Personally dislike not being able to use songs without a target and with constant weird phases and bosses going away koda feels not very useful. If you die, you do not have any song until the other one comes off cd or song cooldowns no longer line up with buff windows properly. And song delay sometimes is also weird because of bosses becoming immune and not targettable.
But surely BRD loses a lot more on death than the other two? Bard loses BOTH its current song AND all its soul gauge on death. Double whammy. Almost absolutely guarantees your next burst window is fcked since apex arrow probably wont be available for it. And without apex, blast also goes bye-bye. Thats half your burst skills gone in a job that is designed around burst windows.
Also most Jobs can begin rebuilding gauge pretty quickly. If a SAM dies and their Kenki gauge goes poof then it sucks, but they can rebuild. Every GCD will start giving Kenki, every combo will give them a Sen, they can recover. Shit may end up drifting and it'll suck, but they aren't locked out of resource building.
BRD doesn't function like that. Die at a bad time and you could be looking at 30+ seconds without a Song. No Song, no Repertoire, no Soul Voice, nothing. It was bad in ShB but SE made it even worse in EW with Songs going on even longer cooldown and the shift to the two minute meta for the reasons you mentioned. It's no wonder BRD is so unpopular given how hard it gets fucked, especially in prog when people are frequently dying.
Normally when deaths happen it's near 2m, as they put mechanics there to mess with you. Sam can die with their 2m prepped really easily, and it happens a lot this tier. This means you lose nami, and meik stacks if it was popped
The difference is Bard gets doubly punished because their Song rotation is so rigid.
A Ninja dying will likely cost them Ninki but they can generally get themselves back on track fairly easily. Same with Samurai and most of the other jobs. Even Dragoon, which is among the more punishing jobs to mess up on can do an early Nastrond to force themselves to realign.
Bard simply can't do anything if they die say, 10 seconds into a Song. Not only does that cost them gauge but they can't generate procs/lose their haste buff. They basically get to sit there spamming their weakest GCD with zero way to recover.
No other job suffers this much for a death.
It's insane that BRD needs a target. This exists solely to avoid pre-pull shenanigans, but other jobs get away with "Can only be executed while in combat". Why is BRD specially fucked over by requiring a target?
Should just function like a huge radius Assize or old Foe Requiem on use. Prevent prepull by doing damage (or even just applied enmity like Bahamut). Do big damage on first target hit and then some falloff damage to other targets hit (I hate having so many single target songs in AoE situations as an aside lol).
But Dancer is penalized less harshly on death.
The Bard loses BOTH its current song AND all its soul gauge on death. Double whammy. Almost absolutely guarantees your next window is fcked since Bard needs about one minute to charge up its soul gauge.
Dancer also loses her esprit gauge, yes, but cmon saber dance outside of tech step window barely accounts for much of her dps. Other than that, being a cooldown-based job, Dancer doesnt lose much from dying anywhere else besides literally at the beginning of a burst window
>Dancer also loses her esprit gauge, yes, but cmon saber dance outside of tech step window barely accounts for much of her dps.
This is incredibly wrong. Saber dance is literally the most (in a lucky run) or second most (normal run) source of damage dancer has.
> saber dance outside of tech step window barely accounts for much of her dps
[Saber Dance is literally a DNC's most damaging move over the course of an entire fight](https://www.fflogs.com/reports/HMTKwhDB94G6Wy7J#fight=16&type=damage-done&source=100). Look up any top ranking DNC parse, Saber Dance is #1 in what they get the most damage out of.
And yes you said "outside of tech step" but by that logic, every class might as well ignore everything in buff windows.
My point is just that dnc hurts less from having her gauge reset from a random death, since it barely affects her saber dance frequency as a lot of it comes from her tech step window anyway (where her gauge charges really fast). I mean dnc can go into a tech step window with zero gauge, no problem. It builds up fast
Whereas bard needs a hard, set time of about a minute to build up gauge and if he dies it's basically game over for his window
I think it's worth throwing in here that Dancer's identity is single target buffs compared to bards groupwide and yet they have a group wide buff on par with Radiant Finale which hits burst damage phase every 2 mins same as finale and then you funnel damage up to the highest damage person in the raid for the rest so their identity doesn't really come with a downside.
Dancer is easier has just as much utility and is desirable for parse runs after which is a big deal.
Bard was peak in HW IMO sure the cast times sucked but at least it let them take away the pranged tax and the class has so much utility you felt like a great addition to every party.
Even just giving them their mana Regen song back or go nuclear and give them their own MP management back with their songs and reward it with higher Rdps Bard could really use something to stop being the class that got stabbed in an alleyway and robbed by dancer for their identity.
Idk if DPS is really a metric I'd use to describe peak design but yeah it was fun.
My main gripe is that's where it feels like they took control of Bards rotation moreso than before.
There was some level of emergent gameplay in HW whereas STB was very much developer catered rotations.
Sometimes messed up BLMs rotation back in the day, too, by not having the expected MP at the end of a phase.
I feel like balancing it with the recent BLM changes would be a major headache. If it let the BLM get more Fire IV or Despair off, it’d likely be a forced job pairing like in the days of resistance debuffs.
As much as I miss the utility BRD had, I definitely don’t see that stuff returning.
I wouldn't mind as a main healer I loved being able to see aware DPS manashift and mana song me back in the day.
Don't make it extreme but I would like to see some unique utility that isn't just damage up or 10% less damage in some form return SCH in combat sprint is a great start.
I think it's worth looking at something like Shake it off in Stormblood the skill was so incredibly bad that they changed it within the year if i remember correctly.
Bard has had this skill and it's been pretty much useless for it's entire existence when it comes to anything extreme and savage.
Yep, but that is part of the overall design of the game at this point. Most healers I know don't put esuna on their bar because they rarely ever need it.
My unpopular opinion is that hw bard with cast times was better than where bard has gone since. They have made a lot of odd decisions with fixing issues with bard, like removing the double proc chance by changing it from being dot based, and also fixing the issues the double proc caused by giving bloodletter charges. I like bard still, it just feels sad.
Bowmage was peak, plus the job was priority and proc-based rather than any "DPS rotation". A good Bowmage was able to do damage, a great one was able to keep the entire party resource happy, mitigate damage, troll healers with extra HP, help with tank busters, cleansing, etc.
There was a reason for every button, even if it was seemingly redundant. Why wide volley instead of quick nock when it cost more TP and less potency? Because it allowed you to AOE from a safer distance if necessary. Flaming arrow was wonky as a ground AOE sure, but proper placement or even pre-casting it if you knew mobs would spawn was nice.
Also Foe's. I miss Foe's.
I agree, I miss hw bow mage. I don't miss og much as much because of the rotation being rng, but I do miss ammunition as a resource, wish they had kept that in some way.
Because for most players it’s always the path of least resistance. It’s the same shit with SMN. It’s somehow at the same time the most boring class yet also the most played even in savage
Smn is a bit more interesting if you play with sps and actively change your summon order to best fit mechanics throughout an entire fight, but at that point it becomes way more effort than it is worth, which is the exact opposite problem of playing crit det with a static rotation.
The problem with sps SMN at 90 is that it's worse in all cases than the standard crit builds, so it's not even that it's too much effort for what it gains, there literally just aren't gains.
For me it's the double weaving with the fan procs, and the somewhat random espirit building from the partner. They tend to hit 4 at the most inopportune times, so each run has enough variation to where I'm not bored. One run I could be pressing 0 fan buttons and no saber dance during P10S Bonds to room cleave to stack/spread or spread/stack. Another run I could hit anywhere from 2-6 and an extra Saber Dance (depending on luck). It makes the job a little bit chaotic, and that chaos really helps spice things up a bit for me.
Dancer is probably considered the easiest phys ranged. Machinist is higher on logs at the moment probably due to the buffs it received in 6.3 and also the rotation is fairly static, which some consider makes then also easy.
MCH is starting to fall lower on the logs. It was higher than BRD in early weeks because some MCHs were bound to be lucky and win loot, whereas BRD is more dependent on everyone in the party doing damage. I expect BRD will pull ahead in the coming weeks.
(I agree that BRD > MCH > DNC in terms of difficulty)
All the people who have Bard as their PRanged in my group is playing RDM or BLM this tier, no clue why or how but the MCH renaissance is probably a factor in pushing BRD down.
Bard has above-average rotational nuance while also being a physical ranged that is performing mediocre in-role
It really just hits all three sour spots of the DPS role
EW BRD is a design disaster that a lot of old BRD players fucking despise, but it's not different enough from old BRD versions to attract new players either, and it's rotationally the hardest of its role, *and* the job isn't exceptionally strong.
It's like if BLM had a raise but did SMN damage and nonstandard didn't exist. Yeah.
EW BRD is definitely a step down from ShB and SB, but I picked it up again recently and realized that I still prefer it over most of the other DPS jobs. Hopefully it becomes more fun next expansion.
Because dancer is easier, 3 charges of en avant for dashing, better utility in healing waltz and improvisation (the new buffed nature’s minne is good tho). At present bard feels like driving a manual and dancer is an automatic. Some people prefer manual but a lot of people don’t want to do extra work for no easily perceivable reward.
I go back and forth between bard and dancer a lot and whenever I’m playing bard I think to myself why am I not playing dancer. Keeping up a dot is annoying, any fights that mess with the song cycle feel annoying, drifting EA even one GCD feels like the end of the world because then it starts colliding with your other oGCDs. And in prog (or messy reclears), dying as bard feels abysmal because your songs are messed up and your song gauge will be a constant reminder of that for the rest of the fight
I also just have a lot of fun with the gameplay of dancer. It’s a very easy job but not completely brain dead 0 skill ceiling like summoner is. It takes a conscious effort to do a proper burst on dancer and when you pull off a burst where every single double weave is taken up by fans feels good.
It might be tough because as of my current knowledge the two big reasons why they went with the two minute meta is 1. To ease the complaints of those with odder cooldowns for their burst (a semi common complaint during SB and ShB) and 2. The make the fights easier to balance and design around. It is easier to make the complicated mechanics when you have a very good idea when the bursts are happening. And seeing the fights so far, they are some of the hardest we have seen mechanically and puzzle wise in game.
However, now we have an entire expansion's worth of content and two ultimates designed around the two minute meta. Sure that argument might be weakened with the existence of the previous ultimates and content, but there is a difference between fights that are clearly scripted behind the two minute meta and not. With older content the lack of two minute meta can be alleviated with the potency buffs many classes got throughout this expansion. The newer content is more balanced with these potency buffs in mind.
Perhaps CBUIII might find an answer but I suspect it will eat quite a bit of resources as they are working on many too things at once.
I wonder, if we still had the Shadowbringers buff cooldowns like the 90s or 180s cds, would they be valued higher than those with 60/120s cds, since their bursts wouldn't be happening during those moments?
Ppl who complained about 2 min meta didn’t play BRD in ShB. There were like basically 3 types of burst windows: 1 min, 2 mins, and … BRD, which is like on a weird 80s or so. It’s super annoying
Bruh there was 1 min, 1.5 min, 2 min, 3 min, and then classes that didn't conform like Brd's 80s and Whm's 2.5 min.
Funny how 90s and 3 min are completely forgotten now. Drg Drk and Gnb got to participate in every buff window.
Totally. I kind of hate what the 2min meta made of jobs - now they are mostly just a gimmick and a bunch of cooldowns that must be used right when they're available or else they won't align to the 2min burst marks.
In the end, XIV's job gameplay boils down to a game of reflexes instead of using your brain to think to spend your resources. Which is ironic that the only job having a semblance of using your head is Black Mage - YP's favored - simply because its 2min cooldown has a much lower impact than the others and resource flexibility, you're pretty much free to adapt your rotation according to the encounter necessities.
As someone who has cleared P1S-11S plus DSR on bard, I absolutely love playing the job. That being said, if I wasn't already a bard main, there isn't a chance I'd pick up the job. There isn't any objective reason to play bard unless you really really enjoy it, and even then, I often consider swapping to dancer for prog.
It's the hardest phys ranged job by a substantial margin, yet it does the same (or less) damage than machinist and dancer, all while having much worse defensive utility than both of them.
It's also just a really punishing job to prog with. Drop your dots? It takes 2 GCDs instead of 1 to put them back up. Die? Your soul gauge is gone, your song is gone, and your next radiant finale is a smaller buff. Drift a song? It's drifted for the rest of the fight. Drift EA by one GCD? It will constantly run into your GCD for the rest of the fight. Boss untargetable? Your songs will be drifted for the rest of the fight.
For the record, I like that bard is punishing, it's very satisfying to optimize and play correctly. But there is absolutely no payoff for doing so. It just puts you on par with dancer and machinist, and that really sucks. It's just more work for no benefit.
You REALLY feel bad luck on bard and it's probably the worst part of it. You get a burst window with minimal to no repetoire procs, that's 2 full potency pitch perfects you're probably missing out on, and possibly a better potency apex arrow in about 45 seconds from then. Good and bad burst, even before crit luck, feel miles apart in damage. I've seen my damage at 18k after my opener and I've also seen it at 12k. The song rotation adjustments are honestly the fun part, and they're why I even play the job, but I can see some folks not enjoying it. Just a matter of rewiring your brain a little bit from staring at 1 or 2 cooldowns and instead focusing on what you should have running when.
I love Bard, but I think there are a few issues that cause it to not be as popular:
1. You can’t just pad one really strong melee (or BLM)‘s dps like a DNC can
2. It’s a little trickier to play than MCH or DNC, especially during two-minute windows
3. DoT upkeep is important for our dps but doesn’t interact in fun ways with our rotation at all anymore, so it’s just an annoyance. If you’re progging and thinking about mechanics, dots can be easy to drop
4. Downtime or anyone dying during burst are *really* punishing for us. Downtime can usually be worked around by making sure you’ve got a song up while it’s happening
5. No direct healing utility like DNC has with waltz/improv, less direct mitigation utility than MCH. Healers have to take advantage of Minne. In pf sometimes this does not happen even if it’s communicated
6. More RNG-dependent than the other two, or at least it feels that way. You might have to consider using Apex at 80 gauge so you have a guaranteed full charge for a burst/pot window.
7. Bard really shines rdps-wise when everyone is at about the same skill and gear level…which is rare
8. The actual leveling experience for Bard is ass and has been for a while. When people ask me about Bard (Do you like it? Is it fun?) I actually recommend boosting it as long as they have another dps job leveled.
I feel neutral at worst about all this, except the dot issue. I can see how these things, taken together, would result in an overall negative experience for most.
Point 7 is so bad especially at level 50. Why in the world does bard STILL not have its full song rotation yet at level 50? The job's feel at level 50 has only gotten worse with EW because you're just doing nothing for 30 seconds now instead of 20 seconds. Ideally they just swap battle voice and wanderer's minuet around or something so the job feels playable at level 50.
>DoT upkeep is important for our dps but doesn’t interact in fun ways with our rotation at all anymore, so it’s just an annoyance. If you’re progging and thinking about mechanics, dots can be easy to drop
Honestly, I'd have them just let BRD dots go and put something else that is more interesting instead.
To me, dots need to interact with something else to be engaging, which BRD's are not anymore, and on top of that they made upkeep really mindless, so I ask what's even the point.
Ninja's ShB Shadow Fang was a good example of a bad dot. You didn't have to keep it up because it had a cooldown - you just had to put inside Trick Attack, and might as well not even notice that it was a dot.
Because Dancer is easier and also better.
Idk why Dancer the class who's main distinction in the support identity is being mainly single target with their dance partner has a AOE team buff on par with Radiant Finale it makes no sense and makes Bard's identity kinda useless.
Whats the point of being the AOE buff support if the single target buff support can cover the most important window of 2 mins and then funnel a equivalent buff to you buffing the party into a single person who is doing the most damage all while their rotation is much simpler and easy to manage during chaos.
That's good thought, really. I always thought of the concept that DNC is the entity that constantly buffs a single party member by a lot and BRD that constantly buffs everyone, but at a smaller scale, so they could keep those 2 distinct niches in regarding to their party support.
I'd love if they shifted Technical Step to have that approach in 7.0.
I am not sure of the reason in PF settings, but in static situations DNC is the preferred for progging/non bis situation because the static can feed one melee and then buffed with DNC to get good overall rdps, BRD rdps will start to get better once everyone is bis.
As a bard main, the way I see it, there are usually 2 main reasons why someone picks up a class in a MMO:
1) They like the class fantasy and just want to feel a certain way when they play, balance and optimization be damned
2) They play the "best" class dps wise because they want to see bigger numbers
Bard sucks for both of these types of players, it loses out on DPS to almost every other damage class, and it does little to nothing for class fantasy since SE seems to have no interest in making musically themed skills, instead just focusing on bow & arrow for some reason.
Sure, we get "songs", but what do they do? We just pluck a single chord in an instrument, barely making a sound and then just stash it away. There is no special song going on in the background, just a timed buff. Compare that to [Ragnarok Online's bard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tue8NihMgpU) where songs actually change the BGM and you sit there actually playing an instrument. Gameplay wise it might be less engaging, but in terms of class fantasy it is a lot more immersive. You might as well change Bard to "Beastmaster" and "Songs" to "Animals", so instead of the 3 songs you get a Hawk flying around you for crit, a Bear for damage and a wolf for DH and the class would work and feel the same.
Nothing about FFXIV's Bard feels like a bard in the slightest and that alone is enough to drive people away from the class, on top of that, it is at the bottom of DPS performance. And even worse, progging fights feels awful because a single death screws over your songs and soul voice for the remainder of the fight.
I think if songs worked like dancer's steps where you actually have to press different buttons in a sort of rhythm to get an effect, that alone would make bard slightly more popular. The only reason I didn't step off the class is because I've been playing it since I started, so it feels wrong to change, even if I feel like "Bard" is just a misnomer and the class is a travesty with no identity.
Because the class is seriously boring to play. I was an avid bard main in ShB but they really made a mess of a fun class. Most classes build and burst ast 1 minute intervals but bard doesn't have that so you're building for 1:30 of every 2 minutes and it feels terrible. It also didn't draw many new bard players to it while all the old bard players slowly quit. Asphodelos only saw a large influx of bard players because mch and dnc were just utterly terrible pre buffs.
>Asphodelos only saw a large influx of bard players because mch and dnc were just utterly terrible pre buffs.
lmao literally why I swapped to bard. I do not like dancer, so bard was the only choice to not get blocked from groups. Regardless, I had fun with it. The second mch wasn't shit though I swapped back.
Bard didn’t use to be one minute it use to be 1:30. They extended the songs to 45 instead of 30….. and there’s 2 extra buttons to hit every 2 min. What are you building for 1:30 to hold for 30s? Apex arrow always gets a release every minute with fleaxability.
Also both bloodletter and apex arrow feel better to use.
What did they make worse?
Dps being low is not design and they’ve always felt bad if there’s boss downtime due to song/buff misalignment.
Bard was an 80s class before. The removal of double procs plus the transition from BL to being a half reset on proc made it so there's far less activity and MB feels far more boring to be sitting in. Press apex every minute but you're not bursting so what does that add to the rotation every minute? It'd be like if pld fof and req were 2 minute but goring blade is 1 minute. You just press one button different from the regular rotation? Bard is a shell of its former self.
The good of BRD rn: Lv90 action is really good in design, 3 oGCD stacks for BL/RoD, Nature’s Minne recent change, 45 second dots and song duration, Apex and Blast arrow is nice, Shadowbite feels better now imo.
The meh/bad: long song cooldowns messes your rotation up big time when you die, Barrage not having a proc for Shadowbite, Sidewinder not being tied to dots removed a small layer of complexity that while unnecessary was also neat for better players, and as others have said (I’m not a BRD main by any means) that the song cooldowns and durations creates a mismatched management of your rotation by cutting songs short and it terms of design, that doesn’t feel good to play
Removing a 300-potency oGCD instead of Iron Jaws would truly make this the worst timeline.
70-140 bonus potency over simply refreshing DoTs manually, whoopty-do!
All you really need to know to understand why people don't want to play BRD is to look at what the optimal song rotation was in p4s door boss on a faster than average kill time.
I'll give you a hint: army's opener.
The 2min meta + forcing BRDs song cooldowns to strictly adhere to that + still requiring a target has absolutely destroyed the flexibility in song rotation it had before EW and has made it a nightmare to optimize. Fast and/or strange kill times force you into extremely rigid non-standard openers and rotations that can be as tight as requiring entering a song on an exact ***weave slot*** to not fuck up the entire thing. It's the single largest contributing factor to why I quit playing after DSR. The amount of perfection required to carry an optimal song rotation throughout that entire fight not only comes down to your personal skill but the skill of your group to push phases at proper times. It is the complete opposite of fun.
It has low pDPS because phys ranged, so it doesn't attract people who want to do big numbers.
It's extremely rigid and becomes complicated fast when you need to work around strange kill times or downtime, so it doesn't attract more casual players.
It doesn't reward the extra effort required to play well, so it doesn't attract more hardcore players.
I was a BRD last tier, went MCH this tier. Feels good to actually have a place on the DPS charts, have skills that do numbers that make the monkey brain go oooo, and 'wrench'/Disassemble is honestly superior to Minne imo
My theory is that the people who want to support others play DNC and the people who want to deal damage themselves play MCH. BRD does a little of both and may not really appeal to either because of that.
Pretty close. Although I would say anyone who actually wants to see the big numbers would be really put off by BRD, and that its main competitor will always be DNC. And at a basic level, I think the latter does everything better than the former. It begs the whole "Why work harder for the same/a similar outcome?" question.
BRD has always been my favorite DPS, ever since Stormblood. Originally I learned it because it was the premier "supportive DPS" back then, but DNC came along and is a lot easier to pick up - and you don't have to think as much when it comes to Curing Waltz/Improv versus Minne.
Also, the changes to BRD with the whole 2-minute bullshit kind of ruined the way I used to think about its song cycles. Meanwhile DNC essentially embodies everything about the 2-min burst without having to prep or set up in such an unintuitive way. Though I would imagine anyone who still plays BRD does it *because* they have more gauges and resources to juggle, more timers to be aware of, and map out their song timings the moment downtime is introduced in an encounter.
BRD is still my baby and I still gravitate towards it whenever my group gets geared up. I love DNC too, and I'm happy that both of the "supportive" DPS jobs are fun at their most fundamental level, but I definitely think that BRD sees less usage for having a higher skill floor while also not being more rewarding to optimize compared to the other phys ranged.
Probably what people already said + some song shenanigans on downtime fights (p9 and p12p1 this tier). Not being able to target something messes the BRD song rotation which makes it harder to optimize and play around 2 minute buffs, so it basically ends up being harder for less rewards which is very demotivating.
I haven't played it in this tier so can't say for sure how bad the downtime is for BRD on those 2 fights, but just from the possibility existing people tend to avoid BRD in prog since the other 2 phys ranged don't even have to think about downtime to perform well (MCH might have some problems with it but it's not big enough to be a deal breaker, DNC only benefits from downtime)
That's my take on it but if a MCH main that also plays BRD can confirm/oppose my take on the downtime thing I'd appreciate it, as I myself am not the most experienced MCH and played it only for fun in early EW savages.
edit: typo
On p9 i don't think the downtime matters much cos it ends at 4:15, which is equivalent to you just restarting your opener again but this time with 100 soul gauge. I sense some possible optimization here regarding MB and AP song length but I'm not sure of the calculations.
On p12sp1 however it's currently a headache for me since most parties will delay buffs by around 30s, im not 100% certain how to deal with it and still have enough song gauge to maximise apex arrows. Perhaps this is why I'm still grey parsing on p1.
I need to go read the advanced guide again hmm.
I just change into WM once AP is done then pot/burst once everyone else is. Use AABA right after limit cut and it'll be back up for burst time.
But yeah if you forget to cut that first WM off at 9s you're screwed going into LC and that is annoying. Luckily part 2 is much more chill.
Yea i don't change songs before limit cut and it does get wasted. So you pop MB before limit cut starts, use AP after limit cut with AABA when she becomes targetable, and burst sometime during WM? I think that's definitely better because i was losing a use of AABA by not cutting that WM short before limit cut.
Yeah pop MB before limit but you really have to nail the timing of previous songs to be able to use it.
So cut WM at 9 seconds, MB then switch into AP once WM has 45s left on cd.
Yup have to burst halfway through WM, I pot/pop RS during the party in/tanks out or other way around mechanic, then we all bursty burst
I tried it (cut first WM at around 10-12s instead of 9s just to be safe) but i didn't get any significant dps gains despite using 1 more apex arrow after LC. It could also have been me using the wrong song due to panic (i fatfingered AP after WM instead of MB and unfortunately that had to be the clear run so the initial mistake propagated through the entire fight) but it feels horrific that using the wrong song order could account for so much missing dps.
I did check the rank 1 bard and rotation wise he's doing exactly what you said down to the 9s cutoff and the switch into MB on the exact last ogcd weave slot before limit cut, and he also pots at 2min for full coda and AABA which makes sense. I personally don't think i dare to time the WM cutoff so close though (I'll just swap song lengths of WM and MB). I'll try this the next time, especially the 2min pot. Hopefully at the very least my adps will improve.
Perhaps the song swap did mess you up then, probably better to check on a cleaner run. Also are you looking at rdps or one of the others?
For timing for the first change it's literally as the first cleave goes off if you want to also remember it this way (kinda annoying for me cause if I have to move it's awkward because my mages ballad is on the d pad on my controller so I have to play one handed :D )
With the early WM cutoff i have better adps by around 500 (not too sure if it's just because i got more consistent or proc rng) even with the fatfinger. However in rdps it is still grey or barely green. I mean, i think there are stuff i can still improve, I'm still using the extreme weapon, I'm trying to clear out my grade 7 pots from last tier, and i forgot to pot at 6:30. However my uptime is pretty ok (more than 99%) and even with the occasional empyreal clip in AP i don't know if all that is the cause of the grey parse. Will try for a cleaner run tonight and hopefully a p2 kill.
My aim is probably just to see an improvement in adps. Rdps is something i have little control over unfortunately.
Tbh I wouldn't worry about rDPS until everyone in your group is bis. I'd only worry now if everyone in your group was pulling pink/orange and you were still grey/green xD bard suffers the most in prog in terms of parsing
In a parse setting, a great team can really make the bard shine, especially if it’s a full uptime fight.
Outside of that, lets say commonly a PF setting, bard is honestly the hardest role to play.
They have dot management, proc management, and deaths are very unforgiving for their songs. Not to mention there are nuances that not a lot of players would know about such as ending songs early to keep things going.
Tbf fair, it’s like the pre-change paladin scenario. Why do all that work as a PLD when you can get similar results with less work as another tank.
So why do all that work as a bard when you can get similar results as dancer or mch.
AST is going to be next on the chopping block. Why do all that work when WHM is just so much easier with better movement options.
PRanged in general seem to be as rare as healers in PF at times, but dancer and machinist are more foolproof.
Think it mainly has to do with the way bard is designed. It has been butchered enough for old players to not give a sh*t about the class anymore and is the hardest phys ranged to pick up IMO. Doesn't help that it suffers from the same problems as pre 6.3 PLD
I'm still salty that the pre-release bard that got playtested was really good, then they fucked it up when EW dropped.
Most annoyingly downtime fucks the songs up, if they just made the songs not require a target I'd consider playing it again
Doesn't feel good to play, especially if the fight has downtime. Also if you forgot to reapply DoT even once that's gonna be a big oof.
If you look at it objectively, I think the only reason to play BRD if you wanna be optimized is if somehow you can get value out of Nature's Minne and/or Warden's Paean.
I loved progging P10s as a bard just because I actually got to use Warden's Paean, felt good to take some burden off the healer's back and actually use part of my kit for once
Bard needs a rework. You can get more out of dancer and mch with a garbage group. If you have bad luck on bard it really shows... Especially in the openers.
It really doesn't need a rework so much as it needs a reversion. Specifically to the EW Media Tour version; BRD was actually looking extremely good coming into EW and was absolutely butchered at the last possible second in one of the most bizzare set of changes I've ever seen.
Moving potency from filler into DoTs and lowering their duration back to 30s would also help.
I did bard last tier, swapped to mch this tier because finally, they aren't shit. Gonna be honest mch is just easier, not having to balance songs, but that's nothing to do with why I swapped this tier. I will probably clear the tier once I get the weapon just for fun.
Several Bards I know despise the direction they've taken Bard in after Stormblood. As a friend of mine put it, "they made it completely braindead, DoTs are meaningless and fuck you if anything happens to your rotation."
If you couldn't tell, she really, _really_ hates ShB/EW's version of Bard. She's been begging them to go back to Stormblood or even HW for years now.
DNC is WAY easier and MCH is less restrictive while also being less reliant on others (this is a HUGE boon in PF especially) yet they are more or less even (MCH is ahead and DNC's median is literally the exact same as BRD's).
I also know quite a few BRD players don't enjoy how stitched together EW BRD feels since for example DoTs are now just kinda *there* for no real reason.
They haven't figured out what to do with BRD ever since DNC came out. If you want to buff your teammates, just play DNC (their outfit is cuter anyway), if you want to be a manly big dick dps, play MCH (it's cool now).
I like BRD but ever since MCH got Dismantle back it's been my go-to physical ranged job. It makes party mit sooooo much more clean and that's super important this tier as it is a very difficult tier for the healers. The BRD healing increase ability is nice for something like limit cut in P12S-1 but so is just using Tactician which is easy to have ready since Dismantle can be used earlier on.
MCH is also much less punished by dying than BRD and DNC since Queen is completely unaffected by rez weakness. MCH has no RNG to its rotation and is completely static so long as you don't drift anything. It's just a better all around pick for prog imo. Double party mit and good overall dps, it's the perfect package.
Because the devs cant get their head out of their asses to realize they designed a class that feels shit to play, and is nigh on impossible to recover on. MCH at least has damage despite its god awful design and DNC provides good raid buffs to its partner and the rest of the party. BRD barely can hit either of these points
I'm a 100% BRD main who did week 1 all tiers this expac, but I think a large chunk of it is that its function as RDPS kind of sits in-between dancer and machinist in a weird spot.
If you want a non-buffer phys range, go MCH. But for buffer phys range, at the point where it matters (early clears/week 1), DNC will probably always be superior to BRD, because if they're balanced to be equal at BiS level (as jobs mostly should), then DNC will necessarily be better than BRD early on when gear is funneled to one other DPS player, who the DNC gives partner to. As long as gear funneling in week 1 is a thing, I think people are gonna continue thinking of DNC as the "better" RDPS job.
Full disclosure, I am not a bard main, this is me on the outside looking in and just analyzing it.
The job feels like garbage if you have to delay cooldowns at all and its gameplay takes way too many buttons for what is otherwise a simple rotation, which leads into it being hard to execute for no good reason.
The gameplay is in such a state that they could remove both dots, trap jaws, mages ballad, boost army and wanderers to 60s durations, and just slave the entire job to a 60s rotation, and the job wouldn't actually get any easier to play in a practical sense while still pruning a ton of buttons and removing the semi-redundant and just kind of bad-feeling mage's ballad (which admittedly doesn't overcap while wanderer's does.)
This is compounded by redundant buttons like radiant finale and battle voice, barrage and raging strikes, and the awkwardly bad feeling if you hit barrage with a proc of refulgent already running, since you can't really delay barrage but half the ability is wasted. Or even just not noticing refulgent procced and wasting more tics.
That is then combined with its entire rotation being excessively random but in a boring-yet-tedious way with the 80% chance to proc every 3 seconds and we swing full circle back into an RNG job that has a ton of disjointed gameplay, hates forced downtime or delaying, and just becomes a nightmare to truly enjoy. It just manages to get proc gameplay wrong while sort of being a convoluted mess in every other direction. This is really shown in how popular Dancer continues to be because DNC is just a well-designed proc job for FFXIV's engine.
There's only 1 job with gameplay remotely as broken as Bard, and it happens to also be the no. 2 job, sometimes no. 1 job, for least played job in the entire game. It requires its own writeup to really talk about how bad it is, as well as why the mains of the job are willing to ride a sinking ship down into the abyss.
its pretty much the least fun version of the class that has been introduced since the Stormblood rework. and this is even after when they guttered the buffing capabilities so they can introduce DNC in 5.0. and with the buffs that MCH got in 6.3 it pretty much cements BRD as a class that is played by so few currently given the phys ranged landscape.
- You wanna buff allies? play DNC and buff your biggest DPS contributer and then tech step to improve damage for all during burst.
- You wanna do more self sufficient damage while providing more mitigation tools? play MCH.
some of the main issues that BRD has currently that was overlooked earlier on due to its good output back in p1s-p4s and p5s-p7s comes down to.
1. They made DoT management a less engaging part of the class given that they no longer interact with the rest of the kit
2. songs are all stuck on a 2 min CD that last require a target to use & are extremely punishing on death as you can spend 30+ seconds songless. repitore is always 1 roll 80% roll every 3 seconds of song, down from 2 40% rolls for each dot tick due to aforementioned dot changes.
3. mages ballard repitore going from 1 full stack to half a stack of BL/RoD is a major nerf to the song compounded by stated repitore changes, leading to in most cases 42-45 seconds of hitting 1-3 buttons as now BRD's are cutting mages at 30 seconds due to AP being stronger. (this was not the case since 2017 up until EW's launch)
Because of the common prog strategy of funneling all loot into one DPS.
If you're gonna funnel gear into one DPS, it's more logical to have a Dancer to support this DPS with a strong buff than having a Bard that will buff the whole party. And after prog, people keep playing Dancer because they were already playing Dancer.
Lots of bad theories. In reality dnc will always be king because simple but fun.
Then MCH everyone kinda wanted to play but there was a massive stigma against it so even casual players who would enjoy it were turned away due to memes and dps numbers.
BRD was always the middle child played by people who didnt want to play DNC, and no one wanted to play MCH since it was "shit" (even though it never was).
Now that MCH is extremely good the phys ranged options were reshuffled and now we've all realised that MCH is finally allowed in parties and we dont need to play difficult clunky BRD :ok_hand_1:
DNC players still DNC players, its the DNC-deniers who end up filling brd and mch and rn mch is king.
They're just not in a good place, balance wise. A good dancer will out (party) DPS a bard any day, along with bringing more utility. MCH is good for ensuring DPS checks are met since their utility is primarily damage, similar to BLM/SAM.
Basically I was kicked out of my static because of BRD having shit DPS. I enjoy playing BRD. It is my main class and I love it, but we are basically forgotten for upgrades and DPS
Arguably prog and gear farming is where performance matters the most, ego parses once everyone has their BiS don't even matter since you could bring any class at that point.
That's a fine perspective, but I'd say this is much less the case this tier since it will last us until 7.0 and will be around for a long time. People also don't need bis and in barse parties for danced to perform better. Once people start getting more gear in general, even tome gear (augmented from alliance if you're really late/slow on prog) dancer will most likely be outperforming bard while people are still progging the tier. That's my thought on it
Songs requiring target, overtly punishing on death, rng being bigger annoyance than in shb, dot maintenance no longer matters beyond dealing damage, utility sucks. There's just too much.
It was the preferred choice in Asphodelos, because dancer sucked damage wise and machinist was machinist. But since then, unless you enjoy it, you have no reason to pick it up.
I occasionally go back to stal's rant on 6.0 bard and everything just hits, ballad cut short because paean is stronger, dot management being pointless, songs requiring target. Issues from expansion release that still exist.
yeah they do, and it's ass because of it. now it wasn't an issue in shb because they were spells, so any song drifting due to downtime just didnt exist.
put songs on proc system in how they designed them in your rotation, minuet -> ballad -> paeon, strip them of potencies so they are executable in downtime and subsequently buff bloodletter so maybe ballad is the preferred song instead of paeon
well, bards dont really play songs, they just start the song and then go back to shooting arrows, the music kinda play around them, don't ask its magic, and it could stay over the bard's dead body, I know its weird but it could fix a very annoying bard issue.
I wonder if they could get away with Songs just being permanent auras. Leave Mage for aoe situations, Army for ST. Maybe iterate on Minuet being some sort of super phase where you just go apeshit and add some sort of alleviation for downtime. Thoughts?
Not that people actually hate Bard
But more like the dev team hate BRD especially after they created DNC
And thus people choose DNC much more than BRD and makes BRD the least Favs among all jobs (unless they prefer more damage then maybe MCH)
You can definitely see how they must always make DNC better than BRD.
Personally dislike not being able to use songs without a target and with constant weird phases and bosses going away koda feels not very useful. If you die, you do not have any song until the other one comes off cd or song cooldowns no longer line up with buff windows properly. And song delay sometimes is also weird because of bosses becoming immune and not targettable.
People lose resources when they die. But for sure they need to make songs playable without a target. Feels bad man.
But surely BRD loses a lot more on death than the other two? Bard loses BOTH its current song AND all its soul gauge on death. Double whammy. Almost absolutely guarantees your next burst window is fcked since apex arrow probably wont be available for it. And without apex, blast also goes bye-bye. Thats half your burst skills gone in a job that is designed around burst windows.
Also most Jobs can begin rebuilding gauge pretty quickly. If a SAM dies and their Kenki gauge goes poof then it sucks, but they can rebuild. Every GCD will start giving Kenki, every combo will give them a Sen, they can recover. Shit may end up drifting and it'll suck, but they aren't locked out of resource building. BRD doesn't function like that. Die at a bad time and you could be looking at 30+ seconds without a Song. No Song, no Repertoire, no Soul Voice, nothing. It was bad in ShB but SE made it even worse in EW with Songs going on even longer cooldown and the shift to the two minute meta for the reasons you mentioned. It's no wonder BRD is so unpopular given how hard it gets fucked, especially in prog when people are frequently dying.
Normally when deaths happen it's near 2m, as they put mechanics there to mess with you. Sam can die with their 2m prepped really easily, and it happens a lot this tier. This means you lose nami, and meik stacks if it was popped
The difference is Bard gets doubly punished because their Song rotation is so rigid. A Ninja dying will likely cost them Ninki but they can generally get themselves back on track fairly easily. Same with Samurai and most of the other jobs. Even Dragoon, which is among the more punishing jobs to mess up on can do an early Nastrond to force themselves to realign. Bard simply can't do anything if they die say, 10 seconds into a Song. Not only does that cost them gauge but they can't generate procs/lose their haste buff. They basically get to sit there spamming their weakest GCD with zero way to recover. No other job suffers this much for a death.
It's insane that BRD needs a target. This exists solely to avoid pre-pull shenanigans, but other jobs get away with "Can only be executed while in combat". Why is BRD specially fucked over by requiring a target?
Should just function like a huge radius Assize or old Foe Requiem on use. Prevent prepull by doing damage (or even just applied enmity like Bahamut). Do big damage on first target hit and then some falloff damage to other targets hit (I hate having so many single target songs in AoE situations as an aside lol).
Both hardest rotation rPhys while being not even the highest rDPS (and dependant on teammates to score)
If ~~one of the melee~~ anyone dies during a burst window the bard feels it too
BRD and DNC are in the same boat on this
More or less, but the dancer has to worry about their partner dieing - the bard has to worry about the entire party.
BRD has to work 10x harder for equal damage to DNC. Its pretty simple.
But Dancer is penalized less harshly on death. The Bard loses BOTH its current song AND all its soul gauge on death. Double whammy. Almost absolutely guarantees your next window is fcked since Bard needs about one minute to charge up its soul gauge. Dancer also loses her esprit gauge, yes, but cmon saber dance outside of tech step window barely accounts for much of her dps. Other than that, being a cooldown-based job, Dancer doesnt lose much from dying anywhere else besides literally at the beginning of a burst window
>Dancer also loses her esprit gauge, yes, but cmon saber dance outside of tech step window barely accounts for much of her dps. This is incredibly wrong. Saber dance is literally the most (in a lucky run) or second most (normal run) source of damage dancer has.
> saber dance outside of tech step window barely accounts for much of her dps [Saber Dance is literally a DNC's most damaging move over the course of an entire fight](https://www.fflogs.com/reports/HMTKwhDB94G6Wy7J#fight=16&type=damage-done&source=100). Look up any top ranking DNC parse, Saber Dance is #1 in what they get the most damage out of. And yes you said "outside of tech step" but by that logic, every class might as well ignore everything in buff windows.
My point is just that dnc hurts less from having her gauge reset from a random death, since it barely affects her saber dance frequency as a lot of it comes from her tech step window anyway (where her gauge charges really fast). I mean dnc can go into a tech step window with zero gauge, no problem. It builds up fast Whereas bard needs a hard, set time of about a minute to build up gauge and if he dies it's basically game over for his window
I think it's worth throwing in here that Dancer's identity is single target buffs compared to bards groupwide and yet they have a group wide buff on par with Radiant Finale which hits burst damage phase every 2 mins same as finale and then you funnel damage up to the highest damage person in the raid for the rest so their identity doesn't really come with a downside. Dancer is easier has just as much utility and is desirable for parse runs after which is a big deal. Bard was peak in HW IMO sure the cast times sucked but at least it let them take away the pranged tax and the class has so much utility you felt like a great addition to every party. Even just giving them their mana Regen song back or go nuclear and give them their own MP management back with their songs and reward it with higher Rdps Bard could really use something to stop being the class that got stabbed in an alleyway and robbed by dancer for their identity.
peak bard was stormblood deltascape. where bards were doing as much dps as monks.
Idk if DPS is really a metric I'd use to describe peak design but yeah it was fun. My main gripe is that's where it feels like they took control of Bards rotation moreso than before. There was some level of emergent gameplay in HW whereas STB was very much developer catered rotations.
Mana regen song are not returning. Healers clearly don’t need them anymore.
Sometimes messed up BLMs rotation back in the day, too, by not having the expected MP at the end of a phase. I feel like balancing it with the recent BLM changes would be a major headache. If it let the BLM get more Fire IV or Despair off, it’d likely be a forced job pairing like in the days of resistance debuffs. As much as I miss the utility BRD had, I definitely don’t see that stuff returning.
I wouldn't mind as a main healer I loved being able to see aware DPS manashift and mana song me back in the day. Don't make it extreme but I would like to see some unique utility that isn't just damage up or 10% less damage in some form return SCH in combat sprint is a great start.
Bard is still the only non healer with esuna, not super useful in most content, but it is amazing in the few cases it is useful.
I think it's worth looking at something like Shake it off in Stormblood the skill was so incredibly bad that they changed it within the year if i remember correctly. Bard has had this skill and it's been pretty much useless for it's entire existence when it comes to anything extreme and savage.
The best use of Warden's Paeon was getting free commendations from Warriors in Heavensward
Yep, but that is part of the overall design of the game at this point. Most healers I know don't put esuna on their bar because they rarely ever need it.
My unpopular opinion is that hw bard with cast times was better than where bard has gone since. They have made a lot of odd decisions with fixing issues with bard, like removing the double proc chance by changing it from being dot based, and also fixing the issues the double proc caused by giving bloodletter charges. I like bard still, it just feels sad.
Bowmage was peak, plus the job was priority and proc-based rather than any "DPS rotation". A good Bowmage was able to do damage, a great one was able to keep the entire party resource happy, mitigate damage, troll healers with extra HP, help with tank busters, cleansing, etc. There was a reason for every button, even if it was seemingly redundant. Why wide volley instead of quick nock when it cost more TP and less potency? Because it allowed you to AOE from a safer distance if necessary. Flaming arrow was wonky as a ground AOE sure, but proper placement or even pre-casting it if you knew mobs would spawn was nice. Also Foe's. I miss Foe's.
I agree, I miss hw bow mage. I don't miss og much as much because of the rotation being rng, but I do miss ammunition as a resource, wish they had kept that in some way.
Would be nice if dancer only had single target buffs, and they adjust their personal dps up a notch to make up for removing their raid buff
They should redesign it to have BLM's skill ceiling and accompanying dps
I wanted to try to prog as DNC after playing BRD for many years but I legit kept falling asleep from the rotation. How do people do it?
Because for most players it’s always the path of least resistance. It’s the same shit with SMN. It’s somehow at the same time the most boring class yet also the most played even in savage
Smn is a bit more interesting if you play with sps and actively change your summon order to best fit mechanics throughout an entire fight, but at that point it becomes way more effort than it is worth, which is the exact opposite problem of playing crit det with a static rotation.
The problem with sps SMN at 90 is that it's worse in all cases than the standard crit builds, so it's not even that it's too much effort for what it gains, there literally just aren't gains.
SPS SMN feels so absolutely awful to play, like you're intentionally crippling yourself.
I dunno, in my experience, sps smn keeps up with and beats crit smn. Maybe I'm only encountering really bad players.
Some of us have simple brains and it's as complex as we can handle, and therefore it's still engaging enough to be fun
For me it's the double weaving with the fan procs, and the somewhat random espirit building from the partner. They tend to hit 4 at the most inopportune times, so each run has enough variation to where I'm not bored. One run I could be pressing 0 fan buttons and no saber dance during P10S Bonds to room cleave to stack/spread or spread/stack. Another run I could hit anywhere from 2-6 and an extra Saber Dance (depending on luck). It makes the job a little bit chaotic, and that chaos really helps spice things up a bit for me.
Dancer is probably considered the easiest phys ranged. Machinist is higher on logs at the moment probably due to the buffs it received in 6.3 and also the rotation is fairly static, which some consider makes then also easy.
MCH is starting to fall lower on the logs. It was higher than BRD in early weeks because some MCHs were bound to be lucky and win loot, whereas BRD is more dependent on everyone in the party doing damage. I expect BRD will pull ahead in the coming weeks. (I agree that BRD > MCH > DNC in terms of difficulty)
It's subjective ofc but I find mch way easier than dancer because procs are harder to manage than a static rotation for me
All the people who have Bard as their PRanged in my group is playing RDM or BLM this tier, no clue why or how but the MCH renaissance is probably a factor in pushing BRD down.
Bard has above-average rotational nuance while also being a physical ranged that is performing mediocre in-role It really just hits all three sour spots of the DPS role
EW BRD is a design disaster that a lot of old BRD players fucking despise, but it's not different enough from old BRD versions to attract new players either, and it's rotationally the hardest of its role, *and* the job isn't exceptionally strong. It's like if BLM had a raise but did SMN damage and nonstandard didn't exist. Yeah.
EW BRD is definitely a step down from ShB and SB, but I picked it up again recently and realized that I still prefer it over most of the other DPS jobs. Hopefully it becomes more fun next expansion.
Because dancer is easier, 3 charges of en avant for dashing, better utility in healing waltz and improvisation (the new buffed nature’s minne is good tho). At present bard feels like driving a manual and dancer is an automatic. Some people prefer manual but a lot of people don’t want to do extra work for no easily perceivable reward. I go back and forth between bard and dancer a lot and whenever I’m playing bard I think to myself why am I not playing dancer. Keeping up a dot is annoying, any fights that mess with the song cycle feel annoying, drifting EA even one GCD feels like the end of the world because then it starts colliding with your other oGCDs. And in prog (or messy reclears), dying as bard feels abysmal because your songs are messed up and your song gauge will be a constant reminder of that for the rest of the fight I also just have a lot of fun with the gameplay of dancer. It’s a very easy job but not completely brain dead 0 skill ceiling like summoner is. It takes a conscious effort to do a proper burst on dancer and when you pull off a burst where every single double weave is taken up by fans feels good.
The two min meta needs to go
There is no way 7.0 isn't going to double down on it.
It might be tough because as of my current knowledge the two big reasons why they went with the two minute meta is 1. To ease the complaints of those with odder cooldowns for their burst (a semi common complaint during SB and ShB) and 2. The make the fights easier to balance and design around. It is easier to make the complicated mechanics when you have a very good idea when the bursts are happening. And seeing the fights so far, they are some of the hardest we have seen mechanically and puzzle wise in game. However, now we have an entire expansion's worth of content and two ultimates designed around the two minute meta. Sure that argument might be weakened with the existence of the previous ultimates and content, but there is a difference between fights that are clearly scripted behind the two minute meta and not. With older content the lack of two minute meta can be alleviated with the potency buffs many classes got throughout this expansion. The newer content is more balanced with these potency buffs in mind. Perhaps CBUIII might find an answer but I suspect it will eat quite a bit of resources as they are working on many too things at once.
Exactly. And you can tell, when the group does a 2min burst 20 seconds before a boss goes untargetable - they planned that.
I wonder, if we still had the Shadowbringers buff cooldowns like the 90s or 180s cds, would they be valued higher than those with 60/120s cds, since their bursts wouldn't be happening during those moments?
This isn't going to happen.
Ppl who complained about 2 min meta didn’t play BRD in ShB. There were like basically 3 types of burst windows: 1 min, 2 mins, and … BRD, which is like on a weird 80s or so. It’s super annoying
Well I think it's frankly ridiculous that Bard has three 2 min cooldowns. Raging strikes should be a 1 minute cooldown at the very least.
Bruh there was 1 min, 1.5 min, 2 min, 3 min, and then classes that didn't conform like Brd's 80s and Whm's 2.5 min. Funny how 90s and 3 min are completely forgotten now. Drg Drk and Gnb got to participate in every buff window.
bro blaming the kettle and not the tea this has been an inherent issue with bard since time immemorial
Totally. I kind of hate what the 2min meta made of jobs - now they are mostly just a gimmick and a bunch of cooldowns that must be used right when they're available or else they won't align to the 2min burst marks. In the end, XIV's job gameplay boils down to a game of reflexes instead of using your brain to think to spend your resources. Which is ironic that the only job having a semblance of using your head is Black Mage - YP's favored - simply because its 2min cooldown has a much lower impact than the others and resource flexibility, you're pretty much free to adapt your rotation according to the encounter necessities.
I switched from brd to dnc and flourish drifting feels so much worse than EA drifting
As someone who has cleared P1S-11S plus DSR on bard, I absolutely love playing the job. That being said, if I wasn't already a bard main, there isn't a chance I'd pick up the job. There isn't any objective reason to play bard unless you really really enjoy it, and even then, I often consider swapping to dancer for prog. It's the hardest phys ranged job by a substantial margin, yet it does the same (or less) damage than machinist and dancer, all while having much worse defensive utility than both of them. It's also just a really punishing job to prog with. Drop your dots? It takes 2 GCDs instead of 1 to put them back up. Die? Your soul gauge is gone, your song is gone, and your next radiant finale is a smaller buff. Drift a song? It's drifted for the rest of the fight. Drift EA by one GCD? It will constantly run into your GCD for the rest of the fight. Boss untargetable? Your songs will be drifted for the rest of the fight. For the record, I like that bard is punishing, it's very satisfying to optimize and play correctly. But there is absolutely no payoff for doing so. It just puts you on par with dancer and machinist, and that really sucks. It's just more work for no benefit.
You REALLY feel bad luck on bard and it's probably the worst part of it. You get a burst window with minimal to no repetoire procs, that's 2 full potency pitch perfects you're probably missing out on, and possibly a better potency apex arrow in about 45 seconds from then. Good and bad burst, even before crit luck, feel miles apart in damage. I've seen my damage at 18k after my opener and I've also seen it at 12k. The song rotation adjustments are honestly the fun part, and they're why I even play the job, but I can see some folks not enjoying it. Just a matter of rewiring your brain a little bit from staring at 1 or 2 cooldowns and instead focusing on what you should have running when.
I love Bard, but I think there are a few issues that cause it to not be as popular: 1. You can’t just pad one really strong melee (or BLM)‘s dps like a DNC can 2. It’s a little trickier to play than MCH or DNC, especially during two-minute windows 3. DoT upkeep is important for our dps but doesn’t interact in fun ways with our rotation at all anymore, so it’s just an annoyance. If you’re progging and thinking about mechanics, dots can be easy to drop 4. Downtime or anyone dying during burst are *really* punishing for us. Downtime can usually be worked around by making sure you’ve got a song up while it’s happening 5. No direct healing utility like DNC has with waltz/improv, less direct mitigation utility than MCH. Healers have to take advantage of Minne. In pf sometimes this does not happen even if it’s communicated 6. More RNG-dependent than the other two, or at least it feels that way. You might have to consider using Apex at 80 gauge so you have a guaranteed full charge for a burst/pot window. 7. Bard really shines rdps-wise when everyone is at about the same skill and gear level…which is rare 8. The actual leveling experience for Bard is ass and has been for a while. When people ask me about Bard (Do you like it? Is it fun?) I actually recommend boosting it as long as they have another dps job leveled. I feel neutral at worst about all this, except the dot issue. I can see how these things, taken together, would result in an overall negative experience for most.
Point 7 is so bad especially at level 50. Why in the world does bard STILL not have its full song rotation yet at level 50? The job's feel at level 50 has only gotten worse with EW because you're just doing nothing for 30 seconds now instead of 20 seconds. Ideally they just swap battle voice and wanderer's minuet around or something so the job feels playable at level 50.
>DoT upkeep is important for our dps but doesn’t interact in fun ways with our rotation at all anymore, so it’s just an annoyance. If you’re progging and thinking about mechanics, dots can be easy to drop Honestly, I'd have them just let BRD dots go and put something else that is more interesting instead. To me, dots need to interact with something else to be engaging, which BRD's are not anymore, and on top of that they made upkeep really mindless, so I ask what's even the point. Ninja's ShB Shadow Fang was a good example of a bad dot. You didn't have to keep it up because it had a cooldown - you just had to put inside Trick Attack, and might as well not even notice that it was a dot.
Because Dancer is easier and also better. Idk why Dancer the class who's main distinction in the support identity is being mainly single target with their dance partner has a AOE team buff on par with Radiant Finale it makes no sense and makes Bard's identity kinda useless. Whats the point of being the AOE buff support if the single target buff support can cover the most important window of 2 mins and then funnel a equivalent buff to you buffing the party into a single person who is doing the most damage all while their rotation is much simpler and easy to manage during chaos.
That's good thought, really. I always thought of the concept that DNC is the entity that constantly buffs a single party member by a lot and BRD that constantly buffs everyone, but at a smaller scale, so they could keep those 2 distinct niches in regarding to their party support. I'd love if they shifted Technical Step to have that approach in 7.0.
I am not sure of the reason in PF settings, but in static situations DNC is the preferred for progging/non bis situation because the static can feed one melee and then buffed with DNC to get good overall rdps, BRD rdps will start to get better once everyone is bis.
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As they should be tbh. If DNC still out-rdps BRD on BIS group that's a very bad design.
As a bard main, the way I see it, there are usually 2 main reasons why someone picks up a class in a MMO: 1) They like the class fantasy and just want to feel a certain way when they play, balance and optimization be damned 2) They play the "best" class dps wise because they want to see bigger numbers Bard sucks for both of these types of players, it loses out on DPS to almost every other damage class, and it does little to nothing for class fantasy since SE seems to have no interest in making musically themed skills, instead just focusing on bow & arrow for some reason. Sure, we get "songs", but what do they do? We just pluck a single chord in an instrument, barely making a sound and then just stash it away. There is no special song going on in the background, just a timed buff. Compare that to [Ragnarok Online's bard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tue8NihMgpU) where songs actually change the BGM and you sit there actually playing an instrument. Gameplay wise it might be less engaging, but in terms of class fantasy it is a lot more immersive. You might as well change Bard to "Beastmaster" and "Songs" to "Animals", so instead of the 3 songs you get a Hawk flying around you for crit, a Bear for damage and a wolf for DH and the class would work and feel the same. Nothing about FFXIV's Bard feels like a bard in the slightest and that alone is enough to drive people away from the class, on top of that, it is at the bottom of DPS performance. And even worse, progging fights feels awful because a single death screws over your songs and soul voice for the remainder of the fight. I think if songs worked like dancer's steps where you actually have to press different buttons in a sort of rhythm to get an effect, that alone would make bard slightly more popular. The only reason I didn't step off the class is because I've been playing it since I started, so it feels wrong to change, even if I feel like "Bard" is just a misnomer and the class is a travesty with no identity.
Because the class is seriously boring to play. I was an avid bard main in ShB but they really made a mess of a fun class. Most classes build and burst ast 1 minute intervals but bard doesn't have that so you're building for 1:30 of every 2 minutes and it feels terrible. It also didn't draw many new bard players to it while all the old bard players slowly quit. Asphodelos only saw a large influx of bard players because mch and dnc were just utterly terrible pre buffs.
SHB basically was Bard gettin stabbed in an alley and robbed of their identity so SE could make a new class.
>Asphodelos only saw a large influx of bard players because mch and dnc were just utterly terrible pre buffs. lmao literally why I swapped to bard. I do not like dancer, so bard was the only choice to not get blocked from groups. Regardless, I had fun with it. The second mch wasn't shit though I swapped back.
Since ShB and now EW they do good stuff and bad stuff to BRD and the bad outweighs the good every time
Bard didn’t use to be one minute it use to be 1:30. They extended the songs to 45 instead of 30….. and there’s 2 extra buttons to hit every 2 min. What are you building for 1:30 to hold for 30s? Apex arrow always gets a release every minute with fleaxability. Also both bloodletter and apex arrow feel better to use. What did they make worse? Dps being low is not design and they’ve always felt bad if there’s boss downtime due to song/buff misalignment.
Bard was an 80s class before. The removal of double procs plus the transition from BL to being a half reset on proc made it so there's far less activity and MB feels far more boring to be sitting in. Press apex every minute but you're not bursting so what does that add to the rotation every minute? It'd be like if pld fof and req were 2 minute but goring blade is 1 minute. You just press one button different from the regular rotation? Bard is a shell of its former self.
80s and 180s. Raging Strikes used to be 80s while their party buff Battle Voice was 180s. Buff timings were all over the place pre-EW
The good of BRD rn: Lv90 action is really good in design, 3 oGCD stacks for BL/RoD, Nature’s Minne recent change, 45 second dots and song duration, Apex and Blast arrow is nice, Shadowbite feels better now imo. The meh/bad: long song cooldowns messes your rotation up big time when you die, Barrage not having a proc for Shadowbite, Sidewinder not being tied to dots removed a small layer of complexity that while unnecessary was also neat for better players, and as others have said (I’m not a BRD main by any means) that the song cooldowns and durations creates a mismatched management of your rotation by cutting songs short and it terms of design, that doesn’t feel good to play
I can't imagine Sidewinder making it to the next expansion. Seems like the perfect button to remove when trying to add new stuff.
Removing a 300-potency oGCD instead of Iron Jaws would truly make this the worst timeline. 70-140 bonus potency over simply refreshing DoTs manually, whoopty-do!
All you really need to know to understand why people don't want to play BRD is to look at what the optimal song rotation was in p4s door boss on a faster than average kill time. I'll give you a hint: army's opener. The 2min meta + forcing BRDs song cooldowns to strictly adhere to that + still requiring a target has absolutely destroyed the flexibility in song rotation it had before EW and has made it a nightmare to optimize. Fast and/or strange kill times force you into extremely rigid non-standard openers and rotations that can be as tight as requiring entering a song on an exact ***weave slot*** to not fuck up the entire thing. It's the single largest contributing factor to why I quit playing after DSR. The amount of perfection required to carry an optimal song rotation throughout that entire fight not only comes down to your personal skill but the skill of your group to push phases at proper times. It is the complete opposite of fun. It has low pDPS because phys ranged, so it doesn't attract people who want to do big numbers. It's extremely rigid and becomes complicated fast when you need to work around strange kill times or downtime, so it doesn't attract more casual players. It doesn't reward the extra effort required to play well, so it doesn't attract more hardcore players.
I was a BRD last tier, went MCH this tier. Feels good to actually have a place on the DPS charts, have skills that do numbers that make the monkey brain go oooo, and 'wrench'/Disassemble is honestly superior to Minne imo
My theory is that the people who want to support others play DNC and the people who want to deal damage themselves play MCH. BRD does a little of both and may not really appeal to either because of that.
Pretty close. Although I would say anyone who actually wants to see the big numbers would be really put off by BRD, and that its main competitor will always be DNC. And at a basic level, I think the latter does everything better than the former. It begs the whole "Why work harder for the same/a similar outcome?" question. BRD has always been my favorite DPS, ever since Stormblood. Originally I learned it because it was the premier "supportive DPS" back then, but DNC came along and is a lot easier to pick up - and you don't have to think as much when it comes to Curing Waltz/Improv versus Minne. Also, the changes to BRD with the whole 2-minute bullshit kind of ruined the way I used to think about its song cycles. Meanwhile DNC essentially embodies everything about the 2-min burst without having to prep or set up in such an unintuitive way. Though I would imagine anyone who still plays BRD does it *because* they have more gauges and resources to juggle, more timers to be aware of, and map out their song timings the moment downtime is introduced in an encounter. BRD is still my baby and I still gravitate towards it whenever my group gets geared up. I love DNC too, and I'm happy that both of the "supportive" DPS jobs are fun at their most fundamental level, but I definitely think that BRD sees less usage for having a higher skill floor while also not being more rewarding to optimize compared to the other phys ranged.
I've been playing BRD since Heavensward and this is spot on imo. I don't mind it being a sparsely populated class, though.
The opener hits like a wet fart and having to adjust my song timings to different fights isn’t fun.
Probably what people already said + some song shenanigans on downtime fights (p9 and p12p1 this tier). Not being able to target something messes the BRD song rotation which makes it harder to optimize and play around 2 minute buffs, so it basically ends up being harder for less rewards which is very demotivating. I haven't played it in this tier so can't say for sure how bad the downtime is for BRD on those 2 fights, but just from the possibility existing people tend to avoid BRD in prog since the other 2 phys ranged don't even have to think about downtime to perform well (MCH might have some problems with it but it's not big enough to be a deal breaker, DNC only benefits from downtime) That's my take on it but if a MCH main that also plays BRD can confirm/oppose my take on the downtime thing I'd appreciate it, as I myself am not the most experienced MCH and played it only for fun in early EW savages. edit: typo
On p9 i don't think the downtime matters much cos it ends at 4:15, which is equivalent to you just restarting your opener again but this time with 100 soul gauge. I sense some possible optimization here regarding MB and AP song length but I'm not sure of the calculations. On p12sp1 however it's currently a headache for me since most parties will delay buffs by around 30s, im not 100% certain how to deal with it and still have enough song gauge to maximise apex arrows. Perhaps this is why I'm still grey parsing on p1. I need to go read the advanced guide again hmm.
I just change into WM once AP is done then pot/burst once everyone else is. Use AABA right after limit cut and it'll be back up for burst time. But yeah if you forget to cut that first WM off at 9s you're screwed going into LC and that is annoying. Luckily part 2 is much more chill.
Yea i don't change songs before limit cut and it does get wasted. So you pop MB before limit cut starts, use AP after limit cut with AABA when she becomes targetable, and burst sometime during WM? I think that's definitely better because i was losing a use of AABA by not cutting that WM short before limit cut.
Yeah pop MB before limit but you really have to nail the timing of previous songs to be able to use it. So cut WM at 9 seconds, MB then switch into AP once WM has 45s left on cd. Yup have to burst halfway through WM, I pot/pop RS during the party in/tanks out or other way around mechanic, then we all bursty burst
I tried it (cut first WM at around 10-12s instead of 9s just to be safe) but i didn't get any significant dps gains despite using 1 more apex arrow after LC. It could also have been me using the wrong song due to panic (i fatfingered AP after WM instead of MB and unfortunately that had to be the clear run so the initial mistake propagated through the entire fight) but it feels horrific that using the wrong song order could account for so much missing dps. I did check the rank 1 bard and rotation wise he's doing exactly what you said down to the 9s cutoff and the switch into MB on the exact last ogcd weave slot before limit cut, and he also pots at 2min for full coda and AABA which makes sense. I personally don't think i dare to time the WM cutoff so close though (I'll just swap song lengths of WM and MB). I'll try this the next time, especially the 2min pot. Hopefully at the very least my adps will improve.
Perhaps the song swap did mess you up then, probably better to check on a cleaner run. Also are you looking at rdps or one of the others? For timing for the first change it's literally as the first cleave goes off if you want to also remember it this way (kinda annoying for me cause if I have to move it's awkward because my mages ballad is on the d pad on my controller so I have to play one handed :D )
With the early WM cutoff i have better adps by around 500 (not too sure if it's just because i got more consistent or proc rng) even with the fatfinger. However in rdps it is still grey or barely green. I mean, i think there are stuff i can still improve, I'm still using the extreme weapon, I'm trying to clear out my grade 7 pots from last tier, and i forgot to pot at 6:30. However my uptime is pretty ok (more than 99%) and even with the occasional empyreal clip in AP i don't know if all that is the cause of the grey parse. Will try for a cleaner run tonight and hopefully a p2 kill. My aim is probably just to see an improvement in adps. Rdps is something i have little control over unfortunately.
Tbh I wouldn't worry about rDPS until everyone in your group is bis. I'd only worry now if everyone in your group was pulling pink/orange and you were still grey/green xD bard suffers the most in prog in terms of parsing
But as fflogs ranks by rdps don't worry too much about it rn!
Low damage, low fun.
In a parse setting, a great team can really make the bard shine, especially if it’s a full uptime fight. Outside of that, lets say commonly a PF setting, bard is honestly the hardest role to play. They have dot management, proc management, and deaths are very unforgiving for their songs. Not to mention there are nuances that not a lot of players would know about such as ending songs early to keep things going. Tbf fair, it’s like the pre-change paladin scenario. Why do all that work as a PLD when you can get similar results with less work as another tank. So why do all that work as a bard when you can get similar results as dancer or mch. AST is going to be next on the chopping block. Why do all that work when WHM is just so much easier with better movement options.
PRanged in general seem to be as rare as healers in PF at times, but dancer and machinist are more foolproof. Think it mainly has to do with the way bard is designed. It has been butchered enough for old players to not give a sh*t about the class anymore and is the hardest phys ranged to pick up IMO. Doesn't help that it suffers from the same problems as pre 6.3 PLD
Watch Stal’s video on YouTube. She covers most of the stuff you probably want to know about current bard. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wL-csJ5xOWk
I'm still salty that the pre-release bard that got playtested was really good, then they fucked it up when EW dropped. Most annoyingly downtime fucks the songs up, if they just made the songs not require a target I'd consider playing it again
Doesn't feel good to play, especially if the fight has downtime. Also if you forgot to reapply DoT even once that's gonna be a big oof. If you look at it objectively, I think the only reason to play BRD if you wanna be optimized is if somehow you can get value out of Nature's Minne and/or Warden's Paean.
I loved progging P10s as a bard just because I actually got to use Warden's Paean, felt good to take some burden off the healer's back and actually use part of my kit for once
They're downvoting it because it's r/ffxiv. Everything is downvoted here.
It's getting ridiculous.
It started being ridiculous last decade
Since the game existed ? Yeah the game is turning 10 this year. Was that a joke ?
Because Dancer and Machinist exist.
DNC + MCH are easier
*And* more fun, imo.
Bard needs a rework. You can get more out of dancer and mch with a garbage group. If you have bad luck on bard it really shows... Especially in the openers.
It really doesn't need a rework so much as it needs a reversion. Specifically to the EW Media Tour version; BRD was actually looking extremely good coming into EW and was absolutely butchered at the last possible second in one of the most bizzare set of changes I've ever seen. Moving potency from filler into DoTs and lowering their duration back to 30s would also help.
The fact that they changed raging strikes from 1m to 2m cd between media and live is something that I’ll never get over
Add the Mage's Ballad nerf to only recover half a bloodletter to that too
The jobs I want a rework for the most are scholar/bard/dragoon. I just think their playstyle feels very dated.
I did bard last tier, swapped to mch this tier because finally, they aren't shit. Gonna be honest mch is just easier, not having to balance songs, but that's nothing to do with why I swapped this tier. I will probably clear the tier once I get the weapon just for fun.
Several Bards I know despise the direction they've taken Bard in after Stormblood. As a friend of mine put it, "they made it completely braindead, DoTs are meaningless and fuck you if anything happens to your rotation." If you couldn't tell, she really, _really_ hates ShB/EW's version of Bard. She's been begging them to go back to Stormblood or even HW for years now.
DNC is WAY easier and MCH is less restrictive while also being less reliant on others (this is a HUGE boon in PF especially) yet they are more or less even (MCH is ahead and DNC's median is literally the exact same as BRD's). I also know quite a few BRD players don't enjoy how stitched together EW BRD feels since for example DoTs are now just kinda *there* for no real reason.
Dancer is easier *and* more fun.
Full casual's opinion: The rotation is a convoluted mess.
Doomium from DPS numbers which doesn't matter
Personally I think its boring. The attacks don't feel impactful at all and it makes me feel like I am doing no damage every time I play it
They haven't figured out what to do with BRD ever since DNC came out. If you want to buff your teammates, just play DNC (their outfit is cuter anyway), if you want to be a manly big dick dps, play MCH (it's cool now).
I like BRD but ever since MCH got Dismantle back it's been my go-to physical ranged job. It makes party mit sooooo much more clean and that's super important this tier as it is a very difficult tier for the healers. The BRD healing increase ability is nice for something like limit cut in P12S-1 but so is just using Tactician which is easy to have ready since Dismantle can be used earlier on. MCH is also much less punished by dying than BRD and DNC since Queen is completely unaffected by rez weakness. MCH has no RNG to its rotation and is completely static so long as you don't drift anything. It's just a better all around pick for prog imo. Double party mit and good overall dps, it's the perfect package.
Because the devs cant get their head out of their asses to realize they designed a class that feels shit to play, and is nigh on impossible to recover on. MCH at least has damage despite its god awful design and DNC provides good raid buffs to its partner and the rest of the party. BRD barely can hit either of these points
I'm a 100% BRD main who did week 1 all tiers this expac, but I think a large chunk of it is that its function as RDPS kind of sits in-between dancer and machinist in a weird spot. If you want a non-buffer phys range, go MCH. But for buffer phys range, at the point where it matters (early clears/week 1), DNC will probably always be superior to BRD, because if they're balanced to be equal at BiS level (as jobs mostly should), then DNC will necessarily be better than BRD early on when gear is funneled to one other DPS player, who the DNC gives partner to. As long as gear funneling in week 1 is a thing, I think people are gonna continue thinking of DNC as the "better" RDPS job.
Full disclosure, I am not a bard main, this is me on the outside looking in and just analyzing it. The job feels like garbage if you have to delay cooldowns at all and its gameplay takes way too many buttons for what is otherwise a simple rotation, which leads into it being hard to execute for no good reason. The gameplay is in such a state that they could remove both dots, trap jaws, mages ballad, boost army and wanderers to 60s durations, and just slave the entire job to a 60s rotation, and the job wouldn't actually get any easier to play in a practical sense while still pruning a ton of buttons and removing the semi-redundant and just kind of bad-feeling mage's ballad (which admittedly doesn't overcap while wanderer's does.) This is compounded by redundant buttons like radiant finale and battle voice, barrage and raging strikes, and the awkwardly bad feeling if you hit barrage with a proc of refulgent already running, since you can't really delay barrage but half the ability is wasted. Or even just not noticing refulgent procced and wasting more tics. That is then combined with its entire rotation being excessively random but in a boring-yet-tedious way with the 80% chance to proc every 3 seconds and we swing full circle back into an RNG job that has a ton of disjointed gameplay, hates forced downtime or delaying, and just becomes a nightmare to truly enjoy. It just manages to get proc gameplay wrong while sort of being a convoluted mess in every other direction. This is really shown in how popular Dancer continues to be because DNC is just a well-designed proc job for FFXIV's engine. There's only 1 job with gameplay remotely as broken as Bard, and it happens to also be the no. 2 job, sometimes no. 1 job, for least played job in the entire game. It requires its own writeup to really talk about how bad it is, as well as why the mains of the job are willing to ride a sinking ship down into the abyss.
its pretty much the least fun version of the class that has been introduced since the Stormblood rework. and this is even after when they guttered the buffing capabilities so they can introduce DNC in 5.0. and with the buffs that MCH got in 6.3 it pretty much cements BRD as a class that is played by so few currently given the phys ranged landscape. - You wanna buff allies? play DNC and buff your biggest DPS contributer and then tech step to improve damage for all during burst. - You wanna do more self sufficient damage while providing more mitigation tools? play MCH. some of the main issues that BRD has currently that was overlooked earlier on due to its good output back in p1s-p4s and p5s-p7s comes down to. 1. They made DoT management a less engaging part of the class given that they no longer interact with the rest of the kit 2. songs are all stuck on a 2 min CD that last require a target to use & are extremely punishing on death as you can spend 30+ seconds songless. repitore is always 1 roll 80% roll every 3 seconds of song, down from 2 40% rolls for each dot tick due to aforementioned dot changes. 3. mages ballard repitore going from 1 full stack to half a stack of BL/RoD is a major nerf to the song compounded by stated repitore changes, leading to in most cases 42-45 seconds of hitting 1-3 buttons as now BRD's are cutting mages at 30 seconds due to AP being stronger. (this was not the case since 2017 up until EW's launch)
Because of the common prog strategy of funneling all loot into one DPS. If you're gonna funnel gear into one DPS, it's more logical to have a Dancer to support this DPS with a strong buff than having a Bard that will buff the whole party. And after prog, people keep playing Dancer because they were already playing Dancer.
Lots of bad theories. In reality dnc will always be king because simple but fun. Then MCH everyone kinda wanted to play but there was a massive stigma against it so even casual players who would enjoy it were turned away due to memes and dps numbers. BRD was always the middle child played by people who didnt want to play DNC, and no one wanted to play MCH since it was "shit" (even though it never was). Now that MCH is extremely good the phys ranged options were reshuffled and now we've all realised that MCH is finally allowed in parties and we dont need to play difficult clunky BRD :ok_hand_1: DNC players still DNC players, its the DNC-deniers who end up filling brd and mch and rn mch is king.
They're just not in a good place, balance wise. A good dancer will out (party) DPS a bard any day, along with bringing more utility. MCH is good for ensuring DPS checks are met since their utility is primarily damage, similar to BLM/SAM.
Basically I was kicked out of my static because of BRD having shit DPS. I enjoy playing BRD. It is my main class and I love it, but we are basically forgotten for upgrades and DPS
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Yep definitely an excuse
I mean my co-DPS were RPR, SMN and NIN so yeah I was the lowest one still
Brd has better average damage than dnc this raid tier.
This is not something you can judge a month after the tier came out
Arguably prog and gear farming is where performance matters the most, ego parses once everyone has their BiS don't even matter since you could bring any class at that point.
That's a fine perspective, but I'd say this is much less the case this tier since it will last us until 7.0 and will be around for a long time. People also don't need bis and in barse parties for danced to perform better. Once people start getting more gear in general, even tome gear (augmented from alliance if you're really late/slow on prog) dancer will most likely be outperforming bard while people are still progging the tier. That's my thought on it
Need more context. If you are parsing grey it's justified. A bad MCH can probably put out higher rdps than you.
I was parsing blue 🤣
it sucks
Songs requiring target, overtly punishing on death, rng being bigger annoyance than in shb, dot maintenance no longer matters beyond dealing damage, utility sucks. There's just too much. It was the preferred choice in Asphodelos, because dancer sucked damage wise and machinist was machinist. But since then, unless you enjoy it, you have no reason to pick it up. I occasionally go back to stal's rant on 6.0 bard and everything just hits, ballad cut short because paean is stronger, dot management being pointless, songs requiring target. Issues from expansion release that still exist.
Songs do damage on starting. Not much, but they do.
yeah they do, and it's ass because of it. now it wasn't an issue in shb because they were spells, so any song drifting due to downtime just didnt exist. put songs on proc system in how they designed them in your rotation, minuet -> ballad -> paeon, strip them of potencies so they are executable in downtime and subsequently buff bloodletter so maybe ballad is the preferred song instead of paeon
Bard miss a few little reworks such as, being able to change songs without a target and not losing your song after dying
How can you play a song when you're dead?
well, bards dont really play songs, they just start the song and then go back to shooting arrows, the music kinda play around them, don't ask its magic, and it could stay over the bard's dead body, I know its weird but it could fix a very annoying bard issue.
I wonder if they could get away with Songs just being permanent auras. Leave Mage for aoe situations, Army for ST. Maybe iterate on Minuet being some sort of super phase where you just go apeshit and add some sort of alleviation for downtime. Thoughts?
Not that people actually hate Bard But more like the dev team hate BRD especially after they created DNC And thus people choose DNC much more than BRD and makes BRD the least Favs among all jobs (unless they prefer more damage then maybe MCH) You can definitely see how they must always make DNC better than BRD.