Need help, My bard is having issue keeping up in dps in o8s kefka first phrase.

I can use some help, my bard is having issue keeping up in dps in o8s kefka first phrase. I been to god kefka before but today the pug is having some issue with getting to god and I was told my dps is around 4k. Any good way to improve that? I can kill the SSS around 30% of the time and the rest are in 1-3% range. My highest confirmed was around 4.8k at Guardian.

What does you gear look like? And what about your rotation? Are you using any food? Pots?

Before I used a custom opener but now i use the most common one. Stormbite>bloodletter> Raging strike > Caustic bite > Minuet > BV> Straigh shot > empyreal arrow > iron jaw > sidewiner then fish for RA or emp + barrage. Use sushi but the food was gone for the phrase. , only use pot when the pt is close to enrage. Gear is 362

There are some certain tricks you can do on Bard to keep dots onto the boss when he jumps away. If you Iron Jaws before he jumps away, you will have enough time to Straight Shot and Iron Jaws once he comes back for the DoT refresh. That will save you GCDs of having to Straight Shot -> Stormbite -> Caustic Bite every time he comes back.

Also since Kefka jumps away so often, there is some song optimization you can do. I believe there are certain parts where you just let Army's Paean play out when Kefka is about to jump instead of clipping Army's Paean at only 20 seconds of playtime like the normal rotation. That way your strongest part of your rotation (Wanderer's Minuet) is aligned with party buffs. Party buffs usually go out once Kefka returns to the battlefield.

Also unfortunately, Bard is very affected by the lack of Dragoon and Scholar. If you do not have a Dragoon or Scholar in your party, your personal DPS is going to be lower than other Bards. Critical Hit Rate and Disembowel means everything to Bard DPS.

Also Bard actually need to do the push back mechanic since we do not have anti push back

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Originally Posted by lulunami

Critical Hit Rate and Disembowel means everything to Bard DPS.

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This is another thing I was going to address: what do your stat weights look like? Though we don’t have any hard numbers like we did for HW, Critical Hit Rate is everything to a BRD given the way our Repertoire mechanic works. When considering gear, BiS, melds, and upgrades, it’s very important that you consider the amount of crit on the gear. The higher the crit, the more likely your songs are to proc Repertoire. Because BRD is so RNG, you want to try and stack as much crit as you can so that RNG is in your favor each time you go into an encounter. The stat priority for BRD is Crit >>>>>> D.Hit/Det (they’re about equal) > Sk.Speed (we don’t want a lot of this—Sigmascape BiS has ~960 Sk.Speed, iirc).

Your opener seems fine—I actually use a slightly modified version of it: Stormbite (Bloodletter - Raging Strikes) > Caustic Bite (Minuet + EA) > Straight Shot (BV + Nature’s Minne on MT) > Iron Jaws > Sidewinder > RA fishing (HS x 3 > Bloodletter > HS x 2 ) > Barrage + EA if no RA proc > Iron Jaws right before RS falls off, and PP at 3 stacks unless I have Litany + Chain Strategem, then I use it at 2 stacks. Are you using IJ every time you enter Raging Strikes? And every time you leave it? You should be using it every time you enter Minuet + RS, and every time right before RS falls off to snapshot the RS buff on your DoTs. And how are you using PP? You should always use it at 3-stacks, unless you have critical Hit enhancing buffs like Litany, Chain Strategem, and Spear that will cause both DoTs to crit at the same time, then you want to use it at 2 stacks so that you don’t waste any Repertoire procs (2 2-stack PPs are more potent than 1 3-stack PP).

And yes, BRD will always need to do pushbacks unless you have a PLD that opts to Cover + Tempered Will you. But the pushback should not affect your DPS that much, since you can stay well within range to still attack Kefka.

Generally the biggest losses for bard damage are DoT uptime, not fishing for procs/RA appropriately, suboptimal barrages, not snapshotting under buffs with IJ appropriately and the usual of keeping the gcd rolling and not over weaving. Short of looking at reports it's hard to know for certain where you're lagging behind.

Whether you have a drg or not is a big deal. Kefka's also a fight that is short enough that damage rng is a big big deal, so just running hot can give you a big spread between your best and worst runs. However, given that people are saying you're hovering around 4k it means that there's likely some of the aforementioned fundamentals to work on.

Also, something to stress: stat weights are never coming back. We are never going to confirm any primarily due to their historic misuse in Heavensward and how they are not a fair nor accurate representation of a given gear combination. Not to mention through spreadsheet abuse you can make any substat have the highest weight. I am glad I had us move away from the outdated concept. Instead now we can provide more accurate dps numbers thanks to game formulae that we worked out.

I don;t run prase but the 4k was the run where we hit 62% in that pug group.

What was your party comp ?

Lulu Nami's advice is good. The points at which it's best to stay in Army's Paeon are leading up to the 3rd graven image (Gravitas), and leading up to the 5th (confuse + sleep). Naturally it's fine to keep firing off Empyreals in this period. Always Iron Jaws before he becomes untargetable (those 2 Gravens mentioned), I usually try towards the end of Graven Image's cast bar, you have a brief window after the bar finishes though. That aside it's mostly pretty standard, though given his constant downtime there are several ways to play around with Requiem, but that's not really related to lower personal dps.