Please boost BRD to make it competitive again

[Olor]

I really love BRD, but let's be honest, there isn't much of a place for it in current content now that GEO is out and so much better. BRD's buffs can't touch GEO's buffs.

Is it possible we could see some kind of boost for BRD to make it more competitive with GEO? This would be good not only for BRD players but for the playerbase who will be able to use BRD in more content and therefore not have to have a GEO for every single party.

Thanks in advance.

People who know the math about just how far off BRD is from GEO - please do feel free to post it! I know it's out there, but I am not familiar with it offhand.

Cheers!

[Fermande]

Agreed. In the AMA, SE said that there are no problems with BRD vs. GEO, but it's clear that GEO is used and BRD is not. I'd love to use my BRD again, but nobody wants a BRD anymore. I feel really bad for people who got the relic or empyrean for it...

[Vae]

Considering BRD had a stranglehold as the only buffer for the first 7(?) years. And remained top buffer even after cor for the next 4. It's not unreasonable to leave bard where it's at. It's still used. Not as much, but still used.

The only way to buff bard, is nerf geo AND blu. Bards only real role was marching. Minuet and madrigal were a side effect.

[Shiyo]

"it was good for x years and now its time for other jobs to be good too!" is not how you balance a game.

[OmnysValefor]

Considering BRD had a stranglehold as the only buffer for the first 7(?) years. And remained top buffer even after cor for the next 4. It's not unreasonable to leave bard where it's at. It's still used. Not as much, but still used.

The only way to buff bard, is nerf geo AND blu. Bards only real role was marching. Minuet and madrigal were a side effect.

Bard's "stranglehold" doesn't justify being, at best, situational now. REM bards who rarely bring them out is a sad thing.

GEO is a lot more powerful than Bard, but that power is necessary for a lot of high-end first clears. That's the job of buffers, to elevate your capabilities. Nerfing GEO would be a mistake. Bard simply needs an overhaul and a look at how to make their advantages more valuable. Mobility, freedom from mp, variety of buffs to variety of people are all 'advantages', they're just largely outdated. As has been said, nerfing GEO only nerfs everyone which is fine for the people with an Aeonic factory (maybe) but makes the ascent harder for anyone else.

I don't want to derail this thread but the nature of BLU is not why people don't bring bards. In many situations, it's preferable to bring a second (or sometimes third--defensive buffs) GEO over a bard.

[VoiceMemo]

I've been asking for brd buff for years, ever since geo came out. I'm not holding my breath though, I think SE thinks brd is powerful enough and that we take same role as geo. Here's what I had asked in the ffxi AMA:

Q:
Can you discuss your plans with bard? When compared to Geomancer, they can do every major spell that bard can with a higher boost because their spells work off percentages, ie ATT, ACC, haste, def.

Geomancer also has the advantage of being completely unresistable because of the bubbles being aura. They can also affect the mob with spells that bard does not have, ie magic defense bonus down, defense down, magic evasion down, magic accuracy down, magic attack bonus down, and evasion down.

These points combined with the fact that most fights have time limit(15 minutes) and scale with HP over 6 people is why now alot of fights exclude bard because bard becomes a luxury job. To do a fight with 6 alot use the Tank, Healer, Geo, SCH, BLM, BLM strategy.

Se's Answer:
The roles for geomancers and bard differ, so it’s difficult to make a direct comparison. Once it’s at a point where we need to make adjustments, we may do something, but we currently have nothing planned in particular.

I then asked this, but got no reply:
How exactly do bard and geomancer differ? Geo has offensive nukes yes, but the playerbase don't play geo that way, much like how ninja was designed differently yet players used it as a tank. Geo is used by plays players as buffer and debuffer, so in effect it has taken the place for both bard and red mage.

[Zhronne]

I use GEO to nuke :O And a lot of people I know use GEO to nuke as well! Granted it's not the primary role, it's an added icing on the cake that BRD doesn't have.

The more preposterous thing about BRD is that to be effective it requires FOUR different legendary weapons. GEO requires only one and arguably even with just Dunna it's already incredibly powerful.
BRD debuffs can be resisted and honestly they hardly matter anyway (Threnodies suck, even the T2 ones)
BRD buffs offer way more versatility but they are static, do not scale, they are less powerful than what a GEO can offer even when stacked, they require more time to be applied and, worst of all, can be easily dispelled.
Last but not least BRD offers much less interesting buffs, mostly focusing on melee stats.

So what does SE mean when "their role differ"? BRD is a buffer more focused on melees and GEO is a buffer focused on... everything pretty much?


I mean in a world where there's some remnant of balance the buffer who can get their buffs/debuffs resisted or dispelled would compensate that with slightly stronger buffs/debuffs, whereas the one who can't have them dispelled would have them slightly weaker.
Here we have a GEO who cannot be resisted/dispelled and has stronger stuff, vs a job who has weaker stuff, can be resisted, dispelled and requires 4 legendary weapons.


...sounds balanced.

[OmnysValefor]

I can see where the "their roles differ" argument comes from.

Bard has CC (lullaby) but that's not usually a big deal. In fact, it's usually irrelevant. Yeah GEO has sleep but only single targets (unless BLM) and so does, likely, half the alli.

Bard has no dependence on MP. That's nice in certain content. It also means a versatility with subs that GEO doesn't have.

Bard can provide a multitude of buffs to multiple people. But seldom do you bring mixed groups. You don't bring a Tank, Healer, Melee, (Melee or BLM), BLM, BLM, Buffer because then the melee needs babysat and and you're not really focusing the power of your group. Likewise, you don't bring melee for a zerg and put a blm in there for nuking because SCs are happening too fast.

Apex parties are a shining example. Noone cares how much damage WS's do. You try to close with the better ws for the bonus to skillchain damage but noone cares what damage the ws's actually do. You do malaise, haste and entrust acumen or refresh as needed.

If you DID want to bring a mixed group, your best avenue would be Tank, Healer, Melee, (Melee or BLM), GEO, GEO. One geo for the melee, one for the mages, and they can cautiously burst with the BLM.

The problem with Bard is that it's still queen of 75 mechanics in a 119 world. People TP so fast as to incidentally self SC.

Too late to change it now, but Honor March should have probably been the 1200 gift, and not tied to yet another weapon bard has to try to get.

[Afania]

So what does SE mean when "their role differ"?

Tbh when SE said "their role differ" I think it may be mistranslation? Maybe what they really meant is "their buffs stack and doesn't share same buff slots".

One example is that if you do melee woc/kirin/T4, you may need honor march to hit required acc comfortably on many lower acc DD jobs. Just having GEO often isn't enough especially if DD's trying to maintain enough multi attack.

In that case (Aeonic)BRD is pretty much a must have in pt and that somehow fits what they say if it meant "their buffs stack and doesn't share same buff slots".

I don't know if SE refuse to buff BRD is because they're worried about people stacking BRD+GEO in endgame accomplishing higher DPS output than T4 difficulty should be.

[Olor]

Thanks for all the folks who chimed in with support. I love bard and I do sometimes see people asking for them, but very very rarely. GEO has a huge advantage with undispellable buffs that are stronger.

I don't want geo nerfed, I just want bard to be buffed a bit so it's a closer thing.

[Shiyo]

Problem is geo has no weakness. The only time it has a weakness is when mobs are specifically created with "cannot be debuffed by geo debuffs" which is lol design in itself.
Unmissable debuffs, undispellable buffs. lol
Jobs with no weakness don't belong in a MMO.

[Afania]

Too late to change it now, but Honor March should have probably been the 1200 gift, and not tied to yet another weapon bard has to try to get.


This....I have a couple of friends who does not have aeonic group but has BRD mule. They'd insist to bring their none aeonic BRD mule to every HTBC or ambuscade so they earn double points, and everytime they bring BRD mule I just want to scream "Could you please get aeonic before insisting to bring BRD....you're lowering party DPS by occupying a pt slot"

Honor march should be something accessible to every BRD tbh, like how Dunna's buff potency should be closer to Idris.

[Olor]

It was definitely a lot more balanced before entrust... three bubbles was the end of bard....

[Vae]

Jobs with no weakness don't belong in a MMO.

#NerfBLU Same reason.

[Eckamus]

Something that would put BRD in a better spot, even if no new songs were added, would be to simply adjust the skill caps and have them scale to 900 combined skill. As it stands a level 99 BRD can cap all song skill caps naked without any job points, unless I'm mistaken. Since I don't think it was ever adjusted from level 75.

Another option would be to actually make Instruments upgradable to iLvl 119 allowing the addition of bonuses like Song +, adding a special song for each instrument (not just Aeonic, etc... along those lines.

[OmnysValefor]

Another option would be to actually make Instruments upgradable to iLvl 119 allowing the addition of bonuses like Song +, adding a special song for each instrument (not just Aeonic, etc... along those lines.

I understand where you're coming from but as a terrible bard (and never intend to have a strong one, too much gear), I think too much has already been asked of the high end bards.

It's time to give bard something. Just give it to them.

[VoiceMemo]

SE could at least change brd to percentage calculations for each song, this would at least give us a chance in terms of boosting power to equal geo. Resistance can't really be helped since the nature of geo bubbles is unresisted aura.

Bard with 3 song and gjallarhorn for minuet 5, 4 3 would be 99+93+85 for 277 attack. Dunna geo, non idris is 13.5% boost for indi and geo fury for 27% total. Most DD have at least 1000 attack(low end), which would be a 270 attack boost. If you add in idris geo, brd gets blown out of the water, as idris makes it 27% boost each for a 54% total which would be a 540 attack boost.

The other thing se could do since Idris = mythic of geo, is boost brd mythic with some + song boost, rather than just duration. This would at least make it fair for a brd and geo with both at mythic level, granted brd probably would still likely have gjallarhorn and one of the harps to allow 3 songs.

[Shiyo]

Idris in general is just far, far, FAR too powerful of an item.

[OmnysValefor]

Bard with 3 song and gjallarhorn for minuet 5, 4 3 would be 99+93+85 for 277 attack. Dunna geo, non idris is 13.5% boost for indi and geo fury for 27% total. Most DD have at least 1000 attack(low end), which would be a 270 attack boost. If you add in idris geo, brd gets blown out of the water, as idris makes it 27% boost each for a 54% total which would be a 540 attack boost.

Not to defend GEO but this isn't how GEO works at all.

Dunna GEO's Fury (900 skill) grants 48.2% attack. You don't stack furies (Indi and Geo-Fury don't stack, nor do any same-pair of geo-spells), you use Fury and Frailty. Fraily grants -28.3% defense to any mob the GEO is actively on the hatelist for, within the bubble.

---------Attack---Monster Defense---Ratio
Base----1000----1500-----------------1:1.5 (or .66:1)
Dunna---1482----1076----------------1.37:1
Idris-----1616----873------------------1.85:1

There is an effective "attack/def ratio cap (pDIF) (https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/PDIF#Attack.2FDefense_Ratio)" in which stacking attack doesn't make your attacks any more potent. You might do a 15k ws againt a lv75 NM and find that fury and frailty don't make you ws any harder.

To defend GEO. First clears (first several clears) of content are balanced around having a geomancer. Your first blm getting Amalric Body (an example I think most people are familar with) didn't make all of Escha Ru'Aun T3 a whole lot easier. As matter of fact, all of your BLMs getting this one piece still doesn't make the fight substantially easier.

Past that, GEO does have mechanical weaknesses and mechanical strengths. So does Bard.

Nerfing GEO nerfs everyone. It has a small but not negligible effect on high end-ls's who are farming aeonics but it makes every Kirin (first one especially, short supply of Stalwart's) harder and every WoC for a progressing LS that much harder. It makes everything you do harder. And if anyone's not bringing GEO as some sort of protest against its "overpowered" nature, you're only hurting yourself.

This is not to say Bard doesn't need buffs (as many players believe it does, and so do I) but it is smarter to buff or overhaul bard than to nerf GEO.

Last thing. Can you honestly say that GEO today is any more overpowered than Bard was in its heyday? Both of these jobs more than made up for the direct-damage people they're "replacing", that's the idea and the requirement, otherwise you wouldn't bring them.

Edit: Yeah GEO's spells are different, but NMs are different today. At 75, many tanks were doing fine in little to no -DT gear (due to overall poor availability). Now it's simply a must.

Soul Voiced Marches were extremely powerful back when Haste II didn't exist and gear-haste-capping was impractical or impossible and MP was a concern.

[Fae]

When comparing GEO to BRD this is what the typical player does:
BRD: can boost attack by static amount
GEO: Can lower def and raise attack by high % amounts

OMG GEO SO MUCH BETTER.

The problem is the typical player isn't really looking at the big picture, and hates complicated ideas because they require them to think and consider many things at a time rather than have simple powerful ideas that are easy to repeat. This is a downfall of human nature, not just ffxi players, a lot of the power of BRD isn't in such simple comparisons.

GEO has a limit on spells over BRD. Basically:
- 1 Spell is empowered with GEO job abilities and geomancy+, up to 75% potency. In return the Buff cannot be moved and can take damage. On monsters that do not have a lot of AoE damage and with very good sets of DT and Luopan Regen, 75% potency - boost can be maintained full time (10 min cap on luopans and Blaze of Glory and Ecliptic are 10 min recasts).
- 1 Spell is empowered with geomancy +, and the GEO must be in range to use it as it is an area effect around them.
- 1 Spell can be entrusted, losing geomancy+ and given as an aura to a selected player. The recast on this JA is longer than the duration of the indi- spell meaning it can't be up full time.

GEO spells are also lost on starting many fights, including all of Escha and UNMs. Meaning if fights are short, potency can not be maintained without going to get revitalizers all the time which isn't reasonable since they are short fights.

Having your buffs immovable, reset, limited to less than 3, and your most powerful version taking damage are very, very big drawbacks but not talked about because GEO is so potent.

For BRD to compete, it's TOTAL power has to equate to that of GEO's 2.5 spells. However when people are makign comparisons, they are comparing 2 songs to 2 GEO debuffs when they were never made or meant to be equal from a design perspective. Let us take a look at why:
- BRD has up to 5 songs as buffs active on one person at a time. These songs can last over 11 minutes and are not reset for engagements and are not grounded to their location, or use auras.
- BRD can give different people different buffs. This already on top of their higher song limits vs geo spell limits, pushes them even further into use.
- BRD Debuffs are not included in any caps whatsoever, so you can basically always have access to them as long as they can land. BRD gets extremely high combined skill and thus magic accuracy.
- BRD is without question, the best crowd control in the game, where as GEO has no AoE crowd control whatsoever natively.
- BRD Buffs STACK with GEO buffs. Meaning if you did precision + torpor + entrust DEX and need more accuracy, adding a 2nd GEO isn't going to give you a lot of mileage that way. You could do 75% empowered Geo-Precision and Geo-Torpor and gain some attack defense boosts which is usually the way people tend to go because GEO is so ubiquitous. It is not however the way you should go if you want to max party slots.

Take these facts along with the fact most people do not know how to use BRD to it's potential (suggesting you do Threnody II instead of bringing a 2nd GEO so you can do languor will make most people roll their eyes or get angry even though it's an extremely potent magic evasion debuff and INT songs are things too for magic acc/base damage boosts), and you get a very lopsided misinformed rhetoric, that is repeated, and repeated again and never actually examined.

The detriments of GEO and the benefits of BRD would be more discussed if people were more informed and didn't shy from more complicated ideas and didn't directly compare 2 songs to everything a GEO can offer so often.

The total number of songs a BRD can offer your party can be:
- Minne x2, March x2, Scherzo on Tank (Geo can't offer a scherzo like spell, and haste for tanks is often forgotten even though things like how often you flash and reprisal recasts are very important)
- Ballad x2, March x2, Scherzo on Healer (Recasts are important for a WHM as well, and while mana issues are far less these days extra MP allows you to be less conservative as a WHM)
- March x2, Minuet x2 or Etude x2 or Madrigal x2 or Prelude x2, Scherzo on DD
- March x2 or Ballad x2, Etude x2, Scherzo on Mages

If you don't deem Scherzo as necessary for a fight you can also replace it with something else, but it's duration with CC is over 23 mins.

Now let's combine that with debuffs:
- Threnody II for up to 360 elemental evasion down, 180 without potency boosts
- Elegy for potent 50% slow
- Nocturne for potent addle effecct
- Light Based extremely accurate dispel from finale

The other mistake people make is comparing things like threnody II to Gambit/Rayke which will always increase damage, but threnody just like if magic acc is capped and you use langour or frazzle will not increase damage.

GEO is used more than BRD, but one big reason for that is GEO can be very lazy and people are lazy. BRD to be fully effective has a LOT to do. Which most bards just... don't do. GEO on the other hand is infamous now for being a job you can cast 3 spells with JA on and afk for 10 mins on a lot of fights. Not that they SHOULD but it's simply something people do. Comparing all of above, BRD's additive power is very strong and very large. The one thing it can't bring to the table that GEO can do is lowering physical and magical defense so much. GEO becomes a powerhouse simply because of geo-malaise and geo-frailty being so strong. They also do not have to deal with resists to lower magic evasion like RDM or BRD does making them consistent. GEO is also very good for pet jobs, because BRD can not do a single thing to boost Pet damage, but through the use of powerful debuffs, Pet jobs are greatly benefited. Nothing in the game will boost damage as much as Geo-Frailty or Geo-Malaise, it can more than triple damage of either physical or magical damage, and geo-malaise especially is on a level far above what any other source can lower magic defense. It's those reasons GEO is used. In a DD setup it is actually optimal in most situations to bring a GEO for indi-fury, geo-frailty, and let the brd handle accuracy boosts, base attack boosts (which also helps fury) and marches and adding safety with scherzo.

So going forward, I hope people will compare ALL of BRD to ALL of GEO at least, rather than comparing 2 songs to 2 GEO spells as is most common, but I won't hold my breath people hate complicated ideas or having to think of all of something at once. People are married to the idea of simplicity = truth, and while sometimes it is, in the complicated interconnected world of real life it usually just doesn't fly. If you compare the max contributions of stats to one stat a BRD or GEO could contribute, by design with it's ability to not also do other debuffs, not also buff other party members for different stats, and having to be grounded to a location and having their strongest spells subjected to dying by aoe damage then BRD should lose on a design basis because BRD has the potential to offer more than that comparison. Most of the story is missing when people compare BRD to GEO, and there's a very good reasons in the developer AMA SE said they don't do the same thing. BRD is optimized when a parties demands are varied. GEO is optimized when a parties demands are unified. Even in a typical Mana Burn setup, BRD can offer a lot, people just don't usually feel it is as necessary to have those boosts as it is to have the damage boosts from Geo-Malaise and hassle free magic evasion control due to no resists for magic evasion, and they are probably right. If the tank survives, the WHM doesn't go oom, and the mob dies, you didn't need a BRD and BRD can't offer the geo-malaise boost to damage. In DD parties however, BRD can be very crucial, in fact of all the DD wins on extremely high level NMs like t4 reisenjima or warder of courage a BRD is required simply because their buffs stack with GEO. On lower end content due to geo-frailty however, GEO becomes preferred.

I feel if SE were to balance GEO and BRD they need to look at Geo-Frailty and Geo-Malaise, but to be careful as nerfing it would also nerf jobs that depend on it (BST, SMN, all mage setups, and to a much lesser degree all DD setups as there are options for potent def down that some DD can offer). I think otherwise, the amount of support additively along with their unique dispel and crowd control features make BRD and GEO pretty competitive other than the fact GEO can be much lazier to be effective which translates to being more useful because people are lazy. (A really good GEO should not be understated though, i.e. ones that land frazzle, backup heal, dispel, and on occasion contribute good dps).

I'm against Buffs straight out, the game is already easy and dumbed down over the years enough from people constantly pushing for things to be made easier on them. If SE nerfed GEO though, it is so ubiquitous to EVERY party setup that exists it would severely change the balance of power of jobs as well as end game difficulty so they have to be very careful.

[OmnysValefor]

When comparing GEO to BRD this is what the typical player does:
BRD: can boost attack by static amount
GEO: Can lower def and raise attack by high % amounts

OMG GEO SO MUCH BETTER.

The problem is the typical player isn't really looking at the big picture, and hates complicated ideas because they require them to think and consider many things at a time rather than have simple powerful ideas that are easy to repeat. This is a downfall of human nature, not just ffxi players, a lot of the power of BRD isn't in such simple comparisons.

When you're giving one spot to a buffer, you have to consider who gives the larger effective gain. Static attack buffs DO add to the base amount, making percentage buffs (berserk, fury, etc) stronger but since one geo will give more attack than one bard, that really matters.


Especially in lowman content, which is what most of the game is.

GEO has a limit on spells over BRD. Basically:
- 1 Spell is empowered with GEO job abilities and geomancy+, up to 75% potency. In return the Buff cannot be moved and can take damage. On monsters that do not have a lot of AoE damage and with very good sets of DT and Luopan Regen, 75% potency - boost can be maintained full time (10 min cap on luopans and Blaze of Glory and Ecliptic are 10 min recasts).
- 1 Spell is empowered with geomancy +, and the GEO must be in range to use it as it is an area effect around them.
- 1 Spell can be entrusted, losing geomancy+ and given as an aura to a selected player. The recast on this JA is longer than the duration of the indi- spell meaning it can't be up full time.

These are all true. Luckily (honestly), most NMs do have aoes. Now it is true that the bubble can also be moved (highlighting it from menu and pressing control+left/right) but this is a cumbersome process and doesn't always protect the bubble from aoes, but it will from conals.


GEO spells are also lost on starting many fights, including all of Escha and UNMs. Meaning if fights are short, potency can not be maintained without going to get revitalizers all the time which isn't reasonable since they are short fights.

Having your buffs immovable, reset, limited to less than 3, and your most powerful version taking damage are very, very big drawbacks but not talked about because GEO is so potent.

Correct.


For BRD to compete, it's TOTAL power has to equate to that of GEO's 2.5 spells. However when people are makign comparisons, they are comparing 2 songs to 2 GEO debuffs when they were never made or meant to be equal from a design perspective. Let us take a look at why:

I'd love to know why 2.5 is the number you picked. A JSE Bard can do 3 songs (full time) in comparison to a Dunna's 2 bubbles full time and weaker bubble half time.


- BRD has up to 5 songs as buffs active on one person at a time. These songs can last over 11 minutes and are not reset for engagements and are not grounded to their location, or use auras.
- BRD can give different people different buffs. This already on top of their higher song limits vs geo spell limits, pushes them even further into use.
- BRD Debuffs are not included in any caps whatsoever, so you can basically always have access to them as long as they can land. BRD gets extremely high combined skill and thus magic accuracy.
- BRD is without question, the best crowd control in the game, where as GEO has no AoE crowd control whatsoever natively.
- BRD Buffs STACK with GEO buffs. Meaning if you did precision + torpor + entrust DEX and need more accuracy, adding a 2nd GEO isn't going to give you a lot of mileage that way. You could do 75% empowered Geo-Precision and Geo-Torpor and gain some attack defense boosts which is usually the way people tend to go because GEO is so ubiquitous. It is not however the way you should go if you want to max party slots.

Take these facts along with the fact most people do not know how to use BRD to it's potential (suggesting you do Threnody II instead of bringing a 2nd GEO so you can do languor will make most people roll their eyes or get angry even though it's an extremely potent magic evasion debuff and INT songs are things too for magic acc/base damage boosts), and you get a very lopsided misinformed rhetoric, that is repeated, and repeated again and never actually examined.

Unless they've changed something, threnodies (single-target magic-evasion-down) do not stack, meaning that if you want to be able to nuke the mob and enfeeble/stun it, GEO is probably going to be superior.


The detriments of GEO and the benefits of BRD would be more discussed if people were more informed and didn't shy from more complicated ideas and didn't directly compare 2 songs to everything a GEO can offer so often.

I know three RME bards, one (maybe two? never seen his bard) with afterglow carn. He had Horn and Harp always at max level when these were each tedious/hard/expensive things. He doesn't yet have Aeonic instrument, but will soon (we're a few HELMs away).


- Minne x2, March x2, Scherzo on Tank (Geo can't offer a scherzo like spell, and haste for tanks is often forgotten even though things like how often you flash and reprisal recasts are very important)


- Ballad x2, March x2, Scherzo on Healer (Recasts are important for a WHM as well, and while mana issues are far less these days extra MP allows you to be less conservative as a WHM)

Ballads aren't generally needed, especially for a whm that doesn't needlessly overcure. Marches can be nice but with a fair amount of haste on gear you're curing in, plus Haste / Haste II and /rdm or /sch (which is more preferable frequently), your recasts are pretty good.



- March x2, Minuet x2 or Etude x2 or Madrigal x2 or Prelude x2, Scherzo on DD
- March x2 or Ballad x2, Etude x2, Scherzo on Mages

You love bringing up Scherzo. In a mage-oriented fight, the tank is the only one usually taking significant damage and most things aren't going to kill a good Paladin or Rune Fencer. Usually, if the tank dies, something went wrong first. Outside of Death Strategies, Ballad isn't a must either (it's not a must there, but it is nice).


If you don't deem Scherzo as necessary for a fight you can also replace it with something else, but it's duration with CC is over 23 mins.

Now let's combine that with debuffs:
- Threnody II for up to 360 elemental evasion down, 180 without potency boosts
- Elegy for potent 50% slow
- Nocturne for potent addle effecct
- Light Based extremely accurate dispel from finale

Enfeebles (Slow particularly) just aren't hugely important. Nocturne is nice, but doesn't stack with addle. BG says "Nothing about Nocturne's [potency] has been quantified", which made me laugh.


The other mistake people make is comparing things like threnody II to Gambit/Rayke which will always increase damage, but threnody just like if magic acc is capped and you use langour or frazzle will not increase damage.

GEO is used more than BRD, but one big reason for that is GEO can be very lazy and people are lazy. BRD to be fully effective has a LOT to do. Which most bards just... don't do. GEO on the other hand is infamous now for being a job you can cast 3 spells with JA on and afk for 10 mins on a lot of fights. Not that they SHOULD but it's simply something people do. Comparing all of above, BRD's additive power is very strong and very large. The one thing it can't bring to the table that GEO can do is lowering physical and magical defense so much. GEO becomes a powerhouse simply because of geo-malaise and geo-frailty being so strong. They also do not have to deal with resists to lower magic evasion like RDM or BRD does making them consistent. GEO is also very good for pet jobs, because BRD can not do a single thing to boost Pet damage, but through the use of powerful debuffs, Pet jobs are greatly benefited. Nothing in the game will boost damage as much as Geo-Frailty or Geo-Malaise, it can more than triple damage of either physical or magical damage, and geo-malaise especially is on a level far above what any other source can lower magic defense. It's those reasons GEO is used. In a DD setup it is actually optimal in most situations to bring a GEO for indi-fury, geo-frailty, and let the brd handle accuracy boosts, base attack boosts (which also helps fury) and marches and adding safety with scherzo.

If a geo's bubble dies, the geo recasts it. If a bard's songs are dispelled (can song effects be absorbed? probably but not sure), this takes a lot of time to recast. If you're rotating two two or three parties, this takes more time, if the dispel is wide.


So going forward, I hope people will compare ALL of BRD to ALL of GEO at least[...]

I try to play a little bit of devi's advocate in these discussions, but it sounds silly to repeatedly bring them up. I'm not saying you have, but that's why I don't.

Sometimes it's nice to say it short and sweet, bard is outdated and could use a look. If SE does not think Bard needs a buff, I would appreciate if they explained why in detail. "They serve different roles", is not enough of an answer.

Edit: Also, in many situations, a Dunna GEO is superior to an RME bard.

Nerf Idris? Makes the game harder on everyone. Nerf Dunna? Makes the game harder on people who need the help the most (since Bard is generally suboptimal). Update Bard

Please forgive me, I forgot that Bard's ability to prebuff also has the flaw of not actually needing it to participate in the fight. I'd go so far as to say that the songs are nice while they're up, but if they get dispelled, it's not a big deal in many situations (mage-Kouryu being a great example). Is it worth keeping the bard in for the full fight and adding to the HP of the monster when they're not really going to contribute much else throughout the fight?

Koryu will probably Hurricane Wing, dispelling everything but losing songs for the remainder of the fight (bard being outside) probably isn't the difference between whether you win or lose.

[Shiyo]

Rebalancing the game around idris not being so incredibly overpowered would be better for the game as a whole IMO.

[OmnysValefor]

You can't nerf Idris or nerf Dunna without only making the game harder. Removing GEO from the game wouldn't change the fact that Bard is not enough of a replacement in many situations. Nerfing Idris and Dunna requires nerfing many fights. I'm not concerned about the people doing Aeonic Farms, they'll probably be fine, but the people still working on lower tiers will be hurt worse. The people where I'm at, on the last leg of first Aeonic will also be hurt.

Future content, whatever that is, will have to be designed appropriately.

The problem is too that the comparison should really just be 3 song Mythic Bard to Idris GEO and that connection is miles apart.

To be honest, as an RME Paladin, I find Rune Fencer a little unfair at times but PLD still has a lot of use so I'm not complaining.

[Fae]

Threnody II values listed aren't stacked, that's just threondy II's potency. Dispel is an issue but not always, where as aoe damage is something almost every mob has so is always a concern for GEO.

Comparing raw numbers of one set of buffs to each other is what people do wrong with BRD vs GEO, it's not an intelligent conversation.

Giving buffs to bard is not a good solution, and I stated why.

Scherzo is still important in many mage fights, Teles for example. Hate resets or charm and one tp move can mean the back line is dead, or charm. Scherzo is an added safety bonus of bard often ignored.

[Olor]

It's time to give bard something. Just give it to them.

Yes, please, something to make brd competitive for NQ folks would be really welcome. Basically I think a brd with only Oboro weapon and mid tier 119 gear should be as good as a GEO with only dunna and mid tier 119 gear. Right now there is no contest.

Right now it's arguable a BRD with one or more RME can still be below a dunna GEO.

BRD needs a boost.... cause yeah, you can work like a dog keeping multiple different songs on every player etc, but even with working twice as hard you're often just not going to add as much to a party as a GEO no matter how hard you work.

[Fae]

And the push for the game being steadily dumbed down marches on. Get it, it's a bard joke cuz marches but it's actually really sad because we're making the game dumber and easier instead of actually becoming better players and using what is already there and asking for stuff for free because complaining is easier than actually working at something. Balance changes should come in the form of nerfs or be balanced with content changes if buffs.

[OmnysValefor]

Threnody II values listed aren't stacked, that's just threondy II's potency. Dispel is an issue but not always, where as aoe damage is something almost every mob has so is always a concern for GEO.

Comparing raw numbers of one set of buffs to each other is what people do wrong with BRD vs GEO, it's not an intelligent conversation.

Giving buffs to bard is not a good solution, and I stated why.

Scherzo is still important in many mage fights, Teles for example. Hate resets or charm and one tp move can mean the back line is dead, or charm. Scherzo is an added safety bonus of bard often ignored.

Threnodies don't stack as in you can't have multiple on the same target (Say Dark Threnody and Ice Threnody).

When you're considering -one spot-, which is most of what the game is, even some of the highest content, straight-vs does matter.

I have not fought Teles yet but I know the charm is a problem, I didn't say mages never take damage, I said they usually don't. I'm not saying Scherzo is just worthless, but on a lot of fights, it's not worth it.

Let's not forget the other things GEO can do: Impact, Stun, MB if light on nukers, and sometimes sleep. Yes, many other jobs in the alli can sleep, but they may be busy with other things.

Bard has scherzo, which doesn't always protect. Multi-hit killshots frequently don't trigger Scherzo because no single hit exceeded the threshold.

GEO has Vex/Attune (only magic evasion, not -mdt or +mdb), Wilt/Barrier (which will reduce the potency of all physical hits) and Fend/Fade (+mdb/-mab).

It's not unintelligent just because you don't agree.

[Olor]

And it isn't "dumbing the game down" to have 2 jobs that can fulfill the role of buffer equally well. We're not suggesting increasing party size or making bard better than GEO - just making BRD good enough to make it so there is more of a choice about what jobs to bring to content - that doesn't make the game easier really, it just means more people can have more fun in more configurations.

[OmnysValefor]

And the push for the game being steadily dumbed down...

Has nothing to do with dumbing it down or making it easier. It's a sad state when a RME [job] is regularly outclassed by a JSE that shares the same role. Yes, they stack but frequently it's not worth stacking them.

I'm not bringing Bard to fights for scherzo and refresh that don't need it and I'm wanting the game easier? Most other cases, GEO just does better. It's not 50/50 or probably even 75/25 and that's pretty sad.

[Fae]

It's not unintelligent just because you don't agree.

You're right, good thing that has nothing to do with why I said what I said, and as in other threads, you tend to purposefully try to misinterpret the other person to make your own position stronger whether you do it through red herring, strawman, or just good old cherry picking all of it has the same effect, it makes it a lot less worthwhile to reply. It leads to running around in circles accomplishing nothing. You're clearly set on your views which I won't hold against you, and I won't hold this against you either but you have less game knowledge and experience than me and while I tend to not discount people on that alone, it goes miles further for stating your perspective if you can admit as much. I've said my view and answers to things like why 2.5 bubbles already (only 2 is geomancy enhanced, and entrust isn't up full time). What you're doing will only get emotional upvotes from people that already share your view, there's very little actual debate on here and informed posts are usually met with the maximum hostility moderators here allow which thankfully isn't much but it still leads to nothing accomplished and for the most part, people ignoring what was said if they don't agree with it. For example all you said in your post had some truth to it, but you purposefully left out context, weights and amounts which purposefully paints a false picture, to a smart outside observer this lends your posts less weight not more, and though it can be effective at swaying people that don't care about the integrity of the argument or getting agreements from those who already agree with you, it's not a worthwhile discussion. What my comment said and was stated to mean is comparing a part of what BRD does to all of what GEO does, and that is the branded comparison made everywhere, is not an intelligent conversation or a good place to talk about design or balance.

As soon as balance changes are made, those other parts of BRD will still be there even if we do not currently use them, which something is favored some people tend to get the most use out of it they can that is the problem of balancing around lazy or low play. Example, before the evasion nerf DD wins on high end content was still done. Now it's just done stupidly well by those same people that could do it before, talking sub 3 min wins on WoC and Teles. SE made the game easier, yet again, by popular demand. And now what was some of the hardest fights in the game is a trivial sub 3 min fight for people that could beat it before anyway. And what new content do we have to replace it now that it is easier? hmmm. It's been a problem since the game came out really, except now we don't have as fast a dev cycle to keep up and we are using temporary content so its like burning the candle at both ends. And yet here we are, people yet again saying buff don't nerf, and make every job stronger if there is any problem, and at the same time make content easier. I don't like it one bit, let alone agree. Geo-Malaise and Geo-Frailty in their current forms are too strong I think SE didn't intend them to be this strong, but if they do nerf those now it will shut the gates on fledgling Aeonic LS as well as directly affect pet jobs. Geo-Acumen and Geo-Fury are fine, but when you start reducing defenses... it tends to have a gigantic effect on damage output (which btw is also part of the power equation for what makes BLU so strong with it's potent Def downs but that is another thread). BRD could stand to be more useful to mage setups, and perhaps have accuracy boosts on threnody II over what they have but for DD setups it's already required to have one on anything hard and they are required on anything that needs crowd control. Threnody II can't "stack" as you put it, but neither do Storms II and you almost always focus on one elemental damage at a time due to elemental weaknesses and Storms being so strong. Any time you buff a job, you're making the game easier.

And yes, FFXI has been dumbed down steadily year after year, sometimes they release new content or harder content. But the "hard" we know today is nothing like the "hard" of yesteryear except maybe master trials and things are made constantly easier, usually by popular demand because people want things handed for free others already worked hard for. BLU in its current form makes the game easier and people want to "buff every other DD job" to make up for it, making the entire game easier. GEO in its current form makes the game easier due to Geo-Malaise and Geo-Frailty, having BRD be comparable would give you stacking effects making the game even easier... there's no way of looking at things it isn't dumbed down by buffing. You make jobs stronger, content is easier, which makes it dumber. The only counter to that is new hard content, this has the effect of phasing out old content and bringing in the new. Ambuscade is our new content, and it is temp content, I'm not sure what they have planned for next year, but I'm going to doubt it will be harder than master trials or aeonic quests, and if I'm right then all these buffs you guys are pushing for will soon leave the game even easier. It's not really the ffxi I fell in love with in the first place if it's made too easy and doesn't take a lot of game knowledge, effort and teamwork to pull off the challenge is what makes it rewarding. I know not everyone thinks that way, but there's no way I'd have so many close friends in game and it'd keep me paying monthly if it was sufficiently dumbed down and I don't like that it steadily goes that way. Buffs should be very situational to address any balance issue not lathered and dumped on to everything that isn't favored and strong, it's counter productive to game quality.

[OmnysValefor]

"You're right, good thing that has nothing to do with why I said what I said, and as in other threads, you tend to purposefully try to misinterpret the other person to make your own position stronger whether you do it through red herring, strawman, or just good old cherry picking all of it has the same effect, it makes it a lot less worthwhile to reply."

Actually, I tend to debate posts as a whole. Here in this this thread, I dissected one of your extremely long posts, agreed with some of it, and disagreed with other parts. I did cut off the end as I had nothing left to reply to.

"It leads to running around in circles accomplishing nothing. You're clearly set on your views which I won't hold against you, and I won't hold this against you either but you have less game knowledge and experience than me and while I tend to not discount people on that alone, it goes miles further for stating your perspective if you can admit as much."

Less? That's likely. Enough less that it matters? Probably not. One of the things I've stood by is the disparity in what's required to be a good geomancer and what's required to be a good bard.

"I've said my view and answers to things like why 2.5 bubbles already (only 2 is geomancy enhanced, and entrust isn't up full time)."

Okay.

"What you're doing will only get emotional upvotes from people that already share your view,"

Only? No. But yes, some of it. And that's true on both sides. There are a few knowledgeable people that still come to these forums but most stay away, or have been banned. I admit when I haven't played a job, or it's been so long that my opinion may be faulty. I admit my experience.

Support, however, isn't really something you have to play (though I do play GEO and have played Bard) to understand their weaknesses and their strengths because what they do is for the rest of the party. Especially when you know the player playing it.

"For example all you said in your post had some truth to it, but you purposefully left out context, weights and amounts which purposefully paints a false picture, to a smart outside observer this lends your posts less weight not more, and though it can be effective at swaying people that don't care about the integrity of the argument or getting agreements from those who already agree with you,"

I know and have known that a threnody is more potent than Focus or Languor, and can be both. I also know/have known that it's seldom just one element that applies to the boss. I suppose Dark Threnody would be nice on Maju but if the Bard doesn't have Aeonic, you're probably better bringing second a second GEO (for a melee kill). If you're only bringing one buffer, you're definitely better bringing a GEO. Enfeebles aren't usually critical to fights anymore. Blind or not, Maju's still going to hit the tank or his shadows (of course, that's not why you blind Maju). As for nuking, if a group's mages are appropriately geared to the content, bursting is not usually an issue, coupled with the inherent m.acc boost on bursts.

You don't paralyze meteor anymore, you vex/attune it.

"it's not a worthwhile discussion. What my comment said and was stated to mean is comparing a part of what BRD does to all of what GEO does, and that is the branded comparison made everywhere, is not an intelligent conversation or a good place to talk about design or balance."

That may well have been what you intended it to mean but it didn't come across well. You seemed to be discounting the entire discussion because you disapprove of the stance. I gave you a long reply and you replied with a few words.

Balance, as you know, doesn't just matter at the very-top or even the higher up rank. Bard and Geomancer will never be completely interchangeable (at least I hope not), but it would be nice to see Bard at any decent level of gear more practical.

Would you advise a new person playing the game to pick Bard or Geomancer if the choice was between the two? I know I'd tell them Geomancer, because they'll have immediate use in any group they're part of (well, once they have JSE gear and Dunna).

And hey, like I said, if SE is fine with where Bard is at, just explain that position (please). Bard has remained unchanged, with the exception of another difficult/expensive/tedious to obtain necessary weapon. I think the community, as a whole, might have a different stance on bard if Honor March was part of JP. I get that melee burns love their aeonic bards, and for obvious reasons.

Edit: The irony is that the weapon is necessary to make bard 'relevant' more often, it's not necessary to get the first wave of kills on presently the hardest content in the game. It can't be, because that's how you obtain it.

Send me a message on FFXIAH, if you like :)

[Zhronne]

I don't know if SE refuse to buff BRD is because they're worried about people stacking BRD+GEO in endgame accomplishing higher DPS output than T4 difficulty should be.
I hardly think that's the case, even without taking into account the frequent dispelga mechanics.
What can BRD provide to a melee setup? Attack, Accuracy, Haste. Arguably single stats but the amounts are really small unless you SV them. (and it takes two slots out of teh 4-5 available for songs)

Haste is usually irrelevant and even when it is an entrusted indihaste takes care of that for a zerg setup.
With Idris using Bolster you can easily cap attack without minuet.
Now accuracy is a different story and I can see madrigals/honor being useful, if only to free up other buffers so they can use stuff other than acc buffs.


But I don't think we can call that something SE should be scared of. There's hardly anything BRD can provide atm in a world where every organized group has at least an Idris GEO =/
Buffing BRD somehow (make so SV/Nitro songs can't be dispelled, powering up minuets or something) wouldn't make BRD+GEO too scary, if anything it would just make BRD a valid alternative to GEO, and that's it.

[Zhronne]

I don't want geo nerfed, I just want bard to be buffed a bit so it's a closer thing.
I don't want GEO nerfed either, it's way too late. If they wanted to nerf GEO they had to do it years ago, not now. (GEO has been already hiddenly nerfed in Master Battles anyway).

To be fair COR would need a buff too, but less than BRD.
COR has the same problem as BRD with dispel mechanics, and they have a harder time than BRD in overwriting buffs, plus they don't have the versatility BRD have (but slightly more than GEO).
COR can provide some DPS (in some content it's quite an useful DPS), can boost next spell cast on a target, has scaling, powerful buffs (not as much as GEO but better than BRD) and last but not least has a plethora of pretty unique buffs.
So... COR situation isn't ideal either, but it's in a much better place than BRD.

And it's no surprise, you still see CORs being used for rotations and utility (random deal etc), yet how often do you see that happening with BRD? Exactely :D

[Zhronne]

Something that would put BRD in a better spot, even if no new songs were added, would be to simply adjust the skill caps and have them scale to 900 combined skill. As it stands a level 99 BRD can cap all song skill caps naked without any job points, unless I'm mistaken. Since I don't think it was ever adjusted from level 75.
There are songs added after 75 cap, but yeah pretty much you can cap every song (except maybe scherzo?) without skill gear. Except for range, of course, can't cap that on the post 75 songs.
Not sure this would be a good solution though. Atm BRD midcasts with Song duration gear. Forcing them to choose between duration and potency would be a bit harsh and quite annoying honestly.



Another option would be to actually make Instruments upgradable to iLvl 119 allowing the addition of bonuses like Song +, adding a special song for each instrument (not just Aeonic, etc... along those lines.
No, please no.
I have every BRD legendary weapon so I'm not saying this because of envy or anything, but fixing a job through equipment is NEVER the right thing to do in a MMO, imho.
A job should be balanced by itself, and gear should make that job more powerful, period.
If a job is so broken that it needs some fix, then you should fix the job, not make a rare item even more powerful than it already is.
I might be saying this against my interest but I really hate this way of "fixing" things.

Once you acknowledge something is not right in a job, then bloody fix the job instead of buffing already existing items and forcing people to get them to "balance" the broken job.

[Zhronne]

Threnody II values listed aren't stacked, that's just threondy II's potency.
Threnody II values officially gave to us by SE are either wrong or they use a different measurement system.
Can't compare those values 1:1 as if they were macc but for a specific element.
Which is what I assumed at first, I guess many other people too.

Truth is, Threnody II does make somewhat of a difference but it's much much weaker than even a Dunna Languor or Frazzle III (or 2...).
In addition to that, Threnodies II apply to a SINGLE element, you have to stick them on the target first, and they can be erased.
Dunna Languor is more powerful, applies to all elements, can't be erased.

See what we have here? It's exactely what I said a few pages ago.
I'm sure every developer would make things differently if they were to create stuff from zero, and the debuff which is harder to stick and to mantain and applies to a single element would be more powerful, whereas the debuff which can't be resisted, can't be erased and applies to all elements would compensate all these pros by being slightly weaker.
Here we have the opposite :D



Dispel is an issue but not always, where as aoe damage is something almost every mob has so is always a concern for GEO.
No.
Dispel isn't an issue on all mobs, just like erase.
LIKEWISE aoe damage isn't a concern for GEO on all mobs.
It's exactely the same, i.e. depends on teh fight.
On average I'd still say it's easier for GEO though, unless you have BoG/EA up, a Luopan is easily replaceable in an instant, songs require you to either get close (in danger) or use Pianissimo, and it takes times between fakes + real.


I'm not taking defense of BRD because it's my best friend forever job and nooo goway you evil GEO I hate you!
<== Has Idris
<== Has AG Carnwenhan, 99 Daurdabla, 99 Gjallarhorn, Marsyas

I bloody love GEO, and I would never ask for a nerf to GEO (way too late).
I'm just saying that BRD needs something, it's quite clear it does, this ain't your regular "omg SE fix my job because it sucks!" rant, there's very very valuable and unbiased reasons to justify it.

[Zhronne]

I'm not saying Scherzo is just worthless, but on a lot of fights, it's not worth it.
Can put many other buffs (or jobs) in place of that "Scherzo".
This situation is a byproduct of the scaling system.
When the monster's HP and hence its difficulty scales for every player you bring into the alliance (and it's quite a GENEROUS scaling for the monster) you need to justify every player you bring in.

Could BRD provide some moderate utility on most HELM fights? Of course it could.
Problem is: would that moderate utility justify the additional time/difficulty gained by bringing one more player into the alliance?
And the answer sadly is pretty much always a big, fat, sad "no".

It goes for many other jobs of course, but this feels especially wrong for a job whose role is that of "buffing others" and can hardly find a spot these days in any end game event =/

[OmnysValefor]

Can put many other buffs (or jobs) in place of that "Scherzo".
This situation is a byproduct of the scaling system.
When the monster's HP and hence its difficulty scales for every player you bring into the alliance (and it's quite a GENEROUS scaling for the monster) you need to justify every player you bring in.

Could BRD provide some moderate utility on most HELM fights? Of course it could.
Problem is: would that moderate utility justify the additional time/difficulty gained by bringing one more player into the alliance?
And the answer sadly is pretty much always a big, fat, sad "no".

It goes for many other jobs of course, but this feels especially wrong for a job whose role is that of "buffing others" and can hardly find a spot these days in any end game event =/

Yeah you're right, and like I pointed out. GEO has 6 spells (sometimes used in pairs, sometimes not) that are just as valid as Scherzo, and I didn't even account for EVA+/ACC-.

Order of spells +MEVA>-MACC > +DEF>-ATK (dependent on fight, usually MEVA will win for it's wider use, covering enfeebles, nukes, etc) > -MAB>+MDT > -ACC/+EVA.

---

You're also right that we're not even bringing up Corsair in this discussion and it certainly could use some tweaks but Corsair is like GEO's little buddy.

---


No, please no.
I have every BRD legendary weapon so I'm not saying this because of envy or anything, but fixing a job through equipment is NEVER the right thing to do in a MMO, imho.
A job should be balanced by itself, and gear should make that job more powerful, period.
If a job is so broken that it needs some fix, then you should fix the job, not make a rare item even more powerful than it already is.
I might be saying this against my interest but I really hate this way of "fixing" things.

^^^^ Ding ding ding.

I'm a full REM Paladin. I'm okay with absolutely needing aegis, needing Ochain, benefitting from Burtgang but another weapon is just over the top and like I've talked about a few times: Best-in-slot bards, lacking Aeonic, not being wanted is tragic. It's funny that while other Aeonics are good, BRD got 'the necessary one'. And like I said, not even necessary to complete [this] content, just necessary to be more desirable.

PLD Aeonic Shield apparently has no distinguishable use.

---

I love HP scaling for making people contribute. I don't think people should be carried just because "it won't hurt anything" and hate HP scaling because it frequently boils down to "what's the bare minimum we can do this with?" and since BRD/COR rolls don't fade away with popping the boss, their roles often get relegated to cheerleaders outside the fight.

[Zhronne]

PLD Aeonic Shield apparently has no distinguishable use.

It's a bloody sexy /lockstyle shield!!!!
...
...
...
Ok let me go back to the dark corner of the room, in silence :(

[Afania]

I don't want GEO nerfed either, it's way too late. If they wanted to nerf GEO they had to do it years ago, not now. (GEO has been already hiddenly nerfed in Master Battles anyway).

To be fair COR would need a buff too, but less than BRD.
COR has the same problem as BRD with dispel mechanics, and they have a harder time than BRD in overwriting buffs, plus they don't have the versatility BRD have (but slightly more than GEO).
COR can provide some DPS (in some content it's quite an useful DPS), can boost next spell cast on a target, has scaling, powerful buffs (not as much as GEO but better than BRD) and last but not least has a plethora of pretty unique buffs.
So... COR situation isn't ideal either, but it's in a much better place than BRD.

And it's no surprise, you still see CORs being used for rotations and utility (random deal etc), yet how often do you see that happening with BRD? Exactely :D

Nah, I think COR power is currently in a "just right" position. In fact I often think this job is a little bit too OP sometimes, buffs like allies roll which increases your dmg by % is pretty strong, and JA reset kinda doubles pt output in longer fights.

But since COR requires massive amount of effort to setup the pt in correct way to make it OP and only a few content can be abused with COR powa it's probably still fine as it is.

Also I tend to view COR as a DPS job with buff abilities, while most people view COR as support job. So the way I build pt around COR and my pov toward this job is probably different from the majority. Since COR often occupy a DPS slot in most pt of mine, the lack of 3 rolls and buffs being dispellable is less of a concern because the job is still contributing DPS in pt.

People keep screaming COR buff all day, but I honestly can't see anyway to buff the job and still keep it balanced. COR can do rolls for every single member in a pt, for example you can give tank defensive rolls AND DD or BLMs DD rolls with just 1 COR in pt, v.s you need 1 extra GEO if you want GEO defensive buffs. So COR buffs being dispellable and less potent than GEO kinda just compensate that strength.

I personally really don't want 3 rolls, because that just move the job away from it's original design direction- which is a job that spends majority of time DPSing and less time buffing. It's already time consuming as it is to do 2 rolls, especially if you do it mid-fight or in ambuscade. I often have to burn my random deal and reset random deal every ambuscade just to speed up the rolling process. The life of keeping up 3 rolls just sounds terrible. If this job gets a buff, it should be the DPS ability that gets buff, not time spent on rolling. If I really want 3 rolls I would just use 2 COR instead.

If there's any buffs that I want for this job I would say reisen level of melee weapon is probably what this job needs the most. Fettering/Blurred +1 combo is so behind at this point.

[OmnysValefor]

Very nice perspective Afania.

I don't agree 100% with it but totally get what you mean. I imagine if you wanted to be more support-oriented, you would play geomancer or bard. Also, I've never really played cor and certainly never for personal dps.

Geo may only have 2.5 buffs but can change those readily. Can't discount that.

[Afania]

Very nice perspective Afania.

I don't agree 100% with it but totally get what you mean. I imagine if you wanted to be more support-oriented, you would play geomancer or bard. Also, I've never really played cor and certainly never for personal dps.


What happened is that atm community frequently use prebuff COR then just buff and drop. My last melee woc (when I was on tank) we even used 3 prebuff COR for 6 rolls.

If SE gives COR 3 rolls it'd just encourage community to continue with COR prebuff and drop, it's just that now we get 3 rolls per COR instead of 2 rolls so we can settle with 2 COR mules for 6 rolls lol.

IMO it doesn't solve any of the issue, nor make the job more desirable. To make the job more desirable the best way is to make the job stronger DPS so at least it has a reason to stay in the pt after buff.

In high lv melee pt this job is pretty bad when it comes to accuracy. Not just because of B ranked skill, but also due to the lack of top tier melee weapons. Melee DPS is also pretty bad compare with melee REMA DDs. Better acc also means better TP gain in high end content to setup skill chain with real DDs etc.

This job is never designed to be a full support job like GEO and BRD anyways. It's REMA are all DD weapons, and it's armors are mostly light DD armor. By comparison GEO and BRD has support REMA and mage gears.

Regardless, even without reisen melee weapon I feel the job is still just right in terms balance. Leaden SC fits in damn well in BLM setup, and COR savage blade build is still pretty strong as melee in terms of DPS. COR's support ability + it's DPS atm still outperforms using another job for the same slot most of the time from my experience, unless the pt is setup to do MB with elements that's not dark.

[Shiyo]

What happened is that atm community frequently use prebuff COR then just buff and drop. My last melee woc (when I was on tank) we even used 3 prebuff COR for 6 rolls.

It's pretty bad when people invite you to come play a video game to not actually play a video game.

How is this fun for people?

[Vae]

It's pretty bad when people invite you to come play a video game to not actually play a video game.

How is this fun for people?

Those prebuff cors are pretty much always 2boxes. Most people (that matter) 2box.

[Shiyo]

Yes, you clearly do not matter if you don't dual box.
..what?

[Jakuk]

Yes, you clearly do not matter if you don't dual box.
..what?

Agreed a silly thing to say. That said, Yes, no one is going to ask someone to come to buff and nothing else, they duo-box the COR.

[Zhronne]

It's pretty bad when people invite you to come play a video game to not actually play a video game.

How is this fun for people?
They do that with mules/secondary accounts, not with real players of course :D

The amount of people who multibox in this game is quite insane, I dunno why it is that way, I've been playing other MMOs and I've never seen it to this extent :x
Not all people do it just for the benefits, someone really seems to be enjoying it.
(I don't multibox btw)

[Olor]

I really appreciate the helpful and polite discussion here. It seems like there is a lot of support for bringing bard up closer to GEO.

[Urmom]

I really appreciate the helpful and polite discussion here. It seems like there is a lot of support for bringing bard up closer to GEO.

Think people like geos current strength in a vacuum but hate how it completely overshadows other jobs primarily defined by their buff/debuffs such as brd or rdm. Cor gets lucky due to it's somewhat unique ones but the rolls that do share similar roles also get overshadowed.

[OmnysValefor]

Think people like geos current strength in a vacuum but hate how it completely overshadows other jobs primarily defined by their buff/debuffs such as brd or rdm. Cor gets lucky with due it's somewhat unique ones but the rolls that due share similar roles also get overshadowed.

This is pretty inishgtful. I don't like or hate where GEO is at though. I think it was designed in a way that decimates where bard is at but that the buffs are necessary for first clears / first several clears and always welcome even if you grossly outgear something. If you're fighting Zi'tah t2 and grossly outgear it, you'll probably still take a GEO because it just makes things faster.

I'm fine with high end content requiring a buffer. I'm fine with it somethings requiring that buffer be GEO (some fights require a specific type of tank), the problem is that you rarely want the buffer to be bard, let alone is it required (besides sleeps).

I think GEO's main luxury over COR, where they overlap, is readiness (5 seconds into a fight, and the geo should be setup) and 100% reliability. Not just for a lack of bust mechanic but you always know Fury is going to give you X%.

Not complaining about bust, it's part of the job.

[Afania]

They do that with mules/secondary accounts, not with real players of course :D

The amount of people who multibox in this game is quite insane, I dunno why it is that way, I've been playing other MMOs and I've never seen it to this extent :x
Not all people do it just for the benefits, someone really seems to be enjoying it.
(I don't multibox btw)

I heard EQ player also DB a lot.

This game favors dualboxers, in terms of grind efficiency and content difficulty.

If you dualbox you make 2x amount of gil in htbc and ambuscade, if you 3 box you make 3x.

In endgame content NM HP scale with more people. So say if you make woc pt and invite real COR x2, BRD and to buff your pt and keep them in ally NM will ended up having 600k extra HP assuming adding 1 person = 200k+ HP. 600k extra HP is really a lot, and it increased kill time by a lot, thus increasing the chance of woc fucking the pt with bene/mijin etc.

On the other hand if you just roll with COR and BRD mules you get all these buffs without having to suffer from HP increase.

So far most of the melee woc pt that I know of, that managed to get 2-3 min kills are all using prebuff BRD and CORs. A lot of the strong PT using real COR and BRD ended up having 3+ min kills despite having top tier DDx4 in pt, probably due to HP increase while keeping them in pt.

Also not having to wait for people when doing lowman event is also a big advantage.

A lot of the endgame first clears on smaller servers are basically just 3ish multi boxers using scripts playing together because it's much faster to organize a pt and experiment efficient strats with less people. When you can log on with 2 other close friends and fill up 90% of ally to try hard stuff such as T4, you can make progress a lot faster than bigger endgame LS that needs to gear up 10 people and coordinate with 10 people for hard events.

[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.

[Shiyo]

I think that's a pretty huge problem with bard. It actually needs more gear than a DD to be playable.

[detlef]

I think it's pretty funny that people say BRD pairs well with GEO in a high-difficulty melee setting, but you have to have already cleared those NMs to get the gear you need to be considered for said situation. In reality you need a relic, mythic, empyrean, and aeonic or else you're not going to be able to contribute. Just leave it at home.

People are right to say that the base job needs some sort of boost that doesn't come in the form of gear. It should be something meaningful enough for a 3-song BRD to bring something to the table at least some of the time. I'm not even sure what that would be at this point.

[OmnysValefor]

Fae, I get your position, but I don't understand it to be honest.

You claim to be at the top of the game but you're worried about what buffs to others. So what if it's an indirect buff to people at the top (your 3 minute WoC just became 2:50!). You said something earlier about making the game easier but isn't that why you bring Aeonic bards? Isn't that way you melee zerg rather than some skillchain setup? There are a few people in this thread with Aeonic Bards andaccess to Aeonic Bards who say Bard can use a baseline buff, but you're insisting that I, and none of them, know what we're talking about.

[Reain]

I think there's a few issues.

Bard traditionally gained strength mostly from new tiers of song but has only gained new tiers of Threnody and March in the last 3 years.
COR and GEO both have buffs/debuffs that are percentage based so naturally get stronger as players/monsters get stronger, spells that scale with skill (geomancy to 900 combined skill), equipment added post item level that significantly increases potency. (Dunna/Idris/Barataria Ring). That's not to say we haven't had lots of quality of life changes and duration increases but buff-wise my pre-delve bard would adequately do today's content outside of Honor March which is locked behind an Aeonic and some boosts to Minuet/Minne/Requiem. (Job points/Minne adjustments).

The strength of songs split among so many tiers isn't worth 1 of 5 song slots. Just as an example, casting 4 Paeons typically does around 42 hp/tic and prevents us casting anything else. A Regen 4 or Regen 5 can do a lot more and has it's own slot. 2 Carols give 110 Elemental resist and block 2 song slots, a Barspell from a WHM typically is 180 elemental resist. Similarly a Boost spells vs etude. Attunement vs 8 Carol1s, 8 Carol 2s, Operetta x2, Aubade, Gavotte, Cappricio, Fantasia, Round. In a difference sense you can pick 1 threnody out of 8 vs languor which works for all spells.

A lot of our spell list is/becomes redundant. Once you get Requiem VII, Requiem 1-6 are retired. Status Resist songs effects can be fixed with a -na spell, an echo drop, a remedy. In a fight like Teles Operetta x2 offers no utily against silence aura. It perhaps doesn't matter but it sounds like they are hitting the limit for the amount of spells they can add.

Songs can take a lot of work to put up and maintain. Against anything that can dispel. In setups where you need to do different songs for Tanks/Mages/Melees/Range DD. Even 1 effect dispel can become a nightmare to fix because it takes a different effect from each person. Duration with troubadour become difficult to change once troubadour is gone. Not that corsair doesn't have some of these problems too. Throwing 2-3 bubbles can be a lot faster even in situations when they are difficult to keep alive.

It's entirely possible to be capped haste, capped acc and capped atk before a bard has cast anything depending on setup. This isn't against high end stuff but these situations can happen. You are left with etudes to cast which outside of SV are a little lackluster. Compared to GEO and COR who still have incredible things to use. Samurai Roll/Tactician's Roll/Allies Roll/Thief's Rolls and more. Attunement, Vex. Wilt and more. 2 or more GEOs or 2 or more CORs in a party still have useful things to use. 2 Bard's in party offer little benefit. Similarly mage-wise when content restore HP/MP on pop, has large amount of temps, and lots of other sources of MP recovery Ballad usefulness is diminished.

Prebuffing and HP scaling. Others have gone into it.

[Zhronne]

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.
Don't need that.
They could already wipe all buffs with Geas Fete NMs if they wanted. As a matter of fact Geomancy bubbles (even entrusted ones) get deactivated each time you pop a new Geas Fete NM.
I'm pretty confident if they wanted they could do the same to all buffs.

This would be a nice solution but I hardly believe it would make a huge difference into BRD's level of "wantedness" into endgame content.
I mean it would certainly be better than the current situation, but I wouldn't expect a very different scenario in the end.
People would just optimize to live without a prebuff BRD. 1-2 mins longer fights, big deal! :P

[Zhronne]

but has only gained new tiers of Threnody and March in the last 3 years.
Despite the name and being affected by +March gear, I wouldn't really call Honor March a new tier of March. It feels more like a unique song than a third, higher tier of March. Doesn't it?
Pointless thing to say, I know :p



A lot of our spell list is/becomes redundant. Once you get Requiem VII, Requiem 1-6 are retired
This is true but affects many other spells from many other jobs as well. Arguably not as much as Requiem though, I agree on that.



Songs can take a lot of work to put up and maintain.
This is a serious issue. Some time ago I got into a (polite) argument with a friend and he was saying BRD was so powerful with the versatility it offers.
That's true in theory but REALISTICALLY you can't really offer 4-5 different songs for every single alliance member, even without dispel mechanics.
One way to make this issue better would be to make SV or Nitro (or both!) songs undispellable. Wouldn't solve the situation when someone goes out of range or dies, but overall it would make the situation better.
Another way is to allow us to powerup Daurdabla and Gjallarhorn. Owners of BOTH weapons will be able to get a new Horn and a new Daubla, they would be identical but both would have the effect of BOTH items, only difference would be one is a String and the other is a Wind instrument. This would make the situation of reapplying (people out of range, dispelled, dead) so much easier because it would save us the step of doing fakes.

Either of these solutions, or even both, would be very welcome. Would it solve BRD's problem though? No, alas I don't think so, and it would be a treat only for us RMEA BRD owners. Surely welcome, but ultimately it wouldn't change the position BRD has in game atm.



Prebuffing and HP scaling. Others have gone into it.
This should be solved regardless of BRD situation, imho. Make all buffs disappear on pop (except stuff like reraise and food, maybe make an exception for "buffs that stay while zoning" as well) AND make the HP scaling of NMs a bit more gentle would do wonders into making leaders be more willing to invite BRD into setups.

Specifically I don't know what else it could be done in an easy and fast way, most of the things I have in mind are fine-tuning stuff that would require SE probably more work than they will ever be willing to invest into BRD.
So what other solutions could they do to fix BRD in a fast way?
Buffing all songs by a small % and consequentially nerf Soul Voice maybe? Altough honestly if they keep the % small like 10 I doubt SV doubling that would break anything.
Specifically Threnodies are in big need of a NOTICEABLE boost. Etudes too need a boost. Paeons too of course but nobody cares about lolPaeons. Marches and Ballads are fine like they are.
They could also merge Prelude and Madrigal, and use Preludes for another type of buff, whatever really, anything would be nice.
But see what I did here? We're already into specific tweaks here and there.
I dunno, I think it's gonna be hard to do something fast and easy that's gonna be meaningful and at the same time it won't make BRD too OP during SV.


tl;dr
Make buffs disappear at pop
Do some QoL change about fake songs and dispelled songs
Do a noticeable buff to Threnodies and Etudes
Merge Madrigals and Preludes, give a new purpose to Preludes

With these points I think BRD would already be in a much better and more desireable position than it actually is, and these changes would affect all BRDs, not just RMEA owners.

[OmnysValefor]

What if we had a fight designed just like escha fights are now (tribulenses and popping) but the fight length was extended by three minutes. All buffs wore on pop (except anything typically not dispellable--reraise, runes even, stances like hasso, light arts, yonin), but the boss didn't agro til it was claimed?

The other advantage this would offer is protecting from the frustration of the occasional person who forgot lens while 2hr is ticking.

The fact is, however, that this doesn't make Bard, in its current form, any more desirable for the groups its not already desired for (lullaby-strategies, melee zergs)

[detlef]

Buffs used to disappear at pop and it was awful. Nobody liked that.

I don't see buffing and dropping to be as big a deal as people think. The job has other issues that seem more pressing.

[Fae]

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.

...

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

No HP scaling means no matter how bad you are if you throw enough people at it, you win. That creates a dumbed down game people didn't like and was why HP scaling was introduced in the first place. It doesn't help that anyone wishing to not bring a job will exaggerate how much HP scaling adds without actually knowing how much it adds in the first place. It's basically misinformation piled on top of rampant opinion which is never good.

Two of the three current master trials let you prebuff before entering by the way.

The solution would be to raise awareness of what you're actually missing out on with a competent brd or cor in party, as people tend to dismiss it without even knowing what it is. You yourself have said and know that COR can add a lot of damage, as well as quickdraw support and biggest of all, Job Ability resets which only COR of all jobs in FFXI can do.


Fae, I get your position, but I don't understand it to be honest.

You claim to be at the top of the game but you're worried about what buffs to others. So what if it's an indirect buff to people at the top (your 3 minute WoC just became 2:50!). You said something earlier about making the game easier but isn't that why you bring Aeonic bards? Isn't that way you melee zerg rather than some skillchain setup? There are a few people in this thread with Aeonic Bards andaccess to Aeonic Bards who say Bard can use a baseline buff, but you're insisting that I, and none of them, know what we're talking about.

I've made no such claim, your statements themselves already display that you lack both experience and game knowledge along with your own testimony about your own accomplishments, I simply stated as such because it's pretty obvious. And once again, reread my posts, what you're responding makes it seem you dont' really understand them. I caution on what should be done, and don't totally disagree that something should and talked extensively about geo-frailty and geo-malaise, which you probably didn't read if you made party setups for endgame more often, or at all, it's something you'd inherently already understand.

To bring brd in line with GEO damage boosts to the point you could only bring bards and no geo you'd have to give them some sort of potent def down and magic def down which would stack with GEO, or give them astronomically high buffs to attack and mab. You have made many wrong statements, such as saying BRD isn't used at all, or only brought for lullaby. And no, I mostly just said you're wrong and gave reasons why don't put words in my mouth. I also don't like how close you're getting to attacking me personally rather than my statements, which is a pretty clear indicator that someone already feels they lost so I guess we know where you stand. The game doesn't need to be easier right now, 95% of the content is something you can do in sparks gear anyway.

[OmnysValefor]

I haven't fought/defeated, as it stands, three bosses in the current game (or really, the game as a whole). (Teles, Schah, and the dragon). When I mentioned this, you said


It leads to running around in circles accomplishing nothing. You're clearly set on your views which I won't hold against you, and I won't hold this against you either but you have less game knowledge and experience than me and while I tend to not discount people on that alone, it goes miles further for stating your perspective if you can admit as much.

So if you've not got aeonic clears (why I said "at the top of the game"), what have you fought that I haven't?

Oh, and Master Trials, because I don't care about content that doesn't improve me.

Edit: I'm clear at who I am and my experience. Names that I recognizes from FFXIAH who are pretty clear about their experience (usually better than mine, Sechs, Saevel, Afania and others) are weighing in and they're not disagreeing.

Are all the REM Bards I know just bad?

[Zhronne]

I don't see buffing and dropping to be as big a deal as people think.
It's a secondary issue, but an issue nonetheless!
Focusing on fixing just that would hardly change anything, but in conjunction with other adjustments it could offer more motivation to bring BRDs into your alliance instead of just dualboxing a mule for prebuffs.

[detlef]

It's a secondary issue, but an issue nonetheless!
Focusing on fixing just that would hardly change anything, but in conjunction with other adjustments it could offer more motivation to bring BRDs into your alliance instead of just dualboxing a mule for prebuffs.Fair enough. I think this is a larger issue for other people than it is for me. I'm probably not in favor of buffs dropping if a BRD leaves the PT because of how annoying a D/C would be. I think you have to allow prebuffing in Escha areas, we've seen how annoying it is to have our buffs wiped at the start of the fight.

I don't think there's ever going to be a situation where a group isn't going to want at least one GEO. If you want to damage something physically, you'll want Frailty for sure and possibly Torpor. You'll probably want to double down with Fury and Precision. In a mage fight, 2 GEOs doing Malaise Languor Acumen Focus are a great start. At best, BRD is competing for with the 2nd GEO but more realistically is competing with the 3rd GEO. GEO is always going to be your 1st support choice but BRD needs to bring something to the table that can get it into the group over a 2nd GEO. I think that's reasonable.

Maybe the issue is that BRD needs to bring something additional to the table that can be used mid-fight. Elegy is not really useful anymore. Nocturne is nice but WHM already has Addle. Threnodies should be good in theory but in practice do not have anywhere near the effect Languor/Focus have. Which is silly considering they are Gift spells and being element-specific should if anything be more potent than a a generic Meva-/Macc+ which can be bought. Finally we have Requiem which isn't bad and has it's uses. That's all I can say for it. Lullaby is great, no doubt about it. But it's only going to get you into an alliance for a couple of fights.

So here's for maybe another strong debuff. Something that stacks with GEO would be nice of course, but some people will get pissy about that. Personally I think a song that inflicts a sort of Amnesia is fair. Maybe it lasts only a few seconds and is used like Stun. Maybe its base recast is 2 minutes so you have to be frugal about its use. Maybe it lasts 2 minutes and adds a second or two of delay between TP moves, acting more like a Slow for TP moves only.

Job's got issues and is pretty much 100% unwelcome to anything unless you have 500m worth of gear. And even then it still gets picked last. There's probably something wrong with that.

[OmnysValefor]

You're both RME Bards, so it's neat to see a discussion. (Zhronne/Sechs has Aeonic, and Detlef/Phil's my friend...i-I-Is it okay I said that, sir?)

I think buffs can disappear at pop if bosses are designed not to agro/initiate timers (Rei Mandy, for example). Bard has a lot of work to do, swapping parties, sometimes buffing different members of the same party. It would weaken its value vs GEO in a lot of strategies if it had to get everything done after the fight began (takes a lot longer than GEO to really get going).

Some fights can take the whole time alotted though, so I think it's a must that fight times be extended 3 minutes so everyone can roll their buffs. I know I've already said this but I think this would make up for division over the issue.

The thing is, as non-Aeonic Bard is now, debuffs wearing at pop makes the job less desirable on content where the bard's presence is optional.

[Afania]

Don't need that.
They could already wipe all buffs with Geas Fete NMs if they wanted. As a matter of fact Geomancy bubbles (even entrusted ones) get deactivated each time you pop a new Geas Fete NM.
I'm pretty confident if they wanted they could do the same to all buffs.

This would be a nice solution but I hardly believe it would make a huge difference into BRD's level of "wantedness" into endgame content.
I mean it would certainly be better than the current situation, but I wouldn't expect a very different scenario in the end.
People would just optimize to live without a prebuff BRD. 1-2 mins longer fights, big deal! :P

2 min longer fight is pretty big deal on woc though :S Everytime when it bene at 2% I just want to toss my controller ;x

[Afania]

The solution would be to raise awareness of what you're actually missing out on with a competent brd or cor in party, as people tend to dismiss it without even knowing what it is. You yourself have said and know that COR can add a lot of damage, as well as quickdraw support and biggest of all, Job Ability resets which only COR of all jobs in FFXI can do.


IMO DD COR works better in mage setup on WoC/death rotation T4. But since we're talking about melee setup here...

Strictly talking about melee setup, despite I'm a COR main I actually used prebuff COR for melee woc(I played tank instead), just because I think it's more optimal to leave COR out of alliance as it is.

We usually run woc with a setup like this:
Tank GEO GEO
DD DD DD DD GEO WHM

Prebuff: COR x2 BRD SCH

We usually bring strong zerging job such as WAR for woc, and will have 1 to 2 THF to steal 1hr and enmity control. If I keep COR in the pt and occupy a DD slot, there will only be 3 DD slot left. Unless the COR can outparse WAR(it can't, obviously), using WAR WAR WAR THF as DD will have higher output than WAR WAR THF COR.

Keeping COR in pt would probably be worth it if WC has 100% of chance to reset MS and enhance WAR output. Although it can reset warcry 100% WAR can use super revit for that already. Otherwise in pt COR is just a half DD when the slot can be used for real DD. Maybe it can use samba for WARs to cap delay, but unless WAR with 2% more JA haste gets massive DPS boost to justify the DPS gap it doesn't seem to worth it.

I've seen a video of COR winning parse on Teles against none aeonic BLU with all of them spamming savage blade, probably due to COR having access to superior savage blade gears(+1000 TP bonus) than BLU(BLU only gets +500 and that's with aeonic only). But IMHO THF is a lot more ideal on teles than BLU, so I would probably still prefer THF on this particular NM.

Overall as it stands in quite alot of situation it is more ideal to leave COR out of alliance in escha. I would keep COR in some longer fights using mage setup probably, but it's not always ideal.

[Fae]

I haven't fought/defeated, as it stands, three bosses in the current game (or really, the game as a whole). (Teles, Schah, and the dragon). When I mentioned this, you said



So if you've not got aeonic clears (why I said "at the top of the game"), what have you fought that I haven't?

Oh, and Master Trials, because I don't care about content that doesn't improve me.

Edit: I'm clear at who I am and my experience. Names that I recognizes from FFXIAH who are pretty clear about their experience (usually better than mine, Sechs, Saevel, Afania and others) are weighing in and they're not disagreeing.

Are all the REM Bards I know just bad?

You hadn't fought melee woc and teles, or you wouldn't have said brd is only used for lullabies, tumult curator, master trials, melee albumen, melee pretty much anything that has higher acc requirements uses bard otherwise you can't fit 3-4 dd in party you have to load them with GEO instead of having rotating COR and BRD along with a GEO if 3 DD.

I'm not arrogant enough to claim I'm the top of anything so I find it you putting words in my mouth, I have multiple times cleared the aeonic quest as many have now. When I say you are lacking knowledge and experience it is because of those reasons and your own statements saying you hadn't done them, or done them with melee setups which was the claim you made that DD don't use BRD's at all they use GEO only which is clearly and provably and by experience false.

Are all the REM bards you know bad is a straw man argument.

Our BRD don't drop, and the value of having a BRD in the alliance for example in melee WoC is that they add value and you're not boned if the fight takes longer than 11 mins. The value of dropping them is only if you have a mule and doing a 5-6 man clear. BRD outside of debuff spells mentioned, can help others in the alliance with their songs as mentioned before in this thread in my prior posts without eatting time from the melee buffs. Also it's no mistake that BRD is on the Kaykaus armor set, BRD/WHM is a long staple of FFXI and can help with off party cures or supliment a whm keeping debuffs off a tank. Just like a COR can add dps, use quickdraw, and so on. It's not that they don't add value left in, it's that people dismiss it as being important whatsoever b/c they can win without it, even if having those things there would increase their success rate they will dismiss it because it's impossible to see when they would've made a different or not unless you've done many things with a good BRD or COR that did the extra work on their job to make themselves extremely valuable beyond their buffs and you run with people that aren't close minded and pay attention.




Threnodies should be good in theory but in practice do not have anywhere near the effect Languor/Focus have. Which is silly considering they are Gift spells and being element-specific should if anything be more potent than a a generic Meva-/Macc+ which can be bought.
As for threnody II, it is possible that meva and elemental magic resistance are calculated somehow differently but if that is so then we should have proof of it then utterly dismissing it as well, and we've been given zero cases why it wouldn't and no proof it does or doesn't. As it stands a BRD doing Threnody II and landing it in a typical mana burn setup where you are using SCH storms so stuck to one element anyway will do by itself as much a difference as a geo doing both focus and languor with one spell. The tradeoff which is probably a fair one is that a BRD can have trouble landing a magic evasion down spell on a mob with high magic evasion and geo debuffs cannot be resisted. RDM faces the same problem with frazzle but in neither case is it good to just make their enfeebles unresistable either, and BRD has options if it's really important to be able to nearly cap magical accuracy as does RDM. 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. Really with threnody II and INT songs BRD can do a lot for magical accuracy just it doesn't have anything to boost magic damage to the degree GEO does because geo-malaise is so powerful. When you lower somethings defense, it will have the backwards effect of all the gear, stats, bonuses and buffs you have become stronger compared to what they used to be, even a small mdb down like from shattersoul can do a lot for result magic damage but GEO gets super pumped up ones.

Dismissing threnody reminds me when everyone would dismiss WHM bar spells, and now they're something people complain about not having if you don't bring WHM, or if your bar spells are weak you're reprimanded for, because people actually understand how they work and benefit the party, and yes I know you can get some amount of MDB from whm bar spells. It shouldn't be dismissed just because you don't like them and I've never seen anything by SE that claims they work one way or another and player testing is only for the amount of elemental resistance down, which is a lot. I even think having a brd keep up threnody II and int songs could be preferable to a 2nd GEO and have GEO focus on providing acumen and Geo-malaise instead,but there's not any real way to develop setups like that especially since almost everyone is convinced that it's worthless without even really using it. As I stated before a big reason people do GEO is it can't be resisted and it's easier to use. Adding power isn't really a good answer imo and if anything GEO should be nerfed. People here are too married to the idea of being given something, and never have anything taken away it's an incredibly narrow viewpoint. I've already said most of this stuff once, and I don't like repeating myself, so I guess I can safely check in pages later to see the conversation never moved as a result.

[OmnysValefor]

You hadn't fought melee woc and teles, or you wouldn't have said brd is only used for lullabies, tumult curator, master trials, melee albumen, melee pretty much anything that has higher acc requirements uses bard otherwise you can't fit 3-4 dd in party you have to load them with GEO instead of having rotating COR and BRD along with a GEO if 3 DD.

I, and others, have said and repeated and stressed that this conversation isn't about exclusively or mostly Aeonic Bards. It seems impractical to try to melee high-tier things without this tool. The bonus to accuracy and attack, an alternate method to haste-capping all in one song.


I'm not arrogant enough to claim I'm the top of anything so I find it you putting words in my mouth, I have multiple times cleared the aeonic quest as many have now. When I say you are lacking knowledge and experience it is because of those reasons and your own statements saying you hadn't done them, or done them with melee setups which was the claim you made that DD don't use BRD's at all they use GEO only which is clearly and provably and by experience false.

I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth. If you've cleared the hardest content in the game, you're a the top of the game. I didn't mean to imply that you were (or weren't, I don't know you) the best-geared person in the best-geared LS.

Yeah, before Aeonic, GEO is far more useful than Bard except on fights that need lullaby. If you're talking about mage strategies, aeonic means little.


Are all the REM bards you know bad is a straw man argument.

Actually, it was exasperation.


Our BRD don't drop, and the value of having a BRD in the alliance for example in melee WoC is that they add value and you're not boned if the fight takes longer than 11 mins. The value of dropping them is only if you have a mule and doing a 5-6 man clear. BRD outside of debuff spells mentioned, can help others in the alliance with their songs as mentioned before in this thread in my prior posts without eatting time from the melee buffs. Also it's no mistake that BRD is on the Kaykaus armor set, BRD/WHM is a long staple of FFXI and can help with off party cures or supliment a whm keeping debuffs off a tank. Just like a COR can add dps, use quickdraw, and so on. It's not that they don't add value left in, it's that people dismiss it as being important whatsoever b/c they can win without it, even if having those things there would increase their success rate they will dismiss it because it's impossible to see when they would've made a different or not unless you've done many things with a good BRD or COR that did the extra work on their job to make themselves extremely valuable beyond their buffs and you run with people that aren't close minded and pay attention.

Yes, bard can be a WHM Jr and help a lot, and I'm sure that this helps in melee-oriented fights. Then again, so can a GEO/WHM or COR/WHM (not the ideal sub).

In most mage oriented fights, a decent WHM can usually babysit the tank and handle the incidental damage most casters will take. GEOs will usually help, and if not mid mb, they may even cure themselves.

Detlef (my friend) said it best, "[Non-aeonic] bard is, at best, competing for the second GEO's spot, but usually the third".

Bard, at the most basic level of decent gear (all the way up through RME) needs a buff. If that indirectly buffs Aeonic as well, so be it.

[Zhronne]

2 min longer fight is pretty big deal on woc though :S Everytime when it bene at 2% I just want to toss my controller ;x
Once we had a bene at 1%, recovered, then another Bene at 12% and trust me I really wanted to kill kitties -.-
WoC is an issue only because we know no reliable strategy for it. All of us rely on the "let's kill it as fast as possible so it doesn't use the wrong SP" which is kinda relying on Luck.
Pretty sure there is a REAL strat for him :P

For melee strat WoC buff not working at start would be QUITE a big deal, I agree with you.
For Mage strat it's... uh... a bit of a deal but honestly it shouldn't really make or break your group. I think the same applies for all mage strat HELM NMs honestly. Especially if it's BRD prebuff we're talking about.

[Zhronne]

As for threnody II, it is possible that meva and elemental magic resistance are calculated somehow differently
It's not possible, it's certain!
Either that or the numbers given to us by SE are off by a good bunch.
Anybody can confirm the amount of difference a Threnody II makes for a single element, while somewhat noticeable, is NOWHERE close to what a Dunna Languor can do, or Distract 3, or Distract 2, etc etc.
I think I already discussed this in a previous post, it's kinda preposterous if you think about it, when the debuff which cannot be resisted and applies to all elements is incredibly stronger than the debuff that applies to a single element, can be resisted, can be dispelled and is unlocked through Job Points.



Maybe the issue is that BRD needs to bring something additional to the table that can be used mid-fight.
I agree.
Well BRD already does that, partially. BRD is still somewhat desireable for melee strats (even if not necessary like GEOs). That's simply because BRD can provide a wide array of additional buffs which stack with bubbles! If you had even more stacking bubbles we already know what the result would be :P

I think we can really sum it up with Threnodies first and Etudes second needing some serious buff. Most other songs could use a buff honestly, but those especially.
The idea someone suggested of merging Prelude and Madrigal is also very very nice.
Not just for the utility of having both buffs in the same slot, but for the fact this would free up two buffs that SE could use to give us something else, instead of using the excuse "Sorry we're out of slots for new songs".
That would grant us some additional unique buff.
If Threnodies were to become useful, that would be another "unique" debuff. Pair that with, dunno, second tier of Nocturne? And suddenly things look far from perfect, but at the same time much much much better than they are today.
And for all bards! Not just RMEA ones :D


Job's got issues and is pretty much 100% unwelcome to anything unless you have 500m worth of gear. And even then it still gets picked last. There's probably something wrong with that.
It's worse. Job is unwelcome EVEN if you have those 500m worth of gear.
Because I do, and guess which job I'm on 99% of the times? Yep, my Idris GEO :D

[detlef]

guess which job I'm on 99% of the times? Yep, my Idris GEO :DI know that feel.

[Fae]

It's not possible, it's certain!
Either that or the numbers given to us by SE are off by a good bunch.
Anybody can confirm the amount of difference a Threnody II makes for a single element, while somewhat noticeable, is NOWHERE close to what a Dunna Languor can do, or Distract 3, or Distract 2, etc etc.
I think I already discussed this in a previous post, it's kinda preposterous if you think about it, when the debuff which cannot be resisted and applies to all elements is incredibly stronger than the debuff that applies to a single element, can be resisted, can be dispelled and is unlocked through Job Points.

Since you're making this claim link to the source, or I have to doubt it as you are saying SE themselves told us how it worked. The wiki's have no info on this, and neither does any dev post I've ever read and while I won't claim to have read all of them I've read most of them. Neither do any guides from bards I've ever read, so your claim looks really dubious to me unless you can provide the source, which you've opted to not do, twice now.

[OmnysValefor]

Job's got issues and is pretty much 100% unwelcome to anything unless you have 500m worth of gear. And even then it still gets picked last. There's probably something wrong with that.

You're the best football player in the NBA!

I just don't understand how people are okay with bard being so undesirable. I mean, if it was just JSE bards, that's one thing, some jobs are like that (hi PLD--you're basically useless without Aegis, should have Ochain 90) but bard is the most demanding job in the game and relegated to the sidelines or effectively done by a mule in most fights.

[OmnysValefor]

Here are ideas from the parallel ffxiah thread. Some are mine, some are not. I agree with some, and not with others. I'll keep my comments (non-bolded text) to a minimum.


Minuet: Attack % instead of Attack+ -- In a stacked situation (bard + geo + cor [and melee having berserk]), bard's buffs being static is nice. When you're chosing one offensive buffer (6 man content, percentage buffs, in a vacuum, are superior)

Madrigal/Prelude: Combine into one song, otherwise is fine

March: Give flurry effect

Etudes: Combine T1/T2 into 1 song to make it roughly as potent as Dunna Indi-Stat buffs.

Mambo: Add M. Eva effect

Minne: Add M. Def effect

Add: Songs that have more unique effects, like COR rolls (although not necessarily the same effect as COR rolls to avoid overlap)


Change Marcato to last for x amount of seconds rather than 1 song would be a massive improvement


A buff that reduced the duration of all enfeebles by X% (except doom!), not including auras.


1) Make Madrigal affect Ranged Accuracy too
2) Use Preludes for a different purpose (that way we can get another buff without Devs having to find space for another song). Purpose could be anything really, possibly something magey. Doesn't have to be OP
3) Buff Etudes and especially buff Threnodies
4) Do something to make the whole mechanism of dispel less of a trouble for BRDs, especially RMEAs ones who have to go through the effort of doing "fakes" every time someone gets dispelled (or dies, etc)
5) Make so Buffs disappear when you pop a Geas Fete NM (or an Unity NM). This isn't a direct fix to BRD, but I think it could provide a small incentive into bringing BRDs inside the alliances and not just as prebuff dualboxed toons
6) We handled Threnodies above, but having another useful debuff to cast on targets would be very welcome. Nocturne II? Or something else completely.


Soul Voice should make affected songs undispellable.


Soldier's Rhapsody
Greatly enhances resistance to dispel and absorption for all buffs.

Bard's Rhapsody
Grants immunity to dispel and absorption for bard songs.
Or maybe just more resistance?


Turn all of the +song duration gear into a new stat, called whatever musical reference you like - let's call it "Harmony" for now.

Step two: give BRD dual hasso/seigan like modes:
- One that uses Harmony as song duration+, like currently exists, so current tactics aren't disrupted
- One that uses Harmony as song potency/accuracy, but allowing no extensions on time (120 seconds, period)

This lets current mule BRDs still work as expected, so people who have built mules with harps/carns/etc don't lose all that effort, while still allowing people who want to play BRD on their main have a chance to do so.


Minuet's, paeon, etude's, minne and mambo: Percentage based buffs.
Status resist songs merged into one buff.
Merge preludes and madrigal into one buff.
Minne: add PDT/cure taken increase
Mambo: add shield block/parry rate
Carols: add MDT/MDB
Paeon: Add max health increase(% based)
Ballads: Add fast cast
Status resist songs: add Magic evasion


Give it access to better DD gear

It has access to some great daggers, gear to back it up might be nice. GEO is the nuking buffer, COR the ranged buffer, offensive gear for Bard (and RDM =P) would make it the melee buffer(s).


songs scaling better with skill would be cool

also make it so that brd enfeebles cant be resisted.


make it possible to mb with requiem and give it helix2-like damage.

I don't think this person means Helix II-level damage, just that Helix does initial damage and matches that with damage over time.


The best answer in the buffs-wearing-at-pop debate would be to dispel the buffs if the owner of the buffs is no longer in alli

This change alone, if nothing else was buffed, would hurt bard more than it helped in a lot of content.

Bard--of all R/M/E/A/JSE levels--needs a buff to it's offensive power, among any other buffs.

There was also some debate about HP scaling and the value of dropping one person.

Certain mobs, due to mechanics, (WoC Benediction, even Charm / Kirin's Terror / Mandragora's absorption / etc), a small amount of HP can mean more than a fight extended by a few seconds. It can mean everything is turned upside down. Past a certain point (limit of useful buffs, monsters building temporary resistance to nukes), adding more people only hurts you.

The same is true for melee in any case where melee are skillchaining, but not true in large melee-zergs.

---

Also SE: If you disagree, please just explain why in detail. In the mind of players, the ones that use these jobs every day, Bard and GEO do not serve different roles.

[Zhronne]

Since you're making this claim link to the source, or I have to doubt it as you are saying SE themselves told us how it worked.
SE told us some incorrect information recently when they tried to address the skill>acc and skill>att and magic skill>acc conversion rates.
There were multiple errors in the original data they provided us too, most of which got corrected.

I didn't say it's necessarily a matter of them unawaringly giving us wrong values for Threnodies, I don't think that's the case.
It's more a matter of elemental resistance - stat working differently from magic evasion- and that's quite clear to anyone who bothered testing Threnodies vs Languor and Frazzle.
Most of us assumed that -50 Thunder to be the same as -50 magic eva, but working only on thunder related stuff.
Quite clearly this is not the case.

So either there's something more at work there and we can't convert ele res to meva at a 1:1 rate (which is the most accepted hypothesys) OR the rate is actually really 1:1, but SE simply gave us wrong data for Thenodies.
I consider the second hypothesys less likely, but who knows?
What's for certain is that it's not 1:1 and Threnodies are much weaker than Languor and Frazzle despite affecting a single element.

Source: Sechs and all the people who participated in the three discussions concerning the issue on BG, FFXIAH and the official forums. I'm pretty sure you're skilled enough to use Google and find this stuff on your own if you really deem it particularly important.
If you ever tested what we're talking about yourself I'm sure you wouldn't need to, so the question is: have you? ;)

[Zhronne]

In all honesty if you want to repeat the test yourself, more data is always welcome, is not really that time consuming.
Back when I did it I used debuffs since they're boolean (sticks/doesn't stick) compared to nuke damage resists and so easier to tell out over small samples.
Lock your gear so you don't have enfeebling midcast and fight something against which you know your macc would be low.
Even with a small sample of 20 or 30 (my test was something like this) and check the resist rate with T2 Threnody of the related element, and then test again with 900skill Dunna Languor and check the quite considerable difference into the stick rate.
You need to pick a target against which your macc is gonna be low to begin with or, of course, the test will be useless.

I don't remember what I used back then, think it was some Ru'aun T2? Not sure honestly.


It all started when I, like many other people, assumed the data SE provided us to be 1:1 with meva- and one time where we couldn't get our dunna GEO to stay online since he kept DCing I said "have no fear guys! I have my newly powerful T2 Threnodies! With Frazzle1 and those, we won't need Languor on this easy stuff! >:D" average nuke damage from Scoreboard kinda provided different data, and from that I tested further on Reisen T2s while helping friend, then went on forum and found other people who were claiming the same exact situation, after which I decided to do this small test with enfeebles :)

T2 Threnodies definitely provide a difference especially if soulvoiced, but at the same time it's quite clear it's something different from 1:1 meva for a specific element like we assumed. (again: either this or the numbers SE gave us for threnodies are off!)

[detlef]

I've never tested Threnodies but they've never acted the same way Languor works. It's just something that's been obvious to me. But Fae, you've claimed to see "huge differences in magic accuracy" with Threnodies. Do you mind sharing some examples where it was beneficial to you? Did it work just for magic damage or did it help with enfeebles as well?

[Urmom]

In all honesty if you want to repeat the test yourself, more data is always welcome, is not really that time consuming.
Back when I did it I used debuffs since they're boolean (sticks/doesn't stick) compared to nuke damage resists and so easier to tell out over small samples.

Well here's your first mistake. Debuffs do have partial resists though most (though not necessarily all since some are weird and we aren't completely sure) have fewer states than nukes.

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.

That said debuffs can present extra difficulties as mob might have a resist job trait that appears calculated separate

As far as the whole meva vs elemental resist thing not sure it's really been tested that well. When the major magic hit rate stuff was tested there wasn't exactly a lot of meva gear or meva down things out there too compare and it seems like a lot of stuff like that got assumed/extrapolated

[OmnysValefor]

Seems to be a fair way to test might be a A Bard, An Idris and a naked RDM (highest enfeebling skill) with no weapon) vs a t1 Zitah NM or simpler UNM.. Ambuscade's Fish might be good.

I'd adjust vs the fish til you found a difficulty that naked RDM (with just weapon) could reliably enfeeble, and then use that to test on.

Focus/Languor and Threnodies should both be able to take the RDM to equivalent level.

Probably could test nukes the same way.

Edit: "A bard, an idris, and a naked RDM" sounds like the beginning to a joke.

[detlef]

As far as the whole meva vs elemental resist thing not sure it's really been tested that well. When the major magic hit rate stuff was tested there wasn't exactly a lot of meva gear or meva down things out there too compare and it seems like a lot of stuff like that got assumed/extrapolatedSomeone has made the claim that Threnodies make huge differences in magic accuracy. I would love to know what led to this conclusion, even if the experiences are just anecdotal.

[Urmom]

Seems to be a fair way to test might be a A Bard, An Idris and a naked RDM (highest enfeebling skill) with no weapon) vs a t1 Zitah NM or simpler UNM.. Ambuscade's Fish might be good.

I'd adjust vs the fish til you found a difficulty that naked RDM (with just weapon) could reliably enfeeble, and then use that to test on.

Focus/Languor and Threnodies should both be able to take the RDM to equivalent level.

Probably could test nukes the same way.

Edit: "A bard, an idris, and a naked RDM" sounds like the beginning to a joke.

Nukes would actually be easier since partial resists of debuffs are reduced duration so would take time to tell if was full or partial resist and don't have to worry about traits and such. Just gotta space them out a few seconds if casting on nms. But given the values we've obtained about macc skill (assuming they are right) it would be fair to say that anything a trash mage wasn't capping on which I'd imagine would be higher xp mobs as well a naked one would be way below the floor so could probably avoid nms all together... which also might be a good idea anyways since for all we know this might be another one of SEs hidden nerfs against nms like circle effects or saboteur.

[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:

They'll single-handily cap magic haste for melee allowing for other buffs from themselves and Geos.
They'll allow for more Myrkr usage for nukers, meaning stronger Death MBs and more Impact debuffs (-20% stats down).
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.

[detlef]

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.Hey now, I still agree with all of this. I made these points earlier in the thread after all. I have just come to the conclusion that because BRD compliments GEO so well in a melee situation, SE is never going to make improvements to the BRD buffs that stack with GEO bubbles. If this is the stance SE is taking (and it seems consistent with what they've said about the state of the job), then it's a tough situation.

That's why I suggested changes to debuffs. Other than Lullaby, they aren't really impacted by RMEA at all so we're talking about changes to the base job. Can you imagine if Dark Threnody let you hit 3-4 unresisted Death MBs on certain hard NMs? Or if Requiem's potency was related to skill and could be affected by Matk or could be MBed?

There's still room for certain songs to be boosted (higher potency Etudes, adding ranged accuracy to Madrigal, etc) so I hope SE does take another look at those instead of letting the job stagnate like it has. And yeah, make Threnodies great again.

[Reain]

Seems unlikely to me that they'll touch Threnodies because of Rayke/Gambit or Requiem because of +60 damage/tic from job points.

[Zhronne]

The reason they're not touching Threnodies is exactely that, they stack with everything else and making Threnodies useful would make a lot of content even more trivial than it already is, unless magic is useless for that content, but at that point threnodies become useless too so we're back to square one.

At the same time though I don't think this can be a satisfying reason and explanation for BRD's current situation. There are many ways they could solve things without going into the bad scenario we just described.
They could make so Threnodies don't stack with some of the other debuffs, for instance. Or they could simply threnodies leave as they are but at that point they'd totally need to give BRD "something else" that is 1) useful, 2) has to be used midfight and not during prebuff.

Wether this "something" is a JA, a new debuff or a new buff I don't care honestly.

[Zhronne]

Or if Requiem's potency was related to skill and could be affected by Matk or could be MBed?
Requiem can be MBed already but other than benefitting from the additional macc granted by a MB, I don't think anything else happens.
You do get the sexy MB message though! :P



And yeah, make Threnodies great again.
Again? Like... have they ever been before lol?
I remember trying to use Threnodies even during level 75 era while everybody else kept on telling me they were useless, and tbf I have to admit they hardly made a noticeable difference even during those days =/

[detlef]

Requiem can be MBed already but other than benefitting from the additional macc granted by a MB, I don't think anything else happens.
You do get the sexy MB message though! :P



Again? Like... have they ever been before lol?
I remember trying to use Threnodies even during level 75 era while everybody else kept on telling me they were useless, and tbf I have to admit they hardly made a noticeable difference even during those days =/Obviously Threnody has never been great, I just thought the phrase was topical. The only times I've ever remembered it making a little difference was in manaburn PTs on IT++ mobs and that was probably just my imagination anyway. As for Requiem, I'm just saying it would be nice if MBing it enhanced its potency or something. Of course, just strengthening it's DOT would be even better than that. I'm spitballing here, what do you want from me lol.

[Zhronne]

Aside from Helix/Kaustra I think Requiem is the most powerful dot in game atm? Poison2 got powered up as well recently so I'm not sure about that anymore.
Although that means very little since it didn't really scale well with how huge the Health pool of monsters became these past few years =/
Requiem also has that annoying range which is shorter than all other debuff songs and I hate that ><
Noticeably raising the potency of Requiem, wether with or without MB, would surely be a nice, welcome change, but I'm not sure that alone would change a lot for BRD's current situation =/ Unless of course it was a compeltely overpowered change but I'm not too fond of stuff like that in general, they usually make someone happy (me! :D) but in the long run they create more issues than they solve :x

[Shiyo]

Nerfing geo is the easiest way to make bard good.

More specifically, idris.

[Olor]

Nerfing geo is the easiest way to make bard good.

More specifically, idris.

I really don't like nerfs - because they invalidate a lot of the work put in. I quit for months after what they did to BST and I still don't like playing it anymore. It took the fun out of it for me. So I'd rather they buff bard than nerf GEO.

Things they could do - ideas taken from this thread:

-Make bard buffs undispellable
-Make bard buffs a % potency rather than a static potency
-Improve bard debuffs
-Give new songs that make it worthwhile to bring a bard

and... the job can't be balanced around Aeonic - that's just ridiculous.

[Shiyo]

Game is already easy, don't need to buff jobs.
Geo is completely broken, just like blue mage.

I agree balancing a job around having an item you get from beating the game(essentially) is really mind-boggling.

Supports shouldn't need more gear than DD's to be playable. The amount of people who enjoy and actually play support is extremely low compared to other roles, making them scale with gear is fine, but making them REQUIRE insane gear like bard does just pushes away even more support players from the extremely limited pool of them.

[OmnysValefor]

Nerfing geo is the easiest way to make bard good.

More specifically, idris.

It really isn't. That means adjusting many escha mobs, many unm.

A few tweaks to songs, a new song or too and bard could be competitive. Make it desirable to keep the bard in group.

Either route requires effort.

[Shiyo]

It really isn't. That means adjusting many escha mobs, many unm.

A few tweaks to songs, a new song or too and bard could be competitive. Make it desirable to keep the bard in group.

Either route requires effort.
No single esha NM requires an idris to be killed. I have talked to people who have been farming them for months now. They say that you do not need an idris geo for them.

Only master trials are hard - and that's one tiny form of content they can rebalance.

This is embrava/pd all over again.

Idris needs to be nerfed to the ground. Like a 75% nerf.

[Vae]

Nothing in the game requires a geo at all. Master trials might but who cares about that garbage.

However; ffxi does require 6 competent humans, which is impossible, so therefor if you cant get 5 competent humans, you *require* a GEO. And that GEO *needs* an Idris.

Idris(geo) makes up for weak players. The entire endgame is based around use of geo now.

If anything geo needs a buff. content 150 would be untouchable without geo to the 99%. (its still untouchable with a geo to the 95%)

[Nyarlko]

...content 150 would be untouchable without geo to the 99%. (its still untouchable with a geo to the 95%)

150 clvl would be untouchable for 100% w/o geo currently. Meaning that I'm honestly not sure if it is even theoretically possible to cap accuracy w/ every player-provided buff currently... Is it possible to get 1890 effective accuracy right now? Because that is how much a lv150 non-NM would require in order to hit cap. >_>;;; NMs frequently have large evasion bonuses on top of the baseline as well, and I simply don't see us hitting 2000ish acc ever if any nerfs happened atm.

There is no need to nerf anyone at this point. We should all be crying out for buffs for all (non-GEO/BLU) jobs instead of trying to tear other jobs down, especially when it makes the game that-much-harder in general whenever a support class gets whacked w/ the nerf bat.

For now, I'd say that BRD could be genuinely competitive if all our combat stat related songs were converted to a percentage basis, all songs had updated caps determined by 900 combined skill, and results were comparable to other support jobs at similar equipment levels.

I would personally rejoice if alllllllllllllllll of our myriad status-resist songs could be trimmed down to a single "resist all" with an easily noticeable resist rate.
Song list in general could use some trimming tbh.. A 99BLM can still run into situations where using T1 nukes makes sense. A 99BRD will never run into a situation where using Paeon1 makes sense. ._.
A pruning pass could also free up some precious spell space for new stuff as well.

I am all for turning Requiem into a helix-like debuff. As long as it can't surpass ~2k-3k/tick, so we can avoid SCH tears being shed while they passionately beg for nerfs. >.>

[Zetaking]

truth the master trails nms evasion isn't even remotely that horrible (120~125Ilevel ish) heck there def isnt even that high(excluding that qudava >.<) its just there massive hp pools and there dmg output is like a 135's on fear and o/u fight anyhow, haven't done the odin alix one so cant talk there. personally im ok with the multiple resist songs and theronys tho i do think they should be extremely potent for being a single effect tho, at least 50% stronger that the mass versions geo has(aka languor and attunment). tho trimming stuff like paeon into say 2 spells that scale with skill that i could see as a good thing.

[Afania]

However; ffxi does require 6 competent humans, which is impossible, so therefor if you cant get 5 competent humans, you *require* a GEO.


Kinda irrelevant to the topic but when I read statement like this I can't help but ask you one question, have you beat all of the escha NM without a GEO before?

Because if you haven't then that put you in the category that you described.

[Vae]

If I team up with 4 incompetent humans, their incompetence doesn't rub off on me. So, yeah.

[Afania]

If I team up with 4 incompetent humans, their incompetence doesn't rub off on me. So, yeah.

Does that mean if you 6 box 6 char you can beat everything without a GEO?

[Olor]

Regardless about how anyone feels about GEO being OP... the issue is that even a dunna GEO offers more utility than most BRDs. Like my JSE bard is not going to be competitive for a slot against a JSE GEO with similar gear levels, it's just not. Nerfing GEO wouldn't make BRD better. It would still be the job that has weaker buffs (except Aeonic) that can be dispelled and weaker debuffs that can be resisted. This is the core issue.

So regardless of what happens with GEO, BRD needs a boost. Making skill matter, making buffs scale is the route I think is most likely to improve the situation. A couple new songs that benefit mages would also help.

[Shiyo]

+Geomancy should probably be nerfed to 1/10th of it's current value, honestly.

[Eckamus]

Nerfing Geomancy+ like you describe would make Idris and Dunna pointless as that is their main purpose/design. As it stands with capped skill and gear Base gives +50 Accuracy, Dunna gives +75 Accuracy and Idris gives +100 Accuracy, respectively.

Basically if it is nerfed to 1/10th, someone would go through a lot of effort to gain ~+5 Accuracy from base for making a Mythic (~+55 Accuracy for Idris, ~+51 Accuracy for Dunna). Which makes no sense and in no way will fix BRD.

I'm not sure if you have ever played GEO, but it is a fun job. I have played it pretty much since it came out and replaced my original main as WHM.

[Shiyo]

Yeah, idris doubling the potency of some geomancy that are already slightly too strong is completely insane.

I played Geo. It's the most boring job I've ever played in FFXI.

[Olor]

Yeah, idris doubling the potency of some geomancy that are already slightly too strong is completely insane.

I played Geo. It's the most boring job I've ever played in FFXI.

Fair enough but I think it is more productive to talk about how to fix bard not about how GEO is broken.

If you have ideas on how you think a NQ bard could be competitive with a NQ geo, please share them :)

[saevel]

Yeah, idris doubling the potency of some geomancy that are already slightly too strong is completely insane.

I played Geo. It's the most boring job I've ever played in FFXI.

Then your playing it wrong. GEO is like a miniature RDM, there is a ton they can do other then just cast bubbles. We often unload haste duty to the GEO's to free up the healers along with Para / Slow / Dia II / Distract / Frazzle type stuff. They even make respectable backup healers and can go /WHM to remove status ailments if the fight is centered around those and thus freeing the WHM up for Cure / Curaga spam.

As for BRD, It's already been mentioned that the reason they are kinda of weak right now is that SE never updated the skill formula on BRD songs and therefor their cap is extremely low. Raising their skill cap to 900 along with raising the power scale on their highest tier buffs would go a very long way to improving them. Then make Threnody's potent and able to actually land and we've got a pretty solid support job. They will never be super important in magic centered fights but their utility in melee / ranged fights is already well established.

[Shiyo]

"You're playing it wrong!"
That's extremely rude and assuming.

[Urmom]

Idris gets +10 to geomancy... make Ghorn give +10 to songs. Oddly that probably wouldn't even be enough

[PristineChicken]

Idris gets +10 to geomancy... make Ghorn give +10 to songs. Oddly that probably wouldn't even be enough

+10 to songs would be more powerful than Idris, relatively speaking. The problem is that BRD songs don't scale like Geomancy does, and that Geomancy debuffs, last time I checked, were not resistable.

[Nyarlko]

+10 to songs would be more powerful than Idris, relatively speaking. The problem is that BRD songs don't scale like Geomancy does, and that Geomancy debuffs, last time I checked, were not resistable.

The sad part is that even if ghorn had songs+10, we'd still be the underdogs w/ weaker buffs that can be dispelled, and debuffs that can be resisted.
Minuet V = atk+62, each song+1 gives add'l atk+4 (above +1, which oddly only gives atk+1.) So MinV w/ songs+10 would give atk+99. That is less than half what a Dunna GEO's Fury would give the average 119+ geared melee... People like to argue that you can stack songs, but the end result is that BRD is going to be inherently weaker than GEO when it comes to buffing, at this time. That same GEO could also toss out a Frailty and double up the atk difference. :/

The only solution is to give BRD an overhaul. Convert direct combat buffs to a percentage basis, raise the combined cap to 900, and scale it so that, in comparable gear, 2x songs = 1x bubble.

[Urmom]

+10 to songs would be more powerful than Idris, relatively speaking. The problem is that BRD songs don't scale like Geomancy does, and that Geomancy debuffs, last time I checked, were not resistable.

Do the math. Sure some songs would be neet particularly the unique ones. But most wouldn't hold a candle or don't matter much. The only real songs I could see that wouldn't still be inferior or inconsequential (ie no one is going to care if your marcato victory march is going to be 39% haste) is honor march which it wouldn't even apply to and Sentinel's Scherzo combined with earthern armor would become even more OP.

[Olor]

The sad part is that even if ghorn had songs+10, we'd still be the underdogs w/ weaker buffs that can be dispelled, and debuffs that can be resisted.
Minuet V = atk+62, each song+1 gives add'l atk+4 (above +1, which oddly only gives atk+1.) So MinV w/ songs+10 would give atk+99. That is less than half what a Dunna GEO's Fury would give the average 119+ geared melee... People like to argue that you can stack songs, but the end result is that BRD is going to be inherently weaker than GEO when it comes to buffing, at this time. That same GEO could also toss out a Frailty and double up the atk difference. :/

The only solution is to give BRD an overhaul. Convert direct combat buffs to a percentage basis, raise the combined cap to 900, and scale it so that, in comparable gear, 2x songs = 1x bubble.

This, all of this.

[detlef]

Don't forget that Songs +10 would be 72 more seconds of duration for Ghorn 99 buffs. That'd be pretty awesome... for pre-buffing and dropping.

[Olor]

Don't forget that Songs +10 would be 72 more seconds of duration for Ghorn 99 buffs. That'd be pretty awesome... for pre-buffing and dropping.

ha!

Well, at least Ghorn isn't *that* ridiculous to get. If they bumped it that much I'd actually feel it was worth the effort - even if it wasn't enough to get more parties really.

[Urmom]

Don't forget that Songs +10 would be 72 more seconds of duration for Ghorn 99 buffs. That'd be pretty awesome... for pre-buffing and dropping.

Full time marcato songs!!!

[OmnysValefor]

ha!

Well, at least Ghorn isn't *that* ridiculous to get. If they bumped it that much I'd actually feel it was worth the effort - even if it wasn't enough to get more parties really.

A relic can cost less than 50m to 99.

If you enjoy the job, horn is very very worth it already, even if bard's not in a great spot.

[saevel]

The sad part is that even if ghorn had songs+10, we'd still be the underdogs w/ weaker buffs that can be dispelled, and debuffs that can be resisted.
Minuet V = atk+62, each song+1 gives add'l atk+4 (above +1, which oddly only gives atk+1.) So MinV w/ songs+10 would give atk+99. That is less than half what a Dunna GEO's Fury would give the average 119+ geared melee... People like to argue that you can stack songs, but the end result is that BRD is going to be inherently weaker than GEO when it comes to buffing, at this time. That same GEO could also toss out a Frailty and double up the atk difference. :/

The only solution is to give BRD an overhaul. Convert direct combat buffs to a percentage basis, raise the combined cap to 900, and scale it so that, in comparable gear, 2x songs = 1x bubble.

Ok stop.

There is a huge difference between static and percentage buffs. Percentage buffs are tacked on at the end while static buffs happen before the percentage buffs. Take a job like BLU/WAR that applies Berserk and Natures Meditation. Give them +100 attack (easy math to use) before and it's now 145 attack, add on Chaos and / or Fury and that number gets bigger. This is why Honor March is so powerful, that 184 buff to base attack ratchets up to some pretty silly numbers once you start layering stuff on. BRD having static buffs is a good thing, they just need to scale better with skill. Minute V should be 100 cap @900 skill and +5~10 per additional "+ song". Doing an across the board increase to the skill cap along with scaling would greatly increase BRD's offensive power in melee orientated parties.

[Olor]

A relic can cost less than 50m to 99.

If you enjoy the job, horn is very very worth it already, even if bard's not in a great spot.

I am currently holding on to all my currency from dynamis farming, but I'm more likely to go for Aegis than a ghorn at this point, unless something changes big time for bard.

[Nyarlko]

Ok stop.

There is a huge difference between static and percentage buffs. Percentage buffs are tacked on at the end while static buffs happen before the percentage buffs. Take a job like BLU/WAR that applies Berserk and Natures Meditation. Give them +100 attack (easy math to use) before and it's now 145 attack, add on Chaos and / or Fury and that number gets bigger. This is why Honor March is so powerful, that 184 buff to base attack ratchets up to some pretty silly numbers once you start layering stuff on. BRD having static buffs is a good thing, they just need to scale better with skill. Minute V should be 100 cap @900 skill and +5~10 per additional "+ song". Doing an across the board increase to the skill cap along with scaling would greatly increase BRD's offensive power in melee orientated parties.

I used Minuet as an example because the effects of both Minuet and Fury are easily verified by using /checkparam. I'm not asking for a change to only Minuet tho, or only melee oriented songs. If songs were converted to a percentage based scaling of buff effects, that would allow for continued parity with other support jobs as player stats continue to climb. The only way that increasing static values would not be a mere stopgap would be to make them insanely stronger than what any other job is capable of providing, which IMO is a "bad idea" for the record. :x Player stats will eventually outpace any sort of reasonable static value buffs, which would only bring us back to the point we're at now.

Percentage based songs = "Hmm. Should we bring GEO or BRD for this fight?" < Parity = competition for the support spot
Static high-value songs = "Hmm. If we have a GEO, then we want a BRD or DD. If no GEO, then grab a DD." < Being a support-of-support = competition for a DD spot dependent on having a support to support
WAAAAYYY oversimplified and ignoring rest-of-group job composition and most other factors, but I can see the decision boiling down to something along those lines in a LOT of situations.
So long as our final values compensate for the loss of stacking buff increases, I see zero problems with moving from static to percentage.

Heck, I believe that given the other support jobs' ability to contribute directly to damage in addition to support, then a pure support like BRD should logically have greater buffs than they do to make up for it. I'm not gonna shoot for the moon though. I'm asking for equality among supports and I believe that, in addition to increased skill caps, a conversion to a percentage basis for our direct stat buff songs would be the simplest long-term solution.

The goal should be roughly around the "2x songs = 1x bubble" mark, in comparable effort-to-obtain gear. The decision on which support to bring should be entirely based on what unique advantages each provides and not on numerical strength of buffs alone. If the numbers say that a top-class BRD with full RME can provide less than a Dunna GEO, there is simply something wrong that needs to be fixed.

Also.... ABSOLUTELY NO JOB should be balanced around assumption of possession of a certain "Ultimate Weapon". Yes, Honor March is badass. No, it should not be used as a basis for balancing the job around UNLESS they gave it to us baseline. That would be like balancing THF around having access to Mercy Stroke after buffing it.

[Shiyo]

I'm not sure why people don't also complain about the fact that a Geo can magic burst for tens of thousands of damage while providing the strongest buffs in the game bar none. Or also the fact that certain jobs like RDM can't even do their role of enfeebler on certain fights that are LITERALLY DESIGNED AROUND BEING ENFEEBLED(Maju) without a geo giving them as much macc and lowering mobs mevasion as much as possible so they can land their enfeebles to disable a mobs aura/mechanic.

The job just does not belong in the game.

Nerf geo to the ground so that other other support jobs are actually good again and stop balancing bosses around geo buffs.

[Reain]

I'd concur it seems especially generous to give Geomancer elemental, enfeebling and dark magic while Bard hasn't figured out how to dual wield.

[Urat]

I think first and foremost bard needs songs that effect pets, akin to corsair rolls.

This would probably be one of the biggest buffs to the job and make it playable again, as a LOT of the meta on quetz is certainly pet burning fights. Being able to have songs that have "pet: accuracy+" or "Pet: Attack+" or whatever would be plenty to get the job back on the party list.

[Zhronne]

Devs just posted.
Their idea of fixing bard is to add new "All Songs +" equipment in slot other than the instrument one.
Sigh...


Aside from the sadness bursting out of such a weak choice, we can at least rejoice *something* is gonna happen to BRD.
Let's just hope these new items won't be too hard to obtain.
Honor March is gonna get quite... interesting.

[Urmom]

Whelp Aeonic gunna become super mandatory then given how much better honor march scales with +song. Assuming we get +1 on each armor slot that would put HM to around 110 acc, 440 att, ~27% haste. Wonder if that would be enough to full time it with marcato for even more goodness

[Urmom]

I think first and foremost bard needs songs that effect pets, akin to corsair rolls.

This would probably be one of the biggest buffs to the job and make it playable again, as a LOT of the meta on quetz is certainly pet burning fights. Being able to have songs that have "pet: accuracy+" or "Pet: Attack+" or whatever would be plenty to get the job back on the party list.

Another thing is giving mage songs. ballad is nice... but cor and geo can refresh AND give macc and mab and even increase the amount of magic dmg the mob takes. The days where brd could always find a home just buffing melee DDs is kind of gone and needs to be able to give meaningful buff the rest of the jobs in the game

[Shiyo]

"Your job is good and usable once you beat the hardest enemies in the game and finish the entire game".

No, that isn't how balance is supposed to work.

[detlef]

Whelp Aeonic gunna become super mandatory then given how much better honor march scales with +song. Assuming we get +1 on each armor slot that would put HM to around 110 acc, 440 att, ~27% haste. Wonder if that would be enough to full time it with marcato for even more goodnessYou're in luck, All songs + will be +1 and on the hands slot only. Probably.

[Zhronne]

They talked using the "plural", which suggests multiple pieces.
Maybe crafted stuff, with NQ and HQ version, very expensive. Oh joy... /sigh

Song+ in the hands or Head slot would be nice, but in the Body, Legs and Feet slot it would conflict with other items when it comes to duration.
Let us not forget each "song+1" increases duration by 10%.

[Olor]

"Your job is good and usable once you beat the hardest enemies in the game and finish the entire game".

No, that isn't how balance is supposed to work.

Yeah, this. I mean come on. BRD shouldn't need the best endgame gear in the game to outshine a dunna GEO

[Nyarlko]

They talked using the "plural", which suggests multiple pieces.
Maybe crafted stuff, with NQ and HQ version, very expensive. Oh joy... /sigh

Song+ in the hands or Head slot would be nice, but in the Body, Legs and Feet slot it would conflict with other items when it comes to duration.
Let us not forget each "song+1" increases duration by 10%.

That conflict = conscious choice required. Always a good thing. ^^

[Fae]

SE told us some incorrect information recently when they tried to address the skill>acc and skill>att and magic skill>acc conversion rates.
There were multiple errors in the original data they provided us too, most of which got corrected.

I didn't say it's necessarily a matter of them unawaringly giving us wrong values for Threnodies, I don't think that's the case.
It's more a matter of elemental resistance - stat working differently from magic evasion- and that's quite clear to anyone who bothered testing Threnodies vs Languor and Frazzle.
Most of us assumed that -50 Thunder to be the same as -50 magic eva, but working only on thunder related stuff.
Quite clearly this is not the case.

So either there's something more at work there and we can't convert ele res to meva at a 1:1 rate (which is the most accepted hypothesys) OR the rate is actually really 1:1, but SE simply gave us wrong data for Thenodies.
I consider the second hypothesys less likely, but who knows?
What's for certain is that it's not 1:1 and Threnodies are much weaker than Languor and Frazzle despite affecting a single element.

Source: Sechs and all the people who participated in the three discussions concerning the issue on BG, FFXIAH and the official forums. I'm pretty sure you're skilled enough to use Google and find this stuff on your own if you really deem it particularly important.
If you ever tested what we're talking about yourself I'm sure you wouldn't need to, so the question is: have you? ;)

So you told us SE told us that threnody values aren't equivalent to magic evasion debuffs, then when asked for the source you said things about magic acc skill to magic acc values which is on weapons mostly and has nothing to do with threnody itself, then claim SE tells us faulty things all the time and that they corrected it later, then you say it's certain out of thing air cuz you messed around with it and put forth 'you had a conversation with your friend about it'.

There's so many things wrong with all of that. You're claiming SE told us, but they didn't when you were asked to show your source. Then you both lean on the fact earlier saying SE told us, while at the same time saying that SE's information is unreliable in your new post. You were asked to give proof or source, and first it was SE told us, and now it's a conversation you had with a friend. Then you're shifting the burden of proof to me, when you're the one making the claim. And somehow you still got upvotes for it, amazing... yet your post actually says nothing.

And now that they do say they will buff bard, you're unhappy with it even though it's a boost to every song's potency and/or duration. Bard gets increasingly stronger as you gear it, for sure, but a topend bard "being equivalent to" a dunna geo as some here have said if you gear it up totally is strictly false. I'd agree BRD doing less for mages and nothing for pet jobs is a problem, however people seem to just accept bringing 2-4 geos now to cap all the stats they wish to and don't think of the number of things BRD can do as one person for the same party, in part b/c the other things they can do are less valued and this buff will make all those things more valuable. I think one reason is a lot of BRD's too don't actually do more than the buffs to the damage dealers, even though it can benefit supports and tanks at the same time. I think unwillingness to give threnody II any merit is also a big problem. And those aren't balance problems they are player problems.

[detlef]

Hey welcome back to the thread. Can you please share the situations where you saw huge differences in magic accuracy with Threnody II?

[Reain]

I'd baselessly speculate that magic evasion also increases elemental resist but elemental resist doesn't increase magic evasion.

[Zhronne]

So you told us SE told us that threnody values aren't equivalent to magic evasion debuffs
I don't think SE said that? I wish, but they didn't afaik.



you said things about magic acc skill to magic acc values which is on weapons
No?
I said that, unlike what most player thought, Elemental resist isn't the same as magic evasion but applying to a single element.
That's what most players believed for the longest time, that 10 thunder resist = 10 meva but for thunder only.
That's not true, as showed by the Threnodies values which are very far from the Languor numbers.
The "conversion" thing was about that, it was just an example.
1 Fire resist does not correspond to 1 Meva for fire based stuff, period.



then claim SE tells us faulty things
SE did tell us some wrong values with that data, but after players reported them, they got fixed.
The part about SE giving us "wrong threnodies data" was my mistake, which I already corrected many posts ago, quoting the original source.
SE never gave us threnodies numbers at all, they were found out by players through the in-game /equip menu, which displays elemental resist + and -



And now that they do say they will buff bard, you're unhappy with it
I'm sure we're all happy with it, it's just that while it's a very welcome change, it wont' "fix" the current issues bard is experiencing and, once again, they are fixing it through equipment, which is exactely the opposite of what every bard was asking for.
While BRD will surely be more desirable from now on, it hardly changes a lot in the grand scheme of support job balance.

[Nyarlko]

New gear does not equate to a buff to any job, particularly when it is being added to whitewash over known existing flaws within the game design.

[Shiyo]

Just make honor march a job gift instead of something you obtain from beating the entire game and it would be kinda ok.

[Urmom]

Just make honor march a job gift instead of something you obtain from beating the entire game and it would be kinda ok.

And have the buffs have equivalents that work for everyone. Give acc/racc/macc, att/ratt/mab, haste/fast cast/snapshot. For master and pets

[Shiyo]

There's actually no reason that pets shouldn't be buffable.

[OmnysValefor]

There's several reasons. Pets (sorry, late edit: bst and smn) aren't bound by TP. BST and PUP pets are far sturdier than players. PUP pets are sometimes the best tank for a task and SMN pets are disposable if necessary.

Pet jobs also have some of the most powerful 1hr's in the game. Pets would have to be reevaluated to make sure opening them up to more/all buffs didn't make them absurdly OP.

Far more apparent at 99-0, player pets seem to take damage differently than players. They would regularly resist or partially resist things that would devastate their masters.

[Shiyo]

Summoner pets don't have any of those things.
They have passive 50% PDT and high resist based on their element though.

[OmnysValefor]

Actually yes they do.

BPs don't require TP but their attacks scale with TP. I'm not sure if this was always the case with SMN. BST's ready moves used to require TP but no longer do.

[Zhronne]

There's several reasons. Pets (sorry, late edit: bst and smn) aren't bound by TP. BST and PUP pets are far sturdier than players. PUP pets are sometimes the best tank for a task and SMN pets are disposable if necessary.

Pet jobs also have some of the most powerful 1hr's in the game. Pets would have to be reevaluated to make sure opening them up to more/all buffs didn't make them absurdly OP.

Far more apparent at 99-0, player pets seem to take damage differently than players. They would regularly resist or partially resist things that would devastate their masters.
While I agree with you, I think our point of view and Shiyo's aren't too far off.

Pets are like this as a way SE used to "compensate" for the fact you can't directly buff them.
If pets were buffable just like players, many of the currently built-in bonuses (DT, ilevel correction, stats etc) would be much different from what we get nowadays.



I'm not sure if this was always the case with SMN
Aside some magical BPs (merit ones and a couple others) it wasn't.
Damage scaling with TP is a new thing added in the november 2016 patch.

[Urmom]

There's several reasons. Pets (sorry, late edit: bst and smn) aren't bound by TP. BST and PUP pets are far sturdier than players. PUP pets are sometimes the best tank for a task and SMN pets are disposable if necessary.

Pet jobs also have some of the most powerful 1hr's in the game. Pets would have to be reevaluated to make sure opening them up to more/all buffs didn't make them absurdly OP.

Far more apparent at 99-0, player pets seem to take damage differently than players. They would regularly resist or partially resist things that would devastate their masters.
Jug pet survivability is less of an issue now with the range.

This is kind of part of the problem SE has put themselves into. Long before they started buffing these jobs there was talk about letting you buff the pets but they instead went with compensating for the lack of buffs. The problems that arise is said compensation is more or less static so you no matter how you do it chances are the pets will do decently better in low buff situations but you'd never make them good enough to compete with a buffed melee. That leads you to seeing a bunch in lower content where buffs aren't needed and making them unable to do much against higher tier stuff.

One thing you can do is change the potency. Like how pet food gives twice as much of a stat to the pet as the master you could make it so buffs on master have a portion say half the potency on the pet. Or you could decently limit how many can be applied like how drg can transfer some of it's buffs but only a few at a time with spirit link/empathy

As far as the resisting goes though pets in general have kind of lost that. It's not been quantified but they've gained very little since 99 while the rest of the world and more importantly the monsters have gained a ton. It almost seems like they totally or mostly forgot the meva stat with ilvl pets or something. Macc suffers a bit as well. Melee base dmg also has the same problem it's literally not increased at all since 99 with only boosts being from the increase in base stats so all pets will only melee about 5-10% harder at 119+ than at 99 while melees have over doubled their base dmgs. Which is partly why they need such powerful moves not dependent on tp (except poor pup) because holy heck the melee dmg is terribad not even counting the slowness at which they get tp (except again pup lol)

[Camate]

Greetings,

There are a couple of plans in the pipeline that the development team is working on for bard.
Right now they are looking into adding new gear that has the “All songs +” property so that song effects can become more powerful through slots other than just instruments. They are aiming to implement this as soon as possible, but as an adjustment to precede this, they have also decided to increase the effect values of certain songs. The team will need a bit of time to get everything ready, but we’ll keep you posted once there is more information.

[Zeargi]

Greetings,

There are a couple of plans in the pipeline that the development team is working on for bard.
Right now they are looking into adding new gear that has the “All songs +” property so that song effects can become more powerful through slots other than just instruments. They are aiming to implement this as soon as possible, but as an adjustment to precede this, they have also decided to increase the effect values of certain songs. The team will need a bit of time to get everything ready, but we’ll keep you posted once there is more information.

That's definitely a start, but there are still songs/spells that are missing that would even the playing field. Certain songs are and have been useless for a long time (The Stat Boosts, the Resist Debuffs, etc) because there are only so many slots a player can have on themselves from songs. There needs to be songs/spells to inflict debuffs on enemies and a stronger way to inflict them. Augmenting heavily the elemental resistance down that certain spells: Like BLM's -ja, Ninja's Ninjutsu, BRD's Threnody, and RDM's En-II could be something that help.

[VoiceMemo]

Yes this is definitely a good start. Maybe also reopen consideration to giving brds Massacre elegy as well, but All songs is most welcome on new gear.

[Creelo]

That's definitely a start, but there are still songs/spells that are missing that would even the playing field. Certain songs are and have been useless for a long time (The Stat Boosts, the Resist Debuffs, etc) because there are only so many slots a player can have on themselves from songs. There needs to be songs/spells to inflict debuffs on enemies and a stronger way to inflict them. Augmenting heavily the elemental resistance down that certain spells: Like BLM's -ja, Ninja's Ninjutsu, BRD's Threnody, and RDM's En-II could be something that help.

I wouldn't say Etudes are useless, the T2 Adjustments were quite welcome too. However, they could totally get rid of all the Status Resist songs and I don't think anyone would really care, at least from a gameplay perspective. They keep saying how they can't create new spells, but they could certainly free up a lot of space by getting rid of those Status Resist. I think a Magic Evasion+ song would greatly be appreciated too, and something to help Brds more in Mage set ups. Ballad/March/Etudes/Scherzo are nice for mages, but Brd ultimately can't increase nuke dmg nearly as much as a Geo could.

Edit: Adding a form of MDB- or Gambit-like effect to Threnodies would be truly awesome for them. As of right now, they're nice but often completely unnecessary. Adding something to increase magic elemental dmg to that Threnody's element would be a great addition while also giving Brd an amazing tool for Mage-focused parties.

[Jakuk]

I wouldn't say Etudes are useless, the T2 Adjustments were quite welcome too. However, they could totally get rid of all the Status Resist songs and I don't think anyone would really care, at least from a gameplay perspective. They keep saying how they can't create new spells, but they could certainly free up a lot of space by getting rid of those Status Resist. I think a Magic Evasion+ song would greatly be appreciated too, and something to help Brds more in Mage set ups. Ballad/March/Etudes/Scherzo are nice for mages, but Brd ultimately can't increase nuke dmg nearly as much as a Geo could.

Edit: Adding a form of MDB- or Gambit-like effect to Threnodies would be truly awesome for them. As of right now, they're nice but often completely unnecessary. Adding something to increase magic elemental dmg to that Threnody's element would be a great addition while also giving Brd an amazing tool for Mage-focused parties.

Plenty they could do if they really wanted space for more spells even without removing spells completely from a job.

They could drop all single cast bar-spells and just give the AoE versions to all the jobs.

Same with Gain- spells just give them Boost- instead.

That's 21 spaces there alone with no impact on gameplay, allowing for more spells for jobs that need them like BRD.

[OmnysValefor]

Plenty they could do if they really wanted space for more spells even without removing spells completely from a job.

They could drop all single cast bar-spells and just give the AoE versions to all the jobs.

Same with Gain- spells just give them Boost- instead.

That's 21 spaces there alone with no impact on gameplay, allowing for more spells for jobs that need them like BRD.

Been pushing for similar.

Give whm5 a trait that makes singles aoe.

Haha, it was you I replied to.


Two brief question:

1) Is it impossible to base the DoT damage of these spells on player's level / ilvl?

2) Can you remove spells? Have you ever considered doing this? If you removed all of WHM's bar spells and gave WHM RDM's barspells along with a trait (say, WHM5) to make them aoe, and likewise for Protect/Shell, you would gain 25 slots of spells. As Jakuk points out, if you merge Gain-STR(etc) and Boost-counterparts, that's 32 slots of spells.

If you announced two months in advance that you were removing these, and made a single NPC available with all these spells (if a server-side conversion is just too difficult), that would give people plenty of time to update macros and buy the spells.

Something like--

Day 0:
Make announcement
Put WHM on RDM counterpart spells.
Add trait to whm.

Two months later
Remove WHM duplicates from the game

[Jakuk]

Been pushing for similar.

Give whm5 a trait that makes singles aoe.

Haha, it was you I replied to.

Yeah, probably where I remembered it from.

There is also a load of BLU spells pretty much everyone would be fine with going that haven't ever been used, even for traits, from day one.

[Sicycre]

Hello, everyone!

Following yesterday's update for enfeebling spells (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/51482-Rdm-Debuffs-are-so-useless-why?p=591531&viewfull=1#post591531), today I'd like to share the upcoming adjustments to songs in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we'll be introducing new gear which will include the "All songs +" property.
In addition to this, we'll be adjusting the effect from the "Song +" property.
Specifically, instead of having this property increase different values for different songs, we'll standardize the effect to be a "+10%" increase for the following songs:

Minne / Minuet / Madrigal / Prelude / Mambo / March (including Honor)

We'll also raise the skill and caps on the above songs.
Furthermore, the "Song +" property will now affect "Carol" songs as well.

These changes will increase the performance no matter which skill obi or gear is used.

Once these are implemented, we hope that you try them out with your instruments!

[Domille]

Ok, so, I'll be the one to ask:

Yeah this helps players, but what does it do for Ulmia and Joachim?

[Jakuk]

Ok, so, I'll be the one to ask:

Yeah this helps players, but what does it do for Ulmia and Joachim?

Probably nothing, not to sure they'll be bothered about Trusts.

[Ataraxia]

Hello, everyone!

Following yesterday's update for enfeebling spells (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/51482-Rdm-Debuffs-are-so-useless-why?p=591531&viewfull=1#post591531), today I'd like to share the upcoming adjustments to songs in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we'll be introducing new gear which will include the "All songs +" property.
In addition to this, we'll be adjusting the effect from the "Song +" property.
Specifically, instead of having this property increase different values for different songs, we'll standardize the effect to be a "+10%" increase for the following songs:

Minne / Minuet / Madrigal / Prelude / Mambo / March (including Honor)

We'll also raise the skill and caps on the above songs.
Furthermore, the "Song +" property will now affect "Carol" songs as well.

These changes will increase the performance no matter which skill obi or gear is used.

Once these are implemented, we hope that you try them out with your instruments!


If Honor March have a strong Regen and defense effect to it than it might make bard optional again After all Mighty Guard is just too good and better than honor march and MG have better protection / survival rate.


It is going to be difficult to make Bard popular at this point but i welcome all adjustment. As I mention before about Geo Idris on why Geo-frailty is so good and not available to regular Geo whom can't afford to make Idris.

Increase +10% as mention by Sicycre that does little to make people actually wanna shout for a bard. Now if Pining Nocturne have a strong defense down effect it might fix bard.

Akihiko Matsui and Sicycre I hope you can think of something cool and creative for bard because i too want to see bard and rdm being in shout group. =)

This is off topic:

I like to say Thank You for making DD equipment for Whm and Bard the Ayanmo set Ambuscade.
I also like to see future attachment for Puppet Master. 3 month have gone by and no attachment.

Top 1 list:
Inhibitor III
Attuner II
Target Maker II
Turbo Charge III
Optic Fiber III

Top 2 List:
Strobe III
Armor V
Mana Jammer V
Galvanizer II
Repeater II
Drum Magazine II
Scope IV
Auto-Rep. Kit V


I hope those attachment come to light in the coming months or if their are better and newer attachment i also welcome it. Anything that involve Puppet Master attachment I give it 2 thumbs up!

[Nyarlko]

Hello, everyone!

Following yesterday's update for enfeebling spells (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/51482-Rdm-Debuffs-are-so-useless-why?p=591531&viewfull=1#post591531), today I'd like to share the upcoming adjustments to songs in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we'll be introducing new gear which will include the "All songs +" property.
In addition to this, we'll be adjusting the effect from the "Song +" property.
Specifically, instead of having this property increase different values for different songs, we'll standardize the effect to be a "+10%" increase for the following songs:

Minne / Minuet / Madrigal / Prelude / Mambo / March (including Honor)

We'll also raise the skill and caps on the above songs.
Furthermore, the "Song +" property will now affect "Carol" songs as well.

These changes will increase the performance no matter which skill obi or gear is used.

Once these are implemented, we hope that you try them out with your instruments!

Please, once the adjustments are implemented, can we get a complete listing of all song effects similar to what you have done before for GEO spells including skill caps and actual effect values? There are actually lots of songs whose effects have not been identified even after all these years, and since many values are being changed anyway, this would be a good opportunity to provide a list with the updated information. (Status resistance songs / Nocturne come to mind as things that aren't exactly testable.)


Ok, so, I'll be the one to ask:

Yeah this helps players, but what does it do for Ulmia and Joachim?

Trusts don't wear gear. :x The changes to skill/effect caps should affect them (possibly negatively, in which case, they should be adjusted to at least maintain current values,) but the gear changes won't.

[Urmom]

Ok, so, I'll be the one to ask:

Yeah this helps players, but what does it do for Ulmia and Joachim?

Given both seem to have 0+ song probably nothing one way or the other

[VoiceMemo]

Hello, everyone!

Following yesterday's update for enfeebling spells (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/51482-Rdm-Debuffs-are-so-useless-why?p=591531&viewfull=1#post591531), today I'd like to share the upcoming adjustments to songs in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we'll be introducing new gear which will include the "All songs +" property.
In addition to this, we'll be adjusting the effect from the "Song +" property.
Specifically, instead of having this property increase different values for different songs, we'll standardize the effect to be a "+10%" increase for the following songs:

Minne / Minuet / Madrigal / Prelude / Mambo / March (including Honor)

We'll also raise the skill and caps on the above songs.
Furthermore, the "Song +" property will now affect "Carol" songs as well.

These changes will increase the performance no matter which skill obi or gear is used.

Once these are implemented, we hope that you try them out with your instruments!

I tested Honor March and we do get an increase in the haste value of Honor march, but the accuracy and attack values still seems to be the same. Is this working as intended? I would have thought since Honor march boosts acc, racc, attack, range attack, and haste that it would increase values for all with the Fili Manchettes +1, which has march +1 on it. My tests showed that before update the acc value was 46(using checkparam), testing after the update acc remained the same at 46. Attack value before was 184(using checkparam), testing after update att remained the same at 184.

[Songen]

I tested Honor March and we do get an increase in the haste value of Honor march, but the accuracy and attack values still seems to be the same. Is this working as intended? I would have thought since Honor march boosts acc, racc, attack, range attack, and haste that it would increase values for all with the Fili Manchettes +1, which has march +1 on it. My tests showed that before update the acc value was 46(using checkparam), testing after the update acc remained the same at 46. Attack value before was 184(using checkparam), testing after update att remained the same at 184.

they mentioned on the release of this update that ~quote from official~The effects of the Song+ attribute found on equipment on Honor March have been decreased.* The overall strength of Honor March is still increased due to change in the base value of the song.~end quote~ since honar's march is part of the over all increased set of spells, what you didn't realise is the lowered teir of +1's on the flute

[VoiceMemo]

they mentioned on the release of this update that ~quote from official~The effects of the Song+ attribute found on equipment on Honor March have been decreased.* The overall strength of Honor March is still increased due to change in the base value of the song.~end quote~ since honar's march is part of the over all increased set of spells, what you didn't realise is the lowered teir of +1's on the flute

Ah, that makes sense, upon testing base honor march I get values of 164 for attack(-4 of 168 preupdate value), 41 for acc(-5 of 46 preupdate value), and 12.5% for haste, (+.1 of preupdate value)

[Songen]

bard has been pulled forward quite a bit this update, the nerf on geo made alot of a difference since people crying about geo, so now brd should beable to return since even if your facing magic mobs, carols and scherzo will make a massive difference since they were boosted this update quite a bit. i think what woulda made brd better over all if they added a single carol that affects all elements which would open up magic evasion again. however if that exsisted before this update, geo wouldn't have been the only job dealing with magic mobs

[Domille]

Carols don't work on Meteor. Carol only covers one element. Carol and Scherzo require 2 song slots so you need a second bard.

So we're supposed to play with 1 DD 2 bard 2 geo rdm now?

If this is the answer we got, I prefer letting GEO stay over powered and BRD never get played. Cause as it sits, game isn't playable, and some pliability is better than zero.

[VoiceMemo]

I would think that majority of people that still play brd are at least RE brds, Relic and Emp, so they would be 4 song brds, so unless you're talking about 2 song brds, I don't see the need for a 2nd brd.

[Nyarlko]

I would think that majority of people that still play brd are at least RE brds, Relic and Emp, so they would be 4 song brds, so unless you're talking about 2 song brds, I don't see the need for a 2nd brd.

The lack of bards is primarily due to the previous game state.. I think we'll be seeing a lot more crawling out of the woodwork now that we're not actually useless in comparison to other support jobs. XD

[Songen]

Carols don't work on Meteor. Carol only covers one element. Carol and Scherzo require 2 song slots so you need a second bard.

So we're supposed to play with 1 DD 2 bard 2 geo rdm now?

If this is the answer we got, I prefer letting GEO stay over powered and BRD never get played. Cause as it sits, game isn't playable, and some pliability is better than zero.

/cough, you rely with meteor as to why brd as a whole and carols are useless? not every mob uses meteor you know. even if you mentioned AoE attacks, Brd's more a melee enhancing job so sherzo fits there even more since melee styles require being up front, all of bards party songs got a massive boost too this update with more gear enhancing it even further which has taken it to geo idris level if you have galljahorn+daudabla.,next thing you'll say only blu's are useful for everything and that no other melee job should be used ever in events, some of the best melee styles are are non blu partys. unless you put the effort into the job, you won't know.

Its not the end of the world for gemancer. they had magic acc and magic evasion for players and mobs reverted to the original intended value, not every single geo spell.
With 90% of endgame content actually weakened by 10-20%. the other 10%of endgame is high teir content outside adoulin/escha/reisei, however if you actually try, there are ways of doing it.

[saevel]

bard has been pulled forward quite a bit this update, the nerf on geo made alot of a difference since people crying about geo, so now brd should beable to return since even if your facing magic mobs, carols and scherzo will make a massive difference since they were boosted this update quite a bit. i think what woulda made brd better over all if they added a single carol that affects all elements which would open up magic evasion again. however if that exsisted before this update, geo wouldn't have been the only job dealing with magic mobs

We were already using BRD as most of our setups involve melee's. The problem with this past update is SE botched something else in the code and NM's magic special attacks are hitting far harder then they were before. In Omen we didn't use Vex / Attunment, instead our GEO used Frailty / Fury and our BRD did HM + VM + Min V / IV or Mad depending on the mega boss. WHM did Barfira + Baramnesria and we would then clobber the NM accordingly, just switching to our Damage Reduction sets when the NM was doing a special move. Malighn Invocation and Interference went from doing 300~400 damage to me in DT sets to doing 800~1600 damage to me in those same -DT sets. Again nothing changed in our strategy and we didn't use the bubbles that were modified. Several others have noticed this same effect, certain NM's going around one shoting players and doing obscene magic damage where before they weren't. So SE broke something in the Magic Resist / Magic Damage formula for us players.