Merits

[Bloodkraft]

I was looking for suggestions on Bard merits please.

was thinking:

Minuet 5/5
Madrigal 5/5

Nightingale 1/5
Troubadour 1/5
Foe Sirvente 4/5
Adventure's Dirge 4/5


Thank You

[sope]

5/5 Lullaby merits is probably the most helpful, hands down.

1/5 nitro too, I guess. Although that was always more of a linkshell requirement for zergs.

Other than that, nothing else is used at all anymore. 100% preference. If you have an awesome plan for sirvente or dirge, go for it.

[Lushipur]

sirvente and dirge are absolute crap...5/5 both night and troub...too cool to have those rdy every 10min

for group 1 i choosed to max the recast of finale and lullaby

[Bloodkraft]

Thanks for the help

[Retsujo]

I find the points in time I need to use Night/Troub are pretty far inbetween eachother, so the recast doesn't effect me much. I went with what you have there for Group 2.

And yes, Dirge and Sirvente do actually help quite a bit.

As for group 1, I went for Lullaby and Finale 5/5. I just hate when enemies spam enhancement abilities. Haha.

[Kensagaku]

I personally am at the following:

Group 1
5/5 Madrigal Effect
5/5 Minuet Effect

My reasons for this is because the game will be outside of Abyssea before long, where we won't be on just double marches. Sure there will be times with the new EG content will require double march, but we'll see as it comes. Since there's no meriting for enhancing our marches, I feel these two will be most important when we get out of Abyssea, since we will no longer have our attack/acc caps from buffs and atma. Lullabies are nice but won't help terribly on NMs except if they spawn adds that can be BRD-slept, and Finale is great but odds are we'll see our groups of RDMs, /RDMs, and /SCHs handling dispel just fine.

Group 2
1/5 Nightingale
1/5 Troubadour

The reason I haven't finished these yet is because I'm unsure of what to come. At the moment, hate is pathetically easy for DDs to cap and just as much so for mages to avoid capping. However, depending on the new EG content, it might be worth wasting a song slot (ballad for mages, or March/Madrigal/Minuet situationally for tank) for Sirvente/Dirge, especially seeing as at the moment there's no way I'm going for the headache that is the Empyreal harp (Screw you Colorless Souls/Apademak Horns. T_T). Really that second category is likely to just go 5/5 Troubadour/Nightingale or 1/5 Troubadour/Nightingale + 4/5 Foe Sirvente/Adventurer's Dirge based on what happens after Abyssea. :s

[Khajit]

I personally am at the following:

Group 1
5/5 Madrigal Effect
5/5 Minuet Effect

My reasons for this is because the game will be outside of Abyssea before long, where we won't be on just double marches. Sure there will be times with the new EG content will require double march, but we'll see as it comes. Since there's no meriting for enhancing our marches, I feel these two will be most important when we get out of Abyssea, since we will no longer have our attack/acc caps from buffs and atma. Lullabies are nice but won't help terribly on NMs except if they spawn adds that can be BRD-slept, and Finale is great but odds are we'll see our groups of RDMs, /RDMs, and /SCHs handling dispel just fine.

If people need acc and atk that bad they generally need to go eat some food on their DD and start wearing proper gear. It's a strange concept i know. Unless SE gives us something like a +999 atk song or a whole new type of song that gives quadruple attacks marches are still going to be on top. Having said that minuet is aiight if you ever plan on dealing with rngs and/or possibly cors that use their guns.

[Kensagaku]

I don't disagree with you; Marches are generally superior. But outside of abyssea we're not going to have our acc or attack caps either. There are gonna be times where we're gonna need to mix it up, and as a result I merited those two in order to maximize their use as much as possible. Usually I have at least two other dispellers available at all times so Finale recast is never a big deal for me, and same with sleeps; usually said dispellers have some form of sleep so I don't need to lower lullaby recast times.

But meh, that's just my own style of play I guess. I haven't picked up my BRD in ages so I'm bound to make mistakes here and there.

[Darka]

Min/Finale recast for me. I had Lullaby, but they added another sleep, so I found it less useful. Troub/Night cat 2, those other spells are awful, and iirc there was an issue about them not working properly.

^Also, even uncapped acc, one madrigal is going to be enough to hard cap pretty often, the bonuses from merits are often going to waste.

[Babekeke]

I haven't found a need to cast madrigal since I got minuet 4. Double march for most situations, or double minuet for zergs/rangers. This was long before abyssea too. Zergs inside abyssea may not require double att either, as some jobs will hit 999 att with gear/JA/food/atma.

I'm 5/5 Minuet, never decided on finale or lullaby, so didn't merit it yet.
1/5 both troub and nightingale. Haven't really found a need to drop the recast timer, but I haven't had to go brd/blm to the likes of cerberus or HNMs that have high resistance vs elegy. For these cases, having T and N in line with ES makes lots of sense.