Endgame Bard Equipment

[Mirya]

Alkalurops is still good for conserving inventory space, but that's the only appeal for BRD.

Alkalurops isn't really a even a big space saver for BRD... I'd still want to carry earth/terra's for my idle set, light/apollo's for cures, dark/pluto's for hMP, and Chanter's for March. The only space it would save is if I had the rest of the set of elemental staves to sing for each threnody. I don't, I just carry a fire staff for ice threnody, so no space is saved at all.

[Spekkio]

assuming kaeko's information on his LJ is right (comes with a large sample size iirc) alk only matches on par with HQ staves if your dchr is pretty inadequate. for a high caliber brd trying to sleep a colibri or something, i'd think that the HQ staff will offer consistently a 5 macc advantage over alk. i'll stick with my HQ staves.

[benny]

Do people really find Piper's Torque worth the inv slot when you have to carry Wind anyway for buffs? I guess we are talking about ideal setups, but the issue of inventory is something most of us have to consider I would think (I favor Goliard feet over Shadow for this reason also...). Also about Alkalurops, it does save a small bit of space by doubling as a Stoneskin piece, but I do agree that I wouldn't really bother to carry it around unless you worry about things like landing wind threnody.

[Kroot]

I wouldn't set your sites so high yet. Focus on a solid equipment build then once you get more experience decide how much gil you would like to invest in your brd.

As a endgame brd you will be in AOE range of some nasty moves while you apply songs. You also will be pulling and sleeping mobs /whm sometimes so a strong stoneskin and -dmg build will help save your life.

cheviot cape, jelly ring, stone gorget, suzaku sune-ate and darksteel set are some things to look in to.

[TheMuffinman]

Thanks again everyone, I now have a better idea of what I'm getting into. (lol)

[noodles355]

March is tiered, certain amounts of singing+wind skill get you more %haste out of it. Madrigal and Minuet are capped, it hardly matters what you wear for them. Prelude is unknown, the other songs are for the most part worthless.

Madrigal and Minuet are not naturally capped at 75. Minuet needs +12 Skill on top of base 450 and Madrigal needs +58 skill to cap.

Another reason for Singing Earring over Wind is you can use it for Harp songs aswell, so inv-1 from not carrying a string earring around. That said, the only song I use a harp for is Horde Lullaby.

I also agree with the last post about a defence set. My brd loses the most exp out of all my jobs hands down.

Also, This topic has your March tiers by skill. Very useful.

Also, Alka does not save yuo any inventory at all on brd unless you carry around all the staves for the threnodies.
You go from: Apollo's, Terra's, Dark, Chanter's
To: Alka, Light, Dark, Chanter's.
You'll still want to hold onto Light staff for Cures and Dark for hMP anyway.

[pchan]

Main: Appropriate HQ staff (+15% magic accuracy)

Prove it.

[Antithesis]

Shadow Coat
Singing Earring

Your golden beyond that imo.

[Bakthi]

Madrigal also benefits from a +skill build: it takes +58 over L75 base skill to cap it.

And Minuet IV takes +12, so if you don't have merits, you'll need 2-3 pieces of +skill gear to cap that too.

Shadow Coat is probably better than Jubbah for debuffs if you have enough CHR in other slots.

I have both, but my issue with using Shadow Coat for debuffs on BRD is that, often, I'm casting Lullaby when a large horde of mobs is beating the crap out of me. It scares me enough using the thing for enfeebling/dark spells on BLM, but it's such a space-and-effort-saver for BLM (assuming a slight willingness to compromise) that I couldn't pass it up.

Alkalurops is still good for conserving inventory space, but that's the only appeal for BRD.

The thing I want it for most is Stoneskin, really. At this point, total inventory is more of a concern that per-job inventory, and I'll never be able to get rid of Apollo's/Terra's anyway.

Edit:

Also, Alka does not save yuo any inventory at all on brd unless you carry around all the staves for the threnodies.
You go from: Apollo's, Terra's, Dark, Chanter's
To: Alka, Light, Dark, Chanter's.
You'll still want to hold onto Light staff for Cures and Dark for hMP anyway.

And you still want a Terra's for the damage reduction. Speaking of which, an "Oh shit" macro isn't a bad idea. Terra's Staff and Cheviot Cape at the very least. Mine has Marduk's Dastanas in it also. Darksteel gear is a possibility (depending on how crazy you want to get/how much BRD crap you already have). So is Jelly Ring, but obviously not always. It wouldn't be a terrible idea to idle in such a set, in fact.

[Hoshiku]

out of curiosity if you're not going for the 5/5 marduks for fast cast wouldn't you be just as well off with bard's roundlet instead of marduk's tiara? it seems like a lot of gil to spend on all those o ingots if you're not going 5/5 and roundlet is pretty easy to get (at least in my dynamis shell).

[Thorny]

Prove it.

HQ staffs are the accepted standard and give 15% m.damage, it's a reasonable assumption that they give 15% MACC as well. If you want alkalurops to be the new best, do a test with a reasonable sample size(1000+ casts per sample with several degrees of m.acc before weapon). Until then, staves are much easier to get and by most accounts better so alkalurops is a toy for slow/para and stoneskin.

[astura]

As for relic vr marduks, Marduks may allow some some more skill tier's to be broke but at the end of the day its just a difference of 2 singing and 1 chr in either direction. Both are the top 2 head pieces for buffing and debuffing.

[drwaffles]

Just so we're clear, HQ Staves give +15% damage - "+15% MAB" is a bit misleading.

[Thorny]

man, i'm retarded today, first the pole strap thing then this @___@ editted post

[Zosi]

Thorny, curious to see your proof that 2 CHR = 0.9 "skill". Is that instrument-specific skill, singing skill or some ratio of the two? Are you just assuming that 2 CHR = 1 M.acc and going from there, and if so, what's the relationship of M.acc and both types of skill? This was a major point of contention in the last BRD M.acc thread. Nobody was able to produce any solid testing, just unbased assertions or reasoning by analogy based on the BLM tests. However, I don't think it's safe to assume that song accuracy is the same as white/black magic due to two skills being used. I know my song accuracy certainly doesn't behave as if I nearly 500 magic accuracy on BLM or RDM.

[Thorny]

Thorny, curious to see your proof that 2 CHR = 0.9 "skill". Is that instrument-specific skill, singing skill or some ratio of the two? Are you just assuming that 2 CHR = 1 M.acc and going from there, and if so, what's the relationship of M.acc and both types of skill? This was a major point of contention in the last BRD M.acc thread. Nobody was able to produce any solid testing, just unbased assertions or reasoning by analogy based on the BLM tests. However, I don't think it's safe to assume that song accuracy is the same as white/black magic due to two skills being used. I know my song accuracy certainly doesn't behave as if I nearly 500 magic accuracy on BLM or RDM.

general assumption is that 1 skill = .9 m.acc for most skills and difference between jesters and astute for debuffs is negligible in practice, but everything as far as brd debuffs is more assumption than anything else.. like you said, nobody did any solid testing on brd debuffs.. the sets i posted are still the best though, barring anything being ridiculously far off of what common sense implies it is. My personal theory is that for debuffs 1/3 to 1/2 of your singing is added to whichever instrument you're using, resulting in a bit over 300 total skill converted to m.acc. This would fit pretty well with my observations, as I find elegy slightly easier to stick than RDM debuffs both using ideal setups.

[Thunder]

HQ staffs are the accepted standard and give 15% m.damage, it's a reasonable assumption that they give 15% MACC as well. If you want alkalurops to be the new best, do a test with a reasonable sample size(1000+ casts per sample with several degrees of m.acc before weapon). Until then, staves are much easier to get and by most accounts better so alkalurops is a toy for slow/para and stoneskin.

Actually, somebody's already made the tests you're talking about with sample sizes of 7k-12k casts, is that enough?

Nowadays the accepted value of MACC on HQ staves is +20 macc when under 50% magic acc, and +30 macc when over 50% magic acc. +20 macc is also the same as +20%.

Alkalurops will be +25-30 macc, with the added potency of +10 to a stat(should also be noted alka can be either 26, 27, 28, or 29 macc, too)

Tests were done by Lodeguy and tranlated by Robonosto. Links can be found here: http://kanican.livejournal.com/tag/scholar!

[Thorny]

7000+ cast sample sizes? The control test has a bit over 3000 while the 2 with staves have less than 2000 each. It shows that NQ staffs add about 20% stick rate in his test, and HQ add 30%, adding 10 elemental skill with a HQ staff adds about 5% m.hitrate while adding 10 skill without one adds about 3.5%. He interprets this data to mean that the effect of m.acc isn't linear, I think a better interpretation would be that the HQ staff is a % increase that compounds with your other sources of m.acc, especially given his margin of error.

[pchan]

HQ staffs are the accepted standard and give 15% m.damage, it's a reasonable assumption that they give 15% MACC as well.

All i see is "blabla analogy". HQ staff give 20 elemental resist so why wouldn't they give 20% accuracy ? And what is your magic accuracy ... Inbefore 200+0.9*76 by analogy..

If you want alkalurops to be the new best, do a test with a reasonable sample size(1000+ casts per sample with several degrees of m.acc before weapon). Until then, staves are much easier to get and by most accounts better so alkalurops is a toy for slow/para and stoneskin.

1000x silence on a pudding, 109 success with Alka, 105 with HQ staff. I got plenty of others.

[Thorny]

All i see is "blabla analogy". HQ staff give 20 elemental resist so why wouldn't they give 20% accuracy ? And what is your magic accuracy ... Inbefore 200+0.9*76 by analogy..




1000x silence on a pudding, 109 success with Alka, 105 with HQ staff. I got plenty of others.

A difference of 4 resists with no data on partial resists in 1000 casts, that's some serious testing accuracy there!