Military Parade - A DD Bard Guide

I saw a guide that had savage blade in all bihu. Is this correct, or lustratio path A?

The problem with Lustratio is you are missing a lot of accuracy. Bihu is bonkers on the accuracy and attack. If you are just doing your regular day-to-day activities, you will likely find that you don't need accuracy, but if you start doing some of the more evasive stuff, your Savage Blades will be very miss-prone.

Meaning, use full Bihu on anything difficult pretty much.

They're probably still pretty close even when your accuracy is capped because Savage Blade is 50/50 STR/MND and the Lustratio set has 0 MND on it. Wearing the Lustratio head and feet together would probably pull ahead since you would get the 4% WSD bonus and STR is a more valuable stat. The accuracy/attack/hp/pdt on the Bihu pieces is always relevant for me so I've never bothered trying anything else.

Ok so I decided to release some minor work I've been doing on the BRD spreadsheet.
It still needs a lot of stuff, but hopefully this can be a new starting point?

Stuff that I updated
Stuff that needs to be updated
Stuff I'm not sure about
Everything else seems to be working but I'll be glad to receive feedback.

More than anything else I need someone willing to help with adding the things my limited knowledge of spreadsheets doesn't allow me to add.
I'm gonna send a PM to Langly, Simonses and Chiaia who have way more experience than me in these things. If you guys know a friend with lotsa free time and willing to help, please direct him this way!


Without any further ado now, here is the link to the spreadsheet.

Some further notes:

Ayanmo +2 ring is called +2 (even though technically it's just a NQ) for the automatic Set bonus calculation.

For some weapons (like Barfawc) I've added multiple versions. The number you see at the end of the weapon is the number of songs active (converting into DA on Barfawc path C). It goes up to 10 even though I seem to recall some early tests hinted at the bonus not going above 4. Regardless, even with 10 it loses to most other options.

Since I was asked to look at it. I'm leave some things I also see missing will update as I find.

New Foods
New Mobs

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm fairly certain Evisceration will blow Mercy Stroke out of the water in this case. It blows it out of the water at 99 as well but looking available gears for 75 cap, you have some very notable advantages for Evisceration.

Byakko Haidate namely.
It'll be Mercy's 6 non-rolling fTP (5 mainhand and 1 Offhand) 80%STR vs
Evisceration's 7.5 rolling fTP (6 hits with DW and 1.25 for any additional hits after) and 50% DEX and Critical Hits

Add WS Gorget to further help the fTP and also that Mandau's Aftermath boosts Critical Hit Rate 5% and its looking like Evisceration should win pretty handily for simple spamming.

martial knife is an option too

Without access to Rudra I dont think you would have any Ws to utilize martial knife with.

Base damage of weapon at 75 cap is far more important than at ilvl. I. Not sure how much dex you can stack at 75 bard for evisceration, but I assume something like 100 total with base dex? So WSC would be around 50.

Martial knife has 27 dmg, Mandau 39.

That 12 dmg difference would be like 15% increase in Evisceration damage. Crit rate from Tp bonus definitely cant compete with that, especially that BRD has probably 0 crit damage bonuses at 75, so it will be just 15% more chance for +1 pdif. So basicaly 15% chance for +30% damage, so around +4% more damage on avg.

almost no way you're getting 3.25+ ratio with 75 stats and mobs, plus you need to take into consideration level correction exists.

Fair enough, but it would need to be cratio 1.0 to even match gain from Mandau, then you would also need to look at +20 attack on relic and melee damage.

Great work Sechs!!

I know it needs some work but it is a good starting point to updating the OP accurately. This will certainly help!

I'll see if any of those fixes I can get implemented too.






Speaking of spreadsheets, I do have a 75 capped BRD spreadsheet. For the sake of discussion, this is the optimal 75 Mercy Stroke set.

ItemSet 374211

AF+1 Legs were better in some situations on lower targets.

Unfortunately, Mercy Stroke doesn't have much use, other than skillchain utility.

There existed a point in BRD's meta, around pre-SoA 99 era, where Mercy Stroke and Exenterator were very close in damage, with the latter being slightly better. This meant BRD's best option at the time was to utilize Mercy Stroke for Aftermath (for increased melee DPS) and use Exenterator normally.

I wanted to see if this was the case at 75 with Mercy Stroke and Evisceration, and all of the game's current changes since then implemented as well. I came to find out Evisceration is just so much better than Mercy Stroke, that it's not worth using even for Aftermath.

Mandau itself is your best mainhand weapon for damage though. While Martial Knife is competitive with non R/M options(like Blau or even STR Dakini), I've found Mandau much better than anything else, if you have it.

If anyone wants to contribute updating the spreadsheet I suggest uploading it in some online repository where everyone (or selected people) can update it. Like Google drive or similar.

Gear is pretty much fine with current choices.
Would maybe have to add a second Tauret. One to use as offhand (no crit bonus) and one as mainhand (crit bonus, average of 20-25% crit should be accurate, supposing WS at 1000tp)

If we rename Tauret we need to update the REMA WS bonus damage formula in the data sheet though.
Currently it's configured to give 50% WSD to Evisceration if a weapon called "Tauret" is equipped in main hand.

Update on the BRD Spreadsheet status.
Nususu kindly offered to take a look at it. It's likely at least a couple of the important things still missing in my first release will be added, thanks to his precious contribution, in the very near future :-)

Is Cohort Cloak +1 with it's new augments now pretty OP for BRD Aeolian Edge? best before was Cath C Head + Relic body for 39 MATK Bonus + 10% WSD vs 100 MATK Bonus now?

Hmm, good question.
Tipically there's a strange relation between Mab and WSD for magic WS, where each point of WSD becomes more useful the more Mab you have in the other slots.

In a certain way it's almost like the relation between Pet: BPD and Pet: Mab for SMN.

This is to say that value and the relevance that the Bihu+3 body is gonna have, will be related to how much mab you can manage to stick in all other slots.


With that said, the Cohort+1 body looks incredibly awesome for Aeolian Edge, not simply for the 100 mab but also for the raw stats and the Macc too.
Will it be better than current options?
Probably, but I dunno.
One thing I know though, if Aeolian Edge is the only thing you're gonna get Cohort+1 R15 for, then I'm not sure it's gonna be worth it, considering the huge price it's gonna have at least for several months.

Cait Crown + max Chironic would match cohort on mab (only if 100% max roll on mab) and should beat it for both macc and int. I don't have a quite maxed one, but that's what I use on brd anyway. Never bothered checking if they actaully beat relic body in max buff situations, but should be close enough in any case.

You would need Chironic with really good augment.
Like +40 mab, +40macc, +3int to match stats on Cohort with Cath crown. You would still be 12 DEX behind Cohort too and also only at 110 macc, which is minimum for Cohort (it has 110~120).

Cohort should also beat relic +3 body with cath crown.
Its also bis body for many nuking/magicWS related things on many jobs, so its awesome piece to have.




Nothing strange in that relation tbh. Also that relation is between every multiplicative stat for any WS, magic etc.

Ie: Wsd will also increase potency of your ws modifier and vice versa, increasing ws modifier will increase potency of multi attack and vice versa etc. etc.

Woops, guess I failed to account for the unity bonus. Cohort should just be a straight upgrade then, outside crazy DM shenanigans.

Like Sechs said though, if it's solely for Aeolian edge you'd have to consider if it's worth the inv -1 for you personally.

Its bis body for BLU nuking and BLU macc. Bis body for Trueflight/Wildfire for RNG. Probably BIS enfeebling for several jobs. BIS elemental nuking for several jobs (especially if macc is needed). BIS MNK magic WS. BIS PLD nukes and magic WS. BIS RUN macc/nuke. Possibly more. If inventory is a problem, that Cloak would probably actually let you save a lot of room :)

Yeah from the new items this cloak seems to be the one thing that I would do, these are on alts so inventory space isn't really an issue.

Guess i'll have to do two, one on my GEO one on my BRD.

Not sure how I overlooked that initially, but wouldnt Ternion dagger +1 or Demersal Dagen be be new bis offhand for Carn?

I haven't tested it yet on the (almost complete!) new spreadsheet, but considering how Tauret was already so close (yet behind) to perf Taming Sari, I suspect Ternion +1 R15 is gonna win.

I'm curious what everyone thinks of the following sets. All of the stats posted below are representative of only what the gear gave me (no other song buffs, etc)

ItemSet 374459
Typical SB augments on the augmentable items.
Total STR = 297
Total MND = 296
Main Hand Acc = 1165
Main Hand Attk = 1172


ItemSet 374460
This is what I see a lot of people posting as their "go to" brd savage blade set. Again the augments on the items are your typical SB augments.
Total STR = 284
Total MND = 284
Main Hand ACC = 1106
Main Hand Attk = 1350


So to sum up these two sets, the first one gives 13 more str, 12 more mnd, 59 more acc, but loses 178 attack. I'm curious as to which one everyone feels would be the better set. I feel like the first one with Ayanmo would, as I will still be getting buffs from songs (HM, minuet, etc), but am curious as to everyone elses thoughts.
Also, I've been using cento offhand, but couldn't figure out how to make it include both of these weapons when making the items sets :P

So what does the dps and wsd look like of a DD bard? Is it worth investing in?

The cost/benefit of DD BRD definitely doesn't compare well with most other DD options.

But if you're like the rest of us, and have already sunk millions(billions) into the job, you just go for it because why not at that point.

With full buffs, songs/roll/geo first set would win I would think. I'm still partial to using some lustratio though.

ItemSet 374533