Bard "buff"

[CKNovel]

Everyone saying 'lol Bard is fine because world first' need to be reminded that the very first UCOB clear was done with a Dark Knight, and I am pretty sure nobody here needs a refresher on the numerous problems that class had throughout Stormblood (nor do I expect anyone here to justify any of that today).

This thread is arguing about design, not what people who are comfortable with the class are capable of doing. Or was Samurai and Black Mage still being able to clear all content in Stormblood meant they were 'fine'? Though if one really wants to get into that specific argument, there was nothing really wrong with them last expansion, the real problem was the community's over-reliance on piercing meta rather than their own class design. But Bard's issues this expansion is more about the entire ranged role in general, on top of their own personal issues (mostly revolving around how random Apex Arrow is and that it doesn't add anything but an extra layer of frustration, for a skill that isn't even that strong to begin with).

Oh, finally something different. This topic has been going on about world first for no reason when the answer is obviously that people play what they want and what they are most comfortable with.
That's why there is many ranged players aswell despite the role having low rDPS.

SAM and BLM were underrated because we did not had access to rDPS calculations before and we all praised the buffs that applies to the whole party. And BLM wasn't as mobile as before.

Now that rDPS, pDPS and aDPS are well splitted we have a much better view about BLM and SAM weight in a group, how rDPS actually impact them. And it turns out they're good, even better than the other jobs in their group.

Funny enough, I remember when DNC buffs were much stronger, Devilment was at 30% crit/dh during the ShB playtest and most claimed it would be way too Overpowered.
For the 5.4 they buffed all jobs to close the gap between SMN, BLM and SAM, but forgot the ranged.

I think they either gave up for the 5.X or that's the way they intend ranged to be.
Buffing ranged for this expansion will be useless, we only have EX content and maybe one Ultimate to go through. I'm really hoping that they intend to rework the purpose of the role during the expansion. It's tiring to see that you have litterally little to no impact on the team utility, survival or DPS.