what can be done to improve the phys ranged situation?

[TheMightyMollusk]

I know this is probably going to be a really bad take... but why don't we remove the cooldown on the songs? :T

I'm serious.

You can make the songs last their normal 45 seconds as they do now, with all the optimization that goes into them (3, 15, 3 iirc?). But rather than putting the button on cooldown, it's just a button that starts the song. That way if you die, you can either play it again or change to whichever song you'd be playing. To minimize the effects dying has on BRD, because it does make the class ludicrously strict.

I'd like to think that there IS an incentive with Coda to not spam the same song or two songs and disregard one. But it may be possible with a bit of fine-tuning if it does become an issue?

Maybe if we need to play a song for a bit to proc the Coda. Otherwise, personally, I'd only hit Army's Paeon long enough for the Coda and otherwise never touch it. It has the lamest Repertoire effect.

[ForteNightshade]

It's almost as though simplifying the Prange to essentially be Baby's First DPS alongside neutering their damage output and support characteristics has backfired tremendously.

How do they fix this? Throw Bard in a time machine going back to Stormblood and start over from there. It used to be the most popular DPS in the entire game. Now it's among the least. From there, give all three of them actual damage and bring back support abilities like Dismantle, Refresh, Foe's and Palisade. All of this would go a long way to making people enjoy the Prange again.

[RyuDragnier]

En Avant is a trap. Yes I was able to do some clutch things with it when my old static was progging Eden but you really don't want to rely on it. Better to learn the right way to do the fight.

Movement skills have always been a trap. Elusive Jump, Repelling Shot, Displacement, En Evante...all are purposefully designed to fool you into moving to your death. Amazing moves outside of raid. in raid...you don't use them for a reason, it WILL kill you.

[TheMightyMollusk]

More of a utility than a trap. They require planning to use properly, rather than just hitting it and praying. It's not actively detrimental like, say, Freecure.

[Memoranda]

As someone who plays a lot of Bard despite the fact it doesn't perform well, my primary gripes with the job boil down to less damage than the melee jobs who have (arguably) less demanding rotations and the fact that generally speaking a raid or group or whatever isn't going to miss my songs and would rather just bring in yet another melee or even a caster. The buffs a Bard provides just feel too inconsequential to even bother with bringing one along. Realistically a party isn't going to notice a 3% increase to direct hit, or a 2% increase to critical. Why Wanderer's and Army's just isn't a flat 5% to direct hit and critical will always baffle me. I can get Mage's only being 1% damage increase, seeing as Dancer can give a constant 5% just to one member of the party, but the other two? Is there any (valid) reason for Bard to offer so little direct and critical hit when Dancer can also give both at the same time to a Dance Partner on a 120 second cool down?

This brings me to my second gripe: Bard still suffers from having Dancer in the game. A Bard's buffs and utility got neutered as soon as Square decided to add a new primary support class in the game. There are a myriad of other things a Bard could buff. Mage's could offer a boost to Determination instead of just damage done, and this would have the side effect of affecting a healer's healing output instead of just more damage. Wanderer's could offer a 2% increase to a primary stat. If Blizzard can figure out a way to make a buff or a food item that says, "Increase primary attribute by X% amount" and have the primary attribute be increased no matter what class receives that buff, surely its not too hard for Square to implement something similar. Army's could offer a boost like 2%-3% decreased damage taken. If they want to keep Dancer as the more offensive support fine, but don't also slap Bards with the exact same buffs but at lesser values just because a Bard's buffs affect more players, especially since those buffs are tuned so low that parties would simply rather take another melee and a Dancer who'll supercharge said melee better than a Bard ever will.

Finally, Sidewinder feels bad because its nothing but another button for damage and a strangely long cool down. I would prefer Sidewinder to just be removed entirely, but honestly at this point I would take the potencies for Sidewinger and Refulgent Arrow being swapped. It feels really bad using such a boring weapon skill in conjunction with Barrage, but this combo happens anyway because Sidewinder is our hardest hitting attack outside Apex Arrow and Blast Arrow.

At the end of the day, I guess those of us who play physical ranged will just have to wait and see what exactly they end up doing when they supposedly go to look at the "Ranged Tax". More likely than not its going to be nothing but very tiny potency buffs that aren't going to do much of anything, but I guess something is better than nothing at all at this point.

[Kazhar]

Ranged is in bad shape, let's punish melee for it.

Punish? As a melee main I'd love nothing more than small hitboxes again. Having to greed for uptime is the one thing that makes melee interesting to play.
These days hitboxes are so big I feel like I'm playing phys. range.

[Akiudo]

my primary gripes with the job boil down to less damage than the melee jobs who have (arguably) less demanding rotations

this is a big aspect many overlook, or just go "duh, you can move totally freely, phys ranged are all easy" while never having actively played one (or at least bard for that matter).

i'll admit i haven't played melee in ages, but i've tanked, i've healed, i've played caster (at least 2 of each of these roles in a raid setting in the last 18 months), none of those came close to the stress i felt on bard.

if i want to optimize my dps on redmage i try to get in an extra cast in a situation where its hard to do so and the second i manage that i gain 40-50 dps.

optimizing dps on bard ? changing up my song rotation, pooling blodletter stacks, making sure i cut my dots as closely as possible while risking for them to fall of completly and costing me 3 times the dps i can ever gain by perfecting it, permanently watch out for proccs so i don't miss one by reacting too late and than theres refulgant arrow and barrage optimization aswell. not even saying bard is hard, but bard is a class that tends to die a death of a thousand cuts when it comes to optimizing it (and dying is brutal as heck depending on where you are in your rotation, not a bard exclusive problem but its definitely one of the classes that get hit the hardest by it).

the procc gameplay honestly takes an enourmos toll on me compared to other classes with a more static rotation. i can raid 4 hours on healer or caster without issues, but 2 hours on bard and i get headaches because the amount of concentration it takes me to optimize the class simply put is exhausting.

[Memoranda]

this is a big aspect many overlook, or just go "duh, you can move totally freely, phys ranged are all easy" while never having actively played one (or at least bard for that matter).

i'll admit i haven't played melee in ages, but i've tanked, i've healed, i've played caster (at least 2 of each of these roles in a raid setting in the last 18 months), none of those came close to the stress i felt on bard.

if i want to optimize my dps on redmage i try to get in an extra cast in a situation where its hard to do so and the second i manage that i gain 40-50 dps.

optimizing dps on bard ? changing up my song rotation, pooling blodletter stacks, making sure i cut my dots as closely as possible while risking for them to fall of completly and costing me 3 times the dps i can ever gain by perfecting it, permanently watch out for proccs so i don't miss one by reacting too late and than theres refulgant arrow and barrage optimization aswell. not even saying bard is hard, but bard is a class that tends to die a death of a thousand cuts when it comes to optimizing it (and dying is brutal as heck depending on where you are in your rotation, not a bard exclusive problem but its definitely one of the classes that get hit the hardest by it).

the procc gameplay honestly takes an enourmos toll on me compared to other classes with a more static rotation. i can raid 4 hours on healer or caster without issues, but 2 hours on bard and i get headaches because the amount of concentration it takes me to optimize the class simply put is exhausting.

See, and I just personally like the satisfaction of playing Bard well and optimizing it as well as is physically possible. It feels really good to hit all my procs and keep an eye on DoT uptime (even if I do kind of find the DoTs in general to be an ancient relic of how the Bard used to be) and correctly managing my songs and their Repertoire stacks.

That good feeling dissipates when I realize that I'm contributing less than a player who's really optimized whatever melee job they're currently on. This is especially true for Ninja, who arguably has a rotation every bit as strict as a Bard does yet aren't saddled with the ranged and support tax ensuring their DPS is barely above Dancer, who is also the support job that provides more meaningful support than the Bard actually does. Like, I'm not asking for Bards to be doing Samurai or Black Mage levels of damage. But there is also no valid reason for them to be at the very bottom of the barrel just because they have a bit of utility and are ranged. The same kind of applies to Dancer, although with how much a Dancer can supercharge a single player I do feel that Dancer itself shouldn't be anywhere other than towards the bottom of the charts.

[Akiudo]

snip

oh totally, i love playing bard, i just don't think its as easy as people make it out to be, in fact i find it harder than a lot of other classes. and yes, dealing shitty damage (and having no meaningfull support while at it) most certainly contributes to people not liking to play bard.

[Tlachtga]

It's almost as though simplifying the Prange to essentially be Baby's First DPS alongside neutering their damage output and support characteristics has backfired tremendously.

How do they fix this? Throw Bard in a time machine going back to Stormblood and start over from there. It used to be the most popular DPS in the entire game. Now it's among the least. From there, give all three of them actual damage and bring back support abilities like Dismantle, Refresh, Foe's and Palisade. All of this would go a long way to making people enjoy the Prange again.

honestly there's a few jobs they should do this for. Astrologian and Scholar come to mind. I miss SB SAM's flexibility too.