BRD Notes from 8/7 Live Letter

[Rufalus]

It's weird how we ended up here. The essence of bard is a supporter who rouses their allies through song and music. Based on that identity you'd expect it to have by far the highest support ability, and trashcan personal dps, and not be a ranger/archer. Dancer would feel more natural in the middle with less support than bard, but fairly high personal dps using its ring blades. I'm not saying they should completely rework everything, it's just odd how a bard ended up being the one positioned in the middle and still getting archery moves like apex arrow instead of bard stuff.

[LunaFaelyn]

"The word "bard" ordinarily puts folk in mind of those itinerant minstrels, fair of voice and nimble of finger, who earn their coin performing in taverns and the halls of great lords. Few know, however, that bards in fact trace their origins back to the bowmen of eld, who sang in the heat of battle to fortify the spirits of their companions.
In time, their impassioned songs came to hold sway over the hearts of men, inspiring their comrades to great feats and granting peace unto those who lay upon the precipice of death."

There are 2 types of people that played bard. One that never wanted to be more than the starting archer job and those that embraced what SE told us bard was on their job guide. I desperately miss the identity of being a bard. As a bard main, I have even stopped raiding. I left my static after the changes. The job just lost it's feeling. I love being a support class. Feeling helpful. I love helping others more so than helping myself. I never cared about doing massive damage. It was a bout making others shine during a fight.
Apex arrow is very underwhelming and make the songs all feel selfish to fill a gauge that has little impact.
Shadowbite feels awkward to use because you are applying dots to a single target in a mob and hoping it doesn't die before you get to use shadowbite.
Monks Mantra and Dancer's Improv feel more useful than Bard's Nature's Minne because they are party wide instead of single target.
Warden's Paean is very situational.
And with all the selfish song changes, Battle Voice still does not affect the bard themselves. They still need others to give them a similar boost.
I just wish that the Devs would have let us have 2 support jobs instead of hollowing out bard to make dancer shine. Which sadly, I love playing dancer for the same reason I once loved bard.

[Shurrikhan]

It's weird how we ended up here. The essence of bard is a supporter who rouses their allies through song and music. Based on that identity you'd expect it to have by far the highest support ability, and trashcan personal dps, and not be a ranger/archer. Dancer would feel more natural in the middle with less support than bard, but fairly high personal dps using its ring blades. I'm not saying they should completely rework everything, it's just odd how a bard ended up being the one positioned in the middle and still getting archery moves like apex arrow instead of bard stuff.

Honestly, in this regard I really liked the concept ARR Bard went with, especially as balanced around a single caster and not too much healer DPS (thus making Foes less of the be-all-end-all). You were alternatively commando and commander, burst and sustain. When singing songs (MB or AP), your damage was decreased. Without them, you were putting out top-tier burst. You surgical strike capabilities and strong party recuperation -- just not both at the same time.

Personally, I hate passive rDPS. In general, I find pure damage raid buffs, outside of short and significant bursts, to be the least interesting. And while there's no way we could make MB or AP work as they did back then, I'd sooner have something like those (and their issues, even) than songs be replaced by, rather than be able to run alongside, personal damage mechanics and passive rDPS as we had in SB. Don't get me wrong -- I love the variance. I just don't think songs were the logical choice for their activator/cycler, and I hate the idea that we should never have to take into consideration the composition we're playing with before choosing our buff -- or, alternatively, that buffs of different types are so inherently impossible to balance -- that there can only ever be one buff type, Damage (or that which likewise has zero additional synergetic elements).

I want back buff types, and for them to be more distinct. (Heck, I don't see Dancer "shining" at all at Bard's expense; Dancer hardly seems much of a "Support DPS" to me in terms of its actual gameplay.) I don't think we need to gut Bard's pDPS to do that, either, though. It's enough that damage is reduced proportionate to the buffs output while that output is being produced, be that through %damage loss or shared resource costs or any combination of the like.