Why do bard songs need a target?

[Rika007]

Uh....yes they do lol.

No they don't. Black Mage has downtime tools like umbral soul that allows their Astral and Umbral rotations to keep ticking when the boss is untargetable. They can hold or use their most powerful GCD due it's stacking mechanic so that they don't lose potency if a burst window has to be delayed by 30 seconds because of unfriendly raid mechanics.

Bard has none of these things. If a boss becomes un-targetable they can't use their songs. Which can completely throw off their burst rotation and misalign Wanderer's minuet. If it makes sense for a raid to delay their burst window then their are times that a Bard literally has to go songless, thus entirely locking a Bard out of their rotation. They can't spend their most powerful GCD if it overcaps, they just have to hold it and deal with overcapping because of lost potency. These are not things a Black Mage has to deal with.

Literally one of the things people always list as a strength of Black Mage is how flexible it's rotation is, how much easier it is to recover from a death, or recovering from drift. If you had said a job with more strict rotation timers like Ninja or Summoner sure. But Black Mage is one of the more flexible jobs in the game when it comes to it's rotation. Bard is probably second to only Summoner in rigidity.

[Cetonis]

Stuff that only works in combat can be weird in terms of how long it takes for the game to realize that you're "in combat". But you're right that aside from that fact, it would be a clear improvement to just have the songs not deal damage and be combat-only. Personally, I would also accept an 80s cooldown on MB and AP, which I think overall would do more good.

SE just hasn't prioritized Bard QoL concerns, is all. Other than, for some reason, making a couple changes nobody asked for in 6.1, while ignoring issues that are actually frustrating people.

Presumably SE just doesn't have the bandwidth to properly care for all 20 jobs at this point. It's a guessing game of which jobs they're going to decide most need attention at any given time, and then a second stage of guessing at whether they actually understand what a job's needs are.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Stuff that only works in combat can be weird in terms of how long it takes for the game to realize that you're "in combat".

Possible work-around is disallowing Repertoire generation, specifically, outside of combat, although I don't know how difficult that would be to implement from a programming perspective.

Codas would still be an issue, but they could honestly just remove/rework that mechanic?

It would also make lingering songs weaker in cases of non-combat downtime (e.g. dungeon traversal).

[Kalaam]

Honestly it is weird, when you consider that dancer doesn't (and its dance does way more damage in an AoE)

[rxantos]

A better question would be. Why are attacks songs?

Only the buffs should be songs. Everything else should be an attack.

[Aikaal]

It doesn't make sense but long answer,

If songs wouldn't need a target, you could use them and build your Finale. Building that Finale would be mandatory because its a significant damage boost. They could fix it by saying you need to be under combat to get your stickers but it would also very likely spawn a very cursed opener where you'd pop a song and wait like 35 seconds and nobody wants that.

Short answer; to prevent cursed openers.

[AxelDH]

The 'song' is actually coming from the enemy. You shoot it with a rusty arrow causing it to cry out in pain for 45 seconds, which inspires nearby allies.

[Ransu]

The 'song' is actually coming from the enemy. You shoot it with a rusty arrow causing it to cry out in pain for 45 seconds, which inspires nearby allies.

Can we make this official lore? lol.

[Hanayumi]

Hmm.. guess they could make them like a non target proximity aoe that for damage over time instead. Same range as the buff so as long as its damaging you build guage? Sort of like mch flamethrower but without the movement lock...