There Are No Bard Rotations Club

The Rules of There Are No Bard Rotations Club:

• 1st RULE: There are no Bard rotations
• 2nd RULE: There are NO BARD ROTATIONS
• 3rd RULE: If someone talks about their rotation you may tell them it’s bad and that your DPS is better with out explanation.
• 4th RULE: You may show your parser data, but only if you haven't disclosed your rotation.
• 5th RULE: You may discuss your rotation, but only if you do not show any parser data.
• 6th RULE: You do not have a rotation.

Okay guys - here is an OPENING rotation my buddy showed me back in December that I've been following:

Straight Shot, Bloodletter (off gcd), Raging Strikes (off gcd), Hawks Eye, Internal Release (off gcd), Windbite, Blood for Blood (off gcd), Venomous Bite, Barrage (off gcd), Blunt Arrow (off gcd), Heavy Shot, Flaming Arrow (off gcd) Heavy Shot, Repelling Shot (off gcd)" - opener

At this point, straight shot should be about to fall off, reapply it, reapply dots after. Use any buffs as soon as they come up (off the gcd of course). The ONLY exception, is to delay barrage to be used with Raging Strikes. Barrage is pretty useless by itself.

If done correctly, your dots will be falling off right as you use internal release every time.

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I haven't had too many people fault this rotation, and later today I'll toss out some numbers. If anyone would be interested in trying out this OPENING rotation and comparing it to their own, or have feed back on how to optimize it further I'd appreciate it.

Oh, so Bards have a priority system too, eh? Perhaps I'll actually level one up and see what's up. Eventually.

This is one blessing of not having a combo system like other jobs.

I do admit that I wished for a little more complexity in the class from a DPS standpoint to make up for the fact that the secondary role is so under-utilized that, other than dodging and weaving, I find trouble staying engaged during encounters.

Every single DPS in this game is priority system based.

Id like this thread for every single DPS class.

Yeah the Dragoon has 'combos' but its still priority based. Its funny that people think that any classes whatsoever have a set in stone rotation

Rule #1: NO CLASS HAS SET ROTATIONS.

Delaying barrage(90s cd) 30 seconds for raging strikes(120s cd) is actually a dps loss in the course of a long fight. I can see delaying B4B for a few seconds to use it with Hawk's Eye and barrage, But 30 seconds is just too long and can dwindle down how many times you can use cooldowns during a fight. And for your opening cd rotation, it is actually better to weave in only 2 cooldowns between globals. Triggering your buffs not during globals is downtime and an obvious dps loss.

Edit: I am probably at no help criticizing and not posting my opening rotation so here it is:

Straight Shot -> Bloodletter + Internal Release -> Windbite -> Hawk's eye-> Venomous Bite-> Raging Strikes + Blood for Blood -> Heavy Shot-> Bloodletter(if it proc) + Barrage -> Heavy Shot-> Bloodletter(if it proc) + Flaming arrow->Heavy Shot->Straight Shot->Windbite->Venomous Bite

The goal is to have your DoTs up while you are buffing since they do a good fraction of your damage. You also want to extend out your damage with buffs for a longer period of time to avoid your DPS plummeting, that is why we reapply your DoT's towards the end with Hawk's Eye/Raging Strikes/Blood for Blood while having a crit chance at the beginning for a good chance of bloodletter procs when your buffs are up. From there on out it is making sure you are reapplying yours DoT's when they are roughly at 3s left, paying attention to your character for when you get straighter shot procs, and using your bloodletter procs. You want to use your buffs right away as I stated above so that you have that additional chance of using them more in a fight. Only time I would save a cooldown is for your 3rd blood for blood so that it will line up with hawk's eye and barrage(your 2nd one should already line up). I don't claim to have created this rotation, but it has worked the best for me.

Yup, bard is kinda hard class to maximise dps on, due to lack of set rotation ez mode.

Straight shot/bloodletter/miseries end procs, keeping buffs off cd, keep all dots up, is surprisingly difficult to do 100%, say, compared to a class with a rotation. I play blm drg and brd, and my abicus results for drg and blm are very consistant, yet my brd results are always different. Theres always a buff not popped, dot not active or proc not used that messes up the dps. And though u always meet bards who say " I play perfectly", upon inspection, theres almost always flaws due to the amount of stuff to keep track of. I think errors in bard play amongst GOOD players are a lot more common than errors found amongst good blms/drgs.

Bard is definitely the most chaotic class to manage.