What is a Bard?

[Kitkat]

In my opinion, in a short term fight brd is strictly DPS, and in long term (IE 8man instance battles/coils) brd is a DPS/DPS enhancer with minor support by use of songs. The reason I say this is because other DPS around you will gain extended DPS capability by giving them Paeon, starting off with foe will enhance the Magic users dealing damage (and if you can squeeze it in at other points even better), and more often than not in long duration fights I'm giving Paeon out far more often than Ballad or Foe. Even a tank can state just how important well timed Paeons in long fights are important.....especially since they can't use invigorate!

I dislike that we, already having lowest damage weapons, take another damage debuff hit when using Ballad/Paeon, but also acknowledge that without a brd, downing T8 isn't going to happen due to running out of TP too often - because from what I've seen melee still outshine blm on this fight, the gap just isn't as great now. Brd can still do 350~370DPS on t8 even using songs, but without using them (cause even brd becomes starved for tp in that fight), we still don't out do other melee.

To this extent I will agree entirely that brd is a DPS, but they still have that ever important Support feature that is glaringly obvious in prolonged fights as compared to other support options other jobs get. Increasing amount healed, damage dealt by piercing, damage dealt by blunt, damage dealt by slashing, attack down, etc., etc., are all support options too, but none of them can stay up if the tp to use them isn't there, can they? A healer can't heal you if they run out of MP mid-fight and the cool downs for ether isn't up, can they? So yes, brd is a bit more supportive than people would like to admit, but we aren't a pure-bred support job and it shouldn't be used to blanket you if you're not holding up to what brd can put out DPS wise even with song duty.