dead jobs

[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)

[ZephyrMenodora]

probably should wait then. I'll keep this thread going to see if anything changes.
Might as well ask while I am responding- which jobs do you think are dead or going to decline?

In my opinion it's probably Monk. Anything that regularly changes this much but doesn't have anything given to it to make it more compelling will probably just lose fans over time.

SMN also changed regularly, but it became the go-to "easy dps" and got a lot of flashy effects so it actually seemed to increase in audience. So, I still see them regularly even in DT. It's underperforming right now though so it may lose some players over time if its dps isn't buffed.

I think all the Healers and Tanks are fine. There isn't that much variety to choose from and even if Paladin is underperforming, it still has "Paladin Fantasy" going for it.

DPS - lots to choose from. I think other DPS that doesn't have a massive audience includes Bard and Ninja. It's too early for me to tell though how that will play out.

Pictomancer is presently probably overtuned, and new - so it could be infringing on BLM territory right now. We'll see how that changes over time also.

[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.

[Xieldras]

I'm probably one of the few BRDs I've seen in Seraph so far (still missing that final zone). AST is the same, I've seldom seen any of them in dungeons.

BRD has a lot of issues. Yes DNC ate our lunch as someone eloquently put it (and I'm still miffed lol), but also that the class itself just has no clear direction anymore whereas it was more akin to a support DPS role back in Stormblood.

• DoTs are somewhat disconnected from the kit so you don't lose much if you forget to IJ them.
• BRDs are punished hard if they mess up or die since songs do not reset upon death and they have a longer duration/CD. Other classes do more damage in general without this punisher.
• Ranged DPS tax.
• Everything BRD offers in terms of support is also offered by other classes at equal or greater value. Our greatest mitigation skill, Troubadour, is a shared role action so DNC and MCH also have a variation of it.
• Speaking of role actions, BRD's Troubadour can overwrite/be overwritten by MCH and DNC's own variations.
• Having multiple BRDs in a party is a pain because songs and buffs overlap one another, so you need to take turns casting Battle Voice or Radiant Finale or else you lose one entirely.
• Warden's Paean has no use outside of clearing one removable debuff every 2 minutes, and those are rare in harder content (but I like cleansing Doom in Fun Scaith Square, don't you dare take this one!).
• Healers don't even need the extra help with Minne most of the time.
• The hyperfocus on Apex Arrow as a staple of BRD's kit, when MCH will outDPS a BRD any day. Heck even our new GCD aoe doesn't quite match up since MCH now gets 2 oGCD aoes that weave well with Overheat. But I'd have to take a look at numbers for that.
• The fact that the devs keep trying to push this class into the median between MCH and DNC. BRD was a support-oriented class that is now being forced into a "strong DPS" mold, but is actually average in everything. It's out-damaged and out-supported. You have no reason to bring a BRD when other classes would be marginally better, especially for progression.

I think one of the reasons for BRD's fall from grace is really that the game seems to be pushing more towards a single-player experience, as in your support skills don't affect the other players as much as it used to. Yes you give buffs, but you can't replenish the party's MP anymore with Refresh or boost the party's TP (man remember that?). This means that the players that wanted to play support classes, without playing Healer, have moved on to the other support class, DNC, or to another role entirely.

For Dawntrail we've received little in my opinion. Potency buffs and one Super Move. And we got to keep both DoTs, so that's nice. But the core of the class, what appealed to people before, was carved out a long time ago. Current BRD is a Jack-of-all-Trades and Master of None.

[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.

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

Well...

Mch - Selfish dps but it's numbers weren't adding up in EW. It was also an easy job coming into EW and SMN stole that. So damage fiends went elsewhere and easy job seekers went elsewhere and that didn't leave a lot of mch fans around.

I stick with it because of the cowboy glam

[Rikka_Chu]

Easy solution: Add random class option to roulettes for extra bonus.