Is bard in a bad spot right now?

[Grimoire-M]

Any complexity and depth this job had was gutted in ShB—and it’s why I dropped the job like a sack of hot potatoes.

Complexity from what, exactly? Snapshotting I can agree was more fun, but the need to stack a specific party composition to be viable due to proc variance and gear scaling affecting your base crit chance was decidedly antithetical to the support aspects of the job, purely because it bizarrely required that support to be given to it to function as a real job. I didn’t think there was a problem with ShB Bard as long as we got increased Repertoire proc rate on Raging Strikes. Ballad has proven to survive unscathed, so with the lower cooldown in Endwalker I’d only want it to apply if RS is used during Minuet. Hell the Coda management could unlock that function and I would be satisfied.

[HyoMinPark]

Complexity from what, exactly? Snapshotting I can agree was more fun, but the need to stack a specific party composition to be viable due to proc variance and gear scaling affecting your base crit chance was decidedly antithetical to the support aspects of the job, purely because it bizarrely required that support to be given to it to function as a real job. I didn’t think there was a problem with ShB Bard as long as we got increased Repertoire proc rate on Raging Strikes. Ballad has proven to survive unscathed, so with the lower cooldown in Endwalker I’d only want it to apply if RS is used during Minuet. Hell the Coda management could unlock that function and I would be satisfied.

The change in repertoire removed Iron Jaws optimization. It dumbed down the job; thereby, removing complexity and depth from those that wanted to do more than the average or bare minimum play. Those that wanted that extra layer of optimization. What optimization is there in IJ now? Far less than there was in SB. Sure, you still snapshot—but under stricter circumstances now. Snapshotting crit buffs doesn’t matter nearly as much now as it did before. And you don’t snapshot as frequently as before. I believe now there has to be at least 2 damage buffs out to snapshot, where as before you could single snapshot if just one crit buff was present. This will likely change again with increased DoT duration in EW. IJ seems like it will become less relevant then than it is now.

BRD was more than capable of functioning “as a real job” without its optimal comp. I’m honestly not sure what you’re even trying to say with that statement. Your post almost insinuates that, without a DRG and SCH, BRD wasn’t viable. BRD was viable. It was just extremely feelsbadman to not have either; especially to not have a DRG.

[Grimoire-M]

The change in repertoire removed Iron Jaws optimization. It dumbed down the job; thereby, removing complexity and depth from those that wanted to do more than the average or bare minimum play. Those that wanted that extra layer of optimization. What optimization is there in IJ now? Far less than there was in SB. Sure, you still snapshot—but under stricter circumstances now. Snapshotting crit buffs doesn’t matter nearly as much now as it did before. And you don’t snapshot as frequently as before. I believe now there has to be at least 2 damage buffs out to snapshot, where as before you could single snapshot if just one crit buff was present. This will likely change again with increased DoT duration in EW. IJ seems like it will become less relevant then than it is now.

BRD was more than capable of functioning “as a real job” without its optimal comp. I’m honestly not sure what you’re even trying to say with that statement. Your post almost insinuates that, without a DRG and SCH, BRD wasn’t viable. BRD was viable. It was just extremely feelsbadman to not have either; especially to not have a DRG.

DRG + AST or SCH I considered pretty much necessary, as any healer combination really couldn't cater to it enough on their own despite one of SCH/AST being guaranteed to show up. SCH in theory aligns well, in practice you'd rather have Piercing and align on the 3m buffs consistently. Piercing + Litany + 6m aligned Dragon Sight for Minuet windows basically meant the two were joined at the hips the whole expansion and Bard suffered far more for DRG's absence (particularly with the 80s window in average play screwing with their alignment) early on. It was only 'viable without catering' for the last tier, and even then we've had those numbers for all of ShB and I don't recall them being impressive until SE buffed Burst Shot how many times?

Hell I remember the frustration with the first tier rates getting to the point I actually swapped to Summoner on O4S just for the consistency despite losing a significant amount of item level. Though even that was also fuelled by a combination of external incentives within the group I had at the time on top of the damage differential. We had SAM/BLM/RDM/WAR/DRK/AST/WHM, which meant Contagion was far more reliable in that group while SMN's low-end DPS was absolutely better than a DRG-less Bard's high end at the time. SMN also could still fill in the ranged slot I was acting in, including providing MP to a raid that needed it (nevermind being able to raise on top of it). It took it into the second tier, and basically got my first orange parse off of abusing the one day one person playing DRG that month (who was trying to find a melee he wanted to stick with) with a SCH decided to just align their Chain Strat with Litany because both were forgetting to press it on cooldown.

I pretty much swapped off of it and stuck to Summoner the rest of the expansion when said DRG decided to swap to Monk the next week, and showed him our O7S logs to prove why. He felt bad but I told him I'd rather we -both- enjoy what we're playing than just one of us.

The variance was just that bad if you were below 35% proc rate, and it was similarly way too good if you got over the 63% threshold inside Minuet, something that could consistently happen in the later tiers. Gear Scaling made their first tier god awful and final tier barely tolerable on its own, which is where that 40% proc rate we have now came from. How that translates in terms of game feel, is basically either you had buffs to align on or you weren't getting to play your job. I don't consider that a viable way job, but the perspective that definition of viable is focused on how fun it is first, though the secondary balancing effect does play a legitimate role.

To be clear though, while I do miss some instances, I do not think every single Iron Jaws snapshot timing needs to come back on them, And I certainly would not add the gear scaling aspect either. You'd have to really nerf Burst Shot and buff their DoTs significantly to accommodate that playstyle to the same degree, something we already know SE hates. I'd rather Bard simply get the boost it needs in Minuet using the Endwalker Raging Strike & Song timers, since that's all it really needs to be 'fun' again, even if it means nerfing Pitch Perfect's tuning to justify that change in the first place. That would give enough of that SB feel back without becoming a raid-composition problem. That's the part I want to avoid inserting back when changing it.