Job change suggestions for BRD in 6.0

[SweetPete]

Akiudo you made some amazing points and I stand right with you. We have new jobs coming I’m sure, so I hope they still are reading these forums and taking the feedback to heart. I hope they won’t just look at the data and see many still playing bard and think it’s okay. It sucks and I still play it. It’s just what it is. I just read someone’s post who is a bard mentor and they had allot of great ideas on how to approve bard as well. I think bard is far from a rework but they definitely need allot of changes from where they stand now.

[MPNZ]

Personal wishlist:

-consolidate guages and timers into a single area on the screen

-Blood letter: Give it three to four charges with an upgrade at level 50 that would change the animation into an Aether-missile (to make it look more magical in a musical theme and in a way that cuts down animation lock outs and BL/RoD resets issues) with a visual on the character model to keep track of charges (only visible when engaged). It may share charges with Paean and Minne if the song gauge deemed irredeemable

-Paean: Give it a circle Aoe radius and a much shorter recast timer

-Minne: Peloton AOE radius and increases the potency and critical chance of Healing and shield spells with a shorter recast timer. Or, make it into the fourth song that focuses on HP recovery and healing/shield spell buffing

-Mages ballad: The ability to restore mp through BL/RoD

-Interlude: A seven to 10 second timer that would activate between songs To help prevent dropping the song buff, and allow song effect to be extended. Music has an effect on ppl even after the music stops

-Song gauge: This should really just like be a resource that players to think over how it should be used or a just a fever gauge that improves the song buff by 2% every rank up in battle. Or make both... *Minne and WP will now cost song gauge

-Return foies requiem. It could be used with a fever gauge like system. I still have it on my hotbar since it's way more useful that Bind since like PVP

-Shadow bite: AOE poison or replicates Wind and poison bite effects from one target to all affected targets and resets the dot timers

-non-dmg status effect to be useful in combat

-Side winder: Add interrupt to its effects or prune it. Also, ignores obstacles

-Using MP as a resource again but not so annoying and off-putting like it was in 2.0-3.0

-Apex Arrow: Just make it have a set numerical cost besides something like "all", or make it proc off of refulgent arrow as an OGCD. Give it a set potency

-an Action that haves the cooldown timers on song for optimization

-Armies paean: 1) Haste should not be a negative, and 2) increase the Haste buff timer to 45 seconds. Basically, it's just a buff that players would have to maintain it's uptime, and it has to be beneficial (This is probably the least likely as the fixes to to the composition of each job individually are done numerically with little thought/understanding to the enjoyment or appeal in how they play causing dev-time to be reallocated to fixing what they broke, imo *ex: Bow mage, SHB Astrologian as problems)

-Barrage: Make it so that it would make ea hit three times as well and each hit to count as a Bl reset/ PP stack/ paean note. RA would still hit three times, but it's three hits per EA & RA. It would just affect those two actions. *"strait-shot ready" will still be activated
when used

-combine raging strikes with barrage to save space. And, if it's too powerful: rework it into a proc+crit increase instead of the 20% damage buff. *"strait-shot ready" will still be activated when used

-Make it so that status effects are actually useful

-Return wide volley. It's a feature. Not a bug

-Raise the other jobs

-status effect songs

-A song that's a push-back+paralysis/stun+repelling shot's animation

-Replace repelling shot with a back-dash animation

-A song that prevents aggroing mobs in the overworld and changes the movement animation into a skipping animation. Or, at least giving it to the Mandeville's for comedic effect

-A meditation ability to refill the song gauge

*This is an expanded wishlist from another thread

[SnowVix]

talking to someone who is freshly leveling it gave me two big ones

1) Make Empyreal Arrow give the guaranteed proc immediately, instead of waiting 14 levels.
2) (and honestly, this needs to be done ASAP, not wait until 6.0) Add information to the UI that Caustic/Stormbite give you a large upgrade on Repertoire chances on that upgrade so that people aren't ditching the class at 60 because they think the 20% repertoire chance will last forever.

[Jirah]

talking to someone who is freshly leveling it gave me two big ones

1) Make Empyreal Arrow give the guaranteed proc immediately, instead of waiting 14 levels.
2) (and honestly, this needs to be done ASAP, not wait until 6.0) Add information to the UI that Caustic/Stormbite give you a large upgrade on Repertoire chances on that upgrade so that people aren't ditching the class at 60 because they think the 20% repertoire chance will last forever.

oof agreed, Empyreal should proc asap it would make the job far more fluid and fun from the get go, as 60s bard is abit stale having no control over your song procs

[Jirah]

BRD is sound, its rotation is engaging and none of its skills feel lateral or misplaced (looking at you MCH) i think the changes need to be done to its support frankly as DNC is more fun to play for the buffs while BRD are automatic without a thought, and its the backbone to BRD more songstress roots that mains keep complaining about. But it needs to tread this road carfully as to not just rip off DNC but to be its own thing.

[Wyakin]

There’s a lot of amazing ideas in this thread from splitting the jobs into ranger/bard (I support this but it’ll never happen. You can split a few classes into multiple jobs like marauder could have a hammer job as well as warrior) other ideas floating around are equally as great. Fixing apex arrow, return foes and mp management the list is endless. All that said the number one issue that grinds on me personally regarding all three ranged is this damn dumb idea that they MUST be so low dps. Currently they’re dealing around 10% less dps than those at the top of the pile. That’s a far too large a gap. At no point do I believe that the three ranged should be matching blm or samurai. I don’t even think they should be matching drg or rdm. But the 10% gulf is too large and should be reduced to 5%

[Gallus]

After playing BRD for a while, I actually think the class is fairly fun, albeit a little complex (definitely a lot harder than both MCH and DNC).

I also think that it fills this middle ground support between MCH and DNC really well, I don't understand this constant desire for BRD to provide more support because Harps and lore (or for god knows what reason <.<)...the permanent CH/DH/Damage aoe buff is no joke, and battle voice is very powerful.

My only issues with BRD are:

- Dots constitute too much damage, which automatically means, if a boss goes constantly immune or a phase has a lot of intermissions, you inevitably lose too much dot uptime (UwU is a pretty good example). Personally, I'd like DoTs damage slightly reduced while the filler GCD potency increased (Burst Shot and Refulgent arrow in this case). This would make BRD a little bit better at snapshotting (something at which the class is currently terrible).

- Apex Arrow: I honestly hate this skill. Just make it exactly the same as MCH's queen. There's no reason why this skill should be able to be used at 20 too. Just turn it into an OGCD and allow it to be used within 50-100 song gauge. At 50 it does 300, at 75 it does 450, At 100 it does 600, you know the drill... Neat and simple.

- Barrage: This is tbh something minor, but I have no idea why after casting barrage you can use anything other than Refulgent Arrow.

- Empyreal Arrow: This skill should have 2 charges.

[Beddict]

I don't understand this constant desire for BRD to provide more support because Harps and lore (or for god knows what reason <.<)...the permanent CH/DH/Damage aoe buff is no joke, and battle voice is very powerful.

Because that's kinda what BRD has always done in FFXIV. Mage's Ballad and Army's Paean used to drain MP and lower BRD's DPS in order to refresh party MP and TP respectively (though these effects were later shifted to Refresh and Tactician while MB and AP got new effects), Foe Requiem used to drain MP to make enemies take more damage, Palisade used to reduce the damage the Tank took, Troubadour used to have three different effects depending on what Song you were playing, BRD used to have a Healer LB3 way back in ARR. But over the years, we lost our ability to restore ally MP and TP (although TP got axed altogether so eh), we lost Foe Requiem and are stuck with only passive abilities to increase party DPS, we lost Palisade which hurts our ability to support our Tanks in dungeons and against tankbusters, Troubadour got completely homogenized to match the new Tactician and Shield Samba, and we got the standard line AoE LB3. People on these forums ask for more support because we remember what we lost. Compound that with the release of DNC which does have active support like Technical Step and Curing Waltz and you got BRD mains upset that their support niche got gutted for the fancy new Job.

[Rika007]

I also think that it fills this middle ground support between MCH and DNC really well, I don't understand this constant desire for BRD to provide more support because Harps and lore (or for god knows what reason <.<)...the permanent CH/DH/Damage aoe buff is no joke, and battle voice is very powerful.

Because those of us who like Bard for far longer then just the last year and a half of play actually would like to get back to what drew us into the job, which was a support dps hybrid, not a DPS with a few very un-engaging support skills. At this point I support the party more when I play Summoner or Red Mage then I do when I'm on Bard. Yes I would also say job lore and fantasy is also important, but I didn't play bard for 6 straight years to just play a Ranger in all but name. I don't want to be the 'middle ground' between MCH and DNC. I want the job identity that Dancer stole back from Bard.

[Gallus]

Because those of us who like Bard for far longer then just the last year and a half of play actually would like to get back to what drew us into the job, which was a support dps hybrid, not a DPS with a few very un-engaging support skills. At this point I support the party more when I play Summoner or Red Mage then I do when I'm on Bard. Yes I would also say job lore and fantasy is also important, but I didn't play bard for 6 straight years to just play a Ranger in all but name. I don't want to be the 'middle ground' between MCH and DNC. I want the job identity that Dancer stole back from Bard.

I'm not sure what qualifies as un-engaging support skills, but I have a hard time understanding how things like Embolden, Devotion or both DNC steps (Technical and Standard) are any different from BRD's battle voice or BRD's aoe song buffs in the "engagement department".
If you are talking about ARR/HW/SB BRD, it was broken, it had ridiculous personal damage, full mobility and what I believe was the highest raid damage too. Both ranged classes were so over the top that anything that wasn't MCH + BRD + DRG could be labelled as a troll party in HW/SB.

BRD's TP and MP refresh doesn't make sense within the current state of the game. What kind of support skills are you even asking for at this point? You've got a permanent damage buff to the entire party in the form of DH/CH/Damage, and a very strong 20% DH buff every 3 minutes. Then, as defensive tools you have Troubadour (10% damage reduction in aoe) ,Nature's Minne (20% more healing on target) and the Warden's Pean (admittedly...this one's a bit underwhelming, but hey, it's still better than nothing).
I think BRD's support at the moment is only lower than DNC (which has less personal damage in most fights) and perhaps slightly lower than NIN?
Looks fine to me.

The only thing I'd personally welcome with BRD are a few QoL changes because the job is unreasonably complex compared to DNC and MCH.