Mousai Gear

Does Mousai +1 set have any utility? Or is it just a placeholder until more solid effect/duration gear is acquired? The price of the pieces on AH lead me to believe there may be use for them.

It's the best for each specific song they boost.
Technically not really the best in the case of Head, potency is the same provided by Empy+3 (through Set bonus) but with Mousai+1 you at least get a boost in duration.

specific song macro pieces is all I have ever used it for

The primary reason I ask is because the only one I actually attempted to use was for Threnody, and my Dark Threnody on Aminon was weaker/shorter because of it.

Then it has to be a user error or an issue in your lua. The Threnody +1/2 extends the duration and potency, not shortens it.

Are you certain you didn't use a Dark Threnody II with SV Nitro initially, and then overwrote it with a SV non-Nitro Threnody? SV songs can overwrite each other of the same type (even if the song you're overwriting has a longer duration), so if you did that, your second cast of Threnody would have a shorter duration than the first cast. I have seen a couple Bards do this on Aminon after they sings songs; They scramble to get their Aminon songs on and then are scared that they might have missed Threnody with Nitro, so they sing it twice and end up overwriting the long duration version with the shorter version. This causes the Threnody to fall off very quickly before Aminon dies, and then you can't put it back on without a SV reset, which is usually a wipe. Very common BRD brainfart.

As others have said, the Mousai +1 pieces all remain the "best" for their specific song, at least in song+ value. They're just somewhat more niche songs (Etude, Threnody, Carol, Minne, Mambo) than the ones that get their similar boost from Empy gear (Mad Min March Ballad Scherzo) or AF gear (Lullaby, Paeon). Can easily see the effect of 3/5 of the Mousai songs with /checkparam, and for Carols you can check your elemental resist on the equipment menu to verify.

For Threnody, it either lands or it doesn't - there's no variance in the duration based on a partial resist or anything like that. Threnody+ gear increases both the potency of the resistance down effect, AND the song duration. Base duration is 60 seconds, plus 6 additional seconds for each Song+1 (so, Mousai+1 head adds 12 seconds to the duration).

Another possibility for what might have happened to Galkapryme here:
Did your Threnody set happen to remove any other pieces of song duration gear? Like, maybe you swapped out an empy body, AF feet, Inyanga legs? That would make a difference, losing any of those pieces would be a reduction greater than the +12 sec gained from Mousai+1.

If that's not it, sounds like you might have overwritten a Threnody with a shorter one like Buukki said, or maybe just an issue with a macro/LUA and gear is not properly swapping in for midcast. Song+ gear does need to be equipped at midcast, so be sure it's in there and not just in for precast and then removed before the song goes off.

Set probably just doesn't combine the other song buff gear and you end up singing in just the mousai and whatever other gear you have on at the time.

Check your sets.

This is patently wrong. Song potency is determined by the value during midcast. Test it yourself. Checkparam in idle, then cast Minuet with Gjallarhorn precast and Daurdabla midcast and checkparam. Compare to the value with Daurdabla precast and Gjallarhorn midcast.

You might want to re-read that quote.


I mean, threnody is on mousai body so...yeah...

OP's question is, as usual, poorly explained. Threnody from mousai body will have lower duration, necessarily, because you're dropping empy body. It will, however, be more potent.

If OP thinks it was somehow less potent, I'd love to know how he determined that. If it was significantly shorter (more than like 30 seconds), it means he *** up the nitro or something else went wrong with his sets.

The real answer to the question is yes, all the mousai pieces have value. For casting their respective songs.

Even turban. Turban gives +2 stat, empy set bonuses gives +1. Unless it's your 5th piece of the set (miracle cheer?), it's fewer stats.

No...the first cast was S/V + NiTro. I didn't cast it again until it wore. To that point, however, I have to go by the debuff addon timer, and cannot confirm its accuracy. So you are saying the Mousai Body +1 is stronger in terms of duration than the Empy Body +3 with Song Duration +14%?

Why do you care about duration over potency on a threnody.

I'll double check that. I actually DID have that happen previously with other songs before I noticed "set_combine" wasn't articulated.

Honestly, I've only been playing BRD for a lil over a month, but have only been using it in Sortie a few times. I was just told to put up Dark Thren II under SV and I did. It was noticed though, that it wore a lil faster than expected. My gearswap had Mousai Body +2 swapped in for Thren songs.

It's misleading. "Song+ equipment shouldn't be removed between precast and midcast" is what he's trying to say but it's worded in a way that cursory reads could easily get the wrong thing from.

Just ran out and did a test. No NiTro, no SV.

Fili Body +3 = 80 second Thren.
Mousai Body +3 = 90 second Thren.

Guess my issue was some other lua problem or, I suppose, possible overcast. Though I don't remember that being the case.

Are you casting Threnody in your song duration/enfeebling set, or mistakenly using a high macc one? Showswaps can easily tell you

Either there's no mousai body +3 or I'm having a stroke.

If you're talking about on aminon, he has some amount of resistance ranks against dark element that will reduce the duration of the threnody by some percentage. There is also the possibility of a resist that reduces duration to 1/2 of what it should be.