From A Realm Reborn to Now - The History of Bard in FFXIV (Retrospect Series) 

PLEASE more like this, its so hard to find resources for old skills. I've only been playing since shadowbringers so this is SUPER interesting to me.

Empyreal Arrow was an OGCD in Heavensward and Stormblood, but it was listed as a weaponskill and was affected by skill speed. It did still have a short cast time in HW, which made it very awkward to weave. Also, until Shadowbringers, Straight Shot was a normal action that maintained a crit buff and the proc just made it a guaranteed crit. So at 70 you had to remember to use the proc on Refulgent Arrow, which was a separate action and not accidentally waste it on the wrong action.

As a BRD main I'd like to start a petition to bring back Flaming Arrow cause it sounds awesome

Man what a throwback! I can't wait to see the next addition to this series!

Next expansion they should give a trait that upgrades Rain of Death to Wide Volley and Bloodletter to Misery's End. Those animations were great! And give us back fire arrow!

Mercy stroke was indeed the Marauder action other melee could take, I remember my friend who mained Monk thought it was funny that the strongest move potency-wise in Monk's kit back then was a cross-class from Marauder. There's a couple of things this doesn't show(as you mentioned with Rain of Death not showing the damage reduction) Wide Volley volley was cheaper TP wise than Quick Nock, Wide Volley had a chance of not making Rain of Death cost 0 TP, and Rain of Death also had a chance of not having Quick Knock cost 0 TP. Another thing that isn't shown here is that you could use Straight Shot without being proc'd by Heavy Shot, and it used to increase your critical hit rate by 10% for 20 seconds. Heavy Shot could give you the "Straighter Shot" proc which would make Straight Shot auto crit. So you'd have to keep the Straight Shot buff up 24/7, reapplying it whenever it'd fall off, or whenever you got the guaranteed crit proc. You'd always need to put the crit buff up before your dots because the dots critting were what reset Bloodletter. Warden's Paeon did have the effect where you could put it on beforehand and it'd insta esuna a buff, that was where the infamous meme of Warriors asking for pre-pull Warden's came from, because their Berserk used to pacify them. All in all, good video except for when the wayback machine didn't show everything, can't wait until we get into other jobs and get to the great "slashing debuff conundrum."

I started in ARR as a Bard, and this was a nice look back. Straight shot raising crits and Rain of Death lowering evasion. Good stuff

I remember killing my static in O8S with old Troubadour, using the HP increase and timing it with Heartless Archangel. Good times.

I remember Wardens Paean did work the same as it does now in Heavensward, where you can use it as a preemptive shield for detrimental effects. This was where Bard was nominated in charge of the Warrior using Beserk and being pacified.

This is an amazing idea especially for preservation cuz its easy for old job skills and even rotations at the time to get lost due to lack of documentations so this series is a pretty cool idea to preserve some of ffxiv's job design history

I really liked the sound of the dot-centric bard in HW, particularly having things proc off dot ticks.

This was excellent. I've been a bard since CBT wave 3 and have remained so until this day. This was a very nostalgic video. Kudos.

Hell yeah, man. Glad you're back on your retrospective videos.

Repertoire (song procs) has also changed quite a bit through the expansions. Back in stormblood, repertoire used crit chance on dot ticks. So you could actually get such a high repertoire chance (e.g. from battle litany + chain strategem + straight shot) that you were more likely to get double procs than single procs This meant that you would use pitch perfect at 2 stacks rather than waiting for 3 stacks. It was really fun snapshotting the crit buffs on your dots when they came up. In Shadowbringers, they made repertoire chance constant as part of the effort to lower the dominance of the crit meta. And then in Endwalker, they decoupled repertoire from the dots and just made it check on the song timer.

Im loving this format. I started back in 2.4 so re-reading all of this has been a nice trip down memory lane.

Thanks for the nostalgia trip. Bard was my second job after PLD and it was due to you that I picked it up, that and it was a DPS powerhouse.

Wow, this took me back. Bard was my first job back in the 2.0 days, and it was a BEAST before the community complained and were then nurfed into oblivion. Wide Volley was the best!

Definitely love this history lesson would love to see more how each class was performing in their expansions as well.

This was such a blast from the past. Please do more of these! I miss wide volley and flaming arrow so much! I remember when people would be at mor dhona shooting their flaming arrows down. It was great!

I very much enjoyed this! It was fun to take a trip down memory lane.

So this all reminds me of my greatest bard story: The scene: Ifrit EX duty finder, because that was a thing people did back then in ARR. The cast: Me, the bard. Everyone else, dead. Ifrit, 10% health. I kited Ifrit around, using everything I had to stay alive while my party said to just wipe it and try again. Even used all my TP to sprint around the outside avoiding melee range. But I saw... LB3 just seconds away. Kited Ifrit to the edge for him to start casting something, so I could run to the middle (because remember the limited range on Healer LB3?) and slammed that LB button to rez the whole party, sacrificing myself for the win! The tanks picked Ifrit back up after he auto'd me to death during animation lock, and the healers left me on the ground while the rest of the party did the last 10% of the fight and won. ...And then everyone yelled at me for wasting their time by staying alive instead of dying so we could pull again. I spent maybe 20s alive waiting for the LB, whereas another pull would have taken however many minutes 90% of Ifrit EX took back then. But sure, I wasted their time saving the raid.

I'm surprised happy didn't mention using wardens paean on warriors when they went into inner release. They couldn't do any actions for like 3 sec after going berserk, I can remember the WAR macros asking healers to PLEASE esuna them lol I got so many commends from warriors in Heavensward. I kinda miss those kind of interactions that jobs had back then.

While I have been on a very long break from the game since finishing 6.0 (haven't done any of the patches) & I haven't felt in the mood to play FFXIV in a long time either, this video made me look back at the game very fondly. I'm someone who had played since 2.0 & re-remembering all the old stuff again really is fun times. I'm really looking forward to this series, I loved the throwback this video provided.

Thank you for this, as someone who didn’t start playing until 5.2. I had been looking all over for info on ARR and HW, but didn’t realize there wasn’t official job guides online until Stormblood. Looking forward to the rest!

Thank god somebody is making this! Thank you!

Very interesting and informative video, please keep the series going, I love seeing these kinds of changes

Great video! Can't wait for a history lesson for all the other jobs!

Okay I *love* this kind of 'guided tour to the past', especially since I came in at the tail end of Stormblood. Can't wait to see... Well, all of it really, to see what sorts of designs they have tried and "given up" on. :D

I really enjoyed this. I’ve been playing since ARR beta, and it was a hell of a walk down memory lane. I’ll definitely be looking forward to more of these.

Looking forward to this series. Thanks haps

I miss so much Wide volley, such one of the coolest animation back then

Would love to see this for the other jobs that changed significantly across xiv's expansions.

Great video, always wanted to get more of an idea of how the game played pre shadow bringers in a more concise dedicated format

Think an extra thing of note from what I remember from being an ARR bard too. Swiftsong also wasn't just a 30s aoe buff to everyone, you had to cast it but it stayed on (ie no timer) until players had enmity or you were too far away from the bard who casted it or the bard who casted it removed it by getting enmity or turning it off. Its like how Foe's worked too but without the MP drain and instead of enemies it was party members for if they got in range of you when it ticked.

As some one who has been playing BRD since the launch of ARR this was quite the trip down memory lane. I like where BRD is now, but the trauma of "Bow Mage" makes me doubt that anything I enjoy is safe.

20:19 you didn't need to turn off WM to use Feint because Feint still didn't have a cast time while under WM. It's why it was pretty good to use because it still got the 30% damage buff and allowed movement

I really hope you keep going with these retrospective videos! I started back around 2.5 with Lancer, DRG feels so different now. Really hope you do one of these for DRK too.

Man the memories lol i miss flaming arrow. I want it back! Thanks for the video happy.

When i see stuff about how combat and jobs worked back then i see a lot of interesting ideas held back because there was a jank or a bug or thing that sometimes happened that would so this etc, and instead of trying to rework those ideas to be more functional they were slowly removing stuff that "didnt fit" for a broader audience. Removing cleric stance, removing scholar dots and shadow flare, (theres no reason we cant have shadowflare today), changing the bards songs to be less utility and more of a rotation, removing enmity management, changing astrologian cards, reworking summoner every expansion but ultimately removing dot management and integration to their kit (bard and smn), changing conal aoes to circles, making everything be a 2 min window, making bosses hitbox gigantic, and etc etc.

Fond memories of sprout me back in Stormblood. The song procs back then depended on if your dots tick crit so you mentioned whether or not you get to barrage refulgent, it was also a high if you got more than 2 3stack pitch perfects in the opener/burst. I do wish bard stuck with the dots causing the song procs. Ive always said that bard should of been the dot class instead of summoner and while summoner went from a minor dot theme to no dots at all, bard went from dot centric to class that happens to have dots

More of these please! I love this

I've been looking forward to this vid since you mentioned it in the q&a 😍

I really enjoyed this video! Just a few weeks ago I wanted to find how HW dark knight worked and that wasn't easy 😀 I hope you continue this series!

my main class all time, masterpiece video for Bard retro

As an Bard main - thank you so much for this

Love Wayback. And need more of these vids for sure. Played Bard at 2.0 but dropped the game since I was playing 100% solo. But I remember most of this for Bard back then lol.

Yay I was looking forward to some more job history from Final Fantasy. Please breathe life into the bestiary again

I miss Wide Volley so much I hope they put it back someday the animation was so cool.

YES, I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR MORE STUFF LIKE THIS.

Actually, Barrage was changed to multiply Weaponskills in HW, and was intended to be used on Emp. Arrow. I think you skimmed over it when you were on the GamerEscape page.

I did not expect such a hit of nostalgia today. The first MMO I ever played was EQ2, mostly as a Troubadour. When I moved on to WoW and Rift I stuck with healer classes, but when I joined FFXIV at the 2.0 launch I immediately picked up bard. It felt nice to be back to a singing support. (Until dancer came out and stole my attention).

These are awesome! Can't wait for Ninja (my main), but looking forward to seeing all of these!

This is awesome can’t wait to see scholar. I maybe the only one who liked stance dance on my healer.

very informative. i quite enjoyed this and hope you do more of this! im actually quite interested in seeing how dark knight has changed since its introduction in heavensward because i didnt start playing ffxiv until stormblood and i mostly played dragoon.

I was honestly hoping someone would do something like this! When you get to caster or even next video talk about the change to sprint!

I love this, great vid/series idea Happy!

would love to see this type of video with clips of the old skills in action too

Bard: wanna see a Backflip? *uses wide volley*

I love this idea! Retrospectives are great, and can give a bit of perspective to debates on the modern state of the game. Looking forward to the Paladin retrospective! I assume that will have to wait until the rework though.

What a walk down memory lane!

I have to say, Stormblood was my favourite iteration of Bard. I loved the Refulgent vs Empyreal gambling (as much as it was a pain for parsers). I loved how the timing of every pull was a little different as a result. I loved being forced to think a few GCDs ahead to avoid accidentally overwriting a Refulgent proc with a necessary SS refresh, unlike now where only the current GCD matters. I loved how crazy hectic it could be if all my procs popped at once (especially if I was also trying to handle savage mechs at the same time). I loved how strong the DoT identity was, and how much focus there was on using Iron Jaws to snapshot buffs - which weren't all on the 2 minute rhythm so I had to pay attention to my party and my DoT durations to constantly judge whether it was worth an IJ or not. I loved multi-dotting in AoE - yeah it was a pain, but you got SO MANY PROCS. And it felt so much more like a support class: Refresh, Tactician, Palisade, ridiculously good uptime on Minne, and a really interesting element of pre-planning in Troubadour. Nowadays a bunch of the support is gone and everything that remains is stuff I'm using anyway for myself (like Battle Voice or the songs), so the fact that it's support is incidental. Back then I was actually THINKING about my party's needs. The only part I didn't really like was the reliance on piercing debuff. It was absurd how much of a difference in parse that could make. Oh, and the loss of Wide Volley from ARR/HW. Way cooler AoE skill than our dinky little cone.

Damn the nostalgia really hit home .... Also I miss Bowmage ... everyone I knew back then bitched about it but I actually loved it (also bard was a PvP beast back then)

In regards to giving MCH something like what Palisade used to be, this would actually make a fair bit of sense for the job: they could essentially be throwing some sort of machine in front of another player to take a portion of the damage.

38:05 I feel so dumb. When I started playing in Shadowbringers, I started as a bard and went through the whole MSQ as it. I had no idea that Shadowbite would do full dmg to all mobs if just your target had dots, I thought every mob had to have both dots on it for Shadowbite to do the full dmg to that mob. That little bit of info would have made my dungeon runs SO much more enjoyable lol

I can't stress enough I wanna see more of this

LOVED this video

Caster bard looks like so much fun. It currently feels like I have to take a simple rotation and play perfectly (or else suffer a big punishment) instead of having a whole bunch of ways to master a job/fight and then not being expected to keep up perfect play all the time.

One thing i noticed you didn't mention/look at properly was Barrage in Heavensward. Barrage was changed to double (and later triple) your next Weaponskill in Heavensward due to Wanderers Minuet removing auto-attacks. Though none of the hits of Barrage could crit. In Stormblood it was changed again to allow you to critically hit with a barraged weaponskill.

I started playing in patch 2.4 "Dreams of Ice" have main'd BRD to this day (though have omni 90 now) and man this is such a great trip! Great way to explain allll the changes the job has been through! 12:20 I miss the wide volley animation so much! I want it back for Ladonsbite! 13:09 I remember saving WoD runs with LB3 when the healers had died, such a good feeling (and got comms!) 19:35 so playing BRD between patches 3.0 and 3.3 was a wild time as every patch they kept tweaking Minuet because of the negative feedback from the community at the start of HW. in 3.0 the damage boost wasn't 30%, I think it was 20% and whilst you could toggle it off instantly, it was classed as a "song" so you had to cast it, like ballad and paeon, so you had to stand there and do nothing for 3 seconds to cast the song, then stand there to cast your 1st skill after activating it, for only 20% extra damage and cancelling your auto attacks.... It came out as a DPS loss to use it! you also needed it on the be able to use iron jaws and empyreal arrow. It was a little demoralizing tbh. You can see in the version of the page you've got, they buffed the damage boost and changed it from a song to an ability, so it was basically an instant cast, so much more flexible, but damn, those 1st few months were ROUGH for bard mains! 21:26 mmh, the shield was there from the start and I remember the WAR macros counting down after they used berserk they'd need an esuna/paeon to get rid of the pacification debuff they got 😂so if you cast paeon on them when they had a couple seconds left they wouldn't even get the debuff in the 1st place 30:33 I have a memory of killing people in Sephi Ex? maybe? with a ballad troubadour I do like the song aspect of the job now, I kinda wish I could be a bit more flexible with them though as it's pretty much set in stone the order and duration now. Still my go to job though! Looking forward to the rest of the jobs being revisited!!

As someone that began with Shadowbringers, my first ever character (still my current main) starting on archer, this is super cool to see I knew bow mage was a thing until Stormblood from watching certain content creators, and honestly I really really like the halfway point in pvp we’ve got right now, the mobile cast on power shot or whatever the 1 is called

Yeah I’m just starting to watch this and already love it o/

Very interesting. Can't wait to see how dragoon looked way back when as I started part way through Shadowbringers patch cycle.

When I saw the video thumbnail, I read it as "BAD RETROSPECT" for a moment there. It ended up being anything but! Bard was my first job back in January 2014, and holy hell, I miss Flaming Arrow!

Oh gawd, discribing Wanderer's reminded me of the days of stance dancing. Then number of time I suffer through a boss fight with Clerics' stance up, or Defiance -> Deliverance and back to push damage and hopefully not drop enmity.

I started after endwalker and have levelled most jobs now except for healers, kind of incredible seeing how different the game was back then

I've always felt FFXIV media was lacking some "historic" content.. Thanks for this!

I really missed Misery's End. To me it was always the "the health is low enough, it's an instant-kill attack." but I can see it being a pretty useful skill to spam on raid bosses if you wanted higher potency attacks more reliably.

Mr. Haps dont stop these kinds of videos. Yes you're reading but hearing you talk about these is great. I played back in this time but I was no expert on everything back then so hearing your take on HOW they were used is great to hear Keep this shit up

Back when I first started playing ff14 I had just caught like the tail end of the level this one job to level 30 and this sub job to level 15.

Man i remember the days of repelling shot during titan. Im honestly glad it doesnt do damage anymore

A blast from the past

love the video, cant wait to see warrior and dark knight retrospective (bring back scurge). Just wanted to point out a couple of things that were missed, and/or incorrect. Firstly, the Barrage change didn't happen in shadowbringers, it was already like that in heavensward and you used it with empyreal arrow back then. Fun fact about the barrage when they changed it in heavensward, the first hotfix patch after 3.0 they had to nerf barrage and reword its description. Originally it read that it would cause your next weaponskill to fire off two more times, so it was essentially a triple-cast of ANY weaponskill. So for like 4 or 5 days of heavensward we were just flying through massive dungeon pulls with barrage/wide volley. It was nuts. Sadly they nerfed it and changed its wording to only buff the next single-target weaponskill used. Another thing about 3.X bard, you mentioned feint as a role action that bards would take for whenever they had to turn off wanderer's minuet. You actually have this backwards, bards took feint for when they needed to have mobility without turning of minuet. It was kind of a clunky thing to play around, but basically bards would drop minuet for movement and in doing so the auto attacks would mostly make up for the loss of the 30% damage from minuet. However, iron jaws and empyreal arrow couldn't be used outside of minuet stance. So essentially if you had just used iron jaws and empyreal arrow, then you were free to turn off minuet for movement if needed, but if your dots were about to expire, or if empyreal was coming off cooldown, then you would have to stay in minuet. This is where feint would come in because it didnt have the same cast time limitation as your other skills. And again regarding 3.X bard, Straighter shot procs were in a really weird place. Ideally you would spam heavy shot to fish for a straighter shot proc, which you would then immediately fire off because every heavy shot used while under "straighter shot ready" was potentially wasted dps. This same concept occurred multiple time the black mage kit with thundercloud procs and fire 3 procs. But the problem for bard was that the enhanced straighter shot weaponskill came with no cast time, meaning free movement. So in a situation where you know you dont have to move for a while, you would just use the procs as you get them normally. But if you knew there was any kind of forced movement or mechanics coming up, you would have to save that proc to use during the mechanic. It was just a weird, clunky part of the rotation back then because it was less dps than using the procs right away, but still more dps than having to use feint while moving. Oh and the thing where bard's would pull bosses by getting too close with foe's. This created another problem in heavensward because with minuet bards couldn't just wait for the pull and then run to their spot while attacking. So often times bards had to have minuet off for the pull, turn on foe's prepull, and then run to their spot as the fight started, and then they could turn on minuet and start using their opener. It was such a weird time, and thankfully it only lasted one expansion because it really just felt like the whole kit worked against itself.

What people forget is that SE forgot how much damage auto attacks actually do so turning on HW wanderers meant you were doing less DPS then without. Turret mode bard just weaker.

the cross class skills, man, that brings back memories, like PLD casting Stoneskin

I love that I can use Warden Pean's in Delubrum Reginae to eliminate Doom status. How many times people were screaming - we don't have a healer, we'll die one by one And here I am, all in white (and green!), cleansing them from Doom, or staying as Last Survivor xD

Rivers of blood procs were based off of dot crits, not a flat 50% per dot tick. That's why internal release was so good on bard, and whenever you got a crit buff you would clip your dots, even in ARR. Straight shot did not work the way it does now like you said. It was a buff you maintained giving you 10% crit while it was up. You could get a straighter shot proc that guaranteed a crit on your next straight shot by spamming heavy shot, but it was a buff you had to maintain, not getting a proc still meant you had to refresh it.

Oh hecc, another creator I follow did a brief history lesson on how WAR worked back in HW. Seeing a job's full evolution is a super fun idea.

I miss the animation of Flaming Arrow and SMN's Shadow Flare. They just looked cool.

Dude so hyped for this vid! Hope you can knock out at least the are jobs before the next expansion!

I wasn't around for caster bard so i don't know what i'm asking when i suggest this. But i feel like an element of caster would be a nice change, I'd not want Bard to revolve around "caster bard" but maybe the next evolution of apex arrow or another song that drains over time or costs mp as that's a resource that's just sitting there not being utilized? Although i feel like the closest thing to caster bard i (who started in stormblood) have experienced is maybe the bard normal attack in pvp? Great video, As a Bard main this is appreciated. Keep up the good work, Haps! :) (Big prayge for wide volley return as an evolution of quick nock. It's long overdue. If the wood wailers can do it! We should be able to do it. C'mon! lol)

Man, I do miss wide volley and granado shot.

Awwww, you started with my job for life, Bard! Nine years a Bard and counting... Wish we still had raise, seeing a body lying around in the wild asking for a raise, always annoying having to switch back to Archer to raise them.

Yeees! I'm going to watch every video you do in this series. Also you might as well talk about how the job is in the current patch(like look at the current bard page). Because yes now(upon you first releasing the video) we can look at how bard is in game for the "current patch" but when people watch the video in the future, you just saying "the current patch"(but you're not actually showing the current patch) will be lost on the future viewer. just an idea to Future proof the series better.

More of this please !

can hardly wait until you hit summoner to see some crazy changes

One significant thing about Stormblood role actions: you still had to pick 5. So the dps could...not pick any silence or stuns in favor of healing and buffs, which would mean there was noone to interrupt attacks.

I don't know why, but ARR Bard sounds like it was so much fun. Makes me kinda sad that I missed that era of FFXIV, even if I don't know if I would've liked it because I never really liked playing Bard, though I only got to experience it from Shadowbringers onward. Very cool idea of a series though, I'm looking forward to more of this. Especially for Lancer/Dragoon, because Lancer is the only thing I know about from the 2.x days. (and like 10 levels of Marauder. lol)

Was a BRD main back in ARR. Changed to WAR in HW and stayed, but BRD is still my second pick for everything. I too, miss flaming arrow and wide volley. Those skills were so great. I also feel it should be mentioned, straight shot was very different. Used to be just to apply a buff to yourself (crit I think?) That you had to keep on. Not like the proc it is now.

Wanderers Paean makes BRD a Rathalos soloing machine.

I would love to see him do this with the 1.0 game and see how much different it is.