So how would you buff bard? (Just like to hear peoples thoughts)

[Connor]

since removing a sensible weapon from it would just change Bard --historically eclectic and largely based on its way of using intersecting skills rather than its combat arts directly-- into a Sonic Mage.

Is this based on Bard from other games or exclusively on Bard in XIV? That doesn’t really make any sense in the context of Final Fantasy because Bard has never been associated with bows outside of this specific game. In FFIII, IV and V it uses harps as its main weapon, one could maybe stretch Cait Sith’s megaphones as being ‘kinda like an instrument’ (calling out orders is kinda like singing lol?), Eiko in FFIX (she’s a Summoner but that’s the closest it gets lol) uses Flutes for a fair amount of her weapons. XI had instruments as a weird off-hand weapon but they were still so crucial to the job’s basic functions (i.e song amount / duration) that they practically did serve as its ‘main weapon’; the weapon slot was just for a dagger/staff to augment your songs/spells lol.

I think based on how Bard appeared in every iteration of FF besides this one, I’m not sure it can really be said that ‘Bard would stop being a Bard if it got a traditional Bard weapon like a Harp or Flute [instead of a Bow and Arrow] ’. It would be like saying ‘Black Mages shouldn’t use staves and if they do they’re not really Black Mages ’. Even if XIV had established Black Mages as fast-paced hand-to-hand martial artists, people would still be like ‘where the staves tho lol’ ‘black mage with no staff how can this be’ etc. I think previously established aesthetics / identity / design concepts should matter, because they do for every other job in this game.

I mean, the ‘practicality’ argument doesn’t make much sense either in a world where people go to war wielding literal books, floating representations of the cosmos and that one guy with the giant paintbrush. That’s before even mentioning the guy whose weapon is four floating glowing crystals they throw around to heal people. And again, if we’re looking at the context of Final Fantasy as a whole, practically every game is full of ‘people running into battle with wholly unpractical and unreasonable weaponry’ lol. Cait Sith fighting with the aforementioned Megaphone, Wakka’s Blitzball, Lulu’s Dolls (FFX really loved their weird weapons lol), Vanille’s fishing rod staff in XIII, Hope’s boomerang (which I swear looks like a toy lol). Edward bringing Harps into battle in FFIV, FFV’s Geomancers fighting with Bells. Not to mention the several guys running around with swords larger than their actual bodies lol.

I disagree that Bard needs the bow. I mean, if anything I’d rather see them pull something out their ass like ‘the weapon is a harp but it [inexplicably] shoots magical bolts of light so it can still do archer-y things’. Best of both worlds. Conceptually anyway. And again this is all with the belief that ‘Ranger’ should be a job that's allowed to exist on its own rather than at being under constant risk of being cannibalised by its evil parasitic twin lol. A job that can actually do justice to bow/arrow gameplay, aesthetics, lore etc without being constantly hampered by having to ‘balance’ it with the ‘musical / bard-like’ aspects. Rangers have/had their own identity within Final Fantasy too but there’s isn’t ever going to be enough space for them to properly explore that so long half of that space belongs to Bard.

And naturally as a disclaimer, I’m talking conceptually/opinion-wise and not in terms of literal implementation, since they (likely) won’t ever actually entertain the idea of changing a class anyway (*hides Summoner under carpet*). Probably