Bard Needs ‘Looked At’

[Connor]

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.

And so frequently they’ve been wrong to do so. Energy Drain? Kaiten? Bard’s song buffs? That Viper thing people liked but disappeared idk what’s it called? What makes them right this time? Because a silent majority neither seen nor heard of swore off Bard for life because it had a 2s cast time on Ballad? They just arbitrarily decided to remove it because they misunderstood the point of ‘no bard cast times [on our bloody weaponskills lol]’

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.
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.

Why did Bard even need a ‘rotation’ in the first place? It already had song/mp management, dot mangement, and procs. It seems like poor justification for them to say ‘it desperately needed its support spells converted into dps stances because they totally had nothing else’.

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.

Unless they had some kind of alternative means of engagement. Like, say managing the use and uptime of support skills or casts/positioning in Summoner’s case? Something to set them apart from other jobs? Not to say Summoner should be some bard-style pure support class but it has always had some decent utility.

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.

And I’m just as unhappy with that as I am about Bard’s song casts. I also dislike how little healers cast compared to spamming oGCD. Just because that’s the current trajectory doesn’t mean I have to sit back and accept it without expressing that. It’s like, my right as a subscriber to scream into the void lol.

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.

I mean, Dancers get to play the dancing minigame during combat so I don’t see why Bard couldn’t have something similar with songs if they wanted to something more than ‘just make them spells’. But then that’s also part of my point; instead of adapting them as spells to work more in line with the ‘constantly attacking’, or adapting them into something unique like Steps, they just took the easiest possible route and made them dps cooldowns with a party support side effect

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.

That’s my point above though. Personally I’m not happy with Bard currently feeling ‘too much Archer’ and ‘not enough Bard’. When you have two(three?) separate groups seeking entirely different things out of a job, is it not an inevitability that it’ll be stretched so thin it simply loses all its depth? That doesn’t make much sense from a physics perspective but it does sound good. I’ve been saying for years they need to do something about separating the jobs so the whole thing can be put to rest. Archer/Ranger can actually do justice to the job as it’s existed in Final Fantasy without being caught up in the musical-magical trappings it requires by necessity to get the ‘Bard’ title. Likewise, Bard could actually exist as its own independent job as it has in previous games without archery constantly having to take center stage simply by virtue of it being tied to the archer base class. People who want to play an Archer/Ranger shouldn’t have to be bogged down with weird magical abilities like Radiant Encore any more than Bard should be bogged down with firing arrows and conjuring the power of darkness (seriously what is going on with Shadowbite and Heartbreak Shot lol). It’s not a ‘realistic’ or ‘practical’ ask and I highly doubt they will ever do it, but frankly I think it’s going to be inevitable in the game’s lifespan.

And I mean as an aside I feel similarly about Ninja to an extent. It makes a lot of sense coming from Rogue but at the same time the Rogue/Thief isn’t just a classic FF job but a classic rpg archetype, so it seems like a huge missed opportunity to me not to lean into that. But then, split jobs were a failure according to SE, so it’s not like there’s any hope of ‘Thief’ existing in that form while Ninja is around. Which doesn’t seem particularly fair to me lol; they should have more forethought about this sort of thing.

[mallleable]

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...

I think it can work. PVP BRD makes it work.

[Absurdity]

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...

I could also appreciate the hybrid design...when there was actually still somewhat of a balance between the two parts.

I think the reason people want bard split into it's two components is because the devs have shown for the last 3 expansions that they can't strike that balance anymore, at least not in PvE.
Regardless of what the abilities are called, bard has mostly just gotten more ways to shoot arrows at a guy for years.

[Carighan]

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...

I don't like it because the singing is irrelevant. It's just a button you press, it has no gameplay mechanism.

Then again I'd level the same as the 120s group buffs ~everyone gets. It's pointless, might as well just bake that effect into the class passively. There's virtually no timing (especially now that it has been made more drift-resistant), no rhythm, no concentration to keep notes, no nothing.

Now if bard songs doubled the damage everyone did for a few seconds but had a complex minigame to put up at just the right time based on non-trivial combinations of procs and chances, sure. That'd be a truly magnificent effect that actually feels like you're singing a song for your group and it has a vast impact. Or if one of the songs were +50% movement speed, or whatever. Or even the song-weaving that was the common MMORPG interpretation of bards for the longest time (see EQ1 Bard or DAoC Bard, Paladin or Skald).
However, while songs are just a group buff you press three times in each 120s cycle instead of once every 120s like everyone else... .yeah not, might as well drop it then. No need to litter hotbars with multiple buttons for it if the gameplay is that lame.

[Valence]

I could also appreciate the hybrid design...when there was actually still somewhat of a balance between the two parts.

I think the reason people want bard split into it's two components is because the devs have shown for the last 3 expansions that they can't strike that balance anymore, at least not in PvE.
Regardless of what the abilities are called, bard has mostly just gotten more ways to shoot arrows at a guy for years.

It's been a regular problem since they turned the songs into the damage rotation in SB. Which in my opinion was a good design for the damage rotation, but it left the job without a lot of flavor songs for support (even if they added Minne), and in SB already party support was turned into role actions already (Tactician/Manasong) and then cut from the game in SHB.

Now they're trying to add more back to it with Radiant and Encore... The job still has quite a bit of music based abilities: Troubadour, Minne, Radiant, Encore, Battle Voice, Warden (and pvp Final Fantasia). And of course, the three DPS songs.

Like I don't think BRD is missing that much on the music side of lore, it's probably more of a gameplay problem.

[PercibelTheren]

I generally agree with you but I am absolutely not on board with your hate of the more niche abilities. Sure, they mostly shine in stuff like deep dungeons but they have their uses and I don't want them to go away. If anything, I think it's bad that most debuffs and DoTs can't be cleansed now. Give Warden's Paeon a small buff and Esuna a small heal or buff or something and it would instantly give supports something more to do.

[Connor]

#bringbackgcdpaean

Why does everything song/Bard related have to be stuck on a 120s cooldown but anything Archery related is happening on the regular lol? I don’t think it’s a particularly good balance to have ‘shoots arrows, does something musical once every two minutes, shoots more arrows lol’. Plus the pulling an instrument out of your ass every 45/35 seconds and playing an entire song in 0.25s. If Paean / Minne were actual GCD support abilities I’d be much less skeptical of Bard as a whole, but apparently such powerful tools as…. Esuna and a healing boost… warrant long cooldowns lol. Lmao even.

[Carighan]

#bringbackgcdpaean

Why does everything song/Bard related have to be stuck on a 120s cooldown but anything Archery related is happening on the regular lol? I don’t think it’s a particularly good balance to have ‘shoots arrows, does something musical once every two minutes, shoots more arrows lol’. Plus the pulling an instrument out of your ass every 45/35 seconds and playing an entire song in 0.25s. If Paean / Minne were actual GCD support abilities I’d be much less skeptical of Bard as a whole, but apparently such powerful tools as…. Esuna and a healing boost… warrant long cooldowns lol. Lmao even.

This makes me think that in an idealized world I'd want a true hybrid ranger/bard to spend 1-2 GCDs on one of those, then the other, always alternating. As in, your goal gameplay wise is essentially to keep a pendulum in the middle, each GCD of either "archetype" moves it to that respective side, not always fully reliably how far, and you want to keep it balanced.

So that you're truly doing both, constantly flipping back and forth.

[Connor]

This makes me think that in an idealized world I'd want a true hybrid ranger/bard to spend 1-2 GCDs on one of those, then the other, always alternating. As in, your goal gameplay wise is essentially to keep a pendulum in the middle, each GCD of either "archetype" moves it to that respective side, not always fully reliably how far, and you want to keep it balanced.

So that you're truly doing both, constantly flipping back and forth.

Personally I’d be happy with
- Minne and Paean on gcd with MP cost to limit usage and maybe adjusted effects if necessary
- Windbite and Venomous Bite replaced with offensive song-based DoTs. I mean they could probably use the Paean animation if they wanted to be lazy lol.
- Iron Jaws looks fine the whole ‘floating orbs of darkness’ visual just looks really out of place on a fair-voice musician poet lol so I’d say keep the animation but change the vfx
- Foe Requiem as a readily available song that can be applied to enemies on gcd for a whatever % vulnerability increase or whatever. Whether it’s the old ‘aura’ type song or applies a standard 30s debuff or whatever.

Basically the main ‘archery’ stuff would continue being Burst, Refulgent, Apex/Blast and Resonant Arrow. The rest, while functionally similar would be song-based to strike a more satisfying balance between archer and Bard. Those four archery skills, 2 song-based DoTs, song-based Iron Jaws and Foe Requiem. Seems like a much better balance in my view.

[Xieldras]

I'm mixed about this.

On one hand, I recognize Bard's issues and do agree they need fixing. The job shifted more towards Archer's base over the expansions and it's been a mess lore-wise. I personally do not enjoy the Apex Arrow gauge.

On the other, I enjoy my DoTs, my Warden's (even if it is functionally useless because the game hates removable debuffs - removing Doom in Dun Scaith is still fun), my Repel Shot (saved my bacon a few times), and my Minne (even if it is useless because Healers don't need it). They're niche, but I adore them the same.

They do need to bring back Foe's Requiem though, or have us do something with our MP. I also enjoyed Refresh because it felt like I was contributing more than straight % buffs to the party (but we're never getting that back).

Or just split Bard into Bard + Ranger next expansion. That solves the conundrum...