Please boost BRD to make it competitive again

[Shiyo]

It's ok bard only needs a 99 relic, a 99 emp and an aeonic to be playable. Oh, and even after all that, it's worse than a geo

[saevel]

BRD does have a place in a party but it's a very specific setup that most don't really know how due to it's relevancy being recent.

Honor March BRD is insanely powerful when paired with a few 2H DD (specifically a WAR) and a GEO + COR in a zerg setup. With Marcato HM gives +69 Accuracy +276 base attack (this part is important) and 20% magic haste. The haste part isn't as important as you'll be capping with either this plus Haste II or Victory March but the accuracy and attack are like having extra songs. Because this is base attack it's added to your total before the percentage buffs like Chaos, Berserk or Fury and thus the actual total increase is larger. Just using another GEO doesn't always work as you can't double up on attack bubbles and you rapidly hit a point of diminishing effectiveness.

Several of the 2H DD are quite powerful, brokenly powerful, they just require a bit more support and coordination other then "spam CDC macro".

That being said, BRD shouldn't require an Aeonic and several legendary weapons to be useful. SE needs to either add new songs or raise / buff the skill = potency formula. Valor Minuet V should have a potency cap WAY higher then 62 and Blade Madrigal should be higher then 30.

[Shiyo]

Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong and stupid, but you don't need the bards attack because you're pdif capped with an idris geo(and other things like dia, light shot, chaos roll, etc) on basically 100% of content as any DD.

[saevel]

Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong and stupid, but you don't need the bards attack because you're pdif capped with an idris geo(and other things like dia, light shot, chaos roll, etc) on basically 100% of content as any DD.

Depends on the fight, food, gear and other buffs. qRatio cap is now FAR higher then a yea ago and 2H have a 15.3% high cap. For 1H DD qRatio caps at 3.25, for 2H DD it's 3.75 vs the 2.25 value from a year ago. Relevant content has NM's with defenses north of 2000 which is high enough that your not auto-capping attack that easily. SE only lowered the AGI:Evasion rate for higher level mobs, they didn't do anything to their defense / VIT.

[Fae]

BRD is used in every single highend DD fight, one or two hand. And it's been being used that way for a long time now. Don't spread misinformation please. This was also stated in a prior post already.

[OmnysValefor]

"We need you for lullabies so you may as well ballad" for mages is not a fair use.

To be desirable for melee, it needs the weapon obtained from the content, invalidating the point of the achievement and adding insult to injury.

If bard debuffs aren't desired, the bard can buff and drop (and this is regularly practiced).

Yes, there are the battles for lockstyle weapons, but most of the playerbase isn't participating in that.

It wouldn't break the game to buff Bard.

[saevel]

"We need you for lullabies so you may as well ballad" for mages is not a fair use.

To be desirable for melee, it needs the weapon obtained from the content, invalidating the point of the achievement and adding insult to injury.

If bard debuffs aren't desired, the bard can buff and drop (and this is regularly practiced).

Yes, there are the battles for lockstyle weapons, but most of the playerbase isn't participating in that.

It wouldn't break the game to buff Bard.

Which is why I believe SE should significantly raise the Skill : Potency formula's on the higher level BRD songs. SE had to do the exact same thing to various other spells, especially for RDM. Wouldn't hurt to make Threnody actually useful by giving them a large magic accuracy bonus and potency.

[Fae]

"We need you for lullabies so you may as well ballad" for mages is not a fair use.

Melee WoC, Teles, two examples that make your statement flawed and wrong, not to mention you're listing ballad which is for a mage setup. Buff and drop is a problem for both COR and BRD but if the fight lasts longer than 9-11mins then it doesn't work and fixing it would actually hurt the job as a whole because then you wouldn't be able to buff multiple parties of an alliance, and has been something said about both jobs forever even when brd was the only truly dedicated support buff class for years and years. Also which has been stated, most LS aren't mean enough to do that to real players, they do that with mules where as real BRD and COR do have a lot of use outside their buffs if you keep them in party/alliance.

My prior posts made these and other points you're choosing to ignore.

[OmnysValefor]

I'm not ignoring your points, you chose not to reply to the part concerning melee for some reason, while addressing melee tactics.

To be desirable for melee, it needs the weapon obtained from the content, invalidating the point of the achievement and adding insult to injury.

[Afania]

Melee WoC, Teles, two examples that make your statement flawed and wrong, not to mention you're listing ballad which is for a mage setup. Buff and drop is a problem for both COR and BRD but if the fight lasts longer than 9-11mins then it doesn't work and fixing it would actually hurt the job as a whole because then you wouldn't be able to buff multiple parties of an alliance, and has been something said about both jobs forever even when brd was the only truly dedicated support buff class for years and years. Also which has been stated, most LS aren't mean enough to do that to real players, they do that with mules where as real BRD and COR do have a lot of use outside their buffs if you keep them in party/alliance.

My prior posts made these and other points you're choosing to ignore.

IMO the best way to deal with buff and drop issue is to create more battle field type of content and all buffs are wiped after enter. Also stop creating contents with HP scaling so bigger pt isn't being punished.

When we first started making melee woc pt we started with having a real BRD in pt who happened to be a career BRD with all REMAs, but eventually as we push faster/more efficient kills we started using someone else with an aeonic BRD mule instead. In the end we ended up using 2 COR mules, 1 BRD mule and 1 SCH mule to prebuff the ally. If we keep all these mules in ally we'd have to deal with 800k more HP from WoC. Assuming your DDx4 deal 10k dps(10k ally dps seems to be quite commonly seen), that's at least 1 min 20 sec extra kill time on woc. And that also means a lot more risk, more chance for it to use that dangerous 1hr and fail the run.

I really have np keeping a dedicated BRD player in the ally, but I'd be hesitated to do so if I'm getting punished with 200k more HP from an NM with high risk to fail if not being killed fast enough and pop being PITA to farm.

To solve this issue I can probably* ask real BRD player to buff and drop too, then invite him to lot items after clear....but that seems kinda rude so I'd rather not do that. He probably wouldn't come just to prebuff the pt of a LS that he doesn't belong to anyways.

IMO, it is really not the fact that BRD buff last so long that's encouraging people to use BRD and COR mules, it's the fact that buffs don't wipe after pop AND pt gets punished for keeping real BRD and COR players in ally.

I agree that making BRD and COR buff depop after they drop pt is a pretty bad solution, it's basically major nerf to the job and tank pt can no longer receive defensive rolls. You may as well use a real GEO over COR defensive rolls if you can't have 1 COR buffing 2 different pt.

I think the best solution is probably make all future content works like master trials.