Bard is support right?

[Rika007]

Natrues minn, Troubadour and battle voice are all chopped liver than

Yes, yes they actually are. Trobadour is a shadow of what it used to be back in Stormblood where it required you to use actual thought and have to communicate with your static when the best use of it was and how the fight lined up with your rotation, now it's just a simplified generic defensive buff that is essentially a glorified role action that was handed out to the other two ranged jobs, just another part of Bard's identity ripped away to make Dancer shine more. Nature's Minne was 'buffed' to allow for it to work on all healing. YAY! But it's cool down timer was double so you get to use it less then half of the time, aka less support usage and chances to flex your play as a support during a fight. Booooo....

Battle Voice is a solid offensive buff yes. But it pales compared to every other offensive buff in the game. It has a longer cool down timer then every single other offensive buff in the game save Devotion and Battle Littany (one of which is a flat damage buff and the other of which is a crit buff, both arguably far stronger stats to be boosting then Direct Hit in all but a few select situations). Trick Attack, Standard Step, Technical Step, Dragon Sight, Brotherhood, Devilment, AST Arcana, Chain Strategem, are all on far shorter cool downs and outside of Dragon sight provide the same if not more benefit than Battle Voice, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of the above abilities I just mentioned, all provide a benefit to the caster of said ability. Battle Voice is the only damage utility in the game that provides the user with NO benefit at all. So not only is it's benefit average or poor compared to its contemporaries, not only do you only get to use it two to three times a fight, but you don't even get anything out of it. It's worse than chopped liver. It's the fat that should have been stripped off the steak.

And before you mention the consistent damage songs let me just put it this way, 95% of Bard's going into Shadowbringers if told they had to axe 2 of the 3 damage buffing support abilities they would have selected the songs first, then Battle Voice second, (and then asked for a new ability to compensate the loss of those) and told the devs to stay the hell away from Foe's Requiem. Cause the songs do nothing for gameplay. They were removed, then added back on, and both changes literally changed nothing about how a Bard plays the game. They don't engage the player or change up anything about what the job does. They are a placebo to try to make Bard players ok with what they loss, and they do a poor job of it.

[BaconBits]

just bring back Foe's Requiem lol

[Wyakin]

Foes, charges in empy/BL, these are two things that need adding to start and resolve bard

[SweetPete]

You have a fairly loose definition of facts... Where did I say that Astro and Dancer can't give themselves buffs? Nowhere. You do you though guy.

I said what I said and I stand by it. Have a nice day. Guy.

[SweetPete]

Foes, charges in empy/BL, these are two things that need adding to start and resolve bard

I agree with you. Also the song potencies need to be buffed and they should affect the bard as well.

[Veloran]

BRD's songs really should work on themselves. I think part of the issue with BRD's party buffs is that they're sort of ill-balanced for group content in a way that tends to just make it better to bring a DNC most of the time. Maybe increase the DPS buff for DPS somewhat while having healers and tanks be affected differently? Like having an MP regen or vuln down buff applied instead. I don't know, something to diversify their utility a bit while still allowing their damage to be raised without it being overly imbalancing.

[SweetPete]

BRD's songs really should work on themselves. I think part of the issue with BRD's party buffs is that they're sort of ill-balanced for group content in a way that tends to just make it better to bring a DNC most of the time. Maybe increase the DPS buff for DPS somewhat while having healers and tanks be affected differently? Like having an MP regen or vuln down buff applied instead. I don't know, something to diversify their utility a bit while still allowing their damage to be raised without it being overly imbalancing.

I really like this idea. I don’t want dancer and bard having the same type of party buffs. A friend of mines told me that bard song buffs are so low because they buff the entire party 100% of the time while dancer only buffs their dance partner 100% of the time while only having technical step for the entire party every 2 minutes. I mean I understand that but bard songs potencies are just way to low. They should bring back mp regen for bard and like you said just unique buffs to make it stand out from dancer.

[Wyakin]

I don’t really care how SE addresses the ranged conundrum. As long as the overall dps of all three is increased by 3%

[SweetPete]

My apologies then, at least to my gut feeling Wanderer's Minuet feels as fine as ever since Stormblood. Frankly speaking I didn't base it on any data, so I'm glad you correct me there.

However, based on a single side-jabbed comment to just say "you have no idea how bard works" is pretty disingeniuous. I didn't spend the majority of my playtime in savage on it, but I get the idea and have played it on occasion. At best I felt like making a joke, at worst my perception of how impactful BRD's is a tad twisted.

But apart from that, my point still stands - BRD's songs give everyone small buffs while doing something bigger for BRD via Pitch Perfect / Bloodletter / haste procs. Sure, giving BRD access to these party buffs as well may give BRD the dps boost it needs, but wouldn't potency changes accross the board or related to song procs do the same?

I think the SE balance team is hesitant to just straight up give BRD its' own buffs sincethat means they need to take into account these buffs into future calculations. So at least based on my gut feeling they will sooner boost potencies.

I’m specifically talking about support that bard gives. It sucks. Dancer is killing it in the support department. Dancer has a heal, 100% uptime on dps, a 5% dps increase for the entire party every 2 minutes as well as Crit and direct hit buff to their partner every 2 minutes. Bard just sucks and if procs aren’t on your side when you sing then it’s even more worthless. Square needs to take bard to the drawing board and give us a healthy amount of support and dps 50/50 like dancer. Right now bard is like 80% dps and 20% horrible support. That’s not good at all.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I’m specifically talking about support that bard gives. It sucks. Dancer is killing it in the support department. Dancer has a heal, 100% uptime on dps, a 5% dps increase for the entire party every 2 minutes as well as Crit and direct hit buff to their partner every 2 minutes. Bard just sucks and if procs aren’t on your side when you sing then it’s even more worthless. Square needs to take bard to the drawing board and give us a healthy amount of support and dps 50/50 like dancer. Right now bard is like 80% dps and 20% horrible support. That’s not good at all.

Technically BRD has a few "equivalents" to support skills of DNC, but I admit - Minne isn't nearly as impactful as Curing Waltz, Technical Step feels like a second Trick Attack compared to Battle Voice and the buff windows are at least reliable and aligning with other buffs better than BRD songs.

Perhaps personally I dont take issue with it being like 80/20 mix, but I get where you are coming from.

Technically BRD's support kit isn't bad, but it feels outdated.