You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

95 Ghorn + neck and body and most likely +1 from gear = 192 sec duration
90 daurdabla + neck and body (and most likely +1 from gear)(this being dependant on which songs people use as placebo, that they will actually macro for) = 186 sec duration

meaning if you don't cast your first 2 songs in less than 6 sec your harp song will not be the song to be overwritten when you play a 4th song. you will actually overwrite the first horn song you played.

say you use a placebo song that doesn't get +1 from gear, you extend the gap from 6 secs to 18 secs. and if you remove the neck 30 sec gap, which is more reasonable when you buff DDs at the mob and have longer casting time between songs. This all has a bigger impact when you use a 99 daurdabla and need to fit 2 songs into that duration gap.

That's why Hymnus is a great song for this, quick casting. Use daurdabla and no neck and no body when casting it and you get quite a bit of excess time. You could also increase the gap by using Marduk legs +1 on your marches and other primary songs. Though you do loose the stats for the +2 gear but I don't really think it's much needed if you have 80% fastcast you can put these all up with plenty of time.

Edit: To give a rough idea of the time you'd have:

120 base duration

2 marches @ 120 +48 +12 +12 +12 = 204
Daurdabla hymnus @ 120 +36 = 156

I think those numbers are roughly right. So you'd have 48 seconds after your first song goes up to get the rest of them up. You could probably pianissimo songs to most of the pt in that time. Though if you are using pianissimo, each individual player gets their own 48 seconds to buff because the initial march would have gone up at different times for each player so I suppose it's a non-issue.

I think my original point is getting lost, in that the tactic for reducing duration on harp songs to overwrite them with full buff should be added to the guide and providing the reference to Duration pieces in a nice neat table vs having to scout out the pieces and calculating it as a user of the guide.
Yes, hymnus is an ok choice for a placebo song. But it is only 1 song of any buff song available and fairly non-beneficial(as most people should be taking arise) to the recipient should you die before rewriting it. I'm not trying to recommend which song people choose to use as placebo songs but leaving it open for people to make their own preferences.
And no you should not use marduk shalwar +1 on horn songs. Its better to have +1 stat of each song you play than another 12 sec. Exceptions to that are ballads and scherzo as CHR doesn't usually benefit your pt. But you'd be silly to not use the +2 empy legs for ballads.

I understand that you're just looking to get stuff added to the guide to help people out and that you aren't arguing about which placebo song to use. I agree it should be added as new brds may not know anything about this. I mean, it took me quite a while to figure out the method I use and that was after posting a whole bunch about it in various brd threads, even one that I made myself. I was just stating the way I deal with making sure I get all the right songs up with max potency the quickest I can. The window you get is fairly sizable once you know the various ways you can do it. I just wanted to be clear on that.

I kinda wish Daurdabla had been a ring/earring/belt/back/shield though... make all this much simpler but I suppose this complication is the price you pay for double the songs.

Also, the Pianissimo fastcast trick should be mentioned as well since the only documented place I've seen it is in a nyzul thread of all things.

Swap the Iaso Cuffs for Aoidos' Manchettes +2
Iaso has ~16 song acc, whereas Aoidos's has ~30 song acc (unless anyone has proven otherwise, 1 skill is worth roughly 1 macc).
Ogapepo Cape+1, Nahtirah Hat and Sangoma Ring would be improvements too, but might not a realistic aim atm.
Can also replace the rings with Maquette(5macc) Omega (3CHR+3macc) and Mediator's/Balrahn's/Angha Ring (4macc) and Nereid rings (3 wind skill which can be augmented with 1macc and 1~2CHR through FoV).

Hope this helps

I'm leveling BRD on my MNK mule for fights where I just keep her out of range anyway (TP feed, AOEs, all my attention on WHM, etc.).

Any suggestions for minimal gear sets?

Constraints:
Gear from AH (lets say 200k cap on a single piece of gear for now), Abyssea, Relic, AF, Salvage (I and II), Bayld.
No spellcast, only windower macros.

If you have windower macros, you should be able to set up a minimal-effort BRD Spellcast.

Stuff like auto-pianissimo would be nice.


Edit:

In reference to the debuff set; you could *probably* swap out some of those CHR/MACC pieces for duration pieces. Mostly Marduk Leg +1 and AF3 Neck. Not many things resist BRD debuff; or if you're going to build that much of a dedicated set you might as well do the relevant debuff staff magian.

I'd agree on most mobs however, if you're fighting delve mobs/NMs you will want all the song accuracy that you can get, esp. on the NMs when refreshing your debuffs.

ItemSet 301230

Equip instruments as needed, Rings are rewards from Einherjar/ToAU but those might be overkill, if you don't want to get a musical earring, then you can try to get a singing earring as a replacement.
That set will cost you 235k based on your server prices, plus any instruments you buy.

/edit put the marduk's +1 legs in there, but until you get them aoidos' rhingrave +2 are very good and probly debatable which you would use for landing ballads

Anyone know where I can find a BRD spellcast that includes the standard stuff + a precast set option? Having a tough time finding one and I've never been even remotely good at writing spellcasts.

I use Sekundes' Brd xml, but honestly don't remember where it was hosted now. Has worked great for me for months now.
Motenten's Xml is another option, though I haven't used it myself.

It's here: http://pastebin.com/6LpzhP43

I try to explain everything I can in it but there are quite a number of things in here so if you have any questions or would like something added let me know.

What instruments do you use? And do you plan to melee ever on brd? If you have ghorn/daur and don't care about melee I have a spellcast thats much more basic than those 2 posted.

The sets in the main guide are not displaying properly it seems.

I hope it's not just me.

OP deleted all his sets and left the site. Time for someone else to set up a BRD guide?

If there's a way to to access and edit the original posts I'll keep it up to date. Or have it be made into a node and give me permissions. I don't know who to ask but will do it if its not much of a hassle.

talk to one of the admin's I'd assume... i'd like to see the gear options back up there since Cantontai is no longer playing.

been trying to update my brd some and having to read through 6 pages to see what other people are saying is kinda annoying, since thats what this topic is suppose to be about on page 1 =(

I've sent Scragg a PM, should hopefully hear something back about this at some point, but failing that we can always copy the info into a new thread and request this one gets deleted or closed

Before Cantontai left, I had asked him after this if I could grab his FFXIAH info just so I can edit in sets I've made, or edit certain other things in the guide. Instead of going through the hassle of making a new thread or whatever, and he said he was cool with that, but he has yet to follow up on it lol. I'll see if I can contact him again and fix up the OP hopefully. I wasn't in any rush to do this initially, since I thought the sets were still up to date, but I didn't know they were all deleted til I read this.

Sorry for any inconveniences this has caused!

Marduk's Legs +1 just to cast Debuff... for buff few secs(8~) extra arent worth for me to lose 2 stats per song, I don't have issues recasting songs.

And about "Windowers Macro"
march.txt
FFXI Macri
/target <stpc>
/console exec brd/march.txt
/ma "Victory March" <lastst>
/equip range "instrument" *** Gjallarhorn, for Daurdabla I just spam a macro to equip the Harp after I start casting the song.

Sadly dont like how Spellcast manage gear swaps on songs, since they do aftercast gearswap after the "casting bar" is 100% and I cast songs @ ~20%.

I am converting the OP to a collaborative node. The itemset will not render correctly for now, it will say itemset 12345. I know what the issue is and will resolve it shortly. The itemsets being blank is a different issue and will need to be worked out by any editors.

Here is the link: http://www.ffxiah.com/node/58

Thanks! I've recently just replaced the essential sets (Buffing, Precast, Debuff), and will begin to replace Cantontai's Idle/DT/SS sets shortly.

Damn, you've beat me to it, was making them up in between Delve runs.

/edit Just me that still can't see the itemsets being loaded properly?, links to them work though

I believe that's what this is referencing to

I just made the edits to the sets, maybe I should have checked on here first. But its up to date for now.

Looking like the sets are working now, but just noticed this needs a Delve section under Roles of Bard, so I'll draft something up rq so we can comment on it and get it added, cause that's the most common use for it now