You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

Try to go directly into gearswap. Spellcast results heavily depend on your connection. Gearswap will always put your precast / midcast sets no matter what.
ex : sing carnage elegy, you'll get precast and midcast even if your pc shows 5 fps in the middle of a delve run. You'll never get that with spellcast.

This post is great if you don't know anything about it : http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/41992/gearswap-for-dummies/

It doesn't matter if you have 2,3 or 4 songs. You will just not equip daurdabla when the script tries.

Try it, you'll never go back :)

SO as for relic reforge, do you think any sets have changed from the op post?

ItemSet 258687

I believe is now our current best debuffing build.

The head is decent upgrade over Brioso for debuffs, although I'd still feel inclined to carry Brioso around for the Paeon +1 because I'd feel incomplete without it. >.<

I'm not sold on upgrading the hands though, just because I'd imagine 119 Emp Hands are going to absolutely destroy them when the time comes. Lurid Mitts aren't far behind Bihu Cuffs +1 anyways.

Feet obviously best for precast.

The Legs can be ignored for now unless you want to improve your Brd's Slow/Para builds (lol). At 119, they should have a pretty crazy amount of Int/Mnd/Chr for the leg slot, but I'm still not sure they'd beat out Brioso +1 for debuff wind acc. I suppose Bihu Cannions are technically best for String Debuff Acc, but w/e.

Body is a really wonderful DD Brd piece, despite the fact I'm still bitter they added Mag. Acc instead of another useful DD stat.

Anyways, I wish they would have released all the Relic 119 gear.

Just a few questions since I'm working toward a 99 harp.

When you 2hr/night/troub do you take the time to put dummy songs with harp and then recast with horn? Does that change whether you're in a party or have to cast for an alliance?

Also with 4 song harp, do you do song -> song -> dummy song -> song -> dummy song > song? Or do you do song -> song -> dummy song -> dummy song -> song -> song?

Also. The song count depends on the players receiving them not the one casting them correct? So you put 4 songs on the melee you still have to use 2 dummy songs on the mages before you can put the full 4 songs on them? Or do you typically just give melee 4 songs and just the mages 2x horn ballad and 2x harp songs?

I very rarely put up my 3rd song with only duardabla. Very occasionally I will. Like if I just want a song up asap and may not have time or the ability to put them up without dying or if I just need a 20' range for something like mazurka.

Most always, I put up a dummy song and then overwrite. Straight duardabla songs don't last as long and aren't as potent so I feel it's a waste.

You can do it several different ways. Both of these work just fine however I prefer the first. Also if you are using clarion then that would go right after your first 2 songs. Then you'd sing dummy, real, dummy, real.

You can also sing a full 4 songs prior to 2hr and then overwrite them all at once.



Correct, it doesn't matter if you have 4 songs on you, if you miss someone or they get dispelled, you'll have to use dummy songs again to get them back up to 3-4. Though if you know only one missed it, you can pianissimo them back up.


What I recommend is this. Say you want double march double minuet on the melee's and double ballad and double march on the mages.

IF everyone is close enough for it, you can save some time by:

minuet, minuet, dummy, march, dummy, march and then go sing ballad ballad for the mages and it'll overwrite the minuets and leave the marches.

However it doesn't always work out depending on how your party/ally is set up and where players are and you sometimes have to do some really weird stuff to make sure everyone has songs.

For 1 PT, I usualy sing 4 pre-songs with daur on everybody. Then JAs if needed.

This way, you're free to sing any song on anyone with full N/T timers. If someone has to get scherzo, obviously sing it last or with pianissimo.

For alliances, af2 augments for T/N are gold.

"song#1 > song#2 > placeholder > song#3 > placeholder > song#4" as you stated can work if song#1 still have more duration left than last placeholder. If your precast set is correct, it will work.

As for your last question, it indeed depends on the players receiving the songs. This is why I like to pre-sing 4 songs with daur, as his range is ridiculously high and everyone will get 4 songs as long as they're not in their mog house.

If mages happen to ninja-dodge the pre-songs, they'll get Balladx2 and will never complain about it.

Thanks much. Both of those posts really helped.

Many players don't want to wait for 6 or 8 songs to be sung in a single party. As such they will start running away at 4 songs. Alliance buffing singing 4 songs per party is recommended to avoid T/N dropping during rotations due to lag or other issues during party invites.

Depending on the situation, I choose between 4 dummy > 4 ghorn or 2ghorn > 2 dummy > 2 ghorn. Usually if I can spare some time and anticipate a switch where dummy songs wont matter like right before entering AA fight/Legion/delve, I will throw 4 dummy on the first party and then proceed with the former song method and do the latter song method once I've swapped into the second party. With N/T relic gear, this should would well with a quick swap.

When it comes to using Clarion Call, I'll do 4 dummy > JA gear and pop all 4 JA (SV/CC/N/T) > 5th dummy song using Daurdabla > overwrite with 5 ghorn songs. This usually means only 6 songs to sing once the fight has started. If I'd have to switch into a new party with JA still active, 3 ghorn songs (clarion call has priority) then 2 dummy songs from harp then 2 ghorn songs for maximum mob poking.

My current precast set has max song spellcasting (49%sst+14% staff+17%fast cast while basically means I can put on 4 ghorn songs within 30 seconds. From my experience, most dd will usually shut up about waiting if they can get 5 SV ghorn songs. If the second bard you're working with has decent duration gear, it can be a pretty awesome sight seeing 8+ songs on the DD.

10 songs from two bards is fun especially with the "wth" from the DD.

Marchx2, Madx2, Minuetx5, Scherzo. dang.

With AF119 and Relic119, has anybody done any tests on the effect of Horde II AoE?

Does anyone know the set for brd for reducing to <75% hp for minstrel's ring ?

One I found. It has to be tested though as hp max went up.

ItemSet 33565

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But really, having a set dedicated to one item proc is not very inventory-friendly. You can cap song-spellcasting - without it and with pieces which will be used for more than 1 set.

nice thanks, i'm not far enough along atm yet to cap it without the ring, still working on a few more key pcs for - song spell casting, not gotten into the newer content yet so i just wondered for a temporary thing until i get all up to date. thanks for your reply.

you probably could still get decent -sst without needing the minstrel ring. my precast set is ItemSet 318947. my current set has -4 sst on hands/legs.

granted the adoulin gear would take gendewitha hands/legs away, you could replace these (and shair) with marduk +1 pieces for their fast cast. set would still give you -14(staff), -31 sst, -26 from fast cast(including set bonus) for -71 casting time total which i personally think isnt that bad for a crazy optimal set. you'd save space on using marduk legs +1 anyways for postcast songs

i would use Aoidos' Belt for Precast set since the quickness in witful belt could proc on that set.
if u +1 back and feet and got your hands on Sheikh Manteel, with neck from meeble you would cap it with staves or use Felibre's Dague and stay @77% SongSpell casting time which is my set atm ( lazy to do staff >.<' )
also am trying to get -5% on both hands and legs to push it @79%

i know with staves it would be easy to cap it, depends on how dedicated you are.

Lower minuets are pretty unimpressive in higher end content and pretty useless in lower end (ATT capped) content. Minnex2 ~

Most ppl use windower... So can use gearswap, I precast in 8occ quickcast (ammo, belt, ring, back) would use dalmatica +1 if find the cursed somewhere....

With gearswap even if quickcast proc you get the miscast gear in time.

Gearswap works, but can also use pay'ekue belt since not capped on haste gear in precast anyway

I actually use the lower tier STR etude over minuet 1 (and sometimes 2).

Also, haste hardly matters in a brd precast set, since the only thing it's gonna be affecting is the recast time.

I haven't tried to use a minstrel's ring in forever. It's such a pain... not only do you need a ton of hp->mp stuff, but someone will always cure you, and depending where you are/what you're doing, being at less than 75% could end up making you dead.

And for haste in precast you have to leave it in too. The only reason I fill in haste in my precast is just in case my midcast doesn't work or there isn't anything else worth while.

I don't think I'd trade Sha'ir/Sheikh's 12/13% for only 2-6% fastcast and 1-3% insta-cast. Even perfect augs would be inv + and a slower average casting time.

Ammo, belt, ring are all acceptable because they wouldn't interfere.

"Slower average casting time" coz 6% even 10% less is not notable after some %, aka, 65sh to cap(80%) is not notable.

But I don't have it... So I stay with Marduk Body +1.

BTW.. wouldn't you imagine how much 8% occ. quickcast proc... is nice when they proc back to back in a recast round.

8% instacast will proc 8% of the time. But don't get me wrong, I'm not denying it's utility. It is nice when things go off instantly and it saves you time when it happens.

But the other 92 casts I want to happen as quickly as possible and if I loose some song casting time and fastcast to a small amount of instacast then it takes longer on average to put all those songs up. I need to put up so many songs having daurdabla that even a fraction of a second on each song is great.

But from 65% to 80% isn't just a fraction of a second. It's 1.2 seconds of time saved. I can notice when my songs take nearly twice as long.

Does gearswap really work that well, like 100% of the time all the time? I haven't looked at it at all yet. On other jobs/with other spells it's not that big a deal, but a instacasted song in pre-cast gear would annoy the heck out of me.

On that note, are there brd gearswaps around that I could poke a look at ? (preferably something with some melee rules :P)

It does... I've not jumped on board yet but I'm planning to.

Definitely looking in to a lua for my bard as well. The ones I've seen on pastebin are either too basic, or I don't understand lua well enough to understand how it works.

Problem with BRD luas and xmls is that you have so many different types of bards. Daurdabla + Ghorn... Daurdabla w/o Ghorn... Ghorn w/o Daurdabla... Neither... Melee with Mandau... Melee without Mandau...

Makes it difficult to find one that's actually tailored to your needs without a bunch of extra code.

Where can you find some of these Gearswap lua's for brd at. I've been using spellcast and tried out someones gearswap but didn't like it all that much. That would annoy me too (instacasted song in pre-cast gear).

If I can be bothered to do it, I'll code (ie kinda learn how it works while blatantly stealing bits of code from everyone I know) my Lua soon.

One downloads when you download the addon in the "beta examples and information" folder.

Anyway, you can "precast/midcast" instant cast spells with gearswap. I start singing in Impatiens and swap to an instrument for midcast and it always works. It's fast.