I was invited by Square Enix to check out FFXIV Dawntrail early, and here’s how BRD is changing as well as what I think it means for the future of the job!
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0:00 Intro
1:13 New Skills
3:19 Tooltips
#ffxiv #dawntrail #mediatour
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This is honestly amazing! Couldnt have hoped for a better result for my main. And the new bloodshot looks spicy af! Ty for the update!
As a BRD main, I still want to go back to Stormblood BRD, but this all looks pretty nice.
The changes on Bard… are not as good as people think, even if there is some good qol.
song activation without target means no more suffering from too slow or fast phases ( as long as we are not forced to cutscene or stun).
If we cannot use songs outside of combat, bard will once again suffer from either too slow or fast pulls.
No more awkward fishing for shadowbite prock, which should have been part of Endwalker in a first place.
Buffs back to 20 duration is welcome addition.
as for missed opportunities:
– Small leeway for song cooldown to 110s instead of 120, as forced cutscenes will cause things go badly misaligned and not to mention if we must be in combat during casual dungeon gameplay to activate songs. Also recovery from death is as usual very punishing due this.
– the cursed 5 yalm target ranged aoe which can easily be eaten by big hitbox foes on shadowbite etc. Should have been streamlined to same radius as rain of death. Having differing circle aoe sizes is not good.
– Paeon is still underwhelming. Even more so now that Ballad got single target buff in form of heartbreak shot trait and minuet for Aoe.
– Access to 3 coda on pull like everyone else has with their Gauges, Bard will be even more scuffed at fresh starts of encounters with another coda scaling ability.
looks like bard will be my new phys ranged flex job 😂
still no aoe DoT…
i was somehow lucky enough x100
A couple of things I'm wondering with these changes:
Barrage now grants a buff called "Barrage" which allows the use of Refulgent Arrow:
If you have both the "Barrage" buff and "Hawk's Eye" proc, does using Refulgent Arrow consume both or just the "Barrage"?
Also can the songs be used outside combat? (To either generate Repertoire stacks, Soul Voice Gauge, or Coda)
I can not believe they gave us wide volley just to take it away again! I much rather have wide volley than Shadowbite.
Bards getting a lot of qol, this is great!
So all our new skills are tied to 2 minute timers. Lovely.
The full song rotation is still 2 minutes. still another 90 second snoozefest while waiting for the shiny burst. Still no procs tied to dots. This class is still not fixed to its former glory.
so the songs are not usable outside of combat at all, despite no longer needing a target?
because on the one hand, it will continue to be irksome that, unless they change it, we have a very substantial difference in our actual opening potency versus the follow-ups. not to mention this would functionally not change anything vis a vis some of the awkwardness with song uptime during dungeons
however
songs usable outside of combat would mean bard has a 2 minute prepull LMFAO
bring on the 90 second countdowns for 3 coda openers lol
Really REALLY hoping the potency of the level 94 trait isn't the final number. Those "increases" are just the current level 90 potency values for Burst Shot and Refulgent Arrow. While the upgrade to bloodletter is hugely welcome, a lack of any potency upgrades to the core GCDs will absolutely cause bard to fall very far behind other jobs in terms of damage contribution.
I hate this god damn guitar bow man, literally every pose and weapon animation has it clipping right through your character's torso. It's like they designed it purely for looks and then when they realised how unpractical it was, it was too late to change it.
Whining aside, great video, very happy with this Bard changes, looking forward to trying it again after originally starting with it in ARR but ditching it in later expacs.
In the live letter they said Pitch Perfect would be changed to an AoE attack. Did they go back on that?
I was hoping for a dedicated 1-2-3 combo, but this is all good.
@3:40 A note on this: While it's true we won't be able to use a 3-coda Radiant Finale in the opener, we should theoretically still be able to get 2 without it affecting our rotation…if your party is willing to do a 30sec pull timer lmao. So no promises.
But yeah, since the songs are on a 2min cooldown and last 45sec, if you Army's Paeon at 30sec prepull you'll be able to get that + the Wanderer's Minuet coda for your opener and still have Army's back up in time for your rotation.
They really need to make songs have 0 cooldown outside of combat to fix the drift in regular dungeons and the need for 3 coda for raid buff at the start of a boss fight, especially now with the Radiant Finale combo action, Radiant Encore.
it is kinda bad with the changes to the duration of our buffs… they need to up raging strikes to 25 aswell or its gonna feel super bad