Thread: Split Archer into Ranger Bard for 7.0

Originally Posted by Connor

It’s also often associated with bows etc in general, hunting weaponry I guess. I’m not saying people expect literal Beastmaster; just that they see the bow and immediately associate it with Rangers/Hunters/Whatever you want to call them

I mean, a person with a bow could be a ranger. But so could a person with a gun, but people don't go and expect machinists to be cowboys like in westerns. Just as many people could expect them to be The Green Arrow.

Personally, I don’t think anyone goes in to playing Bard expecting a physical magical warrior mage launching beams of malevolent darkness and radiant light

SE makes jobs flashy like this even when they are about physical attacks, but you can disable it by turning off battle effects for yourself.

Bard’s identity is kind of predicated on it not being the ‘manager’ of the party, if anything, otherwise they’d go in and help the party, not get emotional about it.

I wasn't talking about being a manager in the lore. I was talking about being a manager in terms of its functional rotation and mechanics, which are unrelated to the lore. But it's got to be realistic, because most people could barely use a bow while still, nevermind win against someone who has a gun or any other weapon probably and if it were possible to be like The Green Arrow, it would probably take that sort of technical management.

Bard’s identity as a job is supposed to be centered around the emotional toll of back line fighters as they watch battles unfold (which somehow becomes a song that physically harms the target lol). But in my opinion they’ve forgotten about that and focused almost entirely on the archery aspects of the job, neglecting the ‘bard’ half of the job.

I agree with you. The music part of bards is an afterthought, to the point it really is just an Archer tbh. The most attention the music part has got is out of battles (bard instruments) and the design of the weapons occasionally.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I feel that Bard in this game is mostly an Archer. The songs are hardly noticeable and it mostly is shooting arrows. Even the songs are attacks now instead of casts.

Rogue is what bothers me more, because once it becomes a Ninja it's just not the same to play. You go from just doing this combo that feels good to do, to doing all this ninjutsu stuff all the time and certain move animations resemble a Ninja more.

When NIN was first released, we could apply 2 types of poisons on our weapons to increase damage and give different ability affects.

Being on topic, they need to make Ranger use crossbows as their weapon and that they can lay down traps or set traps like the Hunter in FFTA and FFTA2. Ranger in FFXI plays like Archer, but it was immensely powerful against monsters. The only downside in FFXI is that you had consumable ammo. Rangers could use bows, but they could use daggers as their main weapon in hand. If you subbed Ninja to Ranger, you could Dual Weild daggers and knives. We even had some daggers and knives that increased range attack potency and even apply status ailments to enemies like poison.

Rangers in FFXI could also wield bows, crossbows, and guns. They didn’t have a good gun rating, but that’s when the Corsair job actually shined.