Bard's future

[DixieBellOCE]

Would honestly just like to see the DoT's removed entirely and throw in some big hitting abilities like NIN's Hyosho Ryanryu

bard will never be what it was pre-ShB, its time we accept that and move on.

[DixieBellOCE]

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

Silkroad Online (Korean MMO) literally has Bard as a harp wielding support class...
It gives MP, Spends its own MP to create buffs, Has ST and AoE attacks, Abilities that Confuse enemies to make them attack eachother ect ect.. best Bard class i have ever played in an MMO.

[JanVanding]

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.

And what's so very crazy is when you look at the PvP BRD they have the exact feeling an Archer should have.

Powerful Draw has a real feeling of weight behind it, from the cast time draw, to the satisfying sound as the arrow connects, they have excellent agency from their quick burst, to their party and self affecting buffs of Apex/Blast/LB and their excellent control with single target silence and repelling shots distance creation and root.

It's insane to me how night and day the difference in the feeling is of playing the PvE BRD, a job that feels to be just going through the motions...

To playing the PvP BRD who feels very much like an Archer that also happens to buff their allies with song.

I want that feeling to Match up.

[ExcogEnjoyer]

I'm wondering what exactly you guys think a level 90 Ranger would even look like, considering that almost all of Bard's animations are ripped straight from FFXI's Ranger. Like, do you think Ranger wouldn't have the flashy particle effects?

[Roarmiaka]

FFXIV desperatly needs an expansion where it splits off the Classes into more jobs, just like summoner and scholar, They took awhile to figure out how to do it and i think its in a good state to do it with others:

Archer: Bard and Ranger
Marauder: Warrior and Berserker
Lancer: Dragoon and Sentinel (could be tank?)
Pugilist: Monk and Skirmisher
Conjuror: Whitemage and Geomancer
Gladiator: Paladin and Duelist

idk coming up with names out of the blue but get my point. These classes can be split to give us more variety with weapons and abilities.

Ranger could keep most of the Archer skills, but instead of songs at 30 we branch off into pets or traps or other fun Ranger gimmicks! There is no reason they are restricted from doing this. The story for bard wouldn't even need to change and we would still have our bow happy bards still on board (still would like a crossbow job too though!)

[Roarmiaka]

I'm wondering what exactly you guys think a level 90 Ranger would even look like, considering that almost all of Bard's animations are ripped straight from FFXI's Ranger. Like, do you think Ranger wouldn't have the flashy particle effects?

I'd assume if they did branch Ranger and Bard many of the skills would be switched over and new ones created for Bard to be more thematic

[Azuri]

I'm wondering what exactly you guys think a level 90 Ranger would even look like, considering that almost all of Bard's animations are ripped straight from FFXI's Ranger. Like, do you think Ranger wouldn't have the flashy particle effects?

I'd be content just with "Ranger" not whipping a harp or violine out of their ass every now and then.

[Psytic]

I hate when people say this, because more often than not its just incredibly thoughtless. Splitting Bard and Ranger would be the death of both those jobs. Ah yes, Bard, a class who's identity revolves around its pure utility, in a game where utility has all but been removed from the game entirely. And Ranger, a selfish physical ranged dps, really swell. Lets check on how Machinist is doing real quick- and its a dead class that's getting locked out of PFs for its dogshit dps. Congrats, you've made a Bard even more flavourless than the one we currently have AND a DoA phys range. Excellent.

Have to disagree. Wow has 36 specs in it. They aren't all viable every patch mostly due to borrowed power but each always has its day in the sun. If Square can't handle making the small amount of classes they have in this game fun or interesting and viable then they need to hire more designers. The main complaint you see about this games classes is the aesthetic and idea of the them is cool, but the actual gameplay and the way they play people find boring because they reuse play styles, over use attack chains , and homogenize on most classes etc.. This team needs some new blood. No reason we can't have a Ranger like ff11 did but similar to Marksman in WoW. The new pvp bard skills are kind of like this already, or a trapper class or a dot only alchemist class, a melee healer, or a green mage geo/ nature class etc. the amount of money they are making they should be adding more devs to find solutions to more interesting gameplay loops or just rip off WoW. If the ideas are thoughtless in this game its because the team behind class design is out of ideas not that its a bad idea to add more classes or split bard from the bow. Just a lack of imagination. Bard can strum a harp like in Lost Ark. People don't often complain about the feel of a class on WoW forums its all dmg tuning complaints, on FFXIV everyone is complaining about how the classes feel , I think they have problem.

[ThorneDynasty]

It's not like an aesthetic change to Bard being more song focused would necessarily have to uproot the entire playstyle. Basically just reskin the DoTs, finishers with traits and make the future abilities musical.

Or comedy option: Keep Bard as is but add Ranger and Singer as standalone jobs.

[ThorneDynasty]

FFXIV desperatly needs an expansion where it splits off the Classes into more jobs, just like summoner and scholar, They took awhile to figure out how to do it and i think its in a good state to do it with others:

Archer: Bard and Ranger
Marauder: Warrior and Berserker
Lancer: Dragoon and Sentinel (could be tank?)
Pugilist: Monk and Skirmisher
Conjuror: Whitemage and Geomancer
Gladiator: Paladin and Duelist

idk coming up with names out of the blue but get my point. These classes can be split to give us more variety with weapons and abilities.

Ranger could keep most of the Archer skills, but instead of songs at 30 we branch off into pets or traps or other fun Ranger gimmicks! There is no reason they are restricted from doing this. The story for bard wouldn't even need to change and we would still have our bow happy bards still on board (still would like a crossbow job too though!)

The SMN/SCH type split with shared EXP is seen as pretty problematic now by the devs at least, so it probably shouldn't work exactly like that. But personally I wouldn't mind jobs that share weapons and some basic class skills.