Job change suggestions for BRD in 6.0

[SweetPete]

with that i agree, the question however is what square intends in that regard as a whole. right now their balancing inside the roles seems to be "no support->weak support->strong support", which i would say is not necessary but kinda the easy way out solution. you have that the clearest with the physical ranged, but it also exists with the casters and the melees (well, if you want to call dps buffs support at least), i.e you have 1 selfish class, 1 (2 in the case of melee) middle ground class and 1 support heavier one. at any rate, we'll have to see how they move forward with that, personally i don't see any real necessity or even good reason for that but in the end we'll have to wait and see how square will move along with both its role aswell as class balance as a whole.[/QUOTE]

Well we already saw how SE threw lore away like a penny on the street. Look at what they did to Astro’s card system. I love bard and I truly hope in patch 6.0 they give us a healthy amount of support to compete with dancer because right now dancer is killing bard in the support department while machinist completely out dps bard in every way. Some say bard will remain in the middle but I don’t wanna believe that. I’m sure SE has listened to our feedback and I truly hope that bard will shine in 6.0.

[Akiudo]

snip

again though, i don't want either or, i want the middle ground between both, which is what bard in this game was originally (at least by lore) and what i signed up for.

it also begs the question of gameplay, if you truly split them between ranger and bard, even if just in an aesthetics sense you would still have people ask for a "pure dps ranger" aswell as people for whom being actually support heavy would be way more important than "shooting" musical notes instead of arrows.

to be perfectly clear here, its not that i don't understand why people want something like a more traditional bard, or even a pure dps ranger, in fact in a perfect "resources are of no concern, balancing issues are no problem, everyone can be happy" world i would say turn it into 3 classes, make a completly musical bard with support on the level of dancer or even slightly more support heavy, rename the current bard to minstrel, maybe give back foes and also give us a pure dps ranger that drops any kind of support for personal performance with a bow. but obviously we don't live in this kind of perfect "everyone can be happy" world, if we did we would have both, ninja and thief.

tl:dr, i'm not saying a pure bard/ranger shouldn't exist, i'm saying recources are finite, and people that want a pure bard/ranger are too quick too disregard that there are in fact people that like the current "in between" bard we have (or at least bard 15% more towards the "between" direction than we have right now which basically is a glorified ranger allready)

[Akiudo]

I love bard and I truly hope in patch 6.0 they give us a healthy amount of support to compete with dancer

thats kinda why i brought in the question about balance as a whole, for one inside roles but also outside of that. right now square seems to be pretty set on this whole "one heavy supporter, one pure dps, rest inbetween" if you look at it on a per role basis.

the thing is, IF square gives us 2 melees next and commits to a clear cut 2/1/1 split for roles in a raid than i could see the physical ranged role as a whole again moving more towards support easily. if however we move forward with a class distribution better suited to a flexible final raidspot and casters only getting more mobile every expansion than either casters need to get down in the dps department or physical ranged need to get up at least half way to the other roles so we get a truely exchangable final raid slot. in that case the question would be if they are willing to reconsider their "1 heavy, 1 support, rest middle ground per role" stance, especially as they seem to be reluctant to give classes too much support as a whole (dancer right now notwithstanding).

either way, lets be hopefull bard will again go back to having at least somewhat better support, cause right now bard is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and thats in big part do to their current insistence on having a middle ground class where "middle ground" isn't really needed or wanted in any kind of trinity mmo.

[ty_taurus]

again though, i don't want either or, i want the middle ground between both, which is what bard in this game was originally (at least by lore) and what i signed up for.

it also begs the question of gameplay, if you truly split them between ranger and bard, even if just in an aesthetics sense you would still have people ask for a "pure dps ranger" aswell as people for whom being actually support heavy would be way more important than "shooting" musical notes instead of arrows.

to be perfectly clear here, its not that i don't understand why people want something like a more traditional bard, or even a pure dps ranger, in fact in a perfect "resources are of no concern, balancing issues are no problem, everyone can be happy" world i would say turn it into 3 classes, make a completly musical bard with support on the level of dancer or even slightly more support heavy, rename the current bard to minstrel, maybe give back foes and also give us a pure dps ranger that drops any kind of support for personal performance with a bow. but obviously we don't live in this kind of perfect "everyone can be happy" world, if we did we would have both, ninja and thief.

tl:dr, i'm not saying a pure bard/ranger shouldn't exist, i'm saying recources are finite, and people that want a pure bard/ranger are too quick too disregard that there are in fact people that like the current "in between" bard we have (or at least bard 15% more towards the "between" direction than we have right now which basically is a glorified ranger allready)

But saying "well I don't want a pure ranger or pure bard, I want a ranger/bard hybrid" is disregarding the fact that people actually want that over what we have now. It's a two way street and neither side is "above" one another. Sure the current bard already exists, but as I mentioned, this is supposed to be a huge love letter to Final Fantasy as a series and people who want to play an Edward style Bard or a FFIII/FFV style Ranger should be allowed to have that. Yes, resources are finite which is why I said the problem was a scope issue. You need time and effort to create something where everyone can have everything, but I would say having jobs that call back to their traditional roots with a splash of nuance is as important as retaining balance and job identity.

[Akiudo]

But saying "well I don't want a pure ranger or pure bard, I want a ranger/bard hybrid" is disregarding the fact that people actually want that over what we have now.

who is "people" and what is "what we have now" ? cause "what we have now" is indeed in quite a sad state, but just go back to stormblood and it was in fact universally loved. stormblood bard was neither pure bard nor ranger and "people" loved it.

also what DO people really want ? you say bard/ranger split, but without meaning to offend you here, you are not "people", you have your own idea what you want and you say more people would want your idea instead of what we have but where is your prove for that ? the fact that we have a new split bard into bard/ranger thread every 4 days or so is hardly prove of anything unless you expect people that like the "idea" behind the current bard and are just unhappy with its performance (or even the factual selfishness/support split) to make threads saying "leave bard as is just please give us back foes requiem, but no no music otherwise please, because we know you want to do this but we actually like our archer/bard hybrid."

also what does bard mean to you personally? using music to attack ? buffing the group ? both of these ? also to what degree ? is dancer a good level of support/personal responsibility for this hypothetical bard or would this still be "not enough support, too much personal dps" ?

furthermore, who asked the general playerbase what they even honestly expect from splitting bard/ranger ? i mean sorry but the question what people expect from bard alone would probably give you people that say/want "more support" while actually meaning bard like it was during stormblood and another subset that says "pure music" which would than further get split between people that just want musical attacks and people that actually want more support and musical attacks at the same time. your own proposal of "musical attacks as a toggle" would probably not satisfy half the people that want a true bard if it meant gameplay would stay as is.

also what about ranger ? there are people that want ranger as a pet class or at least using animalistic abilitys, what about them ?these people completly aside, what even WOULD you turn a ranger into right now aside from a bard without any support ? cause that class i would imagine would hardly be beloved by anyone that currently plays bard, pretty sure that subset of players jumped onto machinist long ago.

[ty_taurus]

who is "people" and what is "what we have now" ? cause "what we have now" is indeed in quite a sad state, but just go back to stormblood and it was in fact universally loved. stormblood bard was neither pure bard nor ranger and "people" loved it.

also what DO people really want ? you say bard/ranger split, but without meaning to offend you here, you are not "people", you have your own idea what you want and you say more people would want your idea instead of what we have but where is your prove for that ? the fact that we have a new split bard into bard/ranger thread every 4 days or so is hardly prove of anything unless you expect people that like the "idea" behind the current bard and are just unhappy with its performance (or even the factual selfishness/support split) to make threads saying "leave bard as is just please give us back foes requiem, but no no music otherwise please, because we know you want to do this but we actually like our archer/bard hybrid."

If I'm being honest, I find the whole "who is 'people'..." thing very condescending. You have evidence in this very thread of people saying they wish that the job would split. Those are the "people" I'm talking about, and yet your statement comes across as very "well who ACTUALLY wants that anyway?" You keep acting like you deserve the bard you want more than any other player and assume I'm doing the same in reverse when I've stated before that all of us deserve the bard or ranger we want equally.

also what does bard mean to you personally? using music to attack ? buffing the group ? both of these ? also to what degree ? is dancer a good level of support/personal responsibility for this hypothetical bard or would this still be "not enough support, too much personal dps" ?

furthermore, who asked the general playerbase what they even honestly expect from splitting bard/ranger ? i mean sorry but the question what people expect from bard alone would probably give you people that say/want "more support" while actually meaning bard like it was during stormblood and another subset that says "pure music" which would than further get split between people that just want musical attacks and people that actually want more support and musical attacks at the same time. your own proposal of "musical attacks as a toggle" would probably not satisfy half the people that want a true bard if it meant gameplay would stay as is.

also what about ranger ? there are people that want ranger as a pet class or at least using animalistic abilitys, what about them ?these people completly aside, what even WOULD you turn a ranger into right now aside from a bard without any support ? cause that class i would imagine would hardly be beloved by anyone that currently plays bard, pretty sure that subset of players jumped onto machinist long ago.

Well if you turn back a few pages, you'd see the idea of a FF14 bard that I think would be a reasonable change all things considered--a bard that has a defined window of almost exclusive archery and an equal defined window of almost exclusive music. That's along the lines of the best we can realistically hope for, but if you want to know what I interpret as specifically a DPS bard, this is the example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMf6NdM55ws

THAT would be a DPS bard in my opinion, using music to attack and support. And if we did get a true-to-its-name bard, then yes I would want the player base who want a defined Archer/Ranger to have their own job as well.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There are players who like the ranger/bard hybrid, there are players who want a dedicated bard, and there are players who want a dedicated ranger. All of us are equally deserving of the things we want, either because it's not fair to rip away an existing job that's been created from the people who enjoy or because it's not fair to the players who want to play a Final Fantasy Bard or Ranger in the modern MMO Final Fantasy to have to kiss their dream jobs goodbye because of some awkward decision making that occured back in 1.0 that stapled the two jobs together at the hip.

[Akiudo]

If I'm being honest, I find the whole "who is 'people'..." thing very condescending. You have evidence in this very thread of people saying they wish that the job would split. Those are the "people" I'm talking about, and yet your statement comes across as very "well who ACTUALLY wants that anyway?" You keep acting like you deserve the bard you want more than any other player and assume I'm doing the same in reverse when I've stated before that all of us deserve the bard or ranger we want equally.




Well if you turn back a few pages, you'd see the idea of a FF14 bard that I think would be a reasonable change all things considered--a bard that has a defined window of almost exclusive archery and an equal defined window of almost exclusive music. That's along the lines of the best we can realistically hope for, but if you want to know what I interpret as specifically a DPS bard, this is the example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMf6NdM55ws

THAT would be a DPS bard in my opinion, using music to attack and support. And if we did get a true-to-its-name bard, then yes I would want the player base who want a defined Archer/Ranger to have their own job as well.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There are players who like the ranger/bard hybrid, there are players who want a dedicated bard, and there are players who want a dedicated ranger. All of us are equally deserving of the things we want, either because it's not fair to rip away an existing job that's been created from the people who enjoy or because it's not fair to the players who want to play a Final Fantasy Bard or Ranger in the modern MMO Final Fantasy to have to kiss their dream jobs goodbye because of some awkward decision making that occured back in 1.0 that stapled the two jobs together at the hip.

i apologize if it came of as condescending, however what i wanted to illustrate with "who is people" is who actually asked for what exactly, that wasn't meant as a slight to anyones opinion but to lead into what i listed later on, that people may have completly different ideas of what a bard/ranger even is to them. i actually agree with you, there are player like me that may want a hybrid, some a dedicated ranger, some may want a "real" bard, and we as players are equally as "deserving" of any of that than the others. however on that note many offer a ranger/bard split as some ultimate solution to that problem, and these people, and this does in fact include you as you yourself "offered" this complete split between music and archery as the best way to appease everyone back when i first asked "what about people like me?" in fact most of the time exclude the middle ground and furthermore are often unclear on what people want exactly.

i'm not trying to offend you or get a rise out of you or anyone for that matter, but just as you yourself said right now how you could see a ffxiv bard "working", say you get exactly that, a bard with an exclusive window of archery and one of music, now say square makes it happen. what does this bard offer to those that want to ditch the bow completly, or at least 90% of it ? what does this bard offer to people that don't even care for the bow but are mostly about buffing and supporting their group ?

when i asked "who are people and what do they want" i didn't intend to invalidate your opinion, i wanted to showcase that even if you just look at "i want a real bard" what this means can and does differ wildly between people.

[ty_taurus]

i apologize if it came of as condescending, however what i wanted to illustrate with "who is people" is who actually asked for what exactly, that wasn't meant as a slight to anyones opinion but to lead into what i listed later on, that people may have completly different ideas of what a bard/ranger even is to them. i actually agree with you, there are player like me that may want a hybrid, some a dedicated ranger, some may want a "real" bard, and we as players are equally as "deserving" of any of that than the others. however on that note many offer a ranger/bard split as some ultimate solution to that problem, and these people, and this does in fact include you as you yourself "offered" this complete split between music and archery as the best way to appease everyone back when i first asked "what about people like me?" in fact most of the time exclude the middle ground and furthermore are often unclear on what people want exactly.

i'm not trying to offend you or get a rise out of you or anyone for that matter, but just as you yourself said right now how you could see a ffxiv bard "working", say you get exactly that, a bard with an exclusive window of archery and one of music, now say square makes it happen. what does this bard offer to those that want to ditch the bow completly, or at least 90% of it ? what does this bard offer to people that don't even care for the bow but are mostly about buffing and supporting their group ?

when i asked "who are people and what do they want" i didn't intend to invalidate your opinion, i wanted to showcase that even if you just look at "i want a real bard" what this means can and does differ wildly between people.

I see where you're coming from, and to answer the question of how do we create a future FF14 where there's a job for the Ranger players, Bard players, and Hybrid players, you have 2 real options:
1. You create new animations for all of Bard's actions that are either musical or bow-related depending on the original action. You create a musical Burst Short and an archery-themed Wanderer's Minuet, for example. You do this for every action and allow the player to choose between the two. This is very scope heavy for the animation team because you're doubling the amount of animations this job needs in comparison to others. It's not very realistic. It also doesn't resolve the issue of whether or not the Bard should be support heavy or not. More on this in a minute.
2. You leave Bard as it is and introduce Ranger and Minstrel as new jobs. The Ranger is a selfished physical ranged DPS like MCH and Minstrel is either a caster or healer that exclusively uses music for damage and support. This is more "realistic" because it's in the realm of things we can expect from expansions, but expecting specifically these jobs is a stretch.

Neither of these options is particularly likely because they're both very resource demanding. Requesting specifically Ranger and Minstrel means 2 other jobs don't get added. The truth is that it's very unlikely that there will ever be a resolution where all 3 camps are completely and entirely satisfied. This is why reworking the hybrid in a fashion similar to my example is what I think would be the best option. You may be forced to use archery as a Bard and music as a Ranger, but at least you will get a window dedicated to the thing you prefer. Even if we go back to Stormblood's Bard, that Bard still wasn't particularly musical. It was a huge step forward, but at the end of the day, the music only exists to enhance the archery aspects and not to shine on its own. This is the main change I want to see, and as someone who would rather Bard be an exclusive musician personally, I would be entirely content with Bard if it were to move in that direction.

Regarding whether to support or not to support, I believe the Bard should focus on selfish buffs but have access to a lot of utility actions like Nature's Minne and Warden's Paean. These are things that you can honestly ignore if you don't like to provide utility, but using them correctly can be a nice benefit to your healers at least. It's not a perfect answer, but again, we probably cant have everything all of us want.

EDIT: one other option I mentioned in the past somewhere is something closer to the idea of creating multiple versions of each spell, but in a way that's more resourceful and less scope heavy. The idea would be to introduce a system not unlike Egi Glamour where you basically get to choose which iteration of an action you want to use for actions that get replaced with new ones at later levels, such as Heavy Shot getting changed into Burst Shot. With this in mind, we could simply include new actions for Bard that are musically themed that are for actions that would get upgraded, such as getting a stronger version of Bloodletter in musical form at level 82 come 6.0. If you don't want to be a more musical Bard, then you can opt to use the old Bloodletter animation instead without sacrificing the potency, and this is something that several other jobs would like.

MCH players that want to be more like Gunners would appreciate going back to the less acrobatic actions of their 1 2 3 rotation. White Mages that miss Stone and Aero animations can go back to them. AST players could choose which version of Malefic they like best. It would also allow the designers to to some more crazy options to make players feel like they're being more stylistic. Maybe in the future, you could evolve this system to allow for more options like BLM players swapping their Ice and Fire spell animations so that their Fire spells recover MP and their Ice spells do burst damage.

[SweetPete]

I don’t mind having bard as a hybrid archer/bard but what I don’t get is why is bard 90% archer and only 10% maybe even less support or even dps? It’s so sad. I don’t mind if they got split but I just want to feel like I’m helping my team allot more when in 4 mans and 8 mans. When I play dancer I feel like I am hugely helping my team but when I’m on bard I feel like I’m just there. Not much support and dps is very low as well. I just don’t feel like I’m contributing much when I play bard. Honestly, it’s happened twice now that when I zoned in expert or 80 dungeons and if it’s bard and dancer or 2 bards either the healer or tank will leave. I actually asked a healer why did they leave and they said 2 bards will be to slow and I’m like omg. Can’t catch a break. I really hope square enix gives bard some love in 6.0 and not allot of useless traits but actually give us good support skills to help our teams. Right now bard just sucks. It’s trash.

[Akiudo]

the problem is that

1

I don’t mind having bard as a hybrid archer/bard but what I don’t get is why is bard 90% archer and only 10% maybe even less support or even dps? It’s so sad. I don’t mind if they got split but I just want to feel like I’m helping my team allot more when in 4 mans and 8 mans.

2

Not much support and dps is very low as well. I just don’t feel like I’m contributing much when I play bard.

it’s happened twice now that when I zoned in expert or 80 dungeons and if it’s bard and dancer or 2 bards either the healer or tank will leave. I actually asked a healer why did they leave and they said 2 bards will be to slow and I’m like omg. Can’t catch a break. I really hope square enix gives bard some love in 6.0 and not allot of useless traits but actually give us good support skills to help our teams. Right now bard just sucks. It’s trash.

are 2 completly seperate issues and the second quote also only indirectly leading to the third.


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I don’t mind having bard as a hybrid archer/bard but what I don’t get is why is bard 90% archer and only 10% maybe even less support or even dps? It’s so sad. I don’t mind if they got split but I just want to feel like I’m helping my team allot more when in 4 mans and 8 mans.

i'm pretty sure most current bards feel that their support just isn't really there, mind you thats not just because dancer exists, its simply that we know what we had and what got taken away, while in exchange we weren't even allowed to catch up in the dps department. bard support as it was simply got gutted with nothing offered in exchange and i don't think anyone really likes that. that however does neither directly lead to nor get fixed automatically by turning it into 2 classes as some people propose.

Not much support and dps is very low as well. I just don’t feel like I’m contributing much when I play bard.

see thats the thing, bard is just that, weak, but thats a result of squares current physical ranged balancing as a whole. dancer isn't even really any stronger in that regard, its just more suited for short bursts (so dungeons) and for raids it has its own niche with speedruns.

If you look at even the 90% percentile you will see both bard and dancer fail miserably to catch up to mch because square right now seems to believe its more important to keep dancers speedrun composition participation at a measly 90+% instead of a 100% so it doesn't matter if in exchange 95% of groups get shafted.

it’s happened twice now that when I zoned in expert or 80 dungeons and if it’s bard and dancer or 2 bards either the healer or tank will leave. I actually asked a healer why did they leave and they said 2 bards will be to slow and I’m like omg. Can’t catch a break. I really hope square enix gives bard some love in 6.0 and not allot of useless traits but actually give us good support skills to help our teams. Right now bard just sucks. It’s trash.

bards are indeed particular bad in that situation as not even our song buffs stacks (not even different ones, which allready means one of you would have to gimp his rotation), however what it really comes down to is that bard as you rightfully pointed out just sucks right now. that however seems to be intentional, not particularly in a "fuck over bard" way but as a direct result of very intentionally tuning the physical ranged way below the other roles while at the same time "needing" a middle ground class inside the role. sadly at this point all we can really hope for is that they ditch the "need for a middle ground class in every role" while at the same time either bringing casters down or the physical ranged up so you actually want them in your raid (like really want, not the current ... and now lets find a physical ranged, yea we all know they suck, but don't forget guys, the 1% counts for your own parse....) situation.


at the end of the day i'll say this, i really hope bard gets back some or realistically even most of its support, if for nothing else but the fact that currently it is a glorified ranger while completly falling behind mch. However, bards lack of support is only indirectly tied to his current position of suckage, that one is a direct result of undertuning the physical ranged so no one would ever willingly take 2 (while having no such qualms about casters, great balancing there...) ampflified by the fact that square feels a completly unnecessary need to have a middle ground class in every role