Bard Foods.. So damn expensive!

[Chilulu]

Re: Bard Foods.. So damn expensive!

Touching on Elemental Staves for a moment.. I just hit 51 last night and immediately threw on my Apollo's Staff since most of the BRD spells are light-based. Only thing is.. I noticed a big reduction in the amount of time my Elegy and Requiem would stick AND stay stuck (I was fighting crabs in Kuftal). Does the hidden elemental boost really help with BRD's songs, or should I go back to my CHR+ equipment?

Elegy is earth element. Stick with the staves

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Bard Foods.. So damn expensive!

When using /WHM, please use MP food (Rolanberry Pies are good). And if a RDM isn't present, please also use juice. Now, refresh doesn't stack with juice, but Ballad and Evoker's Roll do, so with no RDM around, juice is also an option

The misconception people have with /WHM is they think its all for curing. We're not invited for heavy curing, ever, and if you are, just leave the party. Bards can toss out one or two cures in a pinch or per fight, but we're not built for the main healer spot.

But think about what else /WHM's MP can be used for - status removal and bar-spells.

Paralyna, Silena, Blinda, Erase - these four spells can eat a good chunk of any mage's MP when you have mobs that spam status ailments. Do these jobs all a favor and cover these spells for them. After all, a Bard's role is to make a PT more efficient and reduce downtime, this is one other way you can do it.

Elemental Barspells - Use these also for the main healer so they can continue resting at the start of a fight and remain doing so until they're needed to cure. These spells are fast to cast and the cost of the spells won't hurt BRD as BRD's don't have to rest like WHM or RDM would. And any damage reduced from a gobbie bomb or Cursed Sphere is appreciated.

Regen - While you're not expected to cure, Regen does roughly match Cure III in its cumalative MP recovery and costs only 15 MP to cast. With no WHM present in PT and our MP being what it is, this is really the only regen spell you have at your disposal. Paeons aren't terribly practical beyond 20, as you get better AoE buffs, so use Regen when Paeon ceases to be useful.

Pulling

This is a whole other ballgame for BRD. People can say what they want about /WHM not being useful here, but I've pulled as RNG, THF, NIN, COR and BRD. Pulling is a skill and something you have to learn for yourself, simply subbing /NIN doesn't make you a good puller. Its just as much about distance and terrain as it is about tagging/sleeping a mob. If you know the range of your abilites and know the camp, you generally won't be tagged by mobs that much when pulling.

As such, I still recommend MP food and juice and going /WHM to perform the same support as before. I've seen higher chains and a stronger buff cycle from a dutiful BRD/WHM pulling than I ever have from a BRD/NIN, period. Even in TP burn. Even in ToA zones.

CHR Food

Never useful, you get enough CHR as is. And staves make debuffs stick better.

DEF Food

BRD has a lot of access to -% physical defense gear, more than PLD does, actually, so I question the value of Tav. Tacos unless you want to replace a Ring, Back or Ear slot for some other equipment and gain a little CHR back.

Jelly Ring -5% Physical Damage
Earth Staff -20% Physical Damage
Minstrel's Earring - Latent effect (activates with BRD Main job at yellow HP) -30% Physical Damage.

So if damage is a concern, there are other options besides Utsusemi and Tavnazian Tacos. Let's not forget the Melody Earrings (+5 Evasion latent activated by BRD songs) and other evasion gear. You may wish to invest in such gear for future jobs anyway.

[Icemage]

Re: Bard Foods.. So damn expensive!

I disagree slightly with having Bards cast Barfira. You generally only use that spell in XP parties against Bomb Toss from Goblins, and the damage from the suicide version of that move is so high that you really want your WHM or RDM to be casting that spell if at all possible to reduce the chance of one-shot KOs on your party.

MP food is useful when /WHM, but only mildly - as with any non-RDM spellcaster, Bard is more about MP recovery than MP capacity (and even that is only true for RDMs because Convert makes their MP capacity count as MP recovery). Juice works better than virtually any other type of food when /WHM if you have sufficient quantities and enough time to restock/synth - rare indeed is the RDM who understands that BRD/WHM can actually make good use of Refresh when it's provided.

I also disagree about BRD/WHM being a better puller than BRD/NIN. It's just not true, given comparable playing skill levels. I play a very good BRD/WHM, but there's no way I can top the performance of the BRD/NINs I merit with - Utsusemi:Ni is just miles and away better than Blink or Stoneskin when pulling as a Bard. With a BRD/WHM puller, you eventually lose your chain due to the Bard being forced to choose between risking taking damage on a bad pull or losing time to Blink and/or Stoneskin. With BRD/NIN, that decision is never at issue since you need a fraction of the time to shore up defenses. If you're seeing higher chains with BRD/WHM, I would have to chalk it up to having less than stellar RDMs who don't know how to handle themselves without a backup healer.

I do agree that CHR is largely a waste of time, though. CHR is somewhat useful in the early levels pre-40, as you really don't get access to tons of CHR gear until then. However, DEF food isn't always a waste - especially when pulling. Bear in mind that, despite the "lots of" -Physical Damage% gear that Bards can use, you can also stack that with high Defense to make the damage even less. When you're in a pulling role, this is an advantageous boost.


Icemage

[Yeargdribble]

Re: Bard Foods.. So damn expensive!

Paralyna, Silena, Blinda, Erase - these four spells can eat a good chunk of any mage's MP when you have mobs that spam status ailments. Do these jobs all a favor and cover these spells for them. After all, a Bard's role is to make a PT more efficient and reduce downtime, this is one other way you can do it.

I'll agree with this. The main selling points of /WHM are these spells in addition to the ocassional DS+Curaga (II).

Elemental Barspells - Use these also for the main healer so they can continue resting at the start of a fight and remain doing so until they're needed to cure. These spells are fast to cast and the cost of the spells won't hurt BRD as BRD's don't have to rest like WHM or RDM would. And any damage reduced from a gobbie bomb or Cursed Sphere is appreciated.

I'd only cast barspells if the WHM was being lazy. Their bars are leaps and bounds above ours and this only grows more true the higher you get. You also DO NOT want to over-write barspells cast by a WHM. If they are doing it, let them.

Regen - While you're not expected to cure, Regen does roughly match Cure III in its cumalative MP recovery and costs only 15 MP to cast. With no WHM present in PT and our MP being what it is, this is really the only regen spell you have at your disposal. Paeons aren't terribly practical beyond 20, as you get better AoE buffs, so use Regen when Paeon ceases to be useful.

This is good advice to potentially help out a SMN or RDM main healer, but will just simply piss off a good WHM. I believe your Regen can over-write their higher tier Regens and that's a bad thing. Most good WHMs use Regen quite a bit, so if you have one, it's best not to get in their way.

Pulling

This is a whole other ballgame for BRD. People can say what they want about /WHM not being useful here, but I've pulled as RNG, THF, NIN, COR and BRD. Pulling is a skill and something you have to learn for yourself, simply subbing /NIN doesn't make you a good puller. Its just as much about distance and terrain as it is about tagging/sleeping a mob. If you know the range of your abilites and know the camp, you generally won't be tagged by mobs that much when pulling.

Pulling at max distance may save you against something like Flans, but it's not gonna do much for you against quicker mobs. BRD can't get the distance that a Ranger can from mobs so it doesn't save us much... at least not enough to profess that BRD/WHM > BRD/NIN for pulling.

I'll agree that just slapping on /NIN doesn't make you an instantly uber puller. The best BRD/WHM can always perform better than the worst BRD/NIN, but a well skilled BRD in general will perform better with /NIN in fast moving TP burns.

As such, I still recommend MP food and juice and going /WHM to perform the same support as before. I've seen higher chains and a stronger buff cycle from a dutiful BRD/WHM pulling than I ever have from a BRD/NIN, period. Even in TP burn. Even in ToA zones.

We obviously don't go to the same caliber of PTs. In a fast moving TP burn you simply can't keep up with the speed. The mobs are alive an average of 20 seconds. Like Icemage said, you'll eventually have to choose between losing the chain or risking a death.

I generally Pull -> Song -> Pull -> Song constantly while throwing up utsu as I can. The kills are often so fast that I have to make another pull and skip a buff in my cycle and compensate by double pulling or linking on purpose.

I think BRDs that say they can effectively keep up Blink and Stoneskin, help keep people -na'd/Erase, throw out Curagas, keep up 4 songs and pull non-stop are just lying. It's just impossible to do in the the span of time offered in the PTs I'm accustomed to. Essentially, a BRD/WHM PT may be able to keep the chains, but things will slow down including the XP/hr.

My wife has main healed (WHM/SMN) for my TP burns quite often and she strongly prefers BRD/NIN. She says it ends up costing her more in the long run MP wise if I'm BRD/WHM even if I am helping throw out cures. In the majority of our PTs she rarely falls below 500 MP. She can easily keep up with all of the -nas/Erases and cures by herself.

Also, suggesting using an MP food instead of using Tavnazian Tacos seems a little ridiculous for this considering the Tacos have HP and MP on them as well as VIT and +25% DEF. You will get far more out of Tav Tacos if you insist on pulling BRD/WHM.

Minstrel's Earring - Latent effect (activates with BRD Main job at yellow HP) -30% Physical Damage.

Actually it activates at 25% HP (and less than 100% TP for what it's worth). It could potentially go off when you are beging crit'd into the red and may save you from a one-shot kill from low orange to 0 HP from a Skoffin, but aside from that, it offers very little outside of tanking. However, being as there are few alternatives in a reasonable price range, it may be worth using to cover a slot.

You also neglected to mentio the Cheviot/Umbra Cape. NQ is -5% PD. HQ has -12% a night (6% in the day), though both are prohibitively expensive for most BRDs and giving up 10 CHR in a single slot can be quite a blow to your overall CHR level.

So if damage is a concern, there are other options besides Utsusemi and Tavnazian Tacos. Let's not forget the Melody Earrings (+5 Evasion latent activated by BRD songs) and other evasion gear. You may wish to invest in such gear for future jobs anyway.

BRD evasion, being low as it is, won't allow us dodge much. If it's T or higher, we just won't evade even with a heavy evasion build. Mobs being pulled for any type of XP will hit us about 95% of the time regardless of our evasion build.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Bard Foods.. So damn expensive!

rare indeed is the RDM who understands that BRD/WHM can actually make good use of Refresh when it's provided.

It's not that rare. >_>

If a player is using MP productively, it means the RDM in party would then have less things to do. So, if a BRD/WHM is contributing substantial support healing, you can bet gils that I'm tossing Refesh at them. (Or at least trying to--BRD's tend to have a annoying habit of running out of my casting range, especially on mobs with AoE attacks so Curaga from them are highly desirable.)

If the almost-as-busy-as-a-RDM Bard wants to be busier, I support it fully, with a Refresh in every cycle.

I'd only cast barspells if the WHM was being lazy. Their bars are leaps and bounds above ours and this only grows more true the higher you get. You also DO NOT want to over-write barspells cast by a WHM. If they are doing it, let them.

Hmm. I can't remember if you can override bar-spells cast by players with higher skill. Should be easy to test, if I'm not so lazy.

I believe your Regen can over-write their higher tier Regens and that's a bad thing.

This is false. I had parties with quite a few not-so-great WHM's already; with their sporadic Regen II's, my RDM's Regen I ended up with "no effect" from time to time. (Not often enough to allow me to stop using Regen, unfortunately--I used Regen more frequently than WHM's, three out of my last five parties with them.)

* * *

For my Bard (Lv.30), it was pretty much
1. Good Party = Pie + juice (worth the expense)
2. Great Party = Chai Tea i(they didn't need me to heal, and I can happy with the CHR+2 placebo effect for three hour costing only 70 gil...)
3. Bad Party = Ginger Cookies (I had time to rest and the need to use a lot of MP... /sigh)