Please boost BRD to make it competitive again

[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! >" 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/extrapolated

Someone 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.