Why do people hate BRD?

[Kabooa]

It's been said numerous times.

1. The change to static proc % has removed a feeling of progression, for better or worse. There are two sides to this. The pro side is that Bard no longer comes swinging in at the start of an expansion underweight. The con side is it stopped being a monster at the end of an expansion, when it could push upwards of 80+% critical rate on Dots, and being able to snapshot that through good use of Iron Jaws to extend the duration of party critical buffs and their burst windows.

2. The de-emphasis of active party support, even if not much of it remained. Foe Reqieum gave dual purpose to Mana Song, and like anything that has dual purpose, it creates some level of choice between creating meaningful burst windows and providing needed relief when things go wrong.

3. Apex Arrow is not good. Nearly all other gauge spends either allow some forgiveness / stockpiling, or spenders are OGCD, or have manipulation allowing you to line up ideal burst windows. This last part is especially important, as while the Bard is a more RNG job, the inability to meaningfully control that RNG just means you push the buttons as they come off, and that removes player agency. Apex arrow is not an OGCD, therefore its potency when utilized is always considered against the benefit of just rolling your GCD normally, meaning you really only have a small window of utilization of Apex Arrow where it's worthwhile.

4. This is a personal note, but the current line up of actions that can proc Refulgent Arrow leads to unpleasant dissonance. DoTs and Iron Jaws should not proc Refulgent as it's designed now. It just feels bad because you have a set priority and refulgent is second lowest on that, so you get into scenarios where you overwrite Refulgent procs because of what can proc it.

5. Another personal note, Iron Jaws nearly removes any sort of DoT management in the job, and beyond application, you'll almost never touch them again. We're dangerously close to just having Iron Jaws apply the DoTs, because really, what's being lost doing it that way?

[Rika007]

It's been said numerous times.

This was so well thought out that I just have to give thoughts on each of these even if I disagreed on a few points. Because more talk needs to be on Bard, especially with SE seemingly addressing some of the issues while others are being left alone.

1. The change to static proc % has removed a feeling of progression, for better or worse. There are two sides to this. The pro side is that Bard no longer comes swinging in at the start of an expansion underweight. The con side is it stopped being a monster at the end of an expansion, when it could push upwards of 80+% critical rate on Dots, and being able to snapshot that through good use of Iron Jaws to extend the duration of party critical buffs and their burst windows.

This this this. This is the biggest part that no one talks about and why anyone who didn't care about the support loss still had issues with the job. Not just because it effected its numbers and damage, because it effected the jobs FEEL. How it plays, ESPECIALLY during its most important window, the burst period of Raging Strikes and Pitch Perfect. Talk about how good the flat rate is comparatively to the possible lows, but the fact of the matter is, the highs were more often later in the expansion, and that's what people will remember the most, how the job feels when played at it's PEAK. And I can say without a doubt I can count the amount of times I've hit 5-6 or so pitch perfects this expansion on my hands, when near the end of Stormblood that was something that occurred routinely. Hitting only 2 Pitch Perfects SUCKS. It flat out doesn't feel good from an impact standpoint, and honestly makes the job feel slow, which is a death knell for a high APM job.

Even though there should be no reason to nerf Pitch Perfect and Blood Letter's potency with how dumb the Ranged Tax is (especially with Red Mage and SMN getting even more mobile and the Melee DPS less positionals and more uptime tools), I would happily take nerfed potencies on those abilities for higher proc rates or just other ways to guarantee procs (charges to Empyreal Arrow, procs generating from the new party buff, procs whenever sidewinder/barrage/WM/MB are used) just to get that high APM feel of late Stormblood Bard back.

2. The de-emphasis of active party support, even if not much of it remained. Foe Reqieum gave dual purpose to Mana Song, and like anything that has dual purpose, it creates some level of choice between creating meaningful burst windows and providing needed relief when things go wrong.

Another big thing no one counts, that extra mini game of Foe's with Refresh was always a fun thing to plan out during raid tiers with your team. And striping Foe's entirely would be a kin to ripping wings from Paladin, Trick from Ninja, Cards from Ast. It was our premier party support ability and it was just RIPPED away with nothing to replace it. Now we seem to be getting a replacement for it finally in Endwalker (just hope they address the concern that already shows of it not being useable at the start of a fight).

3. Apex Arrow is not good. Nearly all other gauge spends either allow some forgiveness / stockpiling, or spenders are OGCD, or have manipulation allowing you to line up ideal burst windows. This last part is especially important, as while the Bard is a more RNG job, the inability to meaningfully control that RNG just means you push the buttons as they come off, and that removes player agency. Apex arrow is not an OGCD, therefore its potency when utilized is always considered against the benefit of just rolling your GCD normally, meaning you really only have a small window of utilization of Apex Arrow where it's worthwhile.

Yep. Capstone abilities are supposed to feel incredible, the best part of your kits, and I think Apex Arrow is tied with Six Sided Star for the most underwhelming one in the game. And unfortunately not only does it seems like none of those was addressed... it looks like they doubled down on it and added a follow up oGCD attack to it. So unless tool tips show us something different, it is still completely unreliable and doesn't fit in the rotation, BUT is also now MORE important. Not good.

4. This is a personal note, but the current line up of actions that can proc Refulgent Arrow leads to unpleasant dissonance. DoTs and Iron Jaws should not proc Refulgent as it's designed now. It just feels bad because you have a set priority and refulgent is second lowest on that, so you get into scenarios where you overwrite Refulgent procs because of what can proc it.

Personal pref yeah but I agree fully. It really doesn't matter as it leads to more Refulgent Procs and you would need to follow your timings anyway, it just sucks to have to ignore and overwrite them.

5. Another personal note, Iron Jaws nearly removes any sort of DoT management in the job, and beyond application, you'll almost never touch them again. We're dangerously close to just having Iron Jaws apply the DoTs, because really, what's being lost doing it that way?

Eh personally on this I prefer this method of dotting, I just want more interaction from them out of abilities like Sidewinder (make that ability happen more often please). I like the idea of Putting the Dots on manually, and then up keeping with one ability, making a true hard payment for messing up.

[Shurrikhan]

1. The change to static proc % has removed a feeling of progression, for better or worse.

I don't mind losing out on an obligatory parse-pauper-to-prince narrative with each expansion (granted, that tends to already fall within the typical deviation of patch x.0 to x.2 imbalance anyways), but I definitely miss raid buffs feeling worthwhile to snapshot for their effects on Procs.

2. The de-emphasis of active party support, even if not much of it remained.

Agreed. I do think the StB was already somehow both painfully lackluster and bloated (at least, for what it did), but Bard isn't a theme that does well on only a single CD's worth of active party-wide support. (Emphasis on "active"; the song buffs only reduce nuance to our song rotations we'd otherwise be situationally able to further leverage to a degree proportionate to downtime.)

3. Apex Arrow is not good.

And the saddest part is how easily it could be made fine. Heck, with some attached utility and a consumption cap (to allow for banking) it could be great. But I guess that had to be reserved for Endwalker, if not the expansion thereafter?

4. This is a personal note, but the current line up of actions that can proc Refulgent Arrow leads to unpleasant dissonance.

We've seen this proc waste on plenty of other jobs. I can't honestly say it bugs me at all.

But nor would I be particularly sad to lose the Refulgent procs from my DoT. It just means that occasionally I'd lose some priority management or changes to my DoT patterns when facing multiple low-HP enemies, etc. It'd be a loss, and I don't see the need for that loss, but it wouldn't remotely be a significant one.

5. Another personal note, Iron Jaws nearly removes any sort of DoT management in the job, and beyond application, you'll almost never touch them again.

I feel like Iron Jaws' issue is one of button waste more so than a loss to/of DoT management. DoT management still felt like a very real thing -- perhaps even more so in dungeons -- right up until they decided to nearly double DoT durations, from 18s (HW) to 30 (StB).

That said, my preference was always to have Iron Jaws be a gauge spender or, say, a two-charge CD consumer, variable with one's song (and with alternatives available to the other two). That way it doesn't replace our DoTs so much offer a multi-DoT-maintenance advantage for a time.