You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

Honor March will always overwrite any other March (with same +song potency) simply because you cast HM with Marsyas, which has 10% more duration bonus than Gjallarhorn.
You could cast other songs with Marsyas too of course for similar effects, but you would lose the Song+4 from Gjallarhorn, whereas with Honor March obviously you don't lose anything and you don't have the option to pick a different instrument to begin with lol.

The problem with song duration lies in two aspects:
1) Not all Song categories have the same amount of specific song+ gear. Those who don't will receive less duration and hence will be harder to overwrite other songs with them

2) Some song categories have their specific "song+" item in the same slot as other items with generic "song duration+". Like for instance the Feet and the Legs to name two that come to mind.
This creates issues because it obviously makes those songs' final duration be shorter than that of other songs where, for those slots, you can use your regular duration+ gear.

I wish they'd normalize this but at this point it's never gonna happen.
We can at least hope eventually all songs categories will receive the same amount of +Song.



You see when the difference in overall duration between two songs is not too big it's easy to overcome the duration difference.
You simply change the order in which you sing songs (you cast the one that you want to overwrite with pianissimo as first) and/or you wait a couple of seconds after using pianissimo.
When the difference is small it's as easy as that.
When the difference is too big you can't do that simply because the amount of time you have to wait is too big and, some times, you just cannot afford that because NiTro have alas limited duration.
In those situation the only "fix" is to accept the compromise of casting with less than optimal gear than will grant more duration.
For example taking Ballad into consideration: casting with Inyanga+2 legs instead that with Empy+1.

But Ballad is an extremely bad situation so probably not the best example lol.

OK cool, how about Marcato/Clarion Call. I feel like I've had that 5th song on me when I'm other jobs for what feel like forever. Is there a way to reapply songs to not lose it or is it simply duration+ effects?

The problem is never overwriting dummy songs wether you cast them in duration or in no duration gear.
I personally cast them in duration gear but, again, it's never gonna be an issue.

The problem is when you want to overwrite a "real" song with another real song.
Like for example you cast a set of fixed songs for all of the pt but then you want to overwrite a specific song for the mage with Ballad3 and make so the song you will overwrite will not be Scherzo (because the mage might not need madrigal or minuet for instance, but needs Scherzo and could use Honor March)
This is a very practical problem in Dynamis Divergence for instance.

The other day I had a friend who wanted I don't even remember what in place of a Madrigal. It was very very annoying to overwrite that specific song with what he wanted because of the reasons I explained above.

Marcato is a minisoulvoice for a single song, it also increases duration, doesn't stack with Soul Voice, has nothing to do with CC.
Marcato simply gives a potency/duration bonus to the next song you cast, period. It's tipically used with Honor March but YMMV of course.
Once that songs expires or is overwritten, its inherent bonus will expire too.
As long as nobody dies and nobody gets dispelled, you can keep 1 Marcato Song up all of the time because its cooldown coincides with NiTro cooldown. So if you have max duration gear you can have 1 perma marcato song up in a single party.


Clarion Call is the SP2, allows a 5th song to be cast on party. Once it's up you can keep it up as long as you want until:

1) Someone zones
2) Someone dies
3) Someone DCs

If anything like this happen that person will lose all songs effects and, obviously, the 5th song too.
If you make sure to overwrite the songs (with dummys, real, whatever you want) BEFORE they expire, nobody will lose the 5th song and you can virtually keep it up forever.
Unless it's dispelled of course.

It's particularly annoying when a single member in your party dies or gets dispelled because that way that member will be stuck on 4 songs only, whereas everybody else will have 5.
God I hate that so much when it happens lol

Gotcha, thanks for the insight, I hopefully won't be clueless when I start coming to things on BRD soon.

If you're doing the same songs in your final step as your dummy songs they will always overwrite themselves. So -duration wouldn't matter.

If your dummy songs are different than your final songs, you would use -duration because you want to make sure they are the ones that get replaced. Lowest duration song gets replaced unless the song is already up.

Ive kept the 5 songs up by making sure i NITRO asap when timers are up. This was in a PT with no swaps, Honor March sung 1st and no variance in gear or change in song order. This allows for 10+ min songs(5 total) during a Dynamis Divergence farm session. If you prep well, and sacrifice variety for consistency, you can keep up the same 5 songs for hours. Also was lots of fun DD bard with rank 15 Carny. Very busy with buffs\sleep\DD, and the most fulfilling job ive played, to bad FFXIV bard is a shadow of its former self.

Man FFXIV BRD was such a disappointment, always has been, since ARR.
But hard to blame SE.
In a game with that STRICT model of Tank / DPS / Healer it's hard to fit in a "buffer" role or mixed/hybrid roles.

Still I wish they could've done something better than that sorry Ranger who pretends to be playing Harp.
Which in itself is a pretty original idea I guess, but it just doesn't work for people who loved the Final Fantasy BRD.

@ Sechs Yeah, ffxiv combined a gimped Ranger with lackluster songs. Then i switched to Machinist and had a freakin blast.

FFXI Bard is tough to beat across a multitude of MMO's and jobs because it offers a satisfyingly long journey of gear progression and gameplay variety. Now if we only had songs for pet jobs ....

Hello! Aside from DD focused capes, what ambuscade augment capes do you all like to carry and utilize aside from the traditional CHR+20/Magic Accuracy+30/Fastcast+10 one? Looking to get off my lazy butt and reconstruct my gearsets to better contribute as a support for my team of friends.

Edit: And while I'm at it, any particular dark matter augments that might be desirable to aim for while the campaign is active?

Hey guys, up to now I've been manually doing everything with in game equipsets. But since finishing Dharp and almost done with Carn it's time to step up my BRD alt game.

I really like Sammeh's lua, and I'm surprised at how it actually works in detecting the number of songs and changes instrument according.

I seem to however have a couple of issues. The first is with clarion call, as it doesn't seem to be able to read it and not use daurd to cast the 5th song.
The second is that if I'm not using nitro, the songs aren't cast in the right set, as the equip swap is almost instantaneous and not at the time of singing.
I'm using both the lullaby.lua and the Sammeh globals, as instructed.

Help?

Much love and cookies.

QA/TA on chironic.

No love? </3

I'm sorry, ashita onry -.-

Are you having problems when initially putting up a fifth song, or overwriting? I don't use that LUA, but, Clarion always counts as your third song. Even if you already have 3+ songs up. Your "additional song" instrument becomes necessary to put up songs 4 and 5 when it's active. So if that's when it's using Daurdabla for song #5, that'd be intended, correct behavior.



How are you determining that you aren't in the right set? Weak effects/duration? Watching gear blink by?
If you aren't doing a //gs showswaps, then I'd try doing that. Reason being, that LUA has a rule to not bother with a precast set if Nightingale is up. Makes sense, but it does mean that you're getting put right into your midcast set, so that'll be more visible if you're just eyeballing it.

It's not putting up a 5th song in general, no matter how many casts, In auto it basically reads if you have 2 songs up, it swaps to dharp for 3 and 4 then it just overwrites, so you never get the 5th. I basically manually overwrite this using a macro with the /console extra song input that's suggested in the lua, but it would be cool to not think about it.

For the fastcast, it would seem that that no precast setting is automatically on, even if not using nitro, as there's only a quick swap at beginning of cast, into the midcast (song potency set). I am just watching the equip swaps, you're right I have to try the gs log, but by the duration I can pretty much tell it's casting in normal idle gear. This I can't figure out

When you finished your Daurdabla, did you updated the max songs variable at the top? It may not think you can do 5.

Not sure on the precast set, other than to just double check it with showswaps. It should also be giving you a message if it's bypassing the precast set. If it's just doing that all the time, you could try just commenting out that rule (around lines 440-450).

Ok showswaps shows both precast and midcast swaps, but I confirm it's to early.

Sometimes it shows some "delay added message" something like 0.777888989, bit it's unconsistent. What always happens is a "casting interrupted: song" message, but it's not actually interrupted, it just casts in idle gear.

As I said whenever I use nitro everything is fine though.

It's just annoying with utility songs, like Mazurka or if I need an out of nitro Ballad or something like that.

Thanks for the help btw, appreciate it <3

fortunately the only "must have" cape is the one you mentioned, anything after that is just gravy. really aside from DD stuff, you could probably really only be bothered to make something for Cures, or defensive capes.

For instance, not that this would definitively be the best stats for a defensive cape, but just an idea of one could be something like HP+60/Enmity-5/Magic Evasion+45 or split with Status Ailment Resist+10. Plugging in something for PDT is useful if your sets could use it. An idle variant utilizing the Regen+5 augment is also very nice too.



kind of on the same line of thinking, aside from DD stuff, nothing really pops out that screams "Bard," but there's always the Phalanx augs for /RDM, or if you wanted a baller MP Idle set you could aim for Refresh+2 on Chironic Head Hands or Feet.

Anyone on this? So I guess nobody seems to use Sammeh's .lua?

So far during this DM campaign I've gotten the following two chironic pieces and I am trying to figure out how to incorporate them into my TP set. I'm not super satisfied with either of them, although the hands can maybe be incorporated into a weird DW configuration?

Gloves:
ACC+17, ATK+17, Dual Wield + 3, Quad Attack + 2%


Feet:
ACC+3, ATK+3, Haste + 2%, Triple Attack + 3%


I was adding up values hoping that the extra 2% haste on the feet can maybe allow me to swap in some multi attack chironic legs or telchine legs but alas, doesn't look like it >.>;

You don't need a lua to put up a fifth song. Just make a macro for it. Make a macro called 5 song and have it equip your dura and disable that slot. Then cast your songs normally and whatever random fifth song. In another macro have it re enable the instrument slot in gearswap (//gs enable). That does exactly what a gs toggle would do, you press a button and it does what you want without the hassle of dealing with code. Even if you use gs doesn't mean you should or even that it's advisable to use it for everything.

I'm in same boat. Sitting at 25% haste and need that extra 1. No Volte equip yet.

I finally got my Reiki Yotai like 10 minutes after I posted so I am just going to do Yotai/DM Hands for 10 DW (screw the extra 1%), and swap earring from Eabani to Brutal. Putting the feet in my TP set as well and just keep Ayanmo legs for capped haste. That's the best setup I can come up with given my current augs.

Hoping when DM PLUS hits next week (or week after?) I can hit on some better augs.

Plus is on the 17th

Thank you, but as I was saying, I do almost exactly that. My issue remains with the messed up fastcast settings when nitro is off, so it doesn't swap in regular song casting gear, and I can't figure out how to fix that.

If you're real committed you could get Cheer: Green Wyvern for 1% more Haste. Another option is using a Haste augmented Linos, while it may pain you to do.

take solace in the fact that you don't have to worry about it under Ionis!

Can you try to make it so you use the same FC gear regardless of if you have nitro up or not? I don't think my gear is any different in either set minus JA activation. I'm not that great and luas, just spitballin.

Well you wouldn't really want that as nitro is instacast and normally you gain benefit from switching from precast to midcast. That's why I think this whole thing happens, but i just can't seem to adjust it so the midcast stays on until you actually cast with nitro up.

Oh well, I guess I give up :D

Apologies for the potentially dumb question, but does Pining Nocturne stack with Addle? Didn't see it clarified on BGwiki and Nocturne isn't mentioned in the original guide post's full song effect list as far as I saw.