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

[Lambdafish]

High proficiency in the performance feature makes a good BRD in my eyes

[Grimoire-M]

A Dragoon, A Scholar, and an Astrologian.


EDIT: Seriously though BRD has massive utility and is in a well designed state after the problems it had in Heavensward.

The problem with the class, at least in metagaming terms, is it's capable of competing with the selfish DPS in the right group. Your proc-based damage and the myriad of support options available are the two main identities of the class, and while I wouldn't trade away those aspects, I do find it frustrating that it has such a wide gap in power that makes it super lopsided depending on what your group composition is. You could make all of the selfish DPS classes you're raiding with way better but the combination of you with DRG/NIN/MCH/SCH/AST (the meta raid buff classes), trumps everything else in the game. I don't feel that's okay. It makes you co-dependant instead of independent.

The class itself is fine. If you dig too deep into this game's balance decisions, you'll find reasons why it's in a bad state for the game as a whole.

I hope that SE takes the class and balances its contribution in all groups so that its non-dps utility is the reason you'll opt into it rather than it being a 'must-have' class. All it really takes is shifting its procs over to Direct Hit over Crit, and all of those problems disappear.

Making it not only as a well designed class, but a well balanced one too.

[MoroMurasaki]

I think this aspect of BRD is just like the rest of it - it's all about pripritization.

Like in your specific example about getting off Minne instead of an extra Bloodletter - do we need that Minne for something? Did a DRK just use Living Dead or something? Are we prepping an Adlo to spread for big mitigation? If it's just extra defensive utility I say prioritize your dps.

That being said I don't think there's anything wrong with erring on the side of caution, especially in a new encounter.

[HyoMinPark]

Actually, in terms of gain, when you time your utility properly (Foe's, Battle Voice), it nets your party quite a bit of raid DPS. And this is on top of the passive Crit buff, which is always up 100% of the time barring unique circumstances. BRD's raid utility is massive; there is a good reason why people want it. Of course, you have to be aware of proper execution for this to work. That comes with practice and communicating with your raid mates. This is discussing raid viability; in terms of everything else, BRD is still just as viable and just as powerful. But, again, it takes proper execution.

In terms of weaving, unless you have really high skill speed, you can comfortably double weave in all songs but Army's Paeon (the reduced GCD from Repertoire makes your GCD too short to comfortably double weave during it). It's all about timing your oGCDs between your GCDs; offensive ones and defensive ones (Minne, Palisade). Some animations can cause slight clips (Pitch Perfect if it goes off later between your GCDs or if you have higher latency), but the damage loss is not anything like it was in ARR/HW with regards to using utility (-10% personal damage for MP/TP song).

A good BRD is one who maximizes their entire potential - who maximizes not just their own damage, but also the use of their utility to maximize the damage of their party (and survivability). A good BRD is someone who coordinates and determines when their utilities would be the most optimal (this is especially true of Troubadour and Foe's optimization). A good BRD is someone who never stops trying to maximize their potential; they are always learning new ways to use their utility, and new ways to benefit their group.

That's what I think anyways.

[Kabooa]

High proficiency in the performance feature makes a good BRD in my eyes

We can close this thread, Mr. Winner here already won.

[KDSilver]

A good bard for me is someone who both do good damages and use every utility he has.
If i had to choose between high damage but no utility usage (minne, dispel, refresh/tactician, troubadour), and someone with average damage but good usage of the whole toolkit, i'd prefer the 2nd one.
But one course, both good damage and utility usage are the best.

Minne at 45s is so awesome for healers...
But wasted a lot because I rarely see brd using it

[Elleia]

I never feel like I really have to sacrifice my damage to use my utility. I typically try to time my minne uses with holmgang or deployment tactics, and otherwise on CD to help out healers. Foe can add quite a bit of rDPS when timed correctly, and refresh is an absolute must have for healer MP. Refresh, minne and palisade can all be woven in fairly easily with little to no DPS loss. Troubadour can be a bit trickier as the Paeon and Ballad effects aren’t always super useful, but I try to find spots to use it for damage mitigation.

Overall, a good BRD tries their best to maximize their damage while still providing good utility to the group.

[Connor]

Thanks for all the replies everyone!
It definitely seems that Bard is at its best when weaving support between damage rather than focusing on one or the other.
It seems to me like coordinating with the party seems to be key too. Even if it’s not verbally, coordinating your utility with the party and the situation seems to be an important part of getting the most out of Bard. Or at least that’s how it seems to me.

I’d also like to clarify, by talking about what makes a ‘good’ Bard, I ask more about playstyle and ability use than viability in comparison to other jobs. Though I guess maybe it’s not as easy to separate the two as I’m thinking, especially since getting the most out of Bard requires a specific combination of jobs (from what I understand).

I guess an interesting question would be whether people think Bard should be so contingent on other classes to maximise its damage. At the same time though, I think that should be a question for another thread lol.

[thrashette]

In PUGs, I think it's really dependent on the nature of the group. If the DPS is lacking in general and people are dying a lot, you'd probably be better off holding Refresh for when it's needed instead of trying to maximize Foe usage. If you have healers who don't DPS and/or tanks who sit in tank stance and spam their aggro combo (while using cooldowns), you probably can get away with ignoring Minne, Palisade, etc. while focusing on maximizing damage. And another big thing is communicating with the other BRD so you don't overlap buffs. So yeah, like you said, it's all about awareness, communication, and coordination.