brd... skills vs. chr

[Sirelrohir]

I was talking to a friend of mine today and we started talking about brd. Well, I have always been under the impression that for brd, u wanted as much CHR as possible. She told me today that this was not the case and that singing, wind, and string skills are alot better. So, for the sake of discussion, i decided to post here to find out what people think. Whats better for brd, chr gear or ability (singing, string, wind etc) gear?

 

[Elemmire]

I always figured it was like Enfeebling Magic. Skill = better chance to stick and the CHR = better effect or duration.

 

[Bajaratt]

I was talking to a friend of mine today and we started talking about brd. Well, I have always been under the impression that for brd, u wanted as much CHR as possible. She told me today that this was not the case and that singing, wind, and string skills are alot better. So, for the sake of discussion, i decided to post here to find out what people think. Whats better for brd, chr gear or ability (singing, string, wind etc) gear?

Skill is generally better than +stat gear. I think the approximate conversion is 2 stat = 1 skill, or something like that; but skill definitely provides a bigger impact than flat stats.

 

[Bigboy]

Skill is almost always going to be better than a raw stat. In the case of skill levels, you gain both accuracy and effectiveness with that skill, eg: Axes, singing, parry, elemental.

However, after a point the Skill is not needed to insure a spell lands and so you want to boost its effectiveness via the raw stat instead. This is not as noticable as BRD, but you would deffinately see it on BLM.

 

[Makelith]

I don't really play brd much (Brd = lvl 15) so i dont know if closer tward end-game stuff brds only use one instrment. But it seems to me that if your macroing in different instruments you dont want all gear giving +wind instrument when your using a harp. Just seems that youd want all the + for both instruments as you can get. But if you only use one type of instrument then yeah, Skill > Base stat.

 

[Bigboy]

I don't really play brd much (Brd = lvl 15) so i dont know if closer tward end-game stuff brds only use one instrment. But it seems to me that if your macroing in different instruments you dont want all gear giving +wind instrument when your using a harp. Just seems that youd want all the + for both instruments as you can get. But if you only use one type of instrument then yeah, Skill > Base stat.

If you are macroing an istrument, you might as well be macroing in 4 other things with it. But in general you will be using wind instruments nearly the entire time. And anything with +Singing skill is always a safe bet.

 

[Vilurum]

CHR is nothing but debuff resists. Skill is buff/debuff potency (if it can vary, of course: some things have fixed potency such as ballad or finale, and practically everything's potency is capped at 75 anyway) and also debuff resists.

This is, to my understanding, the opposite of how RDM debuffs work (where the MND or INT appropriately, affects the potency and resists, and the enfeebling skill only affects the resists).

Without going and publicizing all my common knowl... er, secrets, here's the general idea:

No skill or CHR, worst resists. (Duh.)
Pure skill with no CHR, pretty bad resists.
Pure CHR with no skill, moderate resists. You see this one pretty often, and it's ... okay, but ...
Balance of CHR and skill, fewest resists.

Reasonable rule of thumb is just to go with the bigger number in any given equip slot, or pick skill if there's a tie (or even if CHR wins but only slightly). That should get you a reasonable balance. There's more CHR gear than skill gear so it's kinda hard to get too much skill and too little CHR. I mocked up a theoretical pure singing/wind skill build for every available slot but body (sorry Minstrel's Coat), and still managed to get a perfectly reasonable +40 CHR on there from equipment alone. Without HQs. (Yes, it's possible to have much much more CHR if you focus purely on that. See above though, it doesn't work as well.)

Just to state the obvious, string skill does zilch when you're using a wind instrument, wind skill does zilch when you're using a string, and both do zilch if for some harebrained reason you're mainjob BRD and not using an instrument at all. (Or if you're subbing BRD, in which case the lack of instrument isn't so harebrained seeing as you *can't* use them.) So don't factor the "other" skill (whichever one you're not using) into your skill totals.