Yoshi-P Sanpo comments re: Bard

[Jirah]

After playing BRD along with DNC and MCH, it seems to be the most well made job among the three not half baked like MCH or not in their prime like DNC. besides a DPS buff I want to see some other buffs such as: increase Burst shot proc to 50%, Armys Muse procs refulgent arrow every Burst shot, The wardens paean removing that dum Has no Effect subtitle because I know dam well no new bard will use it properly with that remark dissuading them to do so. Also have it do something additional like a shield or reduce damage taken. Sidewinder and Empyreal Arrow potency increased drastically or reduce Sidewinder CD to 40 seconds. Have Barrage be able to triple Quick Nock. and finally have Troubadour separate itself from the other ranged raid wide defense skills their is no reason for these three skills to be so similar. Have it increase healing potency, or have it be a combination of Minne and Paean but raid wide, with MCH and DNC being common as trout they dont align their defensive skills optimally its hard enough to get the other Bard to hold battle voice let alone 3 DNC or 3 MCH in a very unfun run. they arent critical skills just dont want them to be replaced by shield samba seconds after I used mine when i could've saved my breath. Apex arrow is a conversation for another topic as it depends on preference

[Cetonis]

besides a DPS buff I want to see some other buffs such as: increase Burst shot proc to 50%, Armys Muse procs refulgent arrow every Burst shot, The wardens paean removing that dum Has no Effect subtitle because I know dam well no new bard will use it properly with that remark dissuading them to do so. Also have it do something additional like a shield or reduce damage taken. Sidewinder and Empyreal Arrow potency increased drastically or reduce Sidewinder CD to 40 seconds. Have Barrage be able to triple Quick Nock. and finally have Troubadour separate itself from the other ranged raid wide defense skills their is no reason for these three skills to be so similar. Have it increase healing potency, or have it be a combination of Minne and Paean but raid wide

50% RA proc - You'd be surprised at how kinda low-impact Refulgent RNG is right now, since RA is only 100p stronger than Burst and the 35% rate reduces variance (compare to ShB). If your thought process is "less Burst Shot spam", my suspicion is that this is where Apex is headed in 6.0. As much as I'd like the single-target version to be an ability, SE likes their consistency, and having it be a GCD in tandem with an increase in gauge generation could bring it up to as high as every 10th/11th GCD or so, basically filling the void left by old Straight Shot.

Army's Muse RA procs - They're likely going to be designing Muses for the other two songs, so realistically we shouldn't expect random add-on effects like this. It's going to be hard enough to construct a Mage's Muse that feels appropriate as it is.

Warden's - Yeah that's a weird coding thingy. Honestly though, if they're going to make every new debuff immune to the auto-cleanse, they might as well remove that aspect of it. As much as it feels great when you do find those cheese-able mechanics, it's not super necessary.

SW - I like a potency increase for this, as per OP. Changing it to 40s would be a bit of a waste of its chance to serve a party-synergy purpose.

EA potency up - Not a fan, at least not until/unless they clean up the kit so that we aren't punished by the auto-proc (BL charges, Wanderer's Muse).

Barrage on Quick Nock - They coulllld, re: solo Apex just being a GCD, they'd have to change Barrage to only affect certain skills (Straight Shot and Refulgent), so they could certainly add Nock to that list.

Troub - Clearly they just want Troub to be a glorified role action, the only reason it isn't is because role actions stop at level 50. I do think it would be nice for Bard (and Machinist) to get a true defensive bomb skill in 6.0, to compete with Curing Waltz.

[heichoukun]

here are some improvements/suggestions i came up with taking into account more support + music based abilities

1) Replace 'Repelling Shot' with a new ability: shooting out a 'grappling hook' to move around with, make it target like ninja's Shukuchi. also, do not make it need you to be in range of target. this would also fix the issue of repelling shot being pretty much useless. im almost never close enough to use it and the animation delay makes it near impossible to use... it would also give you more of a visual of where you go! no more jumping off the ledge!!

2) for hotbar management: make 'Wanderer's Minuet' replace with 'Pitch Perfect' when minuet is in use. you can't use pitch perfect outside of the song anyway, why give it its own button?

3) merge caustic bite and stormbite into one dot skill: this way you arent eating up more gcd time! it can start as 'venomous bite', add in the effect of wind bite, and upgrade them when caustic bite and stormbite are unlocked.
this would make iron jaws pretty useless, but maybe buff its potency to make it more useful? or just get rid of it, less hotbar space.

4) make song effects stack, it is.. so annoying when there's another bard in the party and the buffs are constantly swapping. doesn't even matter if you are using different songs, because they don't stack anyway ;w;

5) make quick nock not require a target... i don't even know why it needs one in the first place. its shooting in a cone in front of you, not around what you are targetting

6) a temporary rez: hear me out ok?? make it like living dead, will just die again if not healed to full. OR there could be no cure and you die again anyway. but it would be very useful to get a healer up again for some quick real rezzes
concept wise, it could be like singing for them and granting new inspiration to fight
could give it a cast bar... casting is not ideal but a rez is a powerful ability

7) other party buff things: do something with warden's paean... i dont think i have *ever* used it. maybe make it into a 1 person dps buff? idk
make it more clear in nature's minne description that it can buff shields too!

8) this applys to dnc and mch as well, make it so that you cannot use troubadour/tactician/shield samba if you are already under the effect of one of these. it cant be stacked, so this is just making sure you cant accidently waste it
can also do the same thing with battle voice, cant use it if you already have the buff on you

9) add another soul voice thing, maybe to even replace apex arrow but it would be good to have variety? my idea is a big party buff to crit hit or overall dps, the buff increasing the more charge you have. similar concept to battle voice, maybe call it crescendo? to make the name more accurate, you could have the buff increase over time before it falls off

alright these are all the ideas i can come up with for now uwu
i dont expect to get any of these but they would be pretty cool

[gumas]

here are some improvements/suggestions i came up with taking into account more support + music based abilities

1) its always bother me why we get a skill that make us do backstep where considering our class, we probably stay far away from the enemy from the very start lol (solo also useless because the backstep is very minimal and it does nothing to change the combat flow at all)

while something like grappling hook is nice, thats not very BRD like, a ninja using grappling hook make sense but for a BRD using it seems weird look/lore wise. maybe something like "teleportation arrow"? the BRD shoot the arrow upward then we teleport to where the arrow land (basically BRD version of NIN Shukuchi)

2) yes totally agree with this, they can put RDM verflare, verholy and scorch in existing skill button but BRD perfect pitch is separate button?

3) this depend for me, if the expansion they give BRD another dot skill then yes, by all mean merge this into one. but right now iam actually fine with it. personally i wish they erase the iron jaw and make Refulgent arrow (when proc) instantly refresh the dot timer, some RNG but its more fun that way


but one thing that i really REALLY want is, please PLEASE dev put a projectile flying from our bow to the target when we do our attack? please? i hate seeing an attack when we clearly using a projectile (arrow) and somehow just magically landed on the enemy without seeing it.

many of BRD attack suffer from this

- Heavy shot (Burst shot suffer less because there is straight line coming out from our bow when we shoot it but it still weak)

- Caustic bite (storm bite is better because when you shoot it there is wind turbulence going to the enemy)

- Blood letter (same case with Burst shot)

- Sidewinder (even less effect than Burst shot and Blood letter)

just make a simple effect, like star wars laser shot or something or one of those blueish arrow shot from Empyreal Arrow. i just want to see the "thing" that we shoot going to the target and hit, it feel more "oomph" that way.

[Morningstar1337]

I assume the skill was for cases where players had to stack on the boss. Stack on the boss, use it to get away from the cleaves.

Grappling hook seems more of a MCH thing then a BRD/NIN thing IMO

[Jirah]

here are some improvements/suggestions

1) I always uses repel for after a stack, the odd thing is it doesn’t do damage that’s where the issue lies, BRD is a Ranged job you don’t need these crazy maneuvers. Not every job needs DNC mobility

2)Solid Idea, even if all the Ranged jobs (especially MCH) have many empty slots. But I like this

3) No, Bard has no rotation this would make the job a bore and make Iron Jaws useless. Last thing we need is even more boring jobs, hello mch

4) With other Bards it’s a pain to cooperate the song buffs to the point where it’s impossible, so yea agreed

5) Agreed I suppose

6) I agree BRD needs more hardy support but let’s not get crazy overboard and give it a lesser living dead

7) I always Use Paean as it’s shield and I never know what’s coming. Helps the healer out not wasting time with Esuna, but I agree as a whole “HAS NO EFFECT” Line annoys me and Paean should have more effects

8) Why do all Ranged jobs has the same exact skill do the same exact thing, I say leave samba and have Troubadour do somthing else. It’s not hard to coordinate a Macro but since MCH and DNC are the two most common jobs will run into this a lot

9) a Gage that buffs? Sounds clunky but Kenki has one so its worth exploring the idea at least. I just wish Apex wasn’t apart of the GCD like Refulgent and Iron jaws. Somthing spammy like Pitch would make Apex better as I already like the skill. A constant gage for songs and knowing the best ways to utilize it under Raging strikes

[Akiudo]

I always uses repel for after a stack, the odd thing is it doesn’t do damage that’s where the issue lies, BRD is a Ranged job you don’t need these crazy maneuvers. Not every job needs DNC mobility

originally it actually did deal damage, that however was allways a pain to time do to the animation lock, which got WAY worse with menuett added during heavensward, while i agree that its a mostly unneeded skill on bard as is please lets not go back to it dealing damage, repel doing no damage most definately was for the better.

4) With other Bards it’s a pain to cooperate the song buffs to the point where it’s impossible, so yea agreed

unless they made some stealth changes its actually worse, the buffs literally don't stack, you can try as much as you want it simply has no effect, the buff that gets used later simply takes precedent and thats it.

[Rai_Takara]

good thing i adressed exactly that both in my original post aswell as in the next paragraph following the one you quoted than. while were at it, can you please crusade against dancer being the obvious pick for speedruns ? i mean you seem to have a problem with a class being clearly superior, even if its just under specific circumstances and potentially for a single fight, so one out of 3 physical ranged being in 93% of top 50 groups among the whole raidtier surely is terrible and fail design. btw while we're at it, on average only around 13% of these groups used scholars, and lets not even talk about warriors. but i guess these things are fine because whatever.

so again, i know i'm repeating myself but it matters jack if one class is clearly superior in a single fight or whatever, the vast majority of groups can't and won't change their lineup on a per fight basis, and if you're part of a group that would do so than so be it, groups that would make their dancer/mch go bard because he brings 0,5% more group dps on one out of 4 fights are exactly the kind of groups that got dancer up to a 93% participation rate for the top 50 speedruns among all fights in the current raid tier, so please don't act like the current "balance" offers these groups any kind of choice.

I mean I agree to a certain extent, but keep in mind that DNC suffers the same thing that SB AST did. The problem with DNC is that it's a heavily RNG based class. This means it is tuned for its average contribution but when the stars align and RNG is in your favor after numerous runs, it'll be stronger. Which is also why it's used in speeds because it becomes a numbers game and aside from speeds, you see MCH is actually stronger, which is pretty much 99% of raiding. I'd reduce dancers RNG spread a bit like they did with AST and balance accordingly.

Except SE isn't encouraging double Melee comps, if anything they are considering double whatever you want as anything that enforces four people close to the boss (like light rampant) is absolutely random about who it chooses. And almost nothing about raid design has taken into effect ranges mobility and used it as an advantage. They haven't done it in years. Nothing about double ranged or caster is inherently blocking SE from making better raids. If anything they have proven that last spot is as flexible as a team wants it to be.

They have been by damage. If you look at previous tiers, it has always been double melee or even triple melee as an optimal comp. SE has compromised by encouraging double melee but still not punishing you for any other comp aside from damage to the point that you can't clear fights.

I am. I see Bard third from the bottom despite a near-perfect situation to multi-dot and benefit. A blue 60th percentile SAM would still beat that 95th percentile Bard and that's a significant gap.

SAM is a hard job to optimize, but Bard really isn't far off. Like I said, it's incredibly easy to leak damage as a Bard. Where SAM is well designed is that you can contribute reasonable numbers even if you aren't on a perfect rotational loop and optimizing Meditate/Seigan, but amazing numbers if you do. So it's easy to pick up and do fine with and very rewarding to master.
A class like Bard is absolutely rubbish played badly and can scrape low tier damage played flawlessly. That's not rewarding. You are getting far too little for the tax you pay.

When it comes to your damage, you should be looking at it relatively. You shouldn't care what a caster or melee is doing. If anything you should only look at your job and the other ranged. In addition, should decouple difficulty and reward. I don't think it's feasible to expect a hard class to pay well. SAM being hard but also rewarding isn't by design, that's an accident, for example. If as a BRD, you're being out done by your peers, something is up, hence why BRD is getting buffed. My only hope is they take it slow and address the actual issues without creating another balance issue. People aren't not taking bards. Heck even world first shiva had a bard.

[Cetonis]

snip

1) The reason Repelling Shot is still in the game is because the level 15 quest dialogue explicitly discusses it and explains what it does. They have changed one of those level 15 quests before, for Pugilist, but they had a skill (Fists of Earth) that was available to move to the level 15 slot. There's no such clear option for Archer. But all the same, there's no reason for SE to go through the effort of reworking Repelling, when they could just remove or replace it instead. Making some new skill would take the same amount of effort, and dredging up an old one (Flaming Arrow? Dare I dream?) would take even less.

2) There's a consistency to having all three songs work the same way UI-wise, most Bards are going to have all of them next to each other or on the same group in their controller hotbar, so suddenly having to ship one onto a "press this a lot at a moment's notice" bind would be kind of disruptive. There are easier / better ways to shed buttons and we have no indication that SE thinks Bard is overburdened on that front right now (heck, I comfortably have space for five different Minne buttons).

3) If SE was going to do that, they would have done so already. And if they were going to do that, they'd just make it a single DoT with a higher (or 100%) proc chance. While the two DoT application skills causes some fight design vs. job balance issues, if that's SE's big concern they can easily resolve that with large numbers buffs (frankly, they could go as high as i.e. 180p and 200p and nothing would break).

4) The passive song buffs are getting removed in 6.0 anyway, most likely. SE didn't get rid of them because they liked them. They're a bad design and SE knows it, they just now also know that if they leave Bard barren on damage support riots will ensue.

5) Micro-managing facing seems even worse than needing a target. This would be a step in the wrong direction.

6) This sounds like a Black Mage proposal to me, also why the heck would you give only one ranged a res, when only one caster lacks one?

7) The only thing they need to do with Warden's is to increase the number of cleansable debuffs. I think a lot of people simply don't look out for them, but there has been a little bit more of it this expac. Still, they could definitely be less shy about i.e. giving people cleansable burns if they step through fire puddles, giving mobs poisons here and there, etc.

8) Would be nice, but they don't do this anywhere else so there's little reason to expect it here.

9) Coming in 6.0, almost certainly. 99% chance it's just a larger single target version of Apex. And 80-90% chance it comes with some increase to gauge generation.

[ItMe]

6) This sounds like a Black Mage proposal to me, also why the heck would you give only one ranged a res, when only one caster lacks one?

Because BLM doesn't need a res.
It doesn't make sense with what a BLM is either traditionally or as it's implemented in FF14.
If it got one it's kit would make it an even bigger res machine than RDM.
And BRD is one of the "support-iest" jobs, so I can understand the logic though I don't think BRD needs a res either.