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Am I correct in thinking that Rain of Death's proc (for free quick nock) is a trap? As Quick Nock is already more damaging and TP efficient even when you factor in the free QN, and that as such you should never cast Rain of Death ever?
For that matter same thing applying to Wide Volley outside situations where you can't get close enough to reliably use QN (because again, less damage for more TP)?
From what I've seen since 2.1, brds use RoD whenever it gets a freebie, and if that freebie gets a free QN then hooray! But I haven't seen anyone using RoD outside of freebies.
Pre 2.1 Bards may fire RoD during a big pull or in situations the tank has to take many mobs like T4 to help tank in taking less damage
In 2.1, RoD has been nerfed to become pretty useless, so like what Peptaru said, Bards only use Wide Volley as AoE, if it results in RoD as a free proc, then hooray and use the free proc, and if you got that lucky to trigger a QN free proc, then hooray again ;)
wide volley mainly now for me and some situations Quick Knock (mainly when it procs)
It is somewhat of a trap, yes.
RoD is only if you need to bypass some weird gap in hit cap (which is quite pointless really), and does slightly less damage too.
Wide Volley is not really used for the procs, it's pointless as already mentioned, it's rather used for it's AoE zone. It's a distant radius targeted AoE, meaning it's much easier to hit everything with it, but you pay a higher TP cost for it.
Once properly positioned, Quick Nock spam gives best results really, unless you're trying to maximize the duration you want to keep AoEing (no encounter seems to need that tho, not even T4, which is is fine with Army's Peon + Invigorate before you get starved).
Bottom line, do whatever but Quick Nock, if properly positioned is the better way to go, per my parses anyways (I run alongside another bard and I used to QN while he rotated, now we both QN spam for obvious reasons).
As Luponius said:
If you can easily hit all the targets with Quick Nock, it's actually more reliable and slightly higher "burst" damage to spam only Quick Nock than it is to use Wide Volley and hope for Procs.
However, if you miss a single target that you would have hit with Wide Volley, the efficiency goes out the window.
So it's really just situational.
If you have to use Wide Volley because you can't hit everything with Quick Nock, and you get a RoD proc, don't ignore it though, it's "free" damage.