A Bard Thought

[ty_taurus]

On one hand, Archer classes are very popular in MMOs, and a lot of people really enjoy the bow & arrow focused fighting styles.

On the other hand, the job is called "Bard," and the fantasy of being a Bard is using music to support allies and attack foes.

This is a topic that's been thrown around since the early days of ARR: "Bard" is simply an Archer in a Bard's clothing, and that's not a great feeling for the people who want a job that focuses on musical support. The biggest reason is simply because the job is named "Bard." If it were named "Ranger" instead, we wouldn't have this issue, because there would always be the possibility of a true Bard being introduced in a future expansion. So long as "Bard" retains its namesake, we will never have a music class.

If we were to change "Bard" into a supporting music job, than the players who love archery would lose access to the job they enjoy and have invested in for potentially ages. At first glance, it seems like a lose-lose situation. Either the players who enjoy archery suffer, or the players who want a music job suffer.

There are a few solutions I can think of that could appear in future expansions. Which option do you think works the best?

Option A: Rewriting the Lore
In this option, Bard's lore would be rewritten as the job being "Ranger" instead. This would essentially require an overhaul of the Job quest line, but the actual play style would stay relatively the same with the exception that any aspects of music would be removed and replaced with something else. Additionally, "Bard" is introduced as a band new Job wielding Instruments as weapons and focusing heavily as a support. They could be either a foil to Dancer as a ranged DPS attacking enemies with music from afar, or could also be reimagined as a healer.

It seems like a great solution, but it would require a lot of extra work as everything that even remotely references Bard in the story and job quest would need to be rewritten. It would have a high quality result, but would undoubtably cost time and effort with something elsewhere. Perhaps Ranger and Bard would be the only jobs of that expansion, one of which not even being new.

Option B:Redesigning Bard and adding Ranger.
It seems like this option might sound the same as Option A, but it's actually a little different. In this example, we aren't going to rewrite the lore of Bard. Instead, Bard's moves will undergo a massive shift in a way similar to what Machinist received. Tools like Refulgent Arrow, Apex Arrow, Empyreal Arrow, etc will all be removed and replaced with musical attacks. Much like the Dancer, the Bow will be restricted to almost exclusively your basic rotation, and everything else will be musical. Again, we could see it transform into a foil to Dancer where their DPS is lowered as support songs are added. Essentially, the concept of being an archer is almost completely obliterated from Bard's identity.

In response, the new job of Ranger gets added as another selfish Ranged DPS, like Machinist. Their weapon of choice would be a crossbow, and they would adopt Bard's old play style.

Basically, the 2 major differences between option A and B are that B doesn't involve changing Bard's lore, and their weapons are different as a result: Bard keeps the Bow but barely uses it while Ranger gets a Crossbow instead.

Option C: Introduce a new Music Job anyway.
Leave Bard as is and let it stay as a Ranger in Bard's clothing. Nothing major changes.

Instead, we get a new job in a future expansion called Minstrel, which could either be a ranged DPS or Healer, much like I've brought up before. Minstrel uses instruments in battle and will utilize music exclusively.

Option D: Something Else

The point of this is to try and find a solution that could possibly make both sets of players happy: Those that want a true-to-its-name archer as well as those who want an actual music user. I realize that there will still be people who will say "none, Bard's fine," but the reality is that it isn't fine. Sure, the job itself isn't a problem on a mechanical level, and people do enjoy it, but there are plenty of players who love the identity of relying on music in battle and want a real representation of this. Current Bard doesn't deliver on that, and pretending that it does because it pretends to focus on music when it's more like 90% Bow/10% Music is just being delusional.

[LunaFaelyn]

I love your ideas. Bard in it's current state, is making us bard mains a community divided. It has been on my mind since 5.0 released. I am so sad that my song just feel empty. I played bard to be useful and supportive and it just lost it's feeling.
I know SE said they would never do it again. But why not branch archer off into Bard (so we can keep the long list of already musical theme bows) and ranger like arcanist became scholar and summoner? The community obviously wants another healer after the dancer outrage of being a dps. Bard could keep it's lore and be a healer and a new story branching off could make the ranger with traps instead of songs.
I just want my identity back. With a heavy heart I started playing dancer just to get that rush of helping someone else do big damage.
Thank you for making this post.

[Cetonis]

Nah, the answer here is just to buff Bard via adding some more support back, and buff MCH and DNC directly, since the job imbalance is quite bad right now and all three ranged are in the trouble bucket.

I don't think anyone is going to sit here and say "Bard must add at least 2k in raid dps on top of its personal or else we'll be mad." They just want it to feel right, and if it "only" adds 750 or 1200 or 1000 or whatever, but the themes and feels are there, that's really just fine.

[MPNZ]

Or they could go all into the concept, allow songs effects to support other players, refine the current song toolkit, change shadowbite into and AOE venombite (an AOE bane is way too much for the procs to handle), remove sidewinder for a CD that halfs the cooldown timers on songs, make use of the slot for pitch perfect, Integrate battlevoice and trabadour and proc rate increases into the cyclical songs, revert battle voice into increasing song buff potencies, Warden's and minne to receive QoL for ease of use and expediance for controller set-ups (circullar for warden and raid-wide for minne), adding charges to RoD/BL, making soul voice into a useable resource, changing apex arrow's into a set amount at 35 points and doubling it's range for kiting, changing Traubadour into a charge skill for soul voice, restoring foie requiem, removing the RA proc from Venombite/stormbite, et cetera.

And, this totally OP, so they may have to remove raging strikes or combine it into barrage (35% damage boost for the next three actions as follows: procs RA, and grants barrage for EA, RA, and burst arrow).

It would be really fun and busy as a fully realized concept, but as most of the jobs are just like only partially formed, IMO, it would probably cause cascading full-redesigns of other jobs or may get deleted entirely or just limited

[ty_taurus]

Nah, the answer here is just to buff Bard via adding some more support back, and buff MCH and DNC directly, since the job imbalance is quite bad right now and all three ranged are in the trouble bucket.

I don't think anyone is going to sit here and say "Bard must add at least 2k in raid dps on top of its personal or else we'll be mad." They just want it to feel right, and if it "only" adds 750 or 1200 or 1000 or whatever, but the themes and feels are there, that's really just fine.

I really wasn't trying to talk about the balance argument of Bard. Really, what I want is a future version of FF14 where both the players who want a dedicated Archer can have that while the players who want a dedicated musician can also have that as well. It's more about theme, style, and lore than the actual mechanics of the jobs.

[Atamis]

As someone who detests bard but loves the Ranger archtype i must agree. I rather like the current "Bard" except for the fact its called bard and still has music inspired abilities. I feel sorry for the real bards out there, I had respect for them even if i looked at them with venom seeing my poor archer class being sullied.

I, for one, see no reason a real Ranger couldn't be split off, even if it doesn't directly split from archer. Something has to be done as the current bard is only in name and this tug of war of playstyles will never end. Just splitting "Bard" from the archer tree could be effective also, but that would require a ton of extra work that SE seems to be extremely shy about doing.
While the concept of a healing bard sounds neat, i don't think that would be ideal. I think the Dancer concept would work a bit better, even if it was just a blatant clone as MCH was to BRD in the beginning. (Also I was hoping for the Singer class to be a healer(Think of the DNC, SNG, BRD groups!))

Having the same weapon shape would not hurt a second archer type, they already deal with it on multiple classes. WHM and BLM both use sticks, and previously used 1H and shield. SMN and SCH currently both use books without even differing in animation while using them. Having a Ranger/Sniper use a Greatbow would be a non issue.

[ty_taurus]

As someone who detests bard but loves the Ranger archtype i must agree. I rather like the current "Bard" except for the fact its called bard and still has music inspired abilities. I feel sorry for the real bards out there, I had respect for them even if i looked at them with venom seeing my poor archer class being sullied.

I, for one, see no reason a real Ranger couldn't be split off, even if it doesn't directly split from archer. Something has to be done as the current bard is only in name and this tug of war of playstyles will never end.

I think you phrased it perfectly. The situation Bard is currently in is exactly a tug of war between player bases. So long as we continue with this mentality that archery and music need to be joined at the hip, both of us suffer. If we get more music and support added to the bard in a future expansion... Yeah, that will make the real fans of "Bard" happy, but it will pull the job farther away from the fans of "Archer." Nothing productive will ever come from these two groups constantly fighting for the same slot.

[Brightshadow]

In my opinion I think what square enix should consider is just retooling Bard to be more support orientated, while releasing a new job - ranger that basically plays the way that BRD does now but with a unique twist/mechanic.


As for the ranger aesthetics obliviously they have Final Fantasy to get inspiration from, but I think they should also consider a Robin hood/Diablo III demon Hunter look for the Ranger with dual crossbows to add something cool that would attract players.

[TankHunter678]

With Option B the bow models could be slightly or fully reworked to make them effectively oversized harps. Some of the bow models already have built in harps. This would allow you to keep the weapon as something beyond the base rotation, as you are instead of shooting arrows at your enemies you are shooting magical manifestations of the song notes being played. Which is something consistent with the early FF games that did include harps as actual in combat tools/weapons.

[HyoMinPark]

It would be far easier to release a new Ranger job than rewrite 6 years worth of BRD lore. I'd rather see BRD return to its Support roots; not become a Ranger.