helping bard with playing Army's Paeon

so this comes up due to the fact that the only time i ever play Army's Paeon is when i get asked unlike with Mage's Ballad and Foe Requiem.

so i just want to know why there is no TP bar displayed in party list when it can obviously be shown (it's displayed for the player but not for the rest of the party) and there are arguably more classes that could use Army's Paeon than there are for Mage's Ballad.

most times i find myself playing Army's Paeon when my party members are at about 200 or 100 TP, when i would rather use it earlier so that thy have less issues later on and i don't end up playing Army's Paeon till i'm out of mana because they forgot to tell me they were good on TP and since i can't see their TP i don't know how much they may have at that moment :\

also was having trouble finding where to put this thread. i read the rules and looked at th forum's uses but i just couldn't figure it out XD.

TL;DR why can't we see TP bars in party list again?

They probably don't have it there since 99.9% of the time it doesn't come up or matter.

I keep waiting for the day that someone asks me to play that song, but such a time has yet to come.

It was mentioned in the London Fan Fest.

They are looking into ways to do this, but they currently do not want so much bars on the UI. So I would expect it around 3.0, if at al.

I think it might be a good idea for the display to show mana or tp depending on class... Like for tanks and melee it could show tp, for healers and casters it shows mana. The only problem would be to show mana or to for bard. I'm not sure why I'd ever need to see a monks mana... So its basically showing worthless information.

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Originally Posted by Dotsusama

They probably don't have it there since 99.9% of the time it doesn't come up or matter.

I keep waiting for the day that someone asks me to play that song, but such a time has yet to come.

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you need more monk friends XD i get asked about TP song so many times in coil :P

Tell them to go shove it unless its t8, thats the only fight ever where you're supposed to paeon. You should be jamming foes requiem at all times.

However I do agree since new content is coming soon, seeing party TP bars would be nice. Why haven't we gotten an official response on that? Or did I miss it somewhere on the forums?

Even in t8 there's no reason to paeon. Unless perhaps you are running all melee + a BRD. Foe's does more for raid damage and without reducing your own.

I play it if the tank is mass pulling for aoe and there is no caster.

I was doing a dungeon yesterday and the BRD kept singing A.P. with PLD/SCH/BLM/BRD setup instead of Foes. It was awful....

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Originally Posted by Chrisbox

Tell them to go shove it unless its t8, thats the only fight ever where you're supposed to paeon. You should be jamming foes requiem at all times.

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meanwhile my healers are running out of mana and i have no mana to play Mage's because i've been using foes the whole time :P
learning when you need foes and when to saving mana is part of our job, just because we can increase blm/smn dps doesn't mean letting our melee dps who are becoming starved thus unable to use abilities is a good idea.

part of our job is to manage the different songs in order to help maximize party output while not lowering yours too much. since normally we'll be checking the MP bars anyway being able to look at TP bars is also important. having to battle voice Paeon because your melee are sitting at 100 TP seems like a huge waste that could have been saved by using it when they were at 300 TP and bring them up to about 500 so that you can save that battle voice for other songs

Or your melee can learn how to manage their TP? It really isn't difficult. More optimal for raid DPS to just use foe's.

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Originally Posted by HulveinBlitz

It was mentioned in the London Fan Fest.

They are looking into ways to do this, but they currently do not want so much bars on the UI. So I would expect it around 3.0, if at al.

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I was thinking instead of a bar, just a number indicating what percentage TP they have.

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Originally Posted by lugiaXD

you need more monk friends XD i get asked about TP song so many times in coil :P

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Turn 8 is the only turn a monk should need paeon.

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Originally Posted by RinchanNau

Even in t8 there's no reason to paeon. Unless perhaps you are running all melee + a BRD. Foe's does more for raid damage and without reducing your own.

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All melee and bard needs paeon in t8 or you become tp starved. Even with optimum invig uses, you become tp starved shortly after the second dread. Or else you're playing your job very wrong.

No one NEEDS Paeon in combat. Everyone needs to learn TP management. It is quite easy on BRD to hold back a few heavy shots when your TP is low. Your DPS will be a good bit higher than if you used paeon. And if you factor in the DPS gain your casters will receive by using Foe's instead you will understand that it makes no sense to use Paeon in combat.

You are on the same server. Feel free to run some tests with me if you have doubts.

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Originally Posted by RinchanNau

No one NEEDS Paeon in combat. Everyone needs to learn TP management.

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With that attitude, Paeon shouldn't even exist.

Honestly, the last time I can remember using paeon was way back in pre-echo t4 during the first wave, and only if there were other physical DD there AoE spamming. Don't think I've used it since.

So melee dps need to manage there TP consuption.... by basically dropping their dps, to conserve tp... because no one needs paeon... Melee dps don't need it to perform optimally at all in tp starving situations. A melee dps being starved of tp is a bigger dps loss than mages not having foes.

I mean, throe us a bone every now and then... But Ok.

Luckily Ninja will take that burden off brds hands soon.

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Originally Posted by Leonus

So melee dps need to manage there TP consuption.... by basically dropping their dps, to conserve tp... because no one needs paeon... Melee dps don't need it to perform optimally at all in tp starving situations. A melee dps being starved of tp is a bigger dps loss than makes not having foes.

But Ok.

Luckily Ninja will take that burden off brds hands soon.

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It's not a large drop in DPS to do things like cut out Phlebotomize when your TP is low. Seriously. T8 is what? 7 1/2 minutes? Maybe 8 max?

Are you implying that SMN shouldn't manage their MP either? They can just ruin 2 and auto attack for better DPS instead of using ruin and always fester instead of using energy drain when necessary.

I am talking about optimal raid damage. If you want to talk about feeding one's ePeen then yes, you can Paeon all you want and have less than optimal raid damage. And you can have 3 BRDs for your SMN too. One with ballad always up and 2 alternating Foe's. But again, not optimal for raid damage.

NIN's TP regen seems most useful. Wonder what the CD time is on it. As far as we know it does not decrease NIN DPS which makes it infinitely more useful than Paeon IN COMBAT.

Even then tp is being consumed rapidly, at that rate we would end up having to slow down our usage of attacks considerably ( which most melee dps do anyway since we're last on the totem pole to receive just about anything party wise.)

Not a lot of melee dps ask for paeon constantly, hell half of the time we just want help to buy time until our next invigorate.

That is where I thin nin comes in, buy time for the other melee dps when invigorate is down and they are low on tp. good melee dps don't usually ask help for tp unless they know they are gonna hit rock bottom and become a detriment to the party by not being able to pull their weight.

At those times, why not throw us a bone? Everyone else drops a little in dps but the melee dps don't go from 450 dps to just over 200 from being tp starved.

Goad is a 1 minute or 2 minute recast I believe. Will more than likely be for melee dps that need some help before the next invigorate.

Goad priority will probably be:
Tanks (if they ask, especially wars) 》mnk/drg/Nin (if they can use it on themselves) 》brd.

in reply to Rinchan (cause character limits are the devil)

invigorate is what 90 seconds? 120 seconds? and you're comparing it to aetherflow (which is god tier) 60 seconds and it gives you 20% mana back where as invig gives 400 tp and 500 on drg BUT drg have higher costs on most their attacks, almost evrything they use consumes more TP than the natural regen, monk's who have 420 skill speed last about 4 minutes before they start having TP problems, at 5 minutes they are complately starved.

goad sounds like it's a single target thing and seems good BUT it still brings up the problem of it is less efficient to ask for TP than to let us see it in party list, and if you give me the whole it helps you see stuff YOU CAN'T SEE SHIT IN THE LITTLE SLITS WHERE A BAR COULD BE CAUSE THE (DE)BUFFS TAKE UP 75% OF THAT SPACE.

saying that a monk or a dragoon should just drop part of their rotation (like DoTs which smn proves is OP) is basically saying that we should just have 4 casters and a bard for foes dps increase to the max. or have 2 bards for alternating foes and 3 casters. something i should point out is it's ONLY and 10% magic res decrease, essentially a 5-10% damage buff for about 45-60 seconds which yes is good but realistically it will take you 2 minutes or so to get that all back and if you use a paeon's for about 30 seconds just till invigorate you've only reduced your damage by 20% for 30 seconds while keeping your melee at 450+ and then can switch to foes for 30 seconds.
what i'm asking is help for others as well as myself so that i can better increase the efficiency of my support abilities.

Let's take this 30 seconds of paeon sample size. That is 300 TP. So you think that reducing BRD DPS by 20% for 30s and not increasing caster DPS by 15% (non-BV foe's) during this time is better for raid damage than a DRG just cutting out Phlebotomize 3 times (270 TP) or a MNK cutting out Touch of Death 3 or 4 times (240 or 320 TP)?

This is dependent on group config, of course If you have no caster DPS then I suppose Paeon is better for raid damage.

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Originally Posted by RinchanNau

Let's take this 30 seconds of paeon sample size. That is 300 TP. So you think that reducing BRD DPS by 20% for 30s and not increasing caster DPS by 15% (non-BV foe's) during this time is better for raid damage than a DRG just cutting out Phlebotomize 3 times (270 TP) or a MNK cutting out Touch of Death 3 or 4 times (240 or 320 TP)?

This is dependent on group config, of course If you have no caster DPS then I suppose Paeon is better for raid damage.

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Its a little bit disingenious of you to compare TP usage without taking into account the natural tp regen.
If you want to compare based on phlebotomize or touch of death it should really be ~9-10 phlebotomizes or 14-15 touch of death's we're talking about here compared to the 30 seconds of Paeon the bard would be playing (give or take 1 or 2 depending on skill speed).

Not true at all. Where do you get that from? All you do is leave 2-3s of auto attack where one of those high TP consumption attacks would have been. It really isn't that challenging. I can assure you that.

So based on your post, in your parties you usually have a drg OR mnk and not both. So in your instance I guess it would be more efficient for the drg or mnk to manage their tp.

In my parties we usually have 1 tank,. 2 casters, 1 bard, 2 melee (both drg and mnk) and 2 healers. In this configuration it is more efficient to play paeon when the melee dps and are low on tp because they are usually your highest dps. If both of them drop from 450+ to 200 that is less efficient for the raid group than the brd eating 20% damage cut and the casters not getting a 15 % damage boost for a period of time (30 sec to help until next invigorate sample size). No matter how hard the brd and casters push in that situation they can not make up the difference that the 2 melee dps are suffering from by not having paeon and being low on tp.

lol keeping foes up longer for more caster damage
and avoiding using Paeon for bard

FAR outweighs the dps loss by melee tweaking rotation to manage tp better.

Truth is...
If bards played other classes they'd know when to sing Paeon without people asking just by seeing what other DPS are doing and how long the fight/pulls are taking.


I just leveled up bard to 50 as my last DoW/DoM class and the 4 or 5 times i sang Army's Paeon on dungeons while leveling up, i had either tank or the DRG/MNK thanking me for using it because they really needed it on the medium/big pulls.

I know there's a huge difference between dungeons and t8, but that's the exact purpose of the dungeons: for you to learn how to play your job properly and hopefully to it's fullest potential.


Unfortunately that's not usually the case. Most bards don't even keep their DoTs up for god's sake.
I've joined some statics for t6 and t7 where the bard never used DoTs. Same for Ramuh EX. They just heavy shot all adds and think that's a good way to play. This... baffles me.

(Typical bard: Stack raging strikes, Blood for Blood, Hawk's Eye and Barrage as soon as the tank pull - or sometimes even before the pull, wasting precious seconds of the buffs - and then spam Heavy Shot all fight long, occasionally using Straight Shot if it's flashing or Bloodletter/Blunt arrow if it's up)

This is not true in the party set up I posted.

say the party composition is 1 tank, 2 melee, 1 brd and 2 casters and healers.
For s#&$s and giggles let's say all the damage dealers are at 450 dps.

your two melee dps are starved for tp. The drop from 450 to 200. That's 500 dps just between the two of them. Over 30 second ( time period) until both of their next invigorates.

That's 15,000 points of damage lost just between the two of them in just 30 seconds.

The bard plays paeon instead of letting the melee run dry for 30 seconds. Let's say that's minus 15% damage from both casters (which it more than likely isn't that high).

With the paeon up the go from 450 dps to 382.5, and let's just round down to 382 even. That's 136 dps lost between just the two casters. Laughable compared to the 500 just the two melee together are loosing.

Let's add the brds loss of 20%. They drop from 450 to 310.

Sow now between 3 different dps the are loosing 226 dps. Still less than half what the melee dps are loosing for a total of 6,780 damage over 30 seconds.

The dps loss difference by not feeding the melee tp is over 8000 in damage. That's just in 30 seconds.

Managing tp doesn't help when you are out of tp, then telling melee to just cut back their rotations because you don't want to cast paeon isn't the greatest idea. You might as well bring all casters instead and get the most out of you foes req that you can and not just invite melee to just limit break.

GOOD melee dps players have a lot to bring to the party and should not be ignored. Most good melee dps don't ask for help with tp unless they foresee themselves in trouble tp wise.

On top of that if you have a war main tank, your helping him/her with keeping hate.

Just throw melee dps a bone every now and then.

like i said is it really that much trouble for a TP bar to exist? it doesn't have any sort of disadvantages and frankly it will help people be better on the support side of bard.

on the topic of me knowing other classes. when you're doing T8 and you're managing callouts, homing missile, looking at the healer's MP, checking your buffs/dot timers, making sure that the towers were pushed correctly *takes a breath* i'm sorry for not noticing exactly how many phlebotomizes and touch of deaths were used as well as factoring in the fact that a lot of the skills drg and mnk use tend to actually cost more than the regen does (at least for monks it does over time) between all that ;).

like you said dungeons aren't raids, although i learnt how to play my job by paying attention to what i was doing, reading my skills and seeing what the optimum amount of damage i can get is, pretty much all dungeons aren't mechanics heavy. which is a shame as there are A LOT of bad dps out there :\

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Originally Posted by RinchanNau

Let's take this 30 seconds of paeon sample size. That is 300 TP. So you think that reducing BRD DPS by 20% for 30s and not increasing caster DPS by 15% (non-BV foe's) during this time is better for raid damage than a DRG just cutting out Phlebotomize 3 times (270 TP) or a MNK cutting out Touch of Death 3 or 4 times (240 or 320 TP)?

This is dependent on group config, of course If you have no caster DPS then I suppose Paeon is better for raid damage.

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my my it would seem someone isn't actually thinking about the fact that:
A) dragoon's have about 3-4 skills that don't actually cost more than 60 tp and they are usually combo skills which means you saying they should just cut out phlebotomize actually doesn't help them because in order for them to do damage they need to keep consuming TP and 2-3 seconds of autos is literally like one auto attack and it's also 2-3 seconds where they could have been doing damage.

B) if you can direct me to a monk who has no skill speed and still pushes 430+ dps i'd like to meet that guy and ask him how in the blazing hells did he even manage to do that. because as far as i can tell monks have low tp costs sure but that means nothing when you factor in that at greased lightning 3 they are beating the natural tp regen you get every 2.5 seconds because their cooldowns are actually closer to about 1.7 or so. so same problem as drg sure they can just take out touch of death but that doesn't adress the issue and since they NEED to keep greased lightning up that 2-3 seconds of auto's will most likely become 2 skills in their rotation which just makes them lose more TP

as a bard i know that my tp isn't actually much of an issue, i can very easily manage till the next invig and still be ok because simply put my DPS drop from not maximizing my DoT timers so they get continued buffed damage amounts to about 40-60 dps but having played drg for a spell and knowing a lot of monk friends who i have practically interrogated in order to know their classes. it would do a lot more good to help me help them by letting me see when they need TP before it becomes an issue.

As it stands right now I only play TP song when I am completely out of TP myself since I cannot see other peoples TP bars and I only play it when a more important song is not needed. As for the mana issue regarding leaving myself short when another song is needed, I do not consider it much of an issue as I have yet to have a problem with such and it is very easy to pop an MP regen potion to restore a reasonable amount of MP. I will point out though I am still working on getting my cross class skills up of which when have done so TP will be less of an issue.

I just keep an eye on my TP and my invigorate. If it looks like my TP is running low (around 300-400) and my invigorate is on cooldown, I'm assuming the Monk and Dragoon's TP must be as well.

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Originally Posted by Danbo05

I just keep an eye on my TP and my invigorate. If it looks like my TP is running low (around 300-400) and my invigorate is on cooldown, I'm assuming the Monk and Dragoon's TP must be as well.

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dragoons have much higher tp costs than bards and monks have a skill speed buff on Grease lightning 3 meaning they run into severe TP issues so your 300-400 with invig on cooldown might actually be 100-200 for drg and mnks at which point you would need to battle voice paeon.

Turn 10 and 11 are TP intensive. 10 is a very strict dps check too. If your melee users run out of TP, you're screwed.