You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

I use Magian Attk stave's (have casting time -14% on them) as part of my fast cast set. This makes the FC better than what is mentioned in the guide. Its a lot of work, since its multiple stave's, so unless you have other jobs to use it on, or your a die hard fast cast bard like myself, they are not worth making.

Edit: I forgot to mention there is a strap with 1% FC that combine is an extra 15% fast cast.

Changed it, to Loquacious ear and Iaso boots so still capped potency but 3% less FC

This is already mentioned in the song precast text, not in the fast cast for sub spells.

whats the best way of keeping track for when songs will wear on other parties i find the Timers plugin don't work well as it shows all the buffs on me and wont overwrite its own timers based on person/last song.

I also think its handy its made very clear in the guide that 3-4 songs bards have to wait a good 30 seconds if wishing to ghorn a harp song (with the same song at least)

The amount you have to wait depends on remaining duration. You can't override a song with itself until the duration dips below 2 minutes.

Daurdabla has +25% base duration for the 90(that's +30 secs) and 30% for the 99(36 secs).

If you have any other duration bonus gear on, it'll boost that further so that's why it's advised that you don't use duration enhancing gear with daurdabla'ed songs.

Of course, if you have the prebuff time, it's best to put up a temp song and overwrite with a good one right of the bat, but pending the situation, that isn't always possible and it's good to know your options so you can pick the best one or fix issues when something *** up.

Timers shows each time you cast, even if it overwrite with a new song, I still have the old ones, all of them. That can be annoying but I find it's useful for when someone runs out of range, separate parties or I'm dealing with multiple song cycles. You just have to keep a closer eye on things and if the old info isn't applicable anymore, just watch the latest one which will be on the bottom of the list since they are sorted by remaining duration.

There really isn't any way for timers to know what party the song was cast on, it's possible they could make it read the log or change it so it would list the timer with the party leader's name instead of "self" but that would require the windower people to add some extra options. It might be possible for someone with some LUA experience to make a songhelper addon that would be able to do all this and probably some more awesome stuff. Just have to find someone willing to do it. ^^

So... I have a stupid question. How do you get more songs on brd?
I am not a brd by nature so I dont know this stuff. I just see people calling out for 3 or 4 song brds all the time and I don't know anything about brd or what gives more songs. does Langeleik give more songs for that type of song or just boost the effects? Are relic and emp the only ways to get more songs?

By using the brd Empyrean Harp.
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Daurdabla_(Level_90) (3 songs)
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Daurdabla_(Level_99) (4 songs)

The complication is that any song you sing with it, is gimp due to the lack of a "song +X", so you have to have a gimp song or overwrite it.

the timers plugin is what I use, and the duration shows the first played of any song you do. so if you have 2 DD parties receiving the same songs, lets say 2 march and 2 minuets, and you play in this order, PT1: Victory March, Advancing March, Valor Minuet V, Valor Minuet IV. Drop and switch party, PT2: Victory March, Advancing March, Valor Minuet V, Valor Minuet IV, Mages Ballad III, Mages Ballad II. your duration timers should say

V March - 2:20
A March - 2:26
Minuet V - 2:32
Minuet IV - 2:38
Ballad 3 - 3:18
Ballad 2 - 3:24

so your top 4 timers should notify you when your songs on PT1 are ending. and since you played everything back to back you should be able to just continue playing all of your songs like you did the first time. Even if you are throwing placebo songs in and overwriting wit minuets your first 2 marches should be on the timer of the very first song you played, so you should know when to re-sing.

Psycooo - You get 1 song for being a brd, you gain another song for having an instrument, you can gain an additional song song by using LVL 90 daurdabla and 2 additional songs for a LVL 99 daurdabla.

LUA add on would be bad arse esp if it could handle

3 + 4 song brds
fake buffs
JAd Songs (with and without fakes up front)
4 songs where you want to wait 30 seconds for the ghorn over writes
times where you just cba and harp songs 3+4


and then show you in a nice form just the 3-4 Songs that matter on the both parties, dont think it would even need to worry about Ballads. Im pretty sure most non brds dont understand what a *** pain in the arse playing brd decently is today.

I admit that it'd be rather complicated to set up but it's possible to do the things you mention. Options would have to be rather advanced since many people rely on various things to buff multiple pt's.

It would be able to figure out who has what buffs by watching packets or the log(it would look for messages such as "Playerx receives the effect of march" to ensure the buff took effect first) and taking your current gear calculating the duration and using rules to figure out what would override what based on who all it hits. So long as your gear always swaps right, it'd be able to correctly calc it and make fairly accurate guesses as to what songs everyone has.

Now... Just to figure out who is going to make all this!

gotta admit that sounds like too much to bother with. If you have even 1 timer counting down on screen it should be fairly easy to know when songs are going to wear. Most of the time I'm looking at Nightingale/Troubadour recast and know the duration of my fully buffed songs. Then again I don't bother with 90% of the add-ons and plug-ins and prefer keeping my screen uncluttered when i play.

Yes we need a taker on this project ;; show your love for bards you want so bad on Delve runs

Is there a way to change the position of just the party buff timers? I would love to have this next to my alliance member list and keep my self timers to the left side of screen so I can distinguish what is wearing on whom at a glance.

So considering the new BRD gloves have 7% Fast Cast and you can get a -4% song casting (likely to go even higher) augment on it, should we conclude than they are the new best precast item?
Paired with... uhm... I suppose Sheikh Manteel?

Before this I think the best combination was Marduk+1 body + Marduk+1 hands, no?

my songs (with latent ring) fire at 30 % cast - that means im at 70/85 % cast right?

The displayed % on the cast bar can be somewhat inaccurate between lag and just that it's going by too fast. It's best to just calculate it out. But with 80% fastcast(this is the cap) an 8 sec song will go off in 1.6 secs.

I'm not at my home computer so I can't test it and say what % it should be at on the bar but it should be lower than that.


Seems like it. Though even without the augment, it's just one below.

Sheikh manteel 13% SC
Marduk body +1 11% FC
Marduk hand +1 7% SC
Marduk set bonus (2 parts) 3% FC
New gloves: 7% SC +4 Aug = 11% SC

So Sheikh + new gloves =24%
Marduk combo = 21%

The only advantage to the marduk combo is that it has 14% normal fastcast which work on non-songs so if you can cap without that 3% then you're better off inventory wise with Marduk.

Lovely to have so many options though.

mmm mine is more like 4 sec cast (and its with your xml Sek) and now and again with lag etc that goes to a 8 sec cast .. well somethings wrong @@

You will definitely be adding the Gendewitha Gages to your inventory for the fast cast along with marduk jubbah +1 for 18% FC on all non-song spells. Gendewitha Gages can replace Marduk Dastanas +1 at -3% song spell casting time or higher. All I'm seeing is that someone was able to get -4% not that it caps at -4%, so these gloves could potentially be even better. And, if that is so we could see capped casting time on songs w/o Minstrel ring or /rdm. Would be better to carry Magian dmg staves than -hp gear any day.

the legs as well should have the potential to get the same augments as the rest of the set and can replace orvail for songs as soon as they have even -1% song casting time augment.

Oh Gendewitha are not song casting time but actual fastcast with an augment of song casting, cool. ^^ Didn't catch that.


Link me your current one with pastebin and I can look at it.

Updated some sets;
PDT/PDT alt
Idle
Song precast
Fastcast
Added an Ideal MDT and song precast set

I believe the Debuff set needs soothsayer now in the optimum set whoever had that set in their profile.

agree soothsayer is best now for macc - but what will it enable us to do that we couldn't before?

just more consistent debuff rate and replace all the Magian staves for a single one. The game imo is at a fairly stale point for the people who were already beating Delve bosses before the recent gear updates. All the gear is easily obtained and upgraded and is becoming overkill for the content available. Our only hope is that they release new delve bosses for Yorcia and Marjami that live up to a decent challenge.

Am i missing something here?

Soul Voice doubles potency for all applicable songs. like march. magic haste cap is 43.75%

Langeleik vmarch (15.8 x 2 = 31.6) + amarch (12.6 x 2 = 25.2) = 56.8

Ghorn(99) Vmarch(17.5 X 2 = 35%) + Amarch (14.3 x 2 = 28.6). = 63.6

you dont need haste. so why do DDs *** for it lol

with marcato.

Langeleik vmarch (15.8 x 1.5 = 23.7) + amarch (12.6 x 1 )= 12.6
) = 36.3

Ghorn(99) Vmarch(17.5 X 1.5 = 26.25) + Amarch (14.3 x 1 = 14.3). = 40.3

You're not missing anything. Most people have no clue about the workings of haste/march and the different haste caps. I constantly see people asking for haste when they have double sv march + embrava up >_>

To be fair though, it starts to get complicated and annoying timing buffs around when things are up and down (you can't keep marcato and sv songs up all the time) so it's easier to just keep things up. If you're limited on the number of songs you have, you can always restrict yourself to one march during sv and make sure hastes are up.

Edit: Thinking about it seem to remember mathing it out before and coming to the conclusion you can't cap Magic Haste with Marches and Marcato, only with Soul Voice. I also kinda misread what you were saying at first, but I'm gonna leave this up anyways as there's an obscene amount of brds around that think for some reason using marcato caps your magic haste with marches. It doesn't. Save it for Minuet if you have 3/4 song, or ballad 3 if you don't. (Running with 2 4 song brds, I personally save my Marcato for ballad 3 on my whms). Or use it if you really don't trust your mages to haste, but brd is a pretty lazy job and that's something you can help out with yourself.

Unless my understanding of the way songs are increased during Marcato and SV, these should be accurate.

Victory March gives a base of 96/1024. Advancing March gives 64/1024. Each tier of march gives 16/1024. Magic haste cap is 448/1024. For the purpose of this post, March +5 is assuming Horn+AF3, March+4 is Langeliek+Af3, March+3 is Piccolo+AF3, etc, you get the idea.

Normal marches(this is counting Victory + Advancing without any marcato buffs and sv):

March+5X2 = 320/1024
March+4X2 = 288/1024
March+3X2 = 256/1024


How much haste a Marcato'd Victory March gives per tier:

March+5 = 176 + 88(marcato bonus) = 264/1024
March+4 = 160 + 80(marcato bonus) = 240/1024
March+3 = 144 + 72(marcato bonus) = 216/1024


How much haste a Macarto'd V-March and Advancing march would give:

March+5 = 264 + 144 = 408/1024
March+4 = 240 + 128 = 368/1024
March+3 = 216 + 112 = 328/1024

I'm sick and my brain is a little addled, so feel free to correct my math.

Soul Voice'd double marches:

March+5X2 = 640/1024
March+4X2 = 576/1024
March+3X2 = 512/1024

Soul Voice'd Victory March(all these can cap [or near cap in the case of +3] magic haste with either Haste Spell or Embrava up):

March+5 = 352/1024
March+4X2 = 320/1024
March+3X2 = 288/1024


Obviously, any of those numbers lower than 448 need either a Haste or Embrava to cap magic haste.

I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure each piece has a maximum of -4% Song spellcasting. This is assuming you are using +2 stones.

Personally I use it mostly for idle gear since it has high def/magic evasion. Abyssea gear + Sha'ir/Sheikh gear hits cap pretty well while singing. Post a gearset with augs if you're building one, I'd like to see what you're shooting for

I don't use an Arka, but Felibre's Dague (dagger dropped by Azdaja has -6% too. Helps to use that + Genbu's Shield for the -PDT.

Aoidos' Matinee (neck) has -3% as well plus increases song effect duration!