How is Bard at max level?

[Travel]

So, I was going to be picking my old Bard job back up; got it up to 50, then I dropped, haven't exactly picked it up since then. I was considering picking it back up so I could level it up to 90 and make it my new Ranged job, but I've heard some things about it.

Namely, it's apparently one of the more complicated/active jobs in the game; while that wouldn't really be an issue for most people, I've got a very bad habit of fumbling and screwing up rotations even with jobs that I know in and out. I've had some fails with Samurai, for crying out loud. Granted, nothing too major, but it's enough of a recurring issue that I'm just wanting to be careful.

Hence, while I am going to give the job a shot (no pun intended) no matter what, I need to know; how complicated is Bard at level 90?

[Mithron]

SCH and BRD are the two most complicated jobs in the game to correctly play on a base rotation level. BLM is more complicated due to fight knowledge, but if we're just talking you hitting a training dummy for 9 minutes straight, BRD is the hardest.

[VentVanitas]

I played BRD for all of Asphodelos and for the most part I think it is fine but not particularly great. It does some things better than ShB BRD and it does some things worse. The two major sticklers I have with the job is the removed DoT procs and the 120s recast on songs. Other issues I have are Mages Ballad feeling too weak because of how wimpy Bloodletter is and Raging Strikes also being on a 2 minute recast for zero reason when it could easily be 60s.

Other Bard players seem to criticize Blast Arrow for being another generic DPS ability like Apex Arrow, but I actually quite like it when it's factored into the rotation on a more midcore/hardcore level. The job wouldn't need many big changes to feel more fulfilling to me just:
- Reduce Raging Strikes from 120s to 60s.
- Give a small potency buff to Bloodletter, with these two changes Mages Ballad shouldn't be our weakest song anymore.
- Increase the duration of Blast Arrow ready so we can do an honest to God double Blast Arrow burst.
- Bring back DoT procs. Our DoTs need a reason to exist again and I'm afraid SE will just remove them.

But the tl;dr is, BRD still has some interesting optimization at max level because of its nature as a proc job and its variable damage tools like Blast Arrow and Pitch Perfect, but I feel like it could have even more interesting things without reworking anything. I wouldn't necessarily call it complex though. It certainly has more depth than DNC and MCH at least.

[Nizzi]

SCH and BRD are the two most complicated jobs in the game to correctly play on a base rotation level. BLM is more complicated due to fight knowledge, but if we're just talking you hitting a training dummy for 9 minutes straight, BRD is the hardest.

Scholar? Did you just swing in from Heavensward?

[Mithron]

Scholar? Did you just swing in from Heavensward?

Healing relevant content on SCH is the hardest job in the game. It's not nearly as hard as even the "easy" jobs of previous expansions, but currently SCH is harder than anything else. What else comes close to even comparing? MNK? BRD? Every job is braindead easy now, SCH is just the least. Placing cards on the right DPS not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. Timing Demolishes and not doing two Dragon Kicks is not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. Not overcapping on Bloodletters while maintaining dot uptime and ensuring not clipping on raid buffs is not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. I really don't find anything else that competes with it.

[Reimmi]

Healing relevant content on SCH is the hardest job in the game. It's not nearly as hard as even the "easy" jobs of previous expansions, but currently SCH is harder than anything else. What else comes close to even comparing? MNK? BRD? Every job is braindead easy now, SCH is just the least. Placing cards on the right DPS not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. Timing Demolishes and not doing two Dragon Kicks is not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. Not overcapping on Bloodletters while maintaining dot uptime and ensuring not clipping on raid buffs is not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. I really don't find anything else that competes with it.

you're kind of contradicting yourself saying bard is complicated then saying it's not

[Mortex]

Healing relevant content on SCH is the hardest job in the game. It's not nearly as hard as even the "easy" jobs of previous expansions, but currently SCH is harder than anything else. What else comes close to even comparing? MNK? BRD? Every job is braindead easy now, SCH is just the least. Placing cards on the right DPS not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. Timing Demolishes and not doing two Dragon Kicks is not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. Not overcapping on Bloodletters while maintaining dot uptime and ensuring not clipping on raid buffs is not nearly as difficult as being a SCH. I really don't find anything else that competes with it.

It’s not that hard. I never healed dsr before and did test for a group we’re I healed up until phase 5 as sch without that much problem. The hardest part about sch is the bad fairy ai and how she is ghosting abilities like no tomorrow. It’s so fun when you need like seraph shields and 10 % magic dmg reduce but she just doesn’t like doing it.

[Mithron]

you're kind of contradicting yourself saying bard is complicated then saying it's not

No. I'm saying BRD is the most complicated DPS currently, but that no job is truly complicated since SHB or really even SB. The easiest job of HW was harder to play than the hardest job of EW.

[Risvertasashi]

If you are trying to optimize BRD it is very easy to leak DPS - because if you don't hit the appropriate button for a proc on the same GCD (or sometimes half GCD), you lose DPS. If several things proc at once and you don't instantly respond with the correct priority, you lose DPS. If you do not care about this, then it is considerably easier to play.

If this doesn't appeal, DNC has procs with more friendly timing (they're on the GCD), and MCH has a set rotation with no variation, making it arguably the easiest in the game (Basically it's 1, 2, 3, 4... all the way up to roughly 20, then loop and repeat)

[Tulzscha]

I found it boring and irritating. The complexity (if you can call it that) comes from having to stare at your bars in case you get a proc and sometimes reacting within a gcd, strict timing on a few abilities for optimal dps, and the already awkward song timing getting goofed up if a boss disappears. Its average apm is one of the highest in the game.

There's kind of a lot to keep track of and remember with dots, songs, procs, cds, and resources (it's a little overwhelming at first) but I found a lot of it ended up feeling disappointingly streamlined.

Apex Arrow for example - a single ability that has an entire resource bar all to itself - seems like it might be tricky to use with everything else going on but at least when I played Bard (and I could have been playing it wrong) it came out once a minute along with Sidewinder and that's it; the resource fills automatically so long as you have a song playing (which you always should) so it looks a lot more complicated than it is.

The dots have the same duration which is quite long now and they're both refreshed by one ability so they boil down to hitting one button every 45s (or earlier to snapshot buffs) or you get punished by having to spend an extra gcd to reapply them. Procs are no longer based off dots so aoe is a lot more boring than it used to be.

The job almost plays itself in a way; you just have to remember your priorities, act accordingly, and adjust your songs based on some boss mechanics. It's mostly about reaction time.