Job change suggestions for BRD in 6.0

[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.

[MartaDemireux]

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.

I think the issue is the passivity of it all. The DPS buffs come as a side effect of BRD's attacks while DNC's buffs are generated by using steps. Some people had asked for that same mechanic for BRD a while back but via playing note combinations on an instrument for buffs but the idea was given to DNC instead.

It might be more engaging if we had an oGCD that strums a harp to produce and maintain the buffs it currently gives. Kind of like an Enochian. Maybe name it Capriccio (short, free form piece of music) and have it replace Bloodletter via trait when the BRD soul is equipped. Have it deal sonic damage to the enemy and function essentially the same as it does now. The buffs BRD gives via its 3 songs could be activated and refreshed by using Capriccio, but they wouldn't give any buffs until you strum that harp. Maybe Ballad's buff can get stacks so it feels like the super buffing moment when you're strumming that harp in between every GCD. Would need to also make an AoE version to replace Rain of Death (which could then be repurposed as an AoE variant of Empyrreal Arrow).

[Rika007]

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".

A lot to unpack here so I'm just going to hit it point by point. There is plenty to go into how, starting with the fact you are only comparing singular abilities rather then whole kits. Red Mage get's Embolden, Dual cast Rez, and Addle. Embolden is actually an ability that's usage in where you use it optimally will depend on what your party comp is, requiring you to actually look and communicate with your team to see if using it for a more greedy personal opener is best, or if you have a very physical burst heavy lineup that you should be holding for better timings with the whole team. Summoner brings Devotion, combat Rez, addle, Pheonix Heal over Time, and during prog, the option to sacrifice DPS and go with Titan shield to push for faster prog and help out healers till everyone is comfortable with mechanics. And devotion actually requires you to properly have your egi positioned or risk missing out on getting it to others. Dancer, I don't see how you could even think that it's a comparison. Just the steps alone are multiple inputs of actions (24 over the span of 2 minutes during a continuous fight compared to bards 6 if you count battle voice and Song usage). And that's not counting everything else that Dancer brings, it's own version of the party AOE defensive buff, a party wide oGCD medica level action, Devilment, and downtime healing boost provided by improvisation.

Bard provides:

-the songs, which were tacked on to a rotation that already existed and their inclusion literally changed nothing about the way we played the job.

-Battle Voice, which including the songs by the way are the ONLY offensive buffs in the game that do not boost the power of the one that uses it.

-Trobadour, a stripped down version of the original that actually used to require planning ahead and work with your healers and tanks to find the optimal usage during a raid, now is just a glorified roll action that every other rDPS gets.

-Nature's Minne, which is actually not a bad one but due to it's cool down timer having been doubled between Stormblood and Shadowbringers is now just viewed as just a worse version of Mantra, even if it was buffed, so it is now a 'less active' support ability.

-Warden's Paen, the absolute meme of an ability that only 3 raids have provided a use for it since Heavensward over the last 6 years.

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.

Power and meta placement is not the subject of discussion here, and is always used whenever people want to dismiss valid arguments about a job. They could have nerfed Bard's numbers into the ground and not touched its support play style if it's meta placement was that big of a problem. Also Bard it self was not broken, the Piercing debuff meta that synergized from DRG, NIN, SCH and BRD was what was OP. The moment you removed a Dragoon from a party, Bard's DPS instantly fell to a more reasonable state. The removal of Bard's reliance on crit for procs and the piercing debuff alone would have easily handled the meta, but they botched that and went overboard, destroying MCH and BRD's support kits while they were at it.

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).

Yes TP and MP refresh no longer would make sense, and while others want them back I agree it's best they remain in the cellar. The issue is not that they removed those abilities, it's that they removed those abilities and provided NOTHING in return to make up for that loss. Refresh, Tactician, Foe's Requiem, Palisade. All support abilities that were flat out axe'd and nothing was given back to makeup for that loss. The loss of Foe's Req and Refresh especially hurts the 'engaging' part of the support I'm talking about. During a fight a good Bard would plan with their healers the optimal way to use Refresh to make sure that healers would get the most benefit while ALSO extending the amount of foe's usage as much as possible. Palisade and Nature's Minne was another great combo to work with healers and tanks to essentially provide a second cooldown during heavy moments after a tank buster where auto-attack damage could knock a tank out when both healers and tanks were short on cool downs.

Instead we now have nothing but passive abilities that not only don't even affect us, but also require no extra input. The songs just happen. They don't require any planning, and if they were removed again today would change nothing about how we play the job. They are there for just flavor to appease Bard players who are displeased about what we have lost, and they do a poor job of it. Battle Voice is strong yes, but it is tied with Devotion and Battle Litany for the longest cool down for party wide offensive support in the game. Brotherhood, Technical Step, Embolden, Trick Attack... all abilities that are either flat out better or on par with Battle Voice, have much shorter cool downs and also buff the user as well. And with the exception of Technical step, all of them are on jobs that are not KNOWN and have Lore and Job Fantasy based around supporting the party.

As for what we want? I'd like things that require far more input. Offensively something that requires us to use our Harp and start a song that boosts all around us with a few button inputs, much like Dancer's steps but with a more Bard like flair, seeing as it's been something we have been asking for since Heavensward. Defensively, it would be nice to see another defensive utility given back to us, a new song that mimics the effects of Palisade and Apoc since those are now a thing of the past. An overall rework of Warden's Paen into something useful that is not reliant on fight design would go a long way in helping out. And honestly them just giving us back a reworked version of Foe's Requiem that doesn't work based off of MP would probably shut up 90% of the complaints literally in an instant.

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.

Again, meta and it's power level compared to other jobs has nothing to do with this discussion. Numbers can always be played around with. Playability, job fantasy, how it feels over prolonged play periods, keeping the same feel of what drew a player into the job? That is what matters, and Bard has lost that this expansion. It went from the most popular job in the game to now second only to Monk in job dissatisfaction. Stormblood Bard was viewed as literally one of the best jobs the game has ever designed, and now the job is in its least popular state ever, even when compared to the Bow Mage days of Heavensward. Meta position alone does not lead to a job getting that thoroughly abandoned.

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.

And this is where I just have to shake my head and ask, "Huh?" This iteration of Bard is the simplest it has EVER been since ARR, and I would reason even less so since Iron Jaws makes dealing with DOT timings far easier. Bard doesn't need to become less complex. It needs to get some complexity back. Double snapshotting your DOTS under buff windows is a thing of the past. Your strongest GCD is a totally RNG dependent ability that you just use whenever with absolutely no thought to buff timings. Your bare support kit only requires you to know when others use their strongest buffs once every 3 minutes. Your defensive kit requires no thought at all due to the changes to Trobadour. Bard has become one of the simplest jobs in the game, and has lost nearly all of its complexity that it had in Heavensward and Stormblood.

[MPNZ]

And this is where I just have to shake my head and ask, "Huh?" This iteration of Bard is the simplest it has EVER been since ARR, and I would reason even less so since Iron Jaws makes dealing with DOT timings far easier. Bard doesn't need to become less complex. It needs to get some complexity back. Double snapshotting your DOTS under buff windows is a thing of the past. Your strongest GCD is a totally RNG dependent ability that you just use whenever with absolutely no thought to buff timings. Your bare support kit only requires you to know when others use their strongest buffs once every 3 minutes. Your defensive kit requires no thought at all due to the changes to Trobadour. Bard has become one of the simplest jobs in the game, and has lost nearly all of its complexity that it had in Heavensward and Stormblood.

And, like, if the difficulty is BRD's High activity: It's still doesn't encourage as much high activity in single target activity as it potentially could back in 4.0. And, it barely requires much attentiveness to it's dots as in 4.0 too, which makes it really forgiving, but there is also little encouragement to be really focused in general play either. And, growth potential is like really small overall in a lot of jobs, so complaints about difficulty are like super suspect

[Jirah]

And this is where I just have to shake my head and ask, "Huh?" This iteration of Bard is the simplest it has EVER been since ARR, and I would reason even less so since Iron Jaws makes dealing with DOT timings far easier. Bard doesn't need to become less complex. It needs to get some complexity back. Double snapshotting your DOTS under buff windows is a thing of the past. Your strongest GCD is a totally RNG dependent ability that you just use whenever with absolutely no thought to buff timings. Your bare support kit only requires you to know when others use their strongest buffs once every 3 minutes. Your defensive kit requires no thought at all due to the changes to Trobadour. Bard has become one of the simplest jobs in the game, and has lost nearly all of its complexity that it had in Heavensward and Stormblood.

WOah hold your chocobos, MCH and RDM fought really hard to earn the Golden Wheel Chair award for most accessible, which MCH won and would like to thank his simps and yoshi p for the lobotomy and hopes to win next expansion with 2 new aoes and nothing else

All jokes aside, BRD will never be the simplest job in the game with those two stagnating, and most likely DNC following them, I 100% agree that people saying "BRD is too hard" need to get checked because past incarnations have been harder and i hope to god Yoshi P doesnt listen to them and do somthng stupid like with MCh and remove even more from them since this trend to downsiize all the jobs is getting ridiculous. Watch for Monk in 5.4 and see it itll fix anything.

Make its support more engaging should be its sole priority..and a ST Soul gauge skill. Bard's Support being mostly passive with its 3 songs is hard to make supporters happy, Natures minne is cool and all since Convalescence doesnt exist anymore the bland ass 120 cd skill obviously needs a redesign, aswell as the other 2 , Battle Voice is ok, Wardens paean is lame due to how few dots are esuna-able and threatening. But my faith is waning due to how the devs have been constantly making content easier and the best case scenario theyll homogenize it like how they did with tanks and give all ranged dps the exact same buffs with the exact same effects

[Gallus]

Bard in ARR was a 4 button faceroll, and you are overestimating Bard's complexity in HW. Sure, it had to deal with the hardcasts (albeit they were very short, so it barely mattered), but you didn't have to rotate 3 different songs, you didn't have to keep track of a song gauge, and some people will disagree here, but I think having to refresh the DOTs every 18 seconds was actually more manageable than doing it every 30 (reason being, 18 seconds is a very short amount of time, you can literally count your GCDs until your next Iron Jaws, 30s makes it easier to forget).
Bard in HW was just massively overbloated with buffs, Hawk's eye, Blood for Blood, Internal Release, Barrage, Raging, etc. Then you had Foe's Requiem which was a flat 3% damage buff to all the party (surely engaging... <.<). The only thing convoluted about HW's BRD was the opener, but keeping the rotation going was simpler than it is in ShB imo.

Opinions though.

[ExcogEnjoyer]

Bard in HW was just massively overbloated with buffs, Hawk's eye, Blood for Blood, Internal Release, Barrage, Raging, etc. Then you had Foe's Requiem which was a flat 3% damage buff to all the party (surely engaging... <.<).

Foes was cool because it let you play actual music (small little jingle snippets, albeit) but its part of the Bard flavor that people liked so much.