Thread: Bard's future

Given the recent controversies with patch 6.1 I ended up resubbing to FFXI and naturally I got a chance to revisit that game's Bard, along with a number of other jobs. Granted I do not own nor will I ever own the entirety of FFXI Bard's list of songs, but it feels great using the ones I do have in order to buff my party and debuff my enemies. Almost like a support class!

Current Bard is still too much of a mess with its (alleged) niche being taken over by Dancer. I hope at some point we get a 4th ranged dps so we can have 2 support (Bard and Dancer) and two selfish ones like Machinist so that this class can finally feel like what it's supposed to be. I miss the days where singing Mage's Ballad to regen mana felt impactful back in ARR, along with Foe Requiem until those skills were changed completely if not outright removed.

In terms of dots, it is only natural for a music-based class to have some kind of association with damage over time. The problem is that multi-dotting dungeon packs was a nuisance without a Bard equivalent of Bane, and for a significant portion of the levelling experience having the dots be tied to song procs makes for unimpactful gameplay. Once you make it to higher levels this resolves somewhat, but back in Shadowbringers I still found myself waiting on procs that just never came.

When I use a song, I want for there to be a damage buff which is as strong as Dancer's or effects on par with Scholar's Expedience movement speed boost mid-battle. I want to be rewarded for maintaining debuffs like Foe's Requiem - not some cheap knockoff poisoned arrows or random wind attacks. The "arcane ranger" spin some of those attacks have are also atrocious, I'd rather arrow skills be arrow skills and music skills be music skills than trying to mishmash the two together in ways like Apex Arrow.

Please just let Bard be an actual Bard. Let a future Ranger job take over the archery part with a crossbow and be done with it. Unhappy marriages of conflicting concepts like this don't make for good results in the long run. I imagine someone will eventually come in and try to bring up lore - I'm well beyond having the patience for arguments like that when the job doesn't deliver well on either front. FFXIV's Bard is a failed Robin Hood/Dragon Age Leliana Concept that needs to address its shortcomings.

"Oh no Bard is only songs that do buffs/debuffs" ok so give them a song that deals direct damage and give them songs that are dots.

"Oh no selfish classes like MCH don't deal enough damage" ok so fix their damage and buff them. Same goes for Ranger, give them arrow skills that don't look and hit like faerie princess magic.

These are problems that have actual solutions that are not far beyond the realm of anyone's reasonable imagination. Bard isn't delivering well on either front now, and resolving it's 8-year long identity crisis will help pave the way for something better. Close minded attitudes like the one above do nothing to help fix the situation and only prolongs the time until the class reaches the disaster state that then necessitates a rework.

Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

"Oh no selfish classes like MCH don't deal enough damage" ok so fix their damage and buff them. Same goes for Ranger, give them arrow skills that don't look and hit like faerie princess magic.

Bard isn't delivering on the "Selfish DPS front" because it's not a selfish DPS.

Moreover, each subrole really only has room for one selfish DPS. Suppose we had a second "selfish DPS" in melee besides SAM. How does that work? If it does ANY less damage than SAM, you'd always bring a SAM instead. If it does more than SAM, then you'd bring it instead of SAM. You could have it be a difficult Job so that people have to be good with it to out damage SAM, thus creating a niche of "higher potential damage but less if unskilled", but then you run into the SMN/BLM problem from ShB where SMN always won (part of that was due to a combat raise, sure, but even with SMN being more complicated, because it could do COMPARABLE DPS, it was generally brought instead of BLM). If you make it too hard, no one plays it. If you make it not too hard enough, it might still be close enough to SAM to take it's spot.

The point is, selfish DPS only works if it actually brings the damage, and even then, it doesn't always work. ShB SMN's damage was "close enough" to BLM that having any utility at all made it preferable.

So having two selfish DPS in the same subrole (Ranged physical) competing for what is already only one spot in the party (comps run dual Melee or dual Caster; does anyone run dual Ranged?) is a poor idea. Worse still, because the Ranged tax where the role ALREADY does less damage than Melee or Casters, a "selfish DPS" doesn't even make sense, as even the selfish DPS among the Ranged does less damage than the lowest damaging Melees and Casters do.

Sure, you could buff MCH to do as much damage as a RDM or DRG, making a selfish DPS Ranged actually have a reason to be brought to fights...but how do you then make a SECOND selfish DPS Ranged, make it competitive without just stomping MCH back out of PF, and still be viable?

.

So no, we don't need two selfish DPS Ranged. In fact, I'd argue MCH needs to stop being one and start offering some utility, buffs, a combat Raise...SOMETHING. I don't even care what at this point. Tactician is also offered by BRD and DNC (though with different names for......REASONS...) as is Peleton (which has no combat use anyway), so there's never a case where it makes sense to bring a MCH if you could fill that slot with a BRD or DNC as it is. MCH would probably have to do quite a bit more damage before that trade-off was even really worthwhile.

BRD is cool for what it is, and does feel like as much of a Support role as we're likely to get with FFXIV's rigid Job design. I get it does have some conflicts, but it's not as bad as you're making it out to be, either.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

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.

What I'm seeing here is you like DNC.

And that's GREAT!

Why do we need two Ranged classes that are the same? The whole value in having 19 Jobs and at least 3 per subrole is that they can all appeal to different player types. I, for one, HATE DNC. It's one of only two Jobs I've unlocked and not played since, and the other is RPR just because I've been busy. I greatly dislike DNC's aesthetic, playstyle, and rotation system. I like BRD's far far FAR better. I love BRD's class fantasy as a Skald archetype wielding a bow both for aesthetics and practicality - it's far easier to sing spirited songs to give your allies a morale boost when you're doing so from a slight range with a less intensive weapon. And the logic makes sense as well, that the first Bardsongs were developed by retired or seasoned Archers who had survived battles and put the spirit of wanting to aid their allies into their music, as well as the FFXIV lore AND irl history belief that the first instruments may have come from hunting bows.

Everything about BRD just makes sense, and the Job is MOSTLY streamlined and fun to play and logical in execution. The only part that's honestly a bit wonky is that the songs don't perfectly line up with the 2 min window, requiring some wonky timing if one is to max optimize it.

The Job is far and away superior to DNC.

Again, it's GREAT you like DNC.

...so play DNC instead of trying to turn BRD into DNC 2.0. Imagine if all PLD players demanded WAR be turned into PLD with "rage magic" instead of holy magic. Not only would most PLD's still not play it anyway, most WARs would abandon the resulting catastrophe of a Job in disgust and revolt.

If you're going to argue that another Job play like DNC, at least pick a Job from a different subrole like melee or something. We don't need multiple Jobs in the same subrole that play identically. We already (more or less) have that with healers, and look how that's turned out...

Oh, and for the record, when I picked up ARC and turned it into BRD, it was exactly what I wanted. When I play BRDs in D&D, I generally make them archer/bow focused and keep at range of the enemy as well so I can keep up attacks on enemies in between my spell flinging. It's honestly the most logical thing for BRDs in a military/fantasy setting.

Originally Posted by Psytic

Have to disagree. Wow has 36 specs in it. They aren't all viable every patch mostly due to borrowed power but each always has its day in the sun. If Square can't handle making the small amount of classes they have in this game fun or interesting and viable then they need to hire more designers. The main complaint you see about this games classes is the aesthetic and idea of the them is cool, but the actual gameplay and the way they play people find boring because they reuse play styles, over use attack chains , and homogenize on most classes etc.. This team needs some new blood. No reason we can't have a Ranger like ff11 did but similar to Marksman in WoW. The new pvp bard skills are kind of like this already, or a trapper class or a dot only alchemist class, a melee healer, or a green mage geo/ nature class etc. the amount of money they are making they should be adding more devs to find solutions to more interesting gameplay loops or just rip off WoW. If the ideas are thoughtless in this game its because the team behind class design is out of ideas not that its a bad idea to add more classes or split bard from the bow. Just a lack of imagination. Bard can strum a harp like in Lost Ark. People don't often complain about the feel of a class on WoW forums its all dmg tuning complaints, on FFXIV everyone is complaining about how the classes feel , I think they have problem.

I mean, let's be fair, at any given time, only around 19 WoW Specs are super viable.

WoW started with, what, 10 classes, 9 per faction (Shaman and Paladin "balanced" against each other...sorta), and only about 10-11 viable specs? Back in the era where all healing capable classes ONLY raided in their heal spec (Druids, Paladins, Priests - Holy only, and Shamen), most classes had "one spec for leveling, one spec for raiding, and one spec that was either for PvP or entirely worthless and only dipped into by the other specs", with the only exception being that Warrior was good at everything (tanking, dpsing, and PvPing), but even then only on two of its specs with the third one only there for augment talents for the other two.

Even two expansions in, Wrath, many specs were not viable or were largely unwanted by the raiding community. Enhance Shaman, for example, was widely panned as bad, and you'd take EITHER a Resto or Elemental (preferably Resto, I believe it was) for Bloodlust/Heroism and nothing more. It was kinda like Trick Attack NIN in FFXIV pre-EW where every party had to have ONE, but any more than that was a net loss for the raid group.

It took them honestly until Mists to make every spec really REALLY viable, and even then, there's some wonk and it took basically stripping the talent system out of the game. And EVEN then, many specs are undesired or have community/meta stigma against them. Not to mention 19 is more than half of 36 (18 is exactly half), meaning FFXIV isn't exactly hyper-far behind WoW even now for a far smaller game in terms of team and (until recently, anyway) playerbase, scope, and scale.

.

As for the overall topic: I feel like they're moving away from DoTs (I vaguely remember something said about it being intensive on the server side of things so they wanted to minimize them to no more than 1 or 2 per Job, but I can't recall the exact statement) in a general sense, so asking for more DoTs probably won't happen. Likewise, traps would MOSTLY require new game code unless they worked like Earthly Star type of things. And the team also is moving away from pets, not toward pets, as we can see from SGE's pets going from able to agro/tank Titan, Ifrit for single target DPS, and Garuda for AOE DPS, to what we have now. So I can't imagine they'd do any of those.

If we got a Ranger in FFXIV now, it would basically be BRD without the Bard songs and replacing them with 4-6 more "straighterest shot" type abilities. I'm not sure that's something anyone would want. They could conversely pull a RDM and make a melee/ranged hybrid, but if the weapon is a bow, that's pretty unlikely, and Rangers in Final Fantasy tend to be more archers with some nature magics, not sword and bow and trap and pet Rangers of D&D or the like.

Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

The SMN/SCH type split with shared EXP is seen as pretty problematic now by the devs at least, so it probably shouldn't work exactly like that. But personally I wouldn't mind jobs that share weapons and some basic class skills.

Kind of agreed with this one, to be honest.

[hb]I'm not exactly sure WHY the Devs are so averse to it, as it's one of SCH/SMN's greatest strengths - being able to have two roles you can slot into without having to level additional Jobs is nice for people that don't like leveling tons of alt Jobs. I've thought for years CNJ should branch into WHM and GEO (as a DPS caster using the more nature element magics) as that would just...make sense to me, not to mention be pretty useful to players. I guess part of the reason is they want new Jobs (not you, BLU) to not start at level 1 and that some might not really branch very WELL, but some of them, like CNH into GEO, would honestly work just fine, especially since they could just carry the 1 handed wand + caster shield thing forward for them to use instead of WHM canes and call it a day on the weapon. The spells already would be fine just making Aero and Earth spells into CNJ.

Spoooooky "oooooh", it would have Medica!

...so what? RDM has Vercure and isn't replacing healers. A GEO with a far less efficient Cure 2 and Medica would hardly be game breaking at any rate. /shrug

Originally Posted by ExcogEnjoyer

I hate when people say this, because more often than not its just incredibly thoughtless. Splitting Bard and Ranger would be the death of both those jobs. Ah yes, Bard, a class who's identity revolves around its pure utility, in a game where utility has all but been removed from the game entirely. And Ranger, a selfish physical ranged dps, really swell. Lets check on how Machinist is doing real quick- and its a dead class that's getting locked out of PFs for its dogshit dps. Congrats, you've made a Bard even more flavourless than the one we currently have AND a DoA phys range. Excellent.

Have to disagree. Wow has 36 specs in it. They aren't all viable every patch mostly due to borrowed power but each always has its day in the sun. If Square can't handle making the small amount of classes they have in this game fun or interesting and viable then they need to hire more designers. The main complaint you see about this games classes is the aesthetic and idea of the them is cool, but the actual gameplay and the way they play people find boring because they reuse play styles, over use attack chains , and homogenize on most classes etc.. This team needs some new blood. No reason we can't have a Ranger like ff11 did but similar to Marksman in WoW. The new pvp bard skills are kind of like this already, or a trapper class or a dot only alchemist class, a melee healer, or a green mage geo/ nature class etc. the amount of money they are making they should be adding more devs to find solutions to more interesting gameplay loops or just rip off WoW. If the ideas are thoughtless in this game its because the team behind class design is out of ideas not that its a bad idea to add more classes or split bard from the bow. Just a lack of imagination. Bard can strum a harp like in Lost Ark. People don't often complain about the feel of a class on WoW forums its all dmg tuning complaints, on FFXIV everyone is complaining about how the classes feel , I think they have problem.

Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Given the recent controversies with patch 6.1 I ended up resubbing to FFXI and naturally I got a chance to revisit that game's Bard, along with a number of other jobs. Granted I do not own nor will I ever own the entirety of FFXI Bard's list of songs, but it feels great using the ones I do have in order to buff my party and debuff my enemies. Almost like a support class!

Current Bard is still too much of a mess with its (alleged) niche being taken over by Dancer. I hope at some point we get a 4th ranged dps so we can have 2 support (Bard and Dancer) and two selfish ones like Machinist so that this class can finally feel like what it's supposed to be. I miss the days where singing Mage's Ballad to regen mana felt impactful back in ARR, along with Foe Requiem until those skills were changed completely if not outright removed.

In terms of dots, it is only natural for a music-based class to have some kind of association with damage over time. The problem is that multi-dotting dungeon packs was a nuisance without a Bard equivalent of Bane, and for a significant portion of the levelling experience having the dots be tied to song procs makes for unimpactful gameplay. Once you make it to higher levels this resolves somewhat, but back in Shadowbringers I still found myself waiting on procs that just never came.

You only had to windbite 5 or 6 mobs to cap out your procs. I never found this to be a problem.

When I use a song, I want for there to be a damage buff which is as strong as Dancer's or effects on par with Scholar's Expedience movement speed boost mid-battle. I want to be rewarded for maintaining debuffs like Foe's Requiem - not some cheap knockoff poisoned arrows or random wind attacks. The "arcane ranger" spin some of those attacks have are also atrocious, I'd rather arrow skills be arrow skills and music skills be music skills than trying to mishmash the two together in ways like Apex Arrow.

Apex arrow was, and still is, the greatest example of the devs not understanding the job or why people liked it. Soul gauge is entirely useless being spent on ONE button, like sch's gauge. We should be spending it on support abilities, not a disappointing "finisher." Blast arrow made it even worse, requiring you to use it at a certain level of gauge, removing any niche optimizations for it based on the linear scaling.

Originally Posted by dspguy

Asking BRD to be a utility player in a game that limits utility to very small/niche circumstances is just asking for something that cannot happen. They moved BRD away from that since the last bit of utility died when they modified AST before ShB. Prior to that BRD lost the ability to regen MP, TP or increase magic damage.

Welcome to the crux of the problem. This is also why healers no longer have their fun utility of eld. The game didn't used to be this dumbed down, designed in a way to make other buffs or debuffs useless, but they just haaaaad to sTReAmLiNe everything.

Um, most of this still applies...

This mostly just going to be a list so...

1.) DoTs and Procs: The overall proc rate is very consistent to the point of being an extremely boring and totally uninteresting design. And, the removal of procs from DoTs, while an attempt to cut down it's opener, leaves little to no incentive to apply, reapply, or just remember they exist. I literally have to remind myself to apply them. They're completely unnecessary to the entire kit, and are basically only slightly bellow sidewinder because it's an OGCD. They could literally just delete these three and no one would notice. Multi-procs were like way more exciting for me, but the RNG was totally not. So this is like: One step forward and two steps back

2.) songs: Armies Paen is only good for it's buff, which should be designed as something to keep up throughout the cyclical song rotation. So, implementing an effect that, let's say, reduces the remaining CD timer for songs by like half or so as a part of Haste's effect or an OGCD ability. It would definitely make the class more active again. BTW, is BRD still singing just for itself? That's still not good, if so...

3.) Sidewinder and shadowbite: Oh, this change definitely move Shadowbite into the safe-zone! I love what you guys did with this rotation, totes! It's so good, but Sidewinder is still useless to the rotation.It's like silence shot. An extra button to press that's not really needed in the rotation. Shadowbite's animation is still ugly and slow, and it should have an the same effect as bane to reduce the need to multi-DoT

4.) ladonsbite: An ugrade to quick knock was way overdue, really. Just not at lv82, and being less impressive in aesthetics and sound than quick knock

5.) TY, for giving Bloodletter stacks. Also, read "1.)"....

6.) Nature's minne, troubadour, and Wardens: Warden's just needs stacks, a reduced CD, and cure III's AOE radius. Nature's minne is still just really inconvenient to use, and it still applies after the healer's have topped off whoever receives it. You guys might want to make it like troubadour or give it stacks too. And, troubadour really should be something we have to keep up as much as possible, but it's still useful as it is, so...

7.) Role skills: status effect skills are useless in PVE, and interrupts are just not going to be used because the whole role is just so naturally busy, which is why they're fun. You guys will never be able to get this role to pay attention to interrupts or see any use in heavy or Bind after you released PVP and nerfed them into ground to any level of popularity. The design just doesn't facilitate their use, at all. And, interrupts definitely have it the worst of them all, IMO...

8.) The new buff is great, and I'm really loving it. But, it would be nice to be able to use it more often

9.) Apex & Blast Arrow: They're still uninteresting and still GCDs. You should definitely make it more like PLD's confitiour combo that would cycle through the seven elements that would apply a unique DoT for each element at half the GCD as normal

10.) Button Bloat/consolidation and other notes: Raging strikes and barrage are still most likely candidates for consolidation, Sidewinder is completely unneeded, and Battle voice really should be a trait at this point. Mages ballad could apply "rivers of blood" like "Armies muse" to help with Armies Peaen's issues. Pitch perfect's action should still be usable after the song duration instead of deleting it's stacks entirely, and only generate stacks during Wanderer's minuet. Repelling shot needs to be reworked into something that's more generally useful like "back hopping" from fighting games (the distancing is perfect though), and the CD's for like abilities in the role need to be reduced, or given a unique GGCD as a whole. Make sure that blood letter doesn't animation lock or be be interrupted by it. And, BL's reset-cancel issues still worry me a bit after being mitigated with stacks, so if you could: please make sure it never occurs while testing it's builds for expacs and stuff...

Ok, I thinks that's everything. A few of these issues lead to dungeons giving me excuses to just be totally inattentive at the 60-75% range, and It's really hard to remember most of the visual details like boss and dungeon designs

And, the changes to PP are way out of touch, so just reverse that, please


As for BRD: It's always one step forward, and two steps back for some reason. And they keep making adjustments in the vein of "Bow Mage" every odd expansion, which is just adding ranger skills that don't play with the overall kit, and then in even numbered expansions they fix what was added. It's still better designed than the 5.0 version, but totally suffers from the same issues a AST'c cards with consistant, but super boring to play and raises questions as to why it exists, like sidewinder, which seems to add even less for "reasons". It would be better to replace it with flourish and give DNC and MCH a back-hop too. The damage could be readjusted into RA or something