM backthen so people really hate that.

[Cetonis]

i though people hate brd backthen because the "stationary" mode? yeah the skill increase your dps but it literally make you more turret than BLM backthen so people really hate that.

No, that was HW. In ARR, Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon were persistent songs that drained your MP while active, in order to provide MP/TP restoration to your party. The thing was, you dealt 20% less damage while they were active. Classes were designed to make people's MP/TP run out after a while, which is how they forced groups to bring a Bard even though its overall damage was lower (after 2.1) even before the -20%.

This continued into HW, with MCH getting a similar treatment, but over time they reduced the penalty down to -10%, and eventually just eliminated it. Honestly it was interesting to optimize for high end groups, but for the average player it just kind of felt bad, nobody wanted to use the skills, healers would yell at their DF ranged to stop being selfish and sing, and so on.

So these skills became Refresh and Tactician in 4.0, just straight 3m cooldowns with no strings attached. Once again, overall the ranged still brought less damage than the fourth-best other dps, but because it was difficult to impossible for healers to maximize their dps without Refresh, you had to bring one (and subsequently a Dragoon).

In ShB, they've decided to stop this frankly-dumb design of forcing people to bring a weaker role just to be able to operate resource-wise. Instead they've changed the party bonus to this 1% per role, which is kind of just as dumb but at least it's transparent, and doesn't open the door to healers getting screwed by bad ranged who don't press Refresh.