What do you think makes a ‘good’ Bard?

[Connor]

I’ve just come back to the game after a long hiatus, and while playing Bard again I’ve begun to wonder what people consider a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ Bard.

I think Bard is in a unique-ish position along with Red Mage where it has utility can cause it to lose DPS. Things like Foe Requiem for example, or Red Mage’s Vercure. While the vast majority of Bard’s utility is oGCD, you can still run into clipping issues, like in situations with Mage’s Ballad and several dotted enemies. There’s only so much space between GCDs, so it’s not always to possible to fit both damage and utility into in that space.

If you were in a party, would you prefer a Bard that had medium damage but used a lot of utility, or one with high damage but not using any utility skills? Would you be offended by a Bard using Minne or Paean instead of Bloodletter? Or maybe a Bard not using them is even worse?

Maybe you believe that every Bard should excel at both damage and utility, and use their full support kit without dropping their DPS. Is such a thing possible? Perhaps the gains from using Bard’s support are actually so small that it doesn’t matter whether they use it.

I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on the matter