You Spoony Guide! - A Troubadour's Libretto

just read this bit on miracle cheer. hadnt thought about 18 min soul voice songs. now I want one xD

18 mins soulvoice songs with -2 potency compared to the potency they would have with Ghorn.
It's still way more potency than you get normally without SV of course.

The main problem I see with Miracle Cheer is Honor March.
If for whatever reason you're not using HM as one of your 5 songs it's no big deal, but if you are then you're gonna have 1 song (HM) with "normal" duration and 4 other songs with the 15min (18) granted by Miracle Cheer.
I see this as quite the annoying limit, honestly, but to each his own.

Also if we want to include the applying/reapplying strategy of SV, which is the only method through which you can reach ~18 mins with Miracle Cheer, then you can do the same even without and reach ~15 mins through normal means.
It's ~3 mins difference, at the small cost of -2 potency.

It's... I dunno, it's cool for sure but it's not something that makes me foam at my mouth at the thought of it?
Just my 2 cents of course.

It's not a big difference but to make a few examples now.
These should be the SV values of some songs with Miracle Cheer and with Gjallarhorn.

Minuet V
GH: 446 attack
MC: 420 attack

Minuet IV
GH: 402 attack
MC: 380 attack

Minne V
GH: 774 defense
MC: 734 defense

Dragonfoe Mambo
GH: 272 evasion
MC: 258 evasion



I mean... it's not a huge difference at all, I'd say it's quite small. But it IS a difference nonetheless.

Yeh it has its issues for sure. I’d use it for victory march and ballads. I’d still probably pick the JA shield personally. Extended duration on rampart/sentinel/warcry/sacro etc would get used every day.

In a seg farm I will usually nitro SV at the start, get the cor to reset then re-apply nitro soul voice again at the 2nd/3rd camp so it lasts until floor 3, then there’s a good chance WC worked or cutting cards worked so the likelihood of SV the entire run is higher.

On that note, I've been contemplating what they could possibly add to the Prime Horn to make it useful without making any of the other rema redundant(or making the prime horn itself inferior to another option we already have).

What do you guys think SE have in mind?

Personally the only real good use I see for Miracle cheer is if you win Bonanza on a mule who doesn't have BRD levelled.
At that point you can get Miracle Cheer and then maybe slowly farm Daurdabla and you're set, you're gonna have a BRD mule that's not BiS but pretty close to that without effort.
You won't have to farm song duration gear
You won't have to farm Ghorn
You won't have to farm Carnwenhan
Arguably you won't have to farm Marsyas either because as we emphasized before it doesn't work well with Miracle Cheer.
I dunno, but in this scenario I can see it as a pretty respectable option over other Bonanza prizes.


I see two problems with this:
1) You're relying on a ~33% chance to reset SV (it's actually slightly higher if we include the WC job points). And if you fail you're gonna end up having SV on the first floor, where it hardly makes a big difference, and no SV on last floor where imho it makes a huge difference. Personally I dislike chances/gambling but to each his own
2) You won't be able to use single march for the full run (SV HM + Haste1 to cap magic haste) because of the Marsyas/MC problem we mentioned before.

So again, as much as I can see the benefit in the approach you described, ultimately it seems like such a small difference that it doesn't exactly make me particularly excited about it.
...now if they ever allowed us to "learn" HM by Trading Marsyas to an NPC it would be a different story but that will never happen alas :-P


I'm betting on Massacre Elegy but unless they revamp the song I'm not sure it would make such a huge difference in terms of making the Prime Horn attractive.

IF WC fails the COR pops Cutting Cards on the BRD, I've been doing this for about a year and 4/5 times on average we have a 2 SV run, sometimes 3 SV's. But yeh, lots of ways to do it; and you can full clear without a single soul voice nowadays with a good group. We sell the 6th spot every now since a member has been on hiatus and usually get 2.4k-2.7k checkout with 5 people, and sometimes still full clear if the buyer DD's too (usually they don't). The key benefit to SV on first floor is the brd and cor being able to confidently take down dahaks or other dangerous mobs like that.


This would be ideal. and Ghorn would make it more potent too! a taru can dream...


I really hope it's something better than that. Not sure how motivated I would be to farm it if it's just Massacre Elegy, unless it was AoE.

An arise type RR hymnus would be interesting, or a PDL/WSD song. I'd accept an HM style mage or tank song I guess. Based on what they did with Ochain maybe they will eradicate Dharp too..

Sell me spots for your seg runs! I consumed 300k segs in a few weeks and now I only have 50k segs XD


Well I dunno I have mixed feelings about special buffing songs added in the Prime Instrument.
On one hand I would love something similar to Honor March but for defensive stats.
Or something similar to that but for mage stats.
On the other hand we have the fact that a buff bound to an instrument is a blasphemy that creates a whole new level of issues like the ones we just mentioned for Marsyas.
Sooo... I dunno. It would be very cool but then again not really.


I'm not sure I'm gonna be utterly disappointed if the Prime Instrument turns out to be something shitty.
One less thing to farm for BRD, not like BRD doesn't have a lot to farm already, right? One could say BRD is the most RMEA-intense job of all the 22 jobs available in FFXI, so really adding yet another thing "mandatory" to farm would be quite taxing.
I get that we old brds are excited about something new, but at the same time I'm not sure it would be a good choice in terms of game design.

I agree. And if it’s all linked to sortie, personally I find the content quite tedious with all the running around and zoning, so not having to make it would be nice lol. Brd is already very OP and the empy gear is barely worth the galimufry and starstones it takes to upgrade. I will always be a brd main but I play 14 jobs and brd +3 is at the bottom of my list to upgrade.

If the feet had 13 stp instead of fast cast I would have wet my pants

So I think no matter what there are 3 option for the new instrument and that's it:

1: this will replace one or more formerly mandatory REMA (Ala Duban and Ochain),

2: this will be an absolutely unique effect therefore mandatory at times (new song/effect)

3: this will be absolutely useless with the current field of REMA (Ghorn song+, harp multiple songs, honor march)

So it's either feast or famine for currently BiS Bards.

With the way the shield turned out I wouldn't be surprised with something brokenly amazing.

With the way the empy+2/+3 turned out I wouldn't be surprised with something brokenly useless.

We're slightly off topic here but has Duban been extensively tested?
Or are people just assuming parry rate / damage reduced values on the simple fact that it's a size 6 shield? The second one existing in game after Ochain.

I wouldn’t say extensively but I tested it on Apex mobs for about an hour and Zixxer also did and posted the results on the pld forums showing the block rate

Theres been a small test that im aware of done on ilvl 139 mobs without reprisal, along with just general testimonials from people foolign around with it in general content seeing a roughly ochain level blockrate before reprisal goes up, often capping with just reprisal.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/46016/first-and-final-line-of-defense-v20/124/#3645949

Can always make it the ranged slot that you want equipped when you idle or engage. Really dumb amounts of Store TP, WSD, or QA would easily make up for having to drop tp when you have to rebuff. Give it a sphere effect with defensive buffs. Fencer+7 just so we can watch them retcon a 2nd fencer piece for going over the cap this cycle. Any direction you want to make it desired.

Or you wild card and make songs played by the prime horn only affect pets. +200 to Virelai.

They included an instrument on purpose. They made it so you literally couldn't progress through the story with it. They've already gone out of their way. It makes no sense to make something that would be lackluster.

Does anyone have a list of song duration gear?

You can find a list on BG Wiki which should be pretty up to date.

Keep in mind there's also "Song +X".
Every Song +1 also gives +10% duration, not just potency.
Which means for instance Gjallarhorn's Song+4 also gives Duration +40%.
Also don't forget that these duration bonuses get doubled when you're under the effect of NiTro.

Oh, I didn't realize that, I thought it was just potency. Thanks for the heads up.

Connecting to this old post of mine I want to furtherly inquire how do you feel about the 567 range tier for Horde Lullaby II. (7 yalms radius)
The previous tier, 486 string, is now reachable with no sacrifice whatsoever thanks to Master Levels.

Reaching the 567 is somewhat feasible but it requires some sacrifices even at ML50.
The 4 slots with concurrent gear are
Instrument and body offer same macc regardless (more or less)
Hands have a small macc gain on the skill option
Feet have a small macc loss on the skill option

Two more slots where we can make swaps without losing duration are waist (5 skill for small macc loss) and back (4 skill for huge macc loss).

Don't need to swap all of them, "just" need to reach 567 string.
Supposing ML50 the basic lullaby set has ~504 string skill.



So the final question is: do you people deem it worthy to have a set where we accept some of these sacrifices to obtain 1 more radius range on Horde Lullaby II?

My answer atm is that nope, it's not worth the effort. If I really want a higher range at the loss of duration I'll just go with Horde Lullaby 1, where you cap range without any specific gear.

Anyone else having issues sleeping the fomors in Sortie? I tried to Foe2 a single and Horde2 a pack yesterday and couldn't get it to land in either case.

Ya you can't sleep them, at least I've never seen someone land one. I've gone in BRD/BLM and with SV, Nitro and Elemental Seal up it didn't land.

They are not sleepable nor lullabyable.
Can break them with Breakga, Accession Break or Entomb just fine though.
I seem to recall Bindga works as well.

Perfect. I was really in my head on that. Thanks all.

Also in case you haven't noticed already, those Fomors aren't undead and as such they don't blood aggro and are unaffected by abilities/spells that work against undead.

Also great information. I did not know that. Thanks Sechs.



Just curious, any special reason for subbing blm? I usually go /nin if SBing or /whm to help with heals.

/BLM for Elemental Seal, I assume.

Purely just to see if I could land a sleep, I'm /nin or /dnc 99% of the time I'm on BRD.

Got it. Thanks.

Probably a noob question, but what is the general priority on songs? Especially if you only have 2 or 3 slots.

Is it something like March (to haste cap) > Madrigal (to accuracy cap) > Minuet? Any feedback would be appreciated.

What do you mean with "priority"? Which songs to cast first, i.e. order? Or do you mean which songs are on average more "important"?