Military Parade - A DD Bard Guide

Probably the SE dev who decided that deserves to be kicked in the bollux.

Apologies if this was addressed.. would R15 Twash/tp bonus dagger be bis for dd? assuming u always have x2 acc songs

Yes, sorta.

thanks, is it by alot? I have R15 Carn, just debating if it's worth the hassle of getting twash, it its not much, then i'll stick to Carn

Oh, not by a lot, i would stick with carn, unless you have nothing to spend time/gil on.

It's been circling in my mind for a while, I dunno honestly.
Granted the answer is likely "yes" for DNC and THF main, but for BRD? I wonder.

BRD lacks the gear DNC and THF have to fully exploit the power of Rudra's Storm (excluding crazy DM augs). Then again, it's not completely devoid of gear either.

You would kinda suffer for accuracy though, no malignance and Ayanmo+2 is pretty much our best Acc option atm, or close to that.
It's not bad, but it's clearly nowhere as much acc as other jobs get.
As such you would definitely have issues in Wave3 and, possibly, even in Wave2 (depending on mobs and on your buffs. 1x Madrigal pretty mandatory if you ask me).


To get back on the topic:
No, I don't know the answer.
I've been trying to create a new, updated BRD spreadsheet but it's frankly beyond my capabilities. If someone wants to do that, I will be more than glad to help with that!

How would Naegling/TP bonus stack up on easy stuff? Thread search didn't really bring up much.

Carn R15 is great. I mean, I would still grab Twash if you were super bored, the “big *** energy” *giggle* for a Bard with all the options is fun to have.

Thanks guys really appreciate it, but I guess ill stick to Carn due to limited info whether it's worth it or not, as I also have other priorities

Cant answer for twash. I have r15 carn, and if you have that, you can do a lot of damage. I just prefer it cause it's close if not the same dps as aeonic spamming rudras. And you dont have to lose TP when renewing songs.

would really be interested in answer to this

It's nice. It only works on stuff with low acc requirements of course because of the lower Sword Skill (and attack, consequentially) and the Centovente offhand.

In such a scenario it's probably gonna be one of BRD's best options in term of pure, simple, straightforward damage output.


You should feel bad, dirty and tainted for using Naegling on BRD though!!!

If ninja's don't feel bad why should we? -.-

Ninjas should beel bad too! xD
But BRD more so I guess, especially people who own a Carns.

Why is this guide so out of date when the author still plays?
C'mon can give it an update for all the brd DD's out there.

It's hard to keep it up-to-date without instruments to measure efficiency of pieces for each slot in an objective way.

Sims are too slow for that (and there are none available).
The spreadsheet is way too outdated.
We can parse stuff sure, but there are so many variables in there and FFXI has no "puppets" to measure DPS efficiently that way.
So yeah...


In terms of TP gear there really hasn't been any major changes in years. Outside of crazy DM augs on Chironic BRD still relies on the same gear.
Ayanmo+2 is basically pretty close to any other option and offers good acc and DT with minimum effort.

Ashera Harness is clearly a body ugprade but alas not everyone can claim to have one.
Bastok Volte Hands/Legs/Feet too are nice upgrades but hard to obtain.

Volte Legs and Jokushu Haidate are nice pieces to put in the legs slot (higher than usual haste values) to compensate for other slots if you get crazy DM augs on Chironic (they have low haste, so you need a slot with bigger-than-usual haste values to compensate. Legs is a perfect slot for that).
Linos is your friend for TP and WS.

Rings have the same options between Moonlight (hybrid/DT), Ilabrat (STP/acc/attack), Petrov and Hetairoi, they're all pretty close and it depends on what sort of builds you're trying to make up.


BRD doesn't get many options and the outcome changes according to your buffs and builds but generally speaking Aeneas and Twashtar MH will favor multiattack, whereas Carnwenhan MH builds will favor MA with AM3 down and STP with AM3 up.
This is a general rule but it doesn't apply to every slot, every piece and every situation, it kinda depends on many factors.


Even SJ wise /NIN vs /DNC is hard to compare.
Former offers the additional layer of defense through Utsusemi and 1 more tier of DW, it's generally more straightforward to use.
The latter offers slightly more acc, 1 more PDL tier, lots of debuffs/tools that go well if you wanna play "support DD" hybrid role instead of focusing on pure DPS after you sang your songs.


WS gear is pretty much the same too.
Lustratio+1 is nice for Rudra but dangerous if you get hit in it.
Ayanmo+2 is a nice starting point for mules or people who don't want to bother too much.
Relic+3 is sorta BiS for Mordant Rime and can be good for other WSs as well (like Rudra) when you're attack-starved. Body is of course sorta BiS for pretty much everything.


Really, that's BRD summed up in a simple way, there hasn't been any huge update to BRD gearing paradygms in years alas.

There are sets here: https://www.ffxiah.com/node/355

Note: I didn't make this.

To add above. /dnc gets skillchain bonus.

Zerging situations I always /DNC for pdl and skillchain bonus. Ninja seems meh.

hey Lewyo, glad to hear you like the idea of the DD BRD guide. this is in fact on my pipeline of things to do, just have been juggling some other things lately. you are right, the OP does need an overhaul. basically what Sechs said though, it is a daunting task when you think about what is involved in doing that now. something would be better than nothing, we just can’t necessarily be dogmatic about what is precisely optimal for every given situation.

still, I think I speak for everyone when I say that the discussions in the comments is very helpful and has been appreciated! part of a guide is not just the guide itself, but also the community invested in it. some of the recent discussions will for sure be incorporated in the next “update” too so that people won’t have to dig through pages and pages to find helpful nuggets of information. thanks!

I'm pretty sure this issue is where their some some "Community Collaborative Guides" on BG-Wiki.

so other people can update it.

even if its just updating gear sets, its really nice.

So, might need to talk to people, but that kind of collaborative guide is a pretty good idea in my opinion.

Btw, a new, updated BRD spreadsheet might become available in a few weeks, end of january maybe if all goes well.

Once that is ready, we'll have once again a powerful instrument to measure efficiency of the different pieces we received over the last 2 years.
Which aren't many as I mentioned before, but still without such an instrument it's proved really hard to evaluate what is better on a slot-by-slot basis, lately.


In general things are gonna be like I said in my previous post btw, which isn't all too different from Bruno's outdated gearsets, honestly.
But who knows, there might be unexpected surprises! There usually always is a piece or two that surprises you with higher-than-expected performance :D

Was actually working on updating it myself a week ago or so, but got bored/worn out after implementing Bard's Charm's PDL calculations for NQ/HQ/HQ+2. lol

Updating the old one (which I maintained for a while) is beyond my skills.
Aside from the new gear which I tried to more or less keep up-to-date (that's a boring, long but incredibly easy part) the old BRD Spreadsheet I shared here a long time ago would need:


1) Gifts (no big deal honestly, BRD doesn't really get any "special" melee gift, just a bunch of passive acc/att/etc bonuses)
2) New, updated buffs (useful in some instances, but then again not really relevant, can easily simulate buffs with the "custom" line)
3) New, updated targets
4) New Acc cap calculations (99% for MH)
5) Gear with "special" properties that have deep impact on the spreadsheet formulae (R15 RMEAs and Tauret, for instance)
6) PDL-related stuff

Just to name a few but there's probably more that I can't remember right now.
Some points are not really that relevant, just QoL for the spreadsheet users. Other things are crucial, without them it's basically impossible to evaluate the DPS of certain options and understand which work better and in which scenario.
Basically it's a ton of work that it's already done on other similar spreadsheets like DNC and THF, so it would probably be more efficient to take one of the two, cut the additional stuff that's not relevant for BRD, adapt the gear and there you go.

sounds great Sechs!! looking forward to having this instrument updated :) no pun intended. this will be really nice though if things go well for you


agreed on the point of going off the THF/DNC spreadsheets. I remember years ago when they first came into the limelight, my brother and I were creating a BRD spreadsheet and just found it easiest to convert one of those existing ones into something suitable for BRD, since a lot of the ingredients were there already.

coincidentally starting this week I have a bit more time on my hands now, so I will also do my part and start to clean up and update OP a bit and contribute to the good work myself

So, was looking at Taming again for a sub to Carn...is Tauret really better than Taming for a sub? Stats on Taming are just...so good.

I am unable to evaluate that without a spreadsheet, which is in the works as I mentioned before.

Basically for P. Sari vs Tauret it's:

Perfect Sari
Higher DEX and CHR (Rime mods)
Triple Attack (reduced return for MH because of AM3, but full return for OH)
Higher white damage (lulz, pretty much irrelevant)
Slightly higher Att

Tauret
Slightly higher overall Acc
Higher offhand specific acc & att
Much lower delay


Without knowing which is the better and out of a completely personal and likely biased hunch, I've been offhanding Perfect Sari whenever I want to use Carnwenhan MH, unless I feel I totally need that additional acc.
It's ~15 more Acc, and further ~6 offhand specific acc.
I wouldn't call this acc difference irrelevant, but then again I wouldn't call it absolutely huge either, can probably compensate with different food or slightly different accessories etc.
I think the incredibly low delay is Tauret's only saving grace as an OH for Carnwenhan users, but again I'm unable to evaluate how much of a difference it would make.

Gotcha. Going to switch back to taming for now.

AG Twashtar would still be a bigger upgrade for Rime and Rudras, though, right, compared to Tauret?