"Serious" Bard 6.0 predicted/suggested kit

[Jirah]

I'd flip this around, and argue that the other ranged should be more like this.

110% agree with this statement! I couldnt agree more! DNC while being fun in its own style and valor, is very nonthreatening and easy. Not mindless but most players argue that DNC is easy mode. MCH is a tier below that and feels like a beta job with how mindless it is and these are NOT RDPS standouts and BRD should not cut more of its limbs to please a crowd that never liked them to begin with much like MCH has done

[gumas]

I'd flip this around, and argue that the other ranged should be more like this.

if that case iam good with it, out of all ranged class (physical), bard seems to be the most "busy" compare to other

[Jirah]

if that case iam good with it, out of all ranged class (physical), bard seems to be the most "busy" compare to other

Which urks me as its still lesser compared to its SB couterpart which was beloved by many but now we have SHB and its hated for being busy? I just dont understand

[Cetonis]

Which urks me as its still lesser compared to its SB couterpart which was beloved by many but now we have SHB and its hated for being busy? I just dont understand

The people complaining about it aren't the same people who loved the job in SB. The complainers were either not playing in SB, playing other jobs, or playing Bard thinking "it's a support, my damage doesn't matter" or something (while also not pressing Foe Requiem).

Machinist being a mess kind of took the public perception hit, hard for anyone to claim Bard was tough when be-perfect-or-else Machinist was right there waving its arms.

And it's not that there isn't a tracking burden / learning curve, it's just that people don't expect to need to practice or learn stuff (to operate on a base level anyway) after trying MCH or DNC.

[Dogempire]

I'd flip this around, and argue that the other ranged should be more like this. As physical ranged, we do not have cast times to worry about, nor do we have melee range or positional concerns.

It makes sense to make up for that lack of "built-in" difficulty somehow, and one way to do it is to have a somewhat higher level of randomness / tracking / juggling than would be allowed on a melee or caster.

A lot of people find Machinist to be dreadfully boring to play for more than a short while, because it has a kit that's tank-level in its simplicity. Without any of the other factors that make it so that tanks are still interesting to play, nor any casts or positionals to do so otherwise, it gets stale fast.

Gonna have to disagree there, not everyone wants to play whack a mole with rng procs, and there needs to be a healthy choice in ranged playstyles other than play the piano but with different weapons and different colored skills. I can agree with ranged being high APM but making all 3 jobs reskins of each other with proc heavy gameplay is basically copying the design mistakes SE made with tanks and healers, reducing their kits to basically reskins of each other with minor flavor variations, and basically taking the lazy approach to balancing.

They could easily make dancer more proc heavy like you suggested, took bard and tuned down its kit a bit so that it has cycling damage phases with their own separate but busy rotations like summoner (but better), and take machinist and get rid of the hypercharge ping nonsense and give it a rigid but busy rotation that requires you to keep everything aligned and not let your skill cooldowns drift out of your burst phase (Like Gunbreaker)

Of course, they could do something entirely different, but ranged jobs shouldn't all fit into the same mold of "Proc hell" otherwise it's 5.0 healers all over again.

[CKNovel]

Gonna have to disagree there, not everyone wants to play whack a mole with rng procs, and there needs to be a healthy choice in ranged playstyles other than play the piano but with different weapons and different colored skills. I can agree with ranged being high APM but making all 3 jobs reskins of each other with proc heavy gameplay is basically copying the design mistakes SE made with tanks and healers, reducing their kits to basically reskins of each other with minor flavor variations, and basically taking the lazy approach to balancing.

Same here, I disagree that all rangeds needs to be the same.

MCH is currently boring because of 3 major factors:
-Heatblast spam and its GR/Ricochets
-The way too automated Automaton Queen.
-1 2 3 with no savor.

Heatblast talks for itself, no ones likes to press the same 5 GCDs in a row, Warriors was fun in SB but it quickly became tiring and SQEX decided to apply the same formula to DRK and MCH. Then you have Wildfire, an "empowered Hypercharge". The only interaction you have with the AQ is summoning it and the button if you goofed the summoning timing. And the 123 combo is simply not right, it's a "wait until you have something" combo, which was the same thing but with procs during SB/HW, except there was ammos back then.

In my opinion, BRD and DNC should be on equal support. SQEX doesn't wants both job to be the same, just makes DNC focus on one team member and BRD on the whole party (Including themselves). DNC support needs to be yeeted, at least remove Devilment but keeps the dancer partner dynamic. Not just "Hey, here's buffs and do the job for me", that keeps me very far from the job.

While charges Bloodletter/RoD is as predictable as a rainbow after the rain, one thing I missed was the "magic support" role. Now it's completely gone, but sometimes I wonder if BRD would work well with Spellspeed bonuses, I know for sure Black Mage would enjoy it and doubt RDM/SMN would be against it. I'm not a huge fan of BRD procs and the job is a reverse of SB/HW MCH, spam 1 while waiting for procs.
I barely play BRD, but it hurts a lot to see the song buff nerfed that much after all BRD would bring during SB.

[SweetPete]

For endwalker. I hope they focus on bards support. Dancer is both support heavy and has high burst phases. Bard isn’t even close to competing with dancer. They have more ranger abilities than bard abilities. I love that people say dancer should focus on their dancer partner and bard should focus on the party. I truly hope we see some amazing changes with bards support come endwalker or I fear it will sit in the corner as it does now while dancer shines in its place.

[Dogempire]

Which urks me as its still lesser compared to its SB couterpart which was beloved by many but now we have SHB and its hated for being busy? I just dont understand

I didn't like bard rotationally back in SB because it was busy but played it because I liked the support aspect, but now that that's gone it's not worth playing because the "support" is outclassed by summoner and monk.

[SweetPete]

I didn't like bard rotationally back in SB because it was busy but played it because I liked the support aspect, but now that that's gone it's not worth playing because the "support" is outclassed by summoner and monk.

Tell me about it. Bards support is so bad right now. I will not be happy if square says bards issue is being to busy. That’s not the issue. The issue is the support needs to match that of dancers. If not just call the job ranger and remove bard from the game. So tired of SE acting completely out of touch with players when they know bard was the support job and they stripped it in favor of dancer when it was released. Then have the nerve to say they don’t know what else to do with bard to make players happy. This is a load of mess and they know it. Give bards their support back.

[Rika007]

Then have the nerve to say they don’t know what else to do with bard to make players happy. This is a load of mess and they know it. Give bards their support back.

I on pretty much every occasion will White Knight the heck out of the dev team against anyone and everyone who says something about em. Seriously. We are blessed with the dev team on this game. But that moment, in that interview where they said they needed better feedback then just 'fix Bard', was the one time I legit stared at my screen and shook my head. There was no defending that one. All the devs would have to do is spend 10 minutes searching either here or the Japanese forum boards (don't even need to check the other FF social media places, but I know the devs to look at places like Reddit and Twitter too), and they will find PAGES of very well thought out constructive criticisms and ideas posted by Bard players who just want to see the support parts of their kit's returned. If they legit think the only feedback they got is just 'fix Bard' with no other ideas, then they were not paying attention at all, or worse are ignoring it.