Will anyone really care if I dont sub WHM?

[KingTonberryIV]

Will the party care? if i sub for WHM people forget that i have still a ridiculously low mp total. (im hume) at lvl 11 i would be able to cast 4 cure spells. at lvl 42 when i can use cure 3 i would be able to cast it only once. just once. at lvl 42. i could cast 4 more cure spells too. if it has to come down to that i tihnk we are screwed.

so will are party be really that gimped if i decided to sub something else? shouldnt they be lucky they have a bard?
here are some subs i have heard people mention and i was thinking about:

bst: just to have a pet - pet wont gimp party xp, only mine. but it would be lots of fun. also ups chr stat

sum: takes 7 mp to raise, and mp drains every couple eseonds right? but i tihnk at higher lvls i could definitely keep it out, because i would play mp regen all the time, and get mp refresh. again would be fun to have a pet out, even if it is weak. i could bust out the pet to do damage and bring out some buffing magic -especially cool ones like shell/protect, en thunder to all, etc.

ninja: thats right ninja. i could dual weild chr boosting knives and do some fighting a bit. brd is as strong as a rdm or thief. do some ws. renkei, toss some enfeebling powder, blink. be fun combo too.

red mage: only reason is that i heard fast could would help it sing faster. not as fun, but im already a red mage.

[Blindside]

Well originally I was going to do a BRD/Whm ... and also RNG/Nin.

Started playing with bard and it is sweet... Now i see most go Bard/Whm but I am a mithra.. and my MP pool is horendous. Now I was thinking Bard/Ninja.... dual weilding daggers, enfeebling powders ona resist, and sing the resist down song.

That would really open for nukes...

I will prob go Bard/Ninja now.... see ya around

[KingTonberryIV]

yes ill see you there blindside . maybe more of us bards with non traditional subs will make people reconsider the white mage orthodoxy. dont get me wrong, whm sub can be good, especially since you mp regen yourself while you sing for other mage, and you can cure status ailments. but still thats not our job. im leaning to have a bst or a sum sub myself. i tihnk the bst sub would be more powerful than sum, but sum is more reliable. but i can just see some party leaders turning us down just because we didnt sub whm. even though whm dont help us with our main job at all and is just useful for last ditch healing. IMHO. :spin:

[Viktoria]

More power to you guys. I hate stale cookie-cutter builds, I love to see variety. I'm doing bard/red mage, I know I know, not THAT rebellious, but I had plans for this setup before I knew of the details of each job, stat-wise.

[Rekiem]

The problem if you don't sub WHM or RDM is that you become far less usefull to a PT. Bard offensive abilities are very low and a Fighter Job won't bring enough but a WHM allow your party to fight more often since someone will be able to heal. Once you reach level 25, you have 6 songs to keep running. 2 for the fighters, 2 for the mages and 2 on the monster. By the time you are over with all this, the monster will probably be at 60~75% HP. At this point you have 2 option, either you start fighting (which is something you should always do unless the main healer need you to help him heal) or you play the rear guard. You look out for incoming link while healing the tank here and there, refreshing your offensive songs etc.. So you see, having a fighter job for bard is not really usefull and yes, people will care. Mostly in this game where theres a huge lack of healers, people are forced to take RDM and BLM to be maine healer and having WHM sub for you is definatly a great asset to your party. The amount of HP you can heal with WHM subbed is probably 5 time higher than the amount of damage you can deal during an entire even if you only got 50MP..

So to answer your question, yes, people will care about what sub job you have, mostly if they only have 1 person who can heal. Honestly, if you want to be a good player who is usefull to his party, either sub WHM or RDM, both will make you a very great team member to have in your party. I prefer to be having a cookie cutter character in my party than an ineffective gimp who think being different is something cool...

[tonka]

Everything that you can say is good about a bard subbing /whm can also be said for any melee class.

A bard has no innate MP and no innate Healing skill, which means he's healing exactly as well as a warrior. A bard can use seal and curega to get that 1 emergency heal in, and so can any other class. It's very different than a RDM subing /WHM who can legitimately act as a backup healer because of innate healing skill and innate MP.

I followed a japanese party in the necropolis around for a bit to see how their bard operated. The japanese bard was subbed ninja. From what i saw his sub really didn't come into play at all, as he was busy running around like a madman between casters & melee.

If anything, i would think a bard would want a sub that adds passive abilities, not more active abilities like a /whm.

[SyNapSe]

Everything that you can say is good about a bard subbing /whm can also be said for any melee class.

Exactly, as someone said earlier.. a level 40 bard is going to have like 60 mana (not counting items that add)

There is almost no reason, IMO, that you have to pick WHM as sub.

I'm choosing RDM... I'll basically be able to heal just as much as a sub'd WHM. It's not like your going to have the mana to cast Cure II, III anyway, and I'll get a few extra enfeebling spells.

Plus, I find RDM significantly easier to lvl up as a main job + more fun.

[Junun]

Everything that you can say is good about a bard subbing /whm can also be said for any melee class.

While this may be true, its not how ever 100% the case. There are different roles in this game. Melees role is either to do dmg or tank. A bard role falls into neither of them, a bard is a support class. Being a support class, it makes sense to be the best support class you can be, hence the subbing of a whm/rdm. Most choose WHM because of the ability to then use the curaga line of spells. Yea I realise you could only cast a few cures but with mana regen its not going tobe as bad as you think.

[Zarrik]

Being able to remove status ailments like poison, paralyze, etc make subbing /whm a no-brainer. There are very few whm mains and lots of rdm mains. A rdm can't remove these negative effects, so you fill that role. On the off chance that you have a whm in group, being able to assist by removing status ailments, allows them to focus on healing and lowering downtime.

Having now played on both sides of the fence (whm and brd) I have to say that I've been in groups with a bard which made my life much easier and exp came in faster.

I've also been the bard in a group w/o a whm and using a rdm or two as main healers. Without me having subbed whm, we would've had huge downtime when fighting mobs that poison/paralyze/blind/etc.

Besides low mp pool or not, it's really not that difficult to boost your max mp through items. Bard are all about decreasing downtime which in return speeds up exp. So what if I'm just a back heal/augmenter. I can heal/regen hp and mp while the mages rest which means we can kill again sooner.

[KingTonberryIV]

But my point is do i REALLY/MUST have a whm sub? i can see how a PLD MUST have a war sub. but for brd, my main job is really different than my subjob no matter what i pick. I just dont see how i could be all that much better subbing whm. wont the party be happy as long as i get those songs on them? can they live without my 1 cure 3 spell? would you still invite a brd to your party if he had no subjob? if so, what difference would it make if he hs any other subjob? all subjobs could be useful for bard.

just my 2 cents.

[sudo]

you know as a white mage running around in a pt without any other healers such as 3 war/1 thief/1 monk and me, I never even bother curing status aliements cause all I can do is heal before i run out of my 200 MP. No one seems to mind very much and we're still pulling good exp. I don't think it matters very much about status aliements. I mean I got the remove poison and blind stuff, but I haven't used them at all yet
I just heal whoever when hp is low cause we are always killing something
they just kill weaker stuff when I rest.

[Malachite]

I'm going to dissect your post a little bit..

bst: just to have a pet - pet wont gimp party xp, only mine. but it would be lots of fun. also ups chr stat

1) You'll be stuck with a very weak pet and your charm likely wouldn't last long(NOTE: I haven't played sub bst..not have i ever seen anyone with sub bst so this might be incorrect.)
2) You'll be busy using long cast time songs. If the charm breaks while you're playing a song you'll have a monster beating on you. Bards aren't exactly that sturdy and if your flow gets interrupted(i.e casting screwed up by getting hit) it's very annoying. Since bards require planning, timing & thinking ahead you don't really want that flow to get interrupted.
3) You get a minor cha bonus, yay.

sum: takes 7 mp to raise, and mp drains every couple eseonds right? but i tihnk at higher lvls i could definitely keep it out, because i would play mp regen all the time, and get mp refresh. again would be fun to have a pet out, even if it is weak. i could bust out the pet to do damage and bring out some buffing magic -especially cool ones like shell/protect, en thunder to all, etc.

1) You'll need 60+ to get any summons worth anything so you'll need another sub before then.
2) The summon abilities require a HUGE amount of mp..i'm not sure if sub smn would even give enough to use them. Likely could use it once then have 0 mp if you're a taru.
3) Summoners have complained that their smns don't really do any worthwhile dmg for their cost so that takes away part of your idea.

ninja: thats right ninja. i could dual weild chr boosting knives and do some fighting a bit. brd is as strong as a rdm or thief. do some ws. renkei, toss some enfeebling powder, blink. be fun combo too.

1) Main reasons for ninja: blink and dual wield. You really shouldn't be getting hit so you wouldn't have to worry about blink. Bards don't do any worthwhile damage nor do you really have time to do damage so that eliminates dual wieldling dmg.
2) Renkei, sure you can use WS but you rarely have time to build up TP. If your fighters are using WS once per battle you'd use it maybe once every 5-8 battles for some weak damage.
3) Cha knives for dual wielding. Granted this would be interesting but the only +Cha knife i know of us our AF Dagger. Monster signa would be more worthwhile instead of using a sub for the sole purpose of having an extra +cha item.

red mage: only reason is that i heard fast could would help it sing faster. not as fun, but im already a red mage

Kind of disappointing that the sub that would work best out of your choices is your least favorite.
1) En<element>spells: You really won't be attacking much so there isn't a need for these.
2) You get healing..but at a much later level than a whm sub.
3) You don't get Status cures like whm.
4) Fast cast. This is a nice ability. I have rdm at lv20 currently and will be trying this once I get ahold of a Minstrel's ring(Lv50 ring that lowers cast time by -25%..Brd only) so I can stack it with fast cast...But i'll assume that I'll go back to whm unless that bonus is very helpful. I find curaga and status cures to be way too helpful.


It's been said before that whm might not be a great sub for a non-caster class..but bards don't really have much of a selection so we resort to something like whm or rdm. With just 1 +MP item I can cast cure 3 3 times as a taru.

[trip69]

bst the bad sub

well i've used it and the cha bonus is the best in the game for a bard.

as for pets, it's based on cha not bst lvl

in beta i could charm most anything my lvl when i was brd/bst.

you can say you won't party with me, and that's cool. later dude...

[Niland]

you dont have to have one sub!

not like it takes year to level a job up to 35 Oo quite nice to play around with whm, rdm and even ninja subs imo

also i dont like this 'being different simply for the sake of being different' playing an ineffective class combo hold no interest for me.

[tonka]

The carbuncle costs 5, and the rest cost either 15 or 30 (but i'm not sure how much MP is drained over time).

Cureaga costs 60.

It's not a perfect combo for BRD either but it's not that much more MP intensive than casting Cureagas. If we're going to look at best case scenarios like a taru with +MP equipment who can cast 3 cureagas, he can certainly flash some summons for the spell effects (which is usually how i see them utilized, but thats a class i never got in beta so i know nada about em).

But if even main Summoners arent real happy with their job, i have to wonder if they're that great as a sub...? But, it is the 2nd highest charisma subjob you can take i think.

But for the original question, even if a party leader won't let you in because you're not /WHM subbed i'm sure you can find another party pretty instantaneously.

Not taking a rare class like Bard seems as nitpicky as not taking non-taru mage or non-galka tank. If my party leader kicked a bard for not /whm sub, quite honestly i'd probably leave & join the bard's new party