Its ffxiv combat really so slow and boring?

[HyoMinPark]

Are they? I don't think anyone has done a census for them in a while though. using sea on my server for level 70s has slightly more rdm and whm than bard. I don't see them as often as I used to, honestly.

BRD is the most popular job and always has been. Just because you “don’t see them on your server” doesn’t change that fact. You hate the site, but even with it being a small percentage of the playerbase, the majority of uploads on that site are from BRDs. Not RDMs and not WHMs.

They are reliant on crits, "working as intended" is always going to have chance, the problem is bloodletter procs are ok if you don't get a lot of them for 20 seconds and a bunch after, but for the songs not so much.

Rarely do you ever have a Mage’s Ballad where you only get a couple procs at the end. Controlling and boosting your proc rate is something that you do have a semblance of control over: proper gear and melds, and knowing when to snapshot crit-enhancing buffs on your DoTs. I never go a run where I only get procs at the beginning or tail-end of Mage’s, and I play almost exclusively BRD at this point.

Ah no, what I meant was they don't work so hot if you need 3 procs or 4 procs within a certain amount of time. You get the four procs early, great. You get them 20 sec in, not so good. Mages is ok ,the other two songs though lose a lot when you can't.

With Army’s Paeon, where it’s ideal to get your four Repertoire stacks early on to get as much benefit as you can from them. Even so, though, the benefit is minuscule, and not enough to stay in Army’s for the full 30 second duration—especially with a Minuet+RS window coming up in 20.

Not getting a full 3-stack PP during RS is a crappy feeling, but if you time your EA usage, you are always guranteed at least a 2-stack during an RS window—EA is used once and only once in Army’s, and delayed until Minuet so that you can use it twice during your RS window to force procs.

You miss the point, just raw potency increases is not enough. Not everyone grinds just so they can get 50 more potency or what have you on an ability, they need more than that. The weapon is cool, or the ability looks great, or it changes how you play or gives more options.

I have to point out the irony that you’re complaining about jobs being overly complex and about hotbars real estate, yet you’re insisting here that jobs need more than potency increases and essentially more rotational complexity. That directly contradicts what you said earlier.

Again, if the game were a bit more robust it'd be ok, but since everything boils down to damage, straight potency or minor buffs will have less impact save for the min max crowd.

Then speak to the developers about making enmity matter in the game; about increasing the need for tanks to stay in tank stance, or for healers to actually have to heal. The latter would mean harder hitting outgoing damage from mobs/bosses though.


I’m not going to continue using posts to argue with you; it always feels like a pointless endeavor. So I am leaving the conversation at this. I still don’t think that new expansions means “add 5-10 new skills”; boosting potencies and adding traits to vary job mechanics can be just as engaging as adding an extra button to press (and considering how a lot of players in this playerbase don’t even want to press their buttons... I mean, they did nerf Heavy Thrust simply because people couldn’t it hit every 11th button...).

[HyoMinPark]

Stormbite, Caustic Bite, Iron Jaws.

The fun with DoTs comes from snapshoting buffs to increase their potency and the rate at which they give you procs. Not just applying them and leaving them on a boss.

Heavy Shot, Straight Shot (Straighter Shot).

With conditionals (based on which buff you have, or which debuff is on the enemy), you could turn the first two sets into a single button each. Because of that, I consider them redundant. They do the same exact thing, only changing based on a condition.

At level 70, you never use Straighter Shot over Refulgent Arrow, so it as part of your rotation is something you don’t really consider past level 54 actually (when you can Barrage EA).

In response to your comment about doing the same exact thing, they don’t function similarly—SS is a critical hit rate buff that you need to upkeep (reapply every 30 seconds) and that you always snapshot your DoTs under, and HS is your filler that procs RA for more damage. They don’t do the same thing functionally; they serve different purposes, not the same purpose.

The only argument you can really apply this to are the DoTs, but that would apply to all jobs that have more than 1 DoT—WHM, SMN, SCH. I don’t really see that as a reason to consolidate them though; you don’t save much by doing so.

All three songs. The mechanics changes the songs have could easily be removed from them, and they'd all be identical outside of Troubadour. I'd prefer actual complexity, making the songs themselves more interesting.

Of course everything is identical when you strip them of their mechanics that make them different.

The complexity with your songs lies within manipulating your DoTs with buff snapshoting and timing EA to force procs in your favor. Not just idly letting the procs happen. Minuet’s procs have different conditions in which you use 3-stack PPs versus 2-stack PPs; Mage’s is the old River of Blood trait, which you can manipulate in AOE situations to grant you more AOE firepower with Rain of Death using EA. The only song I agree is lackluster is Army’s Paeon, which don’t have a proc mechanic in the sense the other two do—it’s strictly a haste buff, and the gains are minuscule which is why BRDs clip it early to re-enter their burst phase.

I see this as a false sense of complexity. It's complex only for the reason of being complex. It's not interesting complexity.

Complexity lies within your DoT management and knowing when you need to actively manipulate songs for certain parts of a fight (in an optimized setting), not Straight Shot or Heavy Shot, naked DoTs, or a song rotation where you don’t actively try to manipulate RNG procs in your favor. You have to look at more than just a base rotation; everything seems basic when you just think about it in terms of the bare bones.

I’m fine with people thinking a job isn’t their cup of tea, but I still needed to tell you where the true complexity with the job lied. This isn’t considering watching out for party support, and Foe’s+Refresh management.

If we agree to disagree, that’s fine. But I don’t think BRD is a braindead job that lacks complexity—pulling off high amounts of damage on it is something where you definitely need deep knowledge of how to manipulate DoTs and procs in your favor. Sometimes RNG screws you over anyways, but I’ve always found it extremely fulfilling to pull off a powerful opener, or pull high numbers in a fight.

To each their own.

[SaitoHikari]

I am really not interested in retreading arguments that Hyo has already adequately covered, but I would like to say that Bard requires a different mentality than most in order to truly maximize what you can do. Easy to play, high skill ceiling based on reaction speed and a deep understanding of how the game mechanics work.

There's a reason why a lot of Bards are clamoring for changes so that they aren't essentially chained to the presence of a DRG in a party in order to even think about competing with other DPS of the same skill level. The essence of Bard -is- RNG, it is the one thing that has survived through all of the various Bard overhauls done every expansion thus far. Learning how to play Bard is essentially figuring out how to manipulate the RNG in your favor, like learning what other party members' buffs and debuffs do so that you can snapshot Iron Jaws to extend higher crit rate, or throwing your DoTs on multiple enemies in a dungeon setting to get Rain of Death to reset between every GCD during Mage's Ballad. BRD is also the one DPS job that is most reliant on party composition - hence the nasty ranged physical DPS meta that only exists because for some reason the devs simultaneously gave a party crit buff AND the only source of piercing debuff in the game to DRG.

Either way, to simplify the crit-related RNG on the BRD's end removes the only complexity the job has - and it can subsequently rocket Bard into broken tier. I mean, do recall what Bard was like back in ARR. Absurdly high damage from anywhere on the field when played properly for a fraction of the effort needed to play other jobs in comparison.

I should mention that due to the nature of BRD's proc resets, it is also the one job where you lose the most DPS by sitting on your procs. If you don't use Bloodletter/Rain of Death during Mage's Ballad before you get a crit proc again, you just straight up lost 100 x the amount of mobs/150 potency. Same case with Wanderer's Minuet, though it is a bit more complex there that has spawned many debates about whether or not it's better to use Pitch Perfect at 2 stacks or wait until 3 (and risk one lost 'overflow' stack if the DoT is a double crit).

Do also notice that Bard is quite support-heavy, though for some reason this is only really emphasized in the last 10 or so levels. At this point, I've learned to time my song rotations to an entire dungeon run, to the point where I will almost always have Army's Troubadour + Palisade ready for the tank during the most dangerous mass pulls, followed by a machine gun barrage of either Pitch Perfects or Rain of Deaths, and still have my openers ready when we reach each dungeon boss.

[MomomiMomi]

Of course everything is identical when you strip them of their mechanics that make them different.

The complexity with your songs lies within manipulating your DoTs with buff snapshoting and timing EA to force procs in your favor. Not just idly letting the procs happen. Minuet’s procs have different conditions in which you use 3-stack PPs versus 2-stack PPs; Mage’s is the old River of Blood trait, which you can manipulate in AOE situations to grant you more AOE firepower with Rain of Death using EA. The only song I agree is lackluster is Army’s Paeon, which don’t have a proc mechanic in the sense the other two do—it’s strictly a haste buff, and the gains are minuscule which is why BRDs clip it early to re-enter their burst phase.

The songs themselves being boring is the part that I don't like about them. They could keep the other parts but separate it from the buffs, and make the songs themselves more unique. The buffs themselves are redundant, and there's very little choice in using a song. As it is the only real choice is which to use first, and which to cut short (which is a given because it's simply inferior to the others). There's little reason in there even being the three songs.

All of that though is just part of why I don't think Bard is particularly fun, and not why I find it unfun. That has to do more with the DoTs, and the other abilities I mentioned. SS/HS/RA all do fill the same function. Outside of not letting SS fall off, you will never have a situation where you will have to decide between two of them. If SS isn't on, you would use SS. If SS is on and Straighter isn't, you would use HS. If Straighter is on and you're not level 70, SS. If you are level 70 and Straighter is on, RA.

Just like you don't like pressing 1-1-1 instead of 1-2-3, I don't like pressing 1-2-3 when I could instead press 1-1-1. I do not find them to be mechanically different, I don't find it any more engaging, and psychologically, I dislike the thought of using an inferior method when a superior method (in my opinion, of course) could be implemented. Every time I play BRD, the redundant abilities bug me and just put me off of the job.

Thus, I would like options. You play the current way, I'd like to play mine.

[Dualgunner]

You have options. Your problem is there's an optimal order decided by the playerbase, which would happen no matter what.

[MomomiMomi]

You have options. Your problem is there's an optimal order decided by the playerbase, which would happen no matter what.

The options I was talking about was consolidating abilities. But if you're talking about songs, no, there isn't an option, unless if you consider going without a song for 40 seconds to be an option.

[Dualgunner]

So I guess order of play isn't an option anymore.

[MomomiMomi]

So I guess order of play isn't an option anymore.

This order of play?

As it is the only real choice is which to use first, and which to cut short (which is a given because it's simply inferior to the others). There's little reason in there even being the three songs.

[Dualgunner]

Yeah, the choice of the order in which you play songs. It's more choice than most jobs have with regards to their rotations, actually.

[MomomiMomi]

Yeah, the choice of the order in which you play songs. It's more choice than most jobs have with regards to their rotations, actually.

Not sure why you're bring it up then, when I had already mentioned it. As I had already mentioned it, that clearly isn't the problem I have.