Job Interesting or Just Plain Dull?

[Xccoortri]

Yeah sorry, I guess carol isn't exactly an every-fight song, but I dunno, I made a mistake

[LockeCole]

Simply put, after 1 hours of levelling I feel like tearing my hair out, after 2 hours I start doing random stuff like run around and poking people while they're levelling. After the third hour I do what I do in the 2nd hour, except i pay a lot less attention to what's going on, and I whip out my sword/staff/club to try to skill up. However, the fact is, no matter how shitty I play (with my whm support that is, I still debuff and use songs ritually X_X) I can still get my party to 4k+ exp an hour, and that's level 55~. I actually hope we pull links else it gets sooo dull~.

~Oh wait, bard retired at 56 \(^^)/. My LS tried to bribe me with 500k~ |No Thank You|. It sucks that the best and most sought after job at high level is also the dullest and most boring one.

[mIze]

Lockie! @_@

Yes.. bard gets so fking dull while xping I have to agree, but the way I figure I've played it this long and am even more needed at 62, so I might as well get to 70+.

Besides... Dunes/Qufim/Kazham/Garl is SO HORRIBLE I never EVER want to xp a lower job again. My whm sub is -still- underleveled because I keep getting crap pts in Yhoator.

[Vember]

I've recently retired my bard (and from game until I decide to lvl something else up).

62 lvls of running and singing and being frustrated at group placement...very unfun. I would seriously start nodding off while I was playing in a group. Zzzz

It stopped being fun (bearable) somewhere in the 50's I think.

But...hey, that's just my opinion.

[Sylvah]

Bard is fun, IF YOU LIKE SUPPORT JOBS. It can't be stressed enough - if you just make a bard because they get parties easily, you will not enjoy yourself. The reason bards get parties easily is because everyone wants them, and very few people want to be them. They are the most indirect job in the game - you won't see the big damage, or the big heals, or the big anything.

All bard skillcaps are absolutely garbage. Our BEST skill is B-...second best C+. The difference between a B- and A+ skill is a staggering 36 points at level 75. Additionally, bards cannot equip any good weapons. None. Daggers are all garbage and we do not get any of the decent weapon skills til 73, we can't equip any of the good swords or staves, etc.

However - if you can look past that, a bard in a party contributes more damage than a black mage or ranger. That extra damage the melees do from madrigal/minuet/prelude - that's your damage. If you weren't there, it wouldn't be done, and it's a lot.

Carnage elegy prevents a lot of damage, ballad 1/2 give a lot more juice to mage's, etc.

The thing is though, if you don't have the mindset that lets you see things like that, you will not enjoy bard. We are, of course, abysmal at farming. I can't bring myself to farm at all, all of my cash comes from parties and bcnm40 - which is just enough cash to squeak by on with good gear, but I'm always looking for more, while my friends in LS are raking in at least 15-20k/hour in zi'tah if not more, etc.

But if you do like that sort of job and the downsides don't bother you, bard is great, and yes, getting parties fast owns. I barely speak any japanese, but have no trouble joining parties - even some with people with those lovely, "NA = NO" comments in their messages. However, parties do get boring on bard after a few hours. I've typed out this entire post while playing, during the 16-20 seconds of doing nothing I get while playing my mage or melee songs~

[Kite322]

Originally posted by Sylvah
It can't be stressed enough - if you just make a bard because they get parties easily, you will not enjoy yourself.

So many people don't understand this. I know friends who are bards that bitch to me all they time about what a chore it is, the only reason they play it is because they want to get high level faster than their friends... That's not the way to play.

[Kite322]

Originally posted by Sylvah
It can't be stressed enough - if you just make a bard because they get parties easily, you will not enjoy yourself.

So many people don't understand this. I know friends who are bards that bitch to me all they time about what a chore it is, the only reason they play it is because they want to get high level faster than their friends... That's not the way to play.

[Dusk]

I like not being an essential damage dealer.

I like being able to provide heals whenever it necessary.

However, I also like being not essential, but all the while essential.

Therefore, I am having a blast as BRD. It's the ultimate support job. If you wanna hack and slash, go play a melee. If you wanna nuke, go play a mage. If you wanna do a little bit of both, but not be relied upon to do so, while still having your own pt agenda (songs and what have you), then BRD all the way.

[Helltaru]

It took you 50 levels to figure out that a Bard isn't the most exciting job on the planet, were you in denial for the first 49 levels or what?

Even though I am doing the same thing battle, after battle, I take pride in the fact that because of my toil, everyone around me performs that much better. I take pride in the fact that downtime is something parties without Bards complain about.

If you only picked up Bard to get into parties easier, you are going to be dissapointed, you are going to become disgruntled, congratulations you wasted god knows how many hours leveling a job you really don't enjoy. If you are not the kind of person who puts the "team" before "I" you will not enjoy being a Bard, if you are the kind of person who thinks the value of a job is based on how much damage it can cause you will not enjoy being a bard.

In conclusion being a Bard is not for everyone, but it is possible to enjoy the class if you have the right mindset. Yeah, the Bard is boring all right, but everyone knows how fun it is to turn on attack and let the game take over until you get 100% TP

[obsidian]

I really don't see how bard is any less repetative than any other job. As a ranger, it was hit alt+d over and over. As a whm is was cure over and over. As a war it was provoke, berserk, or defender over and over.

I think the problem is that people just don't like playing support jobs. They like seeing 800+ damage sidewinders and guillotines. Those people shouldn't be playing bard because they are having trouble getting parties with their melee. The job just isn't for them.

[Peanut_Midgard]

I think some people think BRD is more repetitive because BRD is less reactory than some other jobs. The primary duty of the BRD is there to sing the set of songs every battle. If there's no adds, there's really nothing to "react". A healer needs to react to HP a lot more sensitive than a BRD and manage MP as well as aggro. A nuker needs to consider if they are taking on too much aggro, and also need to coordinate with magic bursts. Tank needs to manage aggro and for PLD also MP management. High damage dealers like RNG or DRK need to watch for aggro and they also participate in renkeis which is pretty fun to do.

Again, BRD is very busy in battle, but the routine is almost exactly the same. So it IS more repetitive in the sense that almost every battle is the same and there's not much thinking involved unless there's a bad situation.

Being a BRD, you don't get fun from the actions that you do ,but you get the fun from enhancing your party. You don't get big numbers, you are not active participant of the battle. Things you do don't have immediate very visible results. It's a tough job and takes a lot of persistence to take it all the way.

[Voyager]

Every job has a repeditiveness to it, and every job has aspects that make it interesting. The trick is deciding which repeditiveness you can tolerate, and which interesting parts you enjoy most.

I've lately been tanking, and, when things are going well, tanking is very repeditive. You just go through your routine for keeping hate, and trust the healers to keep you healed. Its when things go wrong that tanking gets fun.

I recall one party in the Dunes, where things had been going very well. We'd been running for about two or so hours, and everyone had leveld at least twice, we were getting ready to wrap it up for the night when the last batch of levels hit, when something when wrong, and we ended up with a link, and then while we were controlling the link, a Gob spawned to close to the camp, and agroed, and managed to link, one, maybe two, more Gobs into the fight (I'm still not sure, it was very chaotic by that stage.)

I was juggling Provokes, the secondary tank was juggling Provokes, the Bard was juggling sleeps and songs, the Whm was doing his best to keep people healed. It was insane. My SC partner was the secondary tank, so when we were SCing, we had to pick a target, switch to the target, SC, then switch back to our mobs, and make sure we kept hate. I think we even ended up pulling of an impromptue SC with the Bard (Fast Blade>Burning Blade>Shining Strike).

And everyone lived.

It was a fight to remember.

Harry Voyager

[Jizu]

I had my first PT experience last night as a bard and I enjoyed ever second of it. I stayed up until 1 am knowing that I had to be up by 5 am to go to work. I have played a number of jobs and IMO blm gets boring nuke….. nuke…… nuke…… nuke….. hope the melee get the skill chain right Magic blast sit......... rinse repeat. IMO Monk is boring auto attack....... wait for tp..... and start skill chain. IMO War was all right because it was challenge to keep hate, but I am sure it would get repetitive at some point in time too. IMO Whm was rewarding knowing that I was able to mange my mp efficiently enough to get some chains going ^^, but then again u just slow... silence..... heal... heal... heal... heal... divine seal curaga.. sit... rinse repeat. So what you have to do is play a few classes and see what you like, hopefully you have some mmorpg back ground and already have a feeling of what role you like.

It is not a waste of time to lvl up a few classes IMO cuz you can make some easy gil farming crystals at those lvl's in the right places. If you know the right places you can get around 60k if you are good by time you are lvl 10.

I taught I would love being a blm cuz I liked seeing big numbers in eqoa but the support role of a bard in this game is far superior in this game IMO.

[Helltaru]

Heh my friend would always say this

"A good party will have you bored out of your skull, a bad party will have you tearing your hair out, the real fun doesn't begin until you get an unlucky party."

And this point proved true today when I was leveling in Qufim, this party was just devestating, I have never seen the experience flow so damn fast we were getting to chain #5 with seemingly no effort. Well that all changed when some aggro mob spawned within our party during a pull.

Now whoever tells you Bards don't save lives is a liar, because had I not been in that group they would have been screwed. Everyone went into panic mode, so I stepped back put the add to sleep, and than tossed out a heal to the WHM who was 1 hit away from taking a dirtnap, the WHM zoned into the tower, the tank regains aggro and eats a Jetstream, so I toss out a Cure II, the add wakes up and starts pounding my ass, I sing sleep, he resists, so I start curing in between hits until sleep refreshs. Sleep refreshes I put the add on ice again. The tank is near death again so I toss out another Cure II, the WHM finally comes back out and for some reason burns benediction., even though we really didn't need it. Of course he gets aggro, so I start curing him, and he cures himself until the tank can regain aggro. We kill the mob, add wakes up once again, I put it back to sleep and tell everyone to zone. Good Times