Bard ~ Job Manifesto

[Creelo]

.@Jackalman Sometime I'll compare debuffing with Daurdabla vs. a horn like Faerie Piccolo on something resistant to Lullaby, perhaps high-lvl Spectators in Abys. Uleguerand Range. It won't be much testing... but it won't be like 5 casts lol, I'll report back truthfully too since this is something I'm really interested in myself lol My guess though is that they'll either match eachother or the Horn will pull ahead a lil bit with getting less resists.

So I just finished up some super basic testing on this! And the results were quite surprising! lol Wondering if I should post this to a new thread since it's a little long, but it's relevant here too... Anyways! For those who don't want to read all the specifics, just look for the big bold statements.

Question: Daurdabla vs. Faerie Piccolo, which wins for landing Foe Lullaby, by extension all debuffs?

Target: Decent Challenge Spectator in Abyssea-Uleguerand Range. (Wanted higher lvl, but no one was there, didn't matter though as you'll soon see lol...)

Hypothesis: Thought the Faerie Piccolo would win by at least a little bit, but wouldn't have been surprised if Daurdabla's +40 Skill made the results more even between the two.

Testing:

Relevant Buffs: Got full Abyssea Stat Buffs along with MM/Perfect Attendance/Rescuer Atmas

Gear: (Didn't change gear from this once I started writing the used data, aside from Daurdabla/Faerie Piccolo)
PDT Kila+2/Genbu's Shield/--/Daurdabla and Faerie Piccolo
Genbu's Kabuto/Twilight Torque/Novia Earring/Brutal Earring
Avalon Breastplate(Chr+7)/Melaco Mittens/Dark Ring(Chr+1)/Dark Ring(Chr+1)
Umbra Cape/Goading Belt/Goliard Trews/Dusk Ledelsens+1

Relevant Stats: Chr 91+64 (from Abyssea Buffs) 326 Wind Skill, 326 String Skill, 326 Singing Skill, +0 M.Acc

Different Samples tested over Lightsday and Darksday (Both Daurdabla/Faerie Piccolo were tested during this phase, so the Day shouldn't really matter. The samples were taken on separate days (Made sure of no overlap in the days).)



Lightsday Samples

Daurdabla - 64 Total Casts
-14 Full Duration - 21.875%
-10 Half Duration - 15.625%
-40 Fully Resisted - 62.5%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-64 Total Casts - 100%

Faerie Piccolo - 57 Total Casts (Wanted to get more casts in, but didn't have as many Resists and Day changed)
-29 Full Duration - 50.88~%
-11 Half Duration - 19.30~%
-17 Fully Resisted - 29.82~%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-57 Total Casts - 100%~


Darksday Samples (Only a measly 20 Total Casts each, I was getting Tired x.x)

Daurdabla - 20 Total Casts
-5 Full Duration - 25%
-2 Half Duration - 10%
-13 Fully Resisted - 65%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-20 Total Casts - 100%

Faerie Piccolo - 20 Total Casts
-10 Full Duration - 50%
-4 Half Duration - 20%
-6 Fully Resisted - 30%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-20 Total Casts - 100%


Conclusions!: The sample sizes are extremely small (would need like 1000+ if we really want truly conclusive evidence) but no one can deny... Those are some pretty big differences in Lullaby success rate. <.<
The Daurdabla is absolutely horrid for debuffing, and the Faerie Piccolo most clearly defeated it when it came to getting a better resist rate. Since a Faerie Piccolo is essentially the same as a lvl 1 Flute when it comes to Debuffs... We can pretty much conclude that...
Yes, a lvl 1 Flute is MUCH more accurate when it comes to Debuffs, compared to a lvl 90 Daurdabla.

And...

The difference between Wind and String Instruments for debuffs is at least equivalent to 40 Skill, and probably much more. (We already knew Wind > String for Debuffs but Wow!)

On the Lightsday Sample (the better samples lol), there was roughly a 30%~ Higher rate of landing Lullabies for their full duration with the Faerie Piccolo and a 5%~ higher rate when it came to landing Half Duration Lullabies. Perhaps most importantly, the Faerie Piccolo had roughly 33% LESS FULLY resisted Lullabies. Honestly, I was kinda surprised to the Faerie Piccolo have a 30%~ Fully Resisted Lullaby rate by itself. But a 62.5% Fully Resisted Lullaby rate for the Daurdabla?!?! <____<

The Darksday Samples were very, very small. I was mostly curious to see how they'd line up to the Lightsday samples, and they actually lined up extremely well for only being 20 Casts Each! O.o Basically, the Faerie Piccolo had 25% more Full Duration Lullabies, 10% more Half Duration Lullabies, and 35% fewer Fully Resisted Lullabies.

The difference in success rate between the two is really quite high, even for such low sample sizes. If they weren't so high, we could've disregarded them.

Interesting side-notes were that I used my actual debuff gear in the beginning, but quickly realized I wasn't gonna really get the data I needed due to not really getting any resists with the Daurdabla and Faerie Piccolo (only did several casts each)... So I scratched those samples, quickly changed my gear to mostly PDT, with as little Chr+ as possible. The other side-note was that Carnage Elegy never got resisted with either the Daurdabla or Faerie Piccolo in my testing gear. I didn't cast it nearly as much as Lullaby of course, but it was kinda interesting to see how easy it was able to land even in a nearly full PDT set... <.<

Future testing?? I definitely could've set myself better for testing this when it came to Atmas and Gear, but I still got results. Future testing would involve larger sample sizes (durrr). Perhaps I could use this little bit of data, and test again on a DC Spectator and play around with my gear to see if I can match a resist rate to the Faerie Piccolo using a Daurdabla. The increase in skill/M. Acc could potentially give us a rough idea of what the true accuracy difference is between Wind Instruments and String Instruments.

The reason why this is all important below. I'm not saying SE should suddenly adjust the accuracy of String Instruments when it comes to Debuffs at all! The difference is quite balanced actually, especially for Stringed Horde Lullaby.

Also in response to your feedback about the seeming lack of power of Gjallarhorn, the development team mentioned that there is a difference in song accuracy between Gjallarhorn and Daurdabla, and when casting songs on enemies, Gjallarhorn wins out. During the next version update it will also be possible to further enhance the Gjallarhorn.

Oh, but development team! [SIZE="5"]Why spend roughly 170,000,000 gil on the Gjallarhorn when you can spend 43 gil at the local Music Shop for a lvl 1 Flute that can already land debuffs more consistently than the Daurdabla?[/SIZE]

I do hope the development team feels silly for that quoted statement.

PS: I'll say it again, it was never about Daurdabla vs. Gjallarhorn when it came to debuffs. It's not even really Daurdabla vs. Gjallarhorn for buffs. It's about how easy it is to get a Daurdabla and how much more useful it is overall compared to a Gjallarhorn. Please reread previous posts from the Bard community regarding the lackluster power of Gjallarhorn.

The end! Whew x.x

[Mayoyama]

We have a Job Ability that reduces an area of effect song to a single target. Instead of remodeling songs to be area of effect like someone mentioned, can we expect to see a Job Ability that allows a single target song to expand to an area of effect in a way much like Pianissimo? (I feel that would create less hassle from how we already understand songs like the Preludes and Etudes)

^ This.. seems like a really good idea. I did read someone's suggestion to call it Fortissimo, which would make logical sense. This could potentially adress 2 of the issues Camate mentioned - 1st being preludes being aoe, and 2nd allowing the option of making etudes aoe. Not to mention that everyone likes getting new job abilities (its like getting a present at christmas lol).

Simply put, BRD needs more abilities, and preferably more songs that assist Mages. It's bad when you don't need Ballads due to Atma, so you resort to marching the mages, there should be a fast cast song imo.

I want to feel like buffing the mages is as much of a priority as buffing the DD.

This also is something that has lead me recently to levelling cor... with cor I can at least feel more useful than a proc-and-march biyatch and I can actually give useful buffs to mages other than lolballadinaby. I understand game balance would mean brd buffs for things like fast cast,MAB and pet buffs would probably be scaled down a bit in comparison to the cor equivalents, but would really help spice the job up again. Having the option of being busy with all new buffs for dd, mages and pet jobs (when present) would help return a bit more of the excitement and challenge of the job that has otherwise become rather dull and to be blatently honest sometimes outright boring. It's become a joke with the BRD in my ls that when they apply the 2 buffs to the dds (since mages dont need the ballads) they say 'afk again mbating' coz there really isnt anything else for them to do outside proccing lol.

[Glamdring]

I've just thought of something...as we approach lvl99 why does bard still have the separate "song" paths? Would you foggier that a "grandmaster" bard could wieve a song that boosts and have several effects?

With the Abyssea atma system, we have a basis of what I'm requesting. A song that has 3 effects...1 major, 1 medium, and 1 small effect. For example, rather than simply giving bard Mage ballad 4, SE could give a song that gives effect 1 major refresh, 1 medium conserve mp, and 1 minor MaB. Another song could give ACC major, ATT medium, and 1 crit minor.

I'm not a bard, but this simple change could make bards amazing. Not to mention SE could still keep the "2 song" only model.

the problem with what you suggest is the same problem bards have always had... the other players. See, most players seem to be concerned with only what their character needs, not what the party needs. We only get 1 pianissimo, and even if we got several we can't change the fact that we would be so busy getting all 5 seperate buffs done that we wouldn't have time to sleep, elegy, threnody and finale the mob.

In addition, if we make bard songs multidimensional in effect you run into the same prob as we do with atma, where for your job 1 effect is great, 1 is an "uh... ok" and 1 is usually a "what the hell is that?"

Honestly, this is why I didn't brd in meripos except for very close friends; I'm not interested in doing 90% of the work and still having people bitching that our chain broke on the 123rd kill because I stopped to heal myself from my remaining 30 HP since noone will cure the puller/buffer/sleeper/MP whore. Seriously, all a DDs did in those pts is engage, then AFK; I was lucky if I could even get anyone to 'voke off me in a pick-up pt and lullaby/elegy seem to pull alot of hate considering how many mobs would still came after me even AFTER the DD hit it.

Oh, and good idea looking at the accuracy determination instead of addressing through merits or other gear Devs; tired of having to address faulty elements in game mechanics by sacrificing a needed equipment/merit slot instead of fixing the error. Don't pull on bard what you are doing to pup by making us use our limited resources to fix inate problems with the job's relevant code.

[Covenant]

Not to not pick, but I thought this was a discussion about "manifesto" not necessarily gear choices. But, if career bards are arguing the merit of one over the other I can understand the importance. However, no one commented on my "atma" song idea, where bards could give multiple effects with a single song(maj/minor effects). Is it a crappy idea? Overpowered? Ext icing possibility?

I'm not a career bards, but feel like the single buff path is lame. No matter how strong it is...it will always overwrite itself.

[Retsujo]

It's not so much a bad idea as it is a dev actually responded so people want their ideas heard.

In my opinion, your idea would be pretty beneficial but would be unfair because all other effect enhancement abilities and spells across the other jobs won't get the same treatment.

Now if these tier 3 songs that might be coming out do what I think they're going to do, then I think it might be a little of what you're talking about. I'm thinking if tier 3 songs come out they'll be just as good as tier 1 and 2 combined, and cannot be stacked with the other tiers. That basically gives two buffs in one song, granted it's the same buff.

[Glamdring]

Not to not pick, but I thought this was a discussion about "manifesto" not necessarily gear choices. But, if career bards are arguing the merit of one over the other I can understand the importance. However, no one commented on my "atma" song idea, where bards could give multiple effects with a single song(maj/minor effects). Is it a crappy idea? Overpowered? Ext icing possibility?

I'm not a career bards, but feel like the single buff path is lame. No matter how strong it is...it will always overwrite itself.

Sorry Cov, the gear comments is because I was commenting on 2 posts at once, I was saying I support the devs choice NOT to address the issues on brd through gear but by actually adjusting game mechanics.

In response to your Atma-type song, I simply feel that it is too unwieldy. Also, bard songs do not overwrite eachother, they stack, hence why you always see the comments about "double March" or "Ballad x2" and the like. The arguments actually come up when you try to use 2 different songs instead of doubling whoever's fav song.

[Covenant]

I'm going to throw fake numbers out... If Mage ballad does 1 mp and II does +2 mp...having both gives +3 mp. Or you could mp +2 AND intelligence song...

My suggestion..why not song X that gives +2mp WITH intelligence or other combos. Yes Mage ballad X would be cool by itself, but as we proceed towards lvl 99 ...I think "godmode". The game has already "coded" Atmas, and multi effects spells(Bluemage) why not expand in the final 10 lvls for bard. After all this bard above all other jobs lends itself to party effects.

I think the multi effect paths would make bards once again more desirable...mostly oustide of Abyssea AND bard solo'n.

[Kit_Katz]

We are looking into addressing this.

Another thing I hope you could address that was not mentioned. Currently items that have the "Enhance song duration" effect have a higher priority than using Nightingale+Troubadour (hereafter referred to as N/T.)

To explain further, usually songs overwrite one another based on the duration remaining on the song. But when using N/T then singing a song you are unable to overwrite a song already in effect that was sung with the aforementioned equipment on, even though the new song would have a longer duration. Due to this I am no longer able to fully utalize my N/T merits unless I use them for a fresh set in a zerg or similar instance because my normal gear has the "lengthen duration" effect on it.

[detlef]

While we're on this topic, why do Lullaby merits not affect Foe Lullaby II?

[Asanarama]

If you decide to give us the option of making single-target songs into AoE songs, please don’t do it by adding another job ability. I don’t have room for another macro. Make a smart pianissimo (you might want to change its name) with no cooldown that switches an AoE song to single-target or switches a single-target song to AoE.

I was also thinking how I don’t like that you need a “wait” between pianissimo and your song if you decide to put them in the same macro. This just popped in my head and I haven’t thought it through, but what about ammo-slot equipment that goes with bard instruments? There’s probably a whole bunch of stuff you could do with that, but what I’m thinking is replacing pianissimo/fortissimo with this ammo slot gear. One /equip line instead of a /ja line and a /wait line.

It also occurs to me that if they made preludes and etudes AoE, they’d want them to have longer casting time. On the other hand, then maybe we should have shorter casting time when using pianissimo. In the long run, things would probably be simpler if all buffs were AoE, with one job ability making them single-target (and maybe reducing the casting time). It would take some getting used to, but I think once we did get used to it, it would be much simpler. You’d just have to ask yourself , “Do I want single-target or multi-target?”, without adding, “Okay, then what is this buff like normally and do I need to modify it?”