BRD/NIN Tanking

So, lets start this post out by recognizing three things:
1) There are at most a handful of fights in the game right now that would suit a BRD/NIN tank.
2) This would be competitive with level 75 era "holding" tanks like NIN/DRK and RDM/NIN, not with level 99 "tanks" that are basically DDs with some form of substantial damage mitigation/negation.
3) I'm mostly making this post to collect feedback from others before I try to do it. I think it could be fun to tank things on bard and my LS has two excellent bards (but not many people total).

Advantages:
Horde Lullaby/Foe Lullaby/Foe Lullaby II - 240 CE, 24 second recast
Horde Lullaby II - 320 CE (for some reason), 24 second recast
Any Threnody, Elegy, etc. - 240 VE, 100 CE

I haven't actually tested the VE values of Lullabies, because it would require me to find a low level monster that resists my lullabies (like Light Elementals in Qufim, which means waiting for an Aurora).

Now, you might look at the above and be all "okay, wat? How will that let me tank?" Well, Bard can get 80% Casting time reduction with a good build, making these songs almost instant. Also, using a set like this should effectively eliminate their recast:

Assuming 2 seconds per song, Bard could cap Enmity with the above build in approximately a minute. This is, you'll note, not even considering Nightingale, which could be used to let the bards cast even faster.

An aside on damage mitigation:
Sentinel's Scherzo and Earthen Armor with BRD/NIN HP pretty much take care of TP moves and spells (95% damage reduction for TP moves that would take >75% of your max HP), but you could also do the 50% PDT/MDT route if you didn't have Earthen Armor or for "oh ***" moments. Utsusemi recast is a non-issue.


Competition:
Currently the only tanks in the game are Paladins with Aegis and Ochain. For events where shield blocking is useful (like holding a bunch of monsters in Voidwatch), Paladin will still be the clearly superior option because they don't actually need to cap hate and their durability advantages against autoattacks will win the day. However, the game's recent lowman shift has led me to look for lower-man alternatives. If we need to do a fight (like Arch-Omega) with PLD, WHM, and BRD already, what if we could have the BRD tank and switch the PLD to RNG or SMN? Excalibur is less impressive than it was at 75. Many monsters currently resist Atonement. It's perfectly reasonable to think that a RNG could outdamage a Paladin against many new monsters.

Strategically, Paladin's weakness is still their lack of any way to generate substantial CE other than their sword or MP inefficient cure-force sets. Take Arch-Omega as an example again. He starts out in Four-Legged mode (physically resistant), which means that any successful magic DD (except Summoner) is going to rip hate off a PLD quickly by capping VE and CE. BRD/NIN doesn't have this problem. Flying Wyrms. Kited fights. Doesn't matter. Spam Spam Spam.

Anyway, that's all I've got. The promise of new wyrms with Seekers is bringing my attention back to Paladin's weaknesses.

There's always been something inherently badass about tanking on BRD.

BLU is still a decent holding-tank, but like Sylow said, tanking on BRD have always been awesome.
And it have'nt really been done in _years_ since the mazurka hate nerf as far as I'm aware?
And even then it was barely used.

me and some lsmates were talking about the same and a friend linked me to this, i thought it was awesome

Bruno is awesome incarnate.

yeah I thought i was getting trolled when they told me a brd solo'd alfard lol

The biggest issue I can see is it will take a while to catch on since people will be quick to shout lolbrdtank, or just not want to accept that the days of traditional tanks are past.

That and I wouldn't be suprised to see SE nerfing enmity from those songs if/when it does catch on.

Couldn't a PLD somewhat remedy this with Requiescat?

Man, this video....made me miss the Abyssea battle theme xD

I used to just play with the sound off in abyss but idk I kinda enjoy it now lol

Bruno is siren's Oldspice Man, and if anyone were to win your competition, Byrth, it'd probably be him, just by the nature of how he pretty much wins anything he does. Crazy ***'s solo'd so much ***with brd...

yeah does twilightscythe/requiescat go through the physical damage resistance?

You hsould just try it. Don't listen to anyone else.

I feel like they would nerf the enmity not long after a tanking trend caught on. They did this with RDM, and mazurka already. Props for the idea though, looks like it would be fun.

lol...

The monster's attention is assigned to the last person who makes an action that generates enmity and re-caps hate. If a wyrm is flying, it doesn't matter who has a cure cheat set. That's going to be the guy casting songs every 3 seconds.

Also, the amount of enmity you get by curing has been decreasing since level 75 in several different ways. The coefficient is going down and RDM has gotten Tranquil Heart traits. Curing for hate is less viable (PLD/RDM, RDM, or just PLD) at 99 than they were at 75.

I'll let other people have a stab at the rest of that.

My favorite is DNC on mobs we can't reliably DD tank.

And refresh affecting casting time.

And telling Byrth logistics about enmity and tanking lol...

It's really pathetic.

Edit: It gets better! He thinks he can justify himself!

If Roc's (thought they resisted light based enfeebles) (got that backwards) or Light Elementals work, could also try it in MMM with a low level person in party. Would cap their level very low and not require a lot of waiting.

It would definitely change things up and make things interesting :o

Cuz that ruins the whole point of finding out the enmity on the spell?

Wat?

Edit: Rdm isnt just limited to fastcast...

...I'll let you off this time...On a serious note yeah RDM is fairly huge on damage mitigation geared properly (can also EVA tank pretty well also if that ever happens...)

RDM was the brick wall of tanking.

Until paladin became the paladin we know and ignore. There's really no competition anymore. There's no job that doesn't look like a sheet of glass juxtaposed to a reasonably equipped paladin at this point.

Square could undo the enmity adjustment on pertinent spells tomorrow, and red mage would still be an absolutely atrocious tank by comparison.