BRD/WHM Do You Hate it Too!?Follow

Because parties want you to contribute?

Because people like being the absolute best support job in the game, which IS brd/whm.

BRD/RDM is just as good at increasing XP efficiency, you just trade advantages and disadvantages.

How do you enfeeble with half-level skill?

You could hit dia, since it can't be resisted, I doubt you could hit anything else.

On my brd/whm, I rarely end the fight with more than half mana, and am frequently near 0. Any spell I cast is one fewer the main healer has to, so I use my mana whenever possible. To my feeling, if I end the fight with less mana used than the main healer and I'm not oom, I didn't do nearly as much as I could have that fight.

at higher lvls whm sub is a better sub than rdm besides the fast cast abilities because of the ability to cure status ailments. blindna, silena, parylana, poisona etc. enfeebles for either rdm or whm are useless.

You can do any combo you want to, but it's cookie-cutter for a reason. People who actually USE the skills of BRD and WHM will become an incredible power. The WHM / RDM spells become far more important later when fights are taking longer, more support is needed, or when you do not have a WHM (the bar spells are VERY NICE against the oh-so-common crab and goblin enemies.)

You could prolly get invites with other subs more then other jobs, I don't know why you don't get invites because I know of at least one bard who got level 50+ using /WAR.

It's just that, IMO, /WHM can maximize your potential... as opposed to:
/WAR which adds melee skills. I don't know about you but doing less then 1/200th of the damage of the enemies total HP on each succesful swing doesnt sound... great. Healing and status cures and protection from bar-ras seem better to me.
/MNK which adds HP and some other skills related to dodging/damage/accuracy. Again, I'd take healing.
/THF which could be feasible I guess if you had a perma group with a VERY good WHM and BLM/WHM or WHM and RDM. Adds minor damage attributes.
/RDM which decreases song time, but doesnt give you Curaga (nice to save the healer lots of MP... Curaga II + DS is a real MP-saver for others), Bar spells (with a main-job WHM in party they should be casting these anyways), nor status cures, which can give the other mages about 5 or so seconds more of rest per fight when timed correctly.
/RNG ... uhm yes... go Scan the area and look at how many ranged weapons you CANNOT use.
/DRG uhm... poor stat upgrades, no wyvern, and some jump attacks that recharge every 1:30 and then 3:00 later on... yay.
/DRK melee damage is unnoticably better or worse from the utter **** damage output given by subbing Warrior. Same deal.
/BLM I've actually seen this in exp parties. ES + a nuke = less then what a RDM would give off in one nuke and also on a 10 minute timer. Debuffs are out of the question.
/SMN I could see an arguement for this when your Summons actually start getting Aerial Armor / Stoneskin or whatnot, but it sounds like you're still trading alot of support potential for these skills.
/PLD LOW LOW mp, LOW LOW cure spells, SLIGHTLY more defense, some other WS added too if you use sword. Wow, I'm speechless.......
/NIN congratulations you can now use low level Ninjutsu but it still costs you money and you won't be taking much damage anyways so Utsusemi isnt really an incentive. Add into this your low level Ninjutsu skill and you won't be adding much through using it.
/SAM TP, yay... uhm ok I don't think I need to explain this one... if you have time to start spamming your WS I wonder what you're singing.
/BST meh...I don't know how this would work at level 75 but it sounds interesting for solo or playing around, having 2 charm abilities. You can still tame things around your level or lower with this subbed but you CAN NOT solo through the midlevels with this. If you want to know why, go try it past level 30/15, and you will understand. It just doesn't pan out, with charm length and frequency and your own ability to solo.
/WHM the ability to heal, with virtually the same solo capability(complete ****.) Ability to cast Invisible and Sneak is shared by the RDM sub, which I find I use almost everytime we go out to get some EXP. DS + Curaga is 180 HP to everyone (lv32+) and at lv62+ Curaga II with DS is a lifesavor. Alchemists using bombs is a SCARY picture when you cant consitantly stun them, and your WHM or healer is going to burn through alot of MP casting Curaga III/IV or other healing spells to cure that. Which means you can't level there, even though it's some nice EXP. This is the cookie cutter build so you will find more often then not that other party members will expect certain things from you, such as status cures and invisible and sometimes raising other people than who is in your party. I'm sorry if you don't want to help your party, go sub RNG.

think that's an odd party? here was ours last night (lv 32-34) =)

brd
brd
rdm
thf
pld
drk

so, what ended up happening was that we'd cast march, valor minuet II, mages ballad, and madrigal on everyone, and spirited etude on just the rdm. it surprisingly worked out very well o_O chaining and everything, largely due to an awesome pld, and, most importantly, me and the other bard having whm subs. we could both do a little support healing to let the rdm rest a tick or two, getting some mp back, and then let ballad heal ours =) i say brd/whm all the way ^^

~Kizna
Kujata World
32brd/30drk/30war/20whm/15thf/etc...

I was wonder why if chr is all a BRD wants why not past 40 when you really don't use your whm sub anymore don't you sub BST. I was just thinking this is because of ppls hate against BST. As it seems that this is that job that you ether love it and want to be it or you hate all BST and run around taking there pets for fun. But off the BST hatered wouldn't this make a great sub?
I hear alot of BRDs over 60 saying how they need more Chr and this is the job that would give it to u.

Then all the brds I leveled with past 40 sucked :(. I never seen a Brd help me out with a cure or do Curaga so i could rest.

Bards not using their WHM skills while subbing WHM past 40? yes.. those generally do suck. Higher levels get more spells out of WHM and even RDM... making them that much more useful. RDM is a nice sub and I can see where it's coming from... but WHM seems to be a little more. In CN and on kuftal I would frequently SPAM curaga, and once I got Mages Ballad II and was in Cape Terrigan or Boyahda fighting the robber crabs or terror pugils etc, I stopped spamming curaga but I still ended up using it almost every other fight. It's wonderful.

One thing I have to say though... I usually get just enough time to cast all my songs before battle is over in a good group, but in less then good groups I have some spare time in between refreshing songs with my /WHM. With the Fast Cast of /RDM, what would you do with the extra time? Level your weapon skill up? The curing is less with the /RDM, so I cant imagine how 12 extra seconds of ****** melee is making up for the loss of DS and Curaga and Bar-ras and higher level cures faster, etc.

Edited, Fri May 14 15:47:15 2004 by Sacrosanct

People who use the phrase "think outside the box" obviously cannot do so.

P.S. BRD/WHM works. If you hate it, don't do it. If you hate not getting invites or hate getting asked to change your sub-job to White Mage, consider a new career. If you don't like being a support class, you shouldn't have chosen Bard in the first place.

I like Chael's post, I think that's exactly the problem with the "I can play whatever I want" mentality. Try being a paladin and subbing something other than warrior. It's probably one of the least forgiving jobs in so far as what support job you can have.

Also, think of a ninja who spends gil on everything he does. I can quote one as having said they spend around 10k an hour in an exp party on ninja tools if they're actually keeping hate well. If you were putting that much time and effort into something, wouldn't you want everyone around you doing the same?