How Would You Fix Bard?

Removing buffs upon pop seems like a pretty bad idea unless you exclude all buffs with a recast of more than a minute or so, or give a super revitalizer like effect upon pop as well. Losing buffs like berserk, last resort, innin, ect every time in a situation where you're doing multiple short duration fights would be super annoying without some sort of reset.

On the bard thing I'd suggest boost the effects of songs, but only while the bard that cast them is in the party/alliance.

Nerf idris to the ground.
Minuet's, paeon, etude's, minne and mambo: Percentage based buffs.
Status resist songs merged into one buff.
Merge preludes and madrigal into one buff.
Minne: add PDT/cure taken increase
Mambo: add shield block/parry rate
Carols: add MDT/MDB
Paeon: Add max health increase(% based)
Ballads: Add fast cast
Status resist songs: add Magic evasion


Make honor march a default spell and not require an aeonic(lol).
Nerf HMP's/rift stuff to a reasonable number so obtaining a durabla isn't so expensive.

Hell, you could just turbo buff bards defensive buffs and make it the "defensive buffer" or something too.

It's fine the way it is.

Give it access to better DD gear, kthx.

Problem with buffing jobs at this point is that SE has a horrible habit of over buffing a job which makes jobs bandwagon for a long period of time.

As someone pointed out as well the buff/drop & pop is still an issue that leaves both cor and brd out of the loop. One thing I can see is having songs and rolls drop like bubbles. This is the only way to increase the likelihood of locking a brd spot without greatly increasing potency of songs. However, at this point in the game I think all buffs should be % based, especially with the amount of power you get from geo and unresisted % based buffs/debuffs.

Adjusting the song types to handle fights differently would be fairly effective at increasing the types of jobs included into most content. The downfall of this concept would be that you are adjusting various support roles to be set for specialist buffs instead of more universal. What I mean by that is, shifting the focus of buffs on each of the major support jobs to be used in each type of fight. I.E. Geo is magic dmg buff for nukes, rdm can be more magic def for pt, brd can be more melee def, cor can be more melee offensive type buffs. (I don't like the idea of specialist classifications though, just an idea)

Another option could be more of the fights like Oryx which means no geo-debuffs or you could enhance the effect of certain debuffs on various nm's. This would increase the potency of rdm and/or brd enfeebles. (I am sure there can be more implementations of this functionality that I am not thinking of.)

Make Honor march normal song, give aeonic a full new tier of spell that would be percentage based. As for the rest of the support jobs, cor needs a 3rd roll already, rdm needs to be pulled out of 75 cap enfeebles and all the merit based spells to be normal spells. All merit spells should be accessible by all jobs at this point. They should be stronger and more accurate than their lower tier versions. Merits should only make them stronger and more accurate.

Make a guitar.

OP said not to nerf geo. I like the idea of brd being unique with defensive buffs. Scherzo plays into that well.

massacre F(*&#$^&$% elegy!

Regardless of anything that happens to bard or any job, idris needs to be nerfed to the ground. Yesterday.

I think bard being the "defensive buffer" would be cool and make it completely unique!

Nerf Everything.

Justkiaruthings <3

Our buffs have been resetting in ambuscade and htbc and everyone seems fine with that.

Both of those have a long enough reentry time for berserk to be ready(and opportunity to easily reset at nomad moogle if not). It's not the end of the world, but having things like berserk and mighty guard only last one fight would be a significant negative.

Not saying it wouldn't be a good boost to brd or potentially even the game, but it'd absolutely shake up job balance a bit. COR would be garbage for low tiers if popping removed rolls every nm.

songs scaling mo betta with skill would be cool

also make it so that brd enfeebles cant be resisted.

I think the drop&pop is honestly fine, since it still makes Bard relevant, and it kind of mirrors the bard swapping of earlier days

Besides being kinda stupid and removing a dedicated member(s) from the fight, is there some mechanical reason why drop&pop isn't great?

It's bad because you're being asked to come a job and play a video game to not actually play a video game.

So basically yeah, it's because it's stupid and you're removing members from fights.

Or you could, like, not drop your BRD if they're a real player wanting to participate in the fight. 1 member's worth of HP will hardly be noticeable; don't know why people freak out about it so much.

This would change COR also. But to get away from it being a dual boxed mule for buff and drop job, have songs and COR rolls wear off when popping VWNM, Unity NM, Escha, and Reisenjima NMs.

Because woc likes to bene at 1% :S

Yes, you can do a lot of things.
The problem is people don't do things, and think silly things.

It has something to do with risk control. Making decisions to minimize the risk when fighting a dangerous NM with risky 1hr move isn't necessary "silly things".

If you are good enough to reliably get woc win without having to make decisions to minimize the risks then good for you. But not everyone could accomplish 100% win comfortably and sometimes decision has to be made. There's no need to attack people going for safer approach by reducing NM HP.

Bards are still good they just need new debuff spells

Change Minuet to ATTK/MAB and Madrigal to ACC/MACC. Just tossing em a bone.

next topic: "How would you fix COR?"

more realistically, it should be something along the lines of, full dispel will only dispel 1 or 2 songs. that wouldn't be as bad then, if the dispel priority of songs isn't random (for instance, if dispel prioritized last applied song per person)

I also like the idea of the whole Nightingale/Troubadour or Soul Voice gives songs debuff immunity.



aside from dispels, I think one problem lies more with the content than with the job. OP mentioned that BRD has more mobility, or is more versatile, than GEO and COR. do we have relevant endgame content to actually let BRD show this facet of its meta?

if we had relevant content to do where party members split up or have to cover more ground, something where GEO is not as valuable because it can't cover as much area (like, say, Nyzul, MB, some of Limbus, Dynamis, theoretical iLvl Garrison...I'm sure there's others) BRD could be more of a subject of interest. it's true that GEO can still fulfill its roles in these kinds of situations, but BRD does it a lot better and makes the party feel a lot less restrictive, and a lot more free.

a cool feature they could take advantage of is equipment that gives bonuses if songs are applied, like how Kuwunga Earring gives Madrigal: Attack+17. at present, most equipment with this feature are pretty boring or just suck. if they made them significantly better, enough to warrant bringing a BRD in party to activate someone's "Minuet: TP Bonus+750" ammo, or what have you, that'd be neat.

also, some JA that let's you AoE a song on a party member from a distance could be cool.


i'm inclined to agree with OP. Minuet is all right as static Attack+.

makes sense. then repurpose Prelude to like a Double Shot/Triple Shot or something.

just a theory, but when Madrigal and Prelude were made (before the RNG nerf), I feel that they were originally split so as to not give ranged DDs more than a fair amount of accuracy. yeah, Minuet is combined atk/r.atk, but from SE's perspective they may have thought if ranged DDs are melee'ing, they care more about TP gain than their melee DPS. thus they may have concluded that they benefit from both forms of accuracy, and they didn't bother splitting Minuet since their benefit of both forms of attack was minuscule.

maybe they didn't give it any thought though, maybe they were just stupid about it.

don't agree with them being mixed but would like to see some songs of their own like this. That being said, if this happened, I would prefer Carols be buffed, that way it allows room for a new universal m.eva song. I think it's fair and only makes sense that Single elemental resistance song > Universal magic resistance song, while still making the latter useful.

i think the solution is to just make these better. by themselves, they could be really useful as separate songs if they were actually potent. some moreso than others (if Gavotte was a guaranteed 100% chance to resist bind, no one would still use it)

could for instance, make T1 and T2 of these songs and have them function differently. maybe Scop's Operetta could give a thick chance to completely resist silence relative to singing/instrument skill, and Puppet's Operetta would be like a "silence-skin" that eats the next silence and then wears off. it'd still have to be balanced though and have a bit of recast.

something mentioned in an earlier post that falls in line with this is having a dispel resistance song with this mechanic, if it ate a full dispel move and wore off, protecting all other buffs in doing so.

besides that we're owed Massacre Elegy, at this point i feel like they gotta do something sorta "out there," for debuffs. an MB or SC window extension of a few seconds or something would be different.


would be nice, as long as it doesn't steal any spotlight from COR and doesn't just mimic GEO. something like a potent MB DMG+ song would be nice, at a glance. or sort of on the topic of dispel, could make a song with a lengthy recast that just mimics last song applied to each member. like, 4 party members had Minuet cast last, 1 party member had Ballad cast on them last, dispel ate them, cast Mimic song, applies song to all members as though it were that song... or just have a JA that does that.


to be honest we should just get a third 1hr that purges all of our songs in exchange for damage to target. that way the game would evolve into 18 man BRD zergs :)

make it possible to mb with requiem and give it helix2-like damage.

I think a good way to exclude buffs is the "stays after zoning".
Buffs that stay even after zoning wouldn't be taken away, everything else would.

It would greatly affect zerg strats I guess, but in the end I don't think it would make them completely unpractical, just a bit harder to perform.


This is a cool idea, but just like the "songs disappear when BRD drops" I don't think if it's technically possible with the instruments currently in the devs' hands.
I'm leaning for nope, not possible atm.
Dropping (most) buffs on pop is something very easy for them to do, they wouldn't really have to develop anything new but just apply an already existing instrument to UNMs ad Geas-Fete NMs.

But then again I think it's dangerous to focus too much on this "drop buffs on pop" feature.
As I've stated multiple times this feature *alone* would do almost nothing to make BRD (or buffers in general) more desireable.
It could be a nice thing but ONLY if done on conjunction with other tweaks.
Alone it would hardly make a difference and it would be more an annoyance than anything else.

No, please no.
I mean I agree Idris is OP (just like Daurdabla99? People are underestimating how *** broken Dau99 is just because lolBRD these days and because of Terpander) but nerfing Idris NOW would be a bad idea.
It's way too late.
If anything buff Dunna to +6 or something, but way too late to nerf Idris now without major (and rightful) rage from the players.

Depends on the cap of that skill.
If the caps remain the same but we just get better scaling it's ok.
If this is gonna force BRDs to create new, specific sets, farm new gear to reach what would initially be unreachable skill caps etc etc, could be a very annoying scenario for BRDs because it would force them to:
1) Farm more gear and wait months for such gear to be implemented
2) Would force BRDs to choose between duration and potency, it would be a very harsh choice in several circumstances

Plus personally I hate the idea of "fixing" something that's broken by adding new gear (in this case new, more powerful gear with +skill).
If a job is broken and needs balancing, *** fix the job instead of adding new gear. Got it SE? /emo


Most of the time it's not THAT hard to stick stuff on pretty much anything unless that mob is plain immune to something.
It's more an issue of those debuffs:
1) being easily eraseable by some mobs (hello Vinipata!)
2) being ***. Especially T2 Threnodies are incredibly lame considering where they should be.

Not all groups kill HELMs with 27 mins left on their timers.
More groups than you can imagine can't even kill those NMs, and when they do they struggle incredibly in a race against the clock or whatever else.
For group like these even one more player can be quite a considerable difference.

Plus we all know how it works, when you say "yes" to someone, how you gonna justify saying "no" to the others asking to join?
Sure you can cycle people around, make them take turns and all that stuff but this:
1) While it creates a better compromise, it's still not ideal and people are still sitting out
2) Creates additional stress to the people in charge of organizing things for your group

I dunno, HP scaling is not as much of a big deal as some people seem to be making it and in this regard I kinda agree with you.
At the same time though it's not something negligible that doesn't make a difference.
The difference is there, and it's quite noticeable even if it's not as those people want to make it look like.

This scenario would make things better (for the alliance) in some situations, and much worse (for the BRD) in other situations.
Situations where it's a short fight and the BRD wouldn't reapply songs regardless ==> it's very good
Situations where it's a longer fight and BRD is supposed to mantain songs up and rotate between pts ==> gonna be even worse than it is now

Imagine some people getting 1 song dispelled, others in the same pt getting 2 songs dispelled.
Imagine having to reapply fakes, then songs, then pianissimo, then those lovely NiTro songs with higher durations which will make it so lovely for you to overwrite, etc.
I mean srsly, if they have to make it into a "chance" to get 1-2 songs dispelled, I might as well keep the current mechanics honestly :x

Only thing that would make a real difference is if, under certain circumstances, you could make songs completely undispellable. Like NiTro songs or SV songs. Now THAT would make a difference :D
Altough honestly, to get back in topic of "what would you do to fix BRD?" this alone would hardly fix anything.


Like many people pointed out BRD could use a plethora of very welcome and due adjustments, but what's really important to make BRD actually desired into content (and not a drop&pop job) is to make so BRD is useful during the fight, period.
There's no other way.

To achieve this you could go several ways, probably multiple together, like other people suggested already.
Stuff like making buffs drop on pop, or giving new buffs useful for mages, or make debuffs actually matter etc etc.

^ reason why I hated escha on release. It worked that way.

No go away.