Bard still seems really good (and media tour info seems incomplete and will change)

[SaitoHikari]

I will preface this saying that I am actually stoked for Bard as a higher tier raider, and that a lot of the changes make sense from a balancing and design standpoint. However, there are inconsistencies in the tooltips that make it really obvious that we're still going to get a bunch of tweaks before the final build.

If you want to look at current tooltips, there's an Imgur album with all of them.

https://imgur.com/a/Co6kUSy

EDIT: JOB GUIDE CONTAINING FINALIZED CHANGES FOR START OF EXPANSION IS NOW OUT!

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/bard/

---On the removal of critical hit reliance---

To some hardcore raiders, this will be seen as a bad thing. From a design standpoint, this makes complete sense, especially in the context of other classes' critical hit buffs being gutted. We need to remember that at the start of an expansion, our critical hit rate will be naturally low. Having us remain reliant on crit would have ensured that we would remain perpetually chained to certain classes, and we would have just traded DRG reliance to DNC, something the devs would have desperately wanted to avoid.

The 40% proc rate for repertoire actually closely matches current end of expansion crit proc rates with BiS raid gear. With current crit rate party buffs, that rockets much higher during our openers, but again, that's end of expansion BiS. So we've basically traded absurd burst with specific party comps at the tail end of an expansion for more overall consistency. We get to actually start an expansion without having sub ~30% proc rates!

---Shadowbite and Sidewinder---

It is very obvious that one or both of these skills are subject to change. If you look closely, both skills currently have the same potency, the same cooldown, and share a recast timer. If Shadowbite is literally just AoE Sidewinder, then it should have just been upgraded Sidewinder for the sake of reducing hotbar clutter. But the fact that they are currently considered separate skills means that they are not yet finalized.

(It is also worth noting that going off of the impressions of media tour invitees, Shadowbite's damage to everything in its AoE depends purely on the status of the DoT on the primary target, meaning the damage does not individually calculate for each mob in the AoE.)

EDIT: According to JP side, Shadowbite is actually 220 potency for both DoTs. So this means either the JP tooltip for Shadowbite is wrong, the NA tooltip is wrong, and/or the tooltip for Sidewinder in both versions is wrong.

https://dengekionline.com/images/kAr...CjdjmHINMT.jpg

EDIT: Sidewinder's potency is confirmed to retain 260 potency, and Shadowbite's potency was actually 220 potency for both DoTs.

---Bard and Area of Effect---

Bard AoE has suddenly become rather hilarious, and now more important than ever before in the context of healer AoE seemingly being toned down by quite a bit. Before, we needed to be in Mage's Ballad in order to really shine in the AoE department. Now, the developers have given us tools to continue outside of that (beyond the removal of TP). Apex Arrow works independently of the active song. Quick Nock now has a 35% chance to reset Bloodletter/Rain of Death, again independently of the active song. And then there's the earlier mentioned Shadowbite on top of that!

On the subject of Apex Arrow, it is unclear if the media tour build just had a bugged version, or if the developers intend us to reach 100 gauge before using it at 450 maximum potency. The tooltip reads as if Apex Arrow starts at 450 potency and scales up as the Soul Voice gauge goes higher, but the media tour footage indicates the reverse is happening. If it is the latter, Apex Arrow is unreasonably weak for a level 80 skill that has a new gauge mechanic tied to it.

EDIT: Apex Arrow's potency was increased to 500. It is still unclear exactly how it scales, and if it starts at 500 and increases or ends at 500 potency at 100 gauge. Considering a 500 potency/20 gauge weaponskill would be extremely overkill at this point, signs are pointing to the latter... Although it's also worth noting that for some reason, the PvP version of the skill actually specifies how the scaling works, and it's an increase past the stated potency there.

---Storm of Refulgent Arrows---

In order to proc Refulgent Arrow before, we had to rely on a 20% chance from Heavy Shot. Now, that has been expanded by a lot.

- Heavy Shot is upgraded to Burst Shot. Not only does it have significantly higher potency, the Refulgent Arrow proc rate is also increased from 20% -> 35%.

- Barrage now force triggers Refulgent Arrow. You obviously want to use Barrage when you don't already have a Refulgent Arrow proc, unless something like Trick Attack is about to fall off.

- Using Stormbite and Caustic Bite also have a 35% chance to proc Refulgent Arrow through the Bite Mastery trait. It is worth noting that it is currently only tied to the skill usage - or perhaps it is actually tied to the application of the dots themselves. It does not appear to be based on DoT ticks at all. If it is actually tied to the application of the DoT debuffs rather than usage of the skills themselves, then refreshing them through Iron Jaws might have a ~50% chance of triggering Refulgent Arrow. Alas, none of the media tour people have tested this, and it is still subject to change as it is a very weird passive to have otherwise. Even with the passive, you will ideally want to avoid having to recast Stormbite and Caustic Bite as much as possible with Iron Jaws uptime.

Still, this means our openers might be a bit awkward. There's a bit of a debate going on in Bard circles as to whether or not we'll open with Stormbite -> immediate Refulgent if it procs -> Caustic Bite, or if we'll ignore the Refulgent proc from Stormbite and risk having an unused proc via Caustic Bite. So far, all debates are in favor of the latter, mainly for raid buff and debuff optimization with Iron Jaws + repertoire reasons.

EDIT: The Bite Mastery trait was updated to include Iron Jaws having a 35% chance to proc Refulgent Arrow as well!

---Enhanced Army's Paeon---

Enhanced Army's Paeon is probably something that's subject to changes, considering its current tooltip is incredibly wordy. It just essentially says that...

1) Cutting Army's Paeon early immediately to a different song grants the Bard a maximum 12% haste for 10 seconds.
2) Letting Army's Paeon run its full duration gives the Bard a 30 second grace period to activate another song for the 10 second haste buff.

In optimization terms, all it really means is that it basically gives the Bard an extra gcd (and auto-attack) within a Raging Strikes window. It's not that much (especially as a late game passive), but it's still nice to have.

---Bloodletter stacking?---

The media tour build had no sign of this, but the live letter demonstration clearly shows the Bard using two Bloodletters consecutively without a Repertoire proc from Mage's Ballad. One could speculate that the visual effect was removed, but that's unlikely to be the case when repertoire proc effects were still visible in the other two songs.

EDIT: Bloodletter stacking does not exist according to the finalized changes in the job guide.

---What of our support?---

We did lose a few things, however.

- Refresh: Some people in various circles consider this to be a nerf, but in the context of MP/TP being entirely overhauled to the point where MP is only really used for a handful of classes now, keeping Refresh would have just been button bloat. It's really a complete non-issue.
- Battle Voice: Battle Voice was actually buffed, its direct hit bonus was increased by 5%. Alas, the Bard themselves is still unaffected by it. Perhaps this may be adjusted later, as there's really no reason for us to be unaffected by our own buff anymore.
- Removal of passive crit from singing: This hurts quite a bit, but one could argue that 2% bonus crit to party members was also rather minuscule to begin with.
- Foe Requiem: This hurts quite a bit too, but again, one could argue that a 3% damage increase for ~15-22 seconds every few minutes was also minuscule to begin with, and maintaining your MP around it was perhaps one of the more convoluted things about Bard optimization. But it was quite the iconic Bard skill...
- Palisade: Okay, I will admit, losing this really sucks.
- Troubadour: Okay, if this doesn't stack with Tactician and Shield Samba, there is literally no reason this ability should still be on a 180 second cooldown compared to the other two ranged classes having their versions of the ability at 120 seconds. Although I expect this to be rectified in the final release as this is an extremely obvious oversight.

EDIT: It appears that instead of Tactician and Shield Samba having 120 second cooldowns, they were raised to 180 seconds to match Troubadour.

I would also like to say that it's a bit awkward that new Bards will literally get no new non-role skills from level 18 to 30, twelve whole levels. What gives?

[Dyvid]

Still wish songs had the +3% crit on party members and some for of Foe Requiem. Bard finally felt like a DPS/Buffer job in 4.0 and now they took it out with just battle voice remaining.

[AncientCrystal]

I personally hated casting Foe's....

[Besame]

I personally hated casting Foe's....

Hated Foe, if there were any adds, I got em on me.

[gumas]

I personally hated casting Foe's....

it still weird me why foe is still not instant cast, considering all other song is now instant and foe is consider a "song" right?

[Cetonis]

Came looking for meltdowns, found sensible post. Additional point - while its cooldown was raised, it looks like Minne will now affect ability heals, which is a nice buff that should allow it to play nice with more than just Spreadlo.

I realllly hope Apex ends up somewhere that lets us choose when to use it. Like if it actually just scales linearly from x at 20 to 5x at 100, it will almost always be wrong to use it under 95 unless the fight is ending. But if it starts at 450 and just gains like 25 per 10 Soul, then we almost always want to use it right at 20.

So I'm hoping for something like, starts at 450, scales to 1250, or just move the minimum up to 50 and have it range from 450 to 650, that'd be fine too. Or start it at 300 at 20 and have it go up to 450, whatever. But aside from Bloodletters the job is looking kinda light on decisions right now, so hopefully Apex acts as a source for that.

[Irishrager]

Agree with all your points and It still baffles me as to Why we are still not going to be affected by battle voice. Theres no reason we shouldn’t be affected by it like any other party wide buff like litany or brootherhood, but it doesnt work for some reason for battle voice.

[DemonicNeko]

If I could only chose one range dps to bring into a raid. What would make Bard stand out over Dancer? From what I understand. Dancer can give better utility then bard can. With it also seeming like it might be pulling more dps then bard. I could be wrong but that from what I saw between the two classes. MCH I know is pretty much the Range version of Sam and BLM.

[SaitoHikari]

If I could only chose one range dps to bring into a raid. What would make Bard stand out over Dancer? From what I understand. Dancer can give better utility then bard can. With it also seeming like it might be pulling more dps then bard. I could be wrong but that from what I saw between the two classes. MCH I know is pretty much the Range version of Sam and BLM.

Honestly? It's too early to really tell. So far, my view on Dancer is that their support may be grossly over-exaggerated, perhaps partially due to the gutting of support from every other class in turn. A lot of it is coming from people that live on parses, and I say this as someone with a 97th percentile in UwU and am about halfway progging through UCoB. The single target nature of their buffs will really skew with parses, but in practical terms, most people will be really bad at Dancer (what with the kind of reputation random Bards already have), and Dancer's buffs are only as good as how the top DPS in the party takes advantage of it.

The perception that they have a permanent spot in a raid party is a problem, but I'm not sure it's really that much more of a problem compared to the entire crit/piercing meta that dominated end of HW/all of Stormblood. If anything, I'm mildly concerned that we may end up seeing a new (or more accurately, further emphasized) meta where casters are shut out entirely, except for fights that require caster LB. There's already talk in some circles that Ninja/Dragoon/Bard/Dancer might reign supreme in the end unless the developers suddenly enforce a lot of fights that require caster LB that can't be solved by ranged LB (or tank LB cheese). Still, in this context, I would consider Ninja to be more problematic overall - as there are more melee classes shut out by their presence than there are ranged, and it's fairly easy for an extra ranged to handle mechanics that a second melee would do, and the other way around doesn't work out the same way.

At the very least, these changes ensure that Bard has total stability in their damage output while still being capable of respectable burst, while as far as I understand, Dancer's damage is loaded entirely into burst windows. And I figure if the community abuses Dancer too much (or overhype it too much), the devs will probably gut Sabre Dance mid-expansion or something. Kind of like how Balance got nerfed at one point.

That said, I find it mildly interesting that this thread is the only one discussing Bard, and all the other threads for other DPS classes that I can see are in semi meltdown mode.

[Xieldras]

I'm quite sad that Bard loses half of it's buffs (including the crit % from Songs). These changes seem to be erasing Bard's identity as a more support-oriented class (even its quests and official description state that it's songs boost it's allies) and put us more in an Archer/Ranger category. I enjoyed using Palissade on a tank during tankbusters, Tactician when aggro slipped, Refresh to help out with MP-starved healers. While I admit the over usage of Crit was necessary to change (and Pierce debuff), was it really needed to remove so much of our utility as well?

I fear that, with Dancer looking mighty powerful with it's very impressive array of utility/Dance Partner mechanic and Machinist being the selfish DPS of the rDPS trio, Bard will simply not have enough to compete for a spot on groups. It's rather ironic that Square stated they did not want any class to lock a spot, since I'm guessing that Dancer will lock the rDPS spot quite often.

TL;DR : Pessimistically cautious of the changes for Bard since it loses much utility