I have to echo the love for new Bard. I certainly have issues with it that I really want to see addressed, the biggest one being half procs and overall weakness of Mage's Ballad. Ideally I would like to see that addressed immediately in the next patch, because I can't in anyway think that it was intended by the devs to make it be the song we spent the least amount of time in. A quick change to up it back to full resets handles this completely and also would add some much needed impact to the rotation outside of burst windows. While I don't like the lack of DoT interaction and how it hurt AoE, that can be fixed by having more AoE skills added on in future expansions (please SE give us an AoE equivalent to pitch perfect for the love of god). I do miss the loss of Burst shot being able to be held onto, but honestly outside of some wonky fight disengages, with the change to how Repertoire procs now that doesn't matter too much, as if you are using it properly and firing Apex off at around 1 minute, it will then be up again when you go into your Radiant Finale burst window.

But overall even with all these negatives, this is such a MASSIVE upgrade over how awful ShB Bard was, and honestly the closest we've gotten to SB Bard, which to me was as close this game has ever gotten to a perfect job. Sure Radiant Finale feels like a generic cooldown, but when used in concert with Battle Voice and Wander's Minuet, it FEELS impactful to me (not just for our team, but for ourselves, getting the benefit of our songs finally is another massive boon) The burst window is chaotic and loaded with every tool in your arsenal, and it feels strong. The job lost some of it's RNG which can feel bad, but it also gained in now being able to reliably use your damn skills when you want them (aka going an entire 30 seconds and only getting one fully powered Pitch Perfect off is a thing of the past, and good freaking riddance). As long as you do it right Apex and Blasting are always available in your burst, and thank the twelve, we finally sync up with the rest of the raid with our cooldown timers. Some will bemoan that as homogenization, but when you're one of only 3 out of 17 jobs that did not sync up with raid utility, that's just a quick ticket to being the red headed step child, not special.

So yeah over all I give SE a win on this one. I'm definitely not agreeing with those who think the job has been massively simplified for the casual player base. Shadowbringers Bard did that far worse then this new Endwalker version. The only glaring issue is Mages Ballad, and I very much hope they address that as soon as they can, but its not enough to make me not enjoy the job or not want to play it. I prefer the job much more then Dancer after the change to flourish, and while I don't mind Machinist like many do, it's aesthetic never really worked for me. This is still Bard, high APM, put down my DoTs, buff the party and let lose a barrage of skills in a massive burst window.