You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

I wasn’t able to find anything with the current March tiers, but here’s some old March tier values https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/3263/bard-march-song-cap/

not that those values mean anything now, since songs got buffed in the February 2017 update, but seeing that I would assume it’s more or less the same but with higher values
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/52095-Feb.-10-2017-%28JST%29-Version-Update


at 99 it’s not easy to test Victory March tiers since we cap the 600 combined skill cap naturally, but could test Advancing March on /BRD. although, since Honor March caps at 900, that would have had to be proven with uncapped values, which would imply it has lower tiers. I would assume AM/VM abides by the same principle of skill correlating to potency

Does anyone know how to get 2 ballads on mages after singing 4/5 songs with T/N? I can only get ballad 3 on a whm, I never see my ballad 2 stay

You either need to wait or change legs to a max duration piece. I had the same issue it's the same concept as singing dummy songs.

This is complex, there's a few routes to go but all are pretty annoying.
First of all you need to understand why this is happening, why it's "hard" to overwrite some songs with Ballads.

Each "Song +1" gives song duration +10%. There's Song +7 from Ghorn and Moon neck, but there's also "Song duration +" gear. All of these work an ALL songs.
Then there's gear that give +1 or +2 to SPECIFIC songs. There is NOT an equal amount of these items. In general Ballad gets less than these specific gear.
In addition the only item boosting Ballad is the legs, which is concurrent with Inyanga +2 legs. Which means you're trading Song Duration +17% for Ballad+1, i.e. losing 7% duration.

Ok, this was one part.
The second part is the strange dual priority system that is used by the game to decide which song is gonna be overwritten when you cast a song.
Normally the song with the least duration (which tipically is the first one you sung, but not always because of the reasons I explained above). There's other aspects at play but I don't wanna delve too deep. Generally speaking this is why Ballad2 is overwriting Ballad3.



Now... how to avoid this?
Multiple ways, depending on the songs you're casting. Let's say you're supposed to cast Honor March, Blade Madrigal, Minuet5 and Minuet4 and then want to overwrite the 2 minuets with ballad2 and 3, ok?
Sing them with this order: Minuet4 > Minuet 5 > Honor March > Madrigal (can reverse the last 2 songs, doesn't matter).
After you're done wait a certain amount of seconds, then Pianissimo Ballad2, afterwise Pianissimo Ballad3 using Ghorn.
If you waited the right amount of seconds, you'll succeed.
You need to learn how many seconds this wait amounts to by trying. It depends on your gear.

Another method is to overwrite those minuets.
Cast songs in any order. Pianissimo Minuet4 and minuet5 on the mage but cast them USING DAURDABLA (or any other instrument without song+). After that Pianissimo Ballad2 and 3.
More likely than not your ballads will correctly overwrite the Minuets.



Things are a bit more complicated than the way I explained but I was trying to make them as simple as possible °-°
Regardless of the method used, overwriting songs with 2 ballads is annoying on BRD! Hopefully Empy+3 legs will make it easier xD

Is that not the entire point of tenuto. While it won't specifically keep the ballad on the WHM with the JA, the +40 seconds duration with job points will. (the +40 duration should be party effect, yeah?)

Song Song Song Tenutoballad3 ballad2

AFAIK it doesnt work on party members nor can be used with Pianissmio

The ja doesn't but the +40 second duration should, giving ballad3 longer duration than the first song cast.

and you don't use pianissimo, you have the whm move

You lose the ability to overwrite songs on yourself, i.e. to keep up 4songs/5songs.

If that's not an issue for you as a BRD, then sure.
Imho it's not a viable solution.
Realistically you need to pianissimo ballads, period.

99% of the times you can't really afford to move yourself and another person out of range to cast songs and then lose the ability to overwrite songs on yourself.

Suppose that does hamper a dding bard. Then I guess you just wait (20 seconds?) like you mentioned. Simple enough unless you're trying to get a lullaby in the N/T window.

Xsongs waitX0 pianissimo B3 Pianissimo B2

The wait ~20 seconds (number gonna change according to gear) or cast 2 pianissimo bad instrument minuets that will be easily overwrote by 2x Ballads takes more or less the same time.
Actually system 2 is usually faster for my experience.

Whichever method, it's always a major annoyance to do that if you ask me. I hate having to plan stuff like this as a BRD honestly, but that's just me.

The thing that matters is singing Vmarch 3rd, 4th or 5th, ideally last, since march shares the same duration as minuet.

In the scenario of singing order HM >> Min4 >> Min5 >> Vmarch >> pianissimo+Ballad3 will always result in your ballad target having HM + Ballad3 + Min5 + Vmarch without the necessity of dummying down anything. From there it is a matter of dummying down the remaining Min5 to replace with the 2nd Ballad.

This of course becomes problematic in some scenarios where minuets or songs of equal duration are not being used.. example of wave 3 Dyna with no RDM in alliance and CC down. Songs would be HM + Vmarch + Mad + Mad. Any singing order in this case will result in a piano Ballad overwriting the Vmarch since both HM and Madrigals are higher durations thanks to Marsyas(marcato'd) and ambu cape. This is where you would have to dummy down one or both of the Mads to overwrite them with Ballad(s) to keep both of the Marches.

Just a note on HM and when to place it in singing order, personally I prefer it first since it will always be the highest duration song sung since Marsyas and Marcato. Singing it last means that your first song sung will be dropping those few seconds earlier, typically the minuets. It is a very small optimization to equalize durations across all songs and only really relevant in situations where things are coming down to the wire on a re-sing.

This is more a question of playstyle than gearsets. I recall reading a discussion about BRD pulling and holding mobs in segments runs and I wanted to pursue it but I can't recall where the discussion was. Basically wondering if anybody had played this role in segment farms and what kind of party setup it allowed for.

Works with pretty much any setup, it's just a terrible idea (imo). Basically relying on Mambo's and shadows to not die and then sleeping everything on your own when gathered. Easier to do as a BLU (more shadows to work with and more DT spell options) or a RUN (DT+ Regen from something like a SCH keeps you alive NP). Can also Just have the tank pull and then have the BRD sleep them afterwards.

I've also seen (and tried) BRD assisting the tank pulling by going /whm and using banishga to grab far away mobs while tank grabs close, still wasn't a fan and preferred just having tank pull. If you want to have ppl pull other than the tank I'd just suggest using heavy DD like WAR or DRK to do some pulling to start the fighting while the main tank grabs everything else.

I agree that it can work with a lot of jobs, I dissent that it's drastically better on jobs like BLU.
First of all you're not gonna be capping Eva with BLU (unless the BRD gives you Mambos but let's face it, it's not gonna happen), secondly you don't really have more DT than a BRD, unless you're talking about Barrier Tusk but that's not really a huge difference. Both jobs have excellent Eva options and can cap DT easily while getting lotsa eva.

For reference I have 1231 on BLU in my EVA build (that's with lotsa eva from traits) and 1153 on BRD. Gearsets might not be BiS on either jobs, but in that case they're pretty close.
We're talking about ~78 eva, but then we're talking about >227 eva from Mambos and a bit more from food so that more than closes the gap.

RUN is in a similar position to BLU, with the pros of Swordplay when it's up, no big difference either way (on RUN you can get 75% PDT though... and a very strong Phalanx)
On THF with slightly worse gear (and no Gandring) I reach 1354 in my Eva set.


Also another thing you said about BLU: Occultation.
While the spell is no doubt fantastic, when you're getting hit by 30+ monsters, it's not really gonna make a huge difference in the time it takes for you to gather mobs and bring them back to the rest of the pt.
Keep in mind there's a cap to evading blows. You can't go above ~80% physical attacks evaded because mobs' accuracy can't go under 20% land rate. Which is no big deal when you only have a bunch of monsters attacking you, but when the number is pretty huge it means you are still going to get hit by ~20% of the physical attacks they're tryin to land of you, which is likely going to be still a considerable amount with large pulls.

The initial point still stands though, despite some jobs having better base Eva than BRD, BRD can count on a huge amount of Eva from Mambos which you can 100% have on you without fail without having to rely on anybody else.
Considering this, ironically, BRD becomes one of the few jobs who can realistically get close to the Eva cap of monsters in Sheol C, making it a job that's theoretically better than all the others at evading hits while gathering mobs.


...all of this in theory, I've seen BRD eva pulling mentioned but I've never had the chance to try it myself, yet.

I've been thinking about leveling Bard because it's current DD role looks pretty fun (and I currently don't have any support jobs). I have a twashtar and 1000 tp bonus I made for dnc that I could use with bard, and I also have a pretty decent healing set/enhancing magic duration set from my sch that would work if I ever need to go /whm.

With the upcoming voidwatch campaign I should be able to make a Daurdabla, I also have 50k beads that I could put towards the aeonic instrument, but it might take some time to complete all of the kills, so I wouldn't have it right away. My main question is how useful would a non-mastered bard with some decent dd gear, an empy Harp, a gjallarhon and mostly empy/af/relic +1 be in groups for ambuscade d/vd, segments, omen, some dynamis, etc.?

Also, how should I prioritize getting the whistle +1 if I have limited funds? If I start off with the relic and empy I won't have money for the hq whistle, and even after I earn some more gil, would it be better to pay for helm clears and get the aeonic over spending the same amount for the hq whistle?

i would prioritize whistle +1 and marsyas over daur, personally. 4th song is nice, but full potency Honor March is a game changer imo

Entirely this. Priority should go Ghorn, 3 song(any of them), whistle+1, marsyas, daur, then carn. All of your extra song+ for main songs come from empy equipment(Su3 song+ is mostly niche). March and Minuet need to be your biggest focus. 3 song bard with max marsyas and ghorn let's you get up the main dd songs (save for the madrigal in 4th slot for tp bonus offhand).

My BRD mule has become a serious dd contender with Odyssey stuff/augments, 10/10 would recommend to a friend.

I guess I'm in the minority in that I think Marsyas is THE game changer here...

I'm of the mind of Marsyas > Dauradabla > Ghorn > Carn > Whistle +1.

I think Carn is a nice to have, outside of longer lullaby durations. I certainly appreciate it on my alt because it means paying less attention having to only sing once every 10 minutes. It also means being able to sync Marcato with Honor March full-time. That's a big one.

The difference of +1 for a song, whether from Ghorn or Whistle +1 -

Honor March:
* 12/1024 magic haste
* 16 attack
* 4 accuracy

Victory March:
*16 or 17/1024 magic haste

Valor Minuet V:
* 12 or 13 attack

Blade Madrigal:
* 6 accuracy

Carols:
* 8 elemental resistance

Nothing game-breaking here and I would argue the amount of gil required to get that +1, whether it be from Ghorn or whistle +1, would be better spent towards getting your Marsyas completed. That being said, you also gain an extra 10% duration for each +1 song effect.

Marsyas can be the difference between being able to do VD ambus without much of a fuss depending on the group. Or being a main DD party BRD for wave 3. Being able to get magic haste, attack, AND accuracy in ONE song is just too good to NOT be your number one priority. VD ambus typically come with extra acc requirements, and if you only have 3 songs, Honor March goes even further.

Having 4 songs available is also a game changer, more than +1 from either Ghorn or whistle in my opinion. It's literally a whole extra song...imagine the possibilities!

I can appreciate the value of +1 song effects and an extra 10% duration, but I can't put the benefits above Marsyas and having 4 songs.

***It is worth noting, without Marcato, HM + VM will leave you shy of the magic haste cap if you don't have Ghorn & Whistle +1. Without either, 422/1024. With only Ghorn, 439/1024. Cap is 448/1024. With Marcato this is not an issue. This is important to take into consideration in how you prioritize the above, as this can be a significant decrease in performance. I would say this would be an issue for longer content like Dynamis and Odyssey. There will be a gap where you will have to ride non-capped magic haste until Marcato is off cooldown. Or if songs get dispelled and you need to re-apply w/o Marcato available.

Your position certainly isn't unreasonable. By having a single song slot that basically pulls the weight of 2.5 non-Marsayas songs, Marsayas and no Daurdabla is arguably more potent than Daurdabla and no Marsayas. One Honor March essentially replaces Advancing March, adds a second Minuet V near-equivalent, AND adds half of a Madrigal+Prelude. Example to illustrate this, assuming Song+8 (Honor March +4) and no Marcato/SV:

Marsayas w/ 3 songs (Honor+Victory March, Minuet 5) = Capped haste, 455 Atk, 58 Acc&Racc

Non-Marsayas w/ 4 songs (Victory+Advancing March, Minuet 4+5):
Capped haste, 424 Atk, 0 Acc&Racc

Now, Daurdabla does get an edge in being more flexible when you're moving beyond the "standard" March/Minuet/Madrigal selection and wanting an extra slot to do something like mix in a Carol, Dirge, Minne, Scherzo, whatever... But for the situations you'll likely be in the majority of the time, yeah, I can see the argument for Marsayas being more impactful than Daurdabla.


I think Carn is often a bit underrated when people say it's a "luxury" or "nice to have" item. It's a pretty huge luxury to have to sing less often in events where people are constantly moving (Dyna, Sheol A-C, Omen, etc.). The fewer times you have to herd cats to make sure everyone gets their rolls, the better. Greatly reduces the risk of someone missing a song, avoids downtime for your party members standing and waiting for songs (if you aren't singing while they fight) or your own downtime when you could be doing something else (DD/healing/enfeebling/sleeping/whatever), allows full-time use of a Marcato song (and can have NiTro up every time you sing, barring deaths)... That being said, I get the typical advice that it's the lowest priority of the 4. Still not a LOW priority though, Carn is fantastic.

Honestly, I'd maybe put Carn's practical utility even above Ghorn... Carn's perks could reasonably be argued as adding up to more value than +1 song strength (Ghorn versus the next best alternative of Linos w/ Songs+3). But Ghorn is indisputably BEST for potency, and being slightly under haste cap with HM+VM and no Ghorn is indeed a consideration. Couple that with it being so easy to obtain (process-wise) and relatively low cost with current dyna currency prices, and it's very understandable for someone to START with Ghorn just due to it being most easily obtained. Low hanging fruit, and you're never gonna be sorry to have the strongest possible songs.

But, like... a serious BRD will want 'em all ;) It's just a matter of prioritization and there are valid enough arguments for different orders. I got Ghorn first like so many BRDs, but I actually got Carn before Daurdabla. And I was still able to BRD just fine with that somewhat unorthodox order and having to make some trade-offs in song selection. And maybe someone with less access to a good Aeonic group (and not on a merc-heavy server like Asura) could struggle more with getting Marsayas and end up with the rest first, but they're still going to be plenty useful until they manage to get the Aeonic.

I think priority changes a lot depending on wether the BRD we're talking of is a mule or not, but my personal take on priority is:

Marsyas > Whistle+1 > Daurdabla = Gjallarhorn > Carnwenhan

Carn's main and only utility these days is fulltiming NiTro/Marcato, unless Carn allows you to do that it doesn't really give you much, especially nowadays that Carn is (quite regrettably!) not our best DPS option anymore, sigh.

Marsyas is THE game change for real.
Whistle+1 is also quite important imho because it's a solid boost that you can use regardless of the instrument, it works on Marsyas too ya know.

Daubla and Ghorn are in the same place and it's hard to tell which one is better.
There are situations where I'd rather take the +1 song from Ghorn and situations where I'd rather have weaker songs but 4 instead of 3.
So... it's hard to say.
But Ghorn is incredibly quick/fast to make, whereas Daurdabla is a bit more intense. Even if you have money to power through the HMP/Cinders stage, farming all those abyssites and mats from the previous stages is unavoidably going to take you some time.
Unless you merc everything and afk I suppose, that's an option if you're rich!



Edit: arguably the relevance of Carn changes according to the content you're doing. For Ambuscade or quick fights, meh. But for stuff like Segments having 12+ mins of SV instead of 5/6 changes a lot. Having to stop to sing songs 2 times instead of like 4+ also changes a lot. It makes the BRD's life easier for sure and this indirectly affects the performance of your group. But in General most of the times I'd still prefer having a BRD with full potency 4 songs rather than a BRD with slightly weaker 3 songs that last 10 mins. IN GENERAL. But yeah, it depends on the situation/content of course.

For the most part this is entirely true, I also wanted to bring up the fact that Carn was a huge piece of helping my group for odyssey. The difference between resinging songs and losing SV cost many fights (I was still learning to brd at the time so I wasn't entirely apprised to the CC/SV songs then reapply with NiTro during).

But the ability to keep that SV as long as possible, read: the entire duration of the fight scamming SV/CC vs. up to I believe 11-12 minutes, could be the difference for some groups. I agree Carn last but it's still an incredibly valuable piece.

All of that being said don't forget debuff duration with Carn is quite sizeable as well, Earth Threnody for Ongo, elegies for adds, lullabies during farms, etc.

Yeah I edited my original post.
Carn definitely makes a difference.
For content like Segments I'd probably rate Carn much higher (still below Marsyas though).

Not just segments, even for Odyssey Gaol Fights that last more than 6 minutes. I'd say all of the T3 bosses at Vengeance 15 for sure.
On T4, again, it doesn't make a difference.
And on the previous tiers neither. Well at least up to V15!



We can keep discussing this all we want but it still doesn't change the fact that eventually a BRD will have to get ALL of those items we mentioned.
At the same time, realistically, you can't get them all at the same time with a snap of your fingers, you'll have to set priorities and start from somewhere, right?
Some people will just avoid playing the job until they get all those items but I'm sure many others will want to play it before that, which is exactly why we're discussing our personal views on "priorities".

I recently finished getting my alt Daurdabla, Marsyas & Ghorn, and took it to Dynamis for the first time to get the clear (but I actually had to do songs instead of having him afk somewhere). It sucked not having carn.

Having to do those 5-7 songs again just to cover a minute or so whilst waiting for nitro to get back up is such a drag. I was also tanking on my main which probably made it more annoying.

I'm guessing empy+3 will help with this. the empy body will hopefully get a decent uplift on it's current song duration stat, and perhaps some +1 on songs increasing their duration. Perhaps they will make it so you don't need to make carn to be able to keep up nitro songs; making the job more accessible.

I think you would need to get quite a lot of that duration on the body to make that happen. Like at least +20% more and +1 all songs. It will probably push songs to like 10:30, so still only 30 sec to redo songs, which means you will need to start asap on cooldown. I think it will never be comfortable without Mythic.

Based on other gear I'd imagine it will be +2% duration from +1 to +2 and +2 to +3. I'd like to see a +1 to minuet in there to bring it up to the duration of the other songs.

You never know, they might have a curve ball in there like a new song. If not on the gear, perhaps on these dark relics that may or may not be introduced to the game. A mage version of HM perhaps (not that it would be as useful as HM, or another DD oriented song) or a defence focused multi-buff song. Or it could all be extremely minor and boring; especially with BRD already being pretty OP.

Thanks for all the comments, I will be playing on my main and will be farming everything except some of the harder aeonic stuff myself which is why I wanted to know what to do first do to limited time and funds.

It looks like the consensus isn't to make the daurdabla first, I'll keep chipping away at the trials, but for less gil than just the hmp trial I can get the +1 whistle, gjallarhorn and even pay for an entire aeonic clear if I wanted to do it that way. If I grind especially hard during the void watch campaign maybe I can get the the daurdabla as well.

I'll see how I like playing bard with those 3 items first before I look into a mythic, I have 0 progress towards the quests/ranks/etc., so it would be quite a ways out.

Seems like a reasonable approach. And yeah, Aeonic + Relic + whistle for less Gil than the HMP phase of Daurdabla is a pretty compelling reason to go for those as your first priority. If you end up really taking to BRD, then proceed to the Daurdabla and eventually Carn. You’ll definitely be capable with HM and two other max strength songs, and then you’ll see those little “ohhhh it sure would be nice to have Empy/Mythic for X situations” that might tempt you adding those to your bag of toys ;)

Can someone post there Macc Lullaby set? I'd like to think mine is good but trying to sleep those gears in Nyzul Isle is a pain in the ***.