dead jobs

[Espon]

I never see any blue mages, gatherers, or crafters in my parties when I queue up for roulettes.

[Oizen]

I never see Bards or Monks anymore.

[genuine_stranger]

From what I could see in the duty finder MNK, BRD, PLD, RDM.

Those are the four jobs that are more or less rare in my daily roulettes.

[Connor]

For Bard I think there’s a variety of issues putting people off the job. Chief among them being the fact that you work harder than many other dps jobs but you’re (supposed to be) second last of every dps. The ‘support’ the job offers is either entirely passive or useless (Warden’s Paean lol) and on a long cool-down. Rotating songs can be a major pain in certain dungeons because of how rigid your timing needs to be to keep raid buffs aligned. The importance of DoTs has been so completely minimised that they may as well not exist.

That’s not even getting into the lack of any unique support capabilities whatsoever for the job (Esuna on a 45s doesn’t count to me lol), or the major identity crisis the job is constantly having. One minute it’s a support, then a caster, then a support, then a dps, now it’s like a supporter but worse than Dancer with dps worse than Machinist.

Plus there’s the whole ‘literally doesn’t even do what it says on the tin’ because it still leans extremely heavily towards the ‘archer’ position, though that’s a personal thing lol and not (I don’t think) representative of other people’s opinions

For Astrologian there’s already many threads addressing this so I won’t go into that (hint: cards suck now lol). Though interestingly I’ve noticed there’s an extremely small amount of threads ever discussing Bard; even in threads about dps etc I rarely ever see someone mention the job lol. It’s like everyone forgot it existed (which ironically mirrors the very Bard job storyline the devs wrote lol)

[Tunda]

Black mage - the issue is if you cancel your cast the ability will cancel I wish if there is a way if you cancel you do dmg but lower than average

Red mage - not as good as summoner (all have res) and not as good as black mage (damage) and Picto take all the heat this expansion

Astro - game designers can't figure out how to make this job fun and balance

[HemlockEvergreen]

As a Monk main, Monk has never been popular. It's somewhat different from other melee jobs in a way a lot of people can't quite grok, and it doesn't make you have the biggest e-peen on your little "abacus" either. It does not attract FOTM meta chasers.

It is a very fun job to optimize though. And it makes you feel like a cross between Goku and the Avatar.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I agree that I don't see Bard and Monk very often.

Bard being unpopular in FF14 is curious. In WoW, Hunter is tied with Paladin and Druid as the most popular class. In GW2, Ranger is in 3rd place behind Guardian and Necromancer. What Bard lacks compared to Hunter and Ranger is being able to tame beasts and fight alongside them. It will be interesting to see how popular the upcoming Beastmaster job will be, especially in comparison to blue mage. Another issue could be branding confusion. It's called "bard" so people expect a class that primarily sings or plays an instrument, but in gameplay it appears to be a magical archer. So people looking for an archer class don't see it (since people don't list base job along with their evolved advanced classes, and archer seemingly disappears when looking at the list of advanced classes), and people who wanted a bard class might be turned off to see that it's actually an archer, a different class fantasy.

As for Monk, punching stuff with your fists isn't as romantic as being a swordsman or a powerful sorcerer, and the job visually looks lackluster compared to other jobs like Dragoon, Reaper, Viper, etc.

[Lyndina]

As a former Monk "Main" as my chosen dps class...yeah...monks are rare. At the start of Dawntrail i couldnt get behind the new rotation and stuff. Its (in my opinion) very badly explained via the ingame guide. However, today i tried a bit around and its basically a "Create Ressource-spend ressource" rotation. Will probably level it the next days. Gonna see if i still like it at max or drop it completly. From a healer standpoint...and i did a lot of dungeons so far...ninjas are so rare too me.

[HyoMinPark]

BRD has definitely been on a decline ever since it was neutered in Shadowbringers to make way for DNC as the “utility/support phys ranged”. It was the most popular DPS during Stormblood, and played like a dream. It was simple pick up and learn, but had an actual gap between the skill floor and ceiling that made optimization particularly rewarding. The DoTs had nuance. Iron Jaws had nuance. There was optimization between Foe Requiem and the MP regen tool Refresh. It was the best iteration of the job by far—and then ShB happened.

I’d say even Heavensward bowmage was more common in my roulettes than ShB or EW BRD. The devs took what mains enjoyed most from the job (party support and buffing), and gave it to DNC. They also destroyed any and all optimization quirks that SB BRD had, and that made the job feel rewarding to play when done correctly. ShB BRDs (those left, anyways) had to beg for the job to get utility back, and the “best” the devs could do was return the passive song buffs—which was the last things mains were really asking for. They wanted things like MP regen/support and Palisade (free tank mitigation) back. Things that actually supported their party versus a passive buff that only relied on them doing a generic rotation to proc.

Plus, EW BRD had an extremely rigid and punishing rotation if you happened to die mid-combat. Apex Arrow was not well received in ShB, so the developers doubled down and gave BRD Apex Arrow 2 (Blast Arrow). The job still had very little party support (though Minne becoming an AOE buff was nice) that the other phys ranged didn’t already have. Mage’s Ballad becoming the weakest song versus Army’s Paeon simply because of Burst Shot’s potency and not because Army’s Paeon was suddenly interesting or had an actual mechanic to it was also just weird feeling.


I’m definitely biased, since I started playing this game with BRD, actually enjoyed HW bowmage, and adored SB BRD — but there is data on *certain websites* that actively shows the decline in BRD when it comes to high-end content. A lot from it simply not being worth taking over DNC—but there are also a lot of BRDs that simply abandoned the job with the launch of ShB because of its loss of identity and nuance. Either they just went DNC or switched to a different role entirely.

[Xieldras]

Insert text

I still don't understand why the devs seem so insistent on absolutely having a middle point between high DPS (MCH) and support (DNC), forcing it on BRD, save for easy balancing. They have their metrics and I'm pretty sure it's not looking good when it comes to this class, especially seeing as the new PCT has a wide-array of support available while still dealing an amazing amount of damage, thus being an attractive option for whatever amount of players that still shoot arrows.

I think what Bard needs right now isn't "moar damage" like they've done for 3 expansions now, it's actually exclusive buffs: Foe's Requiem, Refresh, Palissade (and I know that Squadron Bards still have those last 2 so the code is absolutely in the game and ready for implementation). Stuff that other classes do not have at their disposal.

There are also ways to have 2 different types of Supports in the rDPS role, since buff options are far and wide. Heck, Foe's was a debuff so that adds even more possibilities (and it's not like the forums haven't suggested hundreds of pages worth of buffs/debuffs/classes as ideas).

People have said before that I should be happy that Bard is getting more damage.
I never wanted more damage, I just wanted to support my party in a meaningful manner without playing Healer. To say I should be happy I get to do more DPS while my support kit is crippled is ignoring the reason people enjoyed this class. If I wanted more damage, I'd play one of those that do a better job at that than Bard, like Machinist.