[Saphiera]

So I hit 46 today with my bard. While getting there I got to try out Pianissimo........ I am a little scared now, I was so busy giving everyone all the buffs they wanted, that I barely had time to do anything els. I love going /WHM to partys for the simple fact that I will be backup healing and not buffing all the damn time. It gives me something els to do. Since I acquired this new JA, I fear there will be no need for /WHM anymore.

I am wondering if any of you have any tips on where to go about using this new JA. What do you do in party setups?

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by Saphiera

I was so busy giving everyone all the buffs they wanted,

Thar's yer probl'm thar.

As you've seen, Pianissimo does NOT automatically make you a short order cook. You have to play the job as you've always played before the JA, except without the Paladins and Rangers getting frustrated about the buffs they need (Refresh is dire to the former and Haste is useless to the latter).

[Saphiera]

I want to play Bard to its best potential, But I do not want to get overworked by it, it seems more ppl will start to realize how well BRD can actually do at buffing with this new JA and I dont mean stat wise I mean how many bufs it is able to actually put out there now. I just dont want this job to become even MORE stressful than it already is.

My party setup was DNC,WAR,THF,BRD,RDM,BLU

I was doing [ACC+ all melee, Pianissimo: Defense-WAR, Haste-DNC, Ballad-BLU, Haste-THF, Ballad-RDM] Repeat
I hardly had time to do any debuffs, no requiem + Slow, I am just scared that every pt I fall into will want the same thing I just did above, I was just testing out my limits with Pianissimo, I was not surprised about the overall performance of my party after that, it was AMAZING, I just dont want to do that all the time, I have to say it took the fun out of bard for me. NOTE: I had to be very careful to keep the pattern going, when something came up that I had to silena or cure, or someone went out of my range for me to give them a song, it would mess the whole cycle up and people would begin to loose their buffs. I like to keep things so that they are always buffed and never have to go without them during the whole time I am partying. (unless we get like a wipe or something)

I just want some tips, do people expect you to do that? or Is it as if Pianissimo never existed? (other than refreshing the PLD,RDM,WHM)

[Raydeus]

Yeah, because of casting times Pianissimo is only there to help you in specific situations, but not to be used full time.

Unless you sub RDM, have JSE body and have Minstrel's ring latent active that is.

In that setup Minuet+Madrigal (or March if Acc isn't an issue) with the occasional Pianissimo Ballad II for the BLU would've worked much better for you.

[TheGrandMom]

You have no one to blame but yourself. As long as you keep catering to people, they'll keep expecting it from you.

[Lanih]

What they said.

Pianissimo is there to help you with Rangers, Paladins, Blue Mages and other jobs that don't benefit from the basic melee songs (or would maybe get more use from one different song). You cast the two songs (mad+min, or whatever the situation needs), and then hit the Ranger with racc, or the PLD/BLU/whatever with Ballad when he/she needs it.

Debuffs (especially Elegy) and sometimes backup cures are way more important than giving everyone in the pt a custom set of songs.

Don't let Pianissimo restrain you from doing your job like it's been done for years now. When you start pulling, you won't have time for specialized buffs anyway. ^^

[Zoltar]

srsly, just use Pianissimo to buff the pld with Ballad...after a while rangers won't benefit from Hunter's Prelude...