The Disappointing State of Bard Going Into 7.0

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Hello, everyone. This is my first post on the official forums so apologies if this gets formatted weirdly. Without further ado, I'd like to open a discussion of the current issues with the Bard job and offer some simple and effective solutions that aim to address these issues while largely leaving the core of the job untouched. While these issues are nothing new within the community, the dispelling of the 7.2 sweeping job change rumor has inspired me to attempt bringing this to the larger communities attention in hope that these may be addressed sooner than later.

So, what are these issues with Bard? Simply put, the current iteration of Bard makes it one of the most strict and punishing jobs to play at a high level while removing a large amount of optimization that made the job fun previously. Endwalker converting the rotation from 80 seconds to 120 seconds while also removing the cooldown reduction that was provided by one of our songs has made it so that recovering from any delay in playing a song is essentially impossible, whether that delay is intentional or not. Bard is also one of, if not the most, punishing jobs to die on because the long song cooldown creates a very large amount of song "downtime" in which you lose access to the buffs and rotation associated with the songs, as well as all of your job gauge while also being the only job in the game to lose access to building gauge for a period. This is by far the largest pain point in the Bard kit, but I would also like to bring attention to DoTs no longer having any interaction with the rest of the kit, "snapshotting" DoTs being non-existent outside of the burst window, and Army's Paeon continuing to provide the same boring "filler" effect since this iteration of the song came out in 4.0.

I know that I'm quickly glossing over some of these issues as I want to keep this post fairly reduced in length, and I'd be happy to elaborate on any of these points in a reply. I do have a Google Doc that goes into much more depth about these points, but I'm unsure if sharing links is allowed on the forums.

As for some ideas on how to address these issues, I have a few ideas that will leave the core of Bard more or less completely untouched. My goal is to provide some constructive feedback in the form of simple quality of life and minor effect changes that would return some flexibility and optimization to the job while slightly reducing how punishing it is to play. (1/3)

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1. Reduce the cooldown of songs from 120 seconds to 110 seconds. This reduces the song downtime when recovering from a death back to roughly how long it was during Shadowbringers and Stormblood while leaving the core rotation unchanged. It also provides a little bit of flexibility by allowing you to sit in a song longer or shorter depending on the situation without ruining the timing of your rotation.

2. Introduce a new self buff tied to the Empyreal Arrow skill. This buff would have a low chance to be received with every Empyreal Arrow use and be guaranteed while under the effects of Raging Strikes. This buff would have a short duration and when using Iron Jaws with this buff active, it would be consumed to slightly increase the potency of the DoTs that get refreshed by Iron Jaws. This would return the concept of "snapshotting" DoTs to the job while being consistent to receive while in the burst window.

3. Add a low chance to receive a second song "proc" whenever gaining one, based on how many DoTs you have applied. This would leave the base 80% chance every 3 seconds on receiving a proc unchanged, and would add a small chance per every DoT applied to an enemy to gain two procs instead of one when the 80% roll is successful. As an example with numbers attached, say each DoT provides a 10% chance for a second proc. In a single target fight with both DoTs on the boss, this would mean you have an 80% chance every 3 seconds to gain one song proc, and every time you successfully gain one proc you now have an additional 20% chance (10% per DoT applied to an enemy) to gain one additional proc for two total. This gives DoTs a small interaction with the kit once more without making them our primary source of song procs and without making Bard overpowered in multi target fights, some of the core issues that plagued the job in previous expansions.

4. During the Army's Paeon song, convert the Army's Paeon action button or Pitch Perfect (to avoid button bloat, though separating them would be an option) into a new GCD weaponskill. This weaponskill would be a combo action to go after Burst Shot, deals slightly more damage than Burst Shot but less than Refulgent Arrow, and would guarantee a proc of Hawk's Eye (the buff introduced in Dawntrail that allows the use of Refulgent Arrow or Shadowbite). Burst Shot retains its 35% chance to grant Hawk's Eye, and this combo is not interrupted by the use of Refulgent Arrow. This effectively creates a 3 part GCD combo during the Army's Paeon song while ensuring that you don't lose the 3rd action when switching songs. Combined with the shortened song cooldowns from my first suggestion, this could add some interesting decision making on whether you should sit in Army's Paeon for an additional GCD or not. (2/3)

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I tried to keep my suggestions fairly succinct without leaving out too many details on how I envision them working. Regardless, the purpose of my ideas is to show that Bard is so close to being in a very good position as a job and is just being held back by a few small but very inconvenient issues. I also understand that all but the first suggestion are to address points that a majority of Bard players probably don't think about, but I feel that adding this little bit of depth to the job once again would go a long way towards making it fun to play for both casual players and those that enjoy having something to optimize and having some flexibility to their rotation. I will try to reply to any discussion about this topic and if you've made it all the way to the end, thank you for reading all of this! (3/3)

[Valence]

I have mained rphys since forever and played BRD exclusively for savage/utlimate in Endwalker, and I'm on two minds about this.

• The songs could definitely benefit from a lower recast than a strict 2min. Being able to float songs around and extend or condense their duration according to the encounter, downtime, etc, is what makes BRD actually very flexible around downtimes unlike a lot of other jobs (like MCH and its stupid tool alignment).
• Being punishing when dying is actually a good thing in my mind, but perhaps it's my rose tinted glasses speaking when thinking about older job design. I do like when dying is punishing. I do like when it brings consequences on the job's rotation. I don't like DNC for that very reason: you can die, you have have all the downtime you can imagine, the job is literally immune to every hurdle. I mean perhaps it's good that some jobs have strengths in that area while others have weakness for identity, but I do like that BRD requires some finer play to come back from the dead. It's also possible I've been permanently damaged in the head for playing SB MCH which has always had the most punishing death of every job across all expansions...
• I do agree however that not being able to put up a song after death sometimes because you died at the beginning of one for example, can feel kinda bad because you're left doing almost nothing. I'd legit like to have a deeper system behind songs which would make it ok for them to have no recast time, but would still ask for the players to go through a significant amount of their duration cycle somehow.
• DoTs having lost their interaction with the whole kit feels just wrong. Not only the repertoire procs are extremely predictable and lose a lot of the frantic sudden spikes of activity they used to have, but the removal of the dot interaction on Sidewinder is just incomprehensible to me: why did they even do that? Well, the obvious answer is, to water down and simplify everything because apparently, making sure that any failure states are removed from abilities has been the main goal of job design for years now. It's just sad.
• Army used to be okay before when the songs were 30s long, because Army would only last 20s, and it was a breather between cycles. Today however, it's resident sleepers for 45s, and I'm actually happy that in DT Ballad is going to take over it so that it's Army that turns into the shortened filler song of 30s, that's already 15s shaved off the resident sleeping so... i'll take it.
• On snapshotting dots with IJs, I don't understand the complaint however. We still do snapshot dots under Raging/burst and it's important and still a big gain to do so. If the idea is to make it even more of a gain, sure, I guess though? But it's hardly a problem for me either way right now.
• I like your idea to give some depth to Army's rotation. I'm also partial to it because it feels like old MCH proc management with ammo.

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Thanks for the feedback! I do agree that death should be punishing to a degree. Bard just feels uniquely punishing when compared to other jobs because it loses access to basically its whole identity until the next song is available. Which has always been the case, but the longer song cooldowns have greatly exacerbated the issue. You went from the maximum possible song downtime after a death of roughly 25 seconds when accounting for rez animation to almost 40 seconds now in Endwalker. That's a massive amount of time to be locked out of part of the kit! Some sort of mechanic that allows song recast to be instant while still requiring the use of all songs would be incredible to be honest. Combined with Dawntrail removing the target requirement, songs would be in a very good place.

As for DoT snapshotting with the Iron Jaws buff, the idea was to bring snapshotting back to the rest of the non-burst rotation. One of my favorite parts of Bard in Stormblood and Shadowbringers was needing to pay attention to which buffs you had applied to yourself or the boss at any given moment and figure out whether it would be a gain to refresh your DoTs with those buffs or not. 'I have a Spear card applied to myself at the moment? Well, that's worth roughly 3% damage gain and the last refresh had Trick Attack and Brotherhood, so I'll pass on this snapshot. But if they pass me the next card too, I'll refresh on that one!' That kind of decision making was a lot of fun to optimize, but I also realize it was a lot of effort and not something that a lot of people may have liked. Plus, with the two minute meta making all raid buffs outside of AST cards go into a single burst window, there's essentially zero buffs outside of the raid window for us to take advantage of. That's what I was hoping to bring back to a small degree by adding a periodic buff to Iron Jaws. Ideally the potency increase on the DoTs should make it so it's only a very minor loss to use the buffed Iron Jaws if you get it with every Empyreal Arrow, but if you know that the guaranteed proc is coming up or are feeling lucky, you could bet on getting the next buff instead, let your current buff fall off, and potentially gain even more potency out of your refresh. It's just something small that adds a bit of the thought process back to refreshing your DoTs outside of the burst window without requiring other jobs to provide buffs again. I hope I explained this in a way that makes sense!

[Valence]

I don't like babysitting buffs and timers on my end. Keeping an eye on a timer for 40s and being distracted within the last 5s and missing the refresh just feels awful as a system to me and I never liked it. While I liked the dot correlation with repertoire before EW, now that it's been removed, only the part that I actually dislike is left on the job. I can understand the engagement snapshotting for specific situations can generate for people, so if that's what bard mains like, then so be it.

I just hate timers.

[mallleable]

I have become kind of a DOT hater as well mostly because xiv doesn't handle them well at all. I do miss how procs scaled in AOE, but that can be achieved though means that aren't DOTs like making a portion of your procs be tied to weapon skills delivered that way you get a proc chance for every enemy hit by Ladonsbite for example. On top of that, Iron Jaws just feels out of place on BRD, its animations are neither music nor archery related. If BRD really needs timers to manage, then I feel like making song upkeep a bit more of an active process would be more bard-like than DOT management.

What I really want are walking casts that PVP BRD currently has. The main GCD Powerful Shot has a cast time, but you can still move while casting albeit at a slower speed. To me, this mechanic fixes a lot of thematic issues that come with having a bow-wielding bard. While it isn't BLM levels of casting, it's still casting so BRD's personal damage output can be increased so can be balanced, and designed like it is a caster, and provide better game feel to players wanting to play archer/ranger. Walking casts also open up the bard gameplay as well by broadening the tempo range in its rotation. GCDs with cast times can provide the slowest APM, instant GCDs can be middle speed, hastened GCDS can be faster, and oGCDs can be the fastest. Song buffs can also provide a personal haste buff so that playing a song can be more viscerally felt by the BRD player themselves. Relatively speaking, BRD could be the PCT of phys ranged where yes, it still has raid buffs, and utility, but it is treated more like a DPS. Let DNC be the synergy DPS, and let BRD be more independent.

I also want more instances of multi hit attacks like Barrage. To me this is also another mechanic that marries bard gameplay, and archery gameplay. Where a bard will amplify the attack power of their allies with music, an archer can amplify their own attacks through abilities like Barrage -- take a smell attack, and turn it into a big one.

[Rekujin]

Rework Shadowbite, it's terrible and shouldn't rely on Barrage.

- Buff the potency
- Remove Barrage potency increase.
- Shadowbite Ready should come from Rain of Death, as a 100% proc chance so it becomes a combo.

So realistically, a streamlined AoE combo would be: Ladonsbite > Rain of Death > Shadowbite > Repeat.

[Valence]

Rework Shadowbite, it's terrible and shouldn't rely on Barrage.

- Buff the potency
- Remove Barrage potency increase.
- Shadowbite Ready should come from Rain of Death, as a 100% proc chance so it becomes a combo.

So realistically, a streamlined AoE combo would be: Ladonsbite > Rain of Death > Shadowbite > Repeat.

So essentially removing GCD rng procs from the AoE kit?

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I have become kind of a DOT hater as well mostly because xiv doesn't handle them well at all. I do miss how procs scaled in AOE, but that can be achieved though means that aren't DOTs like making a portion of your procs be tied to weapon skills delivered that way you get a proc chance for every enemy hit by Ladonsbite for example. On top of that, Iron Jaws just feels out of place on BRD, its animations are neither music nor archery related. If BRD really needs timers to manage, then I feel like making song upkeep a bit more of an active process would be more bard-like than DOT management.

If you don't mind elaborating, how do you feel DoTs could be made better in XIV? I can see how DoTs and Iron Jaws don't really fit the Bard aesthetic and are more of an Archer thing, but if we're being honest, that's kinda what Bard is in XIV. The only parts related to music at the moment are their buffs. Songs, Radiant Finale, and I suppose Battle Voice could be considered "musical." I wouldn't mind leaning more into the musical side, removing DoTs and providing something else to upkeep. But that's getting beyond the scope of what I intended with this post and far beyond something they could provide to us in the time span of 7.0-ish. My hopes were to bring these core issues to attention so that they could hopefully be addressed without a rework and before 8.0 or later.