Bard

[jidion]

What do you guys have against bards doing dmg on par with drgs and mnks and blms and smns for that, first you give us a broken ability wanderers minuet which takes away our ability to run and shoot and bring constant dps you even made minuet in this patch a 15s recast time which still doesnt allow us to stance dance like whms and schs can do with cleric stance, and you give us 2 really good abilities Empyreal arrow and sidewinder, one being locked behind minuet, then you nerf one of our best abilities without even lowering the recast time of the ability, 100 less potency with full bites lowing from 350 to 250(sidewinder). What kind of ignorant, idiotic, person do you have in charge of the bards programming. You took a good job, and you broke it beyond all repair. For this, Once i get my drg to 60, im hanging up my bow on my main job because you guys cant fix and raise the dps on a job that i love so dearly. I have spent countless months on my bard, trying to pick up the best gear, gearing it so that I could be somewhat close to the other dps jobs, but you guys have such a low standard of bard, that you cant even take off the cast time from our Weapon skills while under WM off. In final fantasy xi, rangers were sought to be one of the best dps in the game. You took that idea, and made the ranger a bard, and lowered it to sub standard dps that we cant even match the other dps in the game. You gave warrior a dps stance that can do 7-8k fell cleave crits, whm has the ability to crit for 9-10k on cures, but I can barely break 2-3k on any other ability aside from sidewinder. You add all these dps checks to raids, and extreme primal fights, that no matter how good a bard is geared, we still cant make the dps checks. Either lower the dps checks, or raise the damn bards dps.

[Edellis]

tl;dr

very original thread btw

[Panasync]

It's a beaten horse at this point, the fact that they have support songs puts them into a category this game doesn't have in some people's minds. They don't care that you get a debuff for using them, people don't care that all jobs have party utility and support in some sense, it just goes around in a circle.

Quite frankly I'm tired of discussing it. Unless they make a category in party for a secured slot for support and place BRD/MCH in it, we're a DPS. Yes we have support abilities, almost all jobs do, we're the only job punished when we use ours, and rightfully so, but that should be the only drawback. Bard/Machinist in WM w/o using support abilities should be able to compete at mid-range DPS at the very least. I haven't seen a convincing argument otherwise.

Healers have DPS capabilities, we don't call them DPS because of it.

[Jeckyl_Tesla]

Quite frankly I'm tired of discussing it. Unless they make a category in party for a secured slot for support and place BRD/MCH in it, we're a DPS. Yes we have support abilities, almost all jobs do, we're the only job punished when we use ours, and rightfully so, but that should be the only drawback. Bard/Machinist in WM w/o using support abilities should be able to compete at mid-range DPS at the very least. I haven't seen a convincing argument otherwise.

For progression raiding, there will always be one BRD or now, MCN. There always has been. (Maybe a few statics didn't run it, but since the release of ARR, there's always been a BRD in the group for their support.

Not to mention, the developer himself stated they are a support class.

Throw your dummy out of the pram as much as you want to, but that means they are a support class. End of discussion.

[Kayote]

For progression raiding, there will always be one BRD or now, MCN. There always has been. (Maybe a few statics didn't run it, but since the release of ARR, there's always been a BRD in the group for their support.

Not to mention, the developer himself stated they are a support class.

Throw your dummy out of the pram as much as you want to, but that means they are a support class. End of discussion.

Yeah thats funny. Because he also said MCH is a support class in the same sentence, yet the video we all saw introducing the class said DPS.Mind you this is the same guy who said personal housing will be different. Honestly im starting to think YoshiP is no where near the Squarenix prodigy we treat him like ... more of a one hit wonder. Regardless if support is what we are then he needs to add that role or change one of the DPS to support. Because this back and forth is the main reason we're having such problems. Its not only stretching us thin but its obvious this "prodigy" has no clue wtf he wants to do with us.

As for OP, yes I agree. The only exclusive buffs we have are very limited in their use and really only useful with inexperienced groups. They do not balance this games content expecting the other classes, when played well, to run out of TP/MP. FR is dependent on amount of casters"elemental damage." And pound for pound its only slightly more useful than what the other classes bring, yet just as situational. Bard support is a relic from 1.0.

That said there is already a 19 page thread on this:
The argument"MCH/Bard have utility so their damage should be lower"

...better to just continue it there.

[Panasync]

For progression raiding, there will always be one BRD or now, MCN. There always has been. (Maybe a few statics didn't run it, but since the release of ARR, there's always been a BRD in the group for their support.

Not to mention, the developer himself stated they are a support class.

Throw your dummy out of the pram as much as you want to, but that means they are a support class. End of discussion.

There is no support class in the trinity the developers said they're following. That's why all DPS and even the tanks and healers have support abilities. The developers said it was a trinity. End of discussion.

[Vlady]

Plenty of reasons bard and machinist should not be on par with drag/monk. Every raid would bring multiple if not all bards and machinist if they are on par with monks. Remember 2.0? I do. Turn 1-5 we had 3-4 bards. 2.1 it shrank to 1. Bards can bypass a lot of mechanics that close range melee suffer from.

[Panasync]

...

Why would anyone stack Bards? There is no fight in this game that is harder for melee than Bards. Every coil turn for the most part Bards had far more responsibility than any melee, on top of having to deal with AoE mechanics we have to do side mechanics as to not pull a melee off of the boss. How is sitting on the boss and walking out of an AoE occasionally harder than dealing with the same dodging and having to be responsible for side mechanics while also having to do maximum DPS?

Also I'm tired of this anecdotal regurgitated 2.0 Bard crap. People were not stacking Bards because their output was better then every other job. Post the math on 2.0 Bard vs 2.0 Melee/Caster potential. I don't want to hear a I saw this, and I heard that. Prove it, don't sit there and regurgitate this crap that you have no proof for. If you're not going to prove it don't bother bringing it up.

What mechanics are you speaking of?

[Dervy]

Also I'm tired of this anecdotal regurgitated 2.0 Bard crap. People were not stacking Bards because their output was better then every other job. Post the math on 2.0 Bard vs 2.0 Melee/Caster potential. I don't want to hear a I saw this, and I heard that. Prove it, don't sit there and regurgitate this crap that you have no proof for. If you're not going to prove it don't bother bringing it up.

Clearly someone never raided Hardcore back in 2.0.

People stacked x3 Bard, x1 DoM, or x2 Bard, x1 Monk x1 DoM, or x2 Bard x2 DoM in 2.0 because:
1) Bards only dealt 5% less than a Melee in a vacuum (No songs)
2) Melees had a lot of difficulty with mechanics due to the insane animations on Jumps and Monks only had one Cap Closer every 90s
3) GL3 only increased damage by 23%, Heavy Thrust was 10%, along with other abilities being very low Potency. Their DPS on paper was extremely low and due to their lack of mobility, people only ever ran 1 Melee at max.
4) SMN was broken as hell and easily top DPS if played correctly
5) Song Rotation. You stacked x3 bards because you could rotate each bard to play Foes, keeping it up 100% of the time making SMN DPS insanely high. And each Bard is rotating their songs, the lost DPS was very, very little.
6) T4 Speed-Clearing. Made it easier to AOE burn the Packs and was impossible to do it without a composition with x2 BRD x1 BLM in i70 DL.
7) T2 Allagan Rot. Before people discovered you could brute force T2, having a lot of Range helped spread/organise Allagan Rot much easier.
8) Bards scale the worst with gear each patch, due to their low WD. So back in 2.0, this wasn't even noticeable when people were pulling 290 DPS on content.

Remember, this was at HIGH-LEVEL, where people were dealing with content in Dark Light, not i90. This was September/October 2.0 Meta. Running x2 Bards to cycle songs along with their very good DPS (They had Blood for Blood, 20% IR) trivialised a lot of Mechanics for World 1st/Server 1st groups. It was after the 2.1 buffs/nerfs to classes, where people dropped stacking and went with x1 Melee, x1 Bard, x2 Mages as an "Optimal" composition.

Pls.

[Panasync]

5) Song Rotation. You stacked x3 bards because you could rotate each bard to play Foes, keeping it up 100% of the time making SMN DPS insanely high. And each Bard is rotating their songs, the lost DPS was very, very little.

Firstly I rarely saw 3 Bards, 2 Bards was quite common, I believe BG was using 2 bards on their WF. Secondly what is quoted illustrates my point even more, Bard's weren't used because their damage was #1, just like how parties were stacking Paladins SE didn't say, hey, let's nerf PLD cooldowns so WAR has a spot, no they buffed warrior and changed how limit breaks and party compositions worked.

They could easily change song effects if more than one Bard is in the party, you know what this does? It makes stacking undesirable without compromising the job.

I just spent 5 minutes trying to find a 3 BRD 1 SMN party and couldn't do so, so they can't be as popular as you say. Maybe the groups are just so hardcore they didn't want their sick strats leaking out.

Nothx.