It's high time SE addressed Bard's timing issues

[Connor]

It’s high time they addressed everything about Bard lol (this in particular)

[CyriacWolfe]

Big fan of all the proposed changes! Bard already feels great to play in DT IMO and these changes would make it even better!

[KDSilver]

If only one thing could be done, I'd take the 2nd charge to Empyreal arrow

[Ramiee]

Honestly I just hate radiant finale. I think having a straight damage raid buff ruins bard. The songs will always have an optimal cycle but making it into a rotation with this awful action has pretty much killed any interest in maining bard.
I really wish the songs were just stances that cost MP again.

[Valence]

Ideally all raid buffs should take more than just pressing a button every 2min on cooldown. Whether it offers some optimization through MP resources or otherwise...

[Rika007]

Eh it will never be as good as a feeling as old Foe's requiem, but it's better then NOT having it. Losing Foe's in Shadowbringers truly left the job feeling hollow. While Radiant is not nearly as good as Foe's I'd rather have it then not have it.

[Valence]

Radiant is definitely and ironically one of the less boring raid buffs out there currently... At least it somewhat interacts with the kit, even though it's on rails anyway. You die or mismanage downtime, it directly or indirectly impacts Radiant Finale, unlike a lot of other raid buffs.

[Ramiee]

Radiant is definitely and ironically one of the less boring raid buffs out there currently... At least it somewhat interacts with the kit, even though it's on rails anyway. You die or mismanage downtime, it directly or indirectly impacts Radiant Finale, unlike a lot of other raid buffs.

To me it suits a theoretical dancer with multiple dances they need to use to empower it. I just hate the whole idea of a song rotation for bard. I think burst buffs should be only dancers thing while bard is all about constant buffs exception being defensive buffs personally.

[Rika007]

To me it suits a theoretical dancer with multiple dances they need to use to empower it. I just hate the whole idea of a song rotation for bard. I think burst buffs should be only dancers thing while bard is all about constant buffs exception being defensive buffs personally.

Eh but Bard has never been like that. Even as far back as ARR and Heavensward, back when Foe's Requiem and battle voice where their only offensive buffs, Bard's best buffing abilities were centric to burst moments (as was it's rotation). It's worst and most dislike iteration was when Bard lost that identity during Shadowbringers, and devs tried to shoe-horn it in to some weird, awful middle ground between Dancer and MCH where it waffled between greedy damage and buffing and was terrible at both. All idea of being a burst centric job was tossed out for a steady average damage baseline and the job felt awful.

It got slightly better in Endwalker with Radiant, and now with it's own personal damage now getting back to a more bursty level it feels in a better spot then it's been in a while. But that's mainly due to that burst, all in feeling. Truthfully what the devs need to do is when they design the next ranged phsy they need to decide what the ranged role is gonna be. Either it needs to be an all in ranged damage greedy job like machinist is supposed to be, and both jobs need to be then given damage to actually allow for that sort of mindset; and then consequently Bard gets more party support utility to put it on par with Dancer, so there are two options of support/damage in the range role each. Or, if they are going to continue to cling to the dated idea that mobility and uptime should mean less damage, they need to outright rework MCH to also have its full support options back and make all the ranged role back to the more support centric role they had before so they are viable at all times even with low damage.

[Ramiee]

Eh but Bard has never been like that. Even as far back as ARR and Heavensward, back when Foe's Requiem and battle voice where their only offensive buffs, Bard's best buffing abilities were centric to burst moments (as was it's rotation). It's worst and most dislike iteration was when Bard lost that identity during Shadowbringers, and devs tried to shoe-horn it in to some weird, awful middle ground between Dancer and MCH where it waffled between greedy damage and buffing and was terrible at both. All idea of being a burst centric job was tossed out for a steady average damage baseline and the job felt awful.

It got slightly better in Endwalker with Radiant, and now with it's own personal damage now getting back to a more bursty level it feels in a better spot then it's been in a while. But that's mainly due to that burst, all in feeling. Truthfully what the devs need to do is when they design the next ranged phsy they need to decide what the ranged role is gonna be. Either it needs to be an all in ranged damage greedy job like machinist is supposed to be, and both jobs need to be then given damage to actually allow for that sort of mindset; and then consequently Bard gets more party support utility to put it on par with Dancer, so there are two options of support/damage in the range role each. Or, if they are going to continue to cling to the dated idea that mobility and uptime should mean less damage, they need to outright rework MCH to also have its full support options back and make all the ranged role back to the more support centric role they had before so they are viable at all times even with low damage.

All buff based jobs will lead into burst situations in MMOs because a party will always have periods where buffs and nukes align but with bard in ARR-SB it didn't feel as forced and contrived as it does now. There was of course "buff bursts" but radiant finale is the worst way they could of ever done it for bard, cycling through songs should never of been something necessary imo bard having stances for buffs feels right with it's DPS kit. I would personally prefer if bard leaned into it's dots further and lost some of its bursty DPS abilities but that's just not possible in the current design philosophy.
I completely agree with machinist though, it should have high damage to the level of melees, if this means removing dismantle and tactician then so be it. There's no reason that Phys range can't have a selfish dps when melee has 2 and casters have 1.