Yoshi-P Sanpo comments re: Bard

[Recon1o6]

I'm not very experienced with bard, I've tried to pick it up a couple of times each expansion on my alt. I also played the top level in SB and SHB a couple of times on my brother's account
So not all of my ideas will be accurate I think, but I want to put some out anyway


First, make each song different kind of support instead of just damage like they used to be, and buff the % up to say 10% or more. Something that actually makes a difference in all content, not just savage/ultimate, parsers shouldn't be required to notice a difference in damage.
Perhaps a hp/mp regen song, a damage song and a debuffing song. Maybe a mp cost reduction song for your poor healers and rdms during a particularly bad factory/orbonne run

Ideally, Bard will have more support tools than machinist but less than dancer, and have more damage than dancer but less than Machinist whose selfish but strong.

Buff its dots and some of its other potencies.

Give back wide volley and/or flaming arrow. SOMETHING to make the aoe game more than just quick knock and the occasional apex arrow

[MPNZ]

A lot of the entertainment BRD provided in StB was for how busy it was during it's highs with various procs making the overall feeling very active like a rhythm/music game. So, trying to implement a system that that would allow for some manipulation of those proc rates tied to a growing/falling stack mechanic (1-5) that would be similar to how enmity functions based on a priority the factors of "song upkeep", number of procs activated, procs used, critical hits, Support skills used, support songs (foie, Minne) active and maintained with stack 5 harder to maintain with a quicker fall-off over stack three, and a grace period mechanic after the song timer falls off to be fair. We could even reward players with a reprieve from upkeep with a new "misery's end" of sorts that would allow players a rest from high activity and allow them to breath and refocus...

Support is really weak, and honestly, every odd numbered expansion so far makes bard into an offensively oriented ranger with little support (HW: EA, SW, WM, IJ VS WP, and ShB: SV, AA, SB VS homogenized support), and the dev team really need to just stop it with the whole like "in-between" jobs and just let the jobs become what they are. Seriously, a war being a progressively immortal regen tnk and meme-machine is all that people want from it, and even adding a war encounter that it actually overwhelmingly succeeds in being a healer would be something "on the nose" in acknowledging its reputation for being ridiculous.

Tangent off: Bard's support skills do need some serious QoL like a cure three radius for WP, and making NM work like a party wide potency increase for restoration and shields that would drain MP over time. The issues with the effect/s of "Haste" is an issue that really needs to be addressed and solved in the Buff's benefit (the effect is too short, and several jobs have issues with clipping & action damage cancellation/resets), and MB needs to be able to restore MP again (through dmg dealt by BL and RoD). Soul voice could be used as an alternate resource pool instead of just as AA's battery, and the passive buffs are incredibly weak and unnoticeable without tracking parsers showcasing long-term impacts which lead to it feeling unimpactful

Other general QoL it could do with are: Easier DoT tracking by not having it tied entirely to the boss' HP bar (this limits customization options of the combat UI as well), stackable passive song buffs (example: 15% for one 21% for two), status effect being useful, wide volley, and returning Foie's requiem and palisade.

Remember, buff classes are desired because of their returns outweighing their weaknesses, and human's are innately short-term thinkers which makes initial impressions important

going to bed...

[Liam_Harper]

Bard is not my main either so take anything I say with a pinch of salt, but a lot of the points the OP brings up make sense. The synergy feels off, particularly if you don't track DoT's, like 99% of players. A second charge of Bloodletter and EA would be amazing. I'm surprised it isn't a thing for Bloodletter if Bards have been asking for it for a while.

I don't understand the demand for 90 second song cd's when we can already use a 90 sec rotation. It would just be more punishing on early song clipping. We'd need an additional benefit or rework here.

Pitch Perfect really should be 1 sec cd and I see no reason for it not to be except to punish us and make the end of WM clunky.

Target switching or losing DoT's to an intermission is dire. I feel like there should be some way to apply both DoT's at once, but I can understand people don't want SB/CB to become irrelevant (even though a lot of fights you only need them for the opener or screw ups) and it could be seen as "dumbing down" the class, which I wouldn't want either. But applying both DoT's off the bat after an intermission would feel smooth.
Is there anything we can work with here? A 3 minute CD? A "Bite Ready" proc from Apex Arrow or something else that makes both into instant oGcd's next use? Maybe something for 6.0.

Sidewinder does need a buff.

[Cetonis]

Target switching or losing DoT's to an intermission is dire. I feel like there should be some way to apply both DoT's at once, but I can understand people don't want SB/CB to become irrelevant (even though a lot of fights you only need them for the opener or screw ups) and it could be seen as "dumbing down" the class, which I wouldn't want either. But applying both DoT's off the bat after an intermission would feel smooth.
Is there anything we can work with here? A 3 minute CD? A "Bite Ready" proc from Apex Arrow or something else that makes both into instant oGcd's next use? Maybe something for 6.0.

Yeah I was super racking my brain trying to come up with patch friendly answers to this, and couldn't do much better than (A). There were some cursed ideas, like "Bloodletter deals bonus damage if DoTs aren't up", but ho boy what a noob trap anything like that would be. Cleaner stuff like "casted song that buffs your party's next spell or weaponskill by 5%" or "reverse Misery's End" would have to be an expac thing. Leveraging Apex for this is an interesting idea, since you'd only have it in a mid-fight scenario which is kind of the intent, but I don't know that flavor-wise it'd pass muster. I could see Shadowbite applying Caustic only, to targets that don't yet have it, but it'd need to lose the DoTs-on-target-now damage scaling component. Maybe even repurpose it to not share with SW anymore. But yeah all 6.0 stuff.

My big pet idea for Sidewinder would be if it (and Shadowbite) applied a 15s DoT, that could proc Repertoire. But yeah, more expac things. Also a fan of making it an automatic Crit+DH, make it sexy. But the existence of Shadowbite makes that a little weird. Also why doesn't Shadowbite apply a DoT, come to think of it. It really looks and sounds like (given the bite label) they planned to have it do something in that vein but axed it somewhere in development. Same with our BL charges ;_;

[gumas]

i can only hope brd on the next expansion will have new direct skill attack or such. if they put another buff/dot/debuff basically antyhing with timer again, it will be hell for me.

i love archer in mmorpg, but geezus the ammount of thing that you must watch as brd in ff14 is ridiculous (at least for me).

2 dot, 3 song rotation, pitch perfect proc, repertoire proc, bloodletter proc, refulg arrow proc, and the rest of long cd skill, all while trying to watch the screen to avoid enemy attack and mechanic.

as brd when it come to long battle, my eyes keep going back and forth looking at my hotbars, debuff timers and the center screen which hurt me a lot lol

[ItMe]

i can only hope brd on the next expansion will have new direct skill attack or such. if they put another buff/dot/debuff basically antyhing with timer again, it will be hell for me.

i love archer in mmorpg, but geezus the ammount of thing that you must watch as brd in ff14 is ridiculous (at least for me).

2 dot, 3 song rotation, pitch perfect proc, repertoire proc, bloodletter proc, refulg arrow proc, and the rest of long cd skill, all while trying to watch the screen to avoid enemy attack and mechanic.

as brd when it come to long battle, my eyes keep going back and forth looking at my hotbars, debuff timers and the center screen which hurt me a lot lol

I def agree with all of the above.
No job gives me worse tunnel vision than BRD.

[Rai_Takara]

I'm not sure if this is considered, but is there thought given to how to balance BRD if a fight has multiple targets vs the other ranged? I have a concern that if a fight ever has multiple targets that last more than a brief moment (ex: e7s) that the buffs to BRD ontop of their multi target capabilities will be too much. I'm not sure how you can adjust BRD's multi target capabilities to be in line with the other ranged though since from what I can tell, it's not a pure potency thing as it's all about procs.

I know BRD is not in good place right now but I don't want it to be overbuffed by accident and/or create another ranged arms race.

[MPNZ]

I'm not sure if this is considered, but is there thought given to how to balance BRD if a fight has multiple targets vs the other ranged? I have a concern that if a fight ever has multiple targets that last more than a brief moment (ex: e7s) that the buffs to BRD ontop of their multi target capabilities will be too much. I'm not sure how you can adjust BRD's multi target capabilities to be in line with the other ranged though since from what I can tell, it's not a pure potency thing as it's all about procs.

I know BRD is not in good place right now but I don't want it to be overbuffed by accident and/or create another ranged arms race.

IDK. BRD has been, like, an AOE demon for a while, but just that in itself wouldn't necessitate further nerfs which where acceptable, even if unnecessary, outside of the DoTs which were totally unnecessary. If anything the numbers in general need to crunched downwards and rebalanced to like shorten the DPS gap, or buff other jobs to compensate, or vary the damages incurred to NPC based on their scale because Physical-Ranged is already below or falling short of the perceived minimum required damage values. The launch version of AST was super bad enough in terms of DPS to say the least

[Cetonis]

I would be surprised if SE triggered another arms race solely on the basis of AoE implications. That's exactly what they did in HW, so it'd be a pretty dramatic failure to learn lessons.

Still, this is part of the reason why reverting the DoT nerf would be dubious - it'd be a stronger buff to Bard multi-target than it would to single target. For similar reasons, I don't think I'd support any further Apex buffs, though if it was reworked in some way (presumably in 6.0) that'd be nice.

Re: Tunnel vision, that's one of the reasons why charges on BL and/or EA would be nice - it'd reduce the pressure / punishment associated with those skills, so a newer Bard that's still highly focused on the song cycle and DoTs and other things won't leak as much damage through those short cooldown oGCDs.

That said, I think the "tunnel vision" is overall a good thing, in a sense. Melee have to contend with uptime and (at least sometimes) positionals, Casters ideally need to be getting their casts off. Ranged don't have any built in skill mechanics like that, so SE should be designing them to have other challenges. I don't know if Bard's setup is maybe too much despite that, or if there should be more or whatever, but it's vastly preferable to a situation like Machinist.

[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.