Please boost BRD to make it competitive again

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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 :)

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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

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

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Originally Posted by Urmom

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

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+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.

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Originally Posted by PristineChicken

+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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by PristineChicken

+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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Nyarlko

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.

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This, all of this.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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Full time marcato songs!!!

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Originally Posted by Olor

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Nyarlko

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by OmnysValefor

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by saevel

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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

"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.

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Originally Posted by 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

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You're in luck, All songs + will be +1 and on the hands slot only. Probably.

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%.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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

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Originally Posted by 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%.

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

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Originally Posted by Zhronne

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? ;)

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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.

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

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

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Originally Posted by Fae

So you told us SE told us that threnody values aren't equivalent to magic evasion debuffs

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I don't think SE said that? I wish, but they didn't afaik.

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you said things about magic acc skill to magic acc values which is on weapons

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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.

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then claim SE tells us faulty things

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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 -

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And now that they do say they will buff bard, you're unhappy with it

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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.

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.

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

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Originally Posted by Shiyo

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

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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

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

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.

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

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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I'm not sure if this was always the case with SMN

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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)