Military Parade - A DD Bard Guide

Even if you need accuracy Onca is still pretty good. It depressed me because I farmed so many nice items for my ddBRD but in the end I had to give in to the dark side and started using because it was simply... better. At least on the spreadsheet.
Well of course it depends on HOW MUCH acc you need but Onca provides a big bunch. The only other 2 items that BRD has access to and that provide a good chunk of acc are the Kirin Osode v2 and Byakko v2. The rest is mostly dependant on luck with good acc on Chironic I think. Telchine doesn't get that high I'm afraid.
Well and I guess Alhazen but that provides no other stats, not even haste, altough if you have Byakko that shouldn't be an issue.

Wish BRD would get more ddgear. All mages to be fair, we haven't seen good ddgear for mages in a while.
I use Onca+Telchine even for my ddGEO =/

Well, not like it matters in today's meta. This month's Ambuscade is the first time in a long time that ddBRD was any useful.

Out of reference, messed around a bit with my old ddBRD spreadsheet.
Tried to compare my onca DD set against four different combinations of dd GEAR. I'm comparing just the 5 main slots because in the other slots the gear is the same of course. (see spoiler for details)

body: Bihu +1
legs: Jokushu Haidate

Set1: Top Telchine Head, Hands, Feet (Acc/Att+15, DA+3, STR/DEX+7)
Set2: Medium Chironic x3 (acc/att+20, DA+2%)
Set3: Top Chironic x3 (acc/att+30, DA+3%)
Set4: Top Telchine Head/Hands, Top Chironic Feet

To my big surprise from best to worst:
Set4 > Set1 > Onca > Set3 > Set2

Set3 provides ~30 more acc than Onca set, so that would win in a situation where you need more acc (good luck getting those augs on Chironic though, not very "realistic")
Set2, which is still pretty good augs, provides less acc than the Onca set (same exact acc if you swap Bihu+1 for Reiki Osode, but then DPS goes further down because less att)
I'm not entirely sure why these sets are so close to each other, was expecting Onca further behind. It's probably because Chironic/Telchine have ***base STR/Att, whereas Onca provides good chuck of them?


tl;dr
You can get a better ddset than Onca as of 19 July 2016, but it's gonna take a lot of luck (augs), gil and farming for what will be just a few dps points better than Onca set. Up to personal choice whether or not it's worth the effort/inventoryspace for a job like BRD.



More testing details if you're interested or want to reproduce them yourself
Final notes:
Thinking about Set3 I also tried a different approach with a "Set 5".
Removing 3%DA x3 and adding DW4%x3, then swapping belt/earrings for non-DW stuff.
Result was slightly better than Onca, but worse than Set4 and Set1.

You're better off with Chironic Dual Wield augments and switching your accessories to multi-attack.

With /NIN and capped magic Haste (should be a constant for BRD really), you need 11% DW to hit the delay cap. Your current set has 14%, which is overkill. Chironic can get up to 5% DW on it and I'm not sure the last 1% of DW matters (due to rounding and low delay), so you might be fine without it. Thus you could probably squeeze by with 2 pieces of Chironic or Chironic + Suppa and end up with overall better stats.

With the setup I used above (capped acc etc) a set with 12% DW (4% on each of the 3 pieces) came as third place in DPS.
I called it "set 5". I swapped earrings and belt of course, for multiattack stuff.
It was still better than Onca set though.

Full DPS order from best to worst in the setup I used above was:
Set 4 (Chironic feet, Telchine head/hands), Set 1 (Telchine x3), Set 5 (Chironic x3, DW buffs), Onca set, Set 3, Set 2


Not sure if we can define the difference big or small.
Set4 => ~621 dps
Set1 => ~620 dps
Set5 => ~619 dps
Onca => ~613 dps
Set3 and Set2 => I don't remember but they were under 610.

Do you judge a difference like that big or small? I judge it "very very small" to the point I'm not even sure it's worth to bother but maybe I'm underestimating something?

Like you said there's a ~2% DW excess that I manually removed from the non-onca sets to avoid the TP/hit reduction. My goal wasn't much to create the best set around but to compare Onca vs others to see how good/bad it performed, and for that end I tried to reduce the variables by keeping accessories slot as similar as possible.


Ah of course all of this is taking out of the picture stuff like 5% or 10% Haste Samba.
I underestimated this. Now that I think about it I had HasteSamba up pretty often on the Ambuscade runs this month =/

The differences between the top 3 sets are likely smaller than the error of the model. There is a pretty big difference between 4% DW Chironic x3 and 5% DW Chironic x1 + Suppa.

That's a good point.
Out of the three Chironic pieces it seems the best are the feet, so trying those with Telchine head/hands and I'm getting ~646 DPS.
Now we're talking, this starts being a difference for which it would be worth to bother, if you ask me :D
The others were so close that... meh.


Granted that gettin 30 acc/att AND DW+5% is not very realistic, especially because afaik 5% requires Fern.
With a more realistic 15/15 the set is still rocking a pretty solid ~643dps, pretty much a winner for situations where you can cap acc easily (Onca still has ~40acc more with the currently used sets/augs and the +15 only on feet instead of +30)

Could easily offset it with some swaps (Reiki Osode in place of Bihu, some other swaps) and still come at around ~640 which is still better than the onca set.
Not huge difference, but not small either.

I see Chironic vs. Telchine hands as the best exchange. You're getting feet to be the best because you're using a low evasion target, but it's harder to make up for 15 Acc than 20 Attack.

Good point, I tested in a capped acc situation, but if you need acc it's a different story.

Anybody has a couple of Exenterator setups for BRD?

I guess nobody does D:

Exenterator blows

tbh I think it can do better than blade: shun a lot of the time. AGI > Multihit use fotia.
No spreadsheet but a decent first go at it:

ItemSet 346862

Body you could use instead Reiki Osode and Fili Justacorps +1 have good AGI + STR but no multihit.

Augs on telchine i'd do str + agi and double attack chironic tuape for agi and double attack.

So there's a new sexy dd set for BRD, yai?
The set gives a lot of accuracy and decent base stats (STR/DEX/etc are usually very low on stuff like Telchine and Chironic) but leaves a sorta sour taste in your mouth because of the amount of "wasted" stats.
Like for instance there's Macc and DT on every piece, if those would've been attack or DA or something else now we would be talking about something really hot...

Did some quick tests on the spreadsheets.
For TPing I noticed 3 different scenarios were the weight of stats kinda shifts around a bit
1) Carn AM3 is up
2) Dualwielding
3) Singlewielding


tl;dr
The set alas doesn't give very spectacular results. Actually it comes behind the old Onca + 3%haste TelchineHead in several situations. It's good if you need furhter acc, in my setup it offers around ~40 more accuracy.


The best TP combination I could come up with was
Head: Highwind Helm
Body: Ayanmo+1
Hands: Chironic (at least 20 acc/att, 2% DA)
Legs: Jokushu Haidate
Feet: Ayanmo +1

Some notes

For WS we need to split.
Mordant Rime:
Rudra's Storm:
Evisceration:
Exenterator:


So final notes:
Cool for most WS except Mordant Rime for whatever reason.
Nice for TPing if you need loads of acc, kinda disappointing that each piece of the set has wasted stats, or this set could've been much more awesome.

Prepared a few item sets.
This is the best I could come up with, maybe there's something even better I dunno, I'm open for suggestions.
The DW setup are created considering /NIN subjob. With /DNC you need more DW of course.
I didn't include Ashera Harness because I heard the droprate is incredibly low so it's not really realistic to assume to have one ;_; I tested it though, it comes above Ayanmo+1 of course. In WS instead, strangely enough, it wins somewhere and loses somwehere else.


TP Dual Wield no Acc
ItemSet 338815
Linos best augs: +15 Acc, +3% DA, +3% QA (mine: 13/2/2)
Chironic best augs: Stat+10, Acc/Att +30, DA+3 (mine: STR+7, Acc/Att+20, DA+2)
Intarabus Augs: DEX+30, Acc/Att+20, DA+10
It has to be said that with Carnwenhan AM3 up, STP+10 beats DA+10 on cape

TP Dual Wield Acc
ItemSet 338816
Linos best augs: +15 Acc, +3% DA, +3% QA (mine: 13/2/2)
Intarabus Augs: DEX+30, Acc/Att+20, DA+10

TP no DW, no Acc
ItemSet 332029
Can swap Brutal for Cessance. Brutal came slightly above in my tests but they were pretty close, and STP might make a difference according to delay/STP values.
It has to be remembered that singlewielding gives 5% Crit and 300TP bonus thanks to Fencer tier II.
I think this combination works particularly good with Aeneas to spam Rudra


For the WS sets I'm just posting default ones, not the Acc variations

Mordant Rime
ItemSet 349038
Shukuyu is kinda the same as Carb+1, Ilabrat is better. Both are gonna lose if you're attack capped.
Lustratio+1 best path is A, but it kinda loses to other options (because of the lack of CHR I assume?), NQ not worth it.
Brioso+3 is the best for almost every slot, but you lose a *** of Accuracy if you go that way, so I'm not sure it's gonna be viable. Maybe one piece or two? Which though?
Body: Bihu+1 surprisingly enough beats Ayanmo and Ashera too.
Ishvara Earring is kinda the same as Brutal
Linos wins over Ghorn with perf augs, with less than perf it's win/lose in different situatios, but it's close and imho preferable because of the accuracy.
Intarabus cape with CHR+30, Acc/Att+20 and WSDMG+10% is the clear winner by a large margin. DEX+30, Acc/Att+20, WSDMG+10% (same cape as Rudra) second best. DA+10% third place.

Evisceration
ItemSet 349040
Heitaroi in place of Ilabrat if you don't have it.
NQ Abj still come above other solutions. Paths are B(head), A(hands), D(feet).
Ashera Harness is above Ayanmo but very slighly.
If someone doesn't want to bother with abj gear, then Highwing Helm, Ayanmo+1 hands/feet works nicely.
Intarabus is DEX+30, Acc/Att+20, Crit+10. DA works ok but it's obviously behind Crit. WSDMG is behind both

Rudra's Storm
ItemSet 349042
Surprisngly enough Shukuyu ring beats Ramuh+1. Of course it's the other way around if att is capped on current target.
I really can't come to explain this honestly... given how big the DEX mod on Rudra is.
For Lustratio head here Path A beats Path B. Also Lustratio Legs A beat Jokushu. Unlike Evis where Head B and Jokushu won.
Ashera Harness of course beats Ayanmo.
Other options if someone wants to avoid Abj gear are of course Ayanmo head/hands/feet and Jokushu Haidate.
NQ Lustratio still beat that combination, altough the margin is not really that huge like with HQ (which offers an impressive 8% WSD, in addition to the higher base stats)
Rudra is particularly impressive if you singlewield with Aeneas (that's 800 TP bonus).


Skipping Exenterator because lol@that. Generally Ayanmo works good on that, Highwing Helm, Kobo Kote, Ilabrat, Apate, Fotia neck/belt, etc. Still pretty lame damage.


What can I say? Nothing, except that I'm impressed by Aeneas damage with Rudra, and very disappointed by the fact that even without Lustratio gear, Evisceration still beats Mordant Rime even with Carnwenhan 119v3, unless some math is wrong in the spreadsheet.
I'm really really sad because I love Carns and I love Mordant Rime, sigh.

Temporarily removing the Spoiler tags given how it's currently bugged and requires people to quote a message to see the content.


One last consideration about WS and especially TP sets if you're mainhanding a Carnwenhan and intend to put up AM3.
As soon as AM3 is up Carn is quite the beast, but this gives you a very reduced return from multiattack stuff (DA, TA etc).
This is less true if you're dualwielding (offhand still benefits from those) but VERY true if you're singlewielding.

Point is that people particularly dedicated to the use of Carn should probably make two TP sets for each Acc level.
One with lotsa of multiattack to get fast to 3k, and another set with stuff like STP, acc, att or whatever else you can find in place of Multiattack, to use when AM3 is up.

Main problem with this is that it's not like BRD gets the luxury of plentiful options to pick from =/ Mainly have to rely on augmented stuff and that stuff gets annoying once you've done 9000times already for other jobs.

I figured BRD melee might have a place in Ambuscade this month because it can use marches to overpower Goes' aura, but BRD+GEO with SPs was slower than DNC+GEO without them. Maybe with a larger group it would be worthwhile, but the DPS split between my DNC and BRD has widened substantially since the last time I checked.

AG Carn/AG Twash, etc.

I think the most obvious cause for what you experienced is that DNC received lot of gear over the last 2 years.
BRD got almost nothing. Basically Ayanmo, some random pieces here and there, and for everything else you have to rely on random augments which can get cool but nowhere close to what a real DD gets.

Also it pains me terribly to say this but I feel AG Carns has a place only in spots where you think can make reasonable use of AM3. In short fights or stuff where it hurts too much to build that initial 3k TP, Aeneas is always gonna be ahead.



Still, I'm surprised your DNC+GEO combination so utterly overwhelms BRD+GEO. You'd be thinking being able to use 4 songs (one of which is Honor March) would more or less compensate the difference between the two jobs, or at least get 'em really close.

I was also surprised, and 5 SV songs because I was using SPs.

I think it's because I can make bigger skillchains on DNC and skillchain damage gets huge on Goes after he puts up spikes. I used a single Rudra's to take 20% off his life.


Also, Entrust'd Indi-Haste goes a long way towards negating his slow aura too, so DNC does swing slower than a marched BRD but not by that much.

@Sechs I don't see how Bihu+1 beats Ashera for anything considering how neither have any special stats (DA/TA/QA/wsdmg/ect) and Ashera has higher stats in every single category (STR DEX CHR ACC ATT). Might want double check that.

At this point is AG3 Carn worth upgrading to for dps reason, or just ride out Aeneas. Thanks.

At first I assumed it was because Bihu+1 had higher CHR, but at a closer look Ashera has 7 more CHR than Bihu+1.
I went into the "Gear lists" page of my spreadsheet to double check, but the numbers were right.
So... yeah, it makes no sense. I suspect it has to be an error somewhere in the spreadsheet of course, but I couldn't find it =/
FOUND IT! Was quite silly lol. Yeah Ashera rightfully wins now, all is right, balance is restored!
Btw Brioso+3 is BiS in several slots for Mordant Rime, but you can't realistically use Brioso+3 because of the complete lack of melee stats, as I mentioned before.

Either way, at least on the spreadsheet, I'm getting Evis to beat Mordant at 1000, even with Carns =/


Aside from Mordant (likely a bug), on every other WS Ashera is on top, in some situations it's close to Ayanmo+1 but always above.
Ashera tipically wins in TP situations as well, altough in some setups I got Ayanmo above (probably thanks to the multiattack, which is missing on Ashera)

Basically Ashera is kinda the best for almost everything in almost every situation.
As I said in the premise of my previous post, I kinda left Ashera outside because I considered it not very realistic to assume everyone to have one, given how Omen is fresh content and given how the body drop rates are so low.
With time I'm sure it will become a more accessible/common body, but by then we might have Bihu+3 up, and there's good chances Bihu+3 will be even better, if to upgrade Relic+1>Relic+3 they're gonna use the same paradigm they used for AF+1>AF+3


AG Carn is worth for the Macc imho, especially when you pair it with the new Ammurapi Shield from Kei, period.
Melee wise Carn wins in all those situations where you can realistically make efficient use of AM3. Once you put AM3 up, Carn wins over Aeneas. In pretty much all other situations Aeneas wins, I think this is especially true when singlewielding, the TPbonus from FencerII stacks particularly well with Aeneas for Rudra spamming.

So the next question is: which are those situations where the DPS loss to stack up 3k TP won't put Carn behind Aeneas spamming WS at 1000?

* Situations where you can get TP before the fight starts
* Situations where there are cooldowns betweeen fights/engaging and you have Regain up
* Fights where the fight is long enough that it allows you to make full use of the 3 minutes AM3
* Situations where, by choice or Amnesia, you can't WS and are forced to store TP

Probably something else as well? Can't think of anything.
Also it has to be considered that to make full min/maxing of Carn's efficiency, you'd need a separate TP set for when you have AM3 up.
Multiattack with AM3 up becomes kinda devalued, especially if you're singlewielding. (if you're DWing the offhand still gets full benefits from MA of course)


One practical good use of Carn over Aeneas that I found in Omen is not a strictly DPS-related one, but an utility one.
When you have WS objectives in floor 1-2-4, it's sometimes nice to get AM3 up and then spam Ele WS, for instance, with the additional TPgaining power granted by AM3.
Not really... necessary, or particularly useful, but it does feel cool though! XD (lol)

Also another small, annoying aspect of using Aeneas over Carnwenhan is the TP reset.
Using Carns to refresh buffs of course resets your TP to zero.
I hate that =/
Can find all sort of compromises with lockweapon etc, but they're just that: compromises.

So I was noticing something interesting.
At none or close to no att buffs, Evisceration outperforms Mordant Rime at 1000TP, even with Carnwenhan.

But I noticed that as I start getting more buffs, the situation starts to change and as I get close to pDIF cap (but before that) there's a point where Mordant becomes much better than Evisceration.

What is the reason for this? I guess it's because Evisceration is about crit hits, and crits (when they proc) offer a clear benefit in term of damage when you're far from pDIF cap. But the situation is the other way around as you get closer to the pDIF cap, and crits become suddenly much less interesting.
Am I right?

It's because crits add to the pDIF value. So if you are very low, evisceration's crits will be a big boon, but if you're capped the 30% bonus or Mordant will exceed the boosted pDIF.
At least I'm assuming Carn?

Essentially, +20 means a lot when you start at 0, but means little when you're starting at 200.

The +30% is why you're seeing Mordant pull ahead in the higher buffed scenario.

I am having an awful time trying to find a rule for AM3 to put in Mote's BRD gearswap lua.

Something to automatically switch to an AM3 TP set once AM3 is activated. I've tried things I've found online with no luck.. I did manage to set a simple AM3 timer rule that puts in chat when AM3 is up... but that's not really what I'm after.

Does anyone use Mote's BRD lua that knows how to set this up?

Does anyone have competent AM3 UP sets? I have heavy MA set for AM3 down but having a hard time finding solid replacements.

If you're dualwielding MA gets really reduced returns for your Carn MH, but still full returns for OH.
In most situations/setups going from MA build to STP build when dualwielding, is quite a small difference, I don't suggest bothering with it but I guess it depends on your personal threshold of performance level judgement.

If we're talking about Singlewield the difference is much more noticeable of course.

BRD doesn't have a lot of gear options with the main 5 slots alas, so if you wanna go for STP build you would basically need:
1) An STP+10 Ambuscade back
2) An STP ammo (a differently augmented Linos, otherwise there's the cheaper compromise of Ginsen)
3) Plentiful different STP options for Neck, Earrings and Rings
4) Kentarch+1, Reiki, Sweordfaetels+1 or Olseni belt for Waist
5) For the main five slots, there's not many options alas. Ayanmo+1 head (which is gonna get powered up soon), Ashera Harness, Battlecast Gaiters. I think that's it? Chironic can't get STP augments sadly (except Dark Matter maybe?), so if you want STP options for Hands and Legs you'd be forced to rely on Telchine augments (up to STP+6), but not sure the loss in acc and the other stats would be worth it, plus you'd be struggling with Haste and require a haste belt with such items, to mantain your 25% cap in gear


Basically it's a lot of work for what more often than not produces not really huge increases in your overall damage output. Hope you're aware of this.
There might be other aspects you can improve in your gearing approach to create better output results, before you have to resort to going the STP route.

ItemSet 350296

Slot 4 slot this is the best I could come up with. I'm not entirely sure what would be best for hands/legs. This would be a low acc AM3 up set and you would tweak it as needed.

Cape: DEX30 ACC20/ATT20 STP+10
Chironic Gloves: ACC/ATT/DW4

Updated 4/8/2017

With BRDs low access to MA gear compared to other DDs, you can really take advantage of the MA from AM3. I personally don't have all the pieces in this set as of yet (very close) but already seeing a very noticeable difference in TP gain when AM3 is up.

Anyone have a lua that incorporates DDing? I didn't see one in this thread.
Thanks.

Is there any good lists for offhand daggers?
Carn/blurred+1 seems to be my best choice as far as tp gain.

I stick with Twash/Odium if feeling fancy I can downgrade to the capped Sari, Main Aeneas if you want to just skillchain maybe capped Malevolence if you like to AE cleave lower diff mobs

not sure whats best for you due to gear you wear and have access too but may wana dagger/shield and see also