Will anyone really care if I dont sub WHM?

[Mylek]

Everything that you can say is good about a bard subbing /whm can also be said for any melee class.

This is totally wrong, and the difference is how well they can do their jobs while being support healers.

It is expected of a melee class to be able to either take damage well or deal damage. Once a melee has put on all the high def armor, +accuracy, +attack, +dex/str they have no room left for +mp.

Additionally when a melee is casting a spell there is one thing they are not doing: meleeing. Chaincasting the lower level heals that a whm sub provides would make gaining TP very slow and and reduce the damage the melee does to an enemy. Consider also the need to rest between fights to regain used MP and a melee/whm will not have enough TP to contribute to frequent skillchains.

A bard on the other hand will almost never take hits in a levelup PT. Nor will they be expected to deal a lot of damage to the monsters. A bard/whm can equip the best +mp gear and contrubute greatly to a PT as a support healer without sacrificing the effectiveness of his main job.

[sudo]

The bard/bst thing has been tested by my LS a few times and I'll run a personal test on it later. The results are as follows:

It is possible to charm things that are even match to the bard level at lv 36 brd/ lv 1 bst. So it's all about chr and not on the bst levels. The lack of use of familars would be a problem but we realized that all the even matches in the area are not worth fighting to begin with.

The charm lasts fairly long even at this level of bst and bard combo.

The charm broke about 4 times in a 2 hr period. Might break more often most died tanking for the pt.

The monsters helped tank a bit and let the whm rest for an extra 2 tics maybe before the hitters got bored and started renkis and had the tank pull and so the whm had to get up to heal the tank.
(guess people want to practice their weapon skills)

Later we all stopped hitting and just had the monster fight for us. All players sat around watching the fight was kind of funny. We were experimenting and I started taking bets on which one would win. Max bet was only 100 gil cause I was poor... This didn't last very long cause the fights took a while and the exp was sucking.

We agreed that it was funny to watch but a taru bard/bst was better off with cures cause we wanted to fight tougher enemies and the bard got the exp penality so he wasn't that thrilled.

Since the patch someone pointed out that bards can now charm at lv 75. Ok none of us is that big yet so we'll wait and see what that ends up being.

[tonka]

1. Bards don't stand around with nothing to do except chaincast Cure I, out of all classes they are the most tied up casting their very slow songs.

OTOH a melee can cast quick heals in place of a melee blow. There's plenty on this topic of melee+heals in the RDM forum, i do it all the time when soloing my RDM. Missing 1 strike for a melee does not lower your melee output much, dropping an entire song to cast Cure I does drop your support output.

In terms of who is more able to cast quick heals in combat, Melee is better than Bard. But that's irrelevant because...

2. A WHM sub with no primary class healing skill or healing spells is not a chaincasting, combat healer.

Check on the RDM & BLM forums why they they pick WHM subs. Is it for healing power? No. It's because 1. Extra MP 2. Great utility spells, like status ailment cures.

WHM is a good sub for any support class, but that's different than saying a Bard/WHM is a good healer, which is what i don't buy.

[Rekiem]

The two other best Sub beside WHM and RDM would be THF and BST.

THF for the passive bonus like Treasure Hunter which is nice to have and also for Sneak attack and Trick attack. This would boost our damage a bit.

BST gives a great CHR boost but you also get to control pet. Its pretty easy to do since Bard as high CHR. Its also the one that will give you the best damage. Having a pet attack for you while you sing is usefull and speed up the fight nicely. Bard are also able to use "Charm" at level 75. So having BST will allow you to use your pet more effectively. Only downside is the availability of monsters to charm and the EXP lost connected to them.

[Shakara]

I'm happy with my monk sub so far.

650 HP at level 34, I can get beat on while doing crowd control in the Citadel when our puller brings an extra bat or beetle, and I'm an excellent trick attack decoy for thieves that know what they're doing.

All the while I can still run back and forth playing all the songs I need, and have little to no downtime if the WHM is decently competent.

Healing sucks, resist the WHM sub mandate!