A note about gear swapping. As any bard knows, we are gear whores. Until you get a relic horn and the recently added harp of uberness you will be carrying ALOT of stuff, and to do swaps it all needs to be in your active inventory, not sack/satchel. You will generally have at least 1 instrument for every category of songs, at least until you reach the 80+ level and start getting some of the Aby instruments that enhance more than 1 class of songs each... if you can manage to get them. You may even have both a horn AND harp for some songs if you need to control range/radius. Most bards also use at least a few of the elemental staves. I'm an elvan, so once I hit 50 I also needed to carry MP gear to be able to assist healing and raising after wipes (which requires a food buff too, at least before I got my relic pants at 80). Don't expect alot of room for anything else. You really do need most of those instruments, as the +whatever is generally very apparent (except Requiem, by the time you get +Requiem almost everything is immune, except other players in PvP).

Please note that this is coming from a guy who very much despises changing out of my base gear configuration, but with bard especially even I concede it is a necessity to effective bard play.

Quote Originally Posted by Frost View Post
Spam ACC: Back then SE was really against people actually hitting things for some reason... Then they gave use sushi, and eventually better gear, making Accuracy a non-issue.

Spam STR: This has only been an issue in WS builds. The only call to "Spam Str" was if you were a thief meleeing HNM and hitting zeros. Other than that if you were meleeing in STR gear where there was no Haste, Double/Triple Attack or Store TP, sure, why not tilt the STR vs VIT curve. But those slots were pretty filled. (I.E. no real reason to "Gear for STR")

Spam Haste: "Current Trend" BUT always has been the Top Priority and desire of any melee that knew anything since day one. It's only recently become extremely available and readily accessible. It's not a "Trend" per se...

You're talking about a scale that you dont' seem to comprehend even when it's been posted repeatedly, Yes, 70 Attack on 700 is 10%. But if you're already close to cap on attack it means nothing. adding 7% haste adds in upwards of 20% more hits, 20% more weaponskills, depending on how much existing haste you already got. Even you can see 20% is greater than 10% right? And I am being conservative.

If someone had 0 haste in gear, and no haste casted in them, I MIGHT be able to argue for March/Minuet, but my argument would be more like "Why are you on 0% haste and why isn't the mage hasting people?"

The key factors here are:

1) Haste gets more powerful the more of it you got.
2) Haste very recently because readily available and easily accessible.
3) More people have haste upping the value of haste from other sources (Magic, Marches, Sambas, Etc.)

If it still doesn't make sense read the post linked in my sig.
I haven't read all of the posts on here debating the merits of Haste via whatever means. The only thing I can weigh in on is that Haste does have a cap, and it is quite acheivable for most jobs at end-game levels. Because it is so acheivable, the wise player needs to evaluate what they want from us support roles. They may wish to stay with March x2 from us, using the haste we give to allow them to gear more to another purpose (aim for defense, acc, eva, whatever). Or they may wish to gear to cap Haste themselves and have us boost them in whatever. Against certain mobs they may even want Carols or the like. It's called attention to detail-most newer players don't consider it, but it can have a major impact on strategy.

In fact, since most melee players do gear for haste (for when they don't have access to a good support job) I find it to be much more effective to support those traits not addressed by player gear choice; it does no good to go overkill on Haste (or anything else) if your party can't take a hit, or connect with a hit. Personally, end-game my song combo of choice is to have everyone gear their own haste set and have me either Scherzo|Mambo or Madrigal|Minuet, depending on the mob we face. Of course, with a BAD group it's Hymnus|Paeon, with Hymnus|Mazurka on me to get the hell out, lol.

Don't forget the jackass factor tho'. There is usually at least 1 player who likes to put out awesome numbers and so gears for all-out attack, with nothing to his own survival. That player will be the loudest complainer about how you need to cast "___" song to boost them, will generally ignore strategy and party mechanics in pursuit of a higher damage figure for their records and expect all the healers (including you) to keep them alive through all of this. When they die they'll be screaming that you aren't doing your job (not just about you, "if you didn't suck so much as a tank you could hold hate", "if you just timed your pulls so I could ___", "if you just cured me I could've" in the face of the tank having Doom on them, etc). The good news is they'll usually either leave your party in disgust-with or without a "you all suck" thrown in-or a good pt leader will boot them. Expect to never make everyone happy.