A challenge. Make Bard more Bard.

[Duelle]

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 for damage and 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 or reason to ever pull out a weapon.

And the underlying problem in that is that such a playstyle was not popular. This in effect made the job ridiculously rare, which then had its own set of negative effects on social dynamics and linkshell political structures (read: the princess bard). So you had a job with neutered gameplay and unpopular, yet was seen as essential by linkshells to the point they would fight over said job.

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 and balance of "how many shots fired before you should have to buff".

Well-said.

And this is what this thread is about. Make Bard look like Bard. I can't elaborate it any clearer than that.

And as has been said, Bard is already very Bard. Bards aren't just harps and flutes. They're also silk-tongued manipulators and make excellent spies. And can hold their own in a fight. Daggers, swords and bows in D&D and A Bard's Tale, a bow and arrow in FFXIV.