What is a Bard?

[RinchanNau]

Yea. I would only ballad in a few situations. Dead time in a fight, for example. Doesn't really hurt to ballad then. Healers in triple digit MP? May want to ballad. But even then it's not necessarily needed. WHM may be able to shroud or pop an ether pot. SCH may have aetherflow to pop and then can energy drain. Usually healers will ask if they actually need it. Because often it can look like they do, but they, in fact, do not.

Often the only times to ballad are dead time (nothing to DPS) or when a healer is solo healing a fight that is intended for 2 healers. Depending on the fight that 1 healer may need ballad. Depends how intensive the fight is and how good they are.

[Viviza]

A bard is a DPS job that trades off some of its raw DPS in exchange for utility (songs) and stable damage output in nearly all situations. Look at any DPS job and you'll see a sliding scale between raw output and utility.

Certain jobs are very fussy about range, buffs, movement, flanking, etc.; bards don't have to deal with any of that.

Songs are super useful. I'm not certain what reality people here are playing in where TP and MP regen aren't needed, but it's not the same experience I've had or seen.