Thread: BRD 5.0 Feedback, Suggestions, and Requests

I personally would prefer to see just several small changes and additions to our support/utility kit. I don't want a massive rework of the job's core utility kit akin to Dancer's step abilities done in the middle of the expansion. That's something I would like to see done in 6.0. For now I would like to see just changes and small additions to the current kit in this order:

1) Return Foe's Requiem: Bring this back. It has been our most iconic ability since 2.0. Our only personal means of buffing our own damage. It was clunky to use yes. But we didn't want it axed, we just wanted it to be made more workable. With no more MP and Refresh I would prefer to just have it reworked into an ability with a 2 minute cool down and a 15 second duration. Also no cast time.

2) Rework Warden's Paean: As it stand's now Paen's niche use comes up so seldom many Bard player's don't even bother putting it on the bar. This was fine in Stormblood, when our utility kit felt much more varied. Having little flavor niche abilities like that then felt fine. But now it's one of only 4, and that position makes it's niche usage makes it stand out even more. Current savage fights literally have no use for it what so ever, and in most average duty finder scenarios, you will find healers cleanse things before you ever get the chance. So rework the ability into something that feels impactful. If the requires it to have a longer cool down that is fine. I personally would prefer giving it to another player providing an offensive buff, like a 10% critical hit buff or a 3% damage buff, but you could also go defensive with it, like maybe give it the effects of a combined Palisade/Apoc.

3) Buff Nature's Minne: Giving Minnesota the buff to make it so all healing abilities also would trigger was a great move. However it's cool down was then nerfed to where it would only be available half the time. This hurts not only from a playability side, as you feel like you're getting far less impact from the ability, and really only get anything out of it in situations like static savage play where you can sync up with your healer over voice chat; but it also feels even worse when jobs like Monk, with higher personal and raid dps contribution then you do the same ability just as often but give it to the whole entire party. I would move Minne down at least to it's 45 second cool down it had in SB, but honestly a 30 second cool down would feel far better.

4) Rework Battle Voice: As it stand's now Battle Voice is an average rDPS ability on a massive cool down that doesn't benefit the user at all. This was once again not an issue in storm blood when you were also bringing Foe's and the crit aura's to the table. Now though you bring only this ability. Yes it was buffed to 20%, but Direct Hit has always been a lack luster stat, and when almost all other party utility is just buffing flat damage, it feel's even worse. To add to this, even though the job was supposed to become more personal DPS oriented, Battle Voice still doesn't affect the user themselves. You could go multiple ways of changing this, but I would suggest moving the DH increase down to 10% again, cutting the cool down time to 2 minutes to bring it more in line with other raid buffs, and then finally letting the Bard benefit from it as well.

Doing all this will go a long way in making Bard feel like a Bard again. I understand the Dev's are concerned about balance, as they should be, and although I personally feel Bard's DPS feels very subpar right now, I personally am more then willing to sacrifice more of that pDPS to get a support kit like this back on the job.

Disagree with all four of these.

Battle Voice SHOULD NOT affect ourselves. You don't want that. I promise you, you don't want that. Unless you're bad. But you don't want to be bad.

Our song cycle is 80 seconds. It would be best, for us, to use Battle Voice once every 240 seconds, to make sure it aligns with our Minuet and Raging and Barrage. Or we could do 90 second cycles and hurt our own damage output, which would only situationally be worth it.

Yet it would clearly be best for the party to just press the button whenever the group's planned 3m buffs are going up, no matter what our rotation looks like at the time. And that is the proper, correct use of BV, whether it affects us or not. All that would happen by having it affect us is that you'd have idiots using it selfishly, and non-idiots feeling real bad about how awkwardly timed it is.

Cutting its power is silly as well. 20% is already a not-even-5% buff on average. Bard and the other ranged are far too weak right now as it is, so there's room here to add some damage contribution without sacrifice being needed.


Minne is a good skill, albeit granted it only shines when you have really good healers who know to leverage it. But it's really among the least of our concerns, as awkward as the Mantra comparison is.


Warden's does not need to become a personal damage buff, as that's edging up to DNC flavor for one, and also goes against the skill concept as a protective thing. A Palisade type of deal would be okay, an Excog would be okay, just leaving it as-is honestly isn't bad either - not every skill has to be good all the time.


Bringing back Foe as a lame 2 minute cooldown would be awful. Pressing one more button every n often would not do much of anything for the feel of the job, it's just another button that you never think about, just press it. I don't want Foe back unless it's going to be flexible, and I wouldn't even mind not-getting Foe back if BV was made into more of a flexible, premier skill.

Why not just give them a some kind of temporary pet that can give buffs or do damage? Though the type of pet I can only imagine what it can be other than some kinda siren. Also we can look at other FF titles and just give bards a whole new arsenal of buffs. Buffs like Haste,Reflect,Faith,Bravery or Reraise. Though this is just a gross what if scenario and I personally we need to fulfill some class fantasy with Bard that is lacking. I for one would love to see those changes happen with bard as well as a Mech for Machinist *wink wink* *nudge nudge* More robots!

We're not getting a pet XD Try to keep it realistic / small scale changes in here if we can, please post wild stuff in one of the other threads.

I've only been playing for about 2 months and I've enjoyed the BRD a lot, it's all I play and it's very fun at level 80. I hope the devs don't change it too much.