Bard Needs ‘Looked At’

[Carighan]

Yeah the fact that melee DPS has no downside really causes all kinds of balance issues. Likewise casters had their need to cast (and hence abort casts when having to move) eroded so much it hardly matters any more. Plus like you say, fights are designed to allow full uptime for both casters and melee anyways.

[Mikey_R]

I'm not sure what the actual % difference is between the worst melee and the worst ranged, probably 10-15%?

It needs to be 5 or less.

Just to give the numbers:

FFlogs, using current savage tier, using the rDPS upper quartile DPS numbers for Reaper and Dancer, Reaper is at 38557.3 and Dancer is 36558.34, which means Reaper does 5.47% more damage (rounded to 2 decimal places). Not quite 5% or less, but closer than you assumed.

Even between Dancer at the bottom and Monk (39372.7) at the top, it is still just a 7.70%, which is below the 10%-15% you assumed.

[Valence]

The 10-15% tends to happen in the first tier of expansions, which has been verified since ShB (BRD in ShB, MCH in EW/DT iirc). The gap is also higher in general there.

No, they really aren't.

Except for maybe Monk and Ninja.

And even then, MNK those days is pretty basic, the filler is now on autopilot like VPR (follow the glowy button) and does the thinking for you.
NIN plays a little piano during burst and the rest of the filler is basically 1-2-3 over and over. And even the burst isn't even about choices on the fly, it's a fixed memorized sequence anyway.

Melee can move freely also.

You have no cast times, unless you're RPR or SAM.

Melees also have movement tools, unlike BRD/MCH.

[NightHour]

Just to give the numbers:

FFlogs, using current savage tier, using the rDPS upper quartile DPS numbers for Reaper and Dancer, Reaper is at 38557.3 and Dancer is 36558.34, which means Reaper does 5.47% more damage (rounded to 2 decimal places). Not quite 5% or less, but closer than you assumed.

Even between Dancer at the bottom and Monk (39372.7) at the top, it is still just a 7.70%, which is below the 10%-15% you assumed.

7.7 imo is still a smidge too high imo but its much better than previous expacs.

< 5 would be ideal.

Yeah the fact that melee DPS has no downside really causes all kinds of balance issues. Likewise casters had their need to cast (and hence abort casts when having to move) eroded so much it hardly matters any more. Plus like you say, fights are designed to allow full uptime for both casters and melee anyways.

If the weakness for Ranged jobs is they have to deal slightly less damage than melees because they can keep uptime.


What should melees weakness be?

They should have to game their uptime, not get it handed to them.

[Connor]

I mean I’d say for Bard (and Dancer) there isn’t much need to increase their personal dps output since party buffs scale exponentially or whatever. Just give them more ( actively used ) ways to contribute to the party; even 1 would probably be game-breaking lol.

Makes you wonder what’s going on with MCH having to compete with two support classes but that’s a whole other issue lol

[mallleable]

Give BRD walking casts like it does in PVP, and give MCH, and phys ranged 4 walking casts as well, and give them more line and cone AOE attacks that they have to aim, and make phys ranged the 'aiming' role. It's not super difficult to imagine.

[Valence]

I mean I’d say for Bard (and Dancer) there isn’t much need to increase their personal dps output since party buffs scale exponentially or whatever. Just give them more ( actively used ) ways to contribute to the party; even 1 would probably be game-breaking lol.

Their buffs are already accounted in the usual metrics, where they still fall short of the aforementioned numbers.

[Aco505]

The current tier is challenging melees and casters by quite a bit. Not every fight, mind you, but it's hardly EW levels for melee where the only place to work for it was in Criterion dungeons.

[Connor]

Their buffs are already accounted in the usual metrics, where they still fall short of the aforementioned numbers.

That’s….why I said they should have more lol. Not ‘let’s keep it all the exact same.

I’m pretty sure Foe Requiem or whatever increasing enemy damage taken by like 3% with a high uptime is going to be massively more overall dps than an extra 20p on Burst Shot lol. Idk make it a goddamn archery skill where you shoot the enemy’s weak point to increase damage taken if everyone’s that against Bards ever singing (lol).

Hell they could boost the % increase on songs to like 5-10% and the entire game would be broken. That’s not even accounting for the (albeit minuscule) contribution of non-dps support abilities like Minne and Troubadour.

But we’re really going to act like +20p on Burst is going to save the job forever? Even though by definition Bard pretty much has to be the de-facto ‘weakest dps’. It’s almost like it has something else to provide…as if personal dps isn’t the main focus of Bard…the support job that supports the party with songs lol.

Thinking it’s ever going to be some high deeps competitive pinch hitter with enormous damage potencies and limited support is frankly just as silly as my own campaign for them to become ‘real Bards’. It’s not going to happen; it literally never has lol. The closest they got to it was 2.0 Coils and the game literally broke, they had to nerf Bard into oblivion and forever live in fear of its power lol

And before the voices in my head start saying ‘ oh but it’ll just be cannibalized by the 120s rotation meta’ i say: like yeah, so will literally any dps abilities we get, so what difference does it make?

[Budew]

I like current bard's gameplay loop, but I wish it had more music-themed abilities (like someone had mentioned before). The only song that I find awful is army's paeon, they need to rework that song's gameplay. I'm OK with the rest of the songs though. However, if they do rework bard, I hope they keep the same style of gameplay of being busy (lots of timers, song/gauge management, etc.) Also, no to walking casts for me. If I wanted to play a caster, I would've already picked one of the magical ranged dps or healer.

Let's keep the other supportive abilities like nature's minne, warden's paean, and repelling shot. Repelling shot should be reworked to be direction-based, not target-based. I like nature's minne compatibility with shield healers or for mechs that reduce you to 1hp. Warden's paean is niche but still a good ability, I've used it in many different fights (TEA, FRU, p12sp2, m12sp2, dungeons with doom, etc.) If anything, I want them to add more supportive abilities to the phys ranged role in general, like peloton giving 10s sprint with a cd of 120s in battle.