How Would You Fix Bard?

It's not too late.
It sucks but, people will just have to deal with it.
Nerf/buffs happen for the good of the game. The ToS states that everything is subject to change.

Also, back up curing/elegy used to be super good(elemental seal - > elegy) so you didn't really drop bards on lowman content, only on pure 18 man zergs. I agree with making their debuffs matter again.

How about we don't have to instead? :D

Comepletely different rules to the game and different encounters then. There wasn't hp-scaling, procs were important and desired, Immanence wasn't practical and blms weren't so powerful. Unless they had good atma/atmacite (most had MM for aby at least), mp waa a commodity, melee lived and died under propwr usage of temps.

Before that, it was way more different.

I do like your idea of adding CPr (nice acronym) to Minne.

..

I agree with buffing/fixing(?) the potency of threnodies and making those absolutely unresistable, short of like hydra magic immunity (it resists dia).

Truth is, even with these buffs, bard will probably be second-fiddle (haha) but that's not awful. Nostalgia tears stingy-wingy but things change.

Please no, I hate gear like this.

I'm not even talking about post-abyssea in that post btw. I was talking about level 75 cap content. I would lowman sky gods and sea and vWNMs and ZNM's, elegy was super useful and important in those situations.

Not sure why you'd think I'm talking about abyssea when mentioning bard being useful O_o

People should take care when suggesting nerfs for more reasons than one. More often than not, those shouting for nerfs don't own the weapon(s) in question so they're not out anything.

I'd be willing to bet that someone who has invested the time into making an Idris would not be calling for its nerf - regardless of the circumstances.

It would also serve well to exercise restraint when complaining about things, instead considering said complaint thoroughly. Oftentimes in ffxi this means gearing, cp-ing, and excelling (have high tier gear for said job while participating competently and well in high-tier content on said job) in said area before divulging said complaints, especially if you have many complaints to self-prove before sharing. Even going as far in said restraint as keeping it to yourself if you are unable/unwilling to do the above - especially when you are barely introduced to the facts surrounding them due to inexperience.


Rashness tied to quite-clueless nagging can only be humored for so long before people run out of patience for you and/or you ruin your good name.

If you're meleeing and taking near 30 mins to beat it, you should keep your BRD in alliance to reapply songs. If you're relying on 10 minutes of BRD songs to win in a mage strat, why?

pretty sure the only nm they're thinking of is WoC and melee dps drops to essentially nothing when sv wears if they don't have adequate acc sets

so it's not really 30 min, it's the duration of their sv songs and reapplying won't help

obviously good groups already know they can compensate for extra marginally useful slots, but the majority of groups aren't good

The best answer in the buffs-wearing-at-pop debate would be to dispel the buffs if the owner of the buffs is no longer in alli, but I don't know if we have any indication if SE reatains the id for who put the buffs on you.

I wouldn't call that "relying on BRD songs", but it's undeniable they can speed up your kills with those ~10 mins of prebuffed songs on mage setup.
It's nothing vital, if anything quite a secondary buff to your alliance, but it does speed up the damage you deal at least while songs are still up.

I wasn't talking about our group btw. We sometimes use that when we have an available BRD mule and yes, it does speed up kills, but then again it's not really necessary.
I'm pretty confident not all groups are good as yours Llew though, or even like ours.
There are a large amount of people who still haven't killed some of the HELMs and even with prebuffed songs they still struggle to either stay alive or kill within the 30 mins time limit.
For groups like this one additional member doesn't necessarily make the fight incredibly harder, but at the same time it has to be a member who can provide a noticeable help to the kill, or things will get even harder for them.

Math is not my forte but basically I think we can express it in Amount of additional damage provided by one more member >= Amount of added HP.


I was kinda trying to say something in between two opposite positions I've seen in this (and other) threads.
I don't agree with people who are exxagerating the difference of difficulty a single member into the alliance produces.
At the same time I don't agree with saying it's not a noticeable difference because as it stands, for a lot of groups it is quite a noticeable difference.

I agree this could be the perfect solution, but I'm skeptic on SE having the tech to do this. I think it's unrealistic to expect them to develop it, it could prove to be quite the challenging tasks as it would require them to restructure their packets and add additional information (I wish they would for many other reasons, think about Byrth's suggestion on packets a while ago for instance!)

Whereas the "wear on pop" is totally possible with no additional work required on their side.

the packets dont need additional information, the server can store the buffer id without ever telling the client

it's still more work than they're likely to do unless they already store the buffer id, and there's no indication either way on that

Mechanics matter too.

Hypothetically--

X% more hp allows WoC to bene or even charm. X% more hp allows kirin to terror. X% more hp allowz mandy to maybe absorb a Death before the blm can interrupt in time. It may allow adds to wake, etc.

I wasn't talking about melee-strats only btw, and not about WoC only either.
WoC is so bloody random I'm not even sure it's worth discussing, given how "special" it is.

I remember many months ago on our first HELM kills, and I remember the huge difference when we would tackle Vinipata with 10 people vs trying it with 13 people.
One scenario would provide very fast and smooth kills, the other would produce wipes, timeouts and multiple attempts on a single night before we could bring it down.

Now our gear (and experience, and coordination...) back then was nowhere close to what we have nowadays and I don't claim our group is the best around, but at the same time I'm confident we're better than the average groups attempting HELMs out there, and if it was such a huge difference for experienced old timers like us, it's easy to understand and empathize with those "average" groups and understand how big of a difference in challenge that would constitute for them.

Incoming packet structure wouldn't have to be changed, other than the server telling the client "sorry, I'm taking these". Outgoing probably does track the user, it just depends whether the server-side passes that information to server side.

Server tells Server: March has been put on you for this duration and potency.
Does server also say to server: Blame Sechs.

The server analyzes who is in party (lens check, participation status), it could decide to cancel if Sechs is not in alli.

If the server tracks it, more cancel packets is all.

Yes, Comeatmebro said pretty much the same things.
You guys might be very likely be right, but at the same time SE never showed this possibility in game so far I think.
Whereas the "drop on pop" technology has already been showed and used in multiple instances so we know it really would take them almost zero developing power to activate it and would hardly need further testing either.

We can all dream but at teh end of the day the solution has got to be something that's realistically possible for SE's current manpower, right? =/

Haha, I saw he said the same as I posted it but I worked so hard to type it on my phone that I was keeping it.

Also, Here's a compilation of these suggestions on the OF. Contextual edits were made. Sorry Prothescar, your gramma needs to be mo betta!

):

Honestly, I think they just need to some uniqueness to it. Some sort of buff that will overwhelmingly want you to bring a BRD and not just be like "get a GEO."

Job Trait: Aura: -DT% on a scale corresponding to level.
Maybe a max of -10%DT at lvl99 that exceeds DT caps?
Wouldn't solve everything but might be nice if BRDs also acted as a Dring for the party.
Too much? Lower the percentage.
Not enough? Add a similar aura effect for spell interruption rate and/or fast cast+ or something.

Anyone else facepalming at one stupid idea after another.

make all songs percentage increase like bubbles but less potent because brd can apply 4 songs vs 2 bubble. Also make it song can't stack with bubbles to avoid being too OP when stacked all 3 support jobs.

Most bubbles are not percentage based.

Fury/Frailty, Barrier/Wilt are.

Fend (isn't very used) and Acumen absolutely aren't.

Fade (isn't very used) and Malaise are not but they cause your gear to scale little bit since part of the magic damage calculation is (Caster's MAB / Opponent's MDB)

All the rest, I think, are static values that scale with skill and gear.

That is what most people mean by changing things to a percentage value. Fixed amount based off skill.

As it stands both rdm and brd have terrible formulas in comparison to geo. This is mostly due to SE refusing to adjust the values of rdm and brd which are still stuck in the 75 era while geo is in the ilvl era. Even cor got a monstrous boost with the barataria ring.

The only 2 enfeebles that rdm has that is skill variable is distract and frazzle, and those need a large amount of MND stacked on top of them to max them out. (No known cap due to gear limitations, varying theory of potency) Furthermore RDM also suffers the enfeeble skill to m. acc ratio. Where as GEO only needs to stack skill for buffs/debuffs. This if anything is more of a straight "***" up formula than a static formula.

BRD has this same issue on a different scale, the skill from singing/instruments give a minimal increased value with no gear to massively increase the potency (i.e. dunna/idris, instead brd only gets song + skill equipment)

A geo/rdm can single-handed cap magic haste without even using dunna/idris from capped skill running /rdm haste 1 rotation and only use 1 of the bubbles in the process. This would take at least 2 marches from brd and /whm or /rdm haste rotation. At any point leftover a brd would need to use the remaining possible songs to match up to any single bubble a geo cast next. Furthermore a geo can entrust a 3rd song, putting it yet again further than brd.

The songs don't need to be on par with geo debuffs, if they were that would minimize the need for geo. However geo being the only job that can massively reduce magic def of mob, I doubt geo would be out for the count. The potency of all brd and rdm buffs/debuffs need to be increased. (Or a new tier of semi-effective debuffs) Landing a debuff on rdm or brd isn't enough when the effect value is floored on the content level we play at.

Geo debuffs are unresisted and they are static percentage based values, this coupled with even just a Dunna make geo way overpowered in comparison to rdm and brd. Instead, SE implemented the God awful idea of "Immunobreak" spamming in order to land floored level effectiveness debuffs.

Buff/Drop/Pop will always be an issue as long as it is available, unless SE wipes buffs at start or removes the hp scaling, this will always happen. No matter how much you don't want it to, or how much people tell each other it isn't necessary, people will still do it in order to lower the scaling. Even removing the scaling will only mean they will add more DD for the fight and still use brd and cor a drop and pop buffers.

Quick question: Has anyone suggested that the best way to fix BRD is to nerf BLU yet?

give brd a song that gives everyone in the game a primeval brew effect

Ok, so why then BRDs don't just deal with the current situation then.

That's senseless. As you detail, bard's buffs already scale with gear, although outdated. This person meant percentage buffs.


A bard can haste-cap you with two songs and the spell. One song and the spell or just two songs during 2hr. If you wanted to Marcato a march (you might actually do this for Honor March), one song and the spell could do it.

Many of those situations leave a bard with 3 more songs to cast, four during Clarion Call.

Edit: Also, if a source of Haste II is availabe, Victory March gets you within 2% of spell-haste cap without Horn. HM gets you to haste cap.