Please boost BRD to make it competitive again

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Originally Posted by detlef

I don't see buffing and dropping to be as big a deal as people think.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Zhronne

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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Zhronne

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

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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

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Originally Posted by Fae

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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



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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by detlef

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Fae

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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Actually, it was exasperation.

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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Afania

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Fae

As for threnody II, it is possible that meva and elemental magic resistance are calculated somehow differently

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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.

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Originally Posted by detlef

Maybe the issue is that BRD needs to bring something additional to the table that can be used mid-fight.

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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

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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.

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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

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Originally Posted by Zhronne

guess which job I'm on 99% of the times? Yep, my Idris GEO :D

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I know that feel.