Bard Needs ‘Looked At’

[Carighan]

Yeah I can see why bards are the way they are now, although like virtually all class design simplicity, button bloat and class identity loss, this is an indirect result of the dev team's utter unwillingness to rip out or replace parts of their combat system.

And with how simplistic, anemic and outdated the core combat system is, all class design issues flow naturally from it. You can't have unique class identities in a game where you have both lots of classes but also exactly 1 relevant role (everyone is actually just a damage dealer) but also didn't want to embrace that like GW2 did, on top of a slow GCD, weaving and hence the mudflation of weavable oGCDs.

It's just not a system that can produce interesting or unique class designs, due to underlying design issues.

[Connor]

The point I'm making really is that, in ARR, the class design was very much lore-driven. Every action and ability was designed to make sense in a lore way, but players quickly discovered that this was annoying, impractical for how people actually play, and so they were changed over time to reflect how people actually play and what people actually need when doing content, so now although things may be aimed at lore to a degree, they are also practical.
It also gave them a way to sort of grow the rotation in each song if they want.

Ok I’m sorry but I think you’re confused. ‘People found casting impractical during ARR’???? Are they in the room with us now? Because they weren’t during ARR lol. People didn’t give a shit about Bard songs having a cast time until Wanderer’s Minuet was released in HW because it randomly added them to weaponskills. How could they when they have literally never existed as abilities at that point? Then SE took ‘we don’t want cast times layered on top of non-cast weaponskills with absolutely 0 adjustment’ as ‘literally never give us a cast time ever again and delete them all from songs and make them dps stances that are just for personal dps’.

They were changed over time because SE has had literally no clue what to do with the job; they weren’t refining it to be the perfect class lol, they were literally just trying to appease a subsection of players that don’t even seem to exist anymore? I don’t see anyone else seething about the idea of actually singing in battle instead of plucking a single string once every 45 seconds and calling it ‘music’

Explain to me how it’s wholly impractical for a Bard to actually sing their songs during battle but Dancers can murder the dance floor every fight they join? That just seems like a contradiction. Do they want magical fantasy jobs or do they want realistic practical jobs that just do mundane real-life things? In this fantasy game about a fantasy world where things that couldn’t realistically happen, happen. Technical Step and Tilana are the literal definition of ‘impractical gameplay’ yet that’s perfectly acceptable, but oh no not for Bard! That doesn’t seem fair? Everyone else gets to have fun but we must to the standards of realism if we’re Bards?

Also what are you talking about ‘grow the rotation’ in songs lol? I thought Bards didn’t have a rotation. Songs literally been in the exact same form since Stormblood…where are these ‘growths’? All I saw us getting was combo finishers Apex and Blast lol

[Valence]

I appreciate the advice but the questions were rhetorical not literal. And frankly, none of that makes any sense to me. Who in the world would be inspired by their own song that they perform? I mean, I guess if you’re a narcissist maybe. Inspiring other people , yeah sure that makes sense. Inspiring yourself to shoot harder with a bow? That really doesn’t lol.

Maybe that's why you actually used not to be affected by your own songs before they changed it, now all bards are pure narcissists

[Connor]

Maybe that's why you actually used not to be affected by your own songs before they changed it, now all bards are pure narcissists

Maybe we were humble as newbie lv50~ Bards but now at lv100 the fame has gone to our heads and we’re all mega-divas lol. Radiant Encore is for when our assistant gets the wrong shade of coffee

[mallleable]

Bard in its current form is a Ranger plain and simple. They need to lean into the bard motif a lil more first and foremost. Like why are so many of our moves bow shots isntead of songs? DoTs could easily be dirges, LB3 should be something Operatic. Raging Strikes, and like half of the dps abilities should be songs or at least somewhat music/chant related.

Of course Scholar now transforms into an angel like a priestly class instead of an academic one, so I don't think they really know or care what they are doing when it comes to how jobs are styled.

The thing is I'm totally fine with BRD being more of a ranger, and there are many players like me who actually want just a no frills archer/ranger job that uses a bow. So compromises have to be made as we have to 'share our toys' because we don't exist in an ideal world where 'bard' is its own job, and archer upgrades to like ranger or sniper or something. I think one of the compromises I would be fine with is BRD trades some of its damage buffing potential for higher personal damage, and a greater variety of song buff effects.

Maybe that's why you actually used not to be affected by your own songs before they changed it, now all bards are pure narcissists

BRD being affected by its own songs is totally fine, it means it actually has a stage presence, and can rock out too.

[Valence]

Am I the only weirdo that actually appreciate that XIV bard is a hybrid fighter using a bow but also singing while doing so? Those days feels like everybody wants to either get rid of the bard or the ranger part of the job...

[Carighan]

The thing is I'm totally fine with BRD being more of a ranger, and there are many players like me who actually want just a no frills archer/ranger job that uses a bow. So compromises have to be made as we have to 'share our toys' because we don't exist in an ideal world where 'bard' is its own job, and archer upgrades to like ranger or sniper or something. I think one of the compromises I would be fine with is BRD trades some of its damage buffing potential for higher personal damage, and a greater variety of song buff effects.

Yeah it's a bit of a shame that the archer class doesn't have two jobs branching from it, the purely bow-focused with some self-buffs Ranger and the 90% party-buffs weaving-songs-as-main-mechanic Bard with just some ultra-light archery moves it keeps from the base class for filler.

[MicahZerrshia]

The thing is I'm totally fine with BRD being more of a ranger, and there are many players like me who actually want just a no frills archer/ranger job that uses a bow. So compromises have to be made as we have to 'share our toys' because we don't exist in an ideal world where 'bard' is its own job, and archer upgrades to like ranger or sniper or something. I think one of the compromises I would be fine with is BRD trades some of its damage buffing potential for higher personal damage, and a greater variety of song buff effects.

If they wanted to make bard a dps instead of a true support, which this game does not have no matter how many arguements ppl want to make for the small % dmg bonus songs and dances give, they 100% should have leaned into the Prince Edward thing and made them a caster with songs instead of a ranger that hums sometimes. But this team has a severe problem with creativity in their job design and if someone does add something creative it gets phased out quicky. I would love a true ranger and a true bard.

[Connor]

I’d say the fact the Bard playerbase is so clearly divided into 3 entirely separate groups and clashing (traditional Bards, traditional Rangers, FFXIV Barchers) is a massive issue in and of itself. No other job in the game has such a divided playerbase, because no other job in the game is as confused about what it is/does than Bard.

I’ve been saying since Stormblood that Bards identity is completely fucked when you consider the fact that literally no two players will even define it the same; ‘archer with instruments’, ‘musician with bow’, ‘a bit of both’ ‘a dot dps’ ‘a proc dps’ ‘a support dps’. Look how that’s going for it lol

[Jeeqbit]

Ok I’m sorry but I think you’re confused. ‘People found casting impractical during ARR’???? Are they in the room with us now? Because they weren’t during ARR lol.

Maybe they didn't care about that specifically, but I mean in a general sense, they did not design things in ARR with practicality in mind. They designed it to fit the lore. They clearly had no idea if it would work in, say, a raid. Fluid Aura, for example, which knocked people back. Made a lot of sense to cast some water and direct it at someone to push them away, in, say, a movie... but then everyone just found it annoying because melees are trying to attack the enemy.

So from SE's perspective, they observed what worked in practice and what was just simply annoying or redundant to players and cleaned it up over time.

SE took ‘we don’t want cast times layered on top of non-cast weaponskills with absolutely 0 adjustment’ as ‘literally never give us a cast time ever again and delete them all from songs and make them dps stances that are just for personal dps’.

It's possible they misinterpreted that, yes. I think they also probably just want to appease the "always press attacks" uptime crowd that can't bring themselves to press a GCD that isn't an attack.

They were changed over time because SE has had literally no clue what to do with the job

I do think what I said has merit. The prior casts were just standalone effects to support the party. Whereas now they have managed to create a "rotation" on Bard, despite technically just spamming 1 GCD most of the time, by having a rotation of song phases which have different rules.

It's a bit like how they have managed to created a rotation on Summoner despite technically spamming the same 2 GCDs, by creating a rotation of summons that change the animations that you see.

If either of these jobs didn't have these things... if Summoner didn't have a rotation of summons and Bard didn't have a rotation of song phases, they'd be getting compared to healer rotations even more.

As it stands, they could keep the entirety of the current system but merely add casts to the songs and make them Spells. But we're in an era where they have long been removing casts from other jobs as well - such as Paladin's Holy Spirit, most Summoner attacks and have significantly reduced the number of casts Black Mage does over time.

I don’t see anyone else seething about the idea of actually singing in battle instead of plucking a single string once every 45 seconds and calling it ‘music’

There are two things that I think about this.

I would like if I could make a macro to play a song of my creation, using Bard music, actually in battle. In fact, I was excited for this when they released Bard music, only for them to ruin it by not allowing macros nor for it to be used in raids. I thought I'd actually be able to create music to literally motivate people while I was fighting, to say "this is it, we've nearly got it, lock in". But SE ruined that fun on release.

However, in terms of its actual fighting mechanics, I like that it is mostly just an Archer in terms of gameplay. Because if you compare it to Ninja - Ninja is not a Rogue. It has too much that changes the gameplay because of Ninjutsu. I wish I could play as a Rogue (and so do many others) without that being bad for damage. I'm glad that as a Bard, I am still pretty much an Archer at least.