I'm Going to Rant for a Second...Follow

If you've leveled to BRD and are doing/wearing any of the following, please rethink your job choice and GTFO:

1. wearing a Moldavite Earring (Magic ACCURACY help us... Magic ATTACK BONUS does jack sh*t for Bard)... if you're wearing said earring in an Odin fight I reserve the right to smack you up the side of the head with my Moogle Rod.

2. using a Monster Signa... and no elemental staves. At level 75. In a merit party. Doing that means I *will* swap from my THF onto my BRD and run your crappy geared arse out of my merit camp (after your party comes and camps on top of MINE).

3. wearing Mountain Gaiters. At 75. In said Odin battle. See point #1.

4. Star Necklace, Bird Whistle at 75. I'm just not going to waste my energy. -.-;

It's not difficult to gear your BRD correctly for cheap, c'mon now. The Odin BRD didn't bother me too much, since I didn't see it until after the fight, but the merit BRD... Every time a gimp BRD pulls in merit parties, Altana kills a Moogle.

Yes it is. If you don't have a Wind Torque, you're not taking the job seriously. Which is understandable, because most people level it for easy merits. But don't say it's "not that bad".

im often asked to go brd for merit pts.. and thats even when I say i have a black belt monk and all that crap for my other jobs.. but NO!

"brd plz". I reserve to right to come however i want! (i use a star necklace! i go to pts as brd because im asked not because i want to!)

(I split this up because I didn't want Xellith to think it was directed at him. It comes with a different tone and I'd rather not get crossed wires.)

I agree with Etain though, I am tired of seeing half-assed BRD's run around with thrown together gear that seems to have no real point. Most of the sh*t I see BRD's wear throw me for a real wonder, especially when, had they worn nothing in certain paticular slots, I wouldn't have questioned it at all.

What really drives me up the wall though, and makes me want to emo every time I see one of them, is that every - single - bard - relic - owner on Diabolos is like this. Not a single one of them takes their job seriously. It's like, they were handed relic's before CoP came out, when Osode and Dalmatica was a big thing, and they just stopped upgrading gear. It makes me cringe every time I see one of them walk by.

BRD is not a hard job, nor is it difficult to come across really good gear. In most cases, it may just drop to you because you've got little to no competition. So you'd figure these end-game relic bards would have better gear (we aren't talking about the Bard's who just hit 75). But for whatever reason, they don't.

Do I wonder why the other BRD's on Diabolos wear odd equipment now? Not at all - even if by chance there were some committed bards out there on Diabolos, they have some pretty sh*tty leaders to follow.

And if your on Diabolos and feel a bit butt-hurt (especially any relic owners) about what I just said, I suggest you go thru your equipment very carefully. No Bard is perfect (even me) and there is always room for improvement. If you want advice, I got it. If you want criticism, I've got that too.

If I ever play BRD again (only on very rare occasions) then yes it's going to be wearing a star necklace - because I basically sold my gear for it and only ever play it as a very rare desperately needed measure. It also has melody earring+1s and if I ever get them off AH it'll have heaven's rings as well... reason being - I'm 75BST and nuts about that, so I do have a lot of HQ CHR gear, but I'm not keeping a wind torque around for a job I barely play and if I do ever play it I'm only sticking ballad on BLMs anyhow.

I also never merit on BRD so it's not as if I levelled the job for easy merits - I levelled it long long before the whole "BRD must pull chain bazillion and you suck if you can't pull colibri out of your butt while farting tunes up against 10 other parties in the same camp" phenomenon and that was pretty much the reason I retired the job in the end. My LS leader knows I took the decision to downgrade my gear on it and they were OK with that.

While I agree with what you're saying about progression, I do cut people slack when I gauge their gear. If they're geared relatively well/intelligently and have like, 1 wtf piece, I'll cut them some slack and figure they're a fairly new BRD and still working on their gear.

However, when you have no skill gear at all and are trying to sleep mobs in pure CHR gear and a freaking Monster Signa... NO. Just no. You're an idiot and deserve to be treated as much. NQ Light/Earth staves are fairly cheap (checking FFXIAH real quick... on Fenrir, Light Staff is a whopping 22k, and Earth Staff is 26k... a Monster Signa is ~40k, so by selling that you could by 1 staff and half the cost of the other...) so there's absolutely no excuse not to have them. C'mon now.

Likewise, at 75, Moldavite Earring, Bird Whistle, and Mountain Gaiters? I can find no other reasoning other than 1)too lazy to gear your BRD or 2) too stupid to figure out how to gear it right. My odds are on #1 though.

My "End Game" gear guide exists for a reason- there are MULTIPLE acceptable options in there, along with suggested gear sets to build upon/base your gear on. If you read this forum even somewhat regularly, there is no reason to gear your BRD like you just bought your account off Ebay unless you are 100% lazy.

(I'm getting the same error on my website as you are- sent a message to my website admin, hopefully he'll get it fixed in a timely manner; I have a huge update planned!)

It also goes both ways. If I come to a low-number event on my BRD, and it's well-geared and I'm really paying attention and keeping the traffic moving, then the melee must do the same.

It bugs the living hell out of me if we get to the boss at an event and the melee are asked to wait until they have all been healed and have buffs before engaging, and they don't listen, pull a Leeroy and then we all die. The other night we hit Cerb on floor 80 of Nyzul Isle, time was slightly short but we still had time for the kill. Melee panicked, ran off with yellow HP and missing half of my SV buffs, and engaged.

If they'd waited for 30seconds, they would have had SV Min/March and full hp, and we would have won easily. Instead, Cerb kicked their asses and then ate me.

Very annoying.

I think a better adjustment is to actually weaken the support and spell effect of poorly geared Bards, than rather making what is currently the best to get stronger -- the latter will just fuel further the current imbalance of melee and magic attackers, which has triggered a lot of side effects across the board of the game. In a certain sense, what is close to maximum support now as Bard is very strong.

Anyway, in general, all magic user jobs in this game need a major overhaul and re-balancing.

at the times i get on there are LITERALLY around 40 DIFFERENT people seeking parties in the 6 hour period from 3pm till 9pm...

My BRD still has all the gear I acquired for it as I leveled but I quit for more or less the same reason you did. After about an hour merits just felt like work to me on BRD, worse than work in fact since this was supposed to be my leisure activity and I was the only one with any pressure while a WHM or RDM kept 4 idiot melee alive. It was always funny to me how melee do the least in a merit party but complain the loudest.

Pretty much the same for me. The job use to require me to know ranges of my AoE's, set mages / melee's so those who needed ballad got it..and calming down the THF who ran into range of Ballad b/c he wanted to TA..lol, being asked for Etudes, everyone asking for the job specific songs and figuring out how to get it to them..that's what made the bard job interesting to me. Now it's ATK/Haste/Ballad, the rare Acc for THF beastmen. Job got, boring but the merits were great..still, took the thunder out of the job for me. Gimped my bard pretty bad, I join ls merits now when they need a bard. I can still pull the insane #, all that CHR, sleep isn't resisted.

Now, some brd's left the ls so I've got to get all that gear back haha..going to try for the Yigit, b/c a few melee just chewed me out for wanting Manteel again, saying I'm better off with the EVA over CHR..so they'll at least help me with the Yigit body.. ; ; And I'm going to pimp smack that Imp for that Torque.




That's...a damn good quote right there. Rate up. A brd messes up, it's our butt. A melee hits the wrong damn bird that's slept and another floats in just spawning and links to him and he gets slaughtered..meh nobody's fault it' happens. What get's me is when I'm pulling a colibri from a far corner, and one pops near the PT. They say "Pop" and some melee's just stare at it..they won't engage they won't voke, ranged attack..poke it. Just wait..for me to come back and cast on it. I go nuts then..because i've gotten responses when asking why they just stare at it..and they go "Waiting for you to pull it."



Sucky part is while the bard is shoving pulls out the wazoo trying to keep songs on the RDM or WHM is most likely dealing with some jerk off /WAR or /SAM who refuses to /NIN. They just suck the MP pool. Then again if you got all decent /NIN's or someone who can hold their own as their main job then yeah..you got the pressure and it turns into an actual job rather than fun like it use to be.



Replace bard with just about any other job, lol I'm sure it sucks to see a bard like that, but it's everywhere..jobs can either "get by" or be good at what they do and how they're geared. Getting by, is tolerated for only so long you know? But there's so much that makes your head hurt wondering how did these people get to 75 in the first place.

I just had a THF who wore all Level 30 gear, Noct and Now here's the kicker. lv58. Exception..was his weapons.

Seen War's Merit with fishing rods and pumpkin hats, signal pearls, Level 36 Rings.

SMN's who had xp rings, no AF no evokers ring. Still didn't have all avatars towards the 70's.

RDM's main healing with swords and blank spaces in gear slots wearing life belts.

I myself have been through really terrible pickup merit PTs (when I did do them) -- like people do not provoke adds, mages that do not silence enemies or let Ga spells fire unchecked... (I merit in a variety of jobs :P so I am not always Bard).

Come on folks... Merit PTs are easy mode FFXI already

It's funny cause it's true >.>

The bitch of it is, I leveled Bard "back in the day" (in fact, it was the first job I leveled), and I used to actually ENJOY it, though I stopped at 57 for a multitude of reasons.

Fast forward to sometime in 2006, when I came back from a short hiatus, ToAU had been out for a while, and the TPburn craze was in full swing. More or less on a lark, I decide to dust off the Bard cause, heck, I haven't played it in a while. I end up invited to pseudo-TPburns off of colibris in Aht Urhgan (hey, speedkill parties work at 75, they MUST work at 57-60, amirite!?!?!?!!!). Long story short, the whole experience left me wanting to tear my hair out, ESPECIALLY when the melees bitched at me for letting the chain drop, cause I didn't want to pull when the WHM was out of MP. Yeah, TOTALLY my fault that they can't keep shadows up to save their lives, especially pre-Ni >.> Rinse and repeat 5 or 6 times over the next week (and in between, read lots and lots of horror stories of what I have to look forward to if I tough it out), and I've more or less sworn off Bard for good.

I have lots and lots of respect for the GOOD Bards out there (i.e. the non "merit princess" ones) for putting up with the BS they put up with, and for putting their feet down and saying "NO!" when they don't WANT to put up with it :p. But even if I wanted to try, there is no way I could ever be like that, and I don't particularly want to constantly be the melees' whipping boy for my merits, and I don't want to be shoehorned into coming as Bard to EVERY. SINGLE. EVENT. for the rest of my time in FFXI.

Anyway, /rant off and all that jazz. Later!

Interesting read. And obviously there's always gear endgame that you should not use; however I do use a Star Necklace. BUT. The point you were trying to make I think is that in an HNM environment a torque; etc would be better because going to events as a Bard 75 basically means that you've agreed to make it your main or one of your main jobs in endgame. Now with that said; there's people who use Bards only to merit and do no endgame. The equipment for such a Bard setup is a little relaxed as it doesn't take a Wind Torque, HQ staff to land much on merit mobs.

I'm basically geared for merits; off the top of my head this would be an acceptable meriting bard setup skill wise: Demon's Helm +1 (singing), Neck (flower necklace is fine), Earring (Melody/Melody+1), Body (Yigit Gomlek/Errants), Hands (Bard AF singing), Fingers (Nereid's/+1 can't see using CHR sorry no excuses), Back (Jester's/+1), Waist (Gleeman's), Legs (Bard AF?), Feet (Shair/dance shoes?). Basically what I used in a merit setup and was able to sleep stuff, land elegys etc. It's been a year and a half since I've been on bard in merits but believe that was an acceptable setup.

Even though Bard is an easy job to merit with, the above is what I think is the acceptable merit setup. Now for HNMs, honestly. Follow Etain's guide 110% because it's the only chance you have at landing anything plus looking like you take pride in your job. If you're not a career Bard, then don't put it on your application for a HNM LS. I can see Etain looking at mm merit setup and thinking what the @#%^? because it's possible that she might think I do HNM activities with that setup. Which I did not. But there's so many options available to Bards right now it's crazy.

So much skill equipment out there, and I don't know how it is on other servers, but the skill gear on Asura is hard to come by. And perhaps if I make Bard my HNM job then I'll be working my ass off to attain the skill gear. But for now the setup above works for merits and with extra gil and time I'd purchase the skill gear as I can afford it and eventually be able to use Bard endgame. This thread should be stickied :P or put in the guide Love it.

thing is, when a tier = ~6 skill and 1 piece can give you 7 skill that's gonna improve your buffs which chr isn't going to do no matter how much you squeeze your eyes shut and wish.

Also since CHR doesn't do sh*t after a certain point even for debuffs, and many new and part-time bards won't have gear which gives a decent chunk of skill and will be forced to gear for chr instead, wind torque IS gonna be the better option.

10 skill? wtf was I smoking

Edited, Dec 4th 2008 2:19am by Keliaffxi

I totally agree, when I see Bards wearing relic hands or legs, I just don't get it.

Unfortunately, I remember hitting 75 and seeing some of these bards running around in either Relic, or MP gear and I wasn't sure what I was SUPPOSED to be wearing. Fortunately, I enjoy browsing forums and reading up on what the better gear is for each job.

I think a lot of newer Bards probably get confused by seeing the Bards they look up to wearing gear that makes no sense.

Amen brother

I idle in my Bard's Cannions +1. :<

Of the 3 pairs of pants I actively use, the Relic+1 give me more HP and MP than my Barbarossa's Zerehs (3% haste for Lullaby/Finale, never got B. Haidate) or my Choral Cannions +1.

I do have a different idle set for HNM/long battle stuff though- for that set I idle in the Choral+1 for the -enmity.

If Bhaflau Remnants is ever nice to me and drops my 35, the Shalwar will probably be my default idle pants for both situations, though.

Edited, Dec 2nd 2008 6:03pm by Etain

They make plenty of sense as an MP item.