Quote Originally Posted by Polive View Post
The main problem is that it is hard to balance damage vs support. If the support abilities are too good, then that will be all that is expected of bards. If you still want them to do damage, then they need to have windows in their song rotation to allow them to deal damage and use weaponskills. FFXI bards never dealt any damage because their support to damage ratio was too high, it was way more beneficial for them to sing all day than to ever touch their daggers. If you have 6 or 7 songs to do in rotation, then there's little time to ever pull out a weapon to deal any damage.

The problem you seem to have is a matter of perception. The concept would be exactly the same whether you are an archer shooting arrows with a bow while singing songs or shooting music notes with a violin while singing songs. The picture at the end of the day is still: ranged class with support abilities.

How do you have a job build TP and use regular weaponskills if they have to constantly buff people all the time? The solution is to either have fewer buffs and longer buff duration to allow more damage time, or to make the damage come out faster in between the buffs. The second option would be significantly harder to balance, since the class could feasibly just then focus only on damage and outdo other damage classes. So therefore the team went with the first route.

If you just want some animation swaps so that bards shoot a bunch of notes or whathaveyou that's fine. But that doesn't change the underlying mechanics.
This guy know whats hes talking about. you work for SE by any chance?