Archer's future

[Alaltus]

NB: this has nothing to do with Archer's nerf, AA or whatever.

I was looking at the new weapons and noticed that almost all of the bows have Piety attributes. It seemed quite odd to me, but then i thought that it might have something to do with the upcoming job system (Archer's job is supposed to be Bard).

But I still think it's an odd decision... Considering what we know so far, jobs are gonna be for parties and are gonna be some kind of "specialization" of each class, so there shouldn't be any reason why you might want your a Conjurer not to be WHM or your Gladiator not to be PLD... but what's the point in turning the most powerful DD class into a support Job? o.O I mean, once it becomes Bard it can't be that powerful (judging from those bows, Bard is gonna be piety based, so in order to be effective in that class you have to take away some points from STR and DEX) so unlike the other jobs, that are gonna enhance what the class is already doing, Bard is gonna be totally different from Archer.
My point is, if when the job system is implemented Archer is gonna be Bard, are we gonna be willing to give up on the DPS and get a support Job? Or will we still want a simple Archer?

Honestly I thought Lancer was fitting much better to become Bard (and now all of the former dragoons are gonna kill me ; ; ) since it's slightly less effective as DD than Archer, but already has some buffing skills for the whole party (Surges and Comrade in Arms). I've got th feeling that it was supposed to be a DD/support class at the beginning, but the idea got scrapped by the new team because... well Lancer has to be Draoon, it can't be helped

Obviously these are all speculations since we still know nothing about the job system, but i'd like to know what you guys think about it.

Archer and bard could work... cant say it will give me any memories of FF though. Dragoon has played the dd/support role before specifically IX and XI albeit in XI players largely ignored the support side in favour of the dd side. Before that either Jump was their only skill or the whole dragoon thing was played down completely because all the characters were a mesh of the same abilities/magic etc. So no i dont think bard would have been a better fit for lancer and i wouldnt be surprised if dragoon is again a dd/support job.

[Illusion]

Archer running around having to stop dps all the time to buff people, due to not being in Range? I am sure it will thin the Archer community, unless of course it would not work that way, just thinking of the FFXI bard.

Archer > Ranger would make more sense to me, but they didn't call the Ranger Job.