Tier list!

[Cynric]

BRD Crowd Control - Shadowbind 40 s CD, Blunt Arrow 30s CD, Blast Shot 150s CD. A bind, silence, and knockback, all on relatively long CD's aside from the silence compared to what the other jobs are capable of. That's hardly any Crowd Control, it's there it's just not much.

BRD Utility - Mana Song, Mages Ballad(lowers damage dealt but restores MP), Foe Requiem(Unusable in 4v4) Mana Draw(Useless) Wardens Paean(the only really useful utility they have, however very RNG related with which detrimental effects will be stopped or broken)

BRD has powerful burst yes but they meet the criteria of having no real CC or utility to speak of while also having their burst stopped by purify. If you leave a bard alone they can kill you. But why would you leave a bard alone? They lack CC resistance so it's also easy to sleep them/stun lock them during their burst window and halting it, or even binding them and getting out of their range.

MCH - Crowd Control 40% Heavy / 12 s bind that while good are sharing CD timers, You can use one or the other but not both and you're likely going to be using the bind more often, Stun /Silence on a shared recast timer. Stun Gun AoE Stun, this is good but its not always best the build up DR in an AoE fashion like this. Knockback that requires close range(can be good can be bad, its a coin flip due to the range required)

Machinist actually comes out ahead of bard in terms of CC in one way, and then not in another due to the fact that a lot their CC tools are on a shared timer with each other or require close range for some awful reason.

Utility - Hypercharge(requires careful use as it can overwrite fullswing but otherwise good), Promotion(you'll probably never use this), Rend mind /dismantle(5% isn't anything to really write home about),Report(actually a decent tool like mana song)

The problem is mch suffers from the same thing bard does, they're very susceptible to CC, they require their own CC to be on the target to do their highest damage, which only requires a cleanse to be dealt with. Their utility isn't that great. But they do at least have a decent range of CC where as bard does not.


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Basically they have powerful burst, but they also have a number of problems involving their burst like requiring the target to be CC'd or without purify, they themselves have no tool aside from purify to help deal with CC making their bursts easier to deal with despite being ranged classes. I feel Machinist has a bit more to make it competitive than bard though, they're still both good jobs they're just not the greatest in terms of what they bring aside from their burst.

[Isala]

Cynric, I respect you as a MNK. You do a very good job, and it's nice to see how much effort you put into it. I know you said you "play" bard. But do you main it? Do you go in there, as BRD, and work your skills to their utmost, or are most of your observations based on what you've seen? Because I'm flat out telling you, we're fine. Even despite our CC disadvantage, you're missing the one advantage we do have, over any other class except MCH. We are the ultimate chasers. Yes, there's a damage penalty involved, but we can drop WM at the touch of a button, and run down whatever happens to be trying to get away. A large portion of my kills are from gunning someone down as they run for their lives, and we are VERY good at that. When you use a BRDs spike damage to insta-gib a healer, and then turn your focus to another target? You often have two kills immediately after each other.

No, we don't have CC, or defensive CDs, or... The list goes on. But what we do, which is kill things, we do VERY well, even outside of our burst window.

[RiceisNice]

We are the ultimate chasers. Yes, there's a damage penalty involved, but we can drop WM at the touch of a button, and run down whatever happens to be trying to get away. A large portion of my kills are from gunning someone down as they run for their lives, and we are VERY good at that. When you use a BRDs spike damage to insta-gib a healer, and then turn your focus to another target? You often have two kills immediately after each other.

The moment you drop WM/GB, your damage plummets and starts to fluctuate big time. At this point (especially when we don't have damage penalty when attacking closer than 15 yards), you're better off just using feint while chasing down. But that's hardly exclusive to BRD since even SMN and BLM can do that too through dots or lethargy+procs (considering the enemy heals isn't present if you really are chasing them down).

Yes they can kill things outside of burst, better than MCH and probably SMN in some cases, but BLM can do much better outside of bursts (at the trade off that they don't particularly have fast bursts to begin with).

And lastly, don't take it this way, no one is saying that BRD isn't fine. But relative comparison, I wouldn't say it's as good as a BLM when considering potential and high play. The only job that truly needs to be tuned around to perform better is dork knight honestly, and some adjustments to BLM/WHM if they want to keep catering to cast times.

[Isala]

The moment you drop WM/GB, your damage plummets and starts to fluctuate big time. At this point (especially when we don't have damage penalty when attacking closer than 15 yards), you're better off just using feint while chasing down. But that's hardly exclusive to BRD since even SMN and BLM can do that too through dots or lethargy+procs (considering the enemy heals isn't present if you really are chasing them down).

Right. Feint is a 120+30% bonus for an over all 156 potency, compared to a 150 HS unbuffed. Which is why I use the non-WM time to put up the DoTs instead, get my SS off, and switch over to WM again, for Feint spam. And while, no, they're not saying in here, they are saying it there. When your own party is disappointed that they got a BRD over any other ranged, there's a slight issue in BRDs image.

[RiceisNice]

Right. Feint is a 120+30% bonus for an over all 156 potency, compared to a 150 HS unbuffed. Which is why I use the non-WM time to put up the DoTs instead, get my SS off, and switch over to WM again, for Feint spam. And while, no, they're not saying in here, they are saying it there. When your own party is disappointed that they got a BRD over any other ranged,there's a slight issue in BRDs image.

Which has nothing to do with tier placement or even job balance for that matter, really.

[Isala]

Which has nothing to do with tier placement

On the contrary. When everyone talks about how X sucks for [actual reasons], a ton of people ignore reasons, and just see X sucks.

[Cynric]

I'd say sucks is a strong word for brd . Not as good as it could be? Yeah but sucks? No way. That's just ignorance on the part of people who you seem to get in solo plus at least on our data center most ranged players just aren't that good in my experience. Dark knight is the only class that sucks and scholar to a smaller degree. Especially with the upsurge of monks

[Cynric]

@Isla and other ranged mains: Despite what I have said on the matter this doesn't mean I believe they are not suspect to be moved up to A tier. After the wall changes I do think they're suspect. I'd just like more evidence before moving forward. The list itself will also be overhauled soon as well and I am taking all feedback into account towards the placement of each respective job.