You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

Even doing it to specifically cancel buffs from the person dropping would not be that hard. The buffs already internally track who applied them(if you get 1 minuet dispelled, and you have 2 different minuets active from different bards, only the one who cast it will be notified). They just iterate 32 slots x 5 members, costs essentially nothing.

The issue is whether or not they have an accessible event tied to player dropping already, if they do it's nothing to add. If they don't, they need to either design that event or turn it into a periodic check like regen and geomancy ticks. Still not that big a deal, but they seem to make the tiniest tasks difficult.


I'd still rather they just fixed the godawful zones like dynamis than changed how buffs work, though.

You've all convinced me, I'll save the majority of my him for Carn. I do want one more "instant gratification" toy before I move on to Marsyas and eventually Garn, though. Probably Kaykaus body +1. Maybe a Mousai piece... But which? Any other suggestions? Not Barfawc or JSE neck... primarily because they are still out of budget but but also because I want to square away support BRD first but also need to either put my RP crystals into PUP or into the Cagn bank for now.

Kayakus Body +1 is awesome.
Not really "BRD main stuff" but still awesome.

Mousai wise I'd say the 3 pieces you want to be after are
Hands => Buff carols
Legs => They buff Minne. I haven't used Minne in the longest time but find myself using it pretty often in Dyna especially when BRD swapping.
Head => It's a really modest buff to Etude. +1 stat and +20% duration. It could've been +2 but you lose +1 from using Mousai instead of Empy head (set bonus gives +1 stat according to the element allignment of the song)

Can ignore Feet (lolmambo) and... Body used to be the main Mousai piece, but now that mage setup is no longer a thing, I guess you can ignore body as well.

I think full Kaykaus HQ set is a waste of money for BRD unless you have WHM too to justify its use. Head and Body are ok due to Healing Skill + on the former and Cure Potency II on the latter, plus set bonus. But forget everything else. It's easy to cap Cure Potency without Kaykaus, especially if you get a Serenity. Inyanga hands are very good and don't understimate Vanya set, its path B gives Healing skill +20. Vanya feet are better than Kaykaus HQ and maybe legs too if you can cap Cure Potency using other slots.

But BRD isn't a capable healer as it has no native healing skill and MP pool. And I really doubt you'll ever get hate with your sparse cures, so Enmity- isn't really useful. Basically we heal because we have nothing else to do after singing. That's why 99% of the time I go /NIN and melee everything to death instead. STAB! STAB! STAB! STAB!

You need a better ambuscade pt lead that go with tank DD DD cor brd(heal) geo(heal) setup then :p

/evil

Well, in Ambuscade I'm usually in the tank slot.

/grin

Couldn't agree more.
It's a bit more difficult (but still totally viable with plenty of options) to cap CurePot if you want to avoid using the weapon slot.

Just like you said Inyanga+2 hands are basically the same as Kayakus HQ (considering the set bonus) and they are free, not 15 mils.
Vanya feet are actually better than Kayakus HQ and, again, free.

As it's been said Body is awesome. Head has less skill than Vanya, but it's a good option to activate the set bonus with the Body.
Same kinda applies to legs. Yes Vanya gets 20 skill, but Kaya Legs still are still (slightly) better and they also are the BiS piece for Fast Cast.
Ayanmo+2 are 6% FC though so just 1% less :x

I dunno, I guess it falls down to personal preference, but Body + Head Or Legs (or both!) sounds good to me. If I didn't have other priorities I need gil for I'd totally go for that.

MP pool not really an issue when you can hit yourself with Ballad. Once you have 3 of them good luck running out of MP XD
It's more of an issue if the situation requires AoE heals. There's only so much Curaga2 can heal.
As for single target healing BRD/WHM is quite capable, arguably more than other jobs capable to heal as secondary thing (like... SMN? Or GEO? Can't think of anything else... COR/Mage lol?)

It sort of depends on the content I guess, but for easy and midtier content I've done it before, and I suck as a healer. If I can do that everybody can.

Happened to me actually. Not that often, but then again I don't heal that much lol xD
In general I find -enmity useful, I wouldn't give it priority over +Healing Skill, but it's something to consider.
As I mentioned before though Cap is -50 and don't really need 5/5 Kayakus to reach it.

Anyway, my Dreamset for Cure Potency is a set that can reach CP1 cap without using the Main/Sub slot. On BRD I tend to avoid swapping the main weapon most of the time to grant me more freedom and engage whenever I want without losing my TP.
This used to be easy to do until they added Ammurapi Shield, but I digress :-P
Here's my dream set:

ItemSet 362525

Body Path D (curepot+ConserveMP)
Head/Legs Path B (-enmity)
Vanya Path B (Healing Skill +20)
Cape MND+30, Enmity-10
Linos: MND+8, CurePot +6% (that's cap, only 4% is necessary in theory)

This set grants:
52% Curepot
8% Curepot2
110 Healing Magic Skill
Enmity -45 (cap is 50)
Small amounts of ConserveMP/SaveMP
and lots of MND of course.


Problems with this set that I can see are:
1) FC-3% (-10 ring, +7 legs). No big deal probably, but it annoys me.
2) -Enmity isn't capped. Again no big deal but still...
I guess something could be done about the Waist and Ear2 slots.

It's "just" 5 and 4 skill respectively, could probably give those up for something else.
Can play in those slots with the following items that I can think of:
Ear2: Etiolation Earring, Loquacious Earring, Enchanter's earring +1
Waist: Pythia Sash +1, Witful Belt

Alternatively you could go for CurePot on the cape, and use -5 enmity Ammo and get the rest in the Waist/Ear2/Ring1 slots.
Anyway all of these "problems" arise if you're being adamant on not using a weapon. If you can use stuff like Serenity then you get more freedom in the other slots and could go for something like this:

ItemSet 362526

Same augs as before.
Capped CurePot
CP2 6%
Enmity -50
Conserve MP +16
~34 more MND than previous set
~23 more Healing magic skill
No negative FC


tl;dr
Lots of cares given for what should totally be a truly secondary thing in any BRD's life :-P

Personally I like to "theory craft" sets in my spare time, especially niche ones! Nothing wrong with thinking about the highest potential of specific aspects of a job, it's part of the fun. I also crave "optimization", though it's always more of a target than it is something that ever becomes actualized. I realize a lot of people would rather spend time and resources on other things, and I most certainly will, but the Kaykaus set to me is "fun". Thanks for everyone's input on the subject, I feel enlightened lol.

Edit: Oh, right! My original issue with the weapon slot was that I was capping Cure Pot in my presumed BiS 5/5 Kaykaus set and there didn't seem to be any good options. Not that I didn't want to use it haha. Seems to free up a lot of other slots when you DO use Serenety, though. That is probably the route I will take.

To further expand on the "weapon locked" thing.
I know this may sound crazy to some of you, but on my "mage" jobs where I also melee (BRD and RDM) I prefer to cap Cure Potency without using the Weapon slots, simply because there might be situations where my weapon is locked and I want to cast a heal, and I want that heal to be capped or near capped even without me swapping the weapon.

Now if we were talking about the weapon contributing something 5% CurePot or a bit more... ok, I would simply ignore it, ~45% is good enough.
But here we're talking about stuff like Serenity, 30% cure pot from that slot alone.
I don't want my heals with weapon locked to be 30% less powerful than they should, it's more than I can accept.

Which is why I went the route of creating curepot sets without using the weapon slot. You have to accept some compromises but in the end it's an acceptable result.
Not like I spend 90% of my time as a BRD casting heals anyway lol

(of course you could, you know, have MULTIPLE sets, but that would require effort! And I'm lazy, last but not least Inventory+! When you have 10 jobs geared up you kinda need to draw a line somewhere or you end up with 300 pieces for a single job and that's clearly not acceptable when you have that many jobs geared up lol)

I question whether you get more benefit from using the full Kaykaus +1 set over Vanya Clogs/Inyanga Hands +2. Surely having +4% more CPII would provide at least equal benefit to the +60 skill on those pieces. 60 Skill is +12 base potency on your cure. If you are in the 400-699 power tier, that is maximum +1% on your base cure power, 1.5% after factoring CP I.

Edit: Unless the consideration for skill is Tranquil heart, which I think is also a moot point. BRD/WHM would need 110 (+94 with merits) skill to get the first -1 enmity for tranquil heart.

Edit: Dream Set I think.
ItemSet 362542
Info:
Kaykaus Head/Legs/Feet Path B
Kaykaus Body/Hands Path D for Conserve MP
JSE Cape 30 MND -10 enmity

Totals:

CP I	50
CP II	20
-Enmity	51 (50)
Skill	22
Conserve MP	30

Can swap kuchekula ring for Janniston ring

Edit3: Set bonus for Kaykaus +1 is 4% for 2 pieces, +2% for each piece after up to 10%

That was kind of my original assumption--I would like to see thoughts on that. And then I would be curious about the best main/sub to cure in assuming that set (or also assuming it's the superior set to cure in). Would you just try to strongarm as much MND or -enmity (to cap) into the slot? Is Chatoyant now viable? AFAIK it allows a double weather proc to happen or something?

Full +1 Kaykaus is probably not going to be in my pocket any time soon (or ever?) but I like goals to work towards and don't like "wasting" time on "inferior" options. Of course I don't like to be unrealistic either. At this point I'm happy to see discussion and fun gear sets lol.

My other question would be--how much MND would it take to overcome 1 skill at the Cure I-IV level? The Cure Formula page on the wiki, 1 skill is equivalent to 2 MND, so would Stikini +1 or Sirona's Ring?

From my very quick calculations using FFXIcalculator Inyanga+2 is almost the same as Kaykaus+1 (with set bonus), slightly worse but negligible difference.
Vanya feet on the otherhand are better than Kaykaus+1 feet.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but on a main job like WHM stuff like healing magic skill stops being relevant very early because of the much higher base skill (level 99).
BRD gets only level 49 WHM skill, which is probably why skill is virtually always very useful.



@chads
If I recall it's something like 1 skill = 2 MND = 4 VIT.
I think there are more factors at play and that stuff is slightly different (in modest, further favor of skill) when you're using just Cure1-4 on a job with no native healing skill.

And yes, Chatoyant sorta works like you said. I'm not really a fan of it personally, especially on non-native-healer jobs like BRD.
I find chatoyant more useful when you're a main-healer job and can go /SCH, or you're a SCH main lol.
I still don't like to depend on weather personally, but I can totally see it viable in a scenario like that.
On BRD/WHM though? Nah, I'd rather take stuff like Serenity or similar options any day.

I think that just about clears it up, then! 4/5 Kaykaus +1 if you're insane and 3/5 Kaykaus +1 if you're insane with a sliver of common sense showing and a dash of frugality. Otherwise skill > MND but enough MND (3, 4?) can trump 1 skill. Serenity is a fantastic tool in a BRD/WHMs tool kit and allows you to be cost-effective and close to 100% optimization while freeing up a lot of slots for more good stuff stats. This has helped me plan out my gear significantly! Thanks for entertaining the discussion for so long. : - )

curagas are different in calculations, 1 MND = 3 VIT = 5 Healing Magic Skill. if u wanna have a different set for those

You're VERY wrong!!! On 400-699 power tier each +2.5 on Healing Skill equals to 1 HP healed by a Cure IV while each Cure Potency (I or II) +1% equals to 5 HP healed (because +520 HP floor and I don't think it's possible to reach 600 on BRD, especially if we're ignoring skill while favoring CP). That means Vanya pieces' Healing Skill +20 is equivalent to 8 HP healed (btw, +60 skill equals to +24, not +12 potency on Cure IV 400-699 range) and Kaykaus HQ set bonus Cure Potency II +2% per piece equals to 10 HP healed. However, Healing skill is factored BEFORE Cure Potency then Vanya's 8 HP turns into 12 HP healed assuming Cure Potency +50% in our set.

Of course, I'm not factoring MND and VIT and that's for single Cures only. For Curagas, Kaykaus is much better but BRD only has access to Curaga II and I see no point in making a very expensive Curaga set to heal ~350 HP.

Kaykaus has enmity and cure potency, allowing you to complete your cure set in less pieces. If you want to argue enmity- is irrelevant, it could also be argued that most tweaks past 50% cure potency are irrelevant as well. I would rather have the enmity- than a negligible potency difference if gil is not an issue.

In the end, BRD/WHM is mostly just removing debuffs if no yagrush and throwing a stray cure to prevent death. They aren't typically a primary healing source. Really depends how much you value your gil and how much you value enmity.

I really don’t know what I was doing with the calculations. I knew they looked wrong, but I couldn’t figure out why. I was using cure power for curaga for some reason.

Alright so I'm about 20 colorless souls and ~500 HMP away from 99 Daurdabla and wonder if you all would take a look at my "sets".

Basically I want to know is this up to snuff in order to do Aeonic runs for my Marsayas (and eventually Aeneas!!). This will be my first Aeonic I've ever done as I mostly do Omen/Dyna D/solo misc Geas Fete on PUP.

These are my sets cobbled together from what I already have and a few bits and pieces I plan on having by the end of the week.

Assume 0 JP for now.
+ Gjallarhorn 99 and Daurdabla 99
+ Most if not all AF1/2/3 +1

Also I assume this is more than enough to CP with when the campaign comes up next month? : - P

Anyone can share a update brd dd set... ?

thx guys in advance!!!

You might have more luck asking in THIS THREAD rather than here.

Just saw this post, sorry.
It's hard to give you suggestions because most of the things any of us could suggest you to do are pretty obvious and you probably know that already, it's simply a matter of them taking time and you are already working towards that end.

Plus your sets appear to be empty atm, maybe it's a FFXIAH error, maybe you deleted them, I dunno.


A few generic things:
1) Get full AF1+3. Things might change in the future, but all pieces have an use one way or another. In general it's among our best options for debuff landing. I'm talking about song debuffs of course but, surprisingly, it works really good with enfeebling magic as well, given the huge amount of macc it gives plus the set bonus. For those times when you want/need to land stuff like Silence, Slow or Paralyze when BRD/WHM.
While you're working for that, Inyanga+2 is an awesome set as well.

2) Get Full Empy+1 set. Reforge +3 is gonna come out soon and that might change some paradygm, but you still use the +1 pieces at the moment for specific song categories boosting and song duration

3) Get some Mousai+1 pieces. Body used to be the most important but can probably skip it given how irrelevant magic is in nowaday's game meta. Legs and Hands are useful. You rarely use Carol and Minne some could say, but when you do it's always good to have them 20% more powerful >:D If you have a lot of gil you could think about Head as well. It's "only" +1 stat and +20% duration over the other currently available (and free) options, so it's up to you to decide wether or not that's worth the price of Mousai+1 head

4) Get -song casting time and Fastcast items for two separate (with shared slots) precast sets. One for songs, one specific for magic if you find yourself being on /WHM a lot, and I seem to recall you do. Cap is 80% as you know, but aiming for a bit more never hurts, if you don't have any other good option. Since there are times you could be addled or stuff like that. Otherwise you can fill those empty slots with DT. Different approaches I guess, pick your choice!

5) Since you like to play a lot with /WHM sub, I suggest you get 2 different idle sets. One focusing on Meva and DT (with some random refresh) the other focusing on refresh when you know you're gonna be out of danger but will benefit from that 10+ idle refresh.



Also another small mistake (depending on your opinion, I'm voicing mine!) is that you deliberately chose to cast songs without song duration. Appearently a smart approach to make overwriting them easier, realistically I think it's something that's gonna haunt you when bad ***happens when you're in the middle of casting your songs and you leave your DDs (or the other pt when you're pt swapping) with fake songs.

For this reason you should cast fake songs with your normal gear, changing just the instrument (Daurdabla).
That way the duration will be full (10% less duration than Gjallarhorn of course) and the songs will be the same as the real ones.

I.e. if your role for that specific moment is to give Honor March, Blade Madrigal, Minuet5 and Minuet4, use these exact songs for fakes instead of using dumb ***like Gavotte and so on.
This way if for whatever reason you won't be able to immediately overwrite those songs with real ones, at leasty they will be the "right" songs and with the "full" duration. That is immensely better than giving completely different ***.

Last but not least, it's much better when you are swapping with another brd. If each bard uses the song he's supposed to be singing even with the fakes, you avoid the risk of BRD2's fake songs overwriting BRD2's fake songs. Which could completely happen if, say, both of you use Gavotte as fake song, to make an example.


That's it! If you post specific sets (that are working and I can check! xD) I'll be glad to share my comments on them with you :D

Since that last post I have kind of gotten my gear squared away and finished Daurdabla, currently working on bigger things now! (Omen cards flowing like tap water, next stop Marsyas and Car!)

I love the method you've shared for doing four songs, would you mind sharing a "rotation" that would work with it? My current one would end up with me having 2x normal potency and 2x full potency songs. : - (

Here's what I'm currently doing:
NiTro > 2 Full duration/potency songs > 2 minimum duration dummy songs > 1 full d/p song > Marcato > full d/p song

Anyway, thansk for the helpful post as always! Unrelated note, I got Ashera Harness from AMAN and I'm changing my mind about DD BRD... It's something I would absolutely like to do. In particular I am fond of path B Barfawc as both an insane idle piece and a main hand dd option (as a Xiucoatl owned I believe there is more potential in the Su5's than we give cradit!)

2 Full duration/potency songs > 2 minimum duration dummy > NiTro > Marcato > 4 full d/p songs

I simply have two command bound to my keyboard, one selects Gjallarhorn, the other selects Daurdabla.
Then I have macros for pretty much all songs.
Whenever I cast a song, it gets cast with the instrument I select with my keybinds.
Only exception being Honor March that, obviously, gets cast with Marsyas.
This way I don't need to use specific "silly" songs for fakes, I can use any song I desire or I'm assigned to do, and I can simply turn it into a fake by using the Daurdabla Key instead of the Gjallarhorn key.
I don't have to press the keys each time, just when I want to swap.

This method allows full flexibility and many pros. For example it allows you, if you so desire, to cast fake songs on purpose. This might seem stupid but sometimes it's useful, for instance when your party members are spread and you cannot get within 10 yalms from each of them.
Giving them "fake" songs is better than them not getting songs at all.

I haven't tested Barfawc path B, but I've tested path C and while cool in theory, it's not good enough in reality, it's behind any other option.

You should save your money to get a Carnwenhan and complete it, at R15 it's one of the best DD options AND you're gonna need it regardless for the duration. It's also sorta BiS for landing enfeebling songs.

Best Off Hand options are Taming Sari and Twashtar (no aug necessry)
Otherwise Ternion Dagger +1 I guess?

Other DD gear you may want are full Ayanmo+2, the JSE+2 neck. Volte set from Bastok Divergence is also very hot but clearly not very easy to obtain. Relic+3 body, goes without saying, is mandatory too. Rest of Relic+3 has an use but it's nichey and expensive, can consider that after you're done with more important gear.
Of course a couple of ambuscade DD-augmented capes too.
There is virtually no limit to the amount of useful capes you can get for niche use, but because of inventory restraints I had to draw a line somewhere, and here is what I'm using atm:

1) CHR+20, Macc/Mdmg+20, FC+10, Macc+10 ==> I use this for precast and for landing songs and enfeebling magic
2) DEX+20, Acc/Att+20, DA+10, DEX+10, PDT-10 ==> TP / Idle cape
3) DEX+20, Acc/Att+20, WSD+10, DEX+10 ==> Rudra's Storm cape
4) CHR+20, Acc/Att+20, WSD+10, CHR+10 ==> Mordant Rime cape

In the future you might want a TP cape with STP as well, if you fall in love with Carnwenhan and decide to use that in place of Aeneas for your DDbard.

So, I've something wierd happening. My Bihu Justacorps +3 dont enhance Troubadour with another 20sec. Is it something new or something odd on my end? Ive disabled gearswap, so nothing odd in my brd.lua. Bihu Slipper's Lv109 still enhance Nightingale.

Carns is absolutely first, Barfawc is a future endeavor--I'd like it as an idle piece if nothing else! But yes, I just got my Marsyas KI last night and am tying up my Ichor farm at the moment.

I'm the kind of player that hyper-focuses one job to "completion" instead of having many jobs that are good enough... I just "completed" PUP and BRD is next on my list so I don't mind thinking about niche future things as I plan to get it all! > : - )

Aeneas will be after Marsyas, Carn and even Barfawc I think. I'll probably tune my DD set around Carn for now!

It does work, but it doesn't get recognized by "Timers".
Check the in-game duration thing created by SE, you'll notice the same duration for both Troubadour and Nightingale.

Atm there are plenty of better options for that.
Yes Barfawc might seem cool with that DT bonus for eeach song, but then again it's pros and cons, you'll be relying on songs to cap DT.
What if you get one song dispelled? Or two?
Of course you could create 5 different Idle sets according to the amount of songs you have and equip different items, but that would be quite a strain for your lua and your inventory set.
Plus it's > 100m that you could spend elsewhere, for instance in the Neck that's quite expensive itself.

I mean, I buy a lot of useless stuff myself so who am I to judge, but I just wanted to make sure you're aware how Barfawc atm really is not really that good for anything.


Ideal Carn TP set you want two.
One with lotsa Multiattack when trying to get 3k TP.
One with more focus on STP for when you have AM3 up.

Some noteworthy swaps:
DA and STP on the cape.
Ayanmo+2 body vs Ashera Harness.
There's similar options in the Ring slot as well.

Someone posted this on the official forums also. I have 0 problems with my alt's +3 body giving me the 20 seconds GS or not. I really figured they just messed up their Lua but you're saying even without GS.

Oh Sechs brings up a good point that I wouldn't have even thought about since I have a more up to date timers plugin. Sorry it hasn't been released yet because I need help with the new necks and jse weapon augs since SE did them differently then all augs before.