Please boost BRD to make it competitive again

[Zhronne]

Though for terms of testing it doesn't really matter as all you care about are resist vs complete lands as the game determines that first then breaks down what state of resist based on full land rate.

Exactely the reason why debuffs were picked up to get more relevant data
As I said before it all started with people parsing damage and noticing quit a big difference in nukes compared to when we had the dunna GEO doing Languor.
It followed again when in another group, this time in Reisenjima, a similar situation happened and you could see that by the difference in the average timer to bring down a certain NM we were farming.
All that raw data though is a bit more complex to discriminate and a bit too generic.

After finding out that a lot of people, just like me, were surprised by the fact that appearently we couldn't compare 1:1 the data SE gave us for Threnodies and for the Meva debuffs (Languor, Frazzle) that's why I decided to do a small test on enfeebles, for the purpose of that test partial resist on durations didn't matter, just land/fullrest is what mattered, making the test much more valuable even with a small sample.

I don't really remember right now which mob we picked for the test but I seem to recall it was a Ru'aun T2? Target was picked because of no known relevant/resist trait or elemental affinity.
We tested I think at least 2 debuffs (maybe 3? Think it was 2). For all of them we did around 30ish casts with nothing, then 30ish casts with the relevant T2 Threnody and 30ish casts with Languor.
I don't thin we've ever seen resists with Languor, should check the original report, maybe one or twice. Resist rate with nothing was pretty high, and resist rate with Threnody was definitely better but I still couldn't land like >50% of the time, despite immunobreaks.


I don't think that test alone is enough to demonstrate anything, but when you see it as an addition to many other similar reports/tests by other people, it kinda starts to matter despite its low relevance alone, if you get what I mean.

[Zhronne]

Aside from old tests with debateable relevance, we can tackle the issue from another point of view with some small numbers.

Max Languor => -50 Meva
Dunna Languor => -75 Meva
Idris Languor => -100 Meva
(no bolster)

Frazzle II => -50
Frazzle III => -90
(these are the max attainable values)

T1 Threnody => -70
T2 Threnody => -180
(these are values with Ghorn, currently the best instrument in game as far as potency is concerned)


Now if "Elemental Resistance -" was exactely the same as "Magic Evasion -" but for a specific element, this would mean that Threnody II is almost as powerful as a Bolstered Idris Languor O.O
Clearly we all know that's not the case at all.
So I'm not sure what's the conclusions we can take from this.
Personally I believe that Meva- and EleRes- cannot be compared at a 1:1 rate.
Either there's a much worse conversion formula (like 1:4?) or they're just calculated in two separate and very different ways in the overall Magic Damage dealt formula.

I'm not sure this is the right place to be discussing in depth this, honestly I'm not even that interested in delving so deep into math stuff.
What's important and relevant is that BRD threnodies atm provide a very small benefit compared to other similar bonus brought in by other jobs.


I can understand SE's fear to empower them too much (they stack with Frazzle AND Languor, making Threnodies too powerful could make a lot of content too trivial) but at the same time it's not fair that a job has to suffer for their fear to break the balance.
If they don't want to make Threnodies noticeably useful fine, then give something else unique to BRD that can be used during the fight and don't use the "not enough space for new stuff" excuse again please.
My two cents :3

[Urmom]

Exactely the reason why debuffs were picked up to get more relevant data

I don't think we are on the same page here it seems like you are taking what I said the opposite as this would actually be a point against debuffs. But I'll try to explain why more completely.

Basically for testing what level of resist doesn't really matter it all goes together as part of total resist rate. This means for debuffs that you need to not only count the full resists but the half duration ones as well not to mention use a debuff with a set duration and states like that. Assuming you don't get a flat out resist this means you have to actually wait till the debuff wears off or at least until the half duration point to be sure you didn't get a partial resist.

Now you might be thinking but for rough work it shouldn't matter a lower hit rate will also always result in a higher full resist rate... however due to how the system breaks down individual resist rates for each state after determining hit rate this isn't always the case and they follow more of a curve that starts low rises and then comes back down some (if you are more visually orient pretty good graph over on magic hit rate page of old wiki). Assuming you were only counting full resist vs others instead of full duration vs others this could have easily effected your results quite a bit. Probably still in favor of the meva but maybe not as much or much than those results would get

Meanwhile for nukes you just have to count the highest dmg ones assuming you make sure to get rid of other variables like day/weather magic crit rate and the short window magic dmg reduction thing

[Zhronne]

I don't think we are on the same page here

I think we aren't indeed.
Please allow me to further elaborate!
The purpose of this test was much simpler than probably I gave you impression.
I just wanted to see if there was a difference at all between no buff / Threnody / Languor.
If there were small differences I probably wouldn't have been able to seen them thoroughfully for the reasons you implied and how superficial this test was, but luckily this wasn't the case and the test in its simplicity still proved somewhat useful.
It just tried to answer the question "Is Threnody weaker than Languor?". It wasn't trying to measure how much.


Either way, sorry if I'm sounding rude because it's totally not my intention, but I think we're going a bit off track discussing so much about a simple test that was conducted a long time ago without any particular pretense of it having a high value.
It's just a simple example I quoted among other things, it wasn't my intention to delve so deep into a constructive and helpful critique about how other tests could've proved more useful than the one I conducted ^^'

[Urmom]

Oh I understand and I get the desire to do simple qualitative analysis instead of quantitative. For the purposes of this discussion that is fine. Though it occurs to me my main point may be a bit off because I was looking at the nuke formulas/graph and may have to remath some stuff out. And after doing so yeah think I was more doing half resist state. However the way it follows is full resist rate isn't linear so it might produce results much more or less extreme. Given that the roughness of the test (not sure if you posted actually samples) it still seems to reason it's clearly not 1 for 1 but might be 2 for 1 or much worse or even have some weird nm or cap thing going on

[detlef]

So I finished my Marsyas and in the process I think I've come to appreciate what BRD brings to the table a bit more. Honor March is powerful and BRD compliments GEO well in certain situations. However, the job is still lacking for all the reasons already expressed in this thread. If not a new debuff then maybe something as simple as improving Threnody potency is enough.

Personally, if we bring brd and they do threnody II I've seen huge differences in magical accuracy, people dismiss it out of hand though, almost tongue and cheek.

Help me be a better player here. I'll grant you that BRD compliments GEO well in melee situations (although I'm seeing more how dumb it is to buff and drop). You and Afania changed my mind on that. But please inform me, in what situations did you see these huge differences in magic accuracy?

[OmnysValefor]

Noone was denying that Aeonic Bard works great in melee situations, though it brings little in magic situations.

The argument the whole time has been

A) It's inferior to GEO in most situations (when you aren't talking about stacking and sometimes when you are).

B) It needs 3-4 (not so much mythic) ultimate weapons to be competitive with a job that needs 1, and still it doesn't always outperform Dunna GEO. PLD vs RUN is a similar situation but there are places where PLD is still better and PLD does just fine.

C) Bard needs something baseline to the job. Getting Honor March makes you more efficient at... doing content you've already done.

I'm aware of the new content that sounds a lot like Incursion, "Omen" but we of course don't know what stats will be necessary nor the party size permitted.

[Reain]

Hoping for some good bard specific stats on Reforged Artifact +2 and +3 and the omen accessories. Bard equipment outside of job specific equipment tends to be lacking usefulness.

Arguably SE has made Minuet slightly less useful with the Smite potency buff. It could use an additional effect like increases weapon base damage.

[Olor]

Noone was denying that Aeonic Bard works great in melee situations, though it brings little in magic situations.

The argument the whole time has been

A) It's inferior to GEO in most situations (when you aren't talking about stacking and sometimes when you are).

B) It needs 3-4 (not so much mythic) ultimate weapons to be competitive with a job that needs 1, and still it doesn't always outperform Dunna GEO. PLD vs RUN is a similar situation but there are places where PLD is still better and PLD does just fine.

C) Bard needs something baseline to the job. Getting Honor March makes you more efficient at... doing content you've already done.

All these points. A NQ bard should be roughly equal to a NQ GEO. Right now a NQ GEO is better than a bard, even sometimes better than a bard with a couple ultimate weapons... in almost all situations.

As someone said earlier - the buff/debuff that is most vulnerable to being wiped/resisted should be stronger than the buff/debuff that can't be dispelled or resisted. It's ridiculous that GEO better on both fronts.

[Fermion]

I think the question we should be asking about buffing is what's missing?

Sure the vanilla stuff like +Acc, +Atk, MP/tick, Def down, MDef down, Double Attack, etc. is already taken. This game has evolved past that, so lets think outside the box.

For mages, what about major +Occult Acumen, or a "% of HP cured to MP" songs for healers/PLDs, granting them virtually infinite MP if their potency is high enough? Good mages have learned to min/max to a ridiculous degree, in order to be very MP efficient these days. Why not have a job that unshackles them from MP efficiency and let them go 100% all out like DDs?

The game has sped up immensely, melee can SC with themselves by accident now. MP should not be an issue in endgame parties/alliances. Enmity and recast timers should be the only thing mages worry about at such a high level of play.

This change will effect everyone by allowing SE to make content even harder for us, because they won't have to factor estimated player MP consumption into the mob difficulty algorithms. DDs will no longer have to worry about being an "MP sponge", because once cured, the healer will get a most of that MP back, because of the BRD song.

Also, Haste I should be compatible with Accession now (letting SCH learn haste naturally at lvl 49). +15% magic AoE haste is nowhere near as overpowered now as it was years ago in 2007 when SCH was initially introduced to Vana'diel.

I think these changes will allow BRD/SCH to fit into any party, whether it be melee, MB, or tanking. With the two aforementioned mage songs, and Accession + Haste I, they will once again be welcome anywhere, because of the following three reasons:

1. They'll single-handily cap magic haste for melee allowing for other buffs from themselves and Geos.
2. They'll allow for more Myrkr usage for nukers, meaning stronger Death MBs and more Impact debuffs (-20% stats down).
3. They'll alleviate MP issues for healers, allowing them to replace ballads with other songs and letting WHMs curaga bomb at will.

These are three simple code changes (everything listed is already coded into the game), that will have an immense impact on the BRD job, and can lead to increased game difficulty in general. I put a lot of thought into this, and I hope it's taken seriously. Please feel free to offer constructive criticism to improve my ideas. I want the game to continue to thrive and get better, same as all of us.

Thanks for reading.