Bard Changes I would love to see for End Walker

[dezzmont]

I disagree. Part of what attracts players to Samurai is the aforementioned dopamine effect Cetonis mentioned earlier. The belief it does incredibly high damage is apart of its identity. I cannot tell you the sheer number of Samurai players who believe they're top DPS despite a certain magical abacus proving otherwise. And no other job garners that reaction nearly as often. Incidentally, many prefer the Stormblood iteration of Samurai, which was notoriously weak. Which made it far less popular than its counterparts, Dragoon and Ninja.

None of this is to say Bard isn't without issue rotationally, but don't underestimate the impact low damage output can have on people's perception.

I think you are right and wrong here. Monk also is an extremely high DPS class but has super low player satisfaction in polls despite that. Low DPS is, for most players, only going to be seen as a problem if the job is already unfun, and high DPS likewise only matters if the job 'sells' it well, which SAM does way better than almost any other job in the game besides maybe Black Mage.

It also matters to talk about the segment of the player base we are discussing. Stormblood SAM were not popular in statics or high end stuff, but trust me when I say they were flipping EVERYWHERE outside of that. Ideally you make the job both fun and good, but I would say fun is more critical than good, and the fantasy of the job being well executed is the most critical part of that.