SE needs to be more creative when balancing party damage utility classes.

[StarlingS]

A party damage focused class like Bard should not receive just damage buffs to compensate for it's low dps. Buffing Bard with just damage when it is loaded with party damage will just make it overpowered. But when these classes are bottom tier, most people will just prefer stronger classes in their party.

A solution to this is to give these bottom tier classes utility that can not be measured in damage. An example would be like: in-combat movement speed, shields, healing, etc.

[Vnolan]

Either the bonuses will be broken and force BRDs into parties, or they will have no significant effect and change nothing, since damage trumps all.

[Akiudo]

The primary issue is that Tactician, Troubadour, and Shield Samba are easily the most powerful defensive CDs available to the entire DPS role and seemingly no one realizes that PhysRange will be balanced partly around this fact. In order to gauge where Physical Ranged classes should be, one has to consider how valuable these CDs are.

i would say remind me of this when smn stops being top dps while offering a rez, or monk either loses mantra completly or gets put in its "rightfull" place as the weakest melee. To be clear, i'm not saying your assessment is wrong, just that square has sadly proven so incapable of balancing around any kind of utility at this point i'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to just give everyone some form of it just to muddle the waters on class balance, that or just oficially reduce all classes down to "this is the damage they deal, be happy" and strip them of everything else. Its becoming quite obvious they don't really know what value to put on what kind of utility

Either the bonuses will be broken and force BRDs into parties, or they will have no significant effect and change nothing, since damage trumps all.

also this, its simply the game design. End of progress at the latest damage is > all. And really considering how small the amount of players that really do hardcore progress is, and considering these players will switch classes to whatever class offers what they need the most, be this dps/utility/the most consistency balancing around that crowd is a futile endeavor from the get go.

[BloodRubyXII]

A solution to this is to give these bottom tier classes utility that can not be measured in damage. An example would be like: in-combat movement speed, shields, healing, etc.

Anything that isn't damage is absolutely worthless the deeper into prog you get. Samba, Troubadour, Tactician and Mantra already fill this gap because they're good in progress and also for disrespecting content, and we don't really need more than that.

[Connor]

Nobody would ever support more non-damaging support abilities on Bard (or any job for that matter).Nor wouldthe developers themselves from how they’ve phased out all non-damage support skills. If it doesn’t deal damage, it’s ultimately useless in every way in FFXIV other than ‘I may as well because it’s free and oGCD’. I mean, there isn’t a single job in the game anymore that has even one GCD dedicated to supporting party members, which should be telling of how this game treats party support in general. Support in FFXIV in general is universally designed to be completely unintrusive to your damage rotation, with a simplistic effect (increase X by Y%), long cooldown, and is almost always related to damage in some way (less damage taken = more healer DPS GCDs, for example).

The developers have pretty much already made Bard a pure DPS, and Dancer and Astrologian deal solely in damage dealt increase buffs. Unfortunately if you want to support the party outside of free, instant-use basic damage increases that are off-cooldown, you’ll have to play a different MMO. I’d love to see more ways to help the party besides ‘increase damage passively’ but unfortunately that just isn’t going to happen in FFXIV’s lifetime anymore, unless they somehow contradict their own game design and the wishes of the vast majority of players by suddenly redesigning ranged jobs to be ‘support oriented’ and not ‘personal DPS oriented with support as a by-product of your DPS’

For the case of Bard’s overall DPS, they’ll likely just delete Minne/Paean as justification for further dps potency increases. And possibly remove the song buff effects again in exchange for more personal damage, since I honestly don’t think many Bards would care if they were gone if it meant higher personal DPS (the whole reason people wanted them back was to make up for Bard’s low overall damage at the start of SB). Basically, I think they’ll continue with their currently design philosophy for Bard which is ‘less support, more personal damage, at any cost’, so if any future buffs to overall damage potency come, they’ll likely be compensated by further cuts to Bard’s support capabilities (if such a thing is necessary for balance)

I think the confusion is that you’re assuming jobs like Bard are focused on increasing party damage. But their focus is on personal DPS (like any job, regardless of role), hence why all of their support abilities are damage increase focused and off-cooldown. I mean, Devilment and Battle Voice are the only two support abilities you’ll use often that don’t also do direct damage, not counting the damage reduction ranged role skill (aka Troubadour/Samba/Tactician). You aren’t using you’re abilities to support anyone in FFXIV, you’re using them for your damage rotation and the support is like a ‘pleasant by-product’. The support will never be the main focus though, meaning that ultimately it’s a waste of resources for them to develop non-damaging skills because they’d have to be removed or reworked at some point anyway or nobody would use them. Look at the original Warden’s Paean; there would be an uproar if SE ever attempted to make a new skill like that. A 3 second cast time, and an effect that only shields the target? And then it shields them from status effects which barely exist in ffxiv anyway lol, and when they do they’re either not removable or barely worth removing

I mean, think about how many times you’ve seen a Bard use Minne or Paean? I’d wager the reason is ‘not very much’, because as non-damaging support skills they add no meaningful contribution to anyone besides maybe giving the healers an extra gcd for DPS (but then they do all their healing through oGCDs, so it’s not like healers are all in a a GCD drought)

[AxelDH]

Nobody would ever support more non-damaging support abilities on Bard (or any job for that matter).

...

I mean, think about how many times you’ve seen a Bard use Minne or Paean? I’d wager the reason is ‘not very much’, because as non-damaging support skills they add no meaningful contribution to anyone besides maybe giving the healers an extra gcd for DPS (but then they do all their healing through oGCDs, so it’s not like healers are all in a a GCD drought)

Personally I'd like to see more non-damaging support abilities on Bard, Dancer and Machinist. I think it would be a good idea to double down on that identity rather than just buffing their personal DPS, or adding more DPS support skills.

I'd like them to bring back Palisade, Dismantle, Refresh. And add some other interesting things. As the physical ranged are already at the bottom of rDPS charts, why not give them the ability to Raise? I don't want to upset any Summoners or Red Mages, but if they were to give their Res utility to the physical ranged DPS, and they received a damage buff to compensate, it would make them a lot easier to balance with Black Mages.

Also, I use Minne all the time. And while Paean isn't useful for the vast majority of fights, I like having the option to use it when the situation arises (It saves the healers 1 GCD in Alex Ultimate at least!).

[Vulcann]

i agree but this is what happens when a game developer balances class simply around end game progression. All unique, interesting and flavor gets thrown out of classes in favor of "just boost damage". this happens to every MMO when the "elite" raiders start to show up and start throwing their epeens around and the developers listen.

[Connor]

Personally I'd like to see more non-damaging support abilities on Bard, Dancer and Machinist. I think it would be a good idea to double down on that identity rather than just buffing their personal DPS, or adding more DPS support skills.

I'd like them to bring back Palisade, Dismantle, Refresh. And add some other interesting things. As the physical ranged are already at the bottom of rDPS charts, why not give them the ability to Raise? I don't want to upset any Summoners or Red Mages, but if they were to give their Res utility to the physical ranged DPS, and they received a damage buff to compensate, it would make them a lot easier to balance with Black Mages.

Also, I use Minne all the time. And while Paean isn't useful for the vast majority of fights, I like having the option to use it when the situation arises (It saves the healers 1 GCD in Alex Ultimate at least!).

I totally agree, I mean until 5.0 ranged have largely been about low DPS but offering utility (including non-damage utility like Palisade or Refresh), so it’s not like wanting the role to be about offering support is something coming out of nowhere. I’d love to see more songs like the original Ballad/Paeon/Requiem, with an MP and short cast to balance out the support effects (though obviously they’d have to have different effects than before). I think it’d be really cool if Dancer got more abilities that use the dance mechanics from Standard Step but with different effects, like maybe a haste or defense increase. Machinist could get back it’s debuff abilities like Dismantle/Rend Mind. They could even return Turret Promotion to make them give a support effect to compete with brd/dnc. Maybe like, the next time you summon the turret, it lowers damage dealt/taken to enemies hit by it (though I’m pretty sure that’s just Hypercharge lol)

Unfortunately though, SE seems pretty firm on their design philosophy for ranged dps, where the central part of the role is it’s damage and mobility, and not any kind of support it can bring. That said, they do seem to want Dancer to be FFXIV’s premier ‘support-like DPS’ (because apparently that’s never been bard’s thing lol, so at least there’s potential to see more support abilities on that. For Bard and Machinist though, I’d be very surprised if they get any new support abilities when the next expansion drops (not that I don’t wish they would).

[Lodi]

Final Fantasy "If it's not more dps it sucks" Fourteen.

Since everyone is expected to do dps 100% of the time, anything that doesn't equal more damage is bad. If you have a 10% damage buff and a 20% mitigation buff on the same timer, you'll get scolded for daring to not use the moar dps button.

[Vulcann]

Final Fantasy "If it's not more dps it sucks" Fourteen.

Since everyone is expected to do dps 100% of the time, anything that doesn't equal more damage is bad. If you have a 10% damage buff and a 20% mitigation buff on the same timer, you'll get scolded for daring to not use the moar dps button.

this so much, SE could do so much with classes like bards, dancer and machinist ... but honestly its the community that is holding it back. its the WoWification of FFXIV. "if it doesn't add damage its bad ... real bad!"