You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

So I heard a rumor a while ago that Nibiru Harp had a bug where it gave all song +4 instead of just carol. Is this still a thing, was it ever really a thing.

they patched it

It seems like the AF1+3 (and ambuscade) set bonuses only work to up to 5 pieces.

Which makes the Regal earring only CHR+10 if casting with 5/5 which makes Regal Earing vs Gwati earing/Enchanter earring+1/Darkside earring probably too close to worry about.

It does open option of dropping a piece of AF and still maintaining the 5/5 set bonus.

The options I see are Bihu Roundlet +3 which would be CHR-1 M.acc-10 for Singing+18.

Inyanga Dastanas +2 would be CHR-7 M.acc-5 for Singing+3 Wind+20 for non-lullabies. The lullaby+2 on brioso cuffs+3 probably gives an unquantified amount of M.acc to lullabies (as well as duration).

Hard to say whether they'd be upgrades or not since no one really knows how Singing/Wind compare to straight magic accuracy.

I know I (and probably most other bards) have started to favor straight magic accuracy over Skill or CHR since there's no questioning the amount of magic acc gained from it.

I'm no bard, but wouldn't you default cast debuffs in Inyanga Shalwar +2 for the duration bonus to the songs anyway, so if you've got enough macc to land you'd be doing 4/5 AF1+3 anyway at most?

Tell me if I'm wrong, since the only brd I use is when my brother isn't playing and he's not an expert either.

Probably depends on the target and the bard themselves.

For something like dynamis-D i'd probably favor Fili Rhingrave+1 for the recast-8 for lullabies.
For Vini or Albumen I'd go full duration equipment and use troubadour.
For something where I can't land lullaby reliably and don't have troubadour I'd probably go brioso cannions+3.

I think lullaby wise how you handle the re-sleep is a bigger issue than total duration, except maybe albumen because they explode/benediciton without a way to petrify them, if the fight goes that long.

If you know you can land the spell you are probably dropping AF for fili body+1/inyanga shalwar+2 anyways though (apart from finale).

We would need further tests, no questioning that.
Last I read, which is a long time ago, it hinted at Sing skill being pretty close to 1:1 (maybe 1:0.9) and wind/string being 3:1.

String has the additional bonus of potentially granting further tiers for range on songs you cast with Harp.
For buffs it's hardly relevant, you autocap 19.9 yalms range on the majority of songs. Exceptions being Ballad3 and... Minuet5 maybe? Probably something else.
It's not really that important there anyway I would say, although it can *** you up if you're singing fakes thinking you will hit that friend at 19,5 yalms range only to see him receive just 3 out of your 4 fakes...

Regardless, where it matters is for Horde Lullaby. You would want Brioso+3 head there I think.
And that's not a big deal since you don't use 5/5 Brioso for Lullabies anyway, well at least in the duration set.


I don't think any Bihu is a valid replacement for Brioso+3.
Even without factoring the +15 macc from the set bonus I think Brioso is always better.
Closest you can get is on legs (~95 total macc vs ~96, considering 1:1 for Sing, 1:1 for CHR and 3:1 for Wind) and second best is Head if I recall.

It's a shame but the macc bonuses we received on reforged relic have been lower than expected on pretty much all the pieces, even for other jobs.
I think reforged Fili legs+3 is a good candidate for use in place of Brioso+3, they would have to *** things pretty hard to make them worse than Brioso+3 w/o set bonus. In before they succeed lol!

Anybody ever tested the Song delay- gear btw? Like Fili legs.
I think those seconds are subtracted before everything else, and then Fast cast/haste are calculated on the reduced value, but that's just my assumption since I never tested it nor seen tests performed by other people.
If this is true the relevance of those seconds would be much lower than one would initially expect.

So I could use a bit of help in terms of stepping stones for my brother's bard character. He's working on gearing it up, and we finished Daur this week. I thought I had good enough gear to at least run as brd for VD Ambuscade, but I couldn't sleep the adds at all. Full resist on first cast, got 1 to sleep on second cast. The group I was with graciously downgraded to running Difficult, which I was able to sleep fine. Here is my current Sleep set, which I thought would be enough.

ItemSet 358642

My brother has the cards from omen and will be upgrading all Brioso to +2 this week. That should give me at least 50 more macc and +1 Lullaby. What else can I work on for his sleep set? (I'm also going to have him get a gwati earring from the delve npc dude.)

I can tell you right away that string has a natural higher resist than wind instruments. Get a Damani Horn +1 or Pan's Horn if you do not have a ghorn.

What you could also do is max out Troubadour. It provides an elemental seal effect for all casts done while it is active. Wind/string wouldn't matter then.

Luminary Sash, Digni. Earring, Stikini Ring x2

I know you getting a gwati earring and that's fine but if you can replace it with the one listed.

Also were you trying pear crepes sicne you had a problem.

Good to know, I hadn't seen about wind Resists.

He's working on Ghorn, needs about 50 more Jadeshells.

Doesn't wind have a lot smaller AoE radius than harp?

We were too slow on first run and Troubadour wore before we engaged. Maybe that is why I didn't have problems with difficult, because I always had Troubadour active on engage.

I'm trying to get an Ovate Rope off the AH until I can get him a luminary sash and a Digni. Earring.

I'm trying to build up to Funkworkz sets posted on the bg page. Thanks for the input guys.

Edit: No on the crepes... I forgot to check if he had any on first run.

This is right, it does have a much smaller AOE. You sacrifice range for magic accuracy.


You could get him a Porous Rope while you wait.

Some speculation on my part.

I think Wind's Instrument's Bonus is wind skill gets converted to magic accuracy. Probably 3-4 Wind skill to ~1 M.acc.

For String Instruments, I think its bonus is increases area of effect based on String skill. I suspect that String skill doesn't give any magic accuracy. There might be a small bonus for using an Instrument over nothing though.

If that's correct, then with around 490 Wind skill you'd be looking at a Horn being approximately 120-163 more magic accurate than a Harp.

I also suspect All songs+ gives some magic accuracy to debuff songs based on SE's patch notes:
The issue wherein the Songs+ attribute would not increase the accuracy of Maiden's Virelai.

As for Troubadour, it's very very very strong. It was probably me that said it was like elemental seal but I think it's far stronger. BG wiki lists Elemental seal as somewhere on the order of +256 magic accuracy. I think Trouadour may just auto-cap your magic accuracy. I suspect a 75 BRD with no skill with 5/5 Troubadour could sleep a 139 Ambu.

I'd call it almost foolproof. There seems to be a specific resist amount that it can't overcome. Papesse describes it here:
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/51511/ambuscade-volume-1-october-2017/4/#3295275
The Qutrub Ambuscade it was possible to land Wind Threnody II but exceedingly difficult to.

Virelai patch notes:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/52281-Mar.-10-2017-%28JST%29-Version-Update?p=593664&viewfull=1#post593664

Some JP testing:
http://noranekofantasy.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-320.html


As for your ambuscade I'd just sleep before troubadour wears off like others have said. Doubles your lullaby duration as well as providing a massive m.acc boost. But yea your brother should finish his debuff set in case he has to sleep without troubadour.

You can also use a marine stewpot(AoE food) for 90 M.acc.

When doing Ambuscade where NiTro sleeps are helpful and you are using a PUG tank, put up basic songs for DDs to start the fight then redo them while NiTro is up after the sleep. It can be frustrating, especially if the mobs are difficult (sleepga/silencega/etc) but its better then missing the sleep altogether.

I took this differently. It seems to me that specific "Song+" intruments and gear affect only that song, and they give an unknown amount of macc as well as potency we all know about. The patch notes to me said "Instruments with Virelai+", not necessarily All Songs+. Obviously these are affected too as they affect Virelai.

Yeah that was laziness on my typing.

I guess the question is do songs that already get a potency boost from +song also get a magic accuracy boost.

Shhhh, fiasko you weren't supposed to see this... :D

Just checked on JP wiki, this is what they have:

「ヴィルレー+○」または「全歌+○」の付いた楽器を用いた場合、効果時間に+1につき3秒の修正が加わる。かつては魅了成功率には影響しなかったが、2017年3月10日のバージョンアップで不具合として修正された*1。命中率の上昇率は要検証。

ヴィルレー+の効果を持つ装備は以下の通り。全歌+の装備については【全歌】項を参照。

誰も検証していなかったため、いつからこの不具合が存在していたのかは不明。もっとも、好き好んで使う人がほぼいなかったために、誰にも気づかれなかったが。

Google translate:
When using an instrument with " Willey(Virelai)+" or " All songs +", 3 seconds correction is added to the effect time by +1. In the past it did not affect the attraction success rate, but it was fixed as a bug in the March 10, 2017 version upgrade * 1 .

The rate of increase of the hit rate is necessary verification .

Since no one has verified, it is unknown when since this problem was present. However, because no one used to like it at all, nobody noticed it.

Your gear looks all but bad, for a beginner bard.
Really surprised you got so many resists, you sure your brother's LUA isn't "broken" and is currently casting with a different set? Please doublecheck with EquipViewer and the Showswaps True option from Gearswap.

With that said people already gave you a good amount of interesting suggestions. Some questions on my side now:

1) What path is that Kali? is it augmented at all?
2) Do you have String/Wind/Sing merits? (if not, get em please)
3) How many job points do you have?

Because really, at capped JP and Merits with the gear you posted I'm really surprised you got so many full resists, with a working Lua.

I wrote the lua, showswaps shows it equipping that set.

1) I don't think he's augmented the Kali yet
2) Yes
3) < 100 I know

I know not having JP is a big loss of macc/skill. That situation will probably be rectified soon as I finish mastering some jobs on my main account. He never has a ton of time to play so this is mostly my project.

Out of personal preference I suggest Path A for Kali, I think it's the most magic accuracy, except on targets which are greatly below your level but on those you don't really need a lot of macc to begin with anyway.

For the rest keep pursuing your goal of better gear, I think the path is clear and you already know what to do.
Despite the lack of JPs I'm still surprised you got so many full resists, but I guess that's how it is and I'm just underestimating this month's VD ambuscade /shrugs.

New song icons:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/53937

Always hated that all were the same. Have used Jeanpaul's .dat mod for sometime. Will be interesting to see what these new icons look like. Color me interested...

Don't be too excited. The original idea was it was debuffs on players needed to be changed because they are the same as party buff songs right now. They might leave party buffs the same.

XIview adds great icons. In fact, we use them for BGWiki. https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/BGWiki:SongPotency

So when it comes to lullaby when using nitro do I put duration first or will still go with macc? Was wondering if the duration was worth giving up the 4 extra +song from ghorn. Also when it comes to duration set does anyone put anything special in the non armor slots? Or do you just shove as much macc in there as possible?

ItemSet 359368

This is my current duration set minus the accessories.

5/5 troubadour gives 100% chance to land any songs while the ability is up (as long as the monster isnt 100% resistant). Macc with that is pointless, so you want duration+ then lullaby+.

If you do not have 5/5 troubadour (which you should, as dirge and sirvente are lame) then you want a good mix of macc and duration. I would not give up ghorn for daurdabla in that situation, but i would use marsyas over ghorn.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't G-horn give 40% duration over Daurdabla's 30% duration?

Looking at the wiki page seems to support your statement. Is +Duration and +song multiplicative? Or is that just because Marsyas exists?

I was assuming this person did not have Marsyas. Darudabla is 30%, but blurred harp +1 is 40%.

The only reason to use harp with NITRO is for a wider AOE effect. Blurred +1 is 10% less than Marsyas with a wider AOE. String sacrifices MACC in exchange for AOE.

The HQ knife brd knife now beats carn for Macc right?

Technically yes, it gives +10 more MACC and the same amount of Magic Acc skill. At this moment, I would not want to give up the +50% duration to debuffs that Carn gives for just 10MACC unless I am hellbent on trying to stick something that just wont stick.

In the end it will depend on what kind of augments we will get on both daggers come September.

This all depends if the "Song Effects: Damage Taken -3%" extends to party members or not.

Carnwenhan still wins with AM1 currently.