"Serious" Bard 6.0 predicted/suggested kit

[Connor]

Also BRD has 23 skills and 2 maybe 3 useful role skills out of the 32 slots. It’s no where near as cluttered as other jobs in terms of buttons and still it has less buttons than SB Bard. Your correct we should be mindful unless your ranged as they have the least amount of skills

It’s worth mentioning that certain Bard skills could easily be pruned too (Repelling Shot being the most egregious example)

As for Apex Arrow I think the real problem there is the fact that we have an entire gauge dedicated solely to a single ability. A single target version wouldn’t make much difference to the job overall, but at the same time, it would be nice to have other things to spend the gauge on instead of it just being an ‘Apex Power Gauge’. Dancer has a similar problem with Esprit existing solely for the Sabre Dance (though at least they don’t have to wait until level 80 to unlock their gauge lol)

Some examples of abilities also using Song Gauge could be like maybe a DoT-spread that costs 20 or something. Some kind of support effect like Regen or a shield with a higher cost like 50. Idk it just feels weird having a whole UI section dedicated to the one ability. It would be more engaging to have at least one other option to use Song Gauge for, so I’d like to see something utilise it in 6.0 in some way. But at the same time, I would like to see it be something more interesting than just ‘Apex Arrow but stronger and on one target’.

Personally I think tying Song Gauge to support effect abilities could be a good way to make it more interesting and feel more like the job as described by the game/lore itself. Bards would use their arrow attacks, doing Archer things to build Song Gauge, then use Song Gauge to support the party. Inspire your comrades to ever greater feats, to paraphrase Jehantel. Then Apex can be the ‘dump’ abilities that’s used when nobody needs the support. I think it’d be fun to have to plan ahead whether to use it on something supportive or to use it on Apex for the damage.

Then again, the reality is that players would just remove anything supportive from their hotbars and use it solely for dps, so even though there’d technically be more options it wouldn’t actually change anything. Plus there’s the whole Bard is too OP for songs thing the devs mentioned. So the ‘support’ effects would either have to be functionally redundant (Healing boost in a game where you barely use healing, status cleanse in a game that very rarely features status effects), or they’d break the game balance and make Bard a guaranteed raid spot (again)