Which Weapon Should I Get I'm Too Stupid To Pick!

Idk, if you're in a 6 boss run then you're looking at the difference between:

MC only: victory march, madrigal, 2 minuets
Vs
Full REMA (excluding lough): honor march, madrigal, 3 minuets

So, a difference of 58 acc & 429 attack, per member of the team, which is further multiplied by chaos and/or fury. Double all of those if you're under the effects of soul voice.

Assuming +8 lucky, non-crooked chaos, that's another 50%, with a non-bolster, non-idris indi-fury you're at another 50%, so...you're losing a thousand attack on 5 party members. Again, double that if you have SV.

Not a big sacrifice.

I'm not saying you can't, or shouldn't, play BRD before you get marsyas and/or daurdabla, but i think it's good to be realistic about what the differences are. Each of them makes a massive difference, especially in party play when you're buffing a whole group of people.

You're not doing any sortie, 6 boss or no, as a 3 song brd, get real.

How Asura of you.

It was suggested on the previous page that the commenter could do 6 boss sortie if he slapped together a BRD with MC. I'm not saying that he could find a PUG to accept him, but I can guarantee that with a supportive, competent, decently-geared party, a BRD with only MC could do 6 boss Sortie. Probably even 8, so long as the other players are solid and the plan is good.

That said, going from "i just have a MC" to full REMA makes a big difference, which was my original point.

Side note but even if you don't need the REMA, you still "need" a moonbow whistle+1 which is no joke price-wise, and should probably pick up some kind dynamis neck...and a bunch of other stuff that isn't a REMA. It's not for the faint of heart (wallet).

Anyway...tangents aside, we really need to shift the narrative from "nobody will ever love you unless you have Idris, epeo, 5 REMAs, and R20 ody gear" to "it's fine, just approach the content at your level and gradually progress through it".

Ody, sortie, limbus, dynamis, ambu, etc. Are all purpose-built to allow people to select the challenge level they're geared and experienced enough for. IMO people should be jumping straight into all that ***. Solo, with 1 friend, with linkshell mates, with PUGs, whatever. Get going.

1,000,000% this.
It's wild how picky people are these days about groups, especially when, if you remove the multiboxers and bots, most servers likely don't even hit 100 real individual players.
I don't remember people, in my 21 years of experience, ever being this picky even back when the population was a lot bigger. The majority of linkshells and pugs I was in (75 cap, aby, adoulin, RoV) just took whatever they could get and made it work.
I recently came back to the game after taking a break when Sortie came out and it's baffling to me that I've seen people want r20 ody, m40+ and other ***... for stuff my old linkshell and I completed fine pre-mlvls.

I get it, they want to do it the most efficient way possible. But if 80% of the server is in the same linkshell, you don't really have options to be picky with and I would honestly rather go into content with a non-meta setup and just make some progress. Because any progress is better than no progress.

Yeah, ok. No group is going to be okay with missing a song. Is it okay to grab MC and get 15min songs while working on daurdabla? Of course, and your group will wait and do 6 boss or w/e while everyone gears up.

Eventually you will need that 4th song because it's a massive boost that cannot be compensated.

If you don't care about progressing why do you need to do sortie. If you want to do sortie and progress, you need certain things. Like 4 songs if you want to play brd.

Would you take a dd with no remas nor a damn naegling to do melee sortie? *** no you wouldn't. Stop pretending.

Has nothing to do with Pugs or servers. You want to do certain content, you need to be prepared and progress to it.

I wholeheartedly support that, at least in theory.
BRD specifically is probably the worst job to try to fit into that model because of how intense it is in terms of "mandatory" stuff you need to get and how big of a difference they make.

The original concept by Maletaru still stands strong for me, just maybe... a bit less than for a plethora of other jobs?
But at the end of the day yes, it stands. Especially if you're in a group of likely-minded people who are aware what their limits are, I see no problem ultimately with that. Things can only improve from that point onward!

The RDM without a crocea, geo without idris, brd without marsyas/daurdabla, pld without burtgang, cor without rostam, and dnc without mpu/twashtar team up. Together they kill all the ground floor bosses.
Then they do E
Then they do G
Then they do F
Then they do H
Then they do aminon.

Rinse and repeat for all the content i listed above. Maybe along the way they get those REMA and achieve amazing things. Nobody has to wait to do content until they have every REMA in the game, just don't expect to go straight to the end. Work your way up from the bottom, with your peers. Or get carried, IDGAF. But I think we need to stop promoting the idea of finishing your character FIRST, then doing content.

Not rocket surgery.

Yeah, I agree with you. I would take your point a step further. I'll try to explain.

FFXI is a game that is 90% preparation and 10% execution. You will spend a huge chunk of your time, reforging gear and making incremental improvements to your character. Then, you enter a fight and you/your group will get curb-stomped. Or perhaps, you win, barely, by the skin of your teeth. Eventually, you'll dust yourself off and try to figure out why/how/what went wrong.

In one situation, where a DD is taking too much damage, it's easy to insist that he/she wear more DT/MDB/Magic Evasion gear. It's also possible that the Healer doesn't have capped cure potency, healing magic skill, enmity-, etc. So, these two options for improvement can pull on each other like a tug-of-war.

Let's say Aminon manages to get a TP move off and cause a wipe. You now have a 5/6-way tug of war between everyone in the party to figure how he got a TP move off. It could be that someone's Absorb-TP Magic Accuracy is too low, or maybe their Absorb-TP recast timers aren't at 12-seconds. It's possible that the PLD's stoneskin drops too quickly and they need to be faster about re-applying it maybe they too need to make some upgrades.

So these are small examples, and certainly belabor your point: We don't need REMAs to do everything. (FYI: I don't believe Fujito when he says they test content without any REMAs). But, we certainly need to be on the same page with the group of people that we play with. I don't think it's too much to ask to pay it forward and help the people you play with accomplish their goals, too.

I have good friends in my Sortie static who've dropped millions of gil and gallimaufry to improve their characters and performance, so we can make the most out of our sortie runs. They certainly did not do this by themselves.

If everyone is committed to helping their group improve, then it's no problem and everyone gets better. But if someone wants to be a passenger princess, who just shows up, and doesn't contribute anything back to the group, it just builds resentment over time.

So, I think "you must have a REMA" is a byproduct of too many people saying "you don't need X" and trying to justify doing as little as possible to get ahead.

It's such a double-edged sword too. I try to help people all the time, and I find that many people will mis-represent a character to get an invite. (Looking at you, 50% of all ML50 WHMs with 0% enhancing-duration duration).

We need a better way to vet characters and that would help *** if someone is worth the time to help, I guess. If it were up to me, FFXIAH would have all of your merits/skills/etc up to date, for easy reference.

Does Miracle Cheer offer anything that is unique or crucial to the job, like if I ever remotely consider to pick up BRD and do the REMAs will I need MC?

I don't know anything about BRD but from how I understand it MC is primarily for convenience and for a new BRD to get a quick potency boost, right?

MC on a REMA BRD is basically for ballading the mages for 15 minutes on lower potency instead of ~12 minutes with higher potency, correct?

And there is still the chance that they add more BRD duration gear later so the duration advantage of MC could shrink in the future.

Everything wrong with pugging wrapped up with a neat little bow. Using a daily lockout on a failed run really does feel like a waste of time to someone with previous experience and expectations. Even replacing just 1 person in a 6man group who has never played with them can cause big problems for the day.

I don't think FFXI will ever be able to solve this, sadly. The best you can do is change your own attitude towards networking with more people versus getting the absolute most out of every run, but let's not be naive and pretend many do this.

Quite. You don't "need" 90% of things in the game including HQ gear, +3s/+4s and so on. The game *is* progression. If you're happy with what you have and don't want to progress anymore, great, no need to do more sortie runs.

If you want to do more sortie runs, get a stage 5, do more than 4 bosses, whatever content progression you want to do, your gear must also progress to the point where you are able to do that.

What works for v10 doesn't work for V20. What works for 4 boss doesn't work for 8.

If you're a brd that wants to progress sortie to do 8+ boss, you *need* 4 songs. Sucks, but it is what it is. No one likes it, no one wants to have to farm daurd. It will not change.

Unique, yes.
Crucial? My personal opinion is "no", but to each his own.

I find it can be useful in situations where you're grouping together and you want to give slightly weaker songs for 15 mins without using NiTro.
Or slightly weaker SV songs for 15+ mins etc.
(what "kills" these two approaches is the fact you can't use Miracle Cheer for Honor March and Aria of Passion, alas)

But what you'll find most people agree with probably is the situations where you want to overwrite a song on a party member with a pianissimo Ballad. Which can situationally be very annoying to do, with Miracle Cheer that problem is "solved" at the cost of some ballad potency.

Wouldn't say it's something very common in current meta but regardless, I find it "unique" to Miracle Cheer for sure.

agreed. MC gets ***on by a lot of people who seem to think its only usefull for 3 song alts. Its pretty useful in a lot of nich situations. by no means required, but def a nice pick up for brd.

I would be fine with more BRDs in general to have Miracle Cheer, just because I see so many PUG/Newer BRDs routinely mess up songs and have no clue how to fix them. MC can kind of idiot proof newer BRD singing duties to a degree, giving you long songs that you can overwrite indefinitely without any problems. However, I don't think MC corrects the fundamental issue with BRD for a newer BRD anyways. It's almost better served as a toy/tool for more experienced bards who want to optimize singing and splitting them up. Or a case I can see: someone dies and you don't know everyone else's song timers, so you just resing everything with MC+HM and reset everyone's songs (at a weaker potency), then correct everything at the next Nitro/Marcato.

Even still, these kind of niche applications like Sechs mentioned I would consider these to be more "Advanced" usage of Miracle Cheer. In the same way I would group Yagyu's hate accumulation trick for an advanced Ninja, not a beginner.

But to Dodik's point: they'll still need to invest time into the other instruments at some point, particularly the Harp and Marsyas. The 4th song is incredible (you can juggle CC and maintain 4 songs, but then you're making the same argument for "5 songs" maintenance). So whatever holdover benefit they get from Miracle Cheer is just a temporary placeholder to help them learn the job while they work on other things. I think that's completely fine in that specific lane. But BRD is such an in-demand job, you really can only go so far without the other instruments. I don't even bother playing BRD for Sortie or other events like Segments, because I have to use an Etude instead of Aria, and I know most players want their prime weapons to shine like the sun, and I don't want to hold them back. But that's my personal view, not that my BRD is insufficient for anything.

IMO, "you need REMA" is just the lazy version of vetting someone you don't know. Similar to shouting for "Veteran", but more specific. You don't "need" the rema, and honestly, most players won't even notice the difference (I have purposely casted bubbles in Maxentius during plenty of fights and nobody batted an eye).

Now, when you're forming a party, you have nothing to go off of when you invite someone, so you have to set some kind of standard somewhere. The assumption is that, IF the player has a REMA, or R25+ Nyame, or ML# whatever, they have some investment or knowledge of the job they would play, and are a safer bet to include in their group. I've been in groups where the BRD is on autopilot and sings Aria when there's no chance we are attack capped (and thus getting a worthless song), so the blanket belief that someone with a REMA is more experienced is a guess at best.

So it's completely untrue and laughable that REMA=EXPERIENCE, but I have had JP players specifically ask me "Prime DD OK?" when I asked to join a Limbus climb. I have 3 of them, and I came as DRG with Naegling/Mafic Cudgel for first few floors of Apollyon just because it was a silly standard. But even the Japanese apply some arbitrary standard when forming groups. It's not unusual.

Just to point out, we have people here saying

* "Three song brd is fine"

Then other people saying

* "I don't use my 4 song brd for limbus or segs because I don't have prime horn"

It obviously depends on content, but if you think no one will urge you to get daurd or prime horn because you already have miracle cheer.. Bridges. I sell them. Cheap. /tell me in game

Most people are never going to make it out of the blue. and that's ok.

Water seeks it's level. It mostly depends on where you're at and what kind of progress you expect, less on the actual content.

If you're a more involved endgame player, you're going to have the expectation of players having higher quality items to maintain that level of productivity in any content. If you're used to playing with people whose characters haven't reached that level, it's far more acceptable to use non rema weapons. I used my own personal example because any group I'm invited to likely would expect a certain standard, so I'd rather play something else if what they generally expect is not what I have to offer. I can play Bard in lower tier groups and it would be far higher than their expectations/standard, but it's really just a function of what groups you tend to roll with. You can absolutely clear content with less than the absolute best, you just have to account for what your group wants and is able to do.

What if i made the harp, but never got miracle cheer and don't have relic horn?

Then you're golden. All you have to do is convince idiots that it's ok to have minuet +7 instead of +8 and losing 20 attack is not as big of a deal as they pretend it is. (just lie and sing in apollo's, no ones going to know)

And be ok with not reaching the absolute pinnacle of sweatiness.

I picked the shield mostly for the Warcry/Berserk/Blood Rage extension but also since i don't see it mentioned, I use it on RDM for Saboteur as well.

Yes, of course. I'm not at all surprised by the occurence. I've been rejected from JP groups because they wanted a Mumei SAM and didn't want Impulse Drive.


Sadly, they keep showing up. I did 3 Sortie runs yesterday, all PUGs.

Sortie run#1 had a WHM with ML50. We confirmed prior to the run that they had Boost/Haste spells with adequate enhancing-duration. (We later found out some spells were not applying his sets correctly, but we lived and managed to complete 8-bosses.

Sortie run#2 had a COR who completely lied, never did any Sortie before, couldn't even solo B objective without help. It ended up being this person's first 8-boss run ever. I wanted to be happy for them, but it was kind of spoiled by having to handhold someone who blatantly lied, got lost without asking for help, etc etc.

Sortie run#3 had a JP GEO player who joined discord and spoke little english (I mean, very broken english from a native JP speaker) ...and we successfully completed 9-boss with 2 seconds to spare. This person was so nice and kind and just a great player, despite a HUGE language barrier.

I think this represents the entire gamut of PUGs:

1. decent players with some gaps who want to learn and get better
   

2. total liars/mules pretending to be mains
   

3. a rare gem, someone who can play their job to the fullest capability in end-game content.
   

I have spent years trying to raise the floor for players in this game, to disseminate Vana'Facts, mechanics and other tid-bits to anyone who will listen. Lately, I find a lot of people from #2, and it's very disconcerting. I wish it was easier to surface players from categories #1, #3. (I mean, if we added Likes to people FFXIAH profiles, they would just get bombed with Negative votes, because Hating FFXI Players is a hobby for some people).

At least you didn't get my personal "favourite", person asking for people to join their party of themselves and their alts. Without telling anyone the others in the party are their alts.

And can't multibox to save their lives on top of that.

Tbh, I feel like this group of people are likely to be XIV players who have been coming over to XI lately. That playerbase is notorious for prog lying.