Thread: Job change suggestions for BRD in 6.0

I still think bringing back the original song designs would be the best thing they can do for Bard (as new abilities of course, Ballad etc would stay the same).

They could be 1.5 sec casts on the GCD and all just use the Requiem casting animation.

Like Paean could also give the target a weak hp shield, or Minne could also give a small hp regen. They would cost a chunk of mp to use for balance (2500, enough for 4 casts before hitting 0?), but using them would feed song gauge (maybe like 10 or 20 each song cast) to give Bard a more direct way of affecting song gauge. It could get Foe Requiem back as a damage-oriented song for when nothing defensive is needed.

They could make it so every proc during Army’s Paeon also restores MP for more songs to incentivise using it. Alternatively, all songs could be instant cast whilst in Paeon.

It could get a new weapon skill that requires song gauge (maybe 50) but restores MP for more songs (which means more song gauge which more arrows and dps). Maybe Bard could get a song gauge skill that makes the next song have a much longer duration. The idea would be that most of the songs are defensive, so there’s no serious pressure to manage a full suite of buffs. Instead it would give Bards options to support the party with songs in desperate times (which is kinda what the lore says they’re supposed to be doing...)

Basically it would be the same as it is now, focused on proc-based DoT gameplay, but instead of just pressing a song button once every 30 seconds you’d be using the songs, managing DoTs, throwing out Burst Shot / Refulgent Arrow during downtime, all while trying to hit procs for max dps, then finishing with one of the song gauge abilities like Apex or [insert new ability here]. So you’d use say Ballad, put up DoTs, sing Requiem, burst shots and procs, Iron Jaws, dps got hit by bad so sing Minne to help them get back up while healer is occupied with healing (or too busy spamming Glare lol). They’d have to be very niche usage, otherwise they might start to outshine SE’s premier support job star-of-the-show Dancer. And in that same way Bard can pretty much never get actively used damage buff songs now, since SE seems absolutely set on having not even a modicum of overlap between jobs (well, when they’re dps jobs...). I mean, just look at how they removed even the passive buffs from the proc songs. I honestly believe they weren’t removed for any kind of balancing reason, it was just to make Dancer seem more appealing. As if everyone would just drop Dancer forever if any other job could provide a similar function in different ways

Personally I don’t see why it’s a bad thing for two jobs within a sub-role supposedly defined by ‘provided support to companions’ (according to the game’s own job guide) to both support the party, but that’s a whole different story lol

I’m not sure that a 1.5 cast would be able to get in the way of hitting procs either, since as far as I’m aware you can only really get a proc every 3 seconds anyway under normal circumstances. And of course they should be putting charges on Bloodletter and Empyreal Arrow anyway to try and stop the damage leak Bards can end up with.

Basically I want to see 6.0 Bard take all the good parts of Bard we have now, the good parts from the past, and put them together in a coherent way.

What I really don’t want is another expansion where we yet again become even more ‘Archer’ than ‘Bard’ lol, because I honestly worry about justifying Bard’s existence as anything more than an Archer with A Fancy Name. Like I can’t look at any previous iteration of a Final Fantasy Bard and think ‘so that’s what they were going for with this job’ lol. So it’s like, why even keep parading it as around as a ‘Final Fantasy Bard’ when it doesn’t really look or act like it