Is bard in a bad spot right now?

[Mondy]

haha, yes I will try to do that too, reading all these hate towards bard is really sad.

[Jirah]

moslty hyperbole but at the very least BRD and DNC support, i dont see a reason to pick MCH over any job unless its supposed to be a crutch job

[Cetonis]

These are some... wild takes in here.


1. Presently, ranged dps all bring about 6-9% less total damage (between what they deal personally + buffs to the group) compared to other roles, depending on what fight / job you want to compare to.

Despite this, groups will bring a ranged because of the 1% party-wide main stat buff you get per role. This is a bit of a band-aid, basically SE really doesn't want 2x ranged to be the go-to and this was their solution for ShB.

It is not known if this will be the scale of the gap in Endwalker. Also, Summoner's redesign is going to put a lot of pressure on SE to come up with a new plan, and hopefully manage cross-role balance in a way the players buy into more.


2. Between the three ranged, the balance is very good, and has been for about a year now. People are incredibly bad at keeping up to date on job balance, and lock in ideas from x.0-x.1 that have long since been patched up.

It will probably be shifty to start 6.x as well, and whoever is behind for the first few months will be branded for the whole expac, no matter how well SE closes the gap.

People are also quite bad at wrapping their heads around (9 + 3) = (10 + 2) = 12. Somehow they think 10+2 is less than the others.


3. Regardless and in general, SE does not tune content tightly enough for the small differences in job dps output to have a meaningful impact outside of i.e. competitive speed running. You can make a case for early prog, but even then world racers just bring their favorite / most comfortable jobs a lot of the time.


4. What is true is that Stormblood Bards are, almost universally, disappointed in the Shadowbringers version of the job.

SE removed a lot of popular elements from the kit, and didn't particularly replace them. Most individual removals made sense, but SE failed to see the forest for the trees.


5. "Identity" complaints have no relation to gameplay. There's nothing actually wrong with having a music-themed archer class, some people just really want a pure archer or pure musician and it's simply not going to happen.


6. Endwalker's changes are a substantial improvement, even if they're not exactly a full return to the glory days. Bard mains should look forward to it with light, comfy optimism

[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.

[Aiscence]

snip

The problem is that instead they bring 2 casters that have A LOT of mobility since ShB.

Don't forget that the 1% that they bring is too brought by the 2 other dps role, so in the end only the 4th job have to be considered. if the 1% wasn't there, never would a range be picked as any caster can do movement as good as ranged atm and even if they don't, their dps will compensate largely.

Yes it is possible ton bring any "comp" but it's still feeling very bad to know you are being largely outdps'd by a rdm having 4 times your utility when you were supposed to be a support role, or even worse, supposed to be a selfish dps as a mch.

But yeah people are sad about shb's bard because they only got apex arrow that is .. really a weird ability, the crit not affecting your procs, the songs not being a buff anymore (was given to the dnc in the form of partner dance) and them still not getting a dot spreaded.

[ExcogEnjoyer]

Despite this, groups will bring a ranged because of the 1% party-wide main stat buff you get per role. This is a bit of a band-aid, basically SE really doesn't want 2x ranged to be the go-to and this was their solution for ShB.

Because square has absolutely 0 interest in actually making ranged dps interesting. If not for the 1% buff, not a single group that's serious in any capacity would bring a ranged dps.

2. Between the three ranged, the balance is very good, and has been for about a year now. People are incredibly bad at keeping up to date on job balance, and lock in ideas from x.0-x.1 that have long since been patched up.

Not a single person here is talking about balance.

People are also quite bad at wrapping their heads around (9 + 3) = (10 + 2) = 12. Somehow they think 10+2 is less than the others.

I'll be honest I have no idea what this is referencing.

4. What is true is that Stormblood Bards are, almost universally, disappointed in the Shadowbringers version of the job.

SE removed a lot of popular elements from the kit, and didn't particularly replace them. Most individual removals made sense, but SE failed to see the forest for the trees.

The problem is they removed a lot of fun stuff in order to nerf bard but went overboard and now its a 1 button class.

5. "Identity" complaints have no relation to gameplay. There's nothing actually wrong with having a music-themed archer class, some people just really want a pure archer or pure musician and it's simply not going to happen.

I'm sorry this is just flat wrong. Aesthetic and identity are 2 separate things.

6. Endwalker's changes are a substantial improvement, even if they're not exactly a full return to the glory days. Bard mains should look forward to it with light, comfy optimism

I disagree. the changes are middling at best, with double song procs still making Mages' Ballad a pain to endure, and its locked to level 6.0 content, and the dot changes makes bard even MORE of a 1 button class if that was somehow possible.
The reality is that bard will probably be worse in 6.0 than it's ever been.

[Cetonis]

I disagree. the changes are middling at best, with double song procs still making Mages' Ballad a pain to endure, and its locked to level 6.0 content, and the dot changes makes bard even MORE of a 1 button class if that was somehow possible.

This complaint is objectively incorrect. Bard uses less filler GCDs now than they did in Stormblood, and will use slightly fewer still in Endwalker (Blast Arrow outpaces the Iron Jaws count reduction).

BL charges being at 84 is indeed disappointing, but it's better than not having it. You don't seem to understand what they actually mean gameplay-wise; it sounds like you're going off of second or third-hand complaints, or things people who don't play the job very often say.

[Warlyx]

BL charges should start at lower lvls once u get mage ballad for example

[ExcogEnjoyer]

This complaint is objectively incorrect. Bard uses less filler GCDs now than they did in Stormblood, and will use slightly fewer still in Endwalker (Blast Arrow outpaces the Iron Jaws count reduction).

I define a filler GCD as a GCD that does nothing but damage upfront with no additional effects. for example, burst shot and refulgent arrow are filler gcds because they do nothing outside of do damage. Something like old straight shot would not be a filler gcd.

BL charges being at 84 is indeed disappointing, but it's better than not having it.

I'm in the minority when I say this but i would rather having something that fixes the issue rather than a half measure.

You don't seem to understand what they actually mean gameplay-wise; it sounds like you're going off of second or third-hand complaints, or things people who don't play the job very often say.

No, I understand exactly what they mean.

[Jirah]

End of the day it won’t matter unless you do high end content and even then it never feels like it’s underpowered. The community just cares a ton about minuscule numbers, does BRD do more than SAM? Course not unless you do the fight properly and the Sam dies which ultimately is the important part. Knowledge of The fights and half the time when I enrage it’s because half the party has the res debuff not because of we had a BRD in the group