[DipNSniff]

I find that a melee Bard is better for a party than the /Whm that has become the norm. With /Whm people have this crazy 'support the Whm' idea that is totally unfounded... play a Bard, and if you are good you will understand that you cannot support the Whm. The /Whm part is ONLY for status heals (most importantly), Barxxxxra spells, and the curaga line... a Bard/Whm can never support heal because they don't have the time nor the ability.

With Meat Mithkabobs I do a very substantial amount of damage, and build TP fast (with the only downfall being that I do not gain TP while singing). Take away the /Whm from the scenario, add a level 50 -25% singing time ring, and you will find ample time to get your support duties in very fast and always have 75% TP when any other melee class besides Samurai has 100%. With the Minuet and Madrigal songs on you (along with food such as Mithkabobs if you can afford it) you are as good as a melee in the party would be if you were not there (Attack bonus + Accuracy bonus + % food increase on a Bard makes you as strong as a melee character, with the exception of their inability to end a renkei with a high damage WS). Even if you enjoy the /Whm route however, you should still find yourself meleeing if for no other reason than to utilize the Club or Dagger steal MP skills.

Support does not mean healer, in fact I would say they contradict one another. /Whm gives the Bard the ability to support with status healing, not HP except in Curaga circumstances (which occur most often outside battle, or at times in battle where their effect is minimal). In my eyes Bards were meant to be support and melee characters, never resting and certainly not using mp every battle. Bard/Whm is optimized only for parties without a White Mage main (Red Mage in it's place), other than that perfect party scenario a melee Bard can do oh so much more.

It's too bad that no one realizes this, and a Bard/xxx is always frowned upon when they have not subbed Whm. I would say Bard/Sam is the best possible combo for a 60+ Bard assuming there is a Whm or /Whm in the group. In any great party the /Whm portion of a Bard will be going unused. A Whm should be able to handle the duties of curing status ailments, and the fact that things have gotten to the point where this expectation is put on the Bard makes no sense.

The Bard will always work harder than another other job in the party, of this you can be sure. I am disheartened that in their indolence all other jobs have come to EXPECT Bards to become the Bard/Whm role, and on top of this have an image of them that they can perform things which they cannot.

[Sinzer]

I think people are always going to have their own opinions.

Personally, I believe you are wrong, even at my low levels my damage output as BRD is far lower than my RDM.

I prefer the ability to cast cures and debuffs rather than melee, most the time I usually don't even get chance to put more than 10 swings in (often hittin for 0dmg), hell most the time my WS does 0 dmg against IT.

Plus BRD in a renkei is awful, you cannot skillchain effectively as you have to do so much else, the times I have been asked to help link I always end up making the melees wait. Obviously with a melee subjob it might be a little different as I won't have to worry about curing.

Personally, I prefer the support mage element and feel it is far more useful than a crippled melee.

Also at level 60+ it seems to be fairly common to have RDM, BRD and BLM as your mage/support team. Therefore the heals come in very handy.

[Neplak]

/agree Sinzer

[Lily]

Plus to be an effective bard I always thought you'd be doing the Bard-Dash (tm) back and forth from the melees and mages to apply the right songs on each. Having to disengage and then re-engage the mob each time would be a pain; and thus also limit your TP build up a lot.

[bonovoxpsu]

yes, i'm going to disagree with the thread starter...

bard is PURE support. when its all said and done, anything you can do to aid in your pt support is good. so brd/whm is very optimal. brd/rdm is great too.

don't think you should be melee'ing - it ain't what ya do. if you're buying meat mithkabobs, well, you're wasting your money. at early lvl's, yes, you can melee half-decently. just wait until later lvls, when your "B" skill rating really starts to kick in. you'll be lucky to hit the thing. and i thought late-lvl-rdm-melee-wannabe's were delusional.

and i didn't even mention that you won't have time to melee. at least, you shouldn't. you should be playing your songs non stop.

seems that down the road, you and a rdm are one of the most popular jobs. reason being? SUPPORT. but it seems that both these jobs, people don't want to stop melee'ing... give up your melee dream or change jobs, that's all there is to it.

[Galaa]

/agree with everyone EXCEPT the thread starter LOL

As a bard u'll be too busy running around singing songs for melees and caster. How are u suppose to melee in such conditions? Way better to help with some emergency healing + poisona

[Aniga]

You're a bard. You're a support class. In fact, you're the QUEEN of Support classes. You support the other supporters. And what better way to do that than take some weight off the WHM's shoulders with a WHM sub?

And what do you mean I can't support the WHM with heals? I can have about 220 MP at my level... that's about 5 Cure III's, or about 800 HP worth of support healing. Along with the PLD's MP, my WHM has a lot more MP than usual. Plus since I have my constant 3 MP Regen from the Ballad's, I don't have to sit down. This is way better than me hitting for a piddly 5-10 damage every couple rounds--Heck, even just having status cures would be way more useful than melee.

[mIze]

Same, I agree with everyone who doesn't agree with the thread creator.

Having /whm saves your whm a lot of time after fights patching up the party. With Paeon IV/III, Regen, and C3's I am an amazing post-fight healer. I can put 240 hp/min on the most damaged party member and 140 hp/min on everyone else. Also, a div seal + C3/Curaga is incredibly helpful if something goes wrong or you get one too many AE attacks. Bards naturally dont have much hate at all and can get away with a seal curaga/C3 where a whm could not without drawing serious aggro.

I had a brd/thf in a party yesterday.. ok he could sneak and viper for a little over 200. So? The sam and drk were hitting for upwards of 100 on NORMAL hits. Your damage as a bard is absolutely not important to the outcome of a fight. Using mithkabobs instead of pies or other +MP items is ridiculous. Yes, I agree bard can engage when all song buffs/debuffs are casted since every little bit of damage helps, but not to the point where you lower your support value because you dislike seeing yourself with low damage. That's really selfish, if you don't like being support you need to find another class.

And cmon, how much damage do you actually think you're going to do? With a dagger or sword you won't add anything impressive on normal hits, and after 2 mobs when you finally have 100 tp, you might get as much as a couple of the melee's normal hits.

And btw..

add a level 50 -25% singing time ring

That's latent effect, which means your HP must be in the yellow for it to activate. "Additional effect" on armor is always on, i.e. Refresh on vermillion cloak. A bard will not be in yellow at the start of a fight, and should be done casting all songs before you take that much damage (at lvl 50).

[mIze]

Oh and I think this guy is posting because somebody rejected him for a party due to his useless subjob (most likely brd/sam), and he feels this is the place to rant about it. Or another bard got his spot for having /whm, and he feels this is unjust.

[Sylvanis]

i think i'll add one little tidbit. if you are meleeing, your vision is somewhat limited (sceen is focused on the monster you are fighting). this means you can't see any adds that might happen and it takes a few moments to stop attacking and sleep the add.

[DipNSniff]

The reason I posted this is because I am a Bard/Whm, and a very good one at that. I change instruments, I never let songs wear off, I control the hate pool for the tank vs mages with lullaby (Bards have low hate; I use this to manipulate the pool by converting some Blm hate or whatever onto myself), I craft juices immediately after battle, etc. I believe I have a great sense of what should be happenning to maximize efficiency, that's how my mind works. In 95% of the parties I'm in (that are good, again there's nothing you as a Bard can do to help a bad party) with a White Mage I find that my /Whm goes almost completely unused except for a status heal on occasion, and a unnecessary cure when I feel like it. Even as /Whm I have enough TP in 2 out of every 3 battles to use a WS, be it renkei filler or MP stealing (dual madrigal songs turn a B rating or even D club rating into A+). I am constantly doing something at all times in the party, and when the party members are above average I find insufficient time to ever rest. If the party never has to 'stop and rest before the next chain' after pushing to get a chain 6 for 300 isn't good support, I don't know what is. It's the same scenario for phasing out Whm security for a Rdm, with a Bard subjob other than /Whm you can forgo healing potential for the ability to more efficiently kill mobs faster and longer.

The issues about running around and whatnot are not an issue, when you select a song you are automatically unlocked from the target temporarily as if you were not engaged in melee. Sure it takes a lot of skill to do something other than sing your songs then have a chat with the mages, but it's fun for me when it is intense and I am playing optimally. I am not saying /Whm is a bad subjob for Bard, but I am saying that I think other subjobs can benefit a party's efficiency equally or even more when a Whm is already present in the party.

[HybridX]

Hmmm, I just don't like the way people in the game get all wet because someones sub-job isn't text-book, and thinks the person did it just to piss that person off. Sorry people but the world doesn't spin around you. Some people like to do well, what they want to do, when as some one with a non-text-book sub job gave you a /tell and said "hey man change your sub job to something else" . I'm sorry, but you didn't pay for their game and you didn't pay the 12$ a month he\she pays for it a month.
And unless you played with that person with those main\sub jobs, why judge them? Now, if you played with that person and you know how they play then have have room to talk.