Bard in the party... thoughts?

MCH >>> BRD at this moment as can be seen in A6S or short farm fights like Sephirot Extreme. MCH's burst is just insane and not many parties seem to be stacking 2 casters now, so the hypercharge is epic too. Foe+BV, paen and RoD (for bursting healers) cannot really beat the damage MCH brings to party now.

Pretty much every HC/MC group on my server is rocking MCH now (even parties that had BRD before, just check Ragnarok progression thread, no parties with BRD, there is a reason for that xD). Fortunately my static can deal with the fact that I enjoy BRD (been playing it nonstop since 2013) and don't want to level MCH and do i230 relic again. But if I had the possibility of choice I would definitely go MCH now. There is no reason to go BRD.

I find that, as DRG main, expert roulette takes longer with a BRD as other dps, than with a real damaging job. Guess BRD's in expert roulette aren't usually people to main them and thus know them less well?

The fact that people have learned about MCH's full burst capabilities along with the buff to hypercharge have kinda pushed it ahead of BRD in terms of desired support job. However, MCH has a much higher skill ceiling, so being a decent BRD is better than a crappy MCH.

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Originally Posted by ShaolinMike

The fact that people have learned about MCH's full burst capabilities along with the buff to hypercharge have kinda pushed it ahead of BRD in terms of desired support job. However, MCH has a much higher skill ceiling, so being a decent BRD is better than a crappy MCH.

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This. Running with an excellent MCH is fantastic, but since it takes real skill to play them, I pretty much hate running anything with them since the chances of the MCH being great to excellent are very slim.

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Originally Posted by Maero

Bards are fine and are capable of more damage then people give credit for, probably due to the shortage of good Bards out there :/

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Sorry to be the wet blanket of this thread, but the reason there's a shortage of good bards out there is because most of the ones I know either changed jobs or quit altogether because they didn't like the bard changes in 3.x. Not being snarky. The playstyle changes and going from good DPS down to tying with MCH for dead last was a tough pill to swallow.

You may find this to your advantage, OP, as you may fill a spot some people are no longer willing to play.

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Originally Posted by AskaRay

No, precast as in, cast it before the status effect comes up, instead of waiting for the effect to pop and casting it.
It's better to precast and have the effect never hit then "timing" it to hit as the effect starts (since WP blocks the next status ailment OR cures one status ailment).

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Actually it's not an OR. It's an AND. It will remove a current one and block the next one.

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Originally Posted by Vidrian

I find that, as DRG main, expert roulette takes longer with a BRD as other dps, than with a real damaging job. Guess BRD's in expert roulette aren't usually people to main them and thus know them less well?

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This is kinda the thing though. A lot of the bards you will meet in DF aren't mains or they are just taking it easy.

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Originally Posted by ruskie

Actually it's not an OR. It's an AND. It will remove a current one and block the next one.

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I've usually been too busy to notice but that makes me even happier, honestly...

Also, still, every time i see a bad brd in DF I just want to cry.... luckily i get around it by doing brd myself in DF. Rarely run into others in 4mans.

There are a lot of bad Bards out there, but real top end bards can still pump out amazing stuff. Don't let MCH FotM put you off. Foe Requiem is still amazing if you have magic DPS (and can last longer than Hypercharge as well as being stronger), not to mention the ability to reduce evasion which helps with healers dps too.

Bards are as good now as they were in the previous raid, but its quite apparent that Machinists are much stronger than them this time round, both in terms of personal DPS and team support.

Just look through fflogs, and you can see that Machinists are even competing for top DPS out of all classes in some encounters. Not bad for a 'support' class!

Personally, I think the main advantage Machinists have over Bards is that they can boost their own DPS with Hypercharge, at the same time as boosting the party DPS. Perhaps if a few Bard attacks dealt Magic damage and were therefore buffed by Foes Requiem, things would be a little closer...

BRDs are useful like someone already mentioned, but I think the original question was (or should of been) is a brd worth picking OVER a MCH???

Well unless you have no melee on the team but the tanks, mch will add more dps to the party than brd.
WAR loves brd for sure
healer dpsing also love BRD for evasion down
...and thats all that brd offers over mch..... (IMO not enough to be worth it in a serious setup...but for fun/causal/med-core yea BRD is fine)


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foe averages 1% over hypercharge (without Battlevoice 5min recast). however again... most all parties will have more physical hitting members. Even if you include BV in a 10min fight that moves the avg to 2% over hypercharge.....still not closing the gap....