I truly hope they buff BRD...

[DioK]

...for 5.1 in Frontlines, I really truly do. We have no defense, no self heal, we can’t run away, we can't jump away (not further than other melee classes can jump toward us and slaughter us), our damage is pitiful, we're too dependent on loading a target with dots and then having to attack that same target to charge our skills (meaning we don’t really get to cause the target runs away to the back). We're mostly just dead-meat on the battle field.

Right now, it feels like bard needs an entire team standing in front of it to stay alive. It has no resilience in the battle at all. We're more like support damage as opposed to any kind of primary damage. The only party support skill we have is Peleton, which can help the group run-down an enemy or attempt to help the group run away (although, every ninja, samurai, paladin, warrior, monk, dragoon, dancer and gunbreaker can easily close the distance with jump and dash skills).

Bards were nerfed long ago and with good reason. We were fairly overpowered back then. However, since then, almost every other class has long caught up while bard languished (or saw further nerfs). It would be nice to see a big boost to bards to put them more equitable to the current state of other classes in PvP.

[Shinklet]

Bard isn't as bad as you think, it's about average, balanced almost. But people don't realise it because bard has been meta-defining top tier range for 4 years.

I'd wholly expect a buff to summoner, ninja, gunbreaker and scholar before brd is even considered, even then I'd expect mch and pld to be touched on dirst

[Crit]

Just reroll mch or rdm, easy

[DioK]

Bard isn't as bad as you think, it's about average, balanced almost. But people don't realise it because bard has been meta-defining top tier range for 4 years.

I'd wholly expect a buff to summoner, ninja, gunbreaker and scholar before brd is even considered, even then I'd expect mch and pld to be touched on dirst

I'll agree that bard is balanced when taken by itself (i.e. bard versus bard combat), but it doesn’t feel balanced to me when placed in the context of everything else that other classes do. Bard has less damage, no mitigation, no self-healing, no viable escape mechanisms (we have an escape skill; it just doesn't work well enough compared to the gap closers melee classes have), and negligible party utility compared to other classes. That's not a balanced situation, in my opinion, and none of these issues used to be the case. Bards are basically the first targets because we're such easy kills and an easy way to rank up battle high quickly, precisely because once an opponent is on us, we're just dead. About the only thing we can fight is another bard.

Basically, bard has just been over-nerfed and then left behind.

[BloodRubyXII]

SMN is in a far worse spot than BRD.

[Crit]

SMN is in a far worse spot than BRD.

This is wrong in so many ways lmao

[BloodRubyXII]

This is wrong in so many ways lmao

- Only range without CC
- Horrendous gameplay, mechanically
- Going to be even more trash when every healer gets an AoE heal in 5.1
- Like MCH you can just safely train them into the ground.
- BRD kites better
- If things more or less don't change too much in 5.1, and there are more SMNs on ladder than BRD end of next season, message me on Discord and I will personally buy you a pizza. I'm that confident.

(So many ways, but you cba naming any of them, good talk! Love ya lots Crit but sometimes I'd rather get more than a one liner out of you)

[Crit]

- Only range with a HEALING REDUCTION IN A PRESSURE META, this isn't 4.x

- Phoenix stance is literally black mage for a few seconds, that alone is a lot more than what bard can ever do

- COMETEOR > TERMINAL VELOCITY

- AoE healing potential for chip damage in an AoE pressure meta, no this will not worsen when healers get more AoE spells, it'll still help healers save mp more, and thats HUGE for this meta

- More AoE dmg than bard can ever ask for, literally

- Wither alone pressures the enemy team a lot more than what a bard has in its kit, what can the enemy team be afraid of? a 100 gauge Apex Arrow? LULW

- Bard has no cc in its kit unless you take additionals, thats one thing over summoner yes, but its not extremely significant when the cc additionals can't be reliably used for peel or kiting, they're used offensively too, they may make a difference, but on the long run where summoner will drain more mp with the AoE and healing reduc alone, it is overall better

- Now if we're talking feast, the gap is even bigger, summoner has a lot more comp variety, smn + sam + drk, smn + drg + war, smn + sam + sch + drk, etc, bard has literally close to no strong comps it can be in because its so insignificant compared to other range, why play bard when machinist exists?

- Bard's only spotlight is troubadour in minuet stance with repelling shot buff, you weave burst shots with empys to continuously pitch perfect back to back to back with troubadour, now thats some damage, but thats once every 30 seconds lmao, summoner can be in phoenix each 30 seconds or so as well, but that stance alone does significantly more than bard's temporary spotlight, the AoE dmg, AoE healing, and the healing reduc in general

- As for FL, the AoE dmg is a lot more noticable, lets not forget miasma is instant cast and costs only 500 mp now too, you can just spread that to everyone and you're helping your team big time, if they can capitalize on it of course


If you pit bard vs summoner and they're both being played to the best of their kit's ability, summoner is significantly better, bard was just completely gutted, thats the sad truth, the leaderboard doesn't matter if more bards rank over summoners, people will still flock to whatever is easiest to play and they'll just get carried like every single season since every leaderboard only has like 3-4 actual decent players and 96 memes, the fact of the matter is summoner is alright how it is now, it needs more defensive utility which we'll all get, and bard is lacking in EVERY department, swallow that hard pill. Machinist is definitely the 2nd best range right now for Feast, it is literally a slightly inferior version of black mage, lacking cc, mobility, and cometeor, if you really want me to give you an even bigger paragraph why machinist is ranked that high then ask.

[Divinemights]

...for 5.1 in Frontlines, I really truly do.

This is for Frontline right? In this case Bard is at a good position of backroll DPS. I am not saying you but common mistake of a lot Bard players is to place themselves into Tank’s charge distance. A lot of Bard (other range jobs included) ofthen stand with their front roll teammates and got charged by enemy tank and got focus fire to death because of enemy call sign.

This is the mistake of player that didn’t maximize Bard’s strength, not job’s design issue.

[BloodRubyXII]

- Only range with a HEALING REDUCTION IN A PRESSURE META, this isn't 4.x
SNIP

Yeah fair enough actually, I can't really argue with any of that so I'm gonna go ahead and admit I'm wrong. Forgot they took the bind away from Repel as well. Not taking back that SMN mechanically feels horrible to play though (but that's super subjective - because Brian Ricardo for example loves it). Although I still disagree that the leaderboard representation doesn't matter, you can't solo people like HW, if I'm going to have to carry someone - I'd rather they played something easy which is objectively in that scenario going to make Bard better because it's far easier.

I'll spare you the paragraph, bioblaster on it's own is more pressure than BRD's entire kit and it probably has more routes for on demand burst than any other job.