Bard...

Ok i am confuse about brd right now... does wind instrument skills increase bards songs magic accuracy? I don't see anything in wiki.ffxi that talk about wind skills + = song accuracy +. And if wiki didnt say anything about this then why is bard trying to get soo much wind skill+ for? And plus wiki only said more skill = Song range +. Can someone help me out?

yes wind skill increases song accuracy and possibly duration too. its been a while since ive looked at all this stuff. think about elemental magic sill gear and any weapon skill+. it adds acc

Singing skill and the instrument skill you are using affects your songs acc. Buffs also have different effect caps that are effected by your skill totals. Most of these cap relatively easily without much in the way of gear, however, v.march caps at a very high combined skill. With string instruments, string skill does indeed increase your range.

Wind instruments are also more accurate that string instruments.

ahh i think i understand now.. guess i am buying that wind torque back.
Much thx guys.

For Buffs on your party you always want to pile on as much singing/wind skill as possible. Buffs (esp March) have potency tiers that are reached by increasing skills. However, for Debuffs going all skill is not the best route. There is a "magic range" of Chr that you need on brd to land songs effectively on mobs. I forget what that magic number is (Maybe a BRD main can help us out there) but after you get your Chr in that range then you will want to add skill after that.

Speaking of bard, how unfair is it really that bards main skills, singing, wind instrumen and string instrument has Skill Rank C? Thats so wrong in so many levels. Atleast in my book it is :(

Bard gets 3 different skills. Singing Skill, Wind instrument skill and String instrument skill. With no instrument equipped, your total skill would be your capped Singing skill at 75 which is 250. But any sane person equips an instrument on brd^^. Therefore you combine the skill from Singing + the skill from either Wind or String instrument (250). So the total skill would be 250+250=500. And that is without merits and skill gear, so it isn't all that bad.

I'm not BRD main but I think I recall reading somewhere that the CHR sweet spot was 110ish combined with base stats.

As for the only being C skill I have to agree with Kytio on the combined singing+wind/string. And also, if you take into account that you can get a lot of skill for songs espc. wind skill. My brd's wind w/o merits in effect is only 6 skill under my MNK's H2H which is an A+ rating, so really the gear makes up for the lack of rank Imo.

This may go against popular opinion, but in my experience chr > skill when trying to land debuffs. There may be a sweet spot, but I wouldn't stop there.

C-, they stack so effectively you can get 500+ skill, and having Skill+ is generally more effective than CHR, anything over 120CHR is overkill.

You sure that the skills stack? I'm bard 75, among other jobs, ofcourse im no dedicated bard but use it to merit and in sky/dyna every now and then. I'd say if the skills really do stack and equippping a wind instrument, getting a total of 500+ skill you should be able to land anything on everything, considering that Red mage have enfeeb skill A+, capped 276 @ 75, yet the rdm's in my dyna shell lands their sleeps and slow more easily then i land lullaby and elegy. I know they are different, lullaby is light based and sleep dark based, but it shouldn't matter really. Just saying, if bard have skill 500 as base, + merits and skill from equips it seems to me that everything should land, always, if they stacked.

Is overkill a bad thing? Seems like it would make it more of a definate stick.

I think it is more of a question of what other skills you could invest in rather than going all out in one or the other; dumping as much CHR on all your slots and having a less than desirable wind/sing build VS. high end wind/sing build and a little more than base CHR.

Many brds find a balance between the two to be optimal for landing debufs. That balance(which has been thoroughly tested and widely considered to be "the best"): CHR~110-120 and use every other available slot/combination for wind/sing skill.

I have also heard of diminishing returns on higher amounts of charisma (120+) but have never really looked into it or tested it that much myself. That being said i believe it is safe to say that charisma++ does not necessarily guarantee a "definate stick".

Diminishing returns would only make sense though if you consider how Pld's VIT is an example of it. Also STR seems to have a diminishing return too with lack of atk to reach caps and etc.

I'm personally slowly working on stacking wind/singing where I can in high numbers then putting high CHR in other slots where available. I believe a good mix would far outweigh either all of either skill or CHR.

It is actually 225 cap for each wind/singing/string @75
8/8 merits in wind/sing would wield 241 respectively.
Total of 482 wind/sing skill @75 w/full merits - naked.