At this point should Bard and... I dunno, "Sniper" just be split into two jobs?

[Garnix]

The lore isn't a matter of "how the quests are structured" or "how abilities tie into the quests". The lore is how Gridania's archers have a history of plucking their bowstrings and sing songs on the battlefield to inspire their friends and comrades. The 50+ questline is about a captain in the grand company trying to revive this tradition and start a warsong unit in the Twin Adders, and the Gods' Quiver lends him one of their delinquent archers with the intent of foiling a plan he sees as fruitless, etc. There's multiple bow weapons designed with the intent of being half-harp.

True. But why should they actually change that part of the lore?
Wouldn't it be fine if the bard remained an 'archer/bard' until level 80, and then for the 80+ job quests to be about dropping the bow to focus more on actual bard abilities?
They could make it a progressive change over the next few expansions...

[Qurho]

True. But why should they actually change that part of the lore?
Wouldn't it be fine if the bard remained an 'archer/bard' until level 80, and then for the 80+ job quests to be about dropping the bow to focus more on actual bard abilities?
They could make it a progressive change over the next few expansions...

I mean, the premise of the thread is if Bard should be split into a proper support and another ranged class. If that were the case, I'm not sure how this would be implemented without some hitches. Do you suddenly just lose your offensive toolkit on hitting 80+?

In regards to Bards support, many players agree that the 4.0 changes did Bard wonders as they felt like a Bard, but had the strength behind them people wanted. Unfortunately, with 5.0 and the Devs wanting Dancer to be the most supportive, Bard suffered some even though their playstyle didn't change all that much. The main difference is that Bards doesn't "benefit" from their songs the way Dancers do from their dances. This does makes sense for a few skills, since the song buff for Bard is meant to be the repertoire effect. But it can feel underwhelming at times. The solution isn't so much to fix Bard so that their support "is" more impactful, but so that it "feels" more impactful.

This is a good point though, it's easy to forget that they'd originally removed all the party buffs from Bard's song rotation at the start of 5.0 to shuffle all that supportive ability on to Dancer, before adding some of that back when folks complained. I don't mind where Bard currently is, but I do agree that it definitely feels underwhelming compared to where it used to be.