Is bard in a bad spot right now?

[Rongway]

When deciding what jobs to play, don't go straight to which ones have the lowest dpsMax vs highest dpsMax. Start with which jobs you like the look of. The gear, the animations. If you like two or more jobs' aesthetics equally, decide based on which one feels better to play. Then, if two ore more are have both your favorite aesthetics and your favorite rotation, choose the one that has higher damage potential.

If you enjoy a job enough to learn to play it well, you will deal more damage than you would with the "high dps" jobs that you don't care about.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm suprised some mention the rotation, when it was widely praised as one of the best designed jobs in Stormblood, and rotationally nothing has changed except the addition of Apex Arrow; which while not the most fun skill ever doesn't particularly change what's fundamentally the same rotation as in Stormblood. Not saying SB Bard was flawless, but it does confuse me when this is brought up.

Rotationally, it’s similar to SB BRD, but still a shadow of its former self. The repurposing of Repertoire into a flat 40% chance to proc removed optimization from Iron Jaws, where it was common practice to single snapshot 1 Crit buff, and double snapshot more than 1 Crit buff—especially during burst windows for more Pitch Perfect/Bloodletter procs. So now IJ is used less because the gain from double snapshotting is less than it was prior. There was also Straight Shot’s personal buff which was reapplied every 30s and maintained throughout, but it too was removed. Not as glaring as the dumbing down of IJ, but still a change. Foe Requiem optimization was also removed—which, again, not the most glaring change in rotation, but a change nonetheless. Empyreal Arrow was also changed from a weaponskill to an ability, and that also brought about issues with it.

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. BRD had been my main since I started; and I honestly enjoyed bowmage more than I did this shade of it ShB gave us. EW doesn’t seem much better: Alex Arrow is near universally condemned, and what do they do? Give us Apex Arrow II!! And we get AST’s Divination! Riveting! At least we got Bloodletter charges finally?? But only at level 84 and higher…

The support still isn’t really what people have been asking for either. Song buffs being readded was a failed attempt at placating requests for party support—but that wasn’t the kind of support BRDs were even asking for. They wanted active support like MP management for the party, or to bring things like Palisade back. Minne’s change was nice—but not enough. And Warden’s Paeon continues to be incredibly niche, since so many debuffs in higher level content are not cleansable. I guess it has the advantage in E8S and TEA, but still extremely niche and easily forgotten. Troubadour is kind of whatever at this point because everyone has an x% AOE mitigation button; so it feel less impactful than it did in SB. It made BRD slightly preferred in UwU over MCH because Dismantle couldn’t affect what the primals were doing around the arena; it could only affect what Ultima was doing. Plus, 30 seconds of Wanderer’s Troubadour was *chef’s kiss*.

Physical ranged may not be a “burden”, but they are kept in parties purely for the 1%. If that 1% didn’t exist, there’d be no reason to even bring them. Both their personal and raid damage are super low.

[ForteNightshade]

Since Summoner is going to be about 84% free movement as well, I'm expecting it to be similarly penalized and just not do full damage compared to a RDM or BLM as well.

Funny thing about that is SMN can't be weaker than RDM as it lacks the utility to compensate. Therefore, it'll likely stay in its current position just under Black Mage and Samurai despite having near free mobility. Further proving the 1% party bonus exists only because the dev team doesn't want to balance the Range against other jobs.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Not a complaint in how Bard plays because it's still "relatively" alright although not really.

But,
Wish they'd just hurry up and get rid of the last remaining remnants of Bard's archer motif. Bard doesn't feel like a bard and certainly no longer looks like a classic archer anymore. Bard visually and in SFX, in my opinion, looks sad and pathetic compared to bards in other games and to all the other jobs in this game. You barely use music as Bard and fire magical arrows of magical light out of your bow like Dragon's Dogma's Magick Archer.

If only Radiant Finale looked and sounded as epic as Siren's Deathly Cadenza instead of a despondent and depressed orchestra. But I suppose after years of not being a real bard and being neglected Bard has truly become despondent. Every expansion with Bard I always pray it gets something as beautifully sounding as Deathly Cadenza yet we get nothing but more magic arrows and boring sounding music SFX.

I honestly enjoyed bowmage more than I did this shade of it ShB gave us. EW doesn’t seem much better: Alex Arrow is near universally condemned, and what do they do? Give us Apex Arrow II!! And we get AST’s Divination! Riveting! At least we got Bloodletter charges finally?? But only at level 84 and higher…

Gods do I genuinely miss HW Bowmage. It's also amazing that Bard still uses Bloodletter which still has an animation from way back in 2.0. They couldn't even have been bothered updating its VFX or SFX and now you'll be using it 100% more often. Riveting.

Funny thing about that is SMN can't be weaker than RDM as it lacks the utility to compensate. Therefore, it'll likely stay in its current position just under Black Mage and Samurai despite having near free mobility. Further proving the 1% party bonus exists only because the dev team doesn't want to balance the Range against other jobs.

SMN will only need to hardcast around 4 GCDs per minute in EW making it deal more damage than any of the 3 ranged jobs and have almost the same amount of mobility making the mobility tax on ranged an even bigger joke. And SMN has Devotion (soon changed to Searing Light, which is a straight up better version of Devotion, maybe), it does have utility. It will also still have Resurrection.

I admit I play casters because the ranged jobs are boring mechanically, boring visually and just plain suck, and I'm truly beginning to think the devs are heavily biased towards casters and against ranged. Every expansion casters get new things with impressive weight, VFX, SFX and mechanics while ranged gets trashed on. Like HyoMinPark said, Apex Arrow 2.0 which is a far cry from the weight, power and excitement you get from using Verholy/flare, Deathflare, Foul, Stardiver or Midare.

[DPZ2]

Take heart in the following:

It doesn't really matter what you play, as long as you enjoy the playstyle. There may be content where a 1% increase in DPS will save the day, but that extra 1% may come from a Bard who plays really well, as opposed to a Summoner who only play adequately.

Bards are not troubadours, nor have they ever been. They are, first and foremost, ranged DPS who use bows and arrows. Their songs can buff their party at critical times, but not as much as in past years when it basically guaranteed a spot in a raid group.

Min-maxers will always choose the jobs that produce the "most", even if they dislike the aesthetics and the job itself.

You are not condemned to play only Bard for the rest of time. You are welcome to try out Machinist and Dancer (in the Heavensward expansion, and thereafter). You are welcome to try out healers and tanks and melee/magical DPS. This is not like some other games, where you are doomed to create an alt character in order to enjoy a different playstyle.

Focus on the storyline, for which there are no 'wrong' jobs. See how much you can accomplish with Bard before abandoning it because min-maxers determined it to be a less useful job in more extreme end-game content.

[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.

[Katie_Kitty]

I've been asking about dps jobs to my dps friends and they are kind of acting like bard is sort of 0.9 of a dps. I thought bard was a good dps to have with the buffs and all but I guess not?

Honestly, yeah, bard has been the weakest DPS for all of the Shadowbringers expansion basically. Early on, RDM and NIN were down there in the garbage with them, but those two got fixed while Bard is still pretty lousy overall.

[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.

[Burningskull]

I've been asking about dps jobs to my dps friends and they are kind of acting like bard is sort of 0.9 of a dps. I thought bard was a good dps to have with the buffs and all but I guess not?

Bard is always in a bad spot because they don't k now if they want to make it a Bard or a Ranger. Honestly it's almost like SMN(current SMN) where it's two ideas crammed into one.

[HappyHubris]

Oh dear; reading all these posts is really bad! I've just hit level 36 with my bard (I'm a new player and just thought the bow would be cool!), is there a case for just staying as an archer?

I would ignore online forum threads about MMOs. You'll get the people complaining much more than the people having fun.