Melee Bard

Well that question was asked 2 years ago when those daggers were somewhat useful. These days, there are stronger options for DD.

Like what options for bard as an offhand?

well to answer the question of DA vs OAT first, DA definitely beats it. but as already mentioned there are a lot of stronger options, STR Thokcha, Aluh Jambiya, Oneiros Knife in some instances, Pugiunculus to name a few. DA isn't horrible, it's actually competitive with STR Thokcha at certain times, but if you're doing a magian weapon for BRD you should probably just stick to STR Thokcha since it's typically the best out of the magian daggers in most situations.

I would assume these are the best you can get atm for offhand.







Twashtar maybe if seeing sygnificant gains from dex?

Sounds good to me, this is a distant future though, need verethranga before anything else ATM that's what I'm building from there everything is easy with whm mule.

What do you guys think as for a top of the line tp set for bard?
Edit: wrong earring in right ear, is simply place holder

Coru is only best offhand if the DEX will contribute to hitting the last 10 points of dDEX. Otherwise, as far as I remember, Pugiunculus and STR Thockcha/Aluh Jambiya are the best offhands, with STR Thockcha/Aluh Jambiya only pulling ahead when the extra damage from WS is enough to significantly effect DPS. As for the rest of your set, Atheling>Letalis (at least with dagger merits, acc is not as much of an issue as atk), best pants are augmented Byakko's or Calmecac (depends on daggers and a few other factors), best feet are Wrathwring Nails > Ghadhab Nails > Dusk +1, best bodies are augmented Osode and AF2+2... the rest looks good.

At some point Bruno, Creelo, and I are going to have to have some sort of nerd summit and see about releasing some proprietary info to the public, but for now I think we have most of this information covered in my bard guide, feel free to hop over there if you have any questions (I will obviously keep my eye of this thread as well, though).

I don't understand why you would ever want to do this? Save perhaps, your entire party wipes and you want to finish the mob off?

If the answer is "just for fun" fair enough, but surely there are better ways to spend your time than trying to turn a non-melee job into a melee one?

Whats next then, War/Whm main heal setup?

Are you stupid or something? There are plenty of times that warrant having a BRD around but don't require the healing or support from /whm.

And then there's these people.

The main use of melee bard is in lowman content where a bard's buffs are helpful but support magic is not required. So for instance, if I have a friend going THF or BLU to Dyna and bringing their pocket mule to cure us, I can full-time marchx2 and greatly increase our killspeed while still contributing effectively. Bard isn't quite the DD an equally-geared THF is, but the margin is slim, much slimmer than the margin between those two jobs and some of the other melee mages.


Bard can also be used to solo some things. Is Bard *necessary* to kill those things? Not really, but it's fun. You're playing a video game because you want to have fun, right? You're not seriously suggesting that every moment you play video games you're trying to find the "best use of your time" are you? Because I'll give you a real-life hint: if your goal in life is to get the "best use of your time", video games aren't it.

ETA: and to address something from upthread - dagger merits! If you are playing melee bard, you should have them. Will be adding that to the guide.

Is the best I can come up with for a TP set. Carnwenhan because with it and other song duration gear, you can ride Nightengale and Troubador and only cast songs every 10 min therefore justifying your meleeing (mordant rime is also a decent WS).

Instruments do not wipe TP when you change them, so you can use different instruments, so why not use the one with haste. Granted the intrument adds haste you may not need, it gives you more room to change out other pieces and I thought I should remind people it exists.

If you can sub it and still get the song duration I'd main Mandau, if you can't I'd main Carnwenhan and sub Twashtar.

This is what I use when I feel like Meleeing:
Brego Helm/Angel Lyre + Wrathwing nails would probably be better, but I'm a little inventory strapped so I just stick to what I have already on me (most of this stuff minus the neck is left over from sam/whm meleeing).

99 Carnwehan + N/T and all duration gear puts your songs at something like 9min & 12s. If I had a Carnwehan I'd probably just suffer the TP loss while I recast and use a better dagger to melee with.

What is the current duration cap with all the bonuses?

Initial duration 2 mins(120 sec)

Carnwenhan +50%
Gjallarhorn +40%
Aoidos' Matinee +10%
Aoidos' Hngrln. +2 +10%
Aligned emp +2 gear +10% (limited to March, Ballad, Scherzo, Madrigal, Minuet)
Marduk's Shalwar +1 +10% (can't stack with Aoidos' Rhing. +2 so ballad has -10% compared to the other 4 songs)

120 + 120 * 1.40 = 288 Sec

Then the *2 bonus from NT

576 sec = 9:36

I really hope I'm missing something or doing the math wrong but you'd effectively need a 10:30~ or perhaps even 11:45 to realistically full time NT songs given the time it takes to put up JA's, sing 4(eventually 5) songs and then since you have to overwrite Daurdabla songs, add in placeholder songs too. I'd seriously table flip if someone got dispelled or fighting a tortoise...

Unless I missed something:

120(base) +60(Mythic) +12(Af3 neck) +12(Af3 body) +12(Marduk legs) +48(99 horn) +12(relevant af3 piece)=276/552 (4min 36s or 9min 12s with Troub).

I personally don't like/use Marduk+1 legs, but to each their own.

99 Carnwehan should be a little longer duration IMO, for the amount of work it takes you should at least be able to ride out N/T :/

Ah, I just accidentally added another 10%... Well that's depressing. Even farther from being awesome.

OK, I should have said around 10 min. If your meleeing on BRD it's probably lower end content or things that will die in less than 9 min anyway. I personally wouldn't melee in Voidwatch (time better used spamming threnodys and finding procs) or something like that unless its dagger proc. This also assumed you had Ghorn, and did not account for bard swapping for big mobs.

There's a few things in the set up I posted that could definitely change, like Ninurta's Sash and Portus Collar. I was slightly worried about Acc so I put a bit more in that probably needed. I'm sure there are other ring options too I just can't think of too many bard can use aside from some ACC or ATT pieces.

I only really meant to recommended Carnwenhan (in no way a realistic option for most people) if you were going ALLLLL the way with this to get the most out of your meleeing which even at 9:12 is a ton of extra melee time not running around finding the mages/ranger/cor and melees casting songs. Switching to a better melee dagger was also an option especially if you started singing with 0 TP before a fight anyway just make sure your macros don't switch you back to Carn when casting things like Elegy.

How does boosted mordant rime compare to other BRD WS anyways?

Oh, snap !! lol


I can't speak from experience (I don't have a Carn... yet!! >_<), but MR is a pretty decent WS already so I'd imagine the 30% bonus and AM3 would make it quite formidable. For most situations, it'll be difficult to easily get AM3 on Brd though. I think for straight dmg, a 99 Mandau would generally win.

A good answer, thanks.



I don't understand why you are confusing real life and computer games. You could have left it as "it's fun" (which I believe was one of the things I said in my original post.) But no.... you had to try and be a smart-*** and ended up looking pretty stupid yourself!

non mythic outside abyssea rime wont ever break 2k with a mage sub, more around 1k-1500 when i mess around with it.

If you need to keep a mage sub and want to do any kind of damage 5/5 exenterator with an aluh mainhanded is really your easiest option.

I always thought mandau was a cool option for DD bard, but I would hate losing the option to turn+lullaby my target and put my songs back/cast/multiple waltz without gettin smacked/runaway or whatever cause of the poison effect on mandau.

On test server mordent for me does 3k with WS only atmas like despot for Chr+ rr and vv. does like upper 2k 3k+ on noob mobs with a good ws set. However mythic is not worth it for melee bard lol, but I had put Coru on there for the dex because of evisceration? Is str thotka better?

As of right now, I believe pretty strongly that the best option for dmg for a Brd with mage sub would be Shattersoul with Plenitas Virga at least for Brds without a Relic/Emp/Mythic daggers.

This looks like a pretty fun set to play with on brd =D

I decided to make a 100MP dagger for the Mag Acc as well as for DNC if I need the flourishes to land better I hear MAG Acc works.

Working on the Store TP dagger because I'm hoping that it will make /DNC TP gain good for when I just want to have TP laying around for emergency cures

A +100 tp bonus centovente is a much better choice than a store TP dagger since it works offhanded for making your mainhand ws stronger and its pretty amazing for aeolian edge cleaving in abyssea or killing trash mobs.
If im not mistaken you still cant have more than 1 centovente which further reduces the appeal of making anything but the +100tp version

Make a STR Thockcha if you're doing dagger trials. Whatever gains you may think you'll be making in your TP phase, I can assure you they will pale in comparison to your overall DPS increase with a STR Thockcha. You don't need a dagger for MAcc on Bard, ever, and I don't know much about dancer but I assume Sylow would have a heart attack if you said you were making a Store TP dagger. If you're talking about STP for BRD/DNC, you have many other tools you can use in an emergency, CW3 should never be the difference between life and death. If you're fighting the kind of mobs where CW3 *is* that big a deal, you should be on a different job to begin with.

Because BRD has native MP, it must be a mage job, of course...

...oh wait, no it doesn't. I think I'd rather pull out daggers and do some damage than cast three Cure IVs and be out of MP.

At the rate Bard is getting gear there's going to be no way to bridge the gap between DDs and Bards. Fact of the matter is we don't have the base Adoulin Gear the Thuradaunt gear, we don't seem to be getting the upgradable Delve middle armor gear, we get the really awesome dagger, but it doesn't help if their stats are 30-40 points higher than ours or even more so.

The plans for FFXI is to have lvl 120 mobs and for your gear to basically compensate for that. So there's only so far 75-99 gear can accomadate for us. It'll get to the point where just spamming haste inbetween Nightinggale Troubadour boosted songs while spamming Finale is all we have time to do if things stay in the direction we're headed.

I was hoping SE would release some new AF with this expansion for all jobs and give Bard a bit more DD options if they're not going to put us on Medium Armor DD gear.