New Bard

[Galaxia]

Hello everyone

I have just recently opend the Bard job after hearing very positive things about it. At the moment I am a Summoner and considering switching to Bard can anyone give me some infomation about this job. I have read a few of the guides and they seem very helpful but I am wanting to know about partys, what bards do, and any thing else yu might find helpful. Thank you for takeing the time to read the post ^^ hope yo hear from you

[Vilurum]

Well, Teffie's stickied bard guide is a good place to start. Having said that, of course, I'm going to go into a great long spiel that will probably be very confusing until you've played BRD a bit and seen it all firsthand. Short version is: separate melees and mages, buff them separately, debuff the enemy, and serve as a backup WHM in the meantime.

Edit: great long spiel removed. ;

[Bamce Sylph]

/cry

[Galaxia]

Can I cry too lol

[Fawn]

You are a white mage, so I will do my best to describe the bard job as much in line of the white mage job as possible. Are you familiar with the bar line? Such as barsleepra or barstonra? Bard songs are very similar to the temporary buffs of the bar line, except they take longer to cast. The bard’s primary job is to buff the party with these area effect based buffs and then provide back healing support afterwards (or melee I supose depending on your subjob). The other major difference is that a bard can only have 2 buffs on any particular person at a time (if they are using an instrument, only one without an instrument), where as the bar line could be infinite.

Prior to 25, you pretty much sing 2 songs for the entire party and then an occasional attack song on the enemy (sort of like dia, but in song form.) After 25 it gets a bit more complicated. Since bard songs effect an area and you now have different songs available to benefit the melee and the mages, but not both.. you have to learn to stand in a certain formation so that the circle of area that your song effects ONLY hits the melee or the mages. Imagine a giant glowing ring around your character, you need to make sure the mages are within the ring but the melee are slightly out of it.

Bard is a pretty active job. You are constantly running back and forth to keep the songs on the right people. Then there is healing, debuffing with slows, paralyze, etc, and then debuffing the enemey or providing crowd control with lullabys.

Here, Ill even be geeky and give a diagram. :sweat: This is for levels 40ish and just how I do it (there are different strategies) but it gives a good example of what i mean by standing in formation.

[Galaxia]

Awww what a cute drawing ^^
I was gonna stick with SMN but info i been getting is totaly wrong about em

[Fawn]

Made that for a friend awhile back, figured I might as well recycle it.

[grunion]

that is awesome fawn. if you want to make a whole tutorial page i can host it online for you

[sudo]

Speaking as thf, we don't run around to the mages so don't worry much about us and ballad. We often do go out and pull though, (90% of pts I've been in as a thf had me pulling) Smn will run around though...

And I just want to add that sometimes I take damage pulling or maybe took damage during the fight but the whm never healed me cause they were low and or were busy with tank. I think it'd be helpful to start Paeon just before the mob dies. So that your puller can get some HP's back.

Having whm use Mp on pullers is bad but sometimes unavoidable. Killing a mob 2-3 times should let you gague when something is about to die and you might as well sing paeon so that the song lands just as the thing dies for best results.