Quote Originally Posted by kajv95 View Post
Stopped playing Bard during Shadowbringers over being bored to death due to not having more to consider other than the DPS. When they took off all the weird parts that were sticking out of Bard that happened to be the raid buff things, I simply stopped enjoying it. It's not like I was dealing damage either. Apex Arrow was/is a clunky addition and they doubled down on it in EW it seems so I don't go back other than to flex jobs if needed on the odd occasion.


There's an odd fixation of having Machinist in the rphys job type being a selfish dps which blocks the entire role from being a support role instead, and so we get what we have today. Bards and Dancers that do about as much raid buffing as your friendly neighbourhood punchy monk.
Agreed with everything about Bard; it’s definitely one of the jobs to have suffered the most from the rigidity and passivity of ‘party support’. I will never not be salty that they think ‘Esuna’ aka Warden’s Paean needs a bloody 45 second cool-down instead of an MP cost and/or cast time. Imagine if healers had to deal with the same thing. ‘Sorry about the Doom but I used Esuna on the tank, bye dps!’. I mean, I’m sure 80% of Bards literally don’t know what the song actually is/does lol.

Also agreed about it being weird that Machinist ‘has to have no party buffs’. The weirdest part is, it started off as a ‘supportive’ job. While that was mostly just using Turrets as Ballad/Paeon clones, Hypercharge and things like Dismantle gave it debuff skills that still made it feel like it was supporting the party despite having a more offensive leaning than Bard. It also had the benefit of instant use support, contrasting with Bards having to sing (i.e cast).
We got Dismantle back (with like no explanation lol) after like 3 expansions, but the rest of what made Machinist still feel like it could fit into the ‘provides support’ niche for ranged phys was removed and never developed them further