Do bards deserve all the nerf ?

[Leonus]

QFT. In T5, Bards are the lowest DPS pre-patch. Our Rain of Death helped fill in gaps where someone messed up a Virus rotation (which is also gone now, btw), and our burst helped greatly on the short conflags. Now we have much less utility and burst inside Turn 5 (the most important fight of the game until 2.2). We'll get by just fine, if for nothing less than Mage's Ballad for the WHM and Foe's Requiem for big snake. It's still a huge nerf that has really geared T5 groups in a situation where they're heavily considering cutting out BRD entirely, and will assuredly be testing BRDless teams.

To cut out bard of he party and make it the norm, I don't forsee that happening at all. Ever.

[RyuDragnier]

QFT. In T5, Bards are the lowest DPS pre-patch. Our Rain of Death helped fill in gaps where someone messed up a Virus rotation (which is also gone now, btw), and our burst helped greatly on the short conflags. Now we have much less utility and burst inside Turn 5 (the most important fight of the game until 2.2). We'll get by just fine, if for nothing less than Mage's Ballad for the WHM and Foe's Requiem for big snake. It's still a huge nerf that has really geared T5 groups in a situation where they're heavily considering cutting out BRD entirely, and will assuredly be testing BRDless teams.

That's just crazy talk. Most SE did was make it so 2 BRDs will never be taken in on the same run. They nerfed our damage output and made it so LB gain is lowered if you have any doubles in classes, so there'll only be 1 BRD runs most likely. Also considering that we're the only class that can keep MP up on a WHM constantly, we're still needed for T5.

[Someonewithclap]

The nerfs were pretty minor. The ROD nerf had nothing to do with bards, but was in an attempt to make certain encounters harder (ie: twintanias death sentence, we also saw Virus get the same treatment.)

[Grimner]

The nerfs were pretty minor. The ROD nerf had nothing to do with bards, but was in an attempt to make certain encounters harder (ie: twintanias death sentence, we also saw Virus get the same treatment.)

Correction. The announced nerfs were minor. The ninja nerfs to two of our core damage abilities were anything but.
To clarify:
Blood Letter: from 150 potency down to 130 potency
Straight shot: from 140 potency down to 130 potency

[Dahk]

The ninja nerfs were uncalled for in my opinion. I accepted the announced changed but this is a bit too much in my opinion.

[LunarEmerald]

As a fellow bard, I believe the nerfs were justified. The class was just too good with too many advantages. People were playing it, not because they liked it but because it was better than everything else by a large margin.

[NeonC]

The ninja nerfs do not exist.

[bardaboo]

Let's not forget about the cross class skill changes too. They took away a lot of our damage output potential (considering I'd have to pop all my cooldowns to come close to grabbing agro in a single mob fight with a decent tank seems unnecessary). Which I wouldn't mind if they were attempting to make bards focus more on support. But gimping some of our support abilities too? That makes no sense. Pick ONE thing to change. And considering that you can't be a source of continual support, it's nice to be able to do damage. But now our only source of support is our songs (which drains our mp and can only be used once during any boss fight) bards are a lot less useful. Maybe add more songs? Like upping healing power by even 5 percent could be a nice addition. Or making mobs more likely to recieve crits. Who knows. I'll still play bard.

[Arkghyom]

Which translates into a minor "buff" since now you have those 200 TP to spare on abilities to do more damage

Q.Q much? Deal with it!

[Black91CRX]

My DPS had dropped pretty bad since patch. Even my FC mates commented on it while running Manor HM. It's pretty bad when they can tell a difference.