Bard

Trippyhippy

Trippyhippy

est. 1981
Adventurer
Joined
Dec 15, 2004
Messages
4,152
Age
45
Location
Knoxville, Tennessee
So I played 40 levels of bard about 3 years ago. Now I'm looking to pick it back up. Macro sets, gear suggestions and any other general advice is all welcome. I mean, I know it can't be that hard, Blazn did it.

Also, to anyone that might suggest it, I refuse to use any plug-ins for window including Draw distance and even the TP plug-in.
 
dist plguins although helpful for beginners, kind of negate themselves anyways, after a while you know what dist to be at just by repetition alone.

brd is very easy and fun, gl with it.

gear really doesnt matter until later, just keep songs up and debuff and youll do great.
 
Biggest thing i can think of is to get the HQ instruments on the crafted ones. Their fairly cheep as is
 
It's real easy to get back into it. Just remember to put your mouth on the horn and blow. Should be familiar enough for ya ;)
 
The only advice I can give you really is to not skimp on your instruments. The +1 and +2 versions of them do make a large difference. Wiki is great for the bcnms/isnms that r/e ones drops from which will save you quite a bit of gil, and there are some annoying quests like the one from the guy in the Steaming Sheep (or w/e) restaurant in Port Bastok and one from the bard taru in Windy Waters that will lead to good instruments.

Earth staff macroed into elegy helps. A lot. I'll say the same about light staff and lullaby/horde lullaby.

If you are willing to put the work into opo-opo crown (and willing to pop a pamama every so often) it is definitely worth it in my opinion until better alternatives (ie: skill + gear or the turban) arise.

Can't think of much else off the top of my head, but if you have questions about macros or gear or anything specific, PM me or send me a /tell anytime. Good luck!
 
I have the highest quality insturment for every song. I have a full set of elemental staves and when I get to 51, I will add them to my macros first thing.

More along the lines of what do I sing for different party setups. All I've ever paid attention to before is wether or not I have ballad.

Which chat filters should I leave open?

The Alt macro set is what I consider to be the 1st page and ctrl the 2nd page, which macros do you use in what places?
 
Trippyhippy said:
I have the highest quality insturment for every song. I have a full set of elemental staves and when I get to 51, I will add them to my macros first thing.

More along the lines of what do I sing for different party setups. All I've ever paid attention to before is wether or not I have ballad.

Which chat filters should I leave open?

The Alt macro set is what I consider to be the 1st page and ctrl the 2nd page, which macros do you use in what places?
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Min, Mad, March. 3 Biggest melee songs and used depending on the setup. Ballad you already know.Chat filters.... As long as you have stuff for you off then your fine. Elegy and Horde/Foe Lullaby are a given.
 
As for chat filters, I have a ton filtered out because the character my bard is on is mage exclusive, so I may not be the best to advise you on that. Very seldom do I change filters unless a fight requires me to look for something very specific. I'm sure for a non-mage job the things I have filtered would drive you batty.

I actually have two full pallettes of bard macros which is probably more than I need, as many of them I don't use often, but they are there for speed's sake more than anything (because of instrument swaps). The one I use most often is:

Alt 1:Ballad 2:Ballad II 3:Blade Madrigal 4:Minuet IV 5:Victory March 6:Sheepfoe Mambo 7: Dragonfoe Mambo 8:Horde Lullaby 9:Lullaby 0:Finale

And my Ctrl line is what I use mostly when I'm /whm or for convenient casting when I'm /nin, and I change some of them depending on the need/status effects involved:

Ctrl 1:Ni 2:Ichi 3:Cure III 4:Silena 5:Regen 6:PaeonV 7:Poisona 8:(Either a barspell or a Carol here, usually a barspell) 9:Erase 0:Stoneskin

Then my other set is Ctrl line Etudes (for specific stat increases & RNGs) and Alt 1: Requiem VI 2: Carnage Elegy and then the rest threnodies and a pull macro.

I'm sure there are bards with a lot less, it just depends on preference I guess. I don't like having to frig around manually swapping gear, so even if I hardly use them I like to have them there for when the occasion arises.

What the party needs is really based on the party. Most canon styles parties I bard for want March and Minuet. At the colibri camp where you can't really eat food without having it ganked, I do March and Madrigal. On certain fights you'll need extra evasion, and double mambo. It is really situational. If you're in doubt, go ahead and ask the party what they want/need. You'll get to the point where you just know.

Oooh! And something else I forgot. Yigit Body. If you don't have one for another job and you intend to take bard up, you should get one. No chr+ on it, but the songcasting time is noticably much less. I swap Chr+ Errant in for short cast enfeebs like lullaby and elegy, but I'm wearing yigit body for almost everything otherwise (unless you have the good fortune of having access to sha'ir manteel).
 
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Zyndara said:
Oooh! And something else I forgot. Yigit Body. If you don't have one for another job and you intend to take bard up, you should get one. No chr+ on it, but the songcasting time is noticably much less. I swap Chr+ Errant in for short cast enfeebs like lullaby and elegy, but I'm wearing yigit body for almost everything otherwise (unless you have the good fortune of having access to sha'ir manteel).
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This > Yigit Body
 
Correct but those spells are ridiculously easy to land.
My brd gets resisted about once every 3-4 hours on elegy or lullaby with about +15 in chr gear as a mithra previously or lower. (it's higher now but only cause of AF)
In all honesty I'm still waiting to find something that actually will resist a brd song less often than that. If it wasnt for the fact that you're a taru and already have too much mp on ya by default I'd have recommended mp+ gear help being a backup healer. I've main healed without any noticable difference while a whm on colibri was weakened and reduced to haste/regen monkey so yes MP+ gear is viable on brd during later levels for a bit if the monsters are squishy enough and the tank is good.

Too much mp gear is a bad thing as well since most rdm wont remember to or think to refresh you to let you support them better. Your max Mp should only be as high as you can normally regenerate it. if you have too much to regenerate from ballad/refresh then invest in even more chr or skill+ gear.

Try to see if your mages will let you be on -na duty for non tanks to help conserve thier mp . While you can cover the tanks too if you happen to be mid song it gets kinda annoying trying to silena a ninja quickly.

Do you have chanters staff? That can improve the +atk on your minuets if you X amount of singing/wind skill as there are tiers of skill that you can have to give more of a boost as you go up.

Pulling is pretty basic on brd. get up shadows or stoneskin for relative safety when you've casted your songs and elegy something. once its back at camp try to lullaby it right on top of the previous monster so that the fighting continues undisrupted with skilled players.

Minstrels rings seems like a nice investment. I've not had the oppurtunity to buy one yet and mostly because i've not calculated how much hp->mp convert gear I need to activate it but it is very useful for cutting down on cast times for areas of high competition. When you have a good party they should only be limited by how fast you can bring fluffy things to murder and every bit of time saved getting to and out of camp helps.

Madrigal: if you see people using sushi or that are going to use it chuck the instrument back in the moghouse. The only exceptions might be flash happy puks, thf mobs or mamool ja in general.

Minuet: the bread and butter of most parties. they should already be able to hit often enough for madrigal to not be needed so then you resort to minuet to boost thier attack and have them make the most of thier hits.

March: the 3rd DD song that you will use. I generally sing it when the mobs have aoe slow(spiders) to help the nin tanks keep shadows active and maintain hate. once you get to merit lv this song is more useful imo. by 75 or 70+ technically since they fight the same mobs from then on as the 75 players everyone should have or be getting the gear/merits to hit as hard as they possibly can while being accurate leaving you the main option of just making em do it faster.
 
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Nugotugo said:
This > Yigit Body
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Hmmm. Take a look at what you quoted again (bolded for what I guess you missed):

Zyndara said:
Oooh! And something else I forgot. Yigit Body. If you don't have one for another job and you intend to take bard up, you should get one. No chr+ on it, but the songcasting time is noticably much less. I swap Chr+ Errant in for short cast enfeebs like lullaby and elegy, but I'm wearing yigit body for almost everything otherwise (unless you have the good fortune of having access to sha'ir manteel).
Click to expand...

Not everyone has 14 or 15 mil gil for the manteel. I sure as hell don't.
 
Unless you're going to be using brd in big endgame fights, NQ staves are fine for exp, you'll rarely see resists even with NQ. Sha'ir Manteel is better than Yigit body, but not 10 million gil better; Yigit is definitely a great body piece to have.

Bard is the cheapest job to 75 easily, I wore my crafting apron to 50 then put on my gaudy harness until errant body. That body piece off the NM in sea serpent's grotto is good too if you get that. As long as you have the HQ instruments(the +2's are completely worthless for the most part), then most of the rest of your gear doesn't really matter. MP rings are a good buy since you won't need that much charisma, same for earrings if you already have them. Keep your AF hands/legs until sha'ir at least(nothing else is really good, I wore +mp gear until AF); upgrade them to AF+1 if you're going to do endgame on brd otherwise don't bother. Head is pretty much useless until Opo crown, I wore a hairpin. Back and waist are really simple, for back it's jester's cape pretty much forever, for waist it's Corsette/+1 until 60 then gleeman's belt forever.

As for macro's, Zyndara already covered a bunch, but here's some more. Most parties are going to be minuet/madrigal, unless everyone is eating sushi then do double minuet or minuet/march. The things to make sure that you have is Minuet, March, Madrigal, Ballad, Elegy, both lullaby's and finale. Threnody is good if your party is doing magic bursts, but that's not very common anymore; requiem is nice, but not really needed and becomes a pain to land later on.

Pull with elegy, if the mob is a mage-type that casts spikes, pull with finale so they'll be gone when the melee engage.
 
Nugotugo said:
This > Yigit Body licks balls and is a waste of money(for amatuer bards that need a shorter song delay).
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Fixed!

Just stack up on CHR and mp until you get to your AF years then after that you'll be into it enough again to pick your gearz what you think is best. Also I recommend getting the singing and wind earrings but they are pricey but there also lvl 30. :D
 
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