I've permanently solved The Wanderer's Minuet problem...

[Lemuria]

Ah, that's right...I forgot. There are no other redeeming qualities about the various jobs to make somebody prefer to play one over the other. I guess SE should just remove all jobs and boil the game down to three roles. We can have one tank class, one healer class and one DPS class.

To be fair, that's pretty much what they're doing already. The jobs are slowly becoming more and more homogenized and losing their own identity in the process. When every job starts playing the same as every other job, there are things that need fixing. Just look at the healer changes during the 3.0 update if you want further evidence.

[Hayward]

To be fair, that's pretty much what they're doing already. The jobs are slowly becoming more and more homogenized and losing their own identity in the process. When every job starts playing the same as every other job, there are things that need fixing. Just look at the healer changes during the 3.0 update if you want further evidence.

You can blame the bean-counters and parsers for this. If a job can't outparse the flavor-of-the-month job, it's shunned by the elitist forums and the sheep follow suit. Afterwards, S-E is compelled to make the job desirable to these malcontents.

[Duelle]

I'm amused to see that some people think the issue is entirely about movement. It may be part of it, but a large part of the problem with WM is the gameplay changes. To quote someone who succinctly summed up the problem:

For WM here, the need to stand still wasn't too big of a deal for me because I didn't move around that much in FCoB or any content really. The introduction of a cast bar though, puts in some very unfavorable interactions with how bard functioned in 2.0. Their oGCDs start clipping with each other and now their gameflow feels extremely fragmented when you (and you will) double up on a oGCD inbetween a weaponskill because of a bloodletter reset. It's impossible to catch straighter shot procs unless you purposely delay your weapon skill (and using a oGCD inbetween doesn't help either), and repelling shot will interrupt your cast time if you're under the influence of fey wind or just straight up have too much SkS from gear/weapon. And then there's the animations...when you look at ones like empyreal arrow and windbite you can clearly tell they were not meant to clip into an oGCD at the start of their animation... Bard went from a fast-paced reactive-proc class to a slower-pace who can't pick up on half of their reactive procs

If you still think you're super elite and think they need to adjust, think of a ham-fisted change to your favorite job. Now picture yourself reacting to said ham-fisted change. That's how some BRD mains feel about WM.

-----------------------

You can blame the bean-counters and parsers for this. If a job can't outparse the flavor-of-the-month job, it's shunned by the elitist forums and the sheep follow suit. Afterwards, S-E is compelled to make the job desirable to these malcontents.

I'd chalk this up to the smaller metagame FFXIV uses to balance jobs rather than the number crunchers. Looking at WoW (because we're on the topic of healers):

Holy Priests: Direct heals, AoE heals, AoE cleanse
Discipline Priests: Barriers, effects that increase healing received
Resto Druid: HoTs, abilities that make HoTs detonate into big heals, channeled AoE heals
Resto Shaman: PBAOE HoTs (Healing Stream Totem), Smart heals (targeted heals that heal target and 2 additional allies with lowest HP), direct heals
Holy Paladin: Conal AoE heals, reliance on crit heals, Beacon of Light (basically Clemency but as a permanent buff and can be placed on an ally)
Mistweaver Monk: Placed healing bubbles (kind of like the exploding balls in A4, but they heal you when you run into them), channeled heals, smart heals via their statue

There may be common denominators between these 6 healing classes (all can rez, all can cleanse debuffs, all have some form of direct healing), but they are largely defined by aesthetics and mechanics. This is the direction I was sort of hoping they would take. I can't think of any raid that would turn away any of these healers away, and at least in my time spent raiding, all fit within the meta well enough.

[Izularia]

I'm not able to understand why people always are told that they should get good, just because they don't like Bard's new play style. I mean, many people who chose to play bard in the past did so due to the mobility that is now almost completely gone (if they don't want to lose damage).

I always loved ranged DPS classes, so I main BLM. But I also loved to play Bard now and then, it felt like it was the complete opposite of my main class and so I had some variation when playing.
Personally, I don't really care about the changes since I'm fine with being immobile and, thus, I'm used to it. But, more important, most of the bards aren't and they are forced into a play style they haven't chosen back then.

It is a developers' decision, so there's not much we can do. I just find it a little sad how many bards have lost interest in their old job.

[Vickii]

To be fair, that's pretty much what they're doing already. The jobs are slowly becoming more and more homogenized and losing their own identity in the process. When every job starts playing the same as every other job, there are things that need fixing. Just look at the healer changes during the 3.0 update if you want further evidence.

It's the way most MMO's go/went I'm afraid. Balancing so many jobs is an impossible task and the only ways to do it are a) make all jobs of a function the same or b) accept that there are ups and downs for each class and one patch may be good but another may be bad in comparison to others.

Sadly, the players don't accept that second point very well so devs tend to homogenize everything. Then the same player who complained that Bard had a bad patch, comes back to complain that bard feels exactly the same as Black Mage. It's a vicious cycle.

[Kazrah]

Sadly, the players don't accept that second point very well so devs tend to homogenize everything. Then the same player who complained that Bard had a bad patch, comes back to complain that bard feels exactly the same as Black Mage. It's a vicious cycle.

That's exactly why bard is in the state it's in: homogenization due to the "OMG MOAR DEEPS" mentality that players have gotten.

Also, instead of trying to cram more damage skills in, devs could instead have solved this with more support abilities and use the same line about support abilities to compensate for damage output that they used for why astrologian does less damage than the other two healing jobs.