Bard's future

[ExcogEnjoyer]

Fortunately for us, not a lot of people are clamoring for another flavourless utility class and mobility taxed physical range.

[MPNZ]

Summoner players were the loudest voice coming from within that led to their split, and there no small amount of Bards who want their focus to be on music. There are also a lot of "Bards" who got roped into the class despite being originally sold on the premise that they would be archers on the Character Creation screen. I imagine those players will jump at the chance to play Ranger and leave the song magic behind. A love of class lore is probably one of the weakest attractions to the class as it is now, and would hardly be missed if it was altered to fit a new gameplay kit.

The same pieces that were on the board then are here again now. I can see history repeating itself easily with an eventual rework, one that comes far too late in the game's life cycle but still warranted nevertheless.

It would be more interesting to keep BRD and add a laserlight show idol class (gun-witch, a ranged class from Macht) with drones and dual guns, and a trap/rush-down/keep-away ranger that uses a short-sword and an ax that could combine into a bow that would mix-up Bow-mage and rouge with a bit of rune magic for support.

Also, just to use some of ideas posted in the thread, they should have added movement speed up into haste a long time ago. and they could introduce a stacking buff that would decrease the cooldown timers on songs by five seconds and stack to 2-3 as max per use use of radiant finale(?). And, they could totally add some other buffs named like, "rivers of blood", that would convert 3-10% of RoD/BL dmg into MP. I think the other ideas like Healing% up could could be a rework NM. The buff would have a 40s timer, so once the song/dance stacks are at max it would be very active. Basically, make Phys-RNG one of the top 2 classes that you would want to kill or nuetralise first in PVP

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Rift and Archeage's bards are better bards than FF14's bard. Even Aura Kingdom's bard is a better bard.

[Eorzean_username]

Re: this debate about splitting Bard into two Jobs:

On the surface, I agree with the basic idea that Bard is well-suited to being the game's "dot Job" with a music/tempo-themed attack logic. If they made Dancer work, they could definitely make a skeletal "true Bard" work as well. And I agree that Archer would be far better suited to developing a proper RPG "Ranger" aesthetic and kit if it was no longer burdened with the chore of having to tack on musical notes to everything it gains and does.

But in practice, there's large problems with trying to make this happen at this point.

At the core, Bard is a conceptual mess stemming from the 1.x transition team trying to be clever in a way that can only seem like a good idea when you're locked inside a small echoing room with other developers.

In terms of target audience, FFXIV is a cafeteria of a game, and its priority needs to be stocking popular products that can broadly satisfy people's fantasies. In the FF franchise, there was already a well-established "Bow Upgrade Job" (Hunter/Ranger) and a well-established "Musical Singing Job" (Bard). Fusing them together was one of those oblivious 'Wow, this will be so cool and different' 2-in-1 product ideas that falls apart in actual practice, because it doesn't really appeal properly to either target market.

...It's especially confounding when you consider that Arcanist was needlessly split into 2 distinct Jobs at nearly the same time.

Anyway, that's all in the distant past now, but it affects the present. The problem is that, unlike Summoner/Scholar, whose "Book" weapon is so bland and generic that it can conceptually fit nearly any spellcaster class concept, Bard is now locked into coming from Archer and wielding a Bow. And the story quest lore and cutscenes have locked Bard into being both an archer, and music-oriented.

When you consider that Job Quests just abruptly stopped in EW (...), and that new Jobs don't even get previous Ultimate skins any more (lol), it's not realistic to expect SE to ever invest the resources or energy necessary to completely rewrite and reframe the entire Bard questline. Nor to create an entire new set of true Harp weapons and animations for Bard. Nor to do anything beyond the bare-minimum adjustments necessary to keep it functioning by slicing up and taping the pieces back together in a slightly-different shape.

So, setting aside the ideological battle that's going back and forth here, I think the idea itself — while completely logical — is basically moot, because unlike Summoner, which could keep its entire aesthetic and equipment set, trying to "fix" Bard conceptually is basically dead before it even begins when you consider SE's current level of effort and investment in Job design.


I think that it's absolutely conceptually viable/possible to split Bard into Bard and Ranger... if you put some very heavy resource costs into it. But I can't see SE ever making the decision to pull that trigger, especially when most Bard players are relatively passive/accepting of the aesthetic and flavor of the Job that they ended up with.

So I think that any time you start trying to address the lack of a satisfying product for both "Bow Job" and "Singing Job" in FFXIV, you have to begin with the problematic starting point that Bard:

Is always going to be called "Bard"
Is always going to be wielding Longbows
Is always going to have musical graphics and concepts mixed into its attacks

...Which then puts some weird constraints on what you can do with other Jobs.

For example, Bard comes from Archer. It would make a lot more sense for that upgrade to be Ranger (??? right...), and for a different Job designed like FF4/FF5/FFT Bard or FFX-2 Songstress to take over the musical aspects.

But... then you have to sort out how to handle all the musical lore associated with Bard, what to do with its musical Job design, its musical animations, its musical attacks...

So you look at the other option: make Bard the musical Job, and to keep development costs minimized, just let it be a musician that happens to shoot people with arrows. This even makes some amount of sense when you consider that there's some evidence that historical stringed instruments did first evolve from hunting bows. Then, create a distinct Hunter/Ranger type Job that... doesn't use bows.

This gets weird, though. Now you have Archer upgrading to Bard, and not Ranger, even though both Bard and Ranger exist. And you have a Ranger class that doesn't use Bows.

Then you also have the problem of what to do with that Bow that Bard is stuck with. If you keep using it in attacks and animations, then there's a lot of friction and conceptual overlap with Ranger. And if you don't use the Bow for attacks and animations, then people will begin to complain that it's just an ornament stuck on your back during combat.

None of this is a true obstacle to making it work if you try hard enough, but it's inevitably going to cause confusion and complaints, and from SE's perspective, it would probably make for a lot of unnecessary extra effort compared to just leaving Bard as-is.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

So you look at the other option: make Bard the musical Job, and to keep development costs minimized, just let it be a musician that happens to shoot people with arrows. This even makes some amount of sense when you consider that there's some evidence that historical stringed instruments did first evolve from hunting bows. Then, create a distinct Hunter/Ranger type Job that... doesn't use bows.

This gets weird, though. Now you have Archer upgrading to Bard, and not Ranger, even though both Bard and Ranger exist. And you have a Ranger class that doesn't use Bows.

Then you also have the problem of what to do with that Bow that Bard is stuck with. If you keep using it in attacks and animations, then there's a lot of friction and conceptual overlap with Ranger. And if you don't use the Bow for attacks and animations, then people will begin to complain that it's just an ornament stuck on your back during combat.

Ranger not using bows could be solved with crossbows or throwing hatchets. Machinist's auto-crossbow is more akin to an automated handheld cannon than a regular crossbow.

Reusing pre-existing bow assets, slapping different stats on them and palette swapping them and calling it there isn't that far-fetched of an idea either as it saves modeling and animation costs, which squeenix loves doing. WHM and BLM both use staves and no one's complaining about that overlap. Both SCH and SMN share the same walk, run, sprint and battle pose animations and no one's complaining about that either.

Bard's bow already becomes a glorified ornament when they stow their bow on their back when using any musical based weaponskill or musical ability. Rift's bard acts the same way in that their weapons disappear completely when using bard actions and Rift's bard is conceptually superior and has a far greater gameplay loop than FF14's bard, but that's for another thread.

Not directing anything at you but if people were to start complaining about hypothetical Ranger sharing bows with Bard then they should begin their crusade about BLM and WHM sharing staves and SCH and SMN sharing practically everything.

[ExcogEnjoyer]

And then when you consider how stale Square Enix's new jobs are, you would have to wonder if the "New Bard" and "Ranger" would even be good enough to justify splitting a class that already works fine enough right now. Doubly so when Ranger is one of the weaker base concepts to work with in terms of flavour.

[JanVanding]

My thought is the Current Battle Director hates DoTs for some odd reason.

Honestly? So do I.

They always have to be undertuned compared to other damage types otherwise you end up with crazy exploitable stuff like Hyper powered Flarestar being just another day at the office as opposed to a just for fun in one area thing.

They're typically a very low player agency type and the only thing you ever have to worry about is never letting them time out.

I would much much prefer the DoTs to go away in exchange of more player agency and my rotation having weight instead of knowing full well the job is handcuffed by DoTs because they're a low agency 100% uptime source of damage that's insanely easy to maintain.

I want my BRD to have a bit more complexity, the rotation to actually feel rewarding when you land your burst.

Right now it feels very paint by numbers and held down when there's potential to make it so much more...

[SilverSkyway]

I'm not going into detail as I'm not good at long speech/typing and don't want go into a rant.. But 2cent. Also joined ShB.

I went with Archer (first job) thinking I going play a Ranger or Hunter later on. Not fulling aware of jobs as they were. Once I learn of Archer turns into Bard and that it not the easiest job to play, I move away as soon as I could to Red mage and Dancer to Mch. I barely touched Bard until after beating EW and wanting to max all three rdps. Heck, I brought a skip on Bard because hated the idea of leveling a Bard. But playing the 80-90 with bard, I still not a fan but I enjoy it enough to play it to say it's my main right now.

I do see it flaws. Dots, songs and rng. As said above I wont go into detail. These (Dots, songs and rng) can be fixed. idk how. I don't hate dots or even the rng per say but Bard doesn't know what it wants to be so it can feel lacking to some degree.

To the idea of a Ranger job. I rather use a bow weapon but cross-bow or crossbow/axe/sword duelwield doesn't seem bad idea. They could tie in the story that some people turn away from Archer guild and Bard idea to be more about survival then lovey dovey. lol.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

And then when you consider how stale Square Enix's new jobs are, you would have to wonder if the "New Bard" and "Ranger" would even be good enough to justify splitting a class that already works fine enough right now. Doubly so when Ranger is one of the weaker base concepts to work with in terms of flavour.

I wouldn't call a job that basically plays like WHM to be fine. Burst Shot is Glare, Refulgent Arrow is RNG Glare, Iron Jaws is Dia, Apex Arrow is Misery, Blast Arrow is Super Misery and Sidewinder is Assize. Pitch Perfect is locked behind Wanderer's Minuet and is RNG dependent and barely feels good to use. And Bloodletter is a whopping 110 potency ability with the most bland and boring animation someone could ask for. So happy when Mage's Ballad is up so I can spam that weak and ugly ability that cancels and clips its animation faster than I skip msq cutscenes. Empyreal Arrow is the only remotely satisfying offensive ability Bard has left.

Sage being stale is to be expected, it's a healer, the devs have hated healers since Stormblood. I personally wouldn't call Reaper stale. I don't play it but it certainly has far more to it than Bard does because at least Reaper does things more than spam one weaponskill 70% of the time and doesn't beg RNG to bless them with more things to use (Dancer suffers the same problem but at least they have more than 2 spammable weaponskills). Bard's the stale job here. Staler than the chips in my pantry I've been too lazy to throw out.

[aveyond-dreams]

I wouldn't call a job that basically plays like WHM to be fine. Burst Shot is Glare, Refulgent Arrow is RNG Glare, Iron Jaws is Dia, Apex Arrow is Misery, Blast Arrow is Super Misery and Sidewinder is Assize. Pitch Perfect is locked behind Wanderer's Minuet and is RNG dependent and barely feels good to use. And Bloodletter is a whopping 110 potency ability with the most bland and boring animation someone could ask for. So happy when Mage's Ballad is up so I can spam that weak and ugly ability that cancels and clips its animation faster than I skip msq cutscenes. Empyreal Arrow is the only remotely satisfying offensive ability Bard has left.

Sage being stale is to be expected, it's a healer, the devs have hated healers since Stormblood. I personally wouldn't call Reaper stale. I don't play it but it certainly has far more to it than Bard does because at least Reaper does things more than spam one weaponskill 70% of the time and doesn't beg RNG to bless them with more things to use (Dancer suffers the same problem but at least they have more than 2 spammable weaponskills). Bard's the stale job here. Staler than the chips in my pantry I've been too lazy to throw out.

Basically this. The class has no oomph to it unlike Dancer, which is basically dopamine rush after dopamine rush for me. It's simple combos and symbol minigame at least give it *something* to do. Songs like Mage's Ballad which once upon a time felt so great to use are now reduced to throwaway abilities that have very little impact.

As for how to make a Ranger job that doesn't have a weak fantasy, why not a Mononoke-themed Ranger that has blood/poison aesthetics and uses a crossbow with hatchets? Surely that would carry some weight and appeal to the FFXIV anime loving fanbase. As for the suggestion of an idol type musician class, I have no objections to that. As long as it feels good to play then I'll gladly leave FFXIV's Bard in the trashcan permanently and switch between that and Dancer as my goto rDPS classes.