Bard in FF14 is so much like Hunter without Pet in Ragnarok Online

[Connor]

At this point I’m convinced they need to give up this charade that the job is a ‘Bard’ and rename it Ranger. Change songs to some kind of skill that changes the arrows you use. It would take so little effort for them to make it a pure Ranger. A real Bard job can’t exist in the game until they stop trying to squish Ranger and Bard together, because if the last 3 expansions have been any indication it just doesn’t work. It’s evidenced by the constant balancing mid-patch to address the job either being underpowered or insanely overpowered, plus the reworks of the job for every expansion except Shadowbringers, where they decided to just drop the ‘bard’ identity.

Using one song for a split second animation that you’ll immediately interrupt with Burst Shot, every 30 seconds, with no effect on anyone other than the ‘Bard’ isn’t a satisfying fulfilment of the job’s supposed identity. It’s like if a Black Mage could only use their magic once every 30 seconds, with the spell having no effect on enemies or the caster besides initiating the progression of the job gauge. And they only have three spells, plus two spells that rarely see any use because they provide an often redundant effect that can’t be used often enough to be considered a draw. It wouldn’t feel like much of a Black Mage.

Tl;dr make the job a Ranger and add a real Bard in like 7.0 or whenever. It’s really the only option they have left at this point

[Vorpol]

Tl;dr make the job a Ranger and add a real Bard in like 7.0 or whenever. It’s really the only option they have left at this point

100% agree with this,
I've thought this since ARR, trying to roll Bard and Ranger into one job isn't doing either of them justice
Currently bard damage wise feels okay but as someone who plays a bard, I don't feel like I am a bard or ranger
they should consider making bard a support / healer job and introduce ranger as a ranged physical dps
Even FFXI had those two jobs separate and had a unique feel

[Connor]

100% agree with this,
I've thought this since ARR, trying to roll Bard and Ranger into one job isn't doing either of them justice
Currently bard damage wise feels okay but as someone who plays a bard, I don't feel like I am a bard or ranger
they should consider making bard a support / healer job and introduce ranger as a ranged physical dps
Even FFXI had those two jobs separate and had a unique feel

Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. Right now it feels like each expansion the devs are like ‘so which part do we cut/change this time?’. When it comes to Bard / Archer, it’s like one side always has to suffer for the other to be enjoyable

The closest we’ve come to having a balance that satisfies both groups with Stormblood, but it was so popular that it become almost compulsory for raiding, which is never a good sign

Also, looking at just the concept alone the FFXI iteration of Bard was (at the very least), faithful to what it had been in every Final Fantasy game preciously (as was Ranger, though it didn’t have woodland creatures coming to help it lol). And again, I’m not saying there’s anything ‘wrong’ with how Bard is now, but it doesn’t feel like the same job it is in any other FF. I find it strange that in a game that prides itself on giving a ‘true ff’ feel, we have this one job that has absolutely no precedent in any previous FF. Even Gunbreaker is full of Squall/Lightning references, so while it’s not based on a specific ‘job’ it still channels something to give it that FF flavour. Bard is currently the only battle job that has absolutely no precedent from a previous ff; even Arcanist arguably channels traditional Summoners like Rydia with its focus on offensive magic and summoning (conceptually). And you can even argue that the White Mage oriented Summoners like Garnet and Yuna are represented through support like Devotion, Raise and Everlasting Flight

I know I’m getting way too into this complaint lol, but I just want to make it clear to others who might be confused why I’m saying Bard doesn’t feel like a Bard. And again, this isn’t to say that there is anything numerically or mechanically wrong with its current iteration. But it sucks coming into the game as a Final Fantasy, seeing that there’s a ‘Bard’ job, then realising that it’s actually something entirely different to what the name suggests (in the context of wider FF)

[TcomJ]

You were arguing party buffs a la damage buffs - because there are no other types of buffs that one would stack, outside of progression where you may have to stack mitigative buffs. DNC has 1 party-wide damage buff (Technical Finish). The other two are self and single-target (Standard Finish/Devilment). BRD has 1 party-wide buff.

I'm as disingenuous as you want you DNC to have a place since you clearly jump ship. There is a data on FFlog and you already know DNC gives more damage buff to anybody in the game by rediculous amount that rDPS becomes identical to bard. Just look at aDPS vs rDPS, it's night and day.

I posted the table of abilities you still refuse to acknowledge that DNC has more buffs than BRD by default, while bard songs are all gone just for DNC.

So whether your new job has a place or not, most BRD will not care. That's clear in Japan forum as well, you can go check.
And yes, it's 80-90. Because your rotation accumulate that last 1 second that you are switching song before it runs out, in raid some timing can cause your song to run out or inactive during transition phase or boss LB.

You clearly would deny every suggestion to additional functionality to "songs" since it would hurt your new lover no matter the number.

Grats for now that they steal the support functionality to your new DNC. But pretty sure the dev will listen to Japan forum than here.

[RadicalPesto]

They're not going to redesign every single piece of lore, every single quest, every single artifact armor and relic on Bard just to rename the class to Ranger and add a "real bard" over a few forum complaints prompted entirely by the removal of a passive buff and one skill on Bard. I'm not sure why people bother with these impossible suggestions.

[Vorpol]

I'm not sure why people bother with these impossible suggestions.

I'm sure people said that about 1.0 XD
anything is possible, I don't think any of us are saying redesign everything. More so covert Bard into a healer/support with songs that buff / heal
they could still use a harp/bow and add ranger as a ranged physical damage dealer. it wouldn't be that hard. Will it rub some people the wrong way? maybe..
but overall i think it would be a good change.

[SakiKojiro]

And Bard in Ragnarok Online is way more of a Bard than Shadowbringer's Bard....
Just saying.

https://irowiki.org/wiki/Bard

Isn't this a JRPG fantasy game or is it becoming lazy like WoW on the job design?

SE, you were so close in Stormblood, so close to get it right. What a pity.

As a big RO fan, that's unfair.

Also, FFXIV can no longer compare to WoW in class design. WoW's classes and specs are all super unique and their spells and skills all fit their design super well. They may not have crazy complex rotations, but they fit thematically. Something we don't have.

[Hanayumi]

Main issue devs have with bard's support buffs is that the don't want them to stack with dnc. So they dont want to have to make them be nonstack buffs like sch/ast shields nor do the want to nerf the buffs so that dnc loses a bit of its soul as a true support job, when really bard does just fine without the party buffs. So yeah if ya'll really want bard buff songs back they would pretty much have to be purely utility, defensive, healing, mp regen kinda thing.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm as disingenuous as you want you DNC to have a place since you clearly jump ship. There is a data on FFlog and you already know DNC gives more damage buff to anybody in the game by rediculous amount that rDPS becomes identical to bard. Just look at aDPS vs rDPS, it's night and day.

I posted the table of abilities you still refuse to acknowledge that DNC has more buffs than BRD by default, while bard songs are all gone just for DNC.

So whether your new job has a place or not, most BRD will not care. That's clear in Japan forum as well, you can go check.
And yes, it's 80-90. Because your rotation accumulate that last 1 second that you are switching song before it runs out, in raid some timing can cause your song to run out or inactive during transition phase or boss LB.

You clearly would deny every suggestion to additional functionality to "songs" since it would hurt your new lover no matter the number.

Grats for now that they steal the support functionality to your new DNC. But pretty sure the dev will listen to Japan forum than here.

Very nice personal attack here. Can't attack my argument so you decide to attack me instead. 10/10

So what if I play DNC now as my main raiding job? I had planned to play it back when people still speculated it might be a healer, because I honestly wanted something new to do and the aesthetic of a job that dances to support/heal really appealed to me. I still plan to flex BRD, and I still want both to be equally viable as supports. Contrary to what you have written here, I still love BRD and still play it despite it losing a lot of its support and "BRD-like" aspects. This entire comment is littered with nothing more than ad hominem because you've clearly ran out of arguments at this point.


I speak in terms of rDPS always. Not aDPS. Because rDPS is ultimately what matters in a raid and what matters when it comes to balancing. I'm well aware the DNC's aDPS is low due to the ~1,000+ it can give a single player with just Standard Finish/Devilment. Likewise, BRD has higher pDPS because it buffs less, and is actually a better choice for progression because its rDPS is more stable and not so heavily reliant on another player basically not dying, which happens a lot in prog. Not to mention, Minne is a far more useful tool than Curing Waltz, which is honestly weak considering our HP pools and the amount of outgoing damage that we currently see in Savage. Improv's healing buff is nice, but ideally only availabke for a server tick or two due to the nature of the skill, and it can also throw off DNC's Esprit if used at an inopportune time and they had not properly been managing said Esprit before. Not to mention, people have to be in range just like they do for Mantra.

I'm acknowledging damage buffs. Which are the only buffs you really stack in optimized kills. Very rarely does one have to stack mitigation after they've optimized a fight, and it's far better to space them out for more reduced healing than to pile them onto a single mechanic. In terms of DAMAGE BUFFS, DNC only provides 3 - 2 single target and 1 AOE. That has been my argument all along, but you can try to spin it however you like. You'd never stack both Shield Samba and Improv unless you're doing early progression, and even then it is likely to be overkill. My group hasn't needed double mitigation stacked for anything thus far and we've made it to Titan Maximum. Hence my comment about Samba versus Troubadour. They all effectively do the same thing, so you cannot claim one is an advantage over the other. Trying to say DNC has more buffs than BRD while piling Samba into those counts is disingenuous—they both have the same AOE mitigation. DNC does have more buffs than BRD, but the two are fairly balanced in rDPS regardless of how many buffs DNC gives. Which is how it should be.

Very few instances have deviations from the 80 second rotation. 80 seconds is the standard, not the few instances where one might opt to extend a particular song (Army's Paeon) due to a phase transition or to better line up Minuet with bursts later on in the fight (e.g., O9S Tsunami first versus Blaze first). You counting the 1 second you may or may not add while transitioning does not make your song rotation suddenly 90 seconds, and that's a poor attempt to try and defend your 90 second declaration from a few posts back. The standard is always 30-30-20. Has been since SB introduced the new songs.

I'd rather see both equally viable as support. I've been a firm advocate of returning support to BRD, but, of course, you won't acknowledge that as it directly hurts the attack post you've made here. Feel free to check the decent suggestion thread made by a BRD theorycrafter who suggests readding Foe's as perhaps a gauge ability (among other QoL fixes such as Apex Arrow sound changes) to see that I'm in agreement. I just know that you also have to take care not to break the job as it has been broken so many times before to the point where it becomes a hard lock. Because then it hurts more than just "my new lover" - it hurts MCH as well. Look no further than SB to see how hard of a lock BRD had become because of its utility. I love the job - I've played it as a main since I started this game in 2015 - but it was overpowered.

As for the developers listening to JP over NA: that's not something new. They've always had more open ears to JP than NA. NA had been bringing up piercing and DRG reliance for ages. The devs didn't acknowledge it until a JP player asked Yoshida about changing it.

Whether or not my job “has a place” is irrelevant to me because I’m not a meta slave. Never have been. I only acknowledge that the meta is the best for optimized kills/getting pretty parses, but that about it. What with FFLogs now removing the pad aspects entirely, pretty logs hinges more on player skill and execution than just stacking buffs on players.

[Razard]

I'm sure people said that about 1.0

Comparing the loss of a passive buff and Foe’s Requiem to the release and re-release of one of the worst mmo’s ever created?

And I thought Summoner players where shrieking, hyperbolic morons with no sense of scale. My gosh, the first time BRD’s place in the meta has been called into question and they are already screaming about “Muhdentity”.

What a job can be =/= what you think the class should be.