Quote Originally Posted by Connor View Post
That’s kinda impossible though unless they completely change how the approach phys ranged. When Bard was first conceived of they added it to the game because, in their words, ‘nobody would want to play a pure ranger type class’, and I guess by extension they didn’t think a poet/musician class would be popular either. Hence, they smashed the two together and we got what we have (had) now; a support-oriented dps.

This has been how they do every phys ranged job and likely always will be. You cannot just have ‘deals damage at range’; you have ‘does archery and sings song to support the party’, or and ‘throws sharp objects and dances around to heal and support’, or finally ‘shoots with gun and deals damage with a bunch of machinery’.

To the devs they cannot be simply ‘attacks with bow/gun/chakram’ because then ‘nobody would want to play them’. And I mean, Bard should be a prime example that it really doesn’t matter how high they make our dps if the class still sucks to play, and the passive support is a large part of that (as is other issues i.e song timing)

As I keep pointing out, I still don’t imagine anyone is coming to the literally always support-oriented Poet job or the healing/supporting Dancer job with the idea ‘wow, I’m going to do so much damage by singing and dancing the enemy to death!’ lol. They’re both jobs that have traditionally been associated with party support in every Final Fantasy game except this one, so it seems a bit weird to a complete 180 on their identity and convert them into straight up pure dps. Personally I’d rather see them go back to letting us actually actively support the party, i.e returning Bard’s actual support spells lol (pre-Stormblood songs). I just want to sing in battle YoshiP let me cast my songs again! Why did you [the devs lol] make a spellcasting animation for Bard’s songs then delete it! I trusted you!
First, consider that the status quo might be wrong. Second consider BRD not as an archer or a bard, but as a rock star where music is their weapon, and their bow is their instrument. I am reminded by other media such as the battle of the bands scene from Scott Pilgrim or the koto fight from Kung Fu Hustle or other games such as Hifi Rush or Thumper that music as a weapon is not such an out there concept. The devs should be playing more music, and rhythm games to figure out what to do with BRD as music, and the musicality of archery should be the most important part of BRD's gameplay.