Military Parade - A DD Bard Guide

This set is pretty damn good, im trying to gather all the pieces, have a long way to go with dynamis clears and hq abj. Who would have thought I would be gearing a DD BRD...What a time to be alive.

This set is good.
-Head should be pathB **
-hands B
-legs B unless realllly low attack where D wins; B is safe choice
feet D
-ring1=Epaminondas's Ring
-at high TP (3k normal, 2.5 aeneas ear2="Mache Earring +1".
-Mache+1 -might- win over Ishvara too but that's really gonna depend on total wsd in set (things like chironic dm pieces will change your wsd amount)

-waist artful +1 will only win at completely capped attack. Wanion(dex8 str8) and Grunfeld (dex5 str5acc10att20da2) will win depending on attack level. Grunfeld is always a safe option.


Shetal Stone is -never- good over Reiki Yotai. People often overlook the stp+4 on Reiki. The STP4 is one of reasons the belt is such a strong DW swap vs normal belts.

Eabani+Reiki=11 anyways. Regardless 1 DW over will not make or break you more than losing the 4stp.

Purposely lowering haste by 1 won't make a difference in tp per hit. Gear haste never lowers tp/hit, DW always lowers tp/hit, not just when it's over cap.

-your point on the AGI/str for exten is valid. especially on the hands. 24 agi is a ton on a hand slot. The legs are extremly high also. The Str isn't gonna really matter in cases where the attack doesn't matter.
volte vs relic+3:
head: str+12 agi+11 .. att-62
body: str+1 agi+5 .. att-92 wsd-10
hands: str+13 agi+8 .. att-63
legs: str+13 agi+20 .. att-64
feet: str+16 agi+15 att-61

I would assume relic body isn't worth flipping out. Rest are a good capped att swap.
The legs probably always win.



Some people emphasize tp sets for am3 mythic vs normal way too much. There's very rare cases where it makes a difference, and this is usually just with a stp ammo, 1 ring, or ashera harness.

-Volte Tights stp8 haste9 from Dynamis-Bastok(D) are arguably the best piece you can get on bard besides Ashera Harness. The haste really makes all the other slots more flexible.
-Head should usually beat out ayanmo because of the str.
-hands/feet should win barring some rediculous DM aug (or maybe you can make DW5 hands serviceable? I know taeon hands dw5 are an extremely strong option on RDM).

-Ashera is king on body, this is where there's a tossup tho on Volte vs Ayanmo+2. I'm not sure if on brd volte will beat out ayanmo. It definitely wins with mythic am3. Not sure if it loses normally and it probably loses with Sam roll. (Volte is a much stronger option on rdm due to the heavy base TA rate)

It should also be noted the volte set is -extremely high- meva for melee gear.

Some further tests I did the other day:


Carns vs Aeneas (pre-augs)
I used a scenario that would benefit Aeneas a bit more.
Same TP setup for both sets (Carns benefits more from STP than Multiattack, which gets devaluated once you activate AM3).
Also the WSset I used for Carns was good but not the BiS one (because BiS needs 4/5 Relic+3 and that's not very realistic, it's a big drop in acc)

Despite these bad conditions for Carns my results were that Aeneas setup had ~18% more DPS than Carn, with AM3 down.
With AM3 up Carns is ~0.6% (lol) better than Aeneas but this doesn't take into account the amount of DPS you lose by storing TP to 3k. I guess this is why Aeneas was normally considered the best option.
These numbers are after the release of Relic+3, before that those two weapons were even further away.


Carns vs Aeneas (with augs)
Tried to re-run the test considering the new values and the 15% WS damage bonus on Carns.
Surprisingly enough, despite the not-optimal conditions for Carnwenhan, this time Aeneas is above only by ~9.4% with AM3 down, and Carns is ~8.7% above with AM3 up.
This means that with more optimal conditions (different TP gear, slightly better WS gear) Carns 119 might be almost viable compared to Aeneas.

Altough in all honesty I'd love to parse on a long fight like Wave3 bosses, because I get the feeling Mordant Rime performs worse than the Spreadsheet suggests it does. Rudra always gives very consistant numbers at capped buffs.


Single vs Dual Wield
The above numbers were with dualwield and using a neutral weapon (Taming Sari perf). Using special stuff like Centovente or Twashtar would've benefitted Aeneas more probably, more on that later.
So, how is it when you're offhanding Genmei Shield while /WHM?
Pre augs Aeneas was above Carns by ~28% with AM3 down.
Carns was above Aeneas by ~6% with AM3 up.
Post augs those numbers change to ~17% and (!!!) ~16% respectively with AM3 down and up.


Offhands
Seeing interesting results from the DNC thread I thought it would've been fun to test Centovente and Twash, comparing them to perf Taming Sari.
Of course the first two tend to benefit Aeneas builds more.
Used Augmented versions only for comparisons, in these tests.
Centovente and Twashtar are of course both inferior to Sari when using Mordant Rime, both provide a (smaller than I expected) improvement over Sari when offhanded.
Centovente is surprisingly slightly behind Twashtar.
It takes completely capped buffs for Centovente to be above and even then it's ~1,7% above, was expecting a larger difference :x


Other Mainhands
I tried with augmented Twashtar and I could get it above the Aug Aeneas build by offhanding Centovente. Only 4% better than Aeneas but this is misleading because my spreadsheet doesn't have OTD, just ODD. With OTD that % would've been much higher?
Couldn't get it above Aeneas by offhanding Sari, far below.

I also tried Barfawc assuming it gives 4% DA for each song up to 10.
Best OH seem to be, as expected, Centovente > Twash > Taming Sari.
Results according to the number of songs:
04 => Inferior to Twash, Aeneas and Carn mainhand
05 => Inferior to Twash, Aeneas and Carn mainhand
08 => Better than Carn AM3 down, worse than the rest
10 => Better than Carn AM3 down, kinda there with Aeneas, worse than the rest

This doesn't take into account the higher survivability granted by the additional HP and PDT. All in all it looks a really cool weapon but not worth it if you ask me.

Tried Mandau Aug as well but not worth reporting.





tl;dr MH
Carn AM3 > Twash > Aeneas > Carn > Barfawc

tl;dr OH Rudra
Centovente > Twash > Sari

tl;dr OH Mordant
Sari > Twash > Centovente


notes 1: Carn AM3 is unrealistical in most situations, Twash without Centovente (see below) is slightly behind Aeneas. Which means in realistical situations Aeneas is the winner? I guess.

notes 2: Centovente is unrealistical in non zerg situations when you have superbuffs. Which means Twash is the best OH for Rudra.

Why would it cap at 10 and not 20?and feasible to test 16 (4 songs) it would seem


edit: are you talking 10% or 10 songs?

I'm talking about 10 songs, i.e. DA +40%
Theoretical max is 12 songs, i.e. DA+48%

Assuming it works for songs above 4, which I think it does, the theoretical max amount is 48% (12 songs)
I just didn't test it for that because with 2 bards you already reach 10 songs, and the last 2 slots available are tipically used by COR rolls, not songs.
To get 12 songs it would take 3 bards, the third of which could only use 2 of his 5 possible songs, so it doesn't seem like a scenario worth testing.


Barfawc might still be pretty good with path B, but I have no clue how to implement that in the spreadsheet so I couldn't test it.

So is it confirmed then that Barfawc does indeed give DA and -dt to songs applied on party members?

Carnwenhan/Barfawc is an interesting combination. 120 M.acc, 80 acc, DT-12 to 15, plus Carn Aftermath. A lot of utility for some DPS loss.

Barfawc does feel like a missed opportunity though. Shame the augments were main hand only.

I don't think 10 songs is realistic. Bards usually swap slots with each other and don't get the other Bard's songs.

If we simplify*** the CHR and Skill conversion, Kali path A gives roughly the same macc as Barfawc, and 5% more duration on debuffs.
Between the two I'd be more leaning on Kali, if you ask me.


Yeaaah :'( But then again can't we say the same for the large majority of these Divergence weapons?
I feel Path B still holds potential for pure DPS, I just don't know how to math it out in the spreadsheet.


I get 10 songs rarely, alas, for that very same reason you said.
When the 2nd bard is a real player and not a mule, we always meet together in a pt of our own to give each other songs, before going back to our original pts.
Sadly most of the time I'm the only human bard around these days >___>''



***
CHR could be better or worse than 1:1 according to the difference between your and target's CHR. On really high level target, where Macc really matters, it should be slightly more.
Singing Skill should convert 1:1 though? At worse 0.9:1, unlike Wind and String which, as we know, have much worse rate (around 0.3:1 iir)

It's confirmed that the DT does NOT apply to pt members.

Nobody knows about the DA because nobody augmented it yet, but it stands to reason only the BRD himself gets it.



@Reain
Swap server and let's go farm ourselves a Twashtar! I don't have mules, would take me years to do it alone. Let's join forceeees! <3

Sechs when you going to update your BRD DD sets. god!

Explain to me one thing. This set Lustratio head(B)/hands(B)/legs(B)/feet(D) is 201 accuracy and that's apparently fine.

Now Sechs several times said Bihu+3 head/hands/legs/feet are not optimal, because whole set like that lacks accuracy, yet it has 212 accuracy which is more than above Rudra's set.

I understand that MR is a little different because it has 5fTP on main hit and 1 fTP on 2nd hit, while Rudra's has all fTP on main hit (talking about single wielding obviously), so rudra gets full benefit of +100 accuracy, while MR only benefit with first of 2 hits. Still, that first hit on MR is majority of damage and should be prioritized, so please explain to me, how is 201 accuracy enough and 212 not enough :)

Also Bard JSE neck is great for Rudra's, but it's godly for Mordant. Not only 25 CHR and DEX, but also accuracy and QA+3%. multi proc on mythic/relic WSes are very valuable because they also gets benefit of 45-60% damage bonus, so it's really a great mix.

Maybe both aren't enough. Rudra's set above assumes capped accuracy, but it's very possible that you'll need to swap in a few pieces for accuracy, Ayanmo +2 mainly because it's loaded with both Accuracy and DEX. However it lacks CHR, making accuracy swaps much harder for MR.

Isn't the max amount of characters per account you can have equal to 8?
Or am I wrong?
But I guess you're right. I only have my char and 1 mule, in hindsight I should've created mules and exploited this month :(
Who knows how long we'll have to wait for another Abyssea campaign. At least 6+ months for sure.


Too early in the morning for me so I'm probably missing something but I'm gonna try to reply regardless °-°

When I said it's not completely viable to go 5/5 Bihu I was talking about my own sets and my numbers.
I try to keep my WS set accuracy numbers in line with my TP sets as much as possible, so that the values are sorta close together.
Makes no sense if I have say (fake numbers for the sake of making examples) 1200 acc in my TP set and then I drop to 1050 in my WS set.
Or rather could say it sorta makes sense for 1H WSs like Rudra, but then again your Multiattack procs wouldn't be capped and so on.
Probably it's not such a big impact in the end when you look at the final numbers, it might be such a miniscule DPS % that it's not worth bothering.
But I'm sorta OCD about it and the thought of me being capped in TP and uncapped in WS annoys me, so I always try to keep the two numbers as close as possible to each other.
It's just my personal bias, if we wanna define it that way?

With that said: using full Bihu+3 doesn't allow me to reach acc levels high enough compared to my TP set (acc version).

There's also the AF1+3 thing***
At capped attack the Head, Hands and Feet slot perform better than Bihu+3 for Mordant Rime, but those pieces provide only +30 accuracy together (not counting the earring of course and not counting DEX>Acc).
I mean sure, in situations where you're att capped and acc capped, go for it but personally I really don't want to have 2000000 different sets for Mordant Rime to use in every single possible situation.
I just draw a line somewhere and accept what I consider to be a viable and acceptable compromise.


***
If I recall AF+3 head is (almost) always better than Bihu+3 for Mordant Rime.
Other way around for Legs where Bihu+3 are (almost) always better than AF+3.
Hope I remembered it right, if you wanna check I remember I already posted about this some pages ago when I ran some tests a couple of months ago.

I know I'm talking about absolute bis here but this set:
ItemSet 361583

Should be around ~1168 accuracy without food/buffs. Assuming Augmented Carn and augmented neck. This set is also around ~1285 attack if i'm not mistaken.

Personally I would never use AF+3 because of giant loss in both acc and att, for only 1 CHR and 5 DEX.

Is BRD sheet really assume capped acc/att? I mean I can see it happen with all buff jobs in ally using 1hrs, but otherwise I don't see it happening at all.

My point Sechs wasn't to say your accuracy requirements are too high, but rather to point out that you noticed that accuracy might be too low with full Bihu+3, while other ppl keep posting Rudra's set with same or worse accuracy and almost no attack. Specifically all the Lustratio gear is imo overrated and completely useless for BRD, unless you want to have Fodder WS set that you can I guess also use with SV songs + bolster bubbles + rolls.

AF head should be better than Bihu, from my tests. Unless you're completely devoid of any sort of buff maybe.
About the Head slot you forgot 5STR too btw. Small impact but still, it counts.
Also +15 acc when combined with the Regal Earring (contributes to reduce the huge acc loss)


About the rest, you keep workin on absolute numbers. Those make no sense from the perspective I was taking.
I was working on relative numbers. I want to keep my WS acc as close as possible to my TP acc, period.
Absolute value of acc is irrelevant from this perspective.

Also, you are considering the absolute value after the september patch. Back when I did the tests there was no +30 acc on Carnwenhan and no + 1 billion acc from the Neck.
Those two pieces alone give a pretty huge boost to the absolute value of acc, of course they reduce the relevance of lower acc on Bihu pieces (other than body).
But when you factor them out the difference between other options (Volte and Ayanmo+2) is pretty big and I couldn't afford more than ~2 Bihu pieces (in addition to body, of course) without falling too further behind my desired level of acc for my WS sets.


Yes, but how is this related to me? I mean it's not me who posted those Rudra sets D: I don't use those sets myself, my Rudra set has much higher acc than those and I don't use any lustratio. Just Bihu body plus a collection of Ayanmo+2 and other stuff (I don't recall every single piece exactely, don't have my Lua here with me, but it has much higher acc that what I could achieve with 4-5 Bihu+3 pieces)

Also it makes me jiggle a bit when people pretend Att is completely irrelevant for Rudra on BRD.
Unless you got superbuff and overcap (which sadly is not that common on BRD, especially when you have rotating BRDs because that means that most of the times you won't get the other BRD's buffs).
It's totally not the case.
Att does matter a lot on att-starving jobs like BRD. To the point that under a certain threshold Bihu+3 performs better for Rudra than other options with much higher DEX, I've talked about this already a few pages ago when I did my Rudra tests.
Some Bihu+3 pieces (aside from the obvious body) perform real nice with Rudra at low att levels.

It wasnt your rudra sets but they were posted next to your posts mentioning accuracy and it was just strenge for me that ppl post in same thread next to each other and talking about similar things but with much different look on accuracy/attack and none is trying to verify that. Its like you wasnt reading their posts because i havent seen any info from you stating that those rudra sets might be way too low on acc and they werent reading your posts about accuracy being too low for you on some sets, because they came up with even less acc sets. Since I read everyhting, it was bothering me to see those posts next to each other and without any interaction between them.

It's more that I was trying to avoid to argue with people and I had no time/will to do cross-reference numbers and blahblah.

When I post stuff it's mostly me just sharing my personal opinion and point of view on something, it's never the "absolute truth".
I'm always glad to discuss and confront with each other, many positive things come out from that sort of stuff.
I never ever had any intention to indoctrinate other people lol, I would never dare to go that far.

In the specific case I saw Boshi's post as something that I didn't agree with, but at the same time I considered it something that was just a "different perspective", not necessarily something "wrong".
When I think something is undoubtely wrong I usually say something about it, but I don't think this was the case with the sets he posted, just different views/approaches/perspectives.


If you want me to further expand on that:
I don't like Lustratio set in general, now more than ever (back when it was released it was quite miles away from other options available at the time, these days I don't see it worth its cons).
Compared to my personal approach that I described above (keep the WS acc numbers as close as possible to the acc numbers in my related TP sets) yes, that Rudra set too would be too low in acc for what I'm looking for.

Of course all of that is kinda irrelevant if you assume to be acc-capped.
And I guess this is not that wrong of an assumption. Unlike att (which is sadly not very often realistically capped for BRD, as I mentioned before) it is more realistic to be at capped acc in a considerable amount of situations.
I at least plan buffs that way, prioritizing Acc over Att.

Also, as far as I know the tests about the WSacc on first hit of a WS are pretty bland and non conclusive.
What is absolutely certain is that there's a confirmed acc bonus on the first hit of all physical WSs.
It wasn't confirmed that this amount is the same for all WSs though.
Most people, me for instance, always assumed this to be ~100 acc, but in all fairness it could have a wider range changing from WS to WS, it was never thoroughfully tested (unless I missed some recent tests since last time I asked in the general thread a couple of years ago) to be exactely 100 and exactely the same for all WSs.

And yes, I agree with you that having less acc on WS that are 1 or few hits is an acceptable compromise. One that I personally don't like because I have OCD bias I guess, but I consider that a perfectly acceptable approach.

Obviously not proof that all Physical WSes are the same but did help confirm players testing of +100 acc to some degree. JP Dev post by SE stated that Phy Blood Pacts did in fact get the same bonus as them and it is, +100.

It was stated by SE devs that the first hit of all physical WSs have +100 accuracy on the first hit.

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/112776-Dev-Tracker-Findings-Posts-(NO-DISCUSSION)?p=6633828&viewfull=1#post6633828

Can someone post a top *** MR set

I’ve been testing out a few things just want to see what you guys have

Someone I don't know reported that Barfawc's DA augment applies to everybody that receives the song and not just the BRD who cast it (like the DT part).

I'm very skeptic on this, but if proven true it could be yet another legendary weapon "required" by BRDs.
Anybody else can provide more data on this?

Not a brd but far as aware any song: effect type gear had to be equipped by the person to get the effect, so im also skeptical til aome numbers are put out. Can carns duration be off-handed?

No.

Since things have been reported in a strange way with all the different Carnwenhan versions from 75 to current (and several patches) I went and re-tested.

I can confirm that alas yes, Carnwenhan doesn't work offhand :'(
The other +duration daggers (Legato and Kali? Can't think of others) do work perfectly though.

Figured as much since rema and all. So just assuming it did work for others i guess itd be great, duration hits made up by nice surge of DA, still, doubt it actually does based on wording and how song gear has always worked