A challenge. Make Bard more Bard.

[Ryans]

How is bard not a full bard?

How does three songs make it a bard? They could have slapped the same spells on to gladiator and called it a bard, wouldn't have made it one in peoples' eyes.

[Majidah]

How does three songs make it a bard? They could have slapped the same spells on to gladiator and called it a bard, wouldn't have made it one in peoples' eyes.

what? haha how is singing songs not a bard?
You could ask for more songs and animations, but saying bard is currently not bard like is plain silly.

Bard is mid-low DPS with the best buffs in the game atm. Its more than you can say about XI's bard.

[EinSoFZ]

BRD in XIV is far more fun to play than it was in XI.

That's the honest truth. In FFXI BRD was incredibly limited despite the fact that it was closer to being a true bard. All you could do was sing songs and wait for them to wear off. Run to the front - sing. Run to the back - sing. Maybe try to debuff a monster, but any important fight this usually failed to work. In FFXIV you feel as if you're participating in the fight as an active member as well as having a supportive role. You can get in the heat of things as well as keep other members going. I'd rather FFXIV's version than anything like XI.

[reefo]

I think the bard is fine how it is. I've always played bards as archers with song buffs. Seems pretty stupid to want to just sing a song and sit there for 2min while it wears off.

[Majidah]

I think people who are saying XIV's bard isn't a true bard have only played bard on XI.

Look at RO's bard. It came from archer and it had arrows.

[Ryans]

what? haha how is singing songs not a bard?
You could ask for more songs and animations, but saying bard is currently not bard like is plain silly.

Bard is mid-low DPS with the best buffs in the game atm. Its more than you can say about XI's bard.

Bard has always used, at the bare minimum, a harp as its weapon. It has mostly focused on buffing its party but even when it dealt debuffs/enfeebles it would use its harp to do so.

Again, calling something a bard doesn't make it one. They don't actually sing, nor use an instrument. They spend the majority of their time in combat shooting arrows and focusing on damage (which they aren't very good at). They have a few buffs that they use once every 3 minutes, that's it. All the other jobs branch off a class that relates to the job. The only thing archer has in common with bard is that they have a string on their tools of the trade.

Edit As for XI's bard, it could do a hell of a lot of healing if played/geared properly for it. (Pre-Abyssea) A lot of the time my groups main whm would just go bard because it could keep the group alive and open up a party slot.

[Duelle]

I think people who are saying XIV's bard isn't a true bard have only played bard on XI.

Look at RO's bard. It came from archer and it had arrows.

Indeed. Few seem to realize that a non-combatant that only sings songs is not the only rendition of the bard. There's also the classic bard, which has been repeatedly brought up.

[EinSoFZ]

I think people who are saying XIV's bard isn't a true bard have only played bard on XI.

Look at RO's bard. It came from archer and it had arrows.

In my opinion, it's not the having arrows or not that prevent the current BRD from being a "true" bard. It's the lack of songs and bard related abilities that have this effect. As it is now, which is still a great job, it's more of an archer that is apparently in training to be an actual bard. Primarily, the job is not based on it's BRD abilities but on the Archer qualities. That is to say, they need to pump up the songs and things related to them. I'm not sweating animations and such, but those would be nice too.

That said, we're still very early on in this game. With the addition of more level caps and such, in ARR things could be completely different than they seem.

[Kiote]

I actually really like the Idea of linking Bards to Archers the way Final Fantasy did.

My problem is that they don't play Music.. They don't even use the Harp tethered to their Bow..

[Zantetsuken]

What would happen if SE removed the bow from BRD and just gave them Harp as main-hand and Flute off-hand?

I mean, besides all the ARC skills being useless icons on the action bar?

I don't think there is any way to avoid the bow-harp at this point - although, they could release a whole series of bow-harps and make them mandatory for the BRD job.

Either way, I hope in ARR, BRDs will actually PLAY the instruments...