Bard Changes I would love to see for End Walker

[Easayia]

Bard currently has a few flaws in its kit that feel very not only awkward but they hinder you greatly at times and this has nothing to do with DPS. Personally I don't mind them having less DPS then other jobs if its justified because what they bring to the table.

Bard issues:

1. Army's Peon

This song is lacking and lacking bad. This song currently feels awful to even have in the rotation outside of AOEing mobs. But in boss encounters this song feels like it doesnt have anything noteworthy really triggering as well as to the bard player your hitting (BURST SHOT and praying for a REFULGENT proc) basically you have to few skills going off and it feels like your back to the beginning of the game when you have 2 skills on long global cooldowns sadge....

How they could fix this is making this song proc something at a decent rate like the other 2

or you give it musical flare aka a fully music song where you are spinning around similar to troubadors animations and you also proc something that would have a musical effect. Take this song and give Bard more of a Bard Identity and pull it away from being a archer 90% of the time

2. MP is not even used for anything..

3. Natures minne and Wardens peon

These 2 skills are very neish. Most of the time I find these best to use on myself rather then the party because of how they are used. Basically both of these are currently a I messed up heres something to help keep me alive. Very rarely do I use either on a party member.

Now theres things that can fix this such as making mobs/bosses giving you more reasons to use them on the tank just as an example. However I feel the best way to fix these skills is to have them be an AOE with a similar animation to troubador. I love troubador its so under used but its sometimes so clutch when your party just needs a bit of defense to survive a wipe and the animation of you spinning around playing music is exactly what bard needs more of.
Bard does less damage so an AOE cleanse and a AOE increased healing buff for a brief time to help in bad situations I do not believe would be to strong as long as the values are correct and tuned right.

4. Battle Voice does not buff Bard ( No other job has this issue their buffs apply to them as well this should already be a thing for bard.)

5. AOE dots are currently not a thing

Ive gotten extremely used to hitting tab to swap to each mob and apply dots in dungeons but no other job has to do this.

Either make Shadow Bite take your dots and spread them to all enemies with a shorter cooldown
or
Take Iron jaws and if applied on a mob with dots create a music tornado that spreads the dots.

I think Bard should move from being just a DPS archer to being more of the mix of music and bow its meant to be. It also maintains its current playstyle for those that do like it while adding things and fixing the core issues its currently facing and giving it some more of a support role its currently lacking.

[Jirah]

1) Army’s Peon: I don’t mind what it is but what it is isn’t super fun so I understand the “issue” but I don’t really mind haveing a lax phase before the burst phase and its the song that’s played the least and the Muse speed buff is noticeable even if brief. Suggestions are too vague, not ever song needs to proc somthing and just feels unimaginative. Copy-pasty animation is already boring Peloton shares its animation with 2 other BRD skills let’s not make it three but I do agree the song rotation animations could be better tbh

2) MP? Why should BRD use MP? It’s not a caster and I’m aware Foes use to be a thing but I’m sure they got rid of it for a reason

3) What’s with this obsession with that flute animation? Aoe Paeon and Minne I’m down for but I’d much much prefer charges similar in vein to Essential dignity which would add more weight, but yea fights never have debuff a so don’t mine Paeon being retooled it’s been this way since HW.

4) This isn’t a tangible issue tbh, with or without BV effect BRD still plays the same but now has a extra button to press for its kit instead of optimizing with other jobs like Technical, Chain, or trick. I like BV the way it is because it can be optimized

5) AOE dots can be good under certain conditions like it being a proc or CD, otherwise theirs a few dangers like watering down BRD aoe kit, or being broken with its ST dots

Ima go off course and say I don’t see BRD issues with identity like everyone else’s is, it has almost 50/50 songs and arrows and only slightly leans on Archer more which is the whole shtick if it’s damage so I don’t see a problem. Also being a BRD main I’m grateful you dont hinder its play style as it’s a very real possibility BRD will get hit with the same accessible stick DRK and MCH got

[Easayia]

it has almost 50/50 songs and arrows

Its not how many of each skill it has its that most of the effects are just only arrows the only musical elements are a quick animation to play each song and then the few buffs BV, minne , peon animation wise are lacking and the animation lasts far less then a bow skill. again the only skill that actually feels like its playing music for some kind of duration is Troubadour.

All Im saying is I would love to see more animations going towards the songs right now Bow has all the flashy animations.

Bard currently feels like a mage archer 80% of the time and a song player 20% of the time. would love for them to move it to more of a 50/50 like you say.

[Hanayumi]

Should they seperate Brd and Dnc out a bit more? Perhaps make Dnc more of the single target buffer with dance partner, drop its cd so can more freely switch to others if need to and then Brd can be more of raid wide buffer and have it so theyre songs can also effect themselves.

[SweetPete]

Yoshi did say in a live letter he doesn’t want 2 support jobs in the game. This was before shadowbringers went live. Honestly, they destroyed bard to make dancer the buffer job bard use to be.

When 5.0 came out bard had no party support as far as songs. Due to player backlash they added the little support we currently have. I think they realize they made a huge mistake with bard and they will get a slight rework. More on their support.

My issue with bard is they have way to much to watch for. Dots, songs, soul voice gauge. It’s allot. I hope they trim it down quite a bit.

In the benchmark it seems they are making some single target actions become aoe. Sam with aoe Shoha for example. Maybe the dots will become aoe too. So guess we will have to see next month when the battle system live letter comes out.

I hope they make bard great again.

[ReiganCross]

I think what needed to be said about OP already was, so I'm just gonna add a couple of things.

I really wish Army's Paeon would do SOMETHING with extra Repertoire procs once you have the full speed. It doesn't have to make you do something you need to pay attention to like Mage's and Wanderer's, but maybe start stacking a damage-up buff with the extra procs? Say, you get 5s of 1% damage buff for every extra proc, which is renewed and increased for every extra proc, we shouldn't have more than 5% damage up at a time but it would feel nice to go along with the extra speed. Or maybe let the procs give you Straight Shot Ready in such a way that you start shooting more Refulgent than Burst, I dunno, SOMETHING.

Could Bloodletter and Rain of Death get another stack, please? Hell, at least a second one? Ideally I'd want 3 stacks so you can get a double-proc and still have the cooldown spinning, but seeing the Soul Gauge increase by 10pts while you only get a single refresh that was 3s away from just refreshing on its own kind of stings on the bad RNG bone. I don't know how hard it would be to create a stacking cooldown skill that shares cooldowns with another skill, but just in case you can increase the damage of Rain of Death to just match Bloodletter and drop Bloodletter altogether, making it always AoE. I think this could slightly increase the Bard Opener but not much more than this, it would just allow the Bard to better use his Mage's Ballad procs, or maybe save some stacks to use in Raging Strikes.

Finally, can we carry on our Pitch Perfect stacks the same way that Army's Muse carries on after the Paeon is done? It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just let us still have any leftover stacks that we didn't manage to fire and allow us to fire one last Pitch Perfect outside of Wanderer's Minuet? There are a lot of times where you just end your Minuet and a stack procs up while you already buffered Mage's Ballad, sometimes it's even a double-proc, and you really wish you could've fired that last pitch perfect but it just gets dumped, it would be neat to just have it ready to fire even if you missed those last stacks. It doesn't have to last long, you can give it like 10s after Minuet is over (You probably would only need 3, but who knows what weaving shenanigans might be going on at that time) and it doesn't have to do anything other than just firing a Pitch Perfect with however many stacks remain.

Oh, and please, a general potency buff across all Aiming classes. Right now it feels like any blue-parsing SAM can outdamage a pink-parsing DNC. Yes, I can technically clear with an aiming class, but I feel like I'm making the fight harder by making everyone having to deal more damage just because I like to have freedom of movement. Maybe we could get our numbers more in line with everyone's? I kind of want to live in a world where it's possible that a MCH deals more damage than a BLM and they're both on purple.

[Jirah]

Yoshi did say in a live letter he doesn’t want 2 support jobs in the game. This was before shadowbringers went live. Honestly, they destroyed bard to make dancer the buffer job bard use to be.

When 5.0 came out bard had no party support as far as songs. Due to player backlash they added the little support we currently have. I think they realize they made a huge mistake with bard and they will get a slight rework. More on their support.

My issue with bard is they have way to much to watch for. Dots, songs, soul voice gauge. It’s allot. I hope they trim it down quite a bit.

In the benchmark it seems they are making some single target actions become aoe. Sam with aoe Shoha for example. Maybe the dots will become aoe too. So guess we will have to see next month when the battle system live letter comes out.

I hope they make bard great again.

No disrespect, but you severely contradicted yourself since SB had even more to watch out for with the straight arrow buff, Foes, and Refresh compared to SHB which was a reduction. You issues with BRD is the same as SB with its tangible kit.

I do NOT think BRD needs to be trimmed down and I’m sick of hearing this so often and it worries me wtf kind of job people want it to be reduced to? spam a button? The two other ranged already do this! Dots are second nature, songs are pretty straight forward and soul has literally one skill if your struggling to understand that, learn or go play another job don’t ever ask for it to be reduced to please you


We don’t need the whole ranged role be washed because people think dots are bad, or some other stupid reason which probably is a comparative thing “DNC and MCH are easier” well they also aren’t very good and aren’t the shining star examples I want all jobs to follow nor do I want all jobs to be rejoined like some sort of bland ass singularity

[SweetPete]

No disrespect, but you severely contradicted yourself since SB had even more to watch out for with the straight arrow buff, Foes, and Refresh compared to SHB which was a reduction. You issues with BRD is the same as SB with its tangible kit.

I do NOT think BRD needs to be trimmed down and I’m sick of hearing this so often and it worries me wtf kind of job people want it to be reduced to? spam a button? The two other ranged already do this! Dots are second nature, songs are pretty straight forward and soul has literally one skill if your struggling to understand that, learn or go play another job don’t ever ask for it to be reduced to please you


We don’t need the whole ranged role be washed because people think dots are bad, or some other stupid reason which probably is a comparative thing “DNC and MCH are easier” well they also aren’t very good and aren’t the shining star examples I want all jobs to follow nor do I want all jobs to be rejoined like some sort of bland ass singularity

You’re entitled to your opinion as I am to mines. At the end of the day the devs will do what they want with the jobs and we will still play if we really love the job. Have a nice day.

[Easayia]

No disrespect, but you severely contradicted yourself since SB had even more to watch out for with the straight arrow buff, Foes, and Refresh compared to SHB which was a reduction. You issues with BRD is the same as SB with its tangible kit.

I do NOT think BRD needs to be trimmed down and I’m sick of hearing this so often and it worries me wtf kind of job people want it to be reduced to? spam a button? The two other ranged already do this! Dots are second nature, songs are pretty straight forward and soul has literally one skill if your struggling to understand that, learn or go play another job don’t ever ask for it to be reduced to please you


We don’t need the whole ranged role be washed because people think dots are bad, or some other stupid reason which probably is a comparative thing “DNC and MCH are easier” well they also aren’t very good and aren’t the shining star examples I want all jobs to follow nor do I want all jobs to be rejoined like some sort of bland ass singularity

I agree dont simplify bard if anything they need to fix the weakest song give it something to do other then hoping for refulgent heck just make it proc refulgent if theres enough of a damage increase needed for the next bosses I could see that working great. I agree with Hanayumi make dancer more specific member buffs but stronger then bards buffs on that one person. While let bard be a weaker buff but party wide with shorter durations. The few utility skills they have now are decent just make it AOE the rest of the party similar to Troubador maybe even with a similar animation. I just want more of a music side to bard. right now its kind of bow 80% of the time.

But do not change how bard currently plays just add to it!

[Cetonis]

It *is* possible to reduce that initial stress of "too much to track" without destroying the job or even making it simpler.

For instance, imagine if they get rid of the songs = stances idea, bring back River of Blood and make Pitch Perfect a flat potency for 20 Soul Gauge. Bard would then essentially be in a permanent state of simultaneous Ballad + Minuet(!) But without song timers to manage, and ideally BL charges, it'd be overall more chill yet higher APM at the same time.

Then if they used those song buttons to put together a support system/mechanic that doesn't suck, the job could gain some sorely-needed depth and skill expression. It's a viable option.

(In particular, not that we should take benchmarks too seriously, but there was a sequence where a Bard used probably-PitchPerfect *followed* by WM, so if that's not just benchmark things, something like this may be afoot.)