Rdm/brd?

[Satummoo]

Would this be good for lower levels?

[Bamce Sylph]

no, only reason to sub bard is at 50/25 for ballad, and at level u can sub summoner for auto refresh which gives the same mp/tick as ballad1

[Discordian]

Just as he said, its not as good as it sounds. If you want a good rdm progression you can't go wrong with rdm/blm and rdm/whm. If you want a little less cookie-cutter you can do rdm/drk and get drain and aspir earlier than a blm does.

[Kiyosuki]

Although its not the most efficient sub class, many high level player's have told me that Rdm/Brd is useful past 55-60 in particular situations. If you can't find a Bard, and have a party that requires heavy mp regain like one with a Whm, a Pld, and a Smn in it Rdm/Brd can heal they're mp quite fast. In most cases Blm, or Whm are mor useful because of your greater list of options though.

Like most Red Mage subs, your sub kind of gears you towards. Whm gears you towards defense, Blm more towards offense. So subbing Brd would gear you totally towards enhancing the effect of Refresh. The down part of this ofcourse i guess is that you don't have as greater many number of options in the spell catagory, you become a full fledged battery. :biggrin:

I'm no Red Mage, but many Red mages have mentioned this too me. I'd play it safe and have a mage class at use though, but Brd can be a pt saver in a pinch if there's no Brd around and whatever mp reasons you might need.

Before 50-55 though like the above poster said its not useful at all though.

[Altruist]

From 50 on you can use / bard in certain situations. Extra mp regen is good, and the melee love accuracy up. However:

If you can't land enfeebs or run out of mana don't sub it.

If there is a bard in the PT don't sub it.

If your bard sub isn't half or greater than your rdm, you probably shouldn't sub it.

Otherwise, enjoy.

[kirbys_dead]

but wouldnt subing a bard for the Mp regen be kinda useless with Refresh?

[Yuanlung]

balld stack with refresh or juice

balld 1 stacks with balld 2 (although not an issue here because you can't stak 2 songs without an instrument.)

[Bamce Sylph]

another thing, subbing blackmage lets u use the stat debuffing spells, shock, burn etc, which lowers the monsters stats making it easier to land other debuffs

[bonovoxpsu]

IF those elemental enfeebles stick - we have a C+ skill in elemental magic :dead:

[MMan530]

Its not as bad as you'd think. Shock has a pretty fast cool down timer- if at first you don't succeed, try try again : )

[AtraposBLM]

or just let your neighborhood black mage do what he's good for :P

[Tomoh]

C+ Elemental enfeeble can be increased to near B+ range after LV65. You get +10 from AF and if you have the Water Ring from Leviathon quest, you add +15.

I would never sub BRD, workload will be just too crazy with singing and casting.

[MMan530]

Shock: If we left the black mage spells to the black mages and the white mage spells to the white mages, our job would be incredibly dull. Red mages meddle in a bunch of different affairs for a reason.

Rdm/brd:
If you have free time, level up bard and see :)

Worst case scenario: it doesn't work out. You haven't exactly wasted time because, whether or not it works, you still have those levels in bard.
Best case scenario: you love it and people pay you billions of gil just to wave at them (hey, I said best case scenario).
Typically Rdm/brd isn't thought of as painfully effective, but if you find a way to make it work and you really like it- go for it.

[yepe]

Sub brd can be good if you have too many people in the party to refresh and your sub brd must be at least lvl25. I have been subbing brd for the last 2 lvls because of our static party configuration:

52PLD/WAR
52SAM/WAR
52BLM/WHM
52BLM/WHM
52RDM/BRD
52WHM/BLM or /SMN

My job is mainly to support the party to gain XP fast. So, I started off with Mandrigal on the melee, followed by Gravity, Slow. Run back to the mages and sing Ballad. Refresh whoever needs them and wait for Dispel and MB^^. 4 MP/tick are really something for a group that needs MP intensively for damage. Whm cast haste and look out for everyone's health. We can kill mobs faster than most group with this setup because MB alone doing over 2k damages. You can smile when you see mob's health went from above 1/2 to zero in a burst. When the mob dies, cast ballad again so PLD get the additional 1mp/tick. Every MP counts!!!

Only thing I must say is this job is busy and only for those that like the challenge. One other thing to note is I have to boost +INT +MP gears since brd drops my INT by around 4 pts and 50+MP compared to sub BLM.

[Macht]

The guys question was for lower levels. The responces he's getting is for higher levels. RDM/BRD starts to be effective around lv. 10 of RDM. With the lv. 5 Paeon using it like a drug addiction, it greatly cuts the party's down time. When you have WHM's that have learned more of when it's effective to use Cure's and when it's best to let Paeon do it and just rest or prepare for the next battle you can start chaining IT monsters quite early.

We were able to frequently get #5 chains with Paeon assisting the WHMs and of course getting them to switch between eachother. Downtime actually was None, the Paeon helped the WHMs so they could get to the ones that are taking more damage when an AOE occured then with the RDM part I was able to heal the ones that didn't need to be healed as much so that they were at least at a safe amount of hp and let Paeon heal the rest.

At higher levels though the combination does seem like it's effectiveness may fade.

[Yuanlung]

Originally posted by MMan530
Shock: If we left the black mage spells to the black mages and the white mage spells to the white mages, our job would be incredibly dull. Red mages meddle in a bunch of different affairs for a reason.



Actually, no.. It's not as simple as BLM spells and WHM spells.

The categories, according to skills, are

Elemental, Healing, Enfeeble, Enhencing, Dark, and Devine.

Black mages are good at Elemental magic, red mages are good at enfeebling. Sock is Elemental, not enfeebling, it draws upon the caster's Elemental skill, not the Enfeebling skill.

Red mages are the best enfeeblers, but leave the element spells to the black mages. It's not like we are busy doing anything at the beginning of the battle anyways....

[Chucklez_1]

When it comes to elemental debuffs, I rarely have any trouble on making the spell work even at IT++. And anyway, the downtime is pretty short so you can pretty much recast it after another enfeeble.

As for rdm/brd...I really want to check whether this would make RDMs an ultimate support class or sub smn for aeroal armour and that stoneskinga...then again those pesky spells costs a lot of mp :dead: . There was this one time when I was helping my LS hunt for paper and my party somehow ended up with 2 bards. Anyway, having 4 songs up is totally amazing (neone ever tried a 2 bard + rdm in a pt post lvl 55+ and live to tell about the awesome/horrible pt that was?). I'm guessing that despite rdms will only have one additional song up and that it will be definitely gimped compared to a bards, it would still help anyway. Too bad, I'm stuck in a static where i'm the main healer :sweat:

[Dierdre]

Elemental debuffs landing isn't the issue. It is more of an issue that you don't have them.

The problem is that you can only use one song at a time but will suffer a very significant MP/INT/MND penalty for the privilege. The +1 MP regen will never make up for the loss of MPs you get nor the MPs you would save from fast cast. Similarly, that MP you lost will reduce you the equivilent of 1.5 haste spells per fight during a perfect chain 6. Is madrigal on your melees going to make up for the lack of haste and risk of higher debuff resists? Never.

Even if the above could be overcome, though, you lose the other benefits of a mage job. With BLM you lose aspir (HUUUUGE blow to chaining), Conserve MP, Clear Mind, and the elemental debuffs. With WHM you lose the status fixes and -ga heals and enhancements (status fixes are the only reason to sub this, IMHO). Either way, you lose MPs, efficiency, and flexibility by choosing to be unique. I've run into a couple RDM/BRDs that do okay, but they can never be as efficient as a RDM/mage combo.

Besides, do you really have time to be prancing around singing when you should be stabbing and casting? Many people find the casting alone to be too tiresome ... imagine adding songs to that burden.

[FFXI-FREAK96]

sounds good to be.. but im a newb no ever respondes to my post :(

[dang everything]

I tried it today in my last PT...tiring as hell!!!

Just keeping track of what you have to do is enough to drive you insane! Refreshing everyone, mini healing mini nuking mini brd and enfeebling...so much work.

[Gladesinger]

Apple pie posted an example some time ago with how is was to use RDM / BRD, that was at lvl60ish i believe.

A good deal of information can be found in that particular thread, below is the link.

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32406