BRD pulling technique

[sntangl]

I read this in a previous thread of mine on BRD melee and I was curious. It said BRD should be the main puller. Interesting I thought. I would like to know the strategy behind this technique. From what I have seen this is the order of a fight:

1. Sing Ballad 1+2
2. Pull Mob with Elegy or Finale
3. Sing Melee songs
4. Sing Threnody and Requiem
5. Cure/Buff for SC/bar- spell/Finale to 30% of Mob Health
6. Cast Stoneskin/Blink
7. Rinse and Repeat steps 1-6

Discuss

[Wanta]

That works for me. Just keep in mind that on some mobs like Weapons, Bones and WHM beastman, it's better to pull with Finale.
You will want buffs like Stoneskin and Ice Spikes to be gone when your fighters engage it.

[Icemage]

- BRD shouldn't pull until at least level 55, with Mage's Ballad II. Without Ballad I + II restoring MP, you're going to want to be resting in between songs to recover some MP for chains.

- Against spellcasters that use buffs (Goblin Alchemist, Aura Weapon, Spartoi Sorceror, etc.) Finale to open is a good idea. Against everything else, Elegy is the song of choice. This isn't just because Elegy has such a long recast - by default you should be swapping in Earth / Terra staff for Elegy, which gives you an extra 20% physical defense when that oh-so-annoyed monster comes after you.

- If you're pulling for a manaburn (4 or more BLMs) party, make sure you have Stoneskin, Blink, Ballad I, Ballad II, Elegy, Foe Lullaby, and Horde Lullaby macro'd. Appropriate Threnody is sometimes useful as well.

- Don't bother with Requiem when pulling. You honestly won't have time for it.

General order:

Start:
a) 2x Melee songs for melees
b) WAIT for 20 seconds if using a +2 instrument. Use this time to cast Stoneskin and Blink to start off.
c) Ballad I/II for mages. You have to wait for a bit or one of these two songs will fail to stick to you.
d) Pull.
e) If you didn't use Elegy to pull, sing it now.
f) Repeat.

Spend a moment and use up some MP to help your main healer out in between, or refresh your Blink and/or Stoneskin. IF you have time (sometimes with fast parties, you won't) throw in a quick Threnody attempt. At all costs make sure you are finished with step (c) by the time the monster is dead.

P.S. Remember that bard songs are NOT considered magic, so you can use them safely to pull non-linking enemies around magic-aggressives like Pots.


Icemage

[Rones]

How often you head out to pull will depend on what you are killing, so your cycle isn't static for every party. If you are chaining VT-IT-, you are going to find the the monster dying while doing your second set of buffs. Thus you will be limited to doing either melee or mage buffs each fight and alternating. This is particularly true at 70+ when parties kill at incredible speed. Like Icemage says, don't try this though until 55+ or have a rdm refreshing you.

It is very important though that if you are pulling, you can lullaby what you are pulling. There will be times you get ahead and times you want to be ahead in your pulls. So you just slap lullaby on until the party finishs the previous enemy. However, if you are fighting mobs resistent to lullaby, you might want to reconsider pulling, or be extra cautious.

[zagex]

a) 2x Melee songs for melees
b) WAIT for 20 seconds if using a +2 instrument. Use this time to cast Stoneskin and Blink to start off.
c) Ballad I/II for mages. You have to wait for a bit or one of these two songs will fail to stick to you.

Recently my friend's been having problems sticking 2 ballads on himself. I don't know the exact details of what he's been doing, but you seem to know something about ballads not sticking... Could you go into more detail about it? He said that he just buffed melees, then buffed mages, and while the mages would have both songs, he would end up with 1 melee song and 1 mage song.
He's was really confused why, but stopped caring after he couldn't figure it out and after making sure the mages actually got both songs.

[Icemage]

Recently my friend's been having problems sticking 2 ballads on himself. I don't know the exact details of what he's been doing, but you seem to know something about ballads not sticking... Could you go into more detail about it? He said that he just buffed melees, then buffed mages, and while the mages would have both songs, he would end up with 1 melee song and 1 mage song.
He's was really confused why, but stopped caring after he couldn't figure it out and after making sure the mages actually got both songs.

Simplest possible explanation:

Songs stick to you based on their "duration remaining". Under normal circumstances, all beneficial bard songs have a base duration of 120 seconds (2 minutes). For each +1 to that song you receive from your instrument, add 10 seconds to that figure.

Whenever you cast a new song, it always sticks to you. However, the game looks at all of your older songs and sees which of the two has less duration remaining, and drops that one to make room for your new song

So if you cast Minuet with a +2 to Minuet instrument, it starts at 140 seconds.
Spend 8 seconds to cast Madrigal with a +2 instrument, and it starts at 140, with Minuet at 132 seconds.

If you immediately cast Ballad at this point, you end up with (8 seconds later):

Minuet at 124 seconds (old)
Madrigal at 132 seconds (old)
Ballad at 120 seconds (new)

Since Ballad is new, it sticks to you, and Minuet (the old song with lowest remaining duration) is dropped, leaving you with Ballad and Madrigal.

Now let's say you cast Ballad II. 8 seconds after starting, you now have:

Madrigal at 124 seconds (old)
Ballad at 112 seconds (old)
Ballad II at 120 seconds (new)

The game will force Ballad I to be dropped from your list, leaving you with Madrigal at 124 seconds and Ballad II at 120 seconds.

If you sing any other song at this point, it will force Ballad II to be dropped (Advancing March, for instance), leaving you with March and Madrigal.

This is why you have to wait 20 seconds when using +2 instruments, as I mentioned in the above post. It gives your melee songs a bit of time to "cool off" so you can keep the Ballads on you while pulling.

[Rones]

Recently my friend's been having problems sticking 2 ballads on himself. I don't know the exact details of what he's been doing, but you seem to know something about ballads not sticking... Could you go into more detail about it? He said that he just buffed melees, then buffed mages, and while the mages would have both songs, he would end up with 1 melee song and 1 mage song.
He's was really confused why, but stopped caring after he couldn't figure it out and after making sure the mages actually got both songs.

Same problem I had once and made a thread about. Has to do with song duration. New songs replace whatever song has the shortest duration. So when you sing double minuet with the +2 instrument, they get a duration of around 2 mins 30 secs. If you start casting ballads immidiately after that you will end up with your last minuet which still has a duration of greater than 2min and a ballad with a duration of 2min. When you sing your second ballad it will replace the first ballad instead of minuet, because the first ballad will have a shorter duration than the minuet you sung with +2 instrument.

Curse you Icemage for beating me to the punch by 4 mins.

[zagex]

Forgot to check this for a response for a few days, but thanks for the info, that's really helpful.

[Meth]

It is very important though that if you are pulling, you can lullaby what you are pulling. There will be times you get ahead and times you want to be ahead in your pulls. So you just slap lullaby on until the party finishs the previous enemy. However, if you are fighting mobs resistent to lullaby, you might want to reconsider pulling, or be extra cautious.

I just wanted to add that if you have a RDM or BLM in the PT you can use this method and have them sleep the mob. I semi-static with a RDM and we switch who does the sleeping based on mob type, works great.

[tordall]

For high-chain parties you ussually just switch which set of songs you buff the party with by pull.

E.g. pull-mob -> sing melee songs -> pull mob -> sing mage songs -> continue

For mobs that are hard/impossible to sleep, wait until the xp message goes off before pulling (you still save half the time since you've already run to the mob).

For mobs that like to buff themselves (assuming you're roaming), I find it's best to possition the mob, then sleep it with horde (removing shadows), then spam finale & dispel (bard/rdm for this type of mob).

[Asyra]

I read this in a previous thread of mine on BRD melee and I was curious. It said BRD should be the main puller. Interesting I thought. I would like to know the strategy behind this technique. From what I have seen this is the order of a fight:

1. Sing Ballad 1+2
2. Pull Mob with Elegy or Finale
3. Sing Melee songs
4. Sing Threnody and Requiem
5. Cure/Buff for SC/bar- spell/Finale to 30% of Mob Health
6. Cast Stoneskin/Blink
7. Rinse and Repeat steps 1-6

Discuss

If you sing 2 songs at once, in a lot of parties you'll tend to lose chains when you have to do longer pulls. This isn't all that applicable to the new TOAU areas, due to insanely high repop rates, but it does apply to KRT/Sky.

In most parties, you're best off singing Ballad2 >Stoneskin if needed, then go pull and Horde. Pull back, sing Ballad 1, go pull, sleep, Minuet IV, Pull, March.

There's times when songs go down, but normally not for long. Minstrel's ring helps a ton in these situations.


The way you were olisting it, you're either level 70 fighting crap you shouldn't be, or your weaponskill burn parties suck.


Edit- Make sure you macro Mind gear into Stoneskin, it's worth investing in Mind gear to macro in, as it can save chains by not having to recast, along with saving your life on tricky pulls.

[tordall]

If you don't have time to get two songs off between pulls it's better to pull mutliple mobs at once.

In one of the ToAU zones yesterday I was pulling 3 mobs back at once in order to have time to get my songs off. Think our average chain was around 15 (killing IT mamool ja). Think the xp/time was around 15k/hour, most of our kills were limit chain >5 xp 250. I was loving it every time I could get a mamool ja pikeman since his wyvern gave me extra breathing time before I had to pull again.

I'ld have to switch off between minuet and madrigal depending on which mamool ja type we were fighting though, some of them are rather evasive.