This shows that Foe Requiem increased my friends BLM damage by around 21%, with battledance adding another 9% damage.
A 30% damage increase for your black mage seems very powerful.
So we tested it thoroughly. Foe Requiem does not do what it says, at all. It boosts magic damage by around 15%, aspected or unaspected, and it does not boost elemental damage whatsoever.
How to test
Bring a summoner with you, cast foe req, wait till the debuff is applied, have him cast miasma or bio (both are unaspected), stop singing foe req, have him try and reapply bio once the foe req debuff disappears. It will not apply because the game won't allow you to overwrite a stronger DoT with a weaker one. You can also observe the damage done to be roughly 15% higher.
Do the same thing, but with your own bard DoT's. You will not see any increase in the damage windbite or venomous bite's DoT's deal, and you will be able to clip a foe req applied DoT with a non-foe req applied DoT.
This is the second significant bug I've found with bard abilities (or their tooltips).
Battle Voice - Says it doubles the effectiveness of all songs. What it really does is double the effectiveness of all songs for everyone other than the bard.
Foe Requiem - Says it reduces enemy's elemental resistance by 10%. What it really does is increase caster damage done by ~15%. No bard abilities are affected whatsoever by foe req, even the ones that deal elemental damage. Also, we tested, foe requiem affects all of Garuda Egi's damage, but does not affect Ifrit damage.
edit: Feel free to file bug reports. I have. I'm unsure if the abilities are not working as intended, or if there was a translation mistake made on the tooltips, but it's either one or the other.
edit2: This sort of makes me think the best turn 5 Coil group may very well be 2 PLD, 1 WHM, 1 SCH, 2 BRD, 2 SMN. This would allow you to still take advantage of 3 pets splitting the fireball cleave, and you could have almost 100% uptime on both foe req and mage's ballad, so healers would have near infinite mana and both summoners and their pets would be doing ~15% more damage at the cost of one bard doing 20% less.
edit3: Still haven't tested if it affects the DRG's Dragonfire Dive or a MNK using Fists of Flame. Confirmed it does not affect Fists of Fire damage. It also does not affect flaming arrow damage.
tl;dr:Requiem - +21%~damage BLM/SMN/SCH only,(and flash?) doesn't work with monks spirit fists or bards
Shinzu Nocht Member replied
620 weeks ago