Quote Originally Posted by mallleable View Post
The thing is that BRD already has the numerically strongest raid buffs in the game right now. At full power, BRD has 6% dps + 20% dh + 2% crit buffs during burst while everyone else is 3-5% buff with AST likely being the second strongest (6% + 2X 6% single target buffs). And yet, BRD is the least played phys ranged even though it is currently the strongest in its role, but still one of the weaker dps jobs according to The Math™.
Well it's partly because it's the only job in the game with a raid buff with a fail state, if you die you lose percentage increase on your buff and the raidbuff isn't way stronger than others to make it feel more rewarding. 1% increase over everyone else for perfect play is not rewarding enough to deal with the terrible song timer system.

It's the least played Phys ranged because it's one of the hardest jobs in the game due to song timers forcing you to stare at your hotbar, having to check for procs constantly and being the only DPS in the game now with dot management, all of this while barely being above tanks in damage. Even if the buffing Bard did was absurdly op, if it's damage remains near tank levels a lot of people wouldn't play it. It's not worth having such a busy job that's got low damage when you could play dancer which is much less busy, punishing and has strong buffs too.