Some BRD Mechanics Testing

Hello all,

Having seen several posts across the forum talking about Foe's Requiem's being a DPS booster for BRD, I decided to test the actual abilities and see just how strong the effect was. The abilities from BRD under discussion are Foe's Requiem, Venomous Bite, Windbiter, and Flaming Arrow. For Flaming Arrow, I also had no information regarding how it interacts with buffs, so I decided to test that, as well.

To test, I would approach an enemy, use the relevant DOT on them, and quickly hit ESC to cancel auto-attacks. I would then visually observe the DOTs tick to see if the numbers varied significantly in the presence of the Requiem debuff. Enemies would be pulled with the Foe's Requiem debuff aggro for that section of testing in order to avoid any question as to whether it had applied before attacking.

I first tested Windbiter, as that seemed to strike the balance between useful and dubious. Without Requiem, my DOT ticks were doing around 60 to 65 damage. With Requiem, I expected to see them reach the upper 60s, occasionally touching the 70s. Instead, the range remained unmoving around 60. Well, as I said, Windbiter was dubious to start with.

My Windbiter dreams dashed, I decided to continue on to Venomous Bite, expecting a repeat performance from Windbiter. I was not disappointed. Before and after numbers were both in the ~48-52 range.

I then moved on to Flaming Arrow. First, the plain ticks of damage were doing ~75 damage. I initially assumed that it was just critting, as that's the damage I would expect of a critical Venomous Bite, which is also 35 potency. Then I noticed that *all* of the ticks were in this range. All of them. Even when I pulled three enemies at the same time, all 30 ticks were in the 75 range, completely unbuffed. In other words, there appears to be an error in the tooltip, and, simultaneously, Flaming Arrow never crits. Or, the tooltip is right, but it has 100% crit chance. . .Anyway, the numbers didn't change at all with Requiem up, even though Flaming Arrow seemed most likely to be affected. With that out of the way, I tested Raging Strikes (applied before using Flaming) and saw no results there, either.

In conclusion, I'd like to open the floor to critiques of my method or collaboration, whichever you prefer. I'd just like to get accurate information out, so if you could please keep things structured.

I'm assuming it's an intended mechanic otherwise you'd just always cast Foe Req.

From a game design standpoint it's acceptable but also a little misleading.

btw when to activate battle voice? before i cast the song? or does it still apply when a song is already on? ... problem is, engaging a training dummy and using either way army's paeon is always giving me 30tp per tic... when i was expecting 60 cause of battle voice

edit: i might have missed that the song doesn't apply to the brd itself..?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

btw when to activate battle voice? before i cast the song? or does it still apply when a song is already on? ... problem is, engaging a training dummy and using either way army's paeon is always giving me 30tp per tic... when i was expecting 60 cause of battle voice

edit: i might have missed that the song doesn't apply to the brd itself..?

---

The song itself (at least, Paeon) will apply to the BRD himself. Battle Voice, for some reason, will not. As for when to use Battle Voice, it doesn't matter.

Now I'm curious if the Requiem affects Ruin.
Because if it does, then we're talking about magic resistance rather than elemental resistance.

I believe requiem does not affect any arcanist spells. It seems to be ONLY for BLMs, which is such an oddly specific case.

Furthermore, other ground effects like Shadowflare also do not benefit from Raging Strikes, so at least thats consistent.

I've no idea if anyone else has already said this or not, but the issue might be that the mob(s) you tested on had no resistance to reduce. Might be worth while re-doing the test with a THM next to you to test if they get any damage increase on the same mobs that you're testing on

What lvl and types of mobs are you doing these tests on? I ask because as you know Foe Req decreases elemental resistance by 10%, unlike people whom see that as 10% increase to elemental damage. Mobs that already have little to no elemental resistance will become virtually unaffected by FR. if they say have 100 fire resist then FR would reduce them to 90 resist which may be completely negligible. On the other hand coil bosses may have much higher resistances causing FR to have much more of an effect. For instance, these numbers again are arbitrary, a lvl 53 coil boss could have 1000 which would reduce him to 900 elemental resist resulting in a higher difference. Ill do some testing tonight in coil on high level bosses.

I initially tested Windbiter on the level 48 Garleans north of Vesper Bay. I then did a more comprehensive test (including Windbiter confirmation) on the Hippocerfs in eastern Mor Dhona. I also checked my damage on the Lightning Elementals, Lake Serpents, and Gigas in the area, noting no changes (only tested Requiem on the Elementals, but all damage numbers stayed the same regardless of enemy).

Edit:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pandabearcat

I believe requiem does not affect any arcanist spells. It seems to be ONLY for BLMs, which is such an oddly specific case.

---

It does seem odd, which I suspect is why the idea that BRD gets a boost was so popular. I've heard claims that SMN does as well; needless to say, I doubt that's the case. I'll test to confirm when I get a chance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pandabearcat

I believe requiem does not affect any arcanist spells. It seems to be ONLY for BLMs, which is such an oddly specific case.

Furthermore, other ground effects like Shadowflare also do not benefit from Raging Strikes, so at least thats consistent.

---

Foe req does boost Holy damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

Foe req does boost Holy damage.

---

That's. . .weird. Glad I have a friend who's 50 everything and hopefully won't mind testing. . .

It doesn't effect Windbiter or Flaming Arrow? That's beyond odd, considering both are elemental attacks. Either it's working as intended, which means it's useless unless you have a BLM in the group, or it's currently bugging out, and supposed to work with those two skills. I'm hoping for the latter, just because otherwise it means all our songs are useless outside of very specific circumstances.

I tested it a few days ago and came to the same conclusion: Foe Requiem has no effect whatsoever on anything Bard. Lame but there you have it.

It only affects BLM and WHM (not that important for WHM).
Arcanist damage is neutral.

strange. my test today gave different results. it effected Stone(II) damage, but not holy. it worked for anything blm beside thunder dot (forgot to test scathe). and it also effected smn dots, fester and garuda-egi (forgot about ruin and ifrit though) ...

I usually use Foe Requiem when there are blackmages in my party. My blackmage friend notices a difference in his damages with foe requiem on. I'll try to get some specific numbers the next time I run a dungeon with them.

Edit:
I did some more testing with all the mage classes. Using Foe Requiem effectiviely can turn Summoner, Blackmage, Whitemage, and Scholar into beasts. (Essentially increasing all their spell damage by +(15%-30%) (battle shout+Foe Requiem).

I've been testing Foe Requiem with all the casters and it has a significant effect on their spells. The tool tip on Foe Requiem is wrong and it still does boost non-elemental [un-aspected] spells (couple spells excluded). The downside is, Bard spells and other melee spells that say they have elemental damage are not effected by Foe Requiem.

small update: it effects Thunder DoT, didn't watch carefully enough first time. It does effect Scathe and Ruin. It doesn't effect Ifrit-Egi (cause he is a melee). Only thing I don't understand is Holy (unless something went wrong in my test). But ya conclusion is it effects basicly every offensive magic spell. Bad skill description is bad...

Couple questions about BRD

Do foe requiem's stack? As in if you have 2 BRD's using it will you get double the effect?

@ starkveaumont what about other summons? And for ifrit (and the other summons I guess) what about the elemental burst damage moves? Like inferno.

yep, Enkindle moves are effected as well. on normal stuff, it doesn't seem to do anything for titan and ifrit egi. as already mentioned they are considered physical damage

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

But ya conclusion is it effects basicly every offensive magic spell. Bad skill description is bad...

---

That's pretty much it: the English description is incorrect. The Japanese description has "10% reduction to magic resistance" rather than elemental.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pandabearcat

I believe requiem does not affect any arcanist spells. It seems to be ONLY for BLMs, which is such an oddly specific case.

Furthermore, other ground effects like Shadowflare also do not benefit from Raging Strikes, so at least thats consistent.

---

Arcanist is "unaspected" magic damage and is therefore unaffected by changes to a monster's elemental resistance.

I believe there are 5 *types* of damage you can do as far as the game registers them.
1: Slashing (melee only, debuff applied by warrior)
2: Blunt (melee only, debuff applied by monks)
3: Piercing (melee and ranged, debuff applied by Dragoon)
4: 'unaspected' (Shadow Flare, Freeze, Flaming Arrow, DOT-ticks but not initial damage hit)
5: Magical
-- White Mage : Stone, Stone II, Aero, Aero II, Holy
-- Black Mage : Fire, Fire II, Fire III, Blizzard, Blizzard II, Blizzard III, Thunder, Thunder II, Thunder III, Flare
-- Summoner : Ruin, Ruin II, Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II, Tri-Disaster

I make this assumption based on the active debuffs that can be applied, and turn 4 psudo-stoneskin mechanics.
1: Stoneskin (Physical) blocks bard-attacks including those with elemental descriptors
2: Stoneskin (Magical) does NOT block DoT-ticks
3: Neither Stoneskin (Magical) or (Physical) block ground-target damage
4: Basic Stoneskin DOES block all types of damage
5: Warrior, Monk and Dragoon all have resistance down to different physical attacks.


So starting with all that in mind, I believe that Foe's Requiem will affect "Magical" damage done by Conj/Whm, Acn/Smn/Sch and Thm/Blm, however it will not affect ground-target affects. This would put it on line with affecting the same spells which interact with Stoneskin (magical).

Mage's Ballad and Army's Peon both work as intended, they will return MP/TP to the bard while the song is being sung, and will reduce the bards damage by 20%.

Battle voice is working as intended on Ballad, Peon and Requiem. Battle voice does not affect the bard, but doubles the songs affects for other party members.

Swift song works as intended any member not currently in combat, where in combat is defined as having an enemy on the "enemies list" even if no action has been taken. (good example of this is when it falls off at the start of boss battles).

Way to necro this thread D=

I was wrong about the arcanist spells thing (apparently).

Requiem is a magic resistance debuff, thus applies to every attack that is magical, and does NOT apply to attacks that are physical but say they have an element (such as Venomous Bite).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pandabearcat

Way to necro this thread D=

---

Yeah, I linked to it in another thread, and suddenly there are posts all over, some of whom apparently didn't read the thread at all. >_>

Foe requiem does effect smn dots. Grab a smn and cast fr for him, have him apply a dot and then remove fr. Have him cast the same dot with fr off and it will not override because the previous dot dad buffed. (similar to trying to override dots we apply with our own buffs once our buffs fall off)

I believe we have already come to the conclusion that requiem does not do what it says.

It boosts ALL magic damage (damage based on INT stat) by 10-20%. It does not effect aspected physical damage at all. TBH i don't think aspected physical damage exists, it's just for lore and does not affect anything.