The difference between BRD and some other jobs that I've talked to even such as my WAR/NIN friend is that we can take EPs all day long no problem. I honestly skilled up my staff a long time ago from around 150-180 being mostly afk in Kuftal.

I just found EP robber crabs, engage, sing Paeon+Madrigal and go afk for a bit... ocassionally walk back by to hit my macros and keep my songs up or engage a new crab whilst my big beefy WAR/NIN friend says after he takes an most EP mobs he's having to rest for several minutes afterward and usually has lowish HP.

The problem here is that even against EPs as I'm sure most any melee/NIN can attest... Shadow timers are just too long. You are just in to take some hits here or there. PLD/NIN has the definite saving grace of Flash to earn them a few seconds here and there to either throw shadows back on or save themselves from hits. Most jobs have something like this such as a SAM/NIN having Third Eye for essentially an extra shadow every minute.

The point here is that unless you can slow your mob or haste yourself (which BRD/NIN, WHM/NIN, and RDM/NIN all can) you will get hit and most melees (obviously not including DRK and PLD) have no way to heal themselves so this actually becomes quite a problem.

Whereas most melee jobs would be happy to solo harder EPs while /NIN these mage jobs actually excel at it beyond what a melee is capable and can solo much harder mobs. I can eat Steelshells (DC-EM or maybe T at 75) for breakfast but I know for a fact that I couldn't do this if I didn't have some combination of March, Mambo and Carnage Elegy. My Eva is just too low... as low as most melees. NIN and THF have the benefit of high evasion by 40-50 points over the average melee.

Some of the really impressive stuff is watching a WHM take out really rough mobs. I saw a nice video a while back of an Elvaan WHM/NIN tearing up a VT skeleton in KRT. Granted he had Elvaan STR, VIT and HP and a Kraken Club but it's still quite an awesome thing to watch.

To everyone that says WHM/BRD/RDM/XXXjob takes too long soloing... shame on you. Sure it took Avesta 2hrs to solo Genbu BUT!!! it was possible. It would take me an inordinant amount of time to solo VT mobs to the point that I know it's pointless but when it comes down to it a BRD/NIN could take an NM much higher than themselves solo while the melees that think they own me would only stand up for moments before collapsing in a whimper.


P.S. Derailed thread ftw!!! I hope we make another one. I've been wishing we'd have a nice pic thread to pair up with our recent accomplishments thread. I love seeing what other people are doing in their adventures ^^