Bard's future

[Eorzean_username]

Ranger not using bows could be solved with crossbows or throwing hatchets. Machinist's auto-crossbow is more akin to an automated handheld cannon than a regular crossbow.

That's a good point. I guess my perspective was along the lines of not 'possibility' but 'Would people looking for a Hunter/Ranger be satisfied with not having a Bow?' since the Bow is usually one of the big selling points of that archetype. I know that in most games with multiple ranged weapon types, Crossbows tend to be distinctly unpopular in terms of player preference.

Reusing pre-existing bow assets, slapping different stats on them and palette swapping them and calling it there isn't that far-fetched of an idea either as it saves modeling and animation costs, which squeenix loves doing. WHM and BLM both use staves and no one's complaining about that overlap. Both SCH and SMN share the same walk, run, sprint and battle pose animations and no one's complaining about that either.

And this... is a disturbingly-good point.

To be honest, maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. The ability to implement a Job that doesn't need any new weapon models and also doesn't even need a lot of new animations sounds like something that I could easily imagine Director Yoshida marketing to interviewers during the 7.00 hype phase. 'It was quite a burden for our team to always add new equipment and animations for every new Job. Now we can add more Jobs more easily!' Hmmm...

Not directing anything at you but if people were to start complaining about hypothetical Ranger sharing bows with Bard then they should begin their crusade about BLM and WHM sharing staves and SCH and SMN sharing practically everything.

Well, to be honest, I personally think that BLM/WHM and SCH/SMN have some of the most underwhelming and unexciting weapon designs in the game, partially because they overlap so heavily. It works better in games where each class can equip a variety of weapon types, since if you don't like your Staff this tier, at least you might end up with a Book or a Mace next tier, etc.

But that's totally separate from the broader applicability of the idea and so, yeah, I agree you've got a good point here, too. There's precedent for it, and most people don't seem that bothered by it... they just want to play the game and have fun with their rotation at first priority, as long as there's at least some cool glamours to be had.

[ExcogEnjoyer]

And then when you consider how stale Square Enix's new jobs are, you would have to wonder if the "New Bard" and "Ranger" would even be good enough to justify splitting a class that already works fine enough right now. Doubly so when Ranger is one of the weaker base concepts to work with in terms of flavour.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

And then when you consider how stale Square Enix's new jobs are, you would have to wonder if the "New Bard" and "Ranger" would even be good enough to justify splitting a class that already works fine enough right now. Doubly so when Ranger is one of the weaker base concepts to work with in terms of flavour.

I wouldn't call a job that basically plays like WHM to be fine. Burst Shot is Glare, Refulgent Arrow is RNG Glare, Iron Jaws is Dia, Apex Arrow is Misery, Blast Arrow is Super Misery and Sidewinder is Assize. Pitch Perfect is locked behind Wanderer's Minuet and is RNG dependent and barely feels good to use. And Bloodletter is a whopping 110 potency ability with the most bland and boring animation someone could ask for. So happy when Mage's Ballad is up so I can spam that weak and ugly ability that cancels and clips its animation faster than I skip msq cutscenes. Empyreal Arrow is the only remotely satisfying offensive ability Bard has left.

Sage being stale is to be expected, it's a healer, the devs have hated healers since Stormblood. I personally wouldn't call Reaper stale. I don't play it but it certainly has far more to it than Bard does because at least Reaper does things more than spam one weaponskill 70% of the time and doesn't beg RNG to bless them with more things to use (Dancer suffers the same problem but at least they have more than 2 spammable weaponskills). Bard's the stale job here. Staler than the chips in my pantry I've been too lazy to throw out.

[aveyond-dreams]

I wouldn't call a job that basically plays like WHM to be fine. Burst Shot is Glare, Refulgent Arrow is RNG Glare, Iron Jaws is Dia, Apex Arrow is Misery, Blast Arrow is Super Misery and Sidewinder is Assize. Pitch Perfect is locked behind Wanderer's Minuet and is RNG dependent and barely feels good to use. And Bloodletter is a whopping 110 potency ability with the most bland and boring animation someone could ask for. So happy when Mage's Ballad is up so I can spam that weak and ugly ability that cancels and clips its animation faster than I skip msq cutscenes. Empyreal Arrow is the only remotely satisfying offensive ability Bard has left.

Sage being stale is to be expected, it's a healer, the devs have hated healers since Stormblood. I personally wouldn't call Reaper stale. I don't play it but it certainly has far more to it than Bard does because at least Reaper does things more than spam one weaponskill 70% of the time and doesn't beg RNG to bless them with more things to use (Dancer suffers the same problem but at least they have more than 2 spammable weaponskills). Bard's the stale job here. Staler than the chips in my pantry I've been too lazy to throw out.

Basically this. The class has no oomph to it unlike Dancer, which is basically dopamine rush after dopamine rush for me. It's simple combos and symbol minigame at least give it *something* to do. Songs like Mage's Ballad which once upon a time felt so great to use are now reduced to throwaway abilities that have very little impact.

As for how to make a Ranger job that doesn't have a weak fantasy, why not a Mononoke-themed Ranger that has blood/poison aesthetics and uses a crossbow with hatchets? Surely that would carry some weight and appeal to the FFXIV anime loving fanbase. As for the suggestion of an idol type musician class, I have no objections to that. As long as it feels good to play then I'll gladly leave FFXIV's Bard in the trashcan permanently and switch between that and Dancer as my goto rDPS classes.

[taksqth]

I wouldn't call a job that basically plays like WHM to be fine. Burst Shot is Glare, Refulgent Arrow is RNG Glare, Iron Jaws is Dia, Apex Arrow is Misery, Blast Arrow is Super Misery and Sidewinder is Assize. Pitch Perfect is locked behind Wanderer's Minuet and is RNG dependent and barely feels good to use. And Bloodletter is a whopping 110 potency ability with the most bland and boring animation someone could ask for. So happy when Mage's Ballad is up so I can spam that weak and ugly ability that cancels and clips its animation faster than I skip msq cutscenes. Empyreal Arrow is the only remotely satisfying offensive ability Bard has left

This critique is way too superficial. BRD rotational identity is mixing GCD and oGCD priorities to a degree that you can't find in any other job in this game (not even DNC). I can see the exageration being intended as I agree that currently it's a bit too simple, but I feel like if we don't acknowledge the good aspects of the job we'll just scrap everything that remotely even makes sense. Let me break down the differences:

WHM
- All healer filler consists of one casted filler gcd and a instacast dot. This usually leads to dot refreshes being interesting as a movement optimization tool
- Misery serves as both a healing and damage optimization tool, as it refunds the damage lost on lily GCDs and is a damage gain in buffs
- Assize is a damage oGCD that also heals, which is sometimes good for heal planning

BRD
- Burst Shot and Refulgent Arrow are the filler buttons with RNG, similar to DNC. They also interact with the other GCD actions (Iron Jaws, Apex Arrow and Blast Arrow) and one oGCD action (Barrage) in ways that change priorities during bursts and lead to dynamic gameplay
- Iron Jaws consistently was the dot with the most reward on buff snapshot optimization. EW added a lot of flexibility to this skill, as you can sometimes use it early without losing damage and that leads to more interesting GCD priorities too
- Apex Arrow with the added Blast Arrow followup is one of the more complex tools to optimize in the game currently due to it's heavy RNG, non-linear damage scalling, opportunity cost and the way it interacts with the priorities. You can move it around based on how long you're delaying buffs, if you would hit more than 1 target, wait for a bit of extra song gauge to minimize overcapping, etc.
- First of all, I heavily disagree that Pitch Perfect (PP) barely feels good to use as it is a hard hitting ability and has a fancy animation too. Second, it is the core of the oGCD priority gameplay during burst (as WM is usually the song you have there). It leads to a lot of decision making with early PP dumps before EA/buffs expiring, interchanging BL charges with PP3, etc.
- I agree that Bloodletter and Mage's Ballad currently feel like garbage. There's been a lot of EW feedback on this already
- Sidewinder is just damage, so it's worse than Assize

[Kolsykol]

And then when you consider how stale Square Enix's new jobs are, you would have to wonder if the "New Bard" and "Ranger" would even be good enough to justify splitting a class that already works fine enough right now. Doubly so when Ranger is one of the weaker base concepts to work with in terms of flavour.

Wat, RPR was very well-received.
MNK got one of the biggest reworks and while I personally would like another ogcd or something to juggle in the downtime the Optimal Drift rotation is anything but stale and is incredibly flexible.
Even tho I dropped it at the start of EW after having played since ARR that was mostly due to my disappointment that we didn't get updated animations ( still one of my biggest issue ) and I do think that it revolving so much around the same combos since ARR is getting a bit old.
I picked it up again tho and I underestimated how well-designed it is.
BLM also got new great tools that added a lot of depth to the Job at high-end play.

But it's still incredibly well-designed, same with SAM even if removing Kaiten was dumb which I am hoping will be reverted next major patch.
I remember the MCH rework last time being well-received too.
Reworks aren't going to appeal to everyone but I've heard a lot of positive things about BRD too, it's not some kind of a universal thing that ppl dislike it.

I wouldn't call SGE stale either compared to other Healers which is ultimately what we have to compare it to.
It's one of the more active ones.
Same with GNB, it's the most fun Tank imo and feels very different than the rest the only real issue I have with it is that moving bosses can be a pain because of the ogcd's but I'll take that negative with the more fun rotation.
AST is wildly different than the other Healers too and so is RDM with the other Casters.
I'd say that the new Jobs that have been added in the expansions are some of the most unique ones and some of the most fun to play.

RPR isn't necessarily my thing but to call it stale I think is kinda rewriting history and not looking at how it has actually in reality been received.
There is a reason why it's still by far the most played DPS.

Crossbows completely fail to satisfy the ranger class fantasy, as badly as the quickly abandoned macuahuitls failed to satisfy the PLD class fantasy. Think of the classic archers in fantasy and other popular media, and think of their weapons of choice. Robin Hood, Legolas, Green Arrow, Hawkeye, etc. I can't even think of a crossbow user other than Guts, and I hope you can agree that the class fantasy most associated with Guts is not, uh, ranger. Almost nobody wants crossbows except when brainstorming hypothetical ranged weapons. Archers and rangers need to use actual bows if they're spun off, or nobody will be happy with the result.

I actually think crossbow would be cool, you're right in the sense that bows are the most stereotypical '' Ranger '' weapon in fantasy but I don't rly think people are that closed off to something different.
I mean we got some wacky stuff in FFXIV like a Healer with cards and a Caster with a sword which isn't what people generally attribute to Casters.

[JanVanding]

My thought is the Current Battle Director hates DoTs for some odd reason.

Honestly? So do I.

They always have to be undertuned compared to other damage types otherwise you end up with crazy exploitable stuff like Hyper powered Flarestar being just another day at the office as opposed to a just for fun in one area thing.

They're typically a very low player agency type and the only thing you ever have to worry about is never letting them time out.

I would much much prefer the DoTs to go away in exchange of more player agency and my rotation having weight instead of knowing full well the job is handcuffed by DoTs because they're a low agency 100% uptime source of damage that's insanely easy to maintain.

I want my BRD to have a bit more complexity, the rotation to actually feel rewarding when you land your burst.

Right now it feels very paint by numbers and held down when there's potential to make it so much more...

[SilverSkyway]

I'm not going into detail as I'm not good at long speech/typing and don't want go into a rant.. But 2cent. Also joined ShB.

I went with Archer (first job) thinking I going play a Ranger or Hunter later on. Not fulling aware of jobs as they were. Once I learn of Archer turns into Bard and that it not the easiest job to play, I move away as soon as I could to Red mage and Dancer to Mch. I barely touched Bard until after beating EW and wanting to max all three rdps. Heck, I brought a skip on Bard because hated the idea of leveling a Bard. But playing the 80-90 with bard, I still not a fan but I enjoy it enough to play it to say it's my main right now.

I do see it flaws. Dots, songs and rng. As said above I wont go into detail. These (Dots, songs and rng) can be fixed. idk how. I don't hate dots or even the rng per say but Bard doesn't know what it wants to be so it can feel lacking to some degree.

To the idea of a Ranger job. I rather use a bow weapon but cross-bow or crossbow/axe/sword duelwield doesn't seem bad idea. They could tie in the story that some people turn away from Archer guild and Bard idea to be more about survival then lovey dovey. lol.

[DixieBellOCE]

Would honestly just like to see the DoT's removed entirely and throw in some big hitting abilities like NIN's Hyosho Ryanryu

bard will never be what it was pre-ShB, its time we accept that and move on.

[JanVanding]

Basically this. The class has no oomph to it unlike Dancer, which is basically dopamine rush after dopamine rush for me. It's simple combos and symbol minigame at least give it *something* to do. Songs like Mage's Ballad which once upon a time felt so great to use are now reduced to throwaway abilities that have very little impact.

As for how to make a Ranger job that doesn't have a weak fantasy, why not a Mononoke-themed Ranger that has blood/poison aesthetics and uses a crossbow with hatchets? Surely that would carry some weight and appeal to the FFXIV anime loving fanbase. As for the suggestion of an idol type musician class, I have no objections to that. As long as it feels good to play then I'll gladly leave FFXIV's Bard in the trashcan permanently and switch between that and Dancer as my goto rDPS classes.

And what's so very crazy is when you look at the PvP BRD they have the exact feeling an Archer should have.

Powerful Draw has a real feeling of weight behind it, from the cast time draw, to the satisfying sound as the arrow connects, they have excellent agency from their quick burst, to their party and self affecting buffs of Apex/Blast/LB and their excellent control with single target silence and repelling shots distance creation and root.

It's insane to me how night and day the difference in the feeling is of playing the PvE BRD, a job that feels to be just going through the motions...

To playing the PvP BRD who feels very much like an Archer that also happens to buff their allies with song.

I want that feeling to Match up.